Era of No Mercy

The general director of the Tretyakov Gallery filed a lawsuit against the Minister of Culture

Minister of Culture and Mass Communications Alexander Sokolov may become a record holder for the number of threats of prosecution collected from the heads of services and institutions under his jurisdiction. Yesterday, the general director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Valentin Rodionov, announced his readiness to sue the minister. He considered the minister’s angry statements about the possibly corrupt principles of collecting works for the Sots-Art exhibition organized by the museum in Paris an insult. Judging by the fact that Mr. Rodionov has already filed a lawsuit, he decided to go further than the head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Mikhail Shvydkoy, who also intended to legally punish the minister for his intemperate statements about bribery in Roskultur.

Let us recall that in October, before the opening of the Sots-Art exhibition in the Maison Rouge hall, Mr. Sokolov called for preventing the export of certain exhibits from Russia , which he himself described as “rubbish.” In particular, his dissatisfaction was caused by the work of the duo “Blue Noses” entitled “Era of Mercy” from the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, also known as “Kissing Policemen”. According to the minister, the owners of some private galleries were simply trying to raise the cost of the works of their authors, hiding behind the name of the Tretyakov Gallery.

The radical form of response chosen by Mr. Rodionov, at first glance, seems completely unexpected. Firstly, the lawsuit was filed almost a month after Mr. Sokolov’s speech. Secondly, according to the curator of the exhibition in Paris, head of the department of new trends at the State Tretyakov Gallery, Andrei Erofeev, the attitude of the Tretyakov Gallery’s management towards the works selected for Sots-Art is rather in agreement with the position of the Minister of Culture. According to the unofficial version, the threat of dismissal still hangs over Mr. Erofeev for trying to “compromise” the gallery.

One can, of course, assume that the general director of the Tretyakov Gallery simply decided to show integrity and defend in court the honor of the museum, accused of colluding with private gallery owners and promoting works of no artistic value to the market. However, one cannot help but notice that such integrity fully meets the requirements of the parliamentary majority. Minister Sokolov was, perhaps, the only official from the black list compiled by United Russia who retained his position after the change of head of the cabinet. On the eve of the resignation of Mikhail Fradkov, members of the ruling party in behind-the-scenes conversations spoke very cautiously about the fate of German Gref, but they spoke quite definitely about the decline of the careers of Mikhail Zurabov and Alexander Sokolov.

When Vladimir Putin carried out a slightly different personnel combination, United Russia remained silent. But as soon as the Minister of Culture began to be registered as a member of A Just Russia, and he not only did not refute such information, but also indirectly confirmed it, demands for the resignation of Mr. Sokolov began to sound with renewed vigor. Today, statements about this in the sphere of mass communications under his jurisdiction are not only heard from the lips of high-ranking members of United Russia, but are also confidently disseminated even by the leaders of the district branches of the party in power.

Sergey VALERIEV