“Try me for treason. I betrayed your deranged state”, the Russian anti-war protester Andrei Trofimov told the Second Western District Military Court in May.
In 2023, Trofimov was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, for opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine in social media posts, and trying to join the Free Russia Legion that fights on Ukraine’s side. At that hearing, Trofimov said he hoped for Ukraine’s victory, and called president Putin “a dickhead”.
On the basis of that statement alone, he was further accused of “justifying terrorism” and defaming the Russian army. For those “crimes”, the judge at the hearing in May this year, Vadim Krasnov, added three years to Trofimov’s sentence.
Before sentencing, Trofimov told the court that he had not justified terrorism, but supported the Ukrainian armed forces’ legitimate military actions against aggression, and had not defamed the Russian army whose actions were unconstitutional and illegal. He told the court that he considered himself guilty of a much more serious crime: treason – taking the enemy’s side in war.
And there will be another chance to hear these powerful readings in London – on Thursday 5 February 2026, 6:30 p.m., at Birkbeck College. Here are the details.
You can order copies of Voices Against Putin’s War, or download a free pdf, here.
We published the book against the background of repeated claims that a peace agreement is about to be signed between Russia and Ukraine. These are louder than ever after this week’s talks in Berlin. At the time of writing this, it is not clear to me that the Kremlin is really interested in stopping the war, or what the “security guarantees” being offered to Ukraine actually mean.
I would recommend following the excellent arguments made about the peace process by Oleksandr Kyselov (most recently here, also here and here), Hanna Perekhoda (who writes on Facebook here), and other Ukrainian socialist writers.
If you want to know why the 20% of Donbas that Ukraine still controls matters so much, this comment by the Institute for the Study of War is worth reading. This speech by Valery Zaluzhny helps us understand what the Ukrainian political elite thinks.
Whatever the outcome of the talks now in progress, if any, the defence of victims of Russia’s military occupation of Ukrainian territory, and domestic political repression, will remain a central issue for our movement, right across Europe.
On Chaplygin Street in Moscow. Photo by anatrrra. Used with their permission
EXTERIOR: A neo-classical building in Moscow’s old German quarter. A plaque on the wall reads, “Western District Military Court No 2”. A group of actors and journalists mill around on the lawn.
INTERIOR: A large hall with a grand staircase. Through the frame of a metal detector stands a statue of Lady Justice in her blindfold, holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other.
A commotion. Several portly guards in flak jackets, with a dog on a leash, escort two handcuffed women through the hall. One, about 5ft tall with big eyes and curly hair, is Yevgenia Berkovich, a 39-year-old poet and theatre director. She is dressed in a white shirt and black trouser-suit. The other, slightly taller, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and large owlish glasses, is Svetlana Petriychuk, a 44-year-old playwright.
The two women are led into a courtroom and placed in a cage of bullet-proof glass. A bailiff lets in the spectators, who sit down on the upholstered, green benches. Berkovich mischievously sticks out her tongue as photographers’ cameras flash and click. Yuri Massin, the judge, looks towards Berkovich.
Massin: Are you ready for the proceedings? Berkovich: Well, it depends on what will happen.
What happened was a show trial that revealed the radicalisation of the Russian state in the past few years. By the time proceedings began on May 20th 2024, Berkovich and Petriychuk had already been in detention for more than a year, having been charged with “propaganda and the justification of terrorism”. In the eyes of the regime, they had committed a crime by writing and staging a play called “Finist, the Bright Falcon”. Part docu-drama, part fable, “Finist” tells the story of the thousands of Russian women who, from 2015, were seduced online by professional recruiters from Islamic State (IS), and travelled to Syria to marry jihadists. Many of these women received lengthy sentences on their return home. The play premiered in 2020 to critical acclaim and was performed across the country.
As with any show trial, this one’s outcome was preordained, and its purpose was to justify the existing system and demarcate the ideological limits of the state. In doing so, it elucidated the ultra-conservative, anti-Western belief system that has expanded across public life since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Berkovich and Petriychuk were the first artists to be jailed since Soviet times for the content of their work—or, more precisely, the thoughts of their characters. But as theatrical professionals, they managed to turn the trial into their show.
The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, and Yale’s Program in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, invites you to the premiere reading of Andrei Kureichik’s new play The Empty Shell of War.
The play, featuring performance by Rachel Botchan and D. Zisl Slepovitch, is directed by Shilarna Stokes.
When: January 19, 2025 Time: 4:00 PM Location: Slifka Center, Yale University
The Empty Shell of War offers a gripping exploration of war’s psychological scars. This monodrama follows the journey of a young Jewish girl from a Belarusian shtetl, surviving unimaginable horrors during World War II. Grounded in authentic testimonies from Belarusian survivors of the Holocaust archived at the Fortunoff Video Archive, the play reveals stories of courage, compassion, and survival. The play is a response to the policy of Holocaust denial pursued by Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime in Belarus. This will be the world premiere of the play.
About the Playwright
Andrei Kureichik is a renowned Belarusian playwright, director, and publicist living in exile. Author of over 30 plays performed globally, his works include the groundbreaking Insulted.Belarus, a centerpiece of the global theater solidarity movement. His plays have been translated into 39 languages and honored with awards like the 2023 Best Foreign Play of the Season in Los Angeles and the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Speech. A Yale World Fellow, Fortunoff Fellow and Lecturer, Kureichik also teaches “Art and Resistance” at Yale University.
CREATIVE TEAM
D. ZISL SLEPOVITCH (composer, woodwinds, sound design) is a native of Minsk, Belarus, a New Yorker since 2008. He is a Jewish music scholar (Ph.D., Belarusian State Academy of Music), composer, a multi-instrumentalist klezmer, classical, and improvisational musician (woodwinds, keyboards, vocals); a music and Yiddish educator. Slepovitch is a founding member of the critically acclaimed groups Litvakus and Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble, a regular contributor to the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, a Musician-in-Residence at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, a pianist and music coordinator at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. Slepovitch’s credits include “Defiance” movie, “Eternal Echoes” album (Sony Classical), “Rejoice” with Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot (PBS), and “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish” (off-Broadway).
SHILARNA STOKES is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Research Scholar in the program of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at Yale. She has directed over thirty plays and musicals in theaters throughout the United States, and has received numerous awards, residencies, and fellowships for her directing work. Her current book project, “Playing the Crowd: Mass Pageantry in Europe and the United States,” examines large-scale political pageants performed in England, the US, Russia, France, and Germany. She is a graduate of Yale (BA in Theater Studies and Comparative Literature), Columbia University School of the Arts (MFA in Directing), and the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (PhD in Theatre).
RACHEL BOTCHAN is an award-winning performer with extensive Off-Broadway and regional theater experience and a variety of stage, TV and film credits, She is known for her dynamic range and transformative portrayals. She is an award-winning audio book narrator with many titles for Recorded Books and Audible. She is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she received the Seidman Award for excellence in Drama.
PANEL DISCUSSION
Following the performance, a Q&A and Panel Discussion exploring the play’s themes and historical context will be led by scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vesta Svendsen (Brown University).
VESTA SVENDSEN is a PhD student in History at Brown under Dr. Omer Bartov, studying the role of trauma in Belarus ’post-Soviet national identity formation. She originates from Brest, Belarus and was raised between Belarus and New Orleans. Vesta holds a BA from Tulane University in Russian Studies and an MA from Yeshiva University in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In 2023, Vesta was a Summer Graduate Student Research Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, studying western Belarus. Throughout her MA studies, Vesta engaged in part-time psychoanalytic training to broaden her understanding of transgenerational trauma. As an interviewer for the USC Shoah Visual History Archive, she gathers testimony from Russian-speaking Holocaust survivors and is currently translating a Russian-language Holocaust memoir. Vesta is a member of the Coordination Council of the Belarusian democratic forces. She possesses language skills in Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, French, Polish, and Yiddish.
Faithful to its avant-garde nature, Noise Cabaret premieres the immersive series Dialogues, based on the philosophical works of Plato, on December 25. Alexander Khudyakov turns ancient Greek philosophy into a lively, witty and provocative dialogue with the audience.
Along with his partner Ivan Wahlberg, Khudyakov, who not only acts in the project but directs it, will guide the audience through the labyrinths of Plato’s thought. What is justice? Where is the line between existence and non-existence? What is the true nature of love? These and many other fundamental philosophical questions will serve as starting points for reflection and debate.
Dialogues is a series of interactive performances in which each viewer is involved in a philosophical discussion consisting of adapted texts by Plato and actorly improvisation, meaning that the way the performance goes depends on the audience’s involvement. Each new performance is a separate chapter dealing with a specific philosophical problem, so you can join the series at any stage. The first episode deals with the concept of justice.
Noise Cabaret plans to invite Petersburg celebrities to enrich the conversation with the audience with their own opinions and views.
Khudyakov shared the idea behind the project.
“We wanted to do a story related to people talking in a bar. But just people talking to each other is not interesting. There has to be a big focus. When I studied Plato, I was interested in several aspects of his philosophy. It would have been wrong to limit ourselves to a single topic. So the idea to make a series arose: take Plato, read him, and discuss the themes he raises in the Socratic dialogues.
“We plan to produce a new episode every two or three months. There’s no pretense here that we’re serious scholars of Plato’s philosophy: it’s more of an excuse to talk to people about difficult topics, to air the Dialogues and reflect on them. And a bar is a place where you can talk about all sorts of things, including philosophy.”
Russians spent almost 6 billion rubles on Ozempic generics in 2024
Semaglutide-based drugs are commonly used for weight loss
In the first ten months of 2024, Russians spent 5.9 billion rubles [approx. 52 billion euros] on over one million packs of generic versions of the drug Ozempic (semaglutide), according to DSM Group, as reported by Vedomosti.
Among the most popular generics are Geropharm’s Semavic and Promomed’s Quincenta. The original drug Ozempic stopped [sic] official supplies to Russia in December 2023, opening the market to domestic analogues.
2024 was a record year for drugs in this category. By comparison, in 2023, Russians spent only 297 million rubles on Ozempic, buying 20 thousand packs. In 2022, they spent 1.9 billion rubles (256 thousand packs); in 2021, 758 million rubles; and in 2020, 76 million rubles.
Semaglutide-based drugs are used to treat diabetes but have recently been gaining popularity as weight loss drugs, which has also contributed to their sales growth in Russia.
St. Petersburg will open a new metro station this week, Governor Alexander Beglov announced Thursday, marking the former Tsarist capital’s first new metro station in five years.
The Gorny Institute metro station, located on Vasilievsky Island, will extend the fourth (or “orange”) line westward. It will begin operations at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, with its vestibule open for both entry and exit, Beglov said.
“The opening of Gorny Institute is a milestone,” the governor wrote on Telegram, noting that the city had overcome “significant challenges” during the station’s construction.
Beglov thanked President Vladimir Putin, metro builders, engineers and residents of St. Petersburg for their patience and support, calling the station’s completion the “first results” of sustained efforts to advance the city’s metro system.
The station’s opening comes after years of delays. Initially scheduled for completion in 2015, its opening was postponed to 2018 and later to 2022. Construction efforts were further overshadowed by a fatal scaffolding collapse in June 2020 that killed one worker and injured another.
Gorny Institute is the first station to open since 2019, when three others — Prospect Slavy, Dunayskaya, and Shushary — were inaugurated.
St. Petersburg’s metro is currently made up of five lines and 72 stations. However, it has expanded slowly over the years, in stark contrast to Moscow’s burgeoning metro system, which this year opened eight new stations.
In trying to grasp the tonality of the film [Anora], I am reminded of a line from Francis Bacon: “You can be optimistic and totally without hope.” The situation the characters find themselves in, being at the mercy of the rich, is totally without hope. The “hopeful” version of the script would be one in which Vanya does stand up to his parents and runs off with Ani, even at the price of losing his wealth—this is the film’s narrative lure. Or maybe another where the ruthless capitalist mother gains a grudging respect for her tough daughter-in-law, like in the last season of Fargo. But despite its grim closure, the impression the film gives is far from dreary or pessimistic. The hopeless optimism of Baker’s cinema lies in the sheer life that seems to almost burst out of the filmic frame, and, especially, his deep care for his characters, even Vanya.
In the fall of 2023, with the goal of understanding what is really happening with Russian society during wartime, the Public Sociology Laboratory team went on ethnographic research trips to three Russian regions—Sverdlovsk, Krasnodar and Buryatia. Over the course of a month, PS Lab researchers observed how people talk about the war and how it affects daily life in cities and villages. In addition, they recorded sociological interviews with local residents. PS Lab has compiled three detailed ethnographic observation diaries (more than 100,000 words apiece) and conducted 75 in-depth interviews. Overall, it has managed to collect truly unique data that provides an idea of what people say and think about the war in everyday situations, and not only when answering researchers’ questions.
The full text of the report is book-length and written in a book-style format: it consists of seven chapters, introduces many characters, and allows readers to be fully immersed in contemporary wartime Russia. The following summary, meanwhile, highlights the main analytical conclusions.
Russian society remains politically demobilized and deideologized. Despite the prevailing opinion that it is strictly militarized, we see that the war has become routine and therefore a disregarded part of reality. For example, compared to the first years of the war, the amount of prowar symbolism in public spaces has decreased in all three regions. The war has neither become a source of new ideas in the cultural life of cities or villages nor been integrated into familiar and already-established cultural formats. The war is not discussed in public places, including, with rare exceptions, local online communities.
In spontaneous conversations, Russians rarely discuss the overall goals and causes, criminality, or justifications of the war. They are concerned with the impact of the war on their everyday lives. When they talk about the war, they mostly talk about the same things they discussed before the war, for example, everyday difficulties, money, or ethics. Men more often discuss topics that are considered “masculine” in society, such as the technical side of the war, and women usually talk about “feminine” topics, such as how war destroys families.
Participation in various types of prowar volunteering and organized assistance for the military, which are often cited as an example of the mobilization and militarization of Russian society, is rarely motivated by people’s firm support for the “special operation.” It is usually associated with pressure from the administration, community moral norms (concerning mutual assistance), and/ora desire to help loved ones, rather than a wish to make victory for Russia more likely. Observation of volunteers’ activities show that while working, they do not discuss the war or politics, rather choosing topics that are personable and relatable to them: prices, pensions, families, and/or stories related to the volunteer centers.
Despite all these similarities, the war is perceived slightly differently in different regions. The peculiarities of each region’s view owe to factors like the number of military units and penal colonies from which prisoners are recruited, proximity to the combat zone, the prosperity of the region and the availability of decent jobs, the density of social ties, the circulation of news transmitted by friends on the front lines, etc. In other words, the differences in perceptions of the war are attributable mainly to the peculiarities of life in the regions before the invasion of Ukraine.
The conflict between opponents and supporters of the war is gradually subsiding, while the rift between those who stayed in Russia and those who left is growing. This is happening both because the shared experience of living through a difficult situation within the country is becoming more important for many Russians than any differences in viewpoint, and also because people are discussing the war less.
At the same time, the waning conflict between opponents and supporters of the war does not always mean more social cohesion. Since people are trying to live as if the war is nonexistent and the government does not talk about any losses or problems associated with the war, all negative consequences of the war are either normalized or pushed into the realm of “personal problems” that are not discussed with anyone and that everyone must deal with on their own.
Overall, many people do not feel able to influence political decisions. Therefore, they are increasingly distancing themselves from the war. They understand that they cannot change government policy, but they retain at least some control over their private lives—and therefore they are immersed in them. Over time, not only apolitical Russians but even sure opponents of the invasion experience this powerlessness and, as a result, some of them accept the new reality while continuing to condemn the war internally.
Consequently, many Russians are increasingly distrustful of political news from a broad range of sources. Instead, they put their trust in local media. Local problems and news seem much more important and relevant to them. Moreover, they feel that, unlike the war, local issues are at least sometimes within their ability to influence.
At the same time, the war is weighing people’s emotional state. Many of our interlocutors admit that they experience anxiety, tension, uncertainty, fear, even if these things are not usually spoken about openly. The departure of sons and husbands to war makes women “scream at the top of their lungs.” However, people rarely share such emotions with others, and if they do, they do so in groups with close friends.
Many Russians who are not interested in politics may justify or condemn the war depending on the communicative context.
They tend to non-emotionally justify the war through normalization (“there are always wars”) or rationalization (“it was necessary”) when asked about it directly in more formalized settings, such as research interviews.
They are more likely to criticize the war when prompted to think about how it negatively affects them as ordinary Russians. This criticism differs from that of war opponents. For opponents, the war is a moral crime against Ukraine, whereas for apolitical Russians, the war is seen as something that destroys Russian society and harms ordinary people. However, this criticism does not lead apolitical Russians to question the war’s necessity or inevitability, nor does it extend to criticizing the Russian government.
They tend to emotionally justify the war when confronted with traditional anti-war narratives. When Russia is accused of committing moral crimes against the Ukrainian people, they often take such accusations personally and attempt to defend their own dignity.
Some people have experienced a strengthened sense of national identity, and sometimes a demand for greater solidarity arises. It’s important to note that this increased sense of national identity does not lead Russians to adopt the official imperial brand of nationalism. Unlike the Kremlin, ordinary people live in a world of nation states, not in a world of imperial fantasies (according to which Ukraine is not a real state and Ukrainians are an inferior people).
A feeling of uncertainty is what truly unites Russians today. Despite the fact that people choose various strategies to cope with this feeling, it still significantly complicates the ability to plan one’s life and plunges Russians into pessimism.
Thus, on the one hand, the formerly extraordinary nature of the war is giving way to normalization: the war is gradually becoming something ordinary, another unremarkable part of the surrounding world. In a sense, many Russians resist both the Kremlin’s attempts to turn ordinary citizens into ideological supporters and the attempts of the anti-war liberal opposition to force society to actively experience guilt and fight. On the other hand, the war constantly reminds us of its existence, creating new threats, new anxieties, and new reasons for discontent in Russians.
Dear readers! Times are tough, and the key in this case is holding on in every sense. No one says it’s easy. But it’s not so hard either. The other day I asked Vladimir Putin whether he expected anything more from himself in the outgoing year. But I want to ask you: do you expect anything more from yourself in the coming year? We need to expect things. We need to want things. It’s a way of holding on to ourselves. Of looking after ourselves. Of not losing ourselves. And even of finding ourselves. A hard sign (“Ъ”) will never be a soft sign (“Ь”)! Happy incoming New Year! Let’s not be on the defensive!
Andrei Kolesnikov, Special Correspondent, Kommersant Publishing House
Source: Email from Kommersant, 31 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. The so-called hard sign, which the Bolsheviks dropped from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet in 1918, has been the logo of Kommersant since the newspaper’s relaunch in January 1990. Andrei Kolesnikov has been the newspaper’s special Kremlin correspondent — that is, its chief Putinversteher — for many years. Of course he’ll deny it all when push comes to shove and Putin goes, and he’ll point of course to the cynical, jocular (but ultimately loyal) way he’s written about the Russian dictator and war criminal all these years.
A charity concert has been held in Paris in tribute to the pianist Pavel Kushnir, who died in detention in Russia. The funds raised were donated to the Paris-based Atelier des artistes en exil (Agency of Artists in Exile), which aids artists who have fled their countries due to war, persecution, and discrimination.
The concert was held at Salle Cortot in Paris. World-renowned pianists Grigory Sokolov and Sergei Babayan performed a program of pieces by Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Tickets for the concert were sold out almost instantly.
“As musicians, we want to voice our support for artists around the world who are persecuted and sometimes forced to leave their native country. Pavel Kushnir chose internal emigration and bravely and unreservedly spoke out against the war. He paid for this with his life. We wholeheartedly support Grigory Sokolov and Sergei Babayan’s November 18 concert in Paris and join them in paying tribute to Pavel, as well as in voicing our solidarity with all artists who are suffering from repression today,” reads a letter in support of the concert, which was signed by Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Gidon Kremer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Semyon Bychkov, Paavo Järvi, and many other famous musicians of our time.
“Music can be used for good as well as for ill. Pavel Kushnir always used it for good. Let us honor his memory and follow his example,” says pianist Evgeny Kissin, who also signed the letter.
“I am honored to pay tribute to the memory of a young artist who gave his life for the truth. Pavel Kushnir clearly understood that there can be no happiness and, in fact, no real art when one country causes another country untold suffering, and the truth about this crime is not heard. The deeply inhuman nature of the regime responsible for his death is underscored by the fact that he, a young artist living far from the capital, posed no danger to the continuation of its criminal rule. He made a beautiful recording of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes, and for that reason I wanted to play Rachmaninoff for him. I would have loved to have met Pavel, who was undoubtedly a beautiful, exceptionally sincere young soul. My thoughts are with Pavel Kushnir, his family, and all the victims of the enemies of freedom and truth,” said Sergei Babayan, explaining his involvement in the concert and the works selected for it.
The proceeds from the concert, as well as the donations raised, will be given to the Paris-based Atelier des artistes en exil, which has aided many hundreds of artists during the seven years of its existence.
“When we left Russia, we had heard nothing about Atelier, and it was not clear where we would put down roots,” says composer Dmitry Kurlyandsky, who turned down Russia’s Golden Mask national theater prize, which he was awarded for the music he wrote for Perm-based Theater-Theater’s production of the play Katerina Izmailova. He called the award “antics on the part of a system which is destroying the theater.”
“But on the second day,” Kurlyandsky says, “I had already found out about Atelier. We called them and they invited us to a meeting. It was the very beginning of the wave of emigration from Russia, and Atelier had more capacity to accommodate refugees. We lucked out. Thanks to Atelier we stayed for eight months for free in a hotel in downtown Paris, and during this time we were able to get our papers sorted and find a place to live.”
Judith Depaule
Judith Depaule, founder and head of Atelier des artistes en exil, sat down for an interview with Radio Svoboda.
— How did you find out about Pavel Kushnir’s tragic story?
— From Russian acquaintances. I also read about it in the French press. There wasn’t that much coverage of Kushnir’s plight, but there were some articles nevertheless. Many artists at Atelier talked about it.
It’s all quite frightening, of course. I have been studying the history of theater in the Gulag for a long time. I see Kushnir’s tragedy as a repetition of what already happened, of things with which we are all very familiar. I’m always amazed at how much history can repeat itself. I wonder why it repeats itself, despite everything we know about our past. How is it that people are dying again just for freely expressing themselves! I find it scary, because the right to freedom of expression is what matters most.
— You said that you said that you studied theater in the Gulag. Tell us a little more about that.
— It so happened that as part of my studies I researched the work of the Futurist theater director Igor Terentiev, who was arrested and sent to work on the White Sea Canal. We know a lot about his life on the White Sea Canal because he was photographed by the legendary Alexander Rodchenko. It was a shock to me that the theater could exist in the Gulag. I researched the topic. I went to the Memorial Society, and I was able to interview many former prisoners. I even traveled to Magadan and Vorkuta. So I am an expert on the history of the theater in the Gulag.
— Whose idea was Pavel Kushnir memorial concert? Why were Grigory Sokolov and Sergei Babayan involved in it?
— It was the artists at Atelier who took the initiative. To make the event respectable, they decided to invite famous musicians. We approached Sokolov and Babayan, and they immediately agreed.
— Yes, Sokolov and Babayan are certainly musicians of the highest order. Babayan is also a renowned teacher. Was the concert program solely Sokolov’s and Babayan’s choice? Or did they discuss it with you as well?
— No, they decided themselves what to play in memory of Kushnir. It was their own choice; we didn’t discuss it with them. It was important to us that the program included pieces which they loved and were willing to perform.
— I think any classical music lover would dream of going to such a concert. It’s just a pity that the occasion is so tragic. There was also a letter in support of the concert, signed by a plethora of classical music stars. The letter claimed that Pavel Kushnir had chosen internal emigration, internal exile. Do you agree with this? If so, how do you understand this term?
— I would imagine that Pavel did not want to be the center of attention, but simply wanted to feel freer. This did not work out for him, alas. I think that, while living under a dictatorship, Pavel was trying to find a place where he could at least breathe freely and do what he loved doing. Because Russia is so vast, you could say that it really was internal exile. This again takes us back to the past. When people tried to disappear from the Kremlin’s sight, they left the major cities to feel at least a little bit freer.
— Atelier des Artistes en Exile deals with a wide range of creative genres, not just music or theater, for example. How did you decide to take on such a serious challenge?
— I founded Atelier in 2017 as a response to the migration crisis in Europe, which peaked in September 2015. There were so many Syrian migrants in Paris. I was working in a small cultural center at the time. We just decided to shelter migrants; it wasn’t about artists at the time. Gradually we began helping immigrants and put together a festival that was dedicated to Syria. I often talked to exiled artists, and they always said the same thing: “We were professional artists before we left. We had a profession. What are we supposed to do now? We don’t understand how French society works, we don’t understand its cultural traditions.” And so on. I decided that something had to be done to help performers and artists in exile. Gradually, this idea began to develop, and I set up this agency in early 2017. At the time there was no talk at all about Russian artists and performers, back then it was mostly Sudan and Syria. Atelier has grown because it helps everyone who leaves their country, whatever the reason, whether dictatorship or discrimination. The world is now in a state in which there are wars, dictatorships, and illegal imprisonment everywhere. So performers and artists have started arriving in France much more often.
— What kind of assistance do you provide? Do you help with accommodation, visas, and jobs, or do you support cultural projects?
— For those who are still in their home countries but want to come to France, we help them get visas and explain how to get here. When people are already in France, we help them with long-term visas and residence permits, so that they are staying in France legally. We help them with social services — medical insurance and so on. We provide a place to work, because that is super important. If you don’t have a place to work, you are no longer an artist or a performer. We offer French language courses, and we have put together a program for artists to learn French through art. We help them understand how French society is organized and learn the peculiarities of French culture. We explain to them what rights they have, what benefits they can claim, how they should fill out their income tax declarations, and so on. We also organize cultural events.
— Who supports Atelier des artistes en exil itself?
— It is supported by the French Ministry of Culture, which sponsors various programs. Private foundations also help out. We are constantly looking for resources. The Pavel Kushnir memorial concert also includes a fundraising campaign to support the Atelier. This involves the money from ticket sales and donations, which we need very much, as we have a large team helping hundreds of people — 350-400 people a year.
— How can people who decide to come to you for help prove that they are artists?
— You have to show us what you have done up to this point: a portfolio, internet links, an account of your past work. It is not difficult to check whether a person is actually an actor, musician, or artist. It is immediately clear what kind of experience they have, where they studied, with whom they worked. Then we decide whether or not to work with them.
— Given that there is a full-scale war on in Ukraine, do you prioritize Ukrainian artists who have fled the hostilities when you’re choosing whom to help?
— Because there are many ongoing wars in the world, we don’t prioritize anyone. We just assist people who find themselves in a dangerous situation. If we talk about relevance, we are most often contacted by people from Gaza and Lebanon, who can be killed at any moment and who ask us how they can leave and what they need to do to leave. We are always watching what is happening in the world. It was not that everything was fine in the world when we started, but there were not so many conflicts. After the pandemic, there were immediate problems in Myanmar and Afghanistan, there was the war in Ukraine, there was the brutal crackdown against the women’s rights movement in Iran. And so on and so forth. More and more performers and visual artists have been turning to us because they don’t know how to go on living.
— Has the number of Russians who seek your assistance increased recently?
— It has been a constant flow which doesn’t stop. The current wave of émigrés from Russia is even greater than the very first one, whom we call White Russian émigrés.
— Let us return to the fate of Pavel Kushnir. I have read that famous musicians who learned about this tragedy and then listened to Pavel’s recordings and read what he wrote, voiced regret that they had not known about him or his talent earlier. Do you think there are many such unknown talents in the world? If so, how can we help the world learn about them not only after their tragic deaths, as happened with Kushnir?
— Pavel’s fate mirrors the history of art in many ways. Many great talents have been discovered after their death. There are so many musicians, actors, and artists for whom creating and making art is what matters most, not being famous. It doesn’t matter to them that they are not in the public eye. We can’t know about everyone, of course. I can’t suggest any way of remedying ths; it’s just the way the world works. There are people who will always be in the limelight, and there are people who will go on modestly pursuing what they love. Sometimes they are more talented than the artists we know well. When we discover a great talent after their death, sometimes a hundred years later, we ask ourselves how come we hadn’t heard anything about them until now, how we had missed them. But there’s hardly anything we can do about it.
Saint Pavel? A scene from a march protesting the blocking of Telegram, St. Petersburg, 1 May 2018. Photo: Olga Maltseva/AFP, via Important Stories
French Kiss is an enchanting cabaret show in the style of the Moulin Rouge, as performed by the world-famous Bize Lisu Show Ballet.
The ballet dancers have already conquered the whole world with their performances. They have garnered roaring applause at the birthday of the Prince of Monaco and in the Kremlin Palace, at Europe’s oldest theaters in Malta and the largest modern concert halls in China.
The unique hand-sewn costumes, the sensual dances, the expressive vocals and the compère’s unsurpassed humor are all part of the grandiose performance.
Duration: 2 hours (with 1 intermission) Age limit: 18+
Performers: Bize Lisu Show Ballet Vocals – Yana Radion, Maria Mantrova, Anastasia Radion Compère – Denis Groshev
*Seat numbers 200 to 220, at the buffet tables in the second row of the balcony.
“French Kiss, the Show”
The venue The show French Kiss will take place in one of the most entrancing places in St. Petersburg— the cultural space Gaika Space. And it will be held in LUXURY format [sic], in which the audience is able to choose festive board tables for two to four people.
The original menu, featuring delicious appetizers and exquisite drinks from the bar, will help you not only to enjoy the show, but will plunge you into a world of gastronomic discoveries. Our show will make your evening unforgettable!
Secure free parking is provided to guests of the show for the entire duration of the performance.
Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader
A very cold welcome awaited Pavel Durov in France, but it increasingly seems this is exactly what Durov was aiming for.
Did he come clean? No, it’s just business
Only a week into the discussion of the Pavel Durov case did commentators begin recalling what kind of person he was, and several stories emerged about his life, which, incidentally, has involved support (including financial support), from the “authoritative” Petersburg entrepreneur Mikhail Mirilashvili. Without this support, Durov’s main business venture, the social network VKontakte, might perhaps not have taken off. (Formally, Mikhail’s son, Vyacheslav, was involved in the business, but the money belonged to Mirilashvilipère.) To complete the picture, it should be remembered that Mikhail Mirilashvili “developed” (as they say) Petersburg’s casinos, for licensing of which the then-deputy mayor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Putin was responsible.
Vladimir Putin (left) and Mikhail Mirilashvili (right)
Vkontakte rose and flourished on pirated content, which is still abundant on the network, despite the fierce efforts to combat it. Business journalists relish recalling how Durov fought for Vkontakte—not in the sense of freedom of speech, but in the sense of the value of his stake in the social network—and won, pocketing 400 million dollars.
For an interpretation of Durov’s arrest and persecution by the French authorities, see Baruch Taskin and Aaron Lea’s column. I would like to reiterate that Durov is first and foremost a businessman, and a very cynical one at that. It suffices to recall [the time Durov threw money out of a window] in Petersburg and Durov’s reaction [to the crowd’s reaction and the public and media backlash]. He laughed, before summarizing his mockery in philosophical terms:
“We refuse to accept a world where people can betray their humanity for money. If there are people who agree to do it, their behavior should be severely ostracized.”
We know nothing about Durov’s involvement with the FSB—all our assumptions are based on circumstantial evidence—but the left-wing albeit decent newspaper Liberation has written about his cooperation with the French security services, quoting Durov’s own statements.
Pavel Durov (center) may even benefit from his arrest in France: the court ruling will be an excuse for Telegram’s transition from a media platform to a crypto-business.
Source: Moscow Times Russian Service weekly newsletter, 1 September 2024. All images and captions were included in the original publication. Translated by the Russian Reader
“Pavel Durov launched money from a window (Vesti report)”
Pavel Durov launched paper airplanes with five-thousand ruble bills on board into a crowd on 26 May 2012, which was St. Petersburg City Day. How the crowd lunged for the five-thousand ruble bills can be seen on the footage recorded by the Kazan Cathedral superview webcam. About ten banknotes were thrown, after which the crowd finally became furious and the amusement was stopped.
The webcam is installed on Nevsky Prospekt. The webcam offers a view of the Kazan Cathedral. On the left in the frame is the house of the Singer company. On the days of city holidays, Nevsky Prospekt in this section becomes pedestrian. Live 24/7 we broadcast the life of our metropolis.
Kazan Cathedral (Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God) is one of the largest churches in St. Petersburg. It was built on Nevsky Prospekt in 1801–1811 by architect Andrey Voronikhin in the style of Russian classicism to store a revered list of the miraculous icon of the Mother of God of Kazan. After the Patriotic War of 1812, it acquired the significance of a monument of Russian military glory. In 1813, the commander Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov was buried here and the keys to the captured cities and other military trophies were placed.
Source: Taxi Crew (YouTube), accessed 1 September 2024. Happening upon this livestream of Kazan Cathedral and environs, the neighborhood where I lived for my first two years in Petersburg, was oddly reassuring, and so I left it on in the background as I worked on this “collage” of news and views and images. It was only now, as I was finishing the piece, that I realized that Kazan Cathedral itself is a monument to the centuries-long profound misunderstanding, sometimes tawdry, sometimes violent, that goes by the name of “Franco-Russian relations” in polite society. ||| TRR
First broadcast in 1981, this Hidden Treasure play by Dennis Potter stars Denholm Elliott as Harris and Ian Ogilvy as James. It has not been heard for over 40 years.
In a dingy flat in Moscow, he sits alone — a traitor to his family, his friends, his colleagues. Then the international press descend upon him and he gives his first interview — an interview which brings forth terrible, haunting memories.
Adapted for radio and directed by Derek Hoddinott A BBC World Service Drama production
With thanks to Keith Wickham, Dr Steve Arnold, Ruby Churchill, Louisa Britton, Alison Hindell, Matthew Dodd, Claire Coss, Carl Davies, Helen Toland, Richard Culver, Andrew Jupp, James Peak, BBC Archives and the Radio Circle.
On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”
Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”
Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected.
Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.”
Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.
Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.
Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”
Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.
Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”
The colossal immersive 3D show The Grinch and the New Year Factory
Palma Mansion (18 Pirogov Lane) Dates: 2.01.2024, 3.01.2024, 4.01.2024, 5.01.2024, 7.01.2024 Time: 11:00, 14:00, 17:00 (daily) We recommend arriving 30 minutes before the start of the event.
New Year is a magical time of miracles and fairy tales! StageMagic Agency has produced a colossal immersive 3D show, The Grinch and the New Year’s Factory, that will entertain children of all ages and even adults! The show can be seen only from January 2 to 7 in the old Palma Mansion!
This New Year’s week will be full of magic, and even the walls of the mansion will come to life as if by magic! No, no, we’re not kidding! Thanks to cutting-edge 3D mapping technologies we will create a Petersburg Disneyland in an old mansion featuring enchanting sets, an incredibly colorful light show, and an exciting performance, including musical numbers performed by the city’s best artists!
Little viewers can look forward to becoming full-fledged participants in a exciting journey through Cartoonland and along with their favorite Disney characters saving the New Year from the insidious Grinch, who decided to spoil the children’s holiday and stole all the gifts from the elves’ magic factory! Elsa, Jack Sparrow, a wizard on a real magic carpet, and many more will come to the aid of the good elves! Will the cartoon characters manage to save the New Year? Will goodness prevail? Come and find out at the main New Year’s celebration in Petersburg, The Grinch and the New Year Factory.
Before the show starts, children will enjoy an exciting welcome program including interactive games with their favorite cartoon characters, a TikTok show, a beauty bar, a magician’s show, and even a photo shoot with adorable husky dogs.
But that’s not all! Every child will receive a 3D gift from Santa Claus, and every adult will receive a welcome cocktail from the owner of the mansion!
All categories of children’s tickets entitle them to receive a gift.
RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN BETWEEN 4 AND 10 YEARS OLD ADMISSION WITH PARENTS CHILDREN ARE SEATED IN THE FRONT ROWS BY AGE (YOUNGER CHILDREN IN THE FRONT ROWS, OLDER CHILDREN BEHIND THEM, AND PARENTS BEHIND ALL THE CHILDREN)
There is no such thing as too much magic, StageMagic knows that for sure! See you in the fairy tale!
Duration: 1 hour and 20 minutes We recommend bringing a change of shoes.
Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader
Dima Zitser. Photo courtesy of Deutsche Welle
Dima Zitser, the well-known educator, writer, and presenter of the weekly program Love Cannot Be Educated, gave a lecture in Berlin in mid-December. Before his “pedagogical standup routine,” as he himself dubs his encounters with audiences, Zitser granted an interview to DW. With Russian schools becoming obedient tools of propaganda, the renowned educator increasingly has to explain to worried parents how to protect their children from the monstrous influence of the government’s lies and manipulation. Zitser told DW how to talk to children about the war, how to teach them to resist propaganda, and how to help them adapt to a new country when they have been forced to move.
DW: Russian parents today often do not know how to talk to their children about the war. They want to protect their children from trauma, but prefer to create an information bubble for them and pretend that nothing is happening. How do you feel about this stance?
Dima Zitser: You cannot avoid talking about the war with your child. You’re forbidden not to talk about it! First of all, it’s tantamount to deception: children are always aware of and know much more about the world around them than we would like them to. If Mom doesn’t talk to it, the child will take its questions to everyone else but Mom. It won’t want to traumatize its mom. It will imagine that this is a painful topic for Mom, that it is not the done thing to talk about it in adult society.
Russian children live in a country that has unleashed a bloodbath. Clearly, we must protect children, and we must choose our words carefully when we talk to them about the subject. But we cannot conceal from them the kind of world they live in. Imagine the level of disenchantment that awaits it when a child bumps its head on this reality. There are no secrets that don’t surface in the end. What do we want our child to grow up to be? A person who doesn’t care about the troubles happening in its midst? It is vital for a person to experience emotional strife.
— Sometimes a child has a hard time coping with the war and even feels ashamed because he or she is Russian. What can parents do in such cases?
You have to explain that it has nothing to do with a people or a nation. Tell your child about the history of Germany, say, which went through its own horror. Tell it about Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, about people who found the strength to stand out. It was hard for them, but if they hadn’t done what they did, the German people would have been finished.
My eldest daughter lives in New York. She does a lot of projects, including ones on behalf of Ukrainians. Her son Yasha is nine years old. [Ukrainians] refused to speak Russian with them in one place. So Yasha asked, “If this language is so hated and it has to do with this war, why do we even speak it?” There is no short answer in this case. Your conversation with your child should start with the fact that the feelings and emotions of people from Ukraine who cannot stand to hear Russian are understandable.
A close friend of mine from Kyiv refused to communicated me after the Russian invasion started, even though I’ve never been a Russian citizen. But later I wrote to her in Ukrainian (my mom and dad are from Ukraine), and we had the most painful conversation for an hour and a half. We met in Europe a month and a half after the war started, and she explained to me that she couldn’t bear to hear Russian being spoke. Although my friend understands that Russian-speaking people may have nothing to do with the war, she feels physically sick and her body hurts when she hears Russian.
I think we need to talk about it. This is what is meant by empathy. We try to understand, albeit incompletely, what is going on with other people.
Dima Zitser, ”Freedom from Education” (TEDx Sadovoe Ring, June 2016, Moscow). With English subtitles
— Suppose a child goes to a Russian school where there is aggressive ideological training, where the war is glorified in “Lessons About What Matters.” Is it enough for the family to talk to the child about what is going on?
I take a very rigid stance in this sense. If people who read DW have these things going on at their child’s school, they have to get the child out of there. There is no other option. If we’re talking about a person around six or seven years old, it believes what adults say without a second thought. It has no sense whatsoever that adults could want to harm it. This, by the way, is the basis of many crimes. The impact of school, propaganda, and indoctrination on this person is enormous! There are absolutely horrible studies on this subject in connection with the Second World War and Nazism.
Get the child out of there! In the Russian law on education, there are different forms of education—for example, homeschooling. Right off the bat tomorrow morning, any family can take their child out of school and start homeschooling it. After that, the technical stuff starts. It will be difficult, but did these people assume that they could live during a war and pretend that there was no war? That they could say things to their child at home, and the child would go to its quasi-Nazi school and everything would be fine? It won’t be fine. It’s a war, guys! It’s a matter of saving our loved ones!
We can’t live in a time of war as if it isn’t happening. We have to make decisions. For example, we can form a study group: parents agree amongst themselves, pool their money, and hire a teacher. This is legal, and there is such a trend in Russia.
If a person is fifteen or sixteen years old, it’s no big deal. Well, they will live amidst doublethink, just as we did when we were growing up. True, it did us no good. There is such an argument amongst adults: “We survived after all.” Like hell we survived! We learned to lie, to be mistrustful, to look for a hidden agenda in everything, to expect the worst. I would prefer to live in a world where people are open and frank.
— Suppose a child has been removed from a Russian school, but other sources of aggressive propaganda continue to harass it. Should children be taught to recognize and combat propaganda?
This is like asking whether a person should be taught critical thinking. Yes, of course they should! We should teach them to seek out alternative sources of information and ask follow-up questions. If someone speaks on behalf of the state, one should immediately question what they say. We must teach children that the phrases “everyone knows,” “anyone would say,” and “there is no doubt” are forms of manipulation.
— In addition to children who have remained in the Motherland, there are thousands of children who have left Russia with their parents. The problems faced by emigrants are often discussed, but what happens to the children is forgotten. How should parents behave so that emigration is less painful for their children?
The most common mistake is to try to maintain the routine you had in place before you left the country. Did you study music? You’ll go to music school here too! Were you studying English? You’ll keep learning English! We played chess on Tuesdays? We’ll do the same thing here!
Not even the best parents are immune to this mistake. They instinctively try to maintain stability at such moments, but they are accomplishing just the opposite. The frame of reference has changed! You can’t live in Berlin as if you were still living in Ryazan! People here are different—they speak differently, look different, behave differently. When we try to stop time, we keep the child from growing.
When we keep a child “packed and ready to go,” it has no chance to grow into the country in which it has arrived. What should it do, pretend it’s in Moscow? Not start speaking a new language? Not make new friends? Not go to the German theater? We are suggesting that these years be excised from its life. It’s a grave mistake.
Children are quite protective of adults, often more protective than adults are of them. They understand that Mom has it rough, and Dad has it rough, so I’ll try not to whine. I’m not very good at it—I get prickly and rude—but I try. Adults are really tempted to say, “What do you know about trauma? You’re only nine years old! What we [adults] are going through, now that’s trauma!” But for all its short nine years, it had lived its little life in familiar conditions, from which it was yanked at the snap of someone’s fingers.
You have to find things to keep yourselves afloat. You have to give yourselves the opportunity to learn things, to be interested in things, to like things. There is a beautiful tree here, a comfortable bench here, a nice store here. You have to establish a new routine: going out to eat delicious ice cream after school, inventing new traditions, having new conversations. Yes, it’s going to be hard, and that’s okay. But we’re together, we’re having lots of experiences, we’re recreating our family bonds. If mom (or dad) doesn’t tell the child that she (or he) is having a hard time, then the child is sure that it doesn’t have the right to say that it is having a hard time either. This is an important point! Sometimes, you have to hug each other and cry on each other’s shoulders. This doesn’t lead to neurosis. It’s a way for the child to realize: I’m normal.
Today, everyone at Samokat is talking about only one thing.
Samokat has been notified that we are being evicted from our little home on Monchegorsk Street in Petersburg. While everyone else is busy with pleasant pre-New Year’s chores, we are being kicked out on the street along with our favorite books and holiday plans. We have just one day to move: tomorrow.
First of all, we appeal to the leadership of St. Petersburg and the Committee for City Property Management. And we hope that the cultural capital is not indifferent to the plight of one of the best bookstores in the city by one of the primary independent children’s publishers in Russia.
Just yesterday we shared a Christmas greeting from Natasha, celebrated our publishing house’s anniversary, showed off our cozy annex, and invited you to our New Year’s workshops. Yes, we share all the news with you. Today, unfortunately, there will be no good news.
Samokat’s annex has become a magnet for our dear readers, a place chockablock with warmth and coziness, and we believe that this warmth amounts to much more than four walls (even if they are the four walls dearest to our hearts). Now we need your help very much.
Tomorrow, our little home at Monchegorsk 8B will be open from 9:00 a.m., and we will be giving away all our books at a thirty-percent discount. Now we basically have nowhere to move the books, and any purchases you make will be a huge support to us. Also, if possible, please pick up confirmed internet orders.
We are looking for volunteers to help us get our little home ready to move. There are only two young women taking care of our little home, Natasha and Polina, and we are confident that you will not leave them in the lurch. If you are willing to help, come to Monchegorsk from 1:00 p.m.
We are urgently looking for a suitable storage facility to temporarily store our books, we have somewhere around 250 boxes of books, furniture and equipment.
And of course, we are looking for a new shelter for our books. We need upwards of 25 square meters for retail space and book events, plus a utility room, in the historical/cultural center of Petersburg.
If you have suggestions and options, please write via Telegram at +7 (921) 809-8519, and Natasha and Polina will be in touch.
A court in Moscow has remanded the theater director Zhenya Berkovich to custody in a pretrial detention center and almost inevitably will render the same decision about the playwright Svetlana Petriichuk (whose pretrial restrictions hearing is still underway). This is the first criminal case in Russia against the authors of a work over its content. Both are accused of “condoning terrorism” in the play Finist the Brave Falcon, which recounts how Islamists recruited Russian women as wives. Last year, the production was awarded the state-sponsored Golden Mask theater prize in two nominations.
Before the court hearing, it transpired that the case was based on a forensic examination conducted by Roman Silantyev, head of Moscow State Linguistic University’s Destructology Laboratory, and his colleagues.
“Destructology” is a science invented by Silantyev himself. He claims that the new discipline “comprehensively examines extremist and terrorist organizations; psychotic cults and non-religious sects; totalitarian sects and the magical services sector; suicidal games and hobbies; deadly youth subcultures (Columbine, AUE, etc.) and medical dissidence.”
There are many experts in Russia whose findings are used by the security forces to imprison people for what they say and write. Often such experts are ignorant, their conclusions are unscientific, and their public statements are frankly obscurantist.
But Roman Silantyev stands out even in this crowd.
A former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Ecclesiastical Relations (the church’s equivalent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), at the outset of his expert career, Silantyev presented himself as a specialist in Islam. In 2005, the publication of his book “The Modern History of the Russian Islamic Community” triggered a scandal: Russia’s Council of Muftis wrote that the author’s stance was at odds “with the most elementary norms of universal ethics and morality.”
To understand the outrage of the muftis, we should take a look at Silantyev’s statements. For example, he said that in order to fight the Wahhabis, “physical force—destruction and gouging—is maximally effective” and dreamed that “law enforcement agencies would finally realize that in this case it is better to cross the line than to come up short.”
Over time, Silantyev felt that he had outgrown his narrow remit as a scholar specializing in Islam and since then he has been commenting on everything. He has opposed Star Wars (callingJediism an “anti-Christian multifunctional propaganda project”), claimed that Ukrainians profess the “religion of Ukrainianism,” and called for a legislative ban on Satanism in Russia, accusing Ukraine of spreading it.
In 2020, Silantyev traveled around Russia giving lectures on “extremism prevention.” He boasts that he has taught classes to officers and staffers at the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), and the Interior Ministry. And they seem to actually pay heed to him, or at least to successfully use him for their own purposes. It seems that Silantyev has already helped to send dozens (if not hundreds) of people to prison, including Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And now he has helped send artists to jail. In their expert report, Silantyev and his fellow destructologists write that Berkovich and Petriichuk’s play contains “traces of the ISIS ideology, as well as the subculture of Russian Muslim neophytes.” In addition, the experts detected the “ideology of radical feminism” in the play.
“The ideology of radical feminism, based on the idea of women’s immanent humiliation, is far from harmless. Destructological science has recorded cases in which adoption of this ideology led to the deliberate planning and execution of a terrorist act,” the self-styled experts teach us. And the court, by sending artists to jail, seems to share this opinion.
Open Telegram and keep up with the news.
Rate this year in terms of its nineteenthirtysevenness.
Take a look at it, at its wooden hands,
At its iron cheeks, splotched with new partings.
This is a theater being demolished, a theater in which there is neither audience nor actors.
This is a theater being demolished, a theater in which there are only fishes and corpses.
Take a look at it and set aside your New Year's fun.
Rate the extent of this city's Stalingraditude.
Wave to the harlequins, dragons, and princesses,
And look at it, monitor the process without blinking.
Hang on to it: it will be both lamentation and reward.
Preserve its shadow if you like.
On second thought, forget it.
A video of a read-through of “Finist the Brave Falcon,” the play for which Russian theatrical director and poet Zhenya Berkovich was detained in Moscow earlier today on suspicion of “condoning terrorism.” Here is a link to a website where you can download the (Russian) text of the play, by Svetlana Petriichuk, who was also detained today. Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up.
Many have nearly forgotten the criminal case against the theater director Kirill Serebrennikov and his colleagues, who were tried several years ago. That affair was dubbed the Theater Case. Apparently, there will be another Theater Case in Russia: director Zhenya Berkovich (a former student of Serebrennikov’s, by the way) and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk have been detained in Moscow.
The criminal investigation is centered on the theatrical production Finist the Brave Falcon, which premiered in 2020. The play was staged as part of the theater project SOSO Daughters, which is run by Berkovich. It is based on the criminal trials of [Russian] women who married radical Islamists. They came to know the men online and, having never met them in person, went to live with them in Syria.
“Zhenya Berkovich’s staging of Svetlana Petriichuk’s provocative, documentary style play, tells the story of a Russian woman who befriends and is seduced by a member of an Islamic radical sect online, goes to Syria, marries him, and upon her eventual return to Russia is tried as a terrorist. In recent years, there have been hundreds, if not thousands of such cases in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. From what are these women running? What is driving them to abandon their friends, relatives, universities and workplaces for the promise of some shadowy paradise? All this takes place in the metaphysical space of the Russian fairy tale “Finist the Brave Falcon,” in which the heroine Maryushka seeks and cannot find her betrothed, the mysterious hero, whose face she has never seen and will never see, but is ready to sacrifice everything in order to meet him.” [This annotation has been edited slightly to make it more readable.]
The Investigative Committee claims that the production “publicly justified terrorism,” which is a criminal offense per Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code and punishable by up to seven years in prison. The details of the case are still unknown. Berkovich and Petriichuk spent the entire day undergoing interrogation as witnesses in the case, and it had seemed that they might be released, but as of evening both were still in police custody.
Last year, Finist the Brave Falcon won two Golden Mask Awards—for best playwright and for best costumes. Costume designer Ksenia Sorokina handed over her award to Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko, who has been in jail since April 2022, charged with disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army. (Skochilenko is alleged to have replace price tags in a grocery store with information about the war.)
Zhenya Berkovich has also not made a secret of her anti-war views, including in her poetry. A collection of her poems was published in Israel earlier this month.
“Open Telegram and keep up with the news. / Rate this year in terms of its nineteen-thirty-seven-ness,” one of them begins.
According to Berkovich, her grandmother, the 88-year-old writer Nina Katerli, was worried about her granddaughter, even going so far as to tell her, “Zhenya, be quiet for a while.” Actually, the director explained that she had decided to stay in Russia, no matter what, because she had to take care of her sick grandmother.
“It is to a large extent a necessity, due to all sorts of family obligations,” Berkovich said in December. “If it were now a question of going to prison or taking care of my grandmother, then of course I would leave, because I wouldn’t be able to take care of my grandmother from prison. But right now this is not the choice I’m facing.”
“Zhenya Berkovich: Why I have stayed in Russia and how to go on living”: Berkovich interviewed by journalist Liza Lazerson, as posted in on YouTube in December 2022 (in Russian)
This morning, the security forces searched Berkovich’s grandmother’s apartment. Berkovich and Petriichuk will spend the night at a temporary detention facility, and tomorrow a court will decide whether to remand them in custody or subject them to other restrictions.
First of all, we appeal to the leadership of St. Petersburg and the Committee for City Property Management. And we hope that the cultural capital is not indifferent to the plight of one of the best bookstores in the city by one of the primary independent children’s publishers in Russia.
If you have suggestions and options, please write via Telegram at +7 (921) 809-8519, and Natasha and Polina will be in touch.
