Cultural Issues

Dr Rosamund Bartlett (University of Durham)

'The Ministry of Culture in Post-Soviet Russia and the �Europeanisation� of Musical Life.'

Russian musical life during the first decade following the collapse of the Soviet power provides an interesting case-study, illuminating how the arts are adapting from the totalitarian system of state support and control to the commercial conditions of a market economy. The enormous changes which have already taken place can be seen at every level. Audiences have changed, as have the ways in which they perceive music, professional critics have appeared for the first time (dramatically affecting the relationship with soloists, hitherto unused to having their performances evaluated), and the Ministry of Culture has begun implementing a vigorous arts policy designed to conform with European standards.

During the Soviet period, the Ministry of Culture was run by Communist party officials who had little knowledge of cultural matters, and equally little ability to launch cultural initiatives, given prevailing ideological strictures. To be appointed Minister of Culture was seen as a demotion (as in the case of Ekaterina Furtseva), while the Ministry itself became the butt of many jokes, and renowned for its general lack of culture. From the Perestroika period onwards, this situation has changed, as members of the intelligentsia have been appointed to head the Ministry. The greatest changes in the Ministry of Culture, however, have taken place since the appointment of Mikhail Shvydkoi in February 2000. Unlike his predecessors, Shvydoi, formerly deputy editor of the journal Teatr, and has not been afraid to take a pro-active role in the running of the institutions supported by the Ministry of Culture. This has resulted in the peremptory sacking of many leading figures in Russian musical life.

Not surprisingly, Shvydkoi has paid particular attention to the Bolshoi theatre, an institution always seen as a mirror of Russian society, a symbol of Russian culture, not least because of its proximity to the Kremlin. During the Soviet period the theatre floundered under stagnant leadership, leading to the demoralisation of the staff and an ossified repertoire. Over the past ten years, however, there has been considerable change. In 1992 Yeltsin decided that the Bolshoi should no longer be under the remit of the Ministry of Culture, and it become a freestanding institution. In 1993, UNESCO become involved in a project to renovate the theatre, currently in a dangerous state of repair. Over the 1990s, conflicts between directors and the rest of the company became acute. After Gennady Rozhdestvensky lasted only a year as artistic director, it seemed that the problems of managing this monolothic institution were insurmountable. Shvydkoi has undertaken to introduce European-style management to the theatre, by separating economic and artistic management, appointing Anatoly Iksanov as the Bolshoi�s administrative director. Putin has now returned the Bolshoi to the Ministry�s jurisdiction, McKinsey have been appointed as consultants in an attempt to make the organisation more professional (they have brought in such innovations as computerised ticketing). Many long-serving staff members were unable to tell Iksanov exactly what their job was, and he has attempted to streamline opera and ballet productions.

Shvydkoi has also initiated important changes in the two other institutions funded by the Ministry: the State Symphony Orchestra and the Moscow Conservatoire. At the State Symphony Orchestra, the acrimonious relationship between chief conductor Evgeny Svetlanov and the orchestra had become acute by early 2000: Svetlanov spent most of the year on lucrative foreign tours, but left his beleaguered orchestra behind. Shvydkoi showed he meant business by sacking Svetlanov for dereliction of duty. This represented an unprecedented and shocking exercise of authority by the Minister of Culture. Shvydkoi then proceeded to sack the Rector of the Moscow Conservatoire for grave infringements of financial discipline after serious accounting and financial misdemeanors had been uncovered. The Rector sued, and won his case for unfair dismissal case on a technicality, but was promptly sacked a second time by the Ministry. Corruption continues to be a grave problem. It emerged during investigation that about twenty-five grand pianos had gone missing, for example, badly-needed foreign currency was being siphoned off to a company set up in Switzerland, and property owned by the Conservatoire was being rented out at a profit, with none of the income being invested in the Conservatoire itself. Problems have been exacerbated by the large numbers of teachers who have now left the institution. Attempts have been made to increase salaries, but they still fall far below European standards.

Russia�s young music critics have been on a steep learning curve, as the national newspapers have introduced European-style arts pages and regular coverage of arts events. In a manner reminiscent of Turgenev�s Fathers and Sons, the new critics seem to have no respect for the old guard, even attacking senior figures of the music world such as Rostropovich, who had said that he will never play in Russia again, so stung has he been by the criticism he has received in his own country. As well as new critics, there are also new audiences � nouveau riche Russians who have grown out of going to strip clubs and are seeking sophistication. The death of the disciplinarian concert announcer Anna Chekhova in 1997 signaled the end to formerly reverential concert-going, dominated by the values of the intelligentsia. Anarchy now presides in concert halls, as witness by incessant ringing tones of mobile phones, clapping between movements, and conversations during performances. The increasing number of agents and promoters, and a sharp rise in ticket prices, however, show that normalisation along European lines is gradually taking place.

Dr Riitta Heino (Oxford) �

'The Literary Scene in Russia Today'

Dr Heino sought to shed light on the literary community and its audience in Russia today. This was a �view from within� as it focused exclusively on the thoughts of contemporary Russian critics. The presentation was divided into three parts: readers, writers, and literature, which coincided with the market terms of demand, supply and product, defining Russian literary culture at present.

Demand. The Russian public had lost its interest in serious literature. The readership had turned away from works of aesthetic and moral substance in favour of �fast-food� type and �show-business� like literature. The popular writers had been transformed into stars by publicity hype. �Why had a nation of avid readers turned into lovers of TV and voracious consumers of detective stories, historical romance and science fiction? �As a result of a natural evolution in two domains: all that had been represented by the Russian intelligentsia; and the domain of literature itself, literature�s role and function in society.

The Russian intelligentsia was dying out. Its role as an authority on values in society was no longer needed, it had no new ideas to put forward, its dialogue with society was defined by self-negation. The term intelligentsia would soon be understood only in an historical sense. Groupings which most resembled the intelligentsia would in future be described as the �educated �or the �highly educated� in society. �The intelligentsia had lost the role which had been reflected in the �serious� literature that had become redundant. In the Soviet era literature had performed many functions. It had entertained, engaged the readership in literary aesthetics, served to inform and to guide its audience in the moral and social maze of Soviet living. It had provided a bridge between Soviet reality and the puzzles this reality had presented. Today literature has ceased to function as a �service�. The educated layer of Russian society worked hard and played hard. They had foreign holidays, they went skiing and read detective stories.

Supply. Writers were divided into three categories, based on their relationship with the market: first, those who did not compromise, rescued from extinction by the Western Slavists; second, writers who did not compromise and published at their own expense; and third, writers, who actively sought to satisfy the demands of the public, and of publishers who supplied the public. A further category consisted of writers, such as Victor Pelevin and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, who had succeeded in transforming a creative achievement into a high-yielding market product. �Countless literary prizes did not reflect popularity; they spoke more to the membership of the literary community than they did to the public. The �thick� literary monthlies were struggling to survive; their print-runs were a fraction of those in the perestroika era. The strength of the most successful publishing houses lay in the diversity of their chosen works.

The supply of literature was directly related to the demand of literature to entertain. Popular literature was a branch of that mass culture which had taken root in Russia and which was referred to in derogatory terms by �serious� critics. Publishing was business, and business was concerned with the market. In the absence of those infrastructures (writers� unions, writers� publishing houses, writers� journals � all state sponsored) which had governed literary activity in the Soviet era, the dictates of market had come to intersect conventional alliances in some surprising ways. �

The product. Literature had previously been split into �left� or �right�, defined as the �other� or the �alternative� literature. The �other� and the �alternative� had been regarded as suspicious from the state ideology�s point of view, this literature had had nothing to do with dissident writing. The current division was into �serious� and popular �mass� literature, which denoted a difference between a work of creative talent and a product of workmanlike activity. Pelevin and Akunin, the latter a prolific author of detective novels, were probably the two best known and most widely read authors today. They were both strongly rooted in Russia�s literary past.

In conclusion, the market had brought about a surprising alignment of the previously radical liberal factions of the literary community with its �red-brown� opponents. These opposed groupings had been drawn together for both mechanical and ideological reasons. Firstly, the demands of the market governing the business of publishing were diverse. This meant that ideologically opposed authors had been pooled together under a single roof of a particular publishing house for the sake of business. Such a development would have been unthinkable in the late 80�s and early 90�s. Secondly, in the ideological sense, these groups were becoming united in their anti-�nouveau riche� sentiment. They represented a potential opposition to fashionable liberal thought and their sentiments corresponded to the European anti-bourgeois and anti-globalist dimension. �Whilst the mass culture fed on the American example, Russia�s ideological roots were deeply embedded in European soil. �In the �zero years� � which is how the current century is often differentiated from the twentieth � Russian writers would continue in the vein of past traditions while searching for a compromise between respecting themselves and living with the market.

Professor Marilyn Rueschemeyer (Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design) ��'Central European Visual Arts after the Fall of Communism'

Professor Rueschemeyer argued that art was socially and politically embedded, and that the state played an important role not just in communist societies but also in capitalist societies, and not only in places where there was a strong tradition of public provision for the arts. Professor Rueschemeyer noted that the differences among the countries in East-Central Europe with respect to the role of art were important for the developments that took place after the end of communism. In the 1960s and 1970s there had been more modern art in Poland and Czechoslovakia than in the other communist countries (with some significant difficult periods for artists, such as after the end of the Prague spring); people in these states were more familiar with contemporary trends in modern art. The egalitarian ideal of working for a broader audience had appealed to many artists even while they experimented with new forms. Though there were concrete efforts in several of the countries to create a common culture, it was generally the educated elite that supported innovative visual artists, some of whom had followed western trends or returned to their own heritage of modernity. Several of these artists included political allusions in their work. During the 1980s, there were a number of changes in unions and union leadership, and more artists were able to travel to the West to work and to sell their art.

After the end of communism, many were enthusiastic about the possibilities open to them in their creative work. However, the income of artists now depended primarily on their relationship with the market. That was the case even in eastern Germany, which took on the art institutions of the Federal Republic with its generous state and local subsidies; most artists experienced the loss of income security. Furthermore, since political issues were now discussed more openly and broadly, the apparent necessity for those artists engaged in work that included a critique of their society diminished. These artists felt less supported and more marginalized. Indeed, many east European artists regret the lost role of art and their degraded status in the new structure of society. At the same time some east European artists complained that their art was misunderstood in the West because it had been judged and favoured according to the extent of its visual similarities with Western art. There are artists in several of the eastern European countries who want to be part of the world of contemporary art, while rejecting a definition of their work as pure �individualism.� After the collapse of the communist regimes Eastern European artists had been confronted with transformations, had lost a position that both supported and constrained, and most faced greater austerity. There is now increased pressure, even for traditional art institutions such as museums, to seek private funding.