COVID-free

Dear viewers,

Due to the spread of the coronavirus, a period of non-working days will be in effect in Moscow from October 28 to November 7. There will be no changes in our repertoire: we plan to hold all scheduled performances.

PLEASE NOTE!
🔻 From October 28, all performances for viewers over the age of 18 will be COVID-free [in English in the original]: you can attend these performances only if you have a QR code (confirming you are protected from COVID-19).
🔻 A QR code can be obtained:
🔻 after you have been vaccinated.
🔻 by doing a PCR test (valid for 72 hours)
🔻 after recently being ill with COVID-19 (valid for 6 months from the date of recovery).

If you do not have time to get a QR code before your planned outing to the theater, you can present a certificate showing you have received the first dose of a vaccine.

Our partners for ticket refunds:

RAMT website – https://ramt.ru/orders/
Yandex.Afisha – https://widget.afisha.yandex.ru/refund
Kassir.ru – https://msk.kassir.ru/pages/refund
Listim.com – https://listim.com/pages/for_clients_e_ticket
Ticketland.ru – return by registry tickets@ramt.ru

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and be healthy!

Source: email newsletter from RAMT (Russian Academic Youth Theater), 22 October 2021. Translated by the Russian Reader

Why Russia Is in No Hurry to Get Vaccinated
Kirill Martynov
Rosbalt
October 15, 2021

Vaccination in Russia is at a shamefully low level: according to official statistics, 31.4% of the country’s residents have received two doses of a covid-19 vaccine. By comparison, this figure is now 64% in Germany. In our country, this has translated into a record number of deaths and the transformation of Russia into a reservoir for the virus’s further evolution. The 42% vaccination rate among older Russians is an especially frightening figure: although they’ve had a whole year to do it, they and their relatives could not be bothered to take care of themselves. It’s as if our national motto were Viva la muerte!

But the behavior of anti-vaxxers in a country like ours is apparently rational. The main source of information about the benefits of the vaccines are government agencies and state media, about which everyone knows that, first, they lie constantly, and second, that they are never called on the carpet for their lies. They lied about the absence of Russian troops in Ukraine, and many rejoiced at this military trick. They lied about pension reform, “which will never happen, because the president is against it,” but in this case no one rejoiced.

Russians know that there is no mechanism for punishing liars. If it turned out that the vaccine was dangerous or useless, no one in the Russian government would be held responsible for it. They would just start lying about something else.

Free and fair elections, which liars can lose, are a basic institution for ensuring responsibility, but we don’t have this institution in Russia, nor is it anywhere on the horizon.

When there is a high level of distrust of everything related to the state, it is not surprising that people are in no hurry to get vaccinated. Without trust, the only way to solve this problem is by force, as was done in the Soviet Union.

On the societal scale, trust is even more fragile and valuable thing than in relationships between individuals: it has to be carefully fostered for decades. The Germans managed to pull it off after the Second World War, but we have not even have formulated this task.

This is also not surprising. A high level of trust within society makes a dictatorship impossible: it is instantly opposed by growing solidarity. For example, in Soviet Poland, this happened in particular because the authorities failed to destroy the influence of the Catholic Church and the network of parishes.

Accordingly, it is vital for a dictatorship to keep trust at a minimum level. That’s why Russia is in no hurry to get vaccinated now. It is a byproduct of authoritarianism’s self-defense against “internal enemies.”

Thanks to Paul Goble, a personal hero of mine, for flagging Martynov’s article on his website Window on Eurasia, which has been essential reading for post-Sovietologists and Russianists for the past seventeen years. Get well soon, Paul! Photo by Aleksander Avilov/Moskva News Agency, courtesy of the Moscow Times. Translated by the Russian Reader