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If we trace the relationship between Russian artists and the state/establishment from glasnostto the present day (something I am by no means qualified to do, but I�ll attempt it anyway), we see that Russian artists had numerous paths available to them. I think these can best be illustrated by three representative figures: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who played the role of the religiously conservative Slavophile irredentist reactionary (a bit of a mouthful, but all true); Aleksandr Sokurov, whose relationship to the Russian establishment has been more ambivalent and ambiguous; and, most recent to arrive on the scene, the punk rock band Pussy Riot, who have placed themselves unambiguously and provocatively in conflict with the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church which underpins Russia�s reactionary establishment.
Let�s start with Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was once a moral figure of high standing and his Gulag Archipelagoremains one of the defining documents of one of the twentieth century�s most criminal regimes. It had an enormous influence, both in terms of its publicizing of Soviet crimes, but also in helping to finally liberate so many Western intellectuals from their infatuation with the Soviet Union (according to Enrique Krauze, in his recent intellectual history Redeemers, it was Octavio Paz�s reading of The Gulag Archipelago in the early seventies which had a catalytic effect on his thinking, and finally freed him once and for all from any lingering attachment to the Soviet Union). In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was driven into exile and settled in upstate Vermont, where he lived a largely reclusive life, communicating by penning didactic missives condemning both Soviet tyranny and Western decadence and godlessness (this is the old Slavophile in him, and it places him in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and every other Russian writer who ever said, �Well, in Russia we may have tyranny, but those �Westerners� have no God, and that�s even worse.�) In 1990, Solzhenitsyn�s Soviet (soon to be just Russian again) citizenship was restored, and he returned to the land of his birth. Here, according to a fascinating essay by Tatyana Tolstaya, Solzhenitsyn got himself what I can only describe as a public access TV show, where, for fifteen minutes every week, he would berate the Russian people for their Western decadence, for abandoning the Russian Orthodox faith, and for abandoning ethnically Russian sections of other former Soviet republics (this is where the irredentism comes in; he was disappointed that Russia had not held onto Ukraine, Belarus, and northern Kazakhstan), and all of this with a gray, flowing, Tolstoyan beard. By the end of his life, he was a public supporter of Vladimir Putin and the two can be seen hobnobbing here:
Now, onto Aleksandr Sokurov. For those who aren�t up on the topic, Sokurov is undoubtedly the greatest Russian filmmaker since his mentor, Andrei Tarkovsky. Over the years he�s made a series of masterpieces, including Oriental Elegy, Mother and Son, Moloch, Russian Ark, and The Sun. But, despite his reputation, he frequently runs into trouble getting the funding necessary to make his movies. Because they may be very beautiful, but they aren�t blockbusters; of the films I just mentioned, I�m pretty sure The Sun is the only one with explosions, and it seems that global film audiences are just as philistine as their American counterparts, whom I like to denigrate at every available opportunity.
Now, I don�t know that much about Sokurov�s politics, although he did make a fairly reverent 1999 documentary called Conversations with Solzhenitsyn, so that should tell us something right there. And just based on the spiritual concerns evident in his films, I�d suspect that Sokurov is a Christian of some sort (although he�s hardly likely to be a reactionary; Tarkovsky was into religion, but that didn�t make him a conservative reactionary).
But in making his latest film, Sokurov had an encounter with the Russian political establishment that I think is highly illustrative. The film in question was an adaptation of the Faust legend, and it was to be the final film in Sokurov�s cycle of films about power (these films are: Taurus, about Vladimir Lenin; Moloch, about Adolf Hitler; and The Sun, about Hirohito). And despite his towering reputation and the greatness of these films, Sokurov struggled for years to raise the money he needed to make Faust (the 2008-present economic catastrophe did not help matters). And that�s when Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene. Steve Rose of The Guardian describes Sokurov�s encounter with Putin as follows:
Sokurov met Putin at the Russian PM's country residence. "I told him, if I don't have this opportunity to make this film, it will never happen. A few days later, I was told that the amount I needed was going to be allocated. How and why it happened I don't know. Maybe because he has a very clear idea of German culture and history. I don't think it was because of me. I've never demonstrated my loyalty to his party."
And so Sokurov got his money (from the Russian state; unlike the United States and its pitiful National Endowment for the Arts, other countries like to actively fund the arts) and Faust got made. Sokurov did not feel �compromised� by the experience. According to Rose; Sokurov said, �When I met him [Putin] recently, he asked if I was going to dub Faust into Russian. Reading between the lines, you could see these words as a sort of order. But I wasn't afraid to say no to him. [�] I can only be responsible to my audience, that�s all.�
I think I can accept Sokurov�s reasoning. Having made films about power (and how those exercising it are either blatantly evil (Hitler, Lenin) or are at least destroyed by it (Hirohito; there�s plenty of debate about the extent of Hirohito�s influence throughout the course of WWII, but we don�t have room to discuss it here; Sokurov�s Hirohito is a sympathetic figure)), one can hardly expect Sokurov to be pro-Putin. So whatever Putin thinks he�s getting out of Faust(and yes, it was quite the� Faustian bargain that Sokurov struck with Putin, wasn�t it?), I don�t think someone like Sokurov would let himself be artistically undermined by the state (I say �I don�t think,� because Faust has yet to be released in any capacity in the United States, because American film distributors are greedy philistines and fuck them.)
Oh, and speaking of Putin, fuck Putin, am I right? That�s what the ladies of Russian punk band Pussy Riot thought. There were to be no Sokurov-style deals struck with Putin, not for Pussy Riot. Here�s the back-story on Pussy Riot. On February 21 of 2012, five members of Pussy Riot (I believe there are a total of seven of them; maybe they�re a collective? Like Broken Social Scene or Wu-Tang Clan?) wearing balaclavas burst into the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and, flash mob-style, began performing a song called, �Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away.� Now, first off, this is far more �punk rock� than anything Henry Rollins has done within the last, say, twenty years. But why did they do it in the church? (Why didn�t they do it in the road, for instance?) Because Russian Patriarch Kiril I had openly supported Putin in his election campaign (much as Cardinal Timothy Dolan is openly supporting Romney in the United States). Putin has made himself very cozy with the Russian Orthodox Church, whose conservative leaders are likely seeking to restore the church to some of the power it enjoyed before 1917 (it�s been a while, hasn�t it?) The women of Pussy Riot quite rightly identified the Russian Orthodox Church as Putin�s partners in suppressing democracy and establishing conservative authoritarian rule over Russia and, being genuine punk rockers, attacked them at the heart of their operation.
Well, they were arrested for it and three of them were sentenced to two years in prison for �hooliganism.� Now of course it wasn�t just hooliganism, but rather the fact that these non-Christians had dared to disrespect the pieties of Russian Orthodox believers. Kiril himself said, �We have no future if we allow mocking in front of great shrines, and if some see such mocking as some sort of valour, as an expression of political protest, as an acceptable action or a harmless joke.� One of many people, this Patriarch, who don�t seem to understand that freedom of speech means the right to not pretend to respect the taboos of religions to which you don�t belong. I suspect Kiril I would find he had a lot in common with the Muslim protestors who don�t understand why non-Muslims who disrespect the Prophet Muhammad are allowed to live, let alone to continue to engage in protected speech. So perhaps when Kiril is done with Pussy Riot, he can go after whoever it was that directed Innocence of Muslims.
The three imprisoned members of Pussy Riot have an appeal hearing in October, during which they will hopefully be sentenced to time served and released. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev (Putin�s bitch, as I like to call him) has recently publically suggested that the prison terms to which the women have been sentenced were far too harsh, so perhaps the Russian political establishment will back off of them. In the meantime, I leave you with this Pussy Riot video, depicting the �hooliganism� they perpetrated in the cathedral:
