In the first weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, European leaders believed that their strategy of financial retaliation against Moscow would immediately bring the country to its knees. Russia’s banking system would collapse, taking with it the economy of the world’s largest country. For want of a better word, the European Union has considerably widened the sanctions, which now also affect the energy sector and private individuals. While this policy has not yet had all the desired effects in the political and economic spheres, it has in the fields of culture and art, making cooperation with Russia impossible.
In the early days of the war, Sergei Fofanov, curator at the Tretyakov Gallery, was optimistic. He told Le Monde (February 25, 2022): “Culture remains the first and last basis for discussion”, recalling that in 1956, at the height of the Cold War, a Picasso exhibition had been held in Moscow. The facts proved him wrong.
In Paris, the “Picasso and Russia” exhibition scheduled to open in September 2023 at the Musée du Luxembourg was quickly replaced by an exhibition on “Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso”. The Philharmonie de Paris has modified the programming for its 2022-2023 season, which initially included Russian guests such as conductor Valery Gergiev, pianist Denis Matsuev and the Bolshoi Orchestra. In Amsterdam, the Hermitage Museum has changed its name to the H’ART museum. This independent branch of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, housed in the Amstelhof, a 17the century building, opened in 2009 and presented two exhibitions a year based on the Russian institution’s collections. By changing its name, the H’ART museum has also ended more than twenty years of collaboration with one of the world’s most prestigious museums.
Faberge eggs, Impressionist paintings from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum and other masterpieces were actively presented at exhibitions in London and Paris. Now it is impossible. European museums and collectors withdrew their exhibits from Russian exhibitions, both those already in operation and those planned. These are just a few examples out of many.
In an editorial in the Journal des Arts (March 2022, no. 584), Jean-Christophe Castelain, melancholically reflecting on the powerlessness of art in the face of war, rightly wrote: “Culture must be content with the aftermath. (…) The aftermath means not creating antagonism with Russian civil society by cutting off ties with it. All over Russia there are signs of disassociation among artists, intellectuals, scientists and cultural figures who reject this war”.
Among the latter are Roman Abramovich and his ex-wife Dasha Joukova, co-founders in 2008 of the contemporary art center Le Garage, which moved into a building in Gorki Park in 2015, renovated by Rem Koolhaas’ architects. As soon as the war broke out, Le Garage decided to suspend its programming, a decision consistent with its line of openness to Western creation. The institution’s press release announcing this decision, published on its website on February 26, 2022, was clear: “The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art team has decided to stop working on all its exhibitions until the political and human tragedy being played out in Ukraine has ceased.” Against this backdrop, the relevance of European and British sanctions against Roman Abramovitch is questionable. All the more so as the United States itself, which can hardly be suspected of indulgence, at Volodymyr Zelensky’s request, did not sanction the Russian businessman, believing that he could play a role in the peace negotiations (Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2022).
Also, the Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky, who was a member of the trustees of “Open Russia” (an organization opposing the Russian government), has been placed under Canadian sanctions, on the list of persons “who use their art (music, acting, cinema) to promote the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as persons in the sphere of Russian culture and education, including directors of museums, who are involved in the defacement or total destruction of cultural property on the territory of Ukraine”.
Another example is that of former senator Oleg Tkach, who in the 90s and early 00s, prior to his political activity, was engaged in the development of a major book publishing company. Before the end of his senatorial term in September 2022, he decided not to nominate himself for re-election, and devoted himself entirely to the development of book publishing – fiction, both classic and contemporary literature, as well as books for children. Such literature is now in demand by the Russian-speaking audience, some of whom have found themselves in difficult situations outside the country. However, he is also under the sanctions of the European Union and partner countries.
The Russian government is obviously responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy, but we must ask ourselves whether it is appropriate to turn one’s back completely on civil society. What effect do these examples, which the Kremlin’s propaganda never fails to highlight, have on Russian public opinion? Is there not a risk that they will weld the public around its leaders, rather than detach it from them? Similarly, what sense does it make to sanction businessmen or politicians who appreciate the West to the point of living there and who have clearly distanced themselves from the Kremlin? What influence can these “capitalists” who have “abandoned and despoiled Russia”, these “second-rate citizens, even if they have bought English titles of nobility”, these owners of “yachts and sumptuous villas” who prefer to “send their children to study abroad”, as he himself described them in his speech to the Nation on February 21, 2023, have on Vladimir Putin? Do they have his ear? It’s doubtful. While we wait for the war to come to an end, shouldn’t we be doing all we can to prepare for the “aftermath” by maintaining cultural links with civil society and welcoming these Russians of good will?
