‘They’re ready to forgive you’

How the Kremlin’s ‘penance system’ for artists works — and the compromises they make to keep their jobs

In the summer of 2023, Roman Bilyk from the band Zveri traveled to the self-proclaimed “DNR” to perform for the Russian military — although the artist had once spoken out in defense of director Kirill Serebrennikov, and condemned the war in February 2022. In the fall of 2023, singer Diana Arbenina, who was accused of “discrediting” the army in the spring, sang with the wife of a Russian military officer. These occurrences are becoming more and more common: actors and musicians who used to oppose the war want to safeguard their careers in Russia, and so they’re forced to make compromises and cooperate with the state. Meduza’s special correspondents Svetlana Reiter and Kristina Safonova, as well as iStories special correspondent Maria Zholobova explain how the Kremlin’s “penance system” for cultural figures works.

In early June 2023, the Give Life charity foundation organized a private concert for oncologists and their patients at the Rogachev Children's Medical Center in Moscow. The charity’s founder, Chulpan Khamatova, a former actress at Moscow’s Contemporary Theatre, now living in Latvia, invited Roman Bilyk, leader of the band Zveri, to perform at the concert. Like Khamatova, Bilyk had also condemned the war a year and a half earlier. In February 2022, posts calling for peace also appeared on his group’s social media (the posts are no longer available).

The concert was a great success: Bilyk, according to one of the oncologists at the center, is “equally loved by both children and their doctors” (a representative of the Give Life Foundation refused to speak with Meduza because of the publication’s “undesirable” status).

Two months later, Bilyk and Zveri guitarist German Osipov unexpectedly performed for soldiers from the “Cascade” detachment in Donbas. As it happens, they also loved Bilyk. Pro-Kremlin “war correspondent” and propagandist Semyon Pegov, administrator of the WarGonzo Telegram channel, wrote that “one brutal Cascadian” said, “I grew up on his songs.”

“You’ve always had a ‘healthy’ position. We could talk for a long time about Mariupol. About the city that was razed to the ground by those for whom you and your balalaika player sang songs,” Ukrainian actor and former host of the show “Heads or Tails” Andriy Bednyakov publicly addressed Bilyk.

Many Russian listeners also condemned Zveri’s behavior. A week later, the band's frontman recorded a ditty — a response to the “cleaners” for whom he’d become “inhuman.”

“I don’t understand it at all, not one bit. Anyone in a military uniform is on the other side of art for me,” Valery Polienko, co-writer of the first Zveri songs, director, and poet, said of the ditty on social media. “I don’t understand at all how you guys, my favorites, did this yourselves?”

Alexander Voytinsky, producer, composer, director, and founder of the band Zveri, told The Moscow Times, “I thought Roma was not so keen on politics or traveling to hot spots, but obviously he had some reason to go to Donetsk and sing his song.”

A Chekhov character

“For a year and a half, German Osipov has been sitting in the self-proclaimed ‘DNR,’ and yet he is the band’s current guitarist, he’s everywhere on posters!” says Lera Agapova, former manager of the band and current literary agent of Russian poet Eduard Limonov’s heirs.

Agapova met Bilyk in 2004, when she was working as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg daily newspaper Smena. In 2013, Agapova became a concert director. Two years later, she became Zveri’s general director and worked with the group until May 2019. According to Agapova, years of cooperation and friendship ended with a quarrel and mutual financial claims. In 2022, Agapova left for the United States.

After the war started, Lera says, a longtime fan of the band wrote to her: “Today Odesa is being bombed, I'm sitting in a bomb shelter. The only thing that saves me is Zveri’s music.” And in early August 2023, she saw fresh photos from Donbas on Osipov’s Instagram. “[My anger] boiled over,” Agapova says.

“Has Bilyk changed his shoes?” she continues. “He hasn't changed his shoes! It would have been easy for him to fire Osipov. Bilyk has no [political] position. He is a blank slate on which people whose opinion he trusts can write whatever they want.”

As an example, Agapova says that while the band refused to perform in Crimea on principle, Bilyk went there for “private visits.” These trips, according to her, were carefully concealed: tickets in his name were purchased by his employees, and Bilyk himself made sure that no one from his entourage published photos from the trips (Meduza has at its disposal a screenshot of a route receipt in Bilyk’s name from Simferopol to Moscow on September 8, 2019). However, he himself once forgot about his precautions — and included several photos from Sevastopol, taken in 2014, in a personal photo exhibition “Moments” (this comes from an agreement with St. Petersburg Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art from February 2017, which Meduza is in possession of).

Two of Bilyk's acquaintances, who spoke to Meduza on the condition of anonymity, have not heard about his trips to the annexed Crimea. However, both agree that the Zveri leader has never had a political position.

Bilyk could not find a new image and repeat the success for a long time. However, in January 2017, director Kirill Serebrennikov offered him the role of Mike Naumenko in the movie "Summer". The picture was included in the competition program for the Cannes Film Festival, Bilyk and Osipov received an award for the soundtrack.

“Roma is a provincial boy who feels very strongly about his metropolitan status. He depends very much on the environment he is in,” says a music producer. “He matched the crowd around Serebrennikov. He got drunk with everyone in Jean-Jacques, shouting that Putin is a freak, that we live in an unfree country. He is a Chekhov character, a ‘man in a case’ who believes in the costume in which he is dressed.”

Another source told Meduza, “A political awareness awoke in Roma, but it didn’t really. Deep down, Roman is far from politics, but he was caught up in it. Perhaps, he sincerely wanted to help Kirill Serebrennikov, who believed in his acting abilities and became close to Roman as a friend. Maybe, such a political spin has become fashionable? Hardly. Rather, Roman felt that such a rebellious attitude fit his stage persona.”

However, his own well-being has always been important to Bilyk, say Meduza’s sources. “His soul doesn’t ache for world peace,” according to a producer familiar with the musician. “It’s important to him to travel, to surf.”

In summer 2023, Zveri began to have problems. In early June, the dean of the journalism faculty of the Moscow State Institute of Culture, Yuri Kot, complained to the prosecutor’s office about Bilyk because of his anti-war stance. A week later, the Shot TV Telegram channel reported that the musician was “under investigation for the financing of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

On August 26, Zveri were scheduled to perform at Moscow's VTB Arena. It wasn’t clear to the band or the concert agency until the very last moment whether or not it would happen. A music producer familiar with the situation in the industry and a source close to Zveri told Meduza. The September concert at Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg was also in question.

After the musicians' trip to Donbas, the Moscow event still took place, while the St. Petersburg event was postponed to December 15. Roman Bilyk did not respond to Meduza’s request for comment.

“The guy was just broken,” says a producer. “He has a weakness — money. And here they just put the concert into question.” Meduza’s source adds that he knows from acquaintances close to the band that Bilyk met with representatives of the Presidential Administration. “Roma was given an ultimatum: ‘If you want a concert, go to Donbas,’” the source says.

According to Meduza’s source close to the Presidential Administration, the initiative came from the group itself. “They said, ‘we want to play in Russia,’” he explains of Zveri’s motivation. “[The Kremlin] offered these conditions: ‘Come get your ass on camera.’”

Asked why it was Zveri that attracted the attention of officials, the producer says, “They got on the radar because it's impossible to sit on two chairs [to please both the opposition and the authorities].”

A musician familiar with Roman Bilyk, in turn, is convinced: “He jumped without thinking, in the heat of the moment, loudly declared his position and shut up, he had nothing else to say, he’s a musician to his core, politics isn’t his cup of tea. And then — bang! — and the bill comes to him: have you performed, young man? Now you get it and sign it.”

Meduza’s source did not rule out the possibility that Bilyk was influenced by his new environment. And it's not about Osipov, “[The band] has Roma, and the others are not important. They communicate with each other in a very formal way,” the musician explains, but about documentary filmmaker Evgeny Grigoriev, who’s currently shooting a movie about Zveri. It is him that Bilyk addresses in his video before singing a ditty about the trip to Donbas: “Zhenechka, darling, listen.”

“Zhenya is a super mega Russophile,” a movie producer who knows him tells Meduza. “There are people who accept other models of the world, and then there are people who speak Russian, feel they’re in the right place in Russia, and who are willing to make any sacrifices simply because what is foreign is intolerable."

According to another film producer, Grigoriev, who is friends with Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova, is given “delicate assignments” by the authorities, such as filming artists in the occupied territories (Grigoriev did not respond to Meduza's request for comment).

The documentarian became Roman Bilyk’s “other half”, says a musician familiar with him. And Bilyk is “trapped”: he can’t leave the country, because his audience is in Russia, not abroad.

“He’s got a band, he’s got a family… What’s he going to do there? Sing bardic songs?” argues Meduza’s source. And adds: “It wasn’t them [the authorities] who crushed him, but ours, the white coats. They raised a ruckus and actually played into the hands of the authorities. Well, he went somewhere wrong, came back and everything would have ended there. But no. It seems to me that the authorities even count on such a reaction: they put pressure on the man and left him, and the rest is done by the rest of the mob. There is no empathy, no understanding of the situation, no solidarity, everyone is playing their own tune.”

The musician admits that it is easy for him to imagine himself in Bilyk’s place — because of his anti-war stance, he too was forced to make a deal with the authorities.

Help for the ‘right’ children

Meduza was told by the same musician that until summer of 2023, “no one touched” him, even though he had been speaking out against the war, as well as in support of Ukrainians, on social media.

“Russian society does not have even the slightest control over the authorities. Therefore, any speech in favor of Ukraine — it’s as if you come out of the trench, and you are shot at point-blank range. Maybe just a finger wagging. Maybe they’ll black list you. And they can put you in jail,” the musician says. “These are the rules of the game, they are known. There are two options: either you keep quiet, or there are no more concerts. That’s why everyone kept quiet, kept their heads down — they all chose the first option.”

In time, Meduza’s source also stopped speaking publicly about his position. He concentrated on his work, did several large projects. Before the release of one project, he received an unexpected phone call from a producer.

“All your projects got shut down, you’re out of a job. That’s what we get for all that bullshit you posted. Why the fuck did you do it?” recounts the musician, suggesting that the decision to close the projects “came down from above,” that is, from the Presidential Administration.

“I’m standing there thinking, ‘And what, and how, and where?’ I was faced with this fucking choice,” recalls the source. “Then they said to me: ‘There is a compromise. We need to help the kids.’ I said, ‘Where's the catch?’ There was a catch after all.”

The musician was required to help not just any children, but the “right” ones: the wards of the Elizaveta Glinka Charitable Foundation “Dr. Liza” from the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. Meduza’s interlocutor explains the authorities’ reasoning as such: “The territories have been conquered, children need to be helped. They bring them here [to Russia], perform surgeries on them. The Dr. Liza Foundation procures treatment in different cities. Whether they do it out of the goodness of their hearts, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter to the children, if you look into it.” The musician emphasizes that the children he learned about in the foundation were accompanied by their parents on their trips to Russia.

“The punishment is not that I have to help the children,” he continues. “They [the authorities] don’t care about that. The punishment is that I have to publish it on social media. I think it’s possible even to not help, but the main thing is to publish it.”

Einstein and the knight

Meduza was informed by two sources in the film industry that cultural figures are being offered to help the children of Donbas, the wards of the Dr. Liza Foundation in particular, and to speak publicly about it.

Among the patrons of the fund is the odious speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, who recently proposed sending those “who left the country and committed despicable acts” to Magadan, a town in Siberia which previously had Gulag camps. Volodin has noted that Elizaveta Glinka, who died in 2016, was one of the first to support the residents of the self-proclaimed “DNR” and “LNR”, “who suffered from the shelling of the AFU and genocide at the hands of the Kyiv authorities.”

The Dr. Liza Foundation has been repeatedly accused of being linked to the A Just Russia party, but Glinka denied this. She explained the similarity of the names by the fact that she wanted to thank the party leader Sergey Mironov for helping her organization financially. Nevertheless, in 2007 Alexander Chuev, a member of the presidium of the central branch of A Just Russia, became president of Just Aid Dr. Liza, and Natalia Avilova herself worked in the press service of the St. Petersburg-based A Just Russia in the first half of the 2000s and was Mironov's assistant during his time in the Federation Council.

The Dr. Liza Foundation, founded by Avilova, works with the same Kremlin-loyal party to help children in the occupied territories.

In an interview with Expert magazine, Avilova said that most of the children for whom the foundation pays for treatment are “evacuated” from the occupied territories by officers of the Russian Investigative Committee. She said some families were helped by Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian president's children's rights commissioner — seven months ago the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a warrant for her arrest over her involvement in the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. “She did everything as it should be done. It’s obligatory that one of the parents accompanies the child, an application for assistance is obligatory. Everything is formalized with the migration service when crossing the border,” Avilova said of Lvova-Belova.

In addition to officials, the foundation is supported by well-known cultural figures, such as actor Alexey Serebryakov. In 2012, Serebryakov emigrated to Canada and criticized Russia for waging wars of aggression, describing the country’s national idea as “force, insolence, and boorishness.” Two years ago, the artist returned to Russia, and at the end of last summer began financially supporting the Dr. Liza Foundation. Serebryakov transfers 15% of his royalties for performances to the fund, said a source close to the artist, though they left the question about the volume of donations unanswered.

The website of the fund says that Serebryakov, a longtime acquaintance of Elizaveta Glinka, decided to donate part of his fees from performances to the fund. “The foundation invites you to attend the play ‘Einstein and Margarita’,” the website states.

The play premiered on June 12, 2022 at Moscow’s Pushkin Theater; eight months later it was to be put on at St. Petersburg’s Baltic House, but was suddenly canceled. According to two of Meduza’s sources, it was canceled due to the other performer’s anti-war stance.

“The play was about to be banned throughout the country, but Serebryakov really wanted to put it on. He went to negotiate with the Presidential Administration, he was told: make a video [about helping the children of Donbas],” says an acquaintance of Serebryakov. Serebryakov decided to “compromise” and make a video about the “right children of the Dr. Liza foundation he was helping,” says a source familiar with the details of the Einstein and Margarita production. “The play was hanging by a thread because of their anti-war stance. Serebryakov saved it and chose this option.”

In July, Serebryakov recorded an appeal, which caught many by surprise. Mykolaiv Rastorguev, lead singer of the band Lyube and someone who is close to the authorities, is allegedly the one who offered him that option. In the video, the actor explained how he decided to help 13-year-old Polina, a resident of Horlivka, a town located in the self-proclaimed “DNR.” When asked by Meduza about his relationship to the foundation, Serebryakov wrote, “sorry.”

Natalia Avilova’s response

In response to Meduza’s questions, the head of the Dr. Liza foundation, Natalia Avilova, said that she was unaware that the authorities were offering help to Donbas wards of her foundation in exchange for the opportunity to work on projects in Russia. She added that “one should rely on information from the cultural figures themselves.”

Alexey Serebryakov, Avilova wrote Meduza, was introduced to her many years ago by Elizaveta Glinka. “He always helped her foundation, now he helps us, there’s no politics, religion, social status. Now, in particular, he transfers his fees to the fund and personally at my request is caring for the wounded Polina from Horlivka, without an arm and leg after being wounded and amputated,”

Actress Irina Starshenbaum, Avilova claims, herself wrote her a letter “that she wants to help” the foundation. According to Avilova, on targeted assistance to Donbas, Starshenbaum did not write and did not specify who she wanted to help. “There was no mention of to whom — we have hospices, terminally ill, homeless, beggars, lonely disabled, wounded, injured, victims, refugees,” Avilova explained to Meduza. At the foundation, Starshenbaum “became a supervisor for Masha’s family from Donbas.”

According to Avilova, in addition to A Just Russia, all parties help the foundation: “[LDPR head Leonid] Slutsky bought an ambulance for us. [State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav] Volodin created an unofficial council to help those in need — he and [State Duma Vice Speaker] Anna Kuznetsova help a lot, free logistics, cargo delivery.”

As part of the RT TV channel’s Children of War project, Avilova’s foundation, along with the Children’s Dr. Roshal Foundation, “helps raise money for prosthetics and the rehabilitation of wounded children,” Avilova wrote to Meduza.

The Censorship Office

A popular theater actress and singer, who left Russia right after the war started, was also offered to help the children of Donbas. In the summer of 2023, says the actress, speaking to Meduza on the condition of anonymity, she wrote to a person connected with the Presidential Administration. She interacted with the office of Sergey Novikov, head of the administration’s Department of Public Affairs. Meduza's sources call Novikov “the chief censor of cinema, theater, and music,” and say that it is in his department, not in the Ministry of Culture, that key decisions about Russian cultural policy are now made.

Novikov, a former editor of the Nizhny Novgorod radio station Rendezvous and a longtime aide to Sergey Kiriyenko who worked under him at the Rosatom Corporation, is no stranger to the arts himself. He is fond of classical music, can play the cello and saxophone, and even graduated from the Balakirev College in Nizhny Novgorod, specializing in conducting a pop music orchestra. In 2016, while already working in the Presidential Administration, Novikov staged the opera Rusalka by composer Alexander Dargomyzhsky; as part of an anti-abortion campaign, the production was commissioned by the St. Gregory the Theologian Charitable Foundation established with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill. Novikov did not respond to Meduza's questions.

“A dude associated with AP wrote: ‘It’s so pathetic, you’re so young. They are ready to forgive you. You, most importantly, return to Russia.’ He said: ‘We understand that you’re not going to Mariupol, but maybe you’ll support some social programs? Or a charity fund that helps children in Donbas.’ I refused,” the actress tells Meduza.

Negotiations with the artists in the Kremlin’s public affairs department are controlled by Novikov’s current assistant Vladislav Bochkov, says a source close to the Presidential Administration. In particular, it was Bochkov who supervised Roman Bilyk’s trip to Donbas, according to an acquaintance of the musician. According to Kommersant, Bochkov has been working with Sergey Novikov for many years and was his subordinate back in the Rosatom corporation.

Almost all “cultural” managers — concert promoters, theater directors, and film directors — go to Novikov’s department for instructions, explains a Meduza source working with Russian theaters. In the case of the music industry, the initiative may also come from the promoters themselves, who communicate with the authorities on the principle of “what do you want”, a music producer tells Meduza. “There are plenty of do-gooders who offer to go ‘behind the ribbon’, [i.e. to Donbas] like on safari,” he adds.

A year and a half ago, the offer to “support the special operation” came to DDT lead singer Yuri Shevchuk, says his acquaintance — on the eve of solo concerts that were to be held in the spring and summer of 2022 in Moscow and St. Petersburg. “No problem, do your concert, but you are also required to reciprocate,” paraphrasing what the regional promoters said. “Shevchuk refused, there have been no concerts since then,” says the source. “Their cancellation is, of course, the hardest blow.”

DDT's website has long stated that performances in Russian cities have been postponed for an “indefinite period of time” for “reasons beyond the control of the band and the organizers.” In September 2023, news came that Shevchuk had suffered a heart attack and was undergoing rehabilitation.

“A murmur sometimes grows in me — you’re [the authorities] crushing our poor people who have nowhere to go with their music, performances, and movies,” says a theater actress who has refused offers from the AP.

After the war began, she, like many colleagues, expected “superheroes”, i.e. big artists, to step in to defend them. “They’re supposed to be untouchable. And then you look — fuck, they kicked out big artists for anti-war stances… So you can be indignant that everyone’s sitting around staying silent. But in principle, there’s nothing surprising about such silence,” says Meduza’s source.

At the same time, she says, actors and musicians try not to discuss “contractual agreements” with the authorities with even their closest friends: “Because it's really a shame. I don't want it to get out. They tell you, ‘Support the [charity] foundation, otherwise the movie won't come out.’ And a movie is hell. It's 200-300 people depending on you. And what are you going to do? These people have children, families.”

The dissidents’ fate

The level of intimidation of people for whom creativity remains their main source of income is off the charts, a source in theater circles explains to Meduza. According to him, artists are “clinging to the remnants of their profession” with all their might.

Cultural figures in Russia don’t have the option of expressing their anti-war stance, a Russian screenwriter explains to Meduza. According to him, it is now common practice to simply remain silent. Having stopped speaking out against the war, many filmmakers are focusing on teaching, three sources in the industry tell Meduza.

“Those who teach, I hope, will be touched last — no one needs us yet,” a well-known filmmaker who used to speak out against the war on his social media accounts explains, on condition of anonymity. Now he’s swapped movie sets for a chair at a creative university and calls teaching “the dissidents’ fate,” but says he’s happy with his work.

“How do you teach? I don't see how war can be taken out of context [in a lecture],” a film producer who until recently taught future film workers argues in absentia. In his opinion, the only skill a filmmaker needs now is “reality avoidance.”

But there are other alternatives to “save your conscience,” says a teacher who was previously a film director. He estimates that “about 80% of Russian filmmakers, actors, and cameramen,” including himself, condemned the war in open letters and on social media. Many moved abroad. He decided to stay: “The story here is this: if you opposed the war and decided to leave, be prepared to mop floors. There’s no work [in your specialty], oxygen is running out, and you have relatives and friends at home.”

Filming a movie is not in his plans for now: “It’s appeared in ultimatum form, but this has been around for as long as I can remember. ‘Do you support [the state]? Here's some dough for a movie.’”

A director acquaintance of his recently said, “it comes straight from the top” — “If you make a public statement in support of the war — we’ll give you funding. If you don’t, we won’t give it to you.” The source explains that you can make a “free form” statement, even a Facebook post will do.

Mediators

Volunteer negotiators are trying to help some artists off the black list. One such intermediary between culture and power, say four sources in the film industry, is director and entrepreneur Fyodor Bondarchuk.

According to three of them, Bondarchuk appealed to the management of Sergey Novikov to help actor and producer Danila Kozlovsky. After the outbreak of the full-scale invasion, Kozlovsky made anti-war statements, so his performances were canceled. The theater where he worked was closed for inspection by Rospotrebnadzor, and the actor himself was accused of “discrediting” the Russian army by pro-Russia whistleblower Vitaly Borodin.

In response, Kozlovsky filed a defamation lawsuit against Borodin and won. However, his court victory and intercession of Bondarchuk did not improve the situation. Kozlovsky did not want to compromise, according to two sources in the movie industry. “When he was under pressure, he began to resist, not to negotiate. And what came out came out.” says an acquaintance of the actor.

In September 2023, a series which Kozlovsky produced and played a major role in, was not issued a distribution license. He was also set to direct a movie, but it will instead be shot by Egor Konchalovsky, who recently said that Russia is fighting a “satanic fascist regime of homosexuals” in Ukraine.

Kozlovsky, it seems, has been blacklisted. Comedian Alexander Nezlobin said in an interview with journalist Katerina Gordeeva, that 1,200 Russian artists have been blacklisted, according to rumors.

In addition to Kozlovsky, Bondarchuk “asked the Kremlin” to help actor Pavel Derevyanko, three sources in the movie industry told Meduza. Derevyanko, who in the past has praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and openly supported opposition politician Alexey Navalny, was blacklisted in 2022 and subsequently lost some of his projects. In August 2023 he traveled to Donbas and two sources confirm that he was “moved from the black list to the white list, so now everything is fine with him.”

Representatives for Danila Kozlovsky and Fyodor Bondarchuk did not respond to Meduza’s requests for comment. Pavel Derevyanko declined to comment.

When asked why some are allowed to help children in the occupied territories in exchange for the opportunity to work, while others are sent to film in camouflage in Donbas, one of the artists who went to the talks at the Presidential Administration says that all sides are trying to find an “acceptable option.”

“Upstairs, no one needs to search for a compromise. It’s the task of some producer who receives an assignment from the Kremlin to not only fulfill everything, but also not to be left without artists. Otherwise, the industry will simply collapse,” says a musician familiar with Roman Bilyk.

According to his acquaintance, Bilyk had no “intermediary” to defend his interests before the authorities. Bilyk did not publicize his decision to play in front of the military. “He’s a quiet guy,” says the musician.

Imperial Theater

The authorities are keen for artists who’ve gone abroad to return to Russia in exchange for “repentance,” say two sources in the film industry.

The “imperial theater” is supposed to have the best “serf artists,” says one ironically. Describing the current situation, he says, “How is it that they’ve scattered? Get them all together! We need entertainment, [Western] pirated content can't be more important — we need the people's content, comedies, melodramas, so that people think that everything is fine with us.”

One source, who works with Russian theaters, says that artists who left in protest against the war have begun receiving calls to come back. According to her, those who are ready to return are offered the option of “recording an appeal” in support of the “special military operation.” Actor Philip Avdeev recently faced that situation, two of his acquaintances say.

“Philip was called from abroad — scheduled shooting, the producers went to the Presidential Administration, where they were promised that everything will be in full order. He comes to the set, the producers hesitate and say: “Look, I’m sorry, it’s such a stupid story, you can shoot, but only after the video. You record a video in support of Donbas and we’ll work in peace.” He thinks, the hell with it, the movie didn’t work out, but there are theaters, and he will be able to work there,” says Meduza’s source. However, in the theater directorates, Avdeev was told, “Sorry, old man, you’re on the black list,” after which he left Russia, according to an acquaintance of the actor. “I refuse to comment on this,” Avdeev wrote to a Meduza correspondent.

Those who don’t work on projects that require public funding can do without “shameful appeals” for the time being, and can work without much trouble in Russia, where there are many more projects than abroad, said a cameraman, on condition of anonymity. His statement was confirmed by a sound engineer who left Russia immediately after mobilization was announced, but returned a few months later.

In a conversation with Meduza, the sound engineer recalled how his colleagues began to receive summonses, and everyone panicked on set. Then they “flooded their phones.” The producer of the series where Meduza’s source was working, said: “Leave, we need you alive. It’s not a betrayal. We’ll replace you [at work] with girls.”

Afterward, the sound engineer spent more than a day hitchhiking to Kazakhstan. A few days after he arrived in Almaty he went “to look for some work” with local production companies. He recalls his search as follows:

The pay there is four times less for the same amount of work. In Moscow, I received 200,000 rubles (around $2,270) a month for a project, and in Kazakhstan [the rate] was 50,000 rubles (around $570) [in the local currency].

But even this work, he says, was almost impossible to get — the local studio staff said bluntly, “Our people would say, ‘You took our work away from us and gave it to a newcomer.’” When the sound engineer was offered a job in Russia two months later, he accepted and returned to Moscow.

“I went to the project, those around me asked not to discuss politics with me at work. I also said that the topic was off limits. I generally like everything: I have project after project, my career is developing, I have a lot of job offers. It can be a little sad when I see how my friends who left right after February 24th are slowly starting to work [in foreign productions] — some in Brazil, some in Argentina. But I realize that I have my own story,” says the sound engineer.

* * *

A musician, who is now helping the Dr. Liza Foundation in exchange for the opportunity to work in Russia, fears that it won’t be his last compromise: “Right now I’m helping children. And if [a worse] choice were put before me? Well, that would mean just leaving. But I’m a Russian musician. I understand how it is, living in this country, in this culture. I’m not needed there. So that’s it — the end.”

After a brief pause, he seems to reassure himself: “It’s no big deal. It’s like any other emigration — death in one place and birth in another. I’ll be a cab driver, I have a license.”

Svetlana Reiter, Kristina Safonova, and Maria Zholobova (iStories), with help from Andrey Pertsev

Adapted for English by Ned Garvey