President Vladimir Putin’s run for yet another term in office has launched with events at two major Moscow cultural venues—one a magnet for hipsters, the other a revitalised Stalin-era fairground.
They took place against a new wave of cultural repression, as authorities this week declared the county’s most famous author of historical novels, Boris Akunin, a terrorist for his opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Akunin has been abroad in self-imposed exile since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now in Russia his books are being seized and his name wiped from public view.
Analysts say the case against Akunin could open the door for similar charges against any cultural activists, including artists. Last month, St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket labels with information about Russia’s destruction of Mariupol.
The presidential election, scheduled for March 2024, will be for Putin’s fifth term. He has been in office since 1999, including two stints as prime minister. His candidacy was formally put forth by a group of supporters on 16 December, including cultural figures, at Zaryadye concert hall in a park near the Kremlin approved by Putin and designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York’s High Line. The location draws a fashionable crowd.
On 17 December a second campaign rally was held at VDNH, a fairground built in the 1930s initially to glorify Soviet economic achievements under the rule of dictator Joseph Stalin. It has been revamped in the past decade as a museum and exhibition space with increasingly propagandistic content.
An exhibition touting Russia’s current achievements opened at VDNH’s elaborate pavilions on 4 November, the National Unity Day holiday, including stands devoted to the territories Russia has annexed from Ukraine since the 2022 invasion: the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics and parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
The exhibition, titled Russia, was timed by its Kremlin organisers, who spent billions of roubles on it, to coincide with Putin’s presidential campaign. He toured regional stands, including those of annexed territories. Earlier this month he toured the main pavilion showcasing “Patriotism” and a Kremlin programme called “Russia – Country of Opportunities”.
The Kremlin’s United Russia political party held its congress at VDNH on 17 December in support of Putin’s candidacy. Boris Piotrovsky, St. Petersburg’s vice governor in charge of culture and the son of State Hermitage Museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky, wrote in his Telegram channel after the party congress showed unanimous support for Putin: “It could not be otherwise. After all, Vladimir Putin is a safe and stable future.”
The younger Piotrovsky is frequently mentioned as the successor to his father at the Hermitage. The senior Piotrovsky, who is coy on the subject, had in turn succeeded his father. Russian media reports that Mikhail Piotrovsky, who has expressed vocal support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is expected to be named an official Putin presidential campaign representative as he has been in the past.
In a recent interview with Russia’s RBC he made reference to museum pieces from the war zone, and said museums’ main role in war is to “preserve artifacts” and not to “maintain neutrality.” He said information cannot be revealed about “where things have been taken to, about how safe they are.”
Mikhail Piotrovsky added: “We are working to help restore museums in new territories. In particular, we are faced with the issue of a museum in Mariupol, the sister city of St. Petersburg. The museum there was destroyed, but things were preserved. Our position is that restoration plans should always include plans for reconstruction and even the creation of a new museum. I think we should strive to create new things.”
