Iron curtain on culture: How the Russia-Ukraine war is cancelling shared cultures

Even as Kiev is freezing and trapped in darkness, mostly without electricity and heat, and while most of it shivers and takes refuge in underground metros and subways amidst a barrage of missile attacks from Russia, a dark irony is floating across the borders. The memory of legendary classical musician, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), is being resurrected yet again in the war zones across the border, and in the opera houses of Europe. If anything, it can be termed as a ‘sad return to negative nostalgia and bad faith’.

And while the legend’s epical creations, the sublime ‘Swan Lake’ and ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ did the rounds across Europe’s finest concert halls during Christmas and the New Year, a profound pessimism has come to envelope his aesthetic legacy, cherished across the West and all over the world. The vicious negativity of the war has cast its sinister shadow on not only Tchaikovsky, but on the great heritage of literature and culture in the region. And there is a big debate involving the question, that if a great work of art transcends borders, time and space, then, why should it not transcend war as well? Why should an epical work of art be ghettoized, banned and condemned in the hysteria of ultra-nationalism?

For instance, the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra in UK has been facing criticism after it removed Tchaikovsky’s ‘Overture’ from a programme. This performance is an ode to Russia when it defended itself against the invasion of Napolean. Its orchestra is accompanied by a ‘volley of cannon fire’.

The website of the Orchestra said: “In light of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra… feel the previously advertised programme including the 1812 Overture to be inappropriate at this time.”

In another instance, early this year, the National Gallery in London chose to rename Edgar Degas’s celebrated ‘Russian Dancers’ as ‘Ukrainian Dancers’. There is already a demand to rename Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 2. It is famously called the ‘Little Russian’, which, historically, is a synonym of Ukraine. The symphony was earlier called the ‘Ukrainian Symphony’ and is famous for the endearing use of three popular folk songs from Ukraine. As one letter-writer wrote in the The Guardian: “I am not an advocate for blanket revisionism, but this is one case where reassigning the Ukrainian name would be accurate and appropriate.”

Another letter writer had earlier stated that that although Tchaikovsky was born in Russia, his paternal family came from Ukraine. They were called Chaika (‘Seagull’) and thereby the origin of “the more noble-sounding Chaikovsky” adopted by the composer’s grandfather, who, finally, moved to Russia.

“Tchaikovsky’s Ukrainian origins were hardly celebrated by the Soviets, nor today’s Russians. Russian missiles were blasted at the city of Kremenchuk, the birthplace of Pyotr Ilyich’s great-grandfather, Fedor Chaika, a Cossack who served in the Zaporozhian army. The great composer’s Ukrainian roots should be celebrated as much as possible.”

Meanwhile, in a controversial piece in The Guardian, Ukraine’s culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko has argued that there should be a “cultural boycott” of Russian culture, and that it would not man “cancelling Tchaikovsky”, but would be basically “pausing the performance of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion”. He said that the war is “a civilisational battle over culture and history” in which Russia is actively “trying to destroy our culture and memory”.

Several celebrities in Ukraine have backed his appeal. They have pointed out that Russia is openly using its cultural icons to support the ‘invasion’. When Russia-occupied Kherson in Ukraine, amidst thousands dead across both sides and millions turned into refugees, billboards suddenly emerged in the ravaged city with images of great Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, his links with the city, and references to his pre-Bolshevik, patriotic poetry.

While a large section of the independent Russian media has been banned or journalists have gone into exile, like the Noble-prize winning editor of the banned ‘Novaya Gazeta’, Dmitry Muratov, who has donated part of his prize-winning money to Ukrainian refugees and children, a huge section of Russians, including artists, writers and cultural icons have opposed the war. Anti-war protesters have been packed off to prisons, even while thousands have escaped Russia through its land border refusing to be conscripted forcibly in the army. There are reports about prisoners being unleashed in the war with the promise of freedom if they return alive from the battlefield.

In Ukraine, meanwhile, there is a churning going on. This also being dubbed as the ‘language of decolonisation’, seeking freedom from the past, while redefining and resurrecting a new discourse. This is a concerted attempt to detach the nation’s cultural history from that of Russia, which, they believe, has been a hegemonic phenomena, thereby pushing Ukrainian oral and folk traditions, its poetry and prose, its music and dance, on the margins, or usurping it into the larger Russian canvas. This phenomenon was widespread during the era of the Soviet Union, especially during the dictatorial regime of Joseph Stalin. The mass killings of 1937, has yet again been resurrected as the “executed renaissance”, when scores of Ukrainian artists and writers were murdered or condemned in the labour/death camps of Siberia.

As a consequence, Russian music, poetry, prose or folk tales, least of all the epical Bolshoi Opera, is totally absent in war-ravaged Ukraine. Indeed, even before the invasion on February 4, last year, a TV presenter had collected 25,000 signatures seeking a ban on all concerts featuring Russian artists in Ukraine. Indeed, a law has been passed in Parliament that makes it illegal to import and sell books from publishers in Belarus and Ukraine. It is also being cited that German literature did not return to Soviet Russia after the defeat of fascism. Goethe’s epical ‘Faust’ appeared for the first time 15 years after the conquest of Berlin by the Red Army.

Critics argue that the next ban will be on the famous Russian classics, including Leo Tolstoy, Pushkin, Michail Bulgakov, Anton Chekov and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. This would include removal of their books or stories from the school curriculum as well – in what can be called the ‘rewriting of history’ – a trend familiar in contemporary India. There are reports that a working group in the ministry of education has advised that as many as 40 Russian or Soviet writers and poets should be removed from school text books. According to Ukrainian author, Rostyslav Semkin: “At the moment, I really don’t see how we can excite pupils about the beauty of Russian poetry. Classrooms are full of children whose homes have been destroyed, who have been forced to flee, have been shot at, or, who have lost relatives.”

Others are appalled by this new iron curtain on culture. One letter writer in The Guardian, while participating in this debate, wrote with intense passion and compassion. His letter echoes the intrinsic realism that between war and peace, there can always be a twilight zone of humanism and hope. The letter says: “During the Second World War, the day after Germany invaded Holland, the German mezzo-soprano, Elena Gerhardt, exiled in London, sang a programme of German song with the pianist Myra Hess at the National Gallery. Gerhardt had said to Hess that “nobody will want to hear the German language”, but Hess persuaded her to sing nevertheless.

As she stepped on to the platform, she received such an overwhelming ovation that it took her some time before she was able to sing. The audience understood that the great works of German music represented the best of German civilisation at a time when the Nazis were destroying it. Likewise, Tchaikovsky represents the best of Russian civilisation. Tchaikovsky himself wrote to a fellow composer “though born Russians, we are at the same time even more Europeans”. He too would have been appalled at what Putin is doing to Ukraine.”

In the same vein, a spokesperson for London’s Royal Ballet said, “The presentation of great historic works such as ‘The Nutcracker’, performed by an international roster of dancers, should send a powerful statement that Tchaikovsky – himself of Ukrainian heritage – and his works speak to all humanity, in direct and powerful opposition to the narrow and nationalistic view of culture peddled by the Kremlin.”