World renowned Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko performed before 450 people in a packed hotel ballroom in Palm Beach, Florida, Feb. 3. This was her first appearance on stage in the U.S. since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
In response to this attack, Netrebko had said, “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression, and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now to save all of us. We need peace right now.” Given her high profile in Russia, this was a courageous act. It reflected the widespread opposition to the war there, and encouraged Russian working people and artists who took to the streets in protest before Putin’s bloody crackdown.
Nonetheless, Netrebko became persona non grata at U.S. cultural institutions. The Metropolitan Opera in New York broke her contract and fired her, claiming it had the right to dictate her political positions. She was dumped because of her previous support for Putin and refusal to denounce him. Other engagements in the U.S. dried up.
Netrebko is far from the only Russian performer or writer who has been “cancelled” in Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe. The minister of culture in Lithuania barred any further performances of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” ballet at Christmas. He said Russian culture could not be separated from Russian imperialism, calling for a “mental quarantine” on all such works, a form of “cultural decolonization.”
In 2023, the Kyiv City Council decided that Russian music, plays, books, and art of any kind, whether hundreds of years old or produced by opponents of Moscow’s war, could no longer be showcased in public. Statues of Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia’s greatest poets who died in 1837, were torn down.
These assaults aimed at erasing Russian culture have escalated. Bans have been imposed against distributing or reading Fyodor Dostoevsky — regardless of the fact the great author had been imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp for four years under the dictatorship of the czar.
In March last year, acclaimed Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv faced criticism, including accusations of “treason,” for agreeing to conduct an opera by Tchaikovsky at the New York Met. When she pointed out the great composer’s family background was Ukrainian, it was ignored.
But this kind of “cancel culture” only serves to weaken, not strengthen, the fight by courageous Ukrainian working people, arms in hand, to defend their country’s sovereignty.
For culture and debate, not bans
These cultural bans and boycotts go hand in hand with steps by Washington and other imperialist governments to impose biting economic sanctions on Russia, sanctions that hit Russian working people the hardest. Far from helping the Ukrainian people win their fight, it strikes a blow at Ukraine’s biggest ally — the deepening anti-war sentiment among Russia’s working people.
It was this — alongside the death and wounding of Russian troops — that led Moscow to pull out of Afghanistan in 1989, suffering a humiliating defeat. And these are the same two factors that will make a qualitative difference in pressuring Putin to get out of Ukraine as well.
There are ominous implications from this generalized erasure against all things Russian. The country’s rich culture — its literature, music, art and ballet — is being silenced. Ironically much of this censorship is being imposed by organizations set up to support the arts, which should be at the forefront of upholding cultural freedoms.
As Putin’s Ukraine war drags on, the fullest discussion and debate about it is necessary. Anything that closes down space for fraternization and dialogue is a deadly danger to the working class.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years in Putin’s Gulag for his opposition to the war in Ukraine and Putin’s regime, was released last August as part of Moscow’s most prominent prisoner exchange in decades. He spoke about these questions in a talk at Stanford University Nov. 11. “Ukrainians were my neighbors in Omsk [prison],” he said.
He strongly denounced the idea that all Russians were responsible for the atrocities in Ukraine, saying, “The real criminals are those people in the Kremlin who started the war in Ukraine, not those of us who are in prison because we opposed it.”
“There will be another chance for change in Russia,” he said.