Translated material
Grishkovets VS Arkhangelsky
Is it worth trying to enter into a dialogue with the rulers?
The Putin-Shevchuk dialogue aroused incredible interest and extremely polarized assessments. These poles were most clearly identified in the blogs of two famous people - the writer Yevgeny Grishkovets and the publicist Alexander Arkhangelsky. Both of them once participated in meetings with Vladimir Putin, but the conclusions were different. The New Times considers this discussion important, and therefore puts it on its pages
Yevgeny Hryshkovets:
Those who admire the brave and noble deed of their beloved musician and poet (whom I first heard and fell in love with back in 1987, listened on the ship secretly and wanted only one thing - to shake hands with this man), should understand that those who arranged this meeting , and those involved in propaganda are equally pleased with what he said and did. He worked so well for the propaganda machine, he was so well manipulated! .. He helped create the feeling that our government allows free and free-thinking dialogue with itself. And the fact that this dialogue was clumsy, inconsistent and, as a result, completely ineffectual, is also the government and propaganda recorded as an asset, and not vice versa.
An artist (in the broad sense of the word), as soon as he enters into a direct dialogue with the authorities, as soon as he approaches it, he immediately finds himself in an ambiguous situation. He inevitably feels (in such a situation) responsibility and his significance, while he cannot part with excitement and almost awe (or even fear), moreover, he really wants to save the face of an independent and free person. Such a dialogue is very complicated, traumatic (in the spiritual sense), but most importantly, it is absolutely useless and unnecessary. First of all, the artist is not needed. Only the authorities need such a dialogue. More precisely, the authorities do not need a dialogue. The authorities need to bring the artist closer to themselves, because artists are loved, but the authorities never /… / „
The authorities do not need dialogue
” Artists, poets, musicians... have their own unique opportunities to express themselves. And the artistic word, poetic and musical, no power can shut up. Can't paraphrase and turn into a joke... What's sad? Shevchuk said what I agree with, he said what I myself worry about, and what I have known for a long time. But he said it in such a way that it did not sound bold, but simply bold. And impudence is always something akin to hooliganism. In addition, they spoke with the prime minister in approximately the same language. And in the end, the style of the conversation was dictated by Putin. He won. And it couldn't be otherwise. /Shevchuk/ put himself in a situation in which it was impossible to win.
/…/ I ask Shevchuk's fans not to worry. If you think that what I wrote is an insult to an idol, then you are also very much mistaken. He made an unfortunate mistake. He clearly overestimated both his own weight and the level of today's power. Well, if what he said were not needed by the authorities, then it would not be shown on all state channels. Please don't be so naive!!!
In full: http://e-grishkovets.livejournal.com.
Alexander Arkhangelsky:
Thank God, because there is no and can no longer be any full-fledged totalitarianism. And there is no large-scale, sweeping authoritarianism either. With unalloyed total power, poets, artists, directors talk to the leaders when the leaders want to talk. And only without strangers. Conversations can be both servile, as in the case of Fadeev, and intricately bold, as was the case with Pasternak, who stood up for Mandelstam and invited Stalin to talk about eternity. But their genre remains unchanged. You answer when we ask. When we speak, you should be silent. We ourselves have not yet decided what exactly we will say, order to execute or pardon. And with the softened authoritarian system, artists are ordered to appear for public flogging, they are poured into them on the first day, but they are left to live and act. This is how Khrushchev behaved in the Manezh or at a meeting with young writers. There is nothing like it today. And, I repeat, it can no longer be.
But, alas, in truly developed, truly free countries (for all their inevitable imperfections, no one promised paradise on earth in other areas), a public dialogue between a ruler and an artist is possible only on specific occasions. Not according to general political and not according to intracultural ones. The fate of cinema in general cannot be the subject of the meeting, but the goal is to ask for some money for magazines. We need a clear and definite reason, the presence of a question, the solution of which is unthinkable without the interaction of the two sides of a full-fledged society. Power, empowered through a system of fair elections, and communities of people of art who come to her to talk not about their own, about the general. For the rest, there are rallies and demonstrations, speeches in open media, the art of persuading the audience. Which then goes to the polls. And it will give a ride to politicians who did not listen to you. If he considers your arguments solid. „
They couldn't decide otherwise.
his civic duty
” It would seem that the Saturday conversation is just from this category. Not about mine. Not about the workshop. Helping suffering children. God Himself ordered to obtain from the prime minister a promise to remove taxes from payments for treatment; artists came to him not as people of the theatre, but as people of mercy and pain.
But the fact of the matter is that it is not only children who are sick; sick political system in which clogged blood flow. There is no way to free the big media from political censorship, stop the construction of the Gasscraper, stop the destruction of the peaceful “March of Dissent” and even declare it loudly for everyone to hear, if you don’t get to the very top and use the meeting with top officials to push through an extraneous topic. Not related to charity.
Both Shevchuk and Basilashvili were well aware that they were going beyond the format. But they crossed the line. Not because they wanted to annoy the interlocutor. But because otherwise they could not solve their civic task. And this is inevitable where there is no real democratic competition, the levers of indirect influence on politics have been destroyed; to try to move things off the ground, you must either seek the collapse of the system (which is completely unrealistic), or demand intervention from the first persons. Archaic form and innovative content. The decrepit system and modern, independent behavior. Impossible in the totalitarian past. Out of place in a democratic future, still very vague. But we live here and now. And we act according to the circumstances/.../
In full: http://arkhangelsky.livejournal.com.
Yevgeny Hryshkovets
Writer, playwright, director, actor, musician. Born February 17, 1967 in Kemerovo. A graduate of the Faculty of Philology of the Kemerovo State University, he was awarded the "Symbol of Science" medal and the "Antibooker" prize. The author of nine books, took part in the creation of more than ten films, recorded five music discs.
Alexander Arkhangelsky
Publicist, TV presenter, writer and literary critic. Born April 27, 1962 in Moscow. Graduate of the Faculty of Russian Language and Literature of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. He was awarded the Literary Review (1984) and Literaturnaya Gazeta (1990) magazines; magazines: Znamya (1996), Novy Mir (1996), Friendship of Peoples (1997). Finalist of the TEFI-2005 and TEFI-2006 awards in the nomination "Host of the Information and Analytical Program".