A Khrushchev to open Salzburg Festival
NewsNina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, will deliver the opening address of this summer’s Salzburg Festival, it was announced today.
A New Yorker, she is regarded as an analyst of the Putin regime.
She says: ‘The power of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace surely lies in their insights into the human condition, not just the Russian one. In any case, refusing to engage with Russian culture will not change Putin’s calculations or force him to withdraw his forces from Ukraine. What it will do is cut off a potential source of information about his objectives and motivations.’
She is clearly torn between her support for Russian art and artists and her well-known contempt for Putin and his adventurism. Clearly, she brings a well-formed point of view to the debate. It’s a vexed question — it has been asked since back when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and so many countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics, robbing many young athletes — whose careers tend to be shorter than those of artists — of a chance for which they had trained assiduously.
Should artists have opportunities removed because of the sins of their government? Probably not, unless they openly align with those sins, or with the sinner-in-chief. But given the enormity of what Putin and his henchies have wrought in Ukraine, I’m all for leaving it up to individual organisations.
“refusing to engage with Russian culture will not change Putin’s calculations or force him to withdraw his forces from Ukraine.”
True, but this is a false dichtomy. Those who orchestrate canceling of Russian culture act on false assumption that this will turn the Russians against Putin, and those who support this instinctively always hated everything Russian to begin with. Culture or shmulture, they just hate the whole idea of Russia existing.
“What it will do is cut off a potential source of information about his objectives and motivations.”
In the West, nobody really cares about Putin’s objectives and motivations. They’ve been demonizing Putin for 25 years and ignored Russia’s security concerns for 33 years, and the only thing that can change their attitude is a serious breach in their own security.
Funny — in the west there is an antipathy to dictators and totalitarianism. And a disbelief in “elections” where the winner gets 99% of the vote. Or a country where opposition gets you tossed in jail — or worse.
If Putin had been less tyrannical in his approach to everyday Russians, the west might have had more of an ear for his security concerns.
There is no hatred of Russian culture. Far from it. We in the west are taught from early days of the glories of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov and Turgenev — and we were way ahead of you on Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam. We grow up listening to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and Prokofiev and Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin and Rachmaninoff; we know your fairy tales and stories and operas and your ballets — and your dancers, many of whom have felt the need to leave your land to come to the west in order to have the freedom to choose their artistic fates. Some of that improved after the collapse of your last totalitarian regime, and there seems to be freer flow of artists these days — not just the approved ones, as in the days when Yevtushenko wandered the west while condemning the widow of Pasternak at home.
No, my dear Yuri, you cannot say we have not embraced your arts and artists. What we do not embrace is the treatment of the ones that do not keep Mr. Putin happy: say, Pussy Riot. Now I personally would rather attend a concert by Daniil Trifonov than one by Pussy Riot, as I would rather attend one by Stephen Hough than one by Coldplay. But I do not make any attempt to stop the rockers and rappers, and should they take against certain of our politicians, that’s their right.
It is the right of those who support Putin — though they might examine their consciences and ask themselves why they do — to speak out for him. But nothing — nothing — is gained by simply putting down those who disagree. In a civilised society, each side at least examines the opposing view. Sometimes compromise can be reached.
I have long felt that there is more to the Russia-Ukraine situation than “Russia evil; Ukraine saints.” But that does not alter the fact that Russia deliberately and without any serious attempt at negotiation first annexed Crimea and then invaded Ukraine, a sovereign nation. Western democracies, not being very keen on being dragged into war, picked a side in this David and Goliath conflict. Courageous Russians have decried the action; some have paid heavily for it. Somehow the price being asked of those who justify it — the refusal of some of our halls of culture — seems small. They have the biggest country in the world, with a population that includes some of the most artistically educated of people — how we envy you THAT! — to keep them busy until a much hoped-for peace can be achieved. But if the west does not much approve your Mr. Putin is it because of his intransigent attitude to reaching that peace.
1st, this is not about democracy. This is good old superpower rivalry, like Rome against Cartage, GB against Spain, Napoleonic France against GB, and so on. George W Bush did not say “You are either democracy or dictatorship”, he said “You are either with us or against us”, and he was brutally honest.
2nd, democracy is just one of the means to deliver what people want, and what people want are the 3 basics, Food, Shelter, Safety. If democracy is good in providing this trio, people love democracy; if dictatorship does this, they worship the dictator. History is on my side here. Napoleon III was a dictator but the French loved him and only about 5,000 fled the country. The reason they loved their last Emperor was that he gave something to every class of the society, and the French economy boomed under his rule. It was his defeat at war with Prussia that ended his rule, not the will of the masses to democratize the country. It is already obvious to me that Mexico as a democracy is unable to provide safety for its citizens because the flow of drug money from the USA is so huge. So either Mexico turns into dictatorship or becomes a failed state ruled by the narcos; there is no other choice for them. This is why most Russians love Putin: he saved their country from becoming a lawless failed state.
3d, modern democracies are too imperfect to point their fingers at Putin’s Russia. The only country that’s close enough to direct democracy is Switzerland and the rest of Western democracies are ruled by oligarchies. I’d rather approve Putin’s 11th term than be forced to make choice between Biden and Trump; such choice is simply insulting.
4th, you are wrong saying that Putin decided to invade Ukraine “without any serious attempt at negotiation”, obviously you’ve missed his peace proposals of December 2021.
5th, to adress your Pussy Riot point, they broke the law. In the US they’ll be charged with trespassing, privacy violations, and so on just the same. This is just how propaganda works, my friend. Almost at the same time, Charlie Gilmour, the step-son of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, was arrested for hanging on the British flag during a protest and he got some jail time too. But Sir Paul McCartney did not ask to free Charlie; he asked to free the Pussies. So you see, the same kind of actions in Russia and in UK results in different reaction from the British liberals. An act of hooliganism in a Russian temple is considered to be a display of civic courage, but dececrating the Union Jack is regarded as hooliganism (David later wrote a song condemning Charlie).
This entire spiel reads like pure Putin-apologist propaganda. Especially the whataboutism. (Bringing in Paul McCartney and David Gilmour while complaining that, because democracy has flaws, Russia must therefore be above reproach.)
Please do better.
There is nothing wrong with whataboutism. You forgot that the 1st whataboutist in history was Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Sounds familiar?
Did you seriously just compare yourself to Jesus Christ to justify the use of a cheap logical fallacy? Am I hearing this right? Because that level of mental gymnastics makes Simone biles look like an amateur…
PS: I have to thank you, Eric. You proved my original point that “In the West, nobody really cares about Putin’s objectives and motivations.” Every argument questioning the wisdom and nobility of the Western leaders will be immediately discredited as “pure Putin-apologist propaganda.”
Putin’s objectives and motivations are already clear.
They are not mysterious and not deeply concealed in Russian art.