Watching Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker is a Christmas tradition for many. But this year, people are being urged to stay away: Ukraine’s culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko published an open letter earlier this month asking the West to boycott Tchaikovsky and wider Russian culture until the war in Ukraine is over. ‘This war,’ he said, ‘is a civilisational battle over culture and history’.
He’s right: since February, the Russian state is doing its best to annihilate Ukrainian culture in every possible way: banning and seeking to destroy the Ukrainian language, artists, authors and music. But how far should we go in response? Is a crackdown against Russian culture a wise idea, or does it play into Putin’s hands?
The Kremlin has, of course, long weaponised Russian culture in an attempt to enforce its dominance on the global stage. Examples include the state-sponsored doping programme for the country’s Olympic athletes and the convenient erasure of the non-Russian heritage of its cultural figures (Tchaikovsky himself had Ukrainian roots; the great-grandfather of the poet Pushkin was an enslaved man kidnapped as a child from what is present-day Sudan). But a full boycott of Russian culture is surely not the right response; nor is it as straightforward as Tkachenko suggests.
As the new year approaches, politicians in the West are redoubling their efforts turning to help Ukraine triumph over Russia. Joe Biden has vowed to stick by Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’, when he met Ukraine’s president Zelensky in Washington – and pledged a new $2 billion (£1.7 billion) aid package.
For anyone looking to see this conflict resolved properly, such support must be a priority. But even once the war is over, and the last Russian soldier has left Ukraine, a part of the conflict will continue to rumble on. And that concerns the future of Russia, and more specifically Putin.
Some hawks suggest Russia should pay penance or reparations for the war they have waged and the lives and country they have destroyed. The extent of those reparations is a debate for another day.
But as the Russian political scientist Kiril Rogov recently wrote, ‘Ukrainians will have achieved their victory the day Putin’s regime accepts that its military campaign has failed. But for Russians, victory will only come when Putinism comes to an end and our country is free again.’ The end of Putinism, and a free Russia, is something that everyone who supports Ukraine should also want.
Tkachenko’s appeal to the West came the day before Latvia revoked the broadcasting licence for TV Rain, the independent Russian broadcaster which had fled Moscow in the days following Putin’s invasion and his domestic crackdown on criticism of the war. Since July it had been operating from the Baltic country after being offered refuge there.
The Latvian government took the channel off the airwaves following a series of incidents which they said amounted to the TV station being a ‘threat to national security’, including one Russian presenter calling the Russian army ‘our army’. TV Rain, which is run and presented by opposition-minded Russians – and whose target audience are Russians still living in Russia – said the incidents were mistakes.
Latvia’s decision was widely condemned, not least by the press secretary of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Kira Yarmysh, who said stripping TV Rain of its licence ‘only helps Putin’. He’s right: the loss of TV Rain means a vital tool for combatting Putin and tackling Kremlin disinformation is no more. But worst of all, this crackdown suggests Russians are being treated as if they are all the same – that they are ‘Putin’s people’.
Treating Russians in this way is misguided. Putin’s end will come. It might not be next month, or even next year, but it will come. The wider consequences this will have for the world don’t need spelling out. However, just how and when Putin is removed – because he certainly won’t go of his own accord – depends more on the Russian people than even many of them might currently realise. Any successful removal of Putin and any successors to his regime will depend on a movement from bottom up.
So, how the West chooses to treat, address and talk about ordinary Russians matters a lot.
Leaked polling conducted by the Kremlin this autumn shows that an increasing number of Russians, 42 per cent as of 17 November, are beginning to think the war is not going to plan. Despite this, however, the polling revealed that 67 per cent still think the war should continue.
It suggests most Russians are becoming increasingly unhappy with the war but are unwilling for it to stop while their country is on the back foot. The Kremlin’s pervasive propaganda machine, full of sulphurous rhetoric about Nato and the West and how this has become an existential battle for Russia, is succeeding.
The result, as this polling demonstrates, is that Russian people fear what could be in store for the country following a loss in Ukraine. Ending hostilities now is not an option many Russians want to consider.
But there is also a glimmer of hope here. The polling show potential for changing the tide of Russian thinking. Yet it is up to the West to show Russians that they are able to distinguish between ordinary Russians and the man in the Kremlin. Taking TV Rain off air and boycotting the works of long-dead composers achieves the opposite of this.
For Russians, victory will only come when Putinism comes to an end
That is not to say that Tkachenko is entirely wrong in his remarks. Many ordinary Russians are very proud of their culture. They hold their musicians, sportsmen and artists in the highest of regards. The Kremlin knows this too and it is this that is partly behind its strategy to weaponise Russian culture.
Tkachenko says, at the end of his letter, that ‘rejecting representatives of Russian culture who support its totalitarian regime and preventing concerts of Russian performers who openly support its war of aggression are conscious steps for a mature democratic society to take.’
He’s right: musicians and artistic companies associated with the Russian state should not be given a platform. Russia, and Belarus for that matter, should not be allowed to compete at the Olympics in 2024, as the International Olympic Committee has been rumoured to be considering, or any other sporting event before this war ends.
But I also believe that the West has a responsibility to support and allow any Russians able to sufficiently prove themselves to oppose the Kremlin to act as an ambassador for the anti-Putin cause. The influence this could have in Russia domestically should not be underestimated.
For there to be a hope that, at some point in the future, Russians will rejoin the global community free of Putin, the West has a part to play. It must reassure them that returning to the fold, rather than retreating further behind the supposedly protective shield of Putin’s isolationism, is the most appealing option.
For this to happen, the West must support whatever remains of the independent Russian press. It must also demonstrate to Russians that, contrary to Putin’s rhetoric, the West poses no threat to their way of life. Key to this is showing that their culture does not face annihilation.
In this way, it is on us to give Russians something (freedom from Putin) to fight for and believe in. The good of the world will depend on it.
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