Fighting not with history, but with Russia. Why talking about Russian culture always comes down to politics

The authorship of this rebirth belongs to Moscow itself, which deprived its culture of political neutrality. It turned it into a package product, but this product is supplied to different markets in different equipment. This is the main reason for Ukrainian-European "difficulties in translation". Paris and Kiev, Stockholm and Lviv have very different experience of interaction with Russian culture. The words are the same - and the context is different.

Therefore, what we perceive is natural for many in the West seems excessive. And the fact that we read as cultural collaborationism is hardly interpreted in the friendly capitals. The main task of Russian culture in the empire is to be a flag. Names of cities, monuments on pedestals, streets toponymics - all this is intended to mark space.

The imperial culture is hierarchical, and therefore there is a report on the ranks: "central" figures have the capital "Moscow-Pitersk" registration, and "minor"-something else. 2014 launched the audit process in Ukraine - and we witnessed decommunization. 2022 increased sharpness - and cultural decolonization has gained momentum in the country. And no, it's not a fight against history. Ukraine passes the same path that dozens of former colonies passed to it at the time of sovereignty.

The right to give names is one of the manifestations of power. Therefore, Moscow reacts so sharply to the emergence of new names in Ukraine. That is why he so persistently refuses to name Ukrainian cities - new names. It is no wonder that last winter the Russian army fought in Artemivsk, and missiles in the Russian news fly to Dnipropetrovsk. Ukraine increases the cultural distance - replacing toponymics and adjusting school programs.

He is engaged in cultural emancipation - sending monuments to museums and holding a rebranding of the army. He fights for identity - removing imperial symbols and renamed the metro stations. If Moscow wanted to slow this process, she had to start war.

But when you take political neutrality in your culture, you turn it into a package product and sell it in connection with loyalty to the empire and accepting the Russian version of history - you should not expect it to be bought in the country you attacked. However, it is for the same reason that the Ukrainian optics of view of Russian culture will not always coincide with the western one. When it comes to contemporary writers and artists, they can be measured by their biography.

Lifetime cultural contribution is easily thrown away by lifetime. The one who is a lawyer of Putin and the Kremlin today is predictably deprived of European touring and American visas. But when it comes to the classics, everything is much more complicated. In Ukraine, a great temptation to declare modern Russian policy a direct heir to Russian culture. To draw a straight line from the "Golden Age" of Russian literature - to Bucha. From Silver Age - to Mariupol.

We have the right to our own emotions, but most likely we are unlikely to sell our position to friendly capitals. For the simple reason that after World War II, Europe is not ready to buy essentialism. Essentialism argues that some entities are characterized by a constant set of aspects. That phenomena are unbreakable, and their characteristics are stable. During the Second World War, it was established to explain the crimes of the Third Reich by the nature of German culture.

But the whole further European debate ended in the fact that it was decided to refuse this concept. The post -war consensus was that the contemporaries of the crime are guilty of crimes. Therefore, Lena Rifenstel is responsible for the Third Reich - for the period of which the heyday of her career has fallen. And Richard Wagner, who died fifty years before the victory of the Nazis - no. Therefore, today, public viewing of Rifensstal's films can be regarded as a political gesture.

And listening to the cycle of the operas of the Nibelung Ring remains a cultural performance, not political proclamation. The Ukrainian attempt to minute Russian culture in the West risks to come across the same logic. In response, we will hear that the classical culture is not equal to current politics. That monuments are polysemantic - and therefore defenseless before trying to put them in service.

That an attempt to put collective guilt on long -dead writers and artists only after their citizenship does not stand criticism. In the end, we will be told that the culture of a Russian man is a culture created not only by the Russians. We will be told that in the experience of growing up the Russian soldier, Tchaikovsky's operas were less than Beatles albums. What he read not so much as Dumas. What choosing between Eisenstein and Tarantino, he probably preferred the latter.

And this will be the key argument of our interlocutors against attempts to establish a cause and effect relationship between the national cultural foundation and war crimes. Modern Russia is a hybrid. By nature, it is an anti -European state with European culture. This culture inherited in Europe, imitated Europe and was created according to European rules and canons. In imperial colonies - including Ukraine - Russian culture had to displace and replace.

The imperial historical narrative is instead of Ukrainian. Russian names - instead of the national pantheon. The ubiquity of Russian culture was to marginalize local cultures - displacing them into the periphery. But at the West, the task of Russian culture was not to replace, but to diplomacy. The Russian state has used its own culture as a diplomatic facade for a long time. She had to provoke interest and give birth to interest. Emphasize a civilization community and create a negotiation field.

The European nature of Russian culture distracted attention from the anti -European nature of the Russian state. And the artists and artists fell the role of trade representatives in the sale of "mysterious Russian soul". Where in clearly verified proportions mixed bear and satellite, balalaika and ballet, zeb and constructivism. Genius and villainy were quite compatible - in the great narrative. The repression of the 37th is but the fifth symphony of Shostakovich.

Tanks in Budapest and the defeat of Prague Spring - but five chess world champions. Invasion of Afghanistan - but Brodsky with Nobel's speech. Each time, the external observer could allow the use of a cultural context in the role of universal "instead". "Instead, Nuriyev and Plesetskaya. "Instead, Chaliapin and Tarkovsky. " "Instead, the Diagilev seasons and the Russian avant -garde. " The advantages can be defined as a continuation of the disadvantages.

And vice versa: to say that the disadvantages are just a continuation of advantages. The simultaneous neighborhood in Russia of political barbarism and official culture allowed many in the West to ignore the first and focus on the second. Unlike Ukraine in the West, there is no habit of seeing the threat of its own identity in the Russian culture. Instead, they tend to perceive many Russian classics as long -made globalized characters. As names that exist from national blood and soil.

As a legacy that belongs to all and no one. This experience can contradict Ukrainian optics - but this does not mean that our interlocutors will be ready to give up. And in the same way in the West may not take into account the Ukrainian context. Do not understand the nature of cultural decolonization. Do not notice the meaning of imperial toponymics. Our experiences of coexistence with Russian culture are very different to be clear without translation.

We have ripe for thirty years to our own cultural emancipation, and therefore we must be ready to explain what is happening to us - ourselves and the world. For many years, the West, looking east, looked through Ukraine - immediately to Russia. And we have the right now to demand changes in optics. We can tell our Western interlocutors about the Ukrainian cultural landscape - literary, musical, artistic. Everything that has been Terra Incognita for them for a long time for them and for ourselves.

About everything that was not visible in the light of imperial soffits, which only showed one Russian culture. About everything that was doomed to exist in the shade - or underground. We are unlikely to achieve the goal if we call for Kenseling of another's cultural layer. A similar approach will be opposed to the post -war Western consensus. But we have the right to demand not to replace the conversation about Russian military crimes by the discussion of Tolstoy and Chekhov.

We will not be able to sell the idea of ​​a boycott of Russian culture. But we have to insist on decolonial optics when looking at it. And each of its cultural artifacts should be studied as a monument of the empire and an example of its official discourse - in particular about conquered peoples. We cannot prevent the West from talking about the European nature of Russian culture - but this should not be a reason to ignore the anti -European nature of the Russian state.