Lev Shlosberg

26 December 2024

by Lev Shlosberg

Source: Facebook

A state’s war against art and artists reflects that state’s cultural bankruptcy and the political bankruptcy that inevitably follows.

18+ GENUINE MATERIAL (INFORMATION) HAS BEEN PRODUCED AND DISTRIBUTED BY FOREIGN AGENT LEV MARKOVICH SHLOSBERG OR CONCERNS THE ACTIVITY OF FOREIGN AGENT LEV MARKOVICH SHLOSBERG [This is the text Lev Shlosberg is obliged to add to any publication he makes under Russian law. We reprint it here merely to illustrate the repressive nature of Russian ‘foreign agent’ legislation – ed.]

The affirmation of the verdict against Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk with the cynical reduction of their sentences by a few months is an extralegal, expected, and symbolic decision. The regime is responding with political repressions to an artistic act, that is, to an invented, imagined act that lives only in the sphere of art.

The clients and organizers of this case exist outside the context of culture; they neither understand nor want to understand its language, images, and symbols. The study of works of culture with the Criminal Code at the ready is an anomalous activity that reflects the gaping cultural void inside the state system.

Thousands upon thousands of works of culture of all types (literature, painting, sculpture, film, theatre) contain descriptions of criminally punishable actions, starting with murders and mass executions. Culture reflects life. Only people wholly lacking in notions of culture could approach a work of art not as the description of a crime but as an actual crime. Rejecting and utterly failing to understand culture is becoming the state mainstream and is spilling over into criminal cases.

The public punishment of the antiterrorist performance Finist the Bright Falcon with the incarceration of its two innocent authors on a charge of justifying terrorism draws a line under the relationship between our current Russian state and culture. Culture has been raised to the level of enemy.

All Russian theatre is now restricted in its work by the verdict against Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk. Any playwright, director, or actor is now going to live and work on the minefield of a publicly punished performance, a winner of the Golden Mask (meanwhile the Golden Mask itself has now been demeaned, castrated, and stripped of meaning).

These kinds of verdicts are aimed at demoralizing not only culture but society broadly and paralyzing the will of any authors, literally halting the development of culture, halting creative thought.

But what is happening is much more dangerous for the state than for culture. Culture will always survive—in the dungeons, in the torture chambers, underground, and in internal and external emigration. The language of culture, culture itself, will not be destroyed by even the harshest time, the most barbaric state.

But culture’s bearers—its authors—are vulnerable and mortal. The criminal case against Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk is demonstrative retribution not only against the innocent but also against the defenseless. That is, this act is not only unlawful but also inhumane and shameful. 

The state has no burden of conscience, but it does have a burden of responsibility. Sooner or later this responsibility has to be given a state political assessment and a formally legal formulation at the legal level. Including the full rehabilitation of the innocent and punishment of those guilty of the unjust prosecution and verdict.

That time will come, but right now yet another terrible page has been written in the history of the Russian theatre and Russian justice. It cannot be rewritten or removed.

Freedom for Evgenia Berkovich, Svetlana Petriichuk, and all political prisoners.

Translated by Marian Schwartz