Vladimir Putin’s favorite exhibition, laconically referred to as ‘Russia’, took centre stage in Moscow’s cultural scene from November 2023 to July 2024. Situated in VDNKh, a 325-hectare exhibition and recreation complicated in-built 1939 through the Stalin period to showcase Soviet financial, industrial, and agricultural achievements, the exhibition megalomaniacally praised Putin and his reign. Every of the 89 areas of Russia, plus the occupied territories of Ukraine, had their very own promotional pavilion or stand. Greater than 18 million individuals visited the exhibition, which featured propaganda messages, patriotic talks, and workshops for youths on weaving camouflage nets and crafting trench candles from tin cans. A large, shiny banner with Putin’s assertion ‘Russia’s border doesn’t finish wherever’ was displayed within the pavilion devoted to Ukraine’s Kherson area, 70% of which Russia at the moment controls.
Sergey Kirienko, the presidential administration’s First Deputy Chief of Employees, orchestrated the ‘Russia’ exhibition to have fun his boss. Putin liked it a lot that he ordered the development of a devoted complicated within the middle of Moscow to show the exhibition’s highlights completely, which is now being developed. In an nameless remark, a political strategist referred to the undertaking as a future ‘Putin mausoleum’. In spite of everything, Russia is nicely skilled in commemorating its late rulers: since 1924, the preserved physique of Vladimir Lenin, the person behind the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the USSR, is displayed in his mausoleum at Purple Sq.. You possibly can go to without spending a dime on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm however can’t take footage and will keep silent in pensive awe.
Eight months after the exhibition closed, a museum glorifying the battle in Ukraine opened its doorways in VDNKh. Sardonically, the museum inhabits the constructing used as Ukraine’s exhibit pavilion throughout Soviet instances. The brand new museum follows within the actual ideological and propaganda footsteps of Putin’s favourite expo. It attracts express parallels between the Second World Struggle and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022, framing it as a steady existential combat towards fascism. The costly shows characteristic captured and destroyed Ukrainian automobiles and FPV drones, all marked as trophies, scattered amongst stones, rubble and birch branches. There’s additionally an in depth diorama of the Battle of Bakhmut, depicting Ukrainian troopers as defeated or kneeling in give up, and a reconstructed navy dugout that includes movies of boastful Russian troopers.
The museum doesn’t contact on how the Russian military in Ukraine has carried out the most important crime towards artwork in Europe since Nazi Germany. Russians have stolen and hidden some 1.7 million artifacts and reveals for the reason that Russian invasion of 2014. Neither does it point out the excessive toll that the Russian invasion has taken on tradition in Ukraine. Since 2022, Russia has broken or destroyed greater than 1,550 cultural heritage websites and a pair of,380 cultural amenities, together with libraries, museums and theaters throughout Ukraine.
As a substitute, the brand new battle museum in VDNKh units a ‘golden customary’ for others trapped in wartime censorship, compelled to tiptoe round politics in any respect prices – an inconceivable problem, for the reason that Russian state aggressively pushes propaganda into exhibitions, arrests artists, censors work and is rewriting historical past to mould Ukrainian cultural id. Russia now controls greater than forty Ukrainian museums, integrating them into its cultural infrastructure, and is establishing new museums in Ukraine.
All of those efforts observe a strict state-sanctioned blueprint that gives an in depth ideological message, distributed by way of cultural establishments throughout the nation and occupied lands. ‘The Russian world’, conceived as a state with limitless borders, assumes the reintegration of former Soviet nations and opposes Western affect.
The state overtly makes use of its legislation enforcement to punish those that step out of line. In April 2025 the chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee – one of many pillars of Putin’s repressive machine – ordered the institution of an inside cultural council. Its function is to ‘coordinate dialogue’ between legislation enforcement, public organizations, and cultural staff. In accordance with Russian official Alexander Bastrykin, that is paramount for forming patriotism, civic engagement and conventional ethical values amongst youth. The сommittee’s first assembly, held on 30 September, was referred to as ‘The function of tradition in shaping residents’ authorized consciousness and stopping crime’.
Within the final three and a half years for the reason that full-scale invasion started, the face and state of tradition each contained in the nation and the occupied territories have undergone drastic modifications. In wartime Russia, tradition and repression have develop into symbiotic.
The self-censoring cultural hub
In December 2021, three months earlier than the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the GES-2 Home of Tradition had its grand opening in Moscow, simply throughout the river from the Kremlin. The 470-million-dollar (400 million euros) reconstruction of a Twentieth-century energy plant right into a centre for up to date artwork was led by Pritzker-Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, famend for designing the Centre Pompidou and Istanbul Fashionable. GES-2 initially attracted a few of the greatest up to date artwork expertise from inside Russia and overseas. However the hub for contemporary cultural leisure, with its library, cinema, house for workshops, talks, trend reveals, its high-end eating places, birch grove and even ice-skating rink, is an interesting, spacious constructing that lacks a vital message. It has develop into a self-censoring worrywart.
Earlier than GES-2 opened to the general public, its founder, billionaire oligarch Leonid Mikhelson, who owns Russia’s largest non-state pure fuel supplier, hosted a personal tour for Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s mayor. Some experiences say each weren’t solely unimpressed however borderline livid with the intellectual, hipster haven. GES-2 was by no means meant as a political megaphone, however instances had been altering, and even its innocuous cultural place was deemed an excessive amount of.
Curator-director Teresa Mavica quickly stepped down from her function, and Mikhelson began interfering with the exhibition programme and content material. GES-2 cancelled its creative workshop on the historical past of Russian authority on the final second. Employees eliminated some works from exhibitions thought of ‘too provocative’. They modified the title of the efficiency, God, Moscow to Untitled. Contestation started circulating in Moscow. Three days earlier than the full-scale invasion, GES-2 introduced it had employed a PR knowledgeable to speak with the Russian state and make sense of the continuous repression and censorship. Professional-Kremlin Telegram channels instantly labelled this place as one in all inside censorship. After the battle escalated, the museum described itself as ‘a impartial and apolitical territory the place there was no house for emotional and rash declarations’ and briefly shut down all reveals.
Since February 2022, nonetheless, many employees members have left GES-2. In accordance with some experiences, the stress Putin’s administration places on Mikhelson to host extra patriotic occasions has compelled him to stroll a managerial tightrope. The cultural centre is just getting by, internet hosting mediocre exhibitions and workshops. The espresso remains to be good, although.
When denunciations form cultural coverage
Different cultural areas and actions have fared even worse. The Storage Museum of Modern Artwork, owned by oligarch Roman Abramovich, closed its exhibitions for 2 years within the hope of avoiding bother as soon as the battle escalated. Seven months earlier than reopening, the museum was raided by OMON, particular police items inside the Nationwide Guard, and its long-standing director, Anton Belov, stepped down and left the nation. As soon as reopened, Storage then endured a siege by pro-war activists, who demanded the institution of war-related exhibitions. The museum strikes a cautious steadiness.
In November 2022, Putin signed a decree outlining the implementation and preservation of ‘conventional Russian religious and ethical values’. Amongst them are human rights, dignity, freedom, patriotism, serving the homeland, household values, historic reminiscence and religious superiority over materialism. The decree additionally highlights that the USA and different unfriendly nations, together with unnamed media, transnational firms and NGOs, pose a menace to these values by way of using harmful ideological and psychological affect. Two months later, the Ministry of Tradition demanded that the Tretyakov Gallery, which was established in 1856 and thought to be the foremost repository of Russian fantastic artwork on the earth, replace its exhibitions to observe these conventional values.
A civilian criticism to the Ministry of Tradition, which acknowledged that the gallery confirmed indicators of a harmful ideology, overwhelmingly pessimistic, hopeless and hole, prompted the directive. In his denunciation, the complainant blamed the gallery for showcasing work with demonic and voluntaristic interpretations of historic and non secular occasions, topped off with alcoholism and funerals.
Inside a month, officers appointed a brand new CEO of the Tretyakov Gallery. Elena Pronicheva, a former parliament worker with a observe document of working at VDNKh and Gazprom, the most important nationwide power firm, stepped into the function. Born within the now-occupied territory of Ukrainian Melitopol, she is the daughter of outstanding Federal Safety Service (FSB) basic Vladimir Pronichev, who led the operation towards the Moscow theatre hostage disaster in 2002, the place 132 hostages died because of the impact of sleeping fuel utilized by particular forces, and was a part of the duty drive through the Beslan faculty hostage disaster in 2004, the place 330 individuals, together with 180 kids, died. Pronichev additionally based the Division for the Protection of the Constitutional Order and the Combat towards Terrorism inside the FSB, which is chargeable for a few of the largest political trial circumstances.
In March 2024 police stormed the residences of 20 artists in reference to a case of treason towards Peter Verzilov, founding producer of the feminist Pussy Riot rock band that turned world well-known after they had been arrested and given two-year sentences for taking pictures footage contained in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, positioned close to the Kremlin, in 2012; Verzilov, who left Russia years in the past, is now enlisted within the Ukrainian military. The police search was brutal: artists had been compelled to lie on the ground of their residences, had been yelled at, crushed and threatened with machine weapons, earlier than being detained for questioning. Artists and curators Svetlana Baskova and Anatoly Osmolovsky, who spearheaded the post-Soviet, Moscow artwork underground, left Russia consequently. In an interview, Osmolovsky mentioned that up to date artwork, which represents the thought of modernity, has no place in Russia, below the present regime that dwells on the previous: ‘An idea of the longer term is absent within the Russian consciousness.’
The state additionally tightly controls collective reminiscence. In November 2024 authorities shut down the Gulag Historical past Museum in Moscow, which was established in 2001 to publicly acknowledge the brutal system of Soviet-era camps, bringing collectively a set of state paperwork, household pictures and different objects from gulag victims. In 2021 it received the Council of Europe Museum Prize, for exposing historical past and activating reminiscence, ‘with the purpose of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights at this time and sooner or later’. Officers claimed the closure was resulting from fireplace security violations, however the actual trigger was censorship. When the museum fired its director, Roman Romanov, Elizaveta Lihacheva, then the top of the Pushkin Museum, publicly defended the museum and Romanov. Regardless of being a loyalist, authorities then fired her two months later – even small acts of disobedience aren’t tolerated.
It’s rumoured that the Gulag museum will reopen in a 12 months below new directorship. However its administration must watch out: the state assesses historic and reminiscence actions. Authorities have banned the human rights group Memorial. Officers have forbidden the annual day of remembrance for victims of the Nice Purge. Artists get arrested and imprisoned for calling Russian aggression what it’s – battle.
Looted treasures and inherited energy
Mikhail Piotrovsky, 80, the long-standing head of the Hermitage and a vocal supporter of Putin, is among the few gallery managers in Russia holding their floor. Having inherited the place in 1992 from his father, who had been 36 years within the job, Piotrovsky’s tenure isn’t far behind. And, like father like son, he hopes to transition energy to his son, Boris Piotrovsky, the vice-governor of Saint Petersburg.
The museum possesses caches of European artwork that Soviet Trophy Brigades looted from Europe after the top of the Second World Struggle. Amongst them are papyri from the Austrian Nationwide Library in Vienna, Japanese and Chinese language artworks from the Museum of Asian Artwork in Berlin, Degas’ Place de la Concorde from the Gerstenberg-Scharf assortment, and work by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Courbet and Renoir from the collections of industrialists Otto Krebs and Bernhard Koehler.
The state saved these and different tens of 1000’s of artwork items in secrecy till the autumn of the Soviet Union; then, within the Nineteen Nineties, officers triumphantly displayed them. Authorities nationalized the items, utilizing them as one of many many constructing blocks of Putin’s ideology. The regime, seeing them as restitution for harm that the Nazis brought on, heralded them as winner’s trophies. Since Russian ideology merges the Second World Struggle and the battle in Ukraine as one, these artifacts at the moment are seen each as a historic reminder of overcoming invasion and an excuse for battle.
Not too long ago, Piotrovsky issued a prolonged doc explaining the mission of all Russian museums, which he claims is to instill ‘emotions of loyalty and love for the Homeland by immersion in native tradition and nationwide historical past’. This autumn, officers as soon as once more extended Piotrovsky’s time period, this time till 2030. Each Mikhail and Boris Piotrovsky are closely concerned in shaping cultural coverage in Ukraine’s occupied territories, most notably within the annihilated metropolis of Mariupol.
Pressured russification by tradition
When Mariupol was below siege for 3 months in 2022, greater than 20,000 individuals had been killed and 90% of residential buildings destroyed. Authorities have since rebuilt town as a show of compelled russification. Right here, like elsewhere within the occupied territories, schoolchildren at the moment are learning from textbooks that reward Russia and its navy, and downplay Ukrainian id. The Russian state hosts patriotic live shows, exhibitions, talks and different occasions celebrating the battle all through occupied cities, and has commandeered museums for brainwashing residents.
Within the centre of Mariupol, the cosy museum of people life, as soon as beloved by its residents, has been become a museum devoted to Andrei Zhdanov, a detailed affiliate of Joseph Stalin who was born in Mariupol. Zhdanov, who was chargeable for Soviet propaganda and helped orchestrate the Nice Purge, crafted a celebration cultural doctrine often called Zhdanovshina. Underneath his coverage, authorities in Ukraine criticized writers, actors, administrators, producers and artists who contravened the official line. Officers attacked establishments of Ukrainian historical past and literature, inventive unions, and editorial places of work of newspapers and magazines. They censored theatre repertoires, eradicating any idealization of the pre-revolutionary previous, changing it with content material that glorified Soviet rule.
Now, Stalin’s cult is seeing a comeback. Russian authorities are reconstructing destroyed museums and integrating them into the larger russification image. Within the first days of battle in Mariupol, Russians kidnapped and tortured museum staff till a few of them collaborated. At present, officers have appointed new administrators to many of the area’s museums, who’ve since signed partnerships with varied establishments throughout Russia, participated in Russian occasions, acquired Russian awards and spoken on state TV. The obliterated Museum of Native Lore, for instance, has been rebuilt and now homes reveals from the Russian Nationwide Guard. Within the first 12 months and a half of the occupation, authorities had already applied greater than 50 exhibitions throughout the occupied territories. The state has additionally established new museums within the occupied lands celebrating Russian Cossacks, Russian icons, Soviet Donbas coal miners and Second World Struggle resistance.
In Sevastopol, Crimea, the development of a cultural cluster designed by the Austrian architectural agency Coop Himmelb(l)au is nearing completion. Putin is personally overseeing the complicated, which features a choreography academy, an artwork museum and an opera theatre. Regardless of Ukraine imposing sanctions and opening a felony case towards the agency’s leaders in January 2022, Coop Himmelb(l)au’s architects continued engaged on the undertaking till October 2022, when EU sanctions lastly compelled them to cease. Co-founder Wolf Prix defended the collaboration, claiming he was ‘constructing for individuals, not Putin’, arguing that ‘structure is artwork, and artwork is aware of no borders or sanctions’. He concurrently criticized what he noticed as Western hypocrisy, significantly colleagues who refused Russian initiatives but continued working with authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Building staff at the moment are finishing the buildings with out the architects’ involvement however utilizing their unique designs.
Blueprint for historic revisionism
Every little thing that occurs in tradition and museums inside Russia and Ukraine’s occupied territories follows a strict doctrine adopted by the Ministry of Tradition, guided by the Kremlin’s lead. The inner paper ‘Methodological suggestions for creating exhibitions devoted to the historical past of the particular navy operation in museums of the Russian Federation’ lays out the easy groundwork for historic and reminiscence revisionism. In accordance with this doc, Russia considers Donbas and southeastern Ukraine as traditionally Russian territories, with the 2014 Maidan revolution characterised as an unlawful coup in Kyiv. The battle is justified, the doc states, as a method to guard the id and rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
The doctrine explains exactly find out how to learn the historical past of Russia and the world. The doctrine presents the battle as Russia’s defensive response to ‘shield Russian audio system from cultural and political discrimination’ and to ‘defend Russia from Ukraine’s deliberate assault’. It frames the invasion as a part of preserving ‘historic fact’ and conventional religious and ethical values. The identical factors are repeated in class textbooks and classes in Mariupol and different occupied cities. Russia’s tradition ministry, alongside legislation enforcement businesses, is strictly imposing these tips, merging its cultural establishments into already mighty propaganda and repression machines.
There may be, nonetheless, a brilliant facet. As one of many former museum administrators mentioned off the document, Russia is an exceptionally massive nation and, though the Kremlin and the Ministry of Tradition have their plans, blueprints and techniques, it’s onerous to ensure individuals will truly observe them. Museum employees will all the time discover a solution to simply telephone it in, balancing authenticity with the principles of propaganda by doing the naked minimal. And in the event that they’re caught, they’ll all the time play dummy.
Russia’s new curation mannequin, whereas largely bleak, fits most people, who’re additionally attempting to dwell their lives as if nothing horrible is going on. Final summer season, Zelfira Tregulova, the previous head of the Tretyakov Gallery and a loyalist whom authorities eliminated in favor of the FSB basic’s daughter, curated a large expo at GES-2. ‘The exhibition is doing every thing in its energy to keep up the phantasm that every thing on the earth and in Russia is identical because it was 4 years in the past,’ wrote artwork critic Sergei Hatchaturov. The occasion has set a baseline for up to date museums – visually interesting, censored, remoted and uncritical. Even when the memento outlets do have pretty tote luggage.
This text contributes to the writer’s ongoing analysis for his forthcoming guide, Id Looted: How Russia steals artwork from Ukraine.
