The battlefield belongs to the marauders

On November 19, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said at a meeting with journalists that the refusal of the state to finance the Artdocfest film festival is connected with the political views of Vitaly Mansky, the president of the festival

They held on for a long time. They sat in their cage and looked around, impatiently waiting for the moment when the leader of the pack would say “face” and then, finally, it would be possible. Until then, you have to hold on.

They held on. They came up with various reasons why the objectionable turned out to be on the sidelines of state attention. Everyone understood this, but up to a certain point it was impossible to seize power by the hand, to catch it in open censorship. At the word “censorship”, the Minister of Culture learned to make the face of an offended second-grader caught cheating: “What?! Where?! Slander!"

For a long time they held on. They even managed to get out of the scandal with the film by Alexander Mindadze “Dear Hans, Dear Peter”, if not clean, then at least not too dirty: with great effort, they explained that the demand to redraw the plot that they did not like was only a concern for historical authenticity. No one believed it, but for the sake of peace and Mindadze, everyone retreated: okay, let's not escalate, otherwise everyone's beloved and respected Mindadze will be completely deprived of state funding.

Who knows, maybe last year's story with Mindadze became the first drop of blood shed, at which the authorities bared their teeth, growled, and now they rushed to gnaw without regard for decency?

Last week, the authorities did what is now commonly called the word coming out. Rejecting unnecessary shyness, the state, through its Minister of Culture Medinsky, announced the beginning of censorship: “Not a single project of Mansky will receive a penny of state money while I am a minister ... He said so many anti-state things that he should make the festival at his own expense,” Medinsky said in the answer to the innocent routine question of the author of these lines, who was expecting the same innocent routine response, like “The state suddenly ran out of money just at Artdocfest” or “I was not informed of anything”, or at worst “Khu from Mansky?”

The fact that culture is now run by people who have no idea how the relationship between the state and the artist in a civilized society looks like has long been known. The fact that they confuse culture with a whore - they say, we pay you, and you fulfill our bizarre desires - is also no secret to anyone. But in connection with the epoch-making statement of the minister, several more questions have arisen.

First. How does a statesman, an official of this level, manage to not see the difference between oppositional statements and anti-state activities?

Second. Does a minister have the right not to make a distinction between his own purse and the state budget, naively believing himself to be the owner of not only the first, but also the second?

Third. Are we going to wake up just as united as we always do? The Ministry of Culture experts will be wiped out, to whom the Minister indicated their place, and this place, as it has now become clear, is at the bucket of the Ministry of Culture. Filmmakers will wipe themselves out in the hope that none of them will be next. The public will be wiped out, because Mansky with his "Artdocfest" against the backdrop of falling oil prices and throwing the dollar against the euro is a trifle.

Meanwhile, Medinsky's statement opened a new era in Russia: for the first time in Russia's recent history, there was an open recognition of censorship and persecution for political reasons. The statement was made on November 19, the Day of the Missile Forces and Artillery. The Ministry of Culture celebrated this day in the best way - with a real salvo. The goal is all of us. It seems to have hit.