In Putin’s hands, Russian culture has become a tactical weapon

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Lidiia Karpenko is a Ukrainian journalist living in Toronto and a member of PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile group.

As an eight-year-old from the western part of Ukraine, I thought it was odd that I was part of a group that had to split off from the rest of the class and attend special Russian lessons. In school, we were taught to love Lenin and learned how to be loyal little Octobrists and Pioneers. I read the poetry of Pushkin and listened to the music of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich and Glinka. It was as if Ukrainian art and culture didn’t exist at all.

That was, in some ways, by Russian design – part of the long historical effort, dating back to the Soviet era, to erase, silence or even kill generations of Ukrainian artists.

In the early 1900s, Vasyl Barvinsky – a pioneer of tone clusters in music – was creating work that was different from the Soviet standard at the time: It was thought-provoking, and it was Ukrainian. In 1948, he was arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp for 10 years; most of his compositions were burned in the courtyard of the Lviv conservatory he headed.

In the 1920s, the Slovo (meaning “word”) House in Kharkiv was built specifically for Ukrainian writers whom Stalin tasked with glorifying and popularizing Soviet life. But when they witnessed the Soviet state’s brutality, including the weaponized famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933, even loyal communists felt compelled to speak out. The residents of Slovo House were surveilled, and most of them were eventually sent to concentration camps and shot between 1933 and 1938. This era of repression of Ukrainian intellectuals and artists is now called the Executed Renaissance.

This oppression was going on even before the Soviets took power: In 1876, Ukrainian artists were banned by Tsar Alexander II’s Ems decree. And while Tchaikovsky, who was active at that time, has Ukrainian roots – his great-grandfather was a Cossack – the fact that he was able to use Ukrainian folk motifs in his work speaks to the privileges he enjoyed from the state. In contrast, Mykola Lysenko’s iconic Ukrainian opera Taras Bulba was never even performed in his lifetime because he refused to have it translated into Russian.

According to the Security Service of Ukraine, more than 260,000 Ukrainians became victims of Soviet terror between 1937 and 1938. Most of them were shot, but their families were told that they had died from heart attacks. It took until the KGB archives were opened in 2015 for Ukrainians to even know the exact date that the prominent Ukrainian stage director Les Kurbas died: He was executed on Nov. 3, 1937.

Today, the Soviet Union’s successor – a Russia led by Vladimir Putin – is engaging in a similar strategy: attacking Ukraine’s cities and wiping its culture off the map, while wielding Russian culture as a weapon in the effort.

One of the first things that Russians now do upon occupying Ukrainian territory is Russify the area: They destroy Ukrainian monuments, burn Ukrainian books, take down Ukrainian flags and mount images of Russian artists. They even rename the infrastructure: In occupied Mariupol, the Ivan Franko Library was reportedly renamed for Pushkin, while the name of famed Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky was stripped from a historical library. Mariupol’s Drama Theatre, which was bombed by the Russians in 2022, is now being repaired behind a large fabric barricade featuring portraits of the likes of Pushkin and Tolstoy so that it can host performances of Russian and Soviet-era works. And in October, 2022, the Russian military reportedly killed Yuriy Kerpatenko, the chief conductor of the Mykola Kulish Music and Drama Theatre, in his home, after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson for Russian soldiers.

For decades, Russia has purposefully used its culture as an instrument of influence, as a means to attract and gain people loyal to its policies. At the same time, in the past 30 years alone, Russian troops have been involved in conflicts in Georgia, Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Syria and Ukraine. Russia’s literary and musical masterpieces are now serving as beautiful curtains to cover up the Russian state’s brutality around the world.

Of course, this is not the fault of the artists themselves. Pushkin could not have known that in the hands of a skillful manipulator, his words would become weapons. But now, busts of the poet look like a potential Russian flag.

Two years after the start of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians around the world – including here in Canada, where hundreds of thousands of us have fled the war – continue to be haunted by Russian music and other art. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet remains a Christmastime tradition. And when Canadian arts and theatre companies bring in honoured soloists or other artists from Russia, they will later return home and pay their taxes – money that will go toward the Russian budget and could be spent on new weapons.

All we ask is that you look beyond Russia’s imperial culture so you may discover what Mr. Putin wants it to hide.

Editor’s note: (April 12, 2024): A previous version of this article identified the Canadian Opera Company's production of "Eugene Onegin" as bringing in a Russian soloist in the lead role; a Ukrainian will now be filling that role.