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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

How Putin Reads Tolstoy: The Case For A Hard Line Against Russian Culture

From ballet to opera to classic literature, Russia has turned its culture into an instrument for its own expansion. The West must fight back, Ukraine's culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko writes in an op-ed in German daily Die Welt. It's time to stop supporting Russian artists and seek out Ukrainians instead.

Photo of Anna Netrebko

The pro-Putin singer Anna Netrebko during the last representation of Aida in Vienna in January

Oleksandr Tkatschenko*

-OpEd-

KYIV — At first glance, it seems only a small administrative act: on Jan. 25, Vladimir Putin changed the mission of his country's state cultural policy. Its task now includes "protecting society from external ideological expansion."

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Behind this change lies the idea that there are "unfriendly states involved in activities aimed at undermining the cultural sovereignty of the Russian Federation." What is at stake is nothing less than the "protection of historical truth."

Culture is thus a tool and even a weapon in the hands of the state. Russia actively uses it to promote its interests — from making Russian ballet and other symbols of Russian culture (Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich) popular, to protecting the rights of Russian speakers abroad.

It is time to do something about this.

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