Another Putin job for Valery Gergiev
OperaThe head of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres and of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition has been appointed president of a new L. N. Tolstoy International Peace Prize.
Not the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s the Russian-aggression model.
The first winner is the African Union.
‘Thanks to the efforts of this authoritative international association, aimed at promoting unity and solidarity among African states, defending their national sovereignty, maintaining peace and security on the continent, the mechanisms have been put in place to respond collectively to local crisis situations. Various formats of the regional integration process have been launched, contributing to the social and economic development of Africa, numerous social, cultural, educational, and other programs and initiatives are being implemented, primarily addressed to young people‘, said Valery Gergiev during the ceremony.
Putin sent this message: ‘I consider your project to be an important and demanded initiative designed to help consolidate the international community around the noble ideas of maintaining global peace and security, protection of human rights and freedoms, formation of the new just multipolar world order based on the principles of sovereign equality and respect for each other’s legitimate interests, the rule of international law.‘
1984.
It’ astonishing how a person who has seen so much and has had so many contacts in the Western cultural scene can be so blind and downright stupid to consider Putin a peacemaker – poor Tolstoi!
Some do Putin’s bidding directly, like Gergiev.
Some, like Muti, do what presumably represents Puti’s bidding — namely, to rehabilitate his Great Bass Abdrazakov — indirectly.
If you missed it, Muti is rehabilitating Abdrazakov, the Great Putin Bass; after partnering with him in the last Ravenna festival, the Italian Stallion did it again recently in Japan, as reported by Operawire: https://operawire.com/riccardo-muti-putin-supporter-ildar-abdrazakov-team-up-for-japan-attila/
Muti has strong “cultural” ties with the Russian regime (like Putin, he is a man of “culture” and “beauty”.). He famously let Gergiev conduct his Cherubini orchestra at the Ravenna Festival during the covid lockdown era, a ‘privilege’ accorded by Muti to oh so many few conductors.
Muti is a recipient of the Russian Order of Friendship award (conferred on him by Putin) and a member of the Russian Academy for the Arts, an honor conferred on him just a few months before the start of the Ukraine war; that is, well after the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. In other words, Muti was completely fine and dandy accepting honors from an institution tied to a criminal regime who invaded and annexed a piece of a free European country in 2014, just like Nazi Germany did.
We can’t be sure of much in life. But we can be sure that Muti stands for peace, just like Gergiev.
Follow the cash for weapons and you will always see the winner of a Putin sponsored competition. Gergiev is complicit.
Obama got a Peace prize. For doing nothing.
And that has what to do with what in this conversation? Focus, bot.
Oh Valery, please – stick to your day job (i.e., licking Putin’s boots).
… Global peace and security…. human rights and freedoms… sovereign equality and respect for each other’s legitimate interests…the rule of international law…
This, from Putin? As they said about Kissinger and the Nobel; satire is dead.
In a perfect world, the AU would throw it back at him.
Well, too many countries in the African Union depend on Russian mercenaries. So, they’ll gladly accept it. Besides, quite a few of the countries are ruled by semi-dictators at best. So, it is a good fit. Next year’s winner perhaps Kim Yong Un? Or Hamas? So many worthy recipients are just waiting to be recognized…
This is a very concise and accurate comment. Thank you!
Or maybe too many countries in the African Union still remember who robbed them for centuries and who helped them to gain independence?
Poor good old Tolstoy…
The big irony here is that Tolstoy himself was expelled from the Russian Orthodox Church (for not believing in the Trinity, etc.) and denounced by the Russian Tsarist state apparatus.
O tempora, o mores …
“Russian by birth, orthodox by baptism and education, Count Tolstoy, in the deceiving of his proud mind, defiantly rebelled against the Lord and His Christ and His sacred property, clearly denied everything to the Mother, the Orthodox Church, which nurtured and bred him, and devoted his literary activity and the talent given to him from God for the propagation in the people of doctrines that are contrary to Christ and the Church, and to exterminating in the minds and hearts of people of paternal faith, the Orthodox faith, which established the universe that lived and lived salis our ancestors and which hitherto held strong and was holy Russia. In his writings and letters, scattered by him and his disciples throughout the world, especially within our dear Fatherland, he – a) preaches, with the zeal of a fanatic, the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and – b) the very essence of Christian faith:
1. rejects the personal living God in the Holy Trinity of the glorified, the Creator and the Provider of the universe
2. denies the Lord Jesus Christ — the God-man”
etc.
etc.
etc.
Definition of the Holy Synod of February 20-22, 1901.
WOW! I’m going to go back and re-read Tolstoy.
1984? What about it? There is no double-think here. Western powers have had their hand in no fewer than 7 African coups in the last 3 years, having inflicted dozens of “regime-change operations” since the supposed end of colonisation. Russia, on the other hand, has always done business with African countries without imposing “democracy”, a.k.a. trying to control or undermine sovereign African leaders. Russia is an important diplomatic voice in a continent still ravaged by western colonialism. If you aren’t aware of how popular Putin is in Africa, and how unpopular America is, you really should educate yourself.
Russia has organized “at least seven military coups in West and Central Africa since 2020, in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Chad and Mali”.
Russians are always accusing others for what they are doing themselves … It’s the old narrative. * Yawn. *
OK, let’s check. Concentration camps? A British invention during the Boer war. Poison gas? The Germans. Mass bombing of cities? Here the Germans and the British compete. Racial hygiene theory? A British invention implemented in Germany. A-bomb? The Americans. Military coups in Africa? 220 since 1950. Must be tough for the Russians to always accuse others of their own sins cause they are so uninventive.
Hello Yuri. How is the weather in Moscow? Did winter arrive yet ?
Nice to see that SlippeDisc is not yet banned in Russia 🙂
>>OK, let’s check. Concentration camps>>
These were actually invented by the Russians (Check wikipedia: Siberia, gulags, The Great Purge).
For more reading, you might also want to read Dostoevsky’s memoirs from the mid-1800s or anything by Solzhenitsyn. — Happy reading.
(Dozens of millions of innocent people died in Siberia and in the gulags, including many of your own relatives, which, by the way, makes it particularly shameful that you do not acknowledge them.)
>>Mass bombing of cities?>>
Happening every night in Ukraine. (Check also: Mariupol). You might also want to check: Groznyi. (Rule being: if Russia has a plane, they bomb. But if they don’t have a plane, they cannot.)
>>Poison gas?>>
Check: Polinium tea, radioactive underwears, … (when it comes to various poisons Russians have been the most creative nation on earth for centuries. Check: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, … . Check also: Navalny, Litvinenko, etc.)
>>Racial hygiene theory>>
Russian television just bragged that they are ‘the last white nation left in the world’ 🙂
>>A-bomb? The Americans>>
I know Stalin was jealous… Poor guy…
However, you might wish to check: Tsar Bomba. The biggest bomb in world history was invented by the peaceful…. Russians! 🙂
>>Military coups in Africa? 220 since 1950.>>
False. There has been 220 attemps — most by Soviet Union, by the way! — and only 109 were successful.
For more information, you might wish to read this article from 1966: “Soviet Doctrine and the Military Coups in Africa”.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40199574
Many hugs & kisses,
J
Thanks for your kind words, but check your calendar, Jean. The Boer War was way before Gulag, and even Dachau was before Gulag. And so on. We Russians are so backwards, even the guillotine was envented by some French dude.
Yeah, and it’s not only that, but the help from the West always comes with some ridiculous conditions. Like, when Bush-43 administration helped Africa against AIDS, the package forbade free distribution of condoms. Instead, Africans had to abstain from sex. And now it’s the opposite, the LGBTQ+ agenda is pushed aggressively. For many years Christian missionariers in Africa taught locals that homosexuality is a deadly sin and colonial administrations imposed criminal laws against it. Such morals and laws were mostly left intact after African countries became independent. But now it is like “OK, we changed our laws, so forget everything we told you before. You must change your laws too or else we won’t help you!” People do not like it when some outsiders tell them again and again how they should live.