“The first thing is to ban Russian representatives of media and culture from traveling in the free world.” This was said on Thursday night by the Ukrainian Minister of Culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, who had already been pointing out ways when he proposed drawing up ‘black lists’ of Russian authors. For the minister, the Russian cultural world is closely linked to the army that sows death and devastation in Ukraine.
That is why Tkachenko is very critical of the presence of Russian media in other international spaces: “The world community should distance itself from Russian culture so as not to fall under the influence of propaganda messages.” In his opinion, the narratives of Moscow are “quite primitive”, but not for that reason inoffensive: “With ample financing it pays off, and the free world continues to invest in broadcasting in Russian”.
In this, as in so many other wars, culture is both a victim and an accomplice of its mother nation. This time, with the addition that the cultural battle takes place between children of the same parent; at least, before Ukraine packed up, left the house and built a home of her own, probably not remotely far enough from the once familiar bosom. The Kremlin continues to refer to the Ukrainians as “little Russians”, but the little brother has grown up, has become independent and wants to cut all ties with the older one.
An editor at the state-run Ria Novosti news agency called in April to “de-Ukrainize” Ukraine, in line with Putin’s statements that he denies Ukrainians their identity and even their existence as a nation. Kyiv now launches the offensive.
Kevin M.F. Platt, a professor in the Department of Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and editor of the book Global Russian Cultures, wrote in The New York Times “Russian artists are not the problem.” Platt points out the irony that “those who react to the war by aggressively or indiscriminately banning artists and works because they are Russian are reflecting the same nationalist thinking that drives the invasion.”
Platt defends that the idea of ??the Russian world is a fallacy, a political label promoted by the Kremlin that appropriates everything Russian even beyond its borders. Boris Khersonsky, a Jewish poet from Odessa who writes in Russian, could be described as a poet who “belongs to the Ukrainian culture”, but his poetry is part of the distinctive Russian culture. Here is the crux of the matter: Where do both cultures begin and where do they end?
