"The narratives they offer through culture are therefore some of the clearest expressions of how they see their role in a wartime country. This year, Moscow has hosted two major government-backed awards ceremonies one for books, one for films. In both cases, the organisers played it safe, repeating familiar themes, many of them rooted in Soviet-era cultural and wartime mythology. Prizes went largely to people within the same orbit in most cases, the families of well-known Soviet-era cultural icons."
"At the book festival, the grand prize went to Nikita Mikhalkov, a celebrated Soviet and Russian film director. The Mikhalkovs would win by a wide margin any competition for the family that has stayed closest to the Kremlin for the longest. Nikita's father, Sergei, wrote the Soviet national anthem under Joseph Stalin, rewrote it during the thaw and revised it again under Putin. Nikita, now 80, is a clearcut imperialist and a close ally of Putin."
Four years into the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia's elite have shown no sign of resisting the difficult position created by unilateral action and have instead adapted to survive in what increasingly resembles permanent conflict. Top-level officials and public intellectuals remain reluctant to state private views directly under repression. Cultural production and state-backed awards have become vehicles for signalling elite alignment, with organisers favouring safe, Soviet-rooted themes and rewarding families and figures long close to the Kremlin. Prize choices included a celebrated pro-Kremlin director and a patriotic Stalin-era war thriller remake.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]