Maxim Goryunov: “It’s time to go to work”

“In Russia, you can’t just be a “master of culture.” At the right moment, every Russian “master of culture” turns into a “master of agitation and propaganda,” writes the philosopher and publicist on Facebook , commenting on the arrest of Kirill Serebrennikov.

“At one time, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev, and Leskov, and Rozanov, and Alexei Tolstoy, and Sergei Eisenstein, and Bondarchuk Sr., and both Mikhalkovs, “and all, all, all,” were agitators.

Only Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was simply a “master of culture”: a world-famous count could afford it. In the end, it is true that it is anathema, but the count was his own Church.

Serebrennikov's arrest - apparently, after twenty-five years of freedom, the most successful Russian "masters of culture" have forgotten about their second specialty - to agitate the illiterate Ivanushki from Ryazan not to watch Navalny's channel - and behave as if they are equal to Tolstoy: they sit in Yasnye Polyany, do not answer to letters.

But the campaigning is worth it.

Mikhalkov-junior and Bondarchuk-junior take money for films, but there is no mass heroism. Having arrested Serebrennikov, the authorities remind the “masters of culture”:
it's time to go to work; the state needs propaganda masterpieces like “Alexander Nevsky” and “Ivan the Terrible” by Eisenstein.”