Boycot Sochi-2014: Does it make sense?

COLTA .ru continues the weekly section “Responsibility” : Dear people, people answer a question that has been ardently discussed in recent days. Foreign cultural figures are increasingly talking about the need for a boycott of the Winter Olympiad in Sochi and call for this indifferent. This week, the American singer Cher , who announced her personal non-participation in the opening ceremony of the Olympiad, joined the English actor and writer Stevens Fray, who appealed to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Colta.ru turned to our cultural figures with the question: is this boycott reasonable?

Leonid Bershid

Journalist, media manager

Personally, I have no chance to perform at the Olympics, therefore it is impossible to boycott. And if there are such chances, then it is even more stupid to boycott. I do not believe in all kinds of collectives, boycotts and other kindergartens. If you are angry, for example, Putin's homophobic policy - speak out about this publicly, do not give a hand to Putin, spit in the face of Gomofobu. And then - boycott, fu.

Alexander Vinokurov

Media entrepreneur, investor and owner of the Rain TV channel, Big City magazine, Slon.ru website

It makes no sense. It does not solve anything.

Alexander Gordon

radio and TV presenter, actor, director

I remember the 1980 Olympics, which was boycotted. We won it. Let them boycott, we will win again.

Andrey Erofeev

Art critic, curator

Boycot in this case is ineffective. The boycott is good when the boycotting is a key figure in the event and you cannot do without it. And in a situation of equal and voluntary participation, the refusal of some part of the countries to join the collective event will only increase the chances of victory of the rest. Together with the departure of the protesters, the very topic of protest will be evacuated. Therefore, I think, we must not leave, but, on the contrary, enter the topic of discrimination of sex minorities to the Olympics and publicly, loudly impose a discussion there at all available public sites. Let the organizers shive, forbid, cut out the recordings of the interview, persuade, begged to be silent. This, of course, will put them in a difficult position.

Mikhail Idov

journalist, editor -in -chief of Russian GQ

The boycott does not solve anything. Moreover, it contradicts even the logic of protest. Russia itself, at its own expense, provides the whole world with a gigantic platform for self -expression under sophims and television cameras - it is unlikely that the most witty gesture would simply not come to this site. This is how to use it is another matter.

Gennady Josephavichus

Journalist, producer, film promoter

In this particular story, it is pointless to boycott, because the swing is not equal to the impact. Why should Putin be punished without arriving at the Olympics? In the end, he is not going to ski and skates there, but athletes. All this looks pretty strange. We already had one boycott of the Olympiad in 1980, the second in 1984, for the Olympic movement, this was undoubtedly impacts under the breath and it took many years before everything returned to our circles. It is repeatedly said that the Olympic movement outside of politics, and since the Olympic committee made this choice (maybe it is erroneous, but it has been made), the Olympics should pass - and it must go as remotely from local political color. Although it is difficult for me to call me a fan of any sport, but for someone the Olympiad is a holiday, and it is completely incomprehensible why they must be deprived of it. This is a holiday not only for Russian citizens and people living here. In the world, billions of people who watch the Olympics on TV without leaving sofas. What do they have to do with it?

Tatyana Lazareva

TV presenter, actress, public figure

In place of Cher, I would also boycott. But, firstly, they did not call me to speak at the discovery, and secondly, I live in this country, and if I boycotted everything that I did not agree with, there would probably be nothing left, for which there is generally to live. In addition, I have already made some decisions last winter and participate in the shares of the transfer of Olympic fire from the city to the city throughout our country. I believe that, firstly, I have no right to deprive the opportunity to win or at least participate in such large-scale competitions of those athletes who have been preparing for the Olympics for several years, after all, this does not happen every year. And secondly, this is really an event in the life of all Russian inhabitants, I understood this by the number of those who sent applications to participate in the Olympic fire relay. This is really a grand event for the whole country, and the fact that it has also become political - so we have tiles on the sidewalks is already politics.

Stanislav Lviv

Poet, prose writer, translator

I suggested using the campaign for the boycott of the Sochi Olympics as a pressure instrument for the Russian authorities in August 2012, after the verdict in the Pussy Riot case. Today I am ready to subscribe to this text written more than a year ago. At the same time, it turned out that the intended campaign, in general, practically did not take place, despite the fact that our deeds are going worse and worse. In addition, as expected, the IOC, being an organization that is not representing anyone other than a corrupt international bureaucracy, even threatened that he would regard the support of the Russian LGBT community at the Olympics as a “violation of the Olympic Charter”.

It seems to me that the boycott of the Olympic Games in Sochi as such is impossible: the yard is not 1979. The effectiveness of the boycott procedure itself raises and the effectiveness: the absence of something, even if it is something-some noticeable thing, less noticeable than the presence . Today, the ideal option looks like this: Olympic teams, disagreeing with the cave discrimination policies regarding the LGBT, which is held today in Russia, go to the opening of the Olympic Games not with the flag of their country, but with rainbow. It is difficult to imagine such a development of events - and the word “ideal” is not just like that, most likely nothing like this, - and it would be strange to demand this from the athletes who came to the Olympics. Most likely, the case will be limited to several “partisan” shares.

I deliberately do not mention the rest of the obvious problems here: pressure on NPOs, Stalinism in historical policy, corruption, dysfunctional judicial and law enforcement systems - however, I see that discrimination of homosexuals collects all this problem in itself as a lens. In addition, it is precisely the discrimination of articulated minorities (not necessarily LGBT) is traditionally and fairly mobilizing for the institutionalized third sector in many countries.

There will be no boycott, but it seems to me that the activities of those people outside Russia who require it should be welcomed - simply because it is one of the ways to convey to many people information about what Putin's Russia actually represents.

Alexander Manotskov

composer

It is not necessary to boycott the Olympics, but to remove the bandits from power. So far this has not been done, in a sense, everything is a shame. You can also boycott the gas stations (all), because the bandits ultimately earn on them. Trains - for the same reasons. Do not walk on asphalt, because he was shifted for the tenth time to steal money. Well, if you can do something, then, for example, the courts and in general everything that we imitate legal institutions. I would love to become the author of the opening of the Olympiad - and in this capacity I would once again say that they had gathered the bandits and on the organization of the Olympiad once again. But for a person from outside, for a foreigner, for whom the government personifies the whole country in general, the refusal to cooperate with this country is quite normal. For example, I do not buy any goods for primitive “ideological” motives, although I understand that their specific manufacturers are not to blame for anything. We also do not seem to be guilty of specific, and the external boycott will make us once again feel that we are still to blame: a foreign boycott is good for us to be precisely because we have a chance to take it on our own expense, to feel shame for the country-and bad because we are easy to relieve ourselves for our own power (so during the Russian-Japanese war the intelligentsia rejoiced with every Russian defeat-and in twelve years I received it Bullet in the forehead or exile).

Valery Syutkin

Singer and Ambassador Sochi-2014

(Its director Yevgeny Yakovlev answered the singer.) We do not give comments, nothing will change from our comments.

Artemy Troitsky

Musical critic

It makes sense, and not because of gays, but because of theft, ecology and berthism of the authorities.

Anatoly Ulyanov

Journalist, Socurant Looo.ch

I completely sincerely do not understand the efficiency of a liberal banner at the Dahu furnaces. Boycoting the Olympics, you, of course, begin to phosphorescence with a highly moral political aura-an intelligent person is generally tending to love the theater-however, you should ask the question: will the boycott of the Olympiad Giya from some Ukhta will stop receiving the Orthodox Russian n ... Dules? My opinion - no, will not help. Because neither the fantastic economic consequences of such a boycott, nor the next wave of the grant agencies of European screech will change the fact that homosexuality undermines the foundations of the patriarchal system. Consequently, Patriarchate will never make concessions to what Koshcheev’s needle is contained. To be gay at the king and God is even worse than being a woman, for it destroys the phallic (i.e. literally x ... veneer) the order of the fathers from the inside, through the faithful sons of their fatherland. Therefore, it is not worth hoping that the two-headed dwarf is sympathetic under the pressure of the thinking, as they say, the segments of the population, will begin to read Judith Butler and finally regret the sodomites. This will not happen - idiots rarely become dictators. Progressive social transformations will not come from the rearrangement of political terms, but from the destruction of cultural bonds. The dead Putin will not make Ivan alive, but a living culture will do it. Thus, it is not necessary to boycott the Olympics, but to promote all the best in this world - soullessness, damn and sodistry. In other words, another culture. Moreover, it is advisable to promote children-adult Russians stayed for too long at the reactor to finally decide to take out all this existential belt of the Virgin in the trash. Freedom is scary. All hopes for spoiled children.

Alexey Tsvetkov

poet

The idea of ​​the boycott of the Olympics, with all the arguments in her favor, does not seem reasonable and effective to me. You can talk for a long time about whether the Olympic Games correspond to their current form, the ideal of the rapprochement of peoples, as well as to what extent they became the instruments of propaganda in the arsenal of despotic governments. But this problem did not arise yesterday, and in Sochi it cannot be solved. The experience of the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympiad showed that such events hit primarily to specific people, athletes who have spent years on training, entirely without any state support, for whom such an action becomes a collapse of hopes, and this is clearly unfair. In my opinion, a much more effective protest method is personal and team protests during the Olympics itself, maybe even contrary to the laws of the country's country and the sanctions of the Olympic Committee. Unlike the boycott, such actions are clear, they will be seen in all corners of the earth, and the boycott is abstraction. Only in this option are won by those who do not deserve loss. It is better to light a candle than to curse darkness.

Alexander Cheparukhin

Producer and promoter, art director of the WOMAD festival in Pyatigorsk

This is a very difficult question for me. I am now making incredible efforts so that the WOMAD festival, which I spend with Peter Gabriel, is normally. And imagine, there are (though very few) Western producers who accuse me and Peter Gabriel of making such a festival in Russia. That it is time for Russia to boycott.

I do not have an unambiguous opinion on this topic, because I am an emotional person, and when a series of terrifying events occurs in the country, I have such an impulse that everything needs to be boycotts to the damn mother so that people who still appreciate something reasonable and civilized in this country finally understand what situation they live in and more actively manifest themselves, more actively resisted the outbreaks of violence, aggression, and badly, omstre xenophobia and simply elementary stupidity. But when you cool, you understand that, probably, this is not a method. You can wait for a very long time when the country changes in the direction in which we would like when it becomes a country that can be rightfully proud of. And depriving a whole generation of people of interesting cultural and sporting events is probably wrong. But I repeat that I do not have a formed position. These are all some impulses, sentiments that replace each other.

Just think about some boycott, and then you yourself organize a festival in Siberia and understand that, regardless of the fact that terrible things are happening in the country, this festival in Siberia is a really good matter. You see how people burn their eyes, how they are united around good music. And you understand that this should be done in any case. And at another moment, depression and a feeling of powerlessness begins to cover you, and it seems to you that everything should be politicized and that a person who does not participate in protest activity is not a full -fledged person.

It seems to me that if the protest events around the Olympics moved the situation in our country from the dead point, it would be more important than the Olympics itself. And if the protest only strengthened mutual tension and did not give anything in terms of the development of our civilian self -awareness, then, probably, to hell with it - let the Olympics be. It is difficult to predict.

Prepared by Julia Ryzhenko