tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/russian-art-12130/articlesRussian art – The Conversation2023-09-22T13:15:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107442023-09-22T13:15:46Z2023-09-22T13:15:46ZAndrey Rublev has been called the ‘greatest Russian artist who ever lived’ – but one of his most famous works is at risk under Putin<p>Andrey Rublev (or Rublyov – nobody is sure how his name was pronounced) <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/the-byzantine-commonwealth-eastern-europe-5001453-by-dimitri-obolensky-history-of-civilization-series-london-weidenfeld-and-nicolson-1971-xiv-445-p-400-new-york-praeger-publishers-1971-1500/D37C15C58DC899000E28AA07D693AEA1">has been described as</a> “the greatest Russian artist who ever lived”, whose work had “a clarity of composition and suave tranquillity of mood peculiarly his own”. </p>
<p>In May 2023, it was announced that under Putin, one of Rublev’s most famous works was to be removed from its restoration team and donated to the Russian Orthodox Church. This has prompted concerns about the conservation of his work.<br>
My new book <a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/andrey-rublev">Andrey Rublev: The Artist and His World</a> is an overview of the master medieval Russian painter. Rublev, active around 1400 in and near Moscow, was a monk and painter of icons, frescoes and (possibly) manuscripts in the tradition of the Orthodox Church. </p>
<p>He was highly regarded in his lifetime and for at least a century thereafter. He is mentioned in the proceedings of the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Moscow_Stoglav_hundred_Chapters_Chur.html?id=4RgsAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Council of the 100 Chapters</a> in 1551 (a major council ordering the practices of the Russian Church) and in <a href="http://www.nostalghia.com/TheTopics/RublovDocumentation.html">Tale of the Holy Icon Painters</a> in the 17th century.</p>
<p>He is generally thought to have been born in the 1360s. He must have taken monastic orders sometime before 1405, when he was part of a team painting the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cathedral-of-the-Annunciation">Kremlin Annunciation Cathedral</a>. He spent his last years in the relatively small <a href="https://orthodoxwiki.org/Andronikov_Monastery_(Moscow)">Andronikov Monastery</a> on the edge of Moscow (where <a href="https://all-andorra.com/andronikov-monastery/">a museum</a> is now dedicated to him). A gravestone recording his death on January 29 1430 was found in the 18th century. It has since been lost.</p>
<p>The beautiful cathedral of the <a href="https://www.inyourpocket.com/moscow/spaso-andronikov-monastery_37918v">Andronikov Monastery</a>, now the oldest standing building in Moscow (though damaged in Napoleon’s invasion and fire of 1812), dates from the late 1420s. I believe, though it can’t be proved, that Rublev had a hand in its construction. He certainly did in its painting. As I write <a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/andrey-rublev">in my book</a>, we know little or nothing about the beginnings of Rublev’s life or career.</p>
<h2>Searching for Rublev</h2>
<p>Any search for Rublev must begin with the icon known as the Old Testament Trinity, properly known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(Andrei_Rublev)#/media/File:Angelsatmamre-trinity-rublev-1410.jpg">Hospitality of Abraham</a>. It stood prominently for centuries in the small cathedral of the <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/21/russias-trinity-icon-to-stay-at-moscows-christ-the-savior-cathedral-for-month-longer">Trinity Monastery</a> in hilly, forested country approximately 70kms northeast of Moscow.</p>
<p>This monastery had been founded in the previous century by the hermit and spiritual leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Sergius-I">Sergius</a>, who was later canonised and considered the patron saint of Russia. It stood above the disputes of princes as a common spiritual centre. The icon was painted in memory of Sergius, a symbolic overcoming of enmity in a fractious land (still under Tartar rule).</p>
<p>Three elegant figures are seated round a plain table. They are neither evidently young nor old, male nor female, but are winged and haloed. They are angels, the figures who appeared to Abraham and Sarah, as recounted in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2018&version=NIV">Genesis 18</a>. </p>
<p>They are God’s messengers and deliver the news that, though elderly, Abraham and Sarah will have a son named Isaac. These three figures were taken as symbolic of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit</p>
<p>From the traditional scene, Rublev entirely omits Abraham and Sarah, but includes three symbolic items behind the wings – house, tree and mountain. All this has been apparent only since 1919, when the icon had its first proper cleaning. Until then the painting was obscured, first, by darkening of its varnish, then by the elaborate metal casing fitted over it by subsequent tsars. </p>
<p>Since then, historians have been astounded by the rhythm and poise of the figures, their symbolic meaning and the brilliant colouration based on blood-red and ultramarine blue. Soviet art historian M. Alpatov <a href="https://biblio.sg/book/art-treasures-russia-alpatov-m-w/d/262969929">wrote</a>: “In the history of the arts, there is no other one work that, to the same extent as the Trinity, embodies the best spiritual forces of an entire nation.”</p>
<h2>What we know about Rublev’s art</h2>
<p>Beyond this icon, what did Rublev definitely paint? In 1408, with his fellow monk Daniil, he worked on the great <a href="https://catholicshrinebasilica.com/dormition-cathedral-vladimir-russia/">Cathedral of the Dormition</a> in Vladimir, considered the mother church of middle Russia. Its frescoes are in poor condition, but still show Rublev as an artist of great verve. Though the Last Judgement is represented, there are no scenes of hell.</p>
<p>Beyond these, three probable Rublev icons were found in a woodshed in Zvenigorod, west of Moscow, with links to the Trinity Monastery. The icon of St Michael is so like the Trinity angels that it is usually taken as from the same hand. Around 1400 a series of fine gospel books was made for the main Moscow cathedrals. </p>
<p>Among them was the <a href="https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/andrei-rublev-alpatov-pub-1972-1779587820">Khitrovo Book</a>, a work of a quality that leads me to suspect Rublev’s work. Rublev’s final project, small decorative window-splays in the <a href="https://www.inyourpocket.com/moscow/spaso-andronikov-monastery_37918v">Andronikov Monastery</a> is still intact.</p>
<p>The Trinity icon was moved to the <a href="https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/%E2%84%963-2013-40/andrei-rublev-image-holy-trinity">Tretyakov Gallery</a> in the 1920s, and – considerably battered, as it was – has been carefully studied, restored and displayed, latterly in an air-conditioned capsule. </p>
<p>So things remained, until in May 2023, when <a href="https://anglican.ink/2023/05/16/putin-returns-andrey-rublevs-icon-the-holy-trinity-to-the-russian-orthodox-church/">President Vladimir Putin announced</a> that it would be donated to the Russian Orthodox Church, in time for Trinity Sunday (June 4). The restoration team was outraged in view of its fragility – they had no guarantee that the work would be protected once it left their care – but had to submit. </p>
<p>Why should Putin behave in this way? To keep his ally, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox church, on side? To show that, as boss, he can dispose of valuable possessions? Or (most likely) because he needs that icon’s “help” in his war? Rublev’s great masterpiece went, apparently unprotected, to the modern <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/21/russias-trinity-icon-to-stay-at-moscows-christ-the-savior-cathedral-for-month-longer">Christ the Saviour Cathedral</a> in Moscow.</p>
<p>However, to the surprise of visitors, the icon was temporarily spirited away from the cathedral in late July, so that a different, non-Tretyakov restoration team could work on it. It seems the journey of this masterpiece isn’t yet over.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Milner-Gulland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rublev, active around 1400 in and near Moscow, was a monk and painter of icons, frescoes and (possibly) manuscripts in the tradition of the Orthodox ChurchRobin Milner-Gulland, Emeritus Professor of Russian, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2128302023-09-14T12:51:27Z2023-09-14T12:51:27ZHow Russia’s theatre scene has been obliterated by Putin’s culture war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546988/original/file-20230907-20-qz81ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4668%2C2908&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">View from stage of Moscow's Vakhtangov Theatre.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/moscow-april-23-view-stage-auditorium-135726527">Pavel L Photo and Video/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past decade, Russian president <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/vladimir-putin-6680">Vladimir Putin</a>’s regime has introduced ideologically driven cultural policies intended to shape a new, virtuous Russian citizen for the future. </p>
<p>For those – like Putin himself – old enough to remember the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/soviet-era-76198">Soviet Union</a>, the imposition of an authoritarian cultural policy in the name of ideology comes very naturally. In those days it was called “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Socialist-Realism">socialist realism</a>”, and was intrinsic to the goals of the ruling Communist party. </p>
<p>Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel sworn to the promotion of those goals, has substituted for communism an ultra-patriotic Russian nationalism, drawing deeply on the social conservatism of the Orthodox church.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350142497&tocid=b-9781350142497-chapter3">New legislation and guidelines</a> have banned the use of obscenity in literary texts, theatre and cinema. They’ve also censored blasphemy, forbidden the promotion of “non-traditional” (a euphemism for LGBTQ+) family values to anyone under 18, outlawed any public expression of disrespect towards people or symbols representing the authorities and forbidden the representation of historical events unless these match “official” narratives of the past.</p>
<p>Theatre has been one of the most outspoken art forms of the Russian cultural scene since the end of the Soviet era. State theatres in Russia are still heavily subsidised – as they were in Soviet times – and are correspondingly cautious about subject matter and language. But since the 1990s, independent theatre has also flourished in many provincial cities, as well as in crowded black-box studios in Moscow and St Petersburg. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/new-drama-in-russian-9781788313506/">New Drama</a>”, the most innovative movement of this period, has brought marginal voices to the fore. It often draws upon verbatim material to give voice to former prisoners, disenchanted youth, drug addicts and alcoholics, homosexuals and abused women. The “documentary” aspect of much of New Drama foregrounds the thirst for raw truth after so many decades of Soviet propaganda.</p>
<p>As the Putin regime has become more politically oppressive over the past ten years, independent theatre has staged challenging works questioning the state’s complicity in stealing elections, silencing opposition, endorsing police brutality and tolerating corruption. Unsurprisingly, it is therefore the world of theatre which has suffered most harshly and most visibly under the new, wartime cultural clampdown by the Russian authorities.</p>
<h2>An obliterated cultural scene</h2>
<p>One early manifestation of the shift towards ruthless intolerance of free-spirited theatre-makers came in 2017. The celebrated theatre and film director <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/kirill-serebrennikov">Kirill Serebrennikov</a> was accused – outrageously – of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53197479#:%7E:text=Prominent%20Russian%20director%20Kirill%20Serebrennikov,has%20called%20the%20charges%20laughable.">embezzling state funds</a>. The charge was undoubtedly associated with Serebrennikov’s criticism of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and his support for LGBTQ+ causes. </p>
<p>Having endured two years of house arrest, Serebrennikov was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/26/top-russian-director-kirill-serebrennikov-convicted-of#:%7E:text=A%20Moscow%20court%20has%20convicted,artistic%20freedoms%20in%20the%20country">found guilty in 2020</a>. His sentence was lifted in 2022 following the payment of a large fine, after which he left Russia for the west.</p>
<p>Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s independent theatre scene has been obliterated. Many well-known playwrights, directors and actors have been sacked by nervous theatre managers for expressing opposition to the war and <a href="https://oteatre.info/hronika-razgroma-god-pervyj/">many have left the country</a>. This includes not just the young and those at the cutting edge, but also the older generation, representing what remains of the post-Soviet liberal intelligentsia.</p>
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<img alt="A stately theatre lit at night with fountains outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546990/original/file-20230907-2978-jivs63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fountains near the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/jets-fountain-near-bolshoi-theater-evening-685824145">Baturina Yuliya/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Playwrights whose works have been removed from the repertoire of theatres or banned for performance in Russia by the Ministry of Culture include <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/47541/boris-akunin/">Boris Akunin</a> (also one of Russia’s most popular novelists), <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jan/24/mikhail-durnenkov-russia-the-war-has-not-yet-started">Mikhail Durnenkov</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/18/russia-orders-arrest-alexander-rodnyansky-ivan-vyrypaev">Ivan Vyrypaev</a>. </p>
<p>Durnenkov, a playwright, director and brilliant theatrical pedagogue, left Russia for Finland very soon after the invasion began. His case illustrates the authorities’ swift ruthlessness. On April 19 2022 he posted on Facebook expressing hope that Russia would lose the war, since the country needed to wake up from the appalling nightmare into which it had plunged. </p>
<p>Within a week, his plays had been banned by the Ministry of Culture for performance in all Russian theatres. Then, the state-affiliated Union of Theatre-Makers proposed his expulsion. He was sacked from his post running a studio at the Moscow Art Theatre and deputies in the Russian state called for him to be <a href="https://www.svoboda.org/a/osudil-voynu-zatravitj-na-meste/31816566.html">charged with a criminal offence</a>.</p>
<h2>Theatre under the state</h2>
<p>Under their new managements, several large state theatres such as the Moscow Art Theatre have started staging patriotic plays instead of their previous repertoire. “<a href="https://novaya-media.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/novaya.media/amp/articles/2023/03/07/bolshe-korotkikh-iubok">Agit-brigades</a>” (a Soviet term describing theatre groups sent to the front to disseminate Bolshevik propaganda) have been formed to undertake tours of the occupied areas of eastern Ukraine, to boost morale. In other words, theatre has now been fully instrumentalised by the state in line with its new patriotic cultural policy.</p>
<p>To appreciate the daunting scale of this damage, imagine the equivalent in England. The Royal Court, Southwark Playhouse and Arcola as well as innovative theatres outside London all placed under new government-sanctioned management. Socially controversial works pruned from the repertoire of the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre. West End theatres compelled to stage plays supporting government policies. </p>
<p>Star actors such as Ian McKellen and Judi Dench banned from further work or forced to flee the country. Playwrights of the calibre of David Hare, Lucy Prebble, Tom Stoppard and Jez Butterworth silenced. Directors such as Declan Donnellan, Katie Mitchell and Simon McBurney fired. </p>
<p>This is the extent of the devastation which has been achieved by the Putin regime in Russia, in just a few years.</p>
<p>Timofey Kulyabin, a theatre and opera director from Siberia, left not long after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and now lives in Germany. While <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/25/putin-says-west-treating-russian-culture-like-cancelled-jk-rowling">Putin complains</a> that the west has been attempting to “cancel” Russian culture, Kulyabin comes to a different, <a href="https://meduza.io/feature/2023/01/03/est-odna-strana-kotoraya-tochno-otmenyaet-russkuyu-kulturu-eta-strana-rossiya">bitter conclusion</a>: “There is currently one country which certainly is engaged in cancelling Russian culture. And that country is Russia itself.”</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Julie Curtis receives funding from AHRC (OWRI project)</span></em></p>Theatre has now been fully instrumentalised by the Russian state in line with its new patriotic cultural policy.Julie Curtis, Professor of Russian Literature (Emerita), University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1615822021-09-20T20:06:58Z2021-09-20T20:06:58ZDecoding the music masterpieces: Stravinsky’s The Firebird<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409436/original/file-20210702-22-1nttlld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2525%2C2445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kent G Becker/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 25 1910, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird opened to acclaim at the Paris Opéra. The success propelled its composer, then aged 28, to international prominence, a position of influence he would retain for six decades.</p>
<p>The ballet’s myth-like storyline features a magical Firebird, who helps a young prince rescue a coterie of princesses from Kashchey, an evil sorcerer.</p>
<p>Based on the eponymous bird of Russian folklore, it has ultimately propagated some myths of its own - relating to the artistic ideals of the team who created it, and the narrative’s historical accuracy.</p>
<p>Most crucial, though, is the composer himself who, through successive elaborations of his own biography, engaged in myth-making on an extensive scale. Notable for what Stravinsky expert Richard Taruskin terms his “celebrated mendacity”, questions have lingered as to whether certain of the composer’s early musical ideas were as original as they seemed. </p>
<h2>Conservative ‘modernists’</h2>
<p>After The Firebird, Stravinsky’s early career was bolstered by the triumph of his next two works: Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Given the impact of the last work in particular, it is customary to note Stravinsky’s pivotal influence on the development of musical modernism. </p>
<p>Yet in 1910, he was a largely untested novice. The Firebird was a production of the Ballets Russes, newly formed by its director, the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. For over a decade, Diaghilev had been a leading member of a group known as “Mir iskusstva” (World of Art), the title of their short-lived magazine.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409438/original/file-20210702-13-183ggt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tamara Karsavina as the Firebird in the 1910 Ballets Russes production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WIkimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their artistic ideals, however, were far from modern. A collection of conservatives, many were from aristocratic backgrounds with a tendency toward romantic nationalism. They were aligned against both the “realist” modernism of the previous generation, and the evolving spiritual modernism of fellow Russian composers like Scriabin. Their principles were those against which socialists would soon react. </p>
<p>In a series of ventures for Parisian audiences from 1906, Diaghilev looked to Russia’s past for his sources. After discovering how expensive opera was to produce, he settled exclusively on ballet from 1910. Again, however, his musical choices were initially conservative.</p>
<h2>Repurposed myths</h2>
<p>Magical birds are not without precedent in folklore, having featured in the childhood tales of many countries, such as Germany, where a similar creature appears in Grimm’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bird">The Golden Bird</a>.</p>
<p>Yet in Russia, the Firebird had a special significance, emerging as a nationalist symbol over the latter decades of the 19th century. Characterised as a bird of great beauty, it brought peril to those who tried to catch it or steal its glowing feathers. </p>
<p>In the Ballets Russes production, however, far from causing misfortune, when the young prince catches the Firebird it actually helps him. </p>
<p>Historians have noted the story is similar to lines from Russian poet Yakov Polonsky’s children’s poem, Winter Journey (1844). Yet the synopsis evidently is a conflation of two separate folk tales, developed by Mir iskusstva members as an export vehicle for foreign audiences.</p>
<p>Led by the choreographer Mikhail Fokine, the stories were repurposed by Alexandre Benois and Alexander Golovin, both important contributors to Ballets Russes design, and Nikolai Tcherepnin, the composer originally selected to write the Firebird’s music. </p>
<p>In short, the popular folk tale of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Tsarevich">Ivan-Tsarevich</a>, and his quest for a beautiful princess (in which the Firebird features tangentially), was blended with a separate folk tale about the evil, immortal <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei">Kashchey</a>, who dies at the hand of a prince who possesses a magical egg. </p>
<h2>‘New’ music</h2>
<p>Fokine, who by typical accounts was a difficult choreographer to work with, likely caused three composers to exit or decline the project. Hence, the fortuitous opening for Stravinsky, a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the elder statesman of Russian music whose most progressive works were little known in the West.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409440/original/file-20210702-19-1hveyr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stravinsky (second from left) and Fokine (leaning against the piano) at a rehearsal of The Firebird, 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29954332-fokine">Fokine’s autobiography</a>, Stravinsky sat at the piano, improvising and accompanying as the choreographer first developed his ideas for the work. If this account is accurate, never again would the composer allow himself to appear so ancillary to the creative process. </p>
<p>The most noticeable element of Stravinsky’s score is the way harmonious, tonal music is given to the mortal characters – Ivan-Tsarevich and the princesses – while chromatic, non-tonal music underscores the supernatural others. </p>
<p>This clever device is, in fact, a Russian tradition. The source can be traced as far back as Mikhail Glinka’s opera <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruslan_and_Lyudmila_(opera)">Ruslan and Lyudmila</a> (1842), where a strikingly non-tonal descending scale depicts the supernatural abduction of a bride from her traditional (and tonal) wedding feast. </p>
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<p>Stravinsky, an observant student, had closely scrutinised the innovative, and increasingly non-tonal, musical works of Rimsky-Korsakov, where the device was also prevalent. </p>
<p>He elaborated on one of Rimsky’s theories to create what has been called a “ladder of thirds”. Analysis from recent decades by musicologist Taruskin, has detected this schematic underpinning large portions of The Firebird. </p>
<p>The weirdly alternating pattern of thirds generates the supernatural music of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo9L9H--t3k">the introduction</a>, the Firebird’s <a href="https://youtu.be/Yo9L9H--t3k?t=412">chromatic “swirls”</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/Yo9L9H--t3k?t=1940">Kashchey’s motifs</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407850/original/file-20210623-13-hns6r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The piano score of Daybreak section, from Stravinsky’s Firebird.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/Stravinsky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most beautifully, it also provides the hushed musical transition from the underworld to the final tableau, where Ivan-Tsarevich and the princesses celebrate victory. </p>
<p>Yet for the mortal, tonal characters, Stravinsky, in places, incorporates folk melodies, another popular tradition among Russian composers.</p>
<p>Contrast Stravinsky’s setting of a folk-tune in the <a href="https://youtu.be/Yo9L9H--t3k?t=1428">Khorovod of the Princesses</a> from The Firebird, with Rimsky-Korsakov’s setting of the same melody in his <a href="https://youtu.be/yEwZfGz_tIk?t=528">Sinfonietta</a>.</p>
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<p>Stravinsky was always squeamish when questioned about his use of folk melodies, even flatly denying it. Yet as later analysis has shown, other works of this period, such as The Rite of Spring, feature them in abundance.</p>
<p>The influence of Rimsky-Korsakov can be noted in other ways, too, not least in his own opera about the very same Kashchey (1902), and his final opera, The Golden Cockerel (1908), also, tellingly, about a magical bird. </p>
<p>Indeed, if one wanted to really push the point, mention could be made of the notorious similarity of the Mt Triglav episode from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YneXLIfcf-4">Mlada</a> to Stravinsky’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRU6cJeVDs">Danse infernal</a>
in The Firebird where, in short, the plagiarism seems breathtaking. </p>
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<h2>The ‘hit’</h2>
<p>But that would miss the most important point: for audiences in the West, The Firebird was a hit. These fantastical tales of Russia’s past were woven, almost accidentally it seems, with a musical work that on foreign soil appeared unexpectedly modern.</p>
<p>The belated development of Russian music had for a century remained relatively hidden to the rest of the world. And after a long gestation, it was Stravinsky who revealed many of its treasures. </p>
<p>It was as if a baton had passed from one generation to the next, through the smallest of steps. The real genius of Stravinsky is that he was to run so far with it, and so quickly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A ballet about a mythical bird, Igor Stravinsky’s composition has gone on to make myths of its own.Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/498862015-11-02T05:54:39Z2015-11-02T05:54:39ZThe Beautiful Lie: a radical recalibration of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100091/original/image-20151029-15877-1k8e5nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben King/ABC TV Publicity</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Let’s deal with the timeworn adage that has haunted screen adaptation studies since the birth of the moving image. Can any screen version be as good as the book? </p>
<p>Is the new ABC miniseries <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/beautiful-lie/">The Beautiful Lie</a>, the latest screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15823480-anna-karenina">Anna Karenina</a> (1877), as good as the book? </p>
<p>In short, the answer is yes. But the question, I would argue - and it’s one that film and TV critics in particular pose with tiresome regularity - is redundant. Why? Because, as with The Beautiful Lie, screen adaptations of the novel take us into very different creative territory. </p>
<p>Television adaptations of canonical texts invariably take the costume drama route, presenting us with safe, predictable genre fare that’s usually rolled out on Sunday evenings in serialized drip-feed. </p>
<p>From the BBC serializations in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267267/">1961</a> (starring a pre-Bond Sean Connery) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075476/">1977</a>, to the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088726/">1985</a> TV movie and the Masterpiece Theatre <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246353/">miniseries adaptation in 2000</a>, Tolstoy’s tale of doomed obsessive love plays out in all of its predictable period glory, accompanied by the prerequisite dose of reverence for the canon.</p>
<p>But The Beautiful Lie is anything but predictable. </p>
<p>Given a contemporary makeover by writers <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1912767/">Alice Bell</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1591888/">Jonathan Gavin</a>, this Anna (played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3512758/">Sarah Snook</a>) and her husband, Alexander (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1122123/">Rodger Corser</a>), are sporting “nobility”. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sarah Snook in The Beautiful Lie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV Publicity.</span></span>
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<p>Their status as modern day tennis celebrities ensures their transition from Tolstoy’s 19th century Russia to 21st century Australia within a familiar context, while Vronsky’s military potency is translated to that of indie record producer, Skeet (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4301412/">Benedict Samuel</a>), the sexy outsider whose star momentarily enters the gullible Kitty’s orbit. It is difficult to see how this seemingly radical recalibration of Tolstoy’s narrative can possibly work. And yet, it does.</p>
<p>The Bell/Gavin script has a particularly Australian flavor to it and earlier television dramas they’ve penned clearly influence their treatment of Tolstoy’s story. Rather than replicating 19th century Russia, Bell and Gavin create a contemporaneous Australian family drama of compelling energy for their 21st century audience. </p>
<p>The heady story of love and obsession is of relevance to all times but what’s achieved in this adaptation is a similarly telling critique of a society at a specific moment in time. Layers of family drama unfold, exposing the same levels of dysfunctionality, the same preoccupation with matters of infidelity.</p>
<p>Bell’s award winning work on two earlier TV drama adaptations <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2222848/">Puberty Blues</a> (2012), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1823011/">The Slap</a> (2011) feeds into her depiction of sexual exploration and familial disputes. Gavin, a co-writer on Puberty Blues, is also an award-winning writer of relationship dramas including <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1530541/">Offspring</a> (2010). </p>
<p>All play out against a decidedly Australian cultural and geographical backdrop. But what’s handled with aplomb in this modern take on Anna Karenina is the humour that is so often left out of adaptations of Russian realist literature. The marital strife of Anna’s brother Kingsley and his wife Dolly is infused with gentle comedy, and Kitty’s adolescent angst strikes a familiar chord.</p>
<p>The success or failure of screen romance rests with the chemistry of its lovers: <a href="https://youtu.be/uK_hS5IkNmI">casting</a> is as important to screen narratives as the prose on the page is to the writer. </p>
<p>In The Beautiful Lie, Sarah Snook and her Vronsky, Benedict Samuel, convince us of the inevitability of their union. But the series takes us one step closer to the heat of the affair in a most unusual reversal of narrative “voice”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100093/original/image-20151029-15898-16y5pdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sarah Snook in The Beautiful Lie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV Publicity.</span></span>
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<p>To adapt a first person narration from prose to screen is traditionally viewed as problematic: how does the visual storyteller translate first person narration through the apparatus of an all-seeing camera lens? Voiceover is employed sparingly on screen if at all in most instances, even when the text that’s being adapted is a canonical coming of age narrative like Jane Eyre or Great Expectations.</p>
<p>In this adaptation Anna’s dominant voiceover positions us with her from the outset, filtering our experience of the drama as it unfolds, and creating a pseudo confessional intimacy with the viewer. It speaks to the precursor text and yet it isn’t constrained by it: it takes the drama into different but universally similar emotional territory of relevance to a mainstream 21st century audience.</p>
<p>As with the majority of TV adaptations of canonical 19th century realist novels, film adaptations of Anna Karenina tend to follow the heritage cinema treatment: the camera lingers on period detail and is awash with wide angled panning shots of country mansions and rolling hills. </p>
<p>Screen legends Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh have both starred as Anna (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026071/">1935</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040098/">1948</a>) in period renditions and there have been numerous adaptations (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018107/">1927</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118623/">1997</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=anna+karenina+2012">2012</a>) since the first silent Anna Karenina in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210518/">1911</a>. But like The Beautiful Lie, the latest <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1781769/">film adaptation</a> written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Joe Wright dares to do things differently.</p>
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<p>Yes, it’s a costume drama, though a costume drama with a difference and one that tells the story in a manner that departs from Tolstoy’s realist mode of narration. Wright’s film frames the narrative as a piece of theatre; it takes us away from the heat that’s so central to the viewing experience of The Beautiful Lie and into Brechtian territory that places the audience outside the moment as onlooker rather than participant.</p>
<p>For some, this and the textual interventions of Bell and Gavin are a betrayal of the original text. For others, they are inventive ways to prolong the dialogue with a narrative that’s of universal, long-lasting potency.</p>
<p>Just as “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, adaptations re-vision Anna Karenina in their own way but some, like The Beautiful Lie, thankfully take a more audacious approach than others.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>The Beautiful Lie screens on Sunday nights at 8.30pm on ABC.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvonne Griggs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can screen adaptations of literary classics ever be as good as the source text? Well, yes. As the new ABC miniseries The Beautiful Lie shows, they can explore timeless themes in unpredictable and engaging ways.Yvonne Griggs, Lecturer in Media & Communications, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/469252015-09-03T20:08:26Z2015-09-03T20:08:26ZWhy Catherine the Great’s ‘greatness’ doesn’t grate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93727/original/image-20150903-24484-lesxgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C271%2C1019%2C715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who, exactly, was Catherine II, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catherine II by Fyodor Rokotov. The Hermitage/ Wikimedia Commons. </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The current <a href="https://theconversation.com/masterpieces-from-the-hermitage-puts-the-great-in-catherine-the-great-review-45435">Hermitage exhibition</a> at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is subtitled – quite rightly – The Legacy of Catherine the Great. As per the gallery’s blurb, it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>showcases one of the world’s greatest art collections. Featuring works by artists including Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez and Van Dyck, the exhibition offers a dazzling array of works including the finest group of Dutch and Flemish art to come to Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But who, exactly, was Catherine II, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia?</p>
<p>None of those titles were known, or even likely, when she was born in 1729 in Prussia. In reality, she was connected only rather remotely to Russia, through her mother’s cousin’s husband, and was named Sophie Friederike Auguste, Prinzessin von Anhalt-Zerbst. </p>
<p>But her marriage, arranged by the childless <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/elizabeth-of-russia-38006">Russian Tsarina, Elizabeth</a> (1709–1762), was to a boy who was both her own second cousin and the only living grandson of <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/peter-the-great-9542228">Peter the Great</a> (1672–1725). </p>
<p>This orphaned fiancé, Karl Peter Ulrich, was also brought up in Prussia, and stood to inherit the Russian throne as Peter III. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93723/original/image-20150903-24473-1mzvan9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Catherine II 1776–77 by Alexander Roslin 1718–93. Oil on canvas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When brought to St Petersburg in 1745, aged 14, Sophie’s charm and intelligence boded well for her future as Peter’s consort. She was also astute enough to change her name to Ekaterina, and be received into the Russian Orthodox Church; and even to note, along with many others at the court, that childish, sickly Peter constantly failed to impress as Elizabeth’s nominated heir. </p>
<p>Although the marriage went ahead, Catherine would only have to let external events take their course to see Peter abdicate, and die six months after mounting the throne in 1762. She then allowed herself to be proclaimed Tsarina in her own right.</p>
<p>By that stage her Russian was excellent, whereas Peter’s had been almost non-existent. And therein lay the first key to her popularity and her greatness. </p>
<p>It was apparent long before Elizabeth died – also in 1762 – that her long-term plans were not working. Nine years after the wedding of Peter and Catherine, the much-vaunted marriage had failed to produce a child. Why then frown upon Catherine when she discreetly acquired a lover and gave birth to a boy? </p>
<p>Elizabeth snatched the child, Paul, and brought him up as her own. Honour, so to speak, was saved. </p>
<p>In all of this, Catherine’s behaviour was never questioned. By the time Peter came to his unhappy end, she’d had three relationships, all conducted according to established protocol, and she would have several more “favourites” after taking power in 1762. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93726/original/image-20150903-24512-1g3zq32.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catherine II 1773, by Jean-Antoine Houdon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But – and this is another of the reasons she was (including in the modern sense of the word) “great” – they were all in their turn sent away with a bag of money, a smile, and a promise of ongoing friendship. </p>
<p>Sometimes, as in the case of <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Grigory-Aleksandrovich-Potemkin-Prince-Tavrichesky-Imperial-Prince">Grigory Potëmkin</a>, her most ambitious, powerful and passionate lover, Catherine continued to seek their advice and companionship long after she’d stopped sleeping with them. </p>
<p>Wise and generous enough to retain former lovers as valued friends, she was nevertheless too single-minded to share her power or position with any one of them. </p>
<p>Five years into her reign, she completed a huge rewriting of Russia’s inadequate legal code to present to her government. She called it her <a href="http://library.law.yale.edu/news/monuments-imperial-russian-law-nakaz-english">Nakaz</a> (1767), or Instruction. In gratitude for a labour of which they would have been incapable, her officials thought to bestow on her a new title. </p>
<p>Of the many suggestions that were put forward, “Catherine the Great” received the most votes but, though flattered, she rejected it, insisting it was unearned. Looking at the 20 chapters written in French (her secretary translated them into Russian), posterity might disagree with that modesty. </p>
<p>The Nakaz is proof both of great intellectual ability and a capacity to spend long hours combing through political, historical and philosophical treatises from all over Europe, sifting a multitude of ideas into one cohesive document. </p>
<p>A fourth aspect of Catherine’s individual greatness is visible in the fabric and contents of that part of her city whose classical green and white edifices still grace the banks of the river Neva. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93717/original/image-20150903-24464-3il6sq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace in Winter, St Petersburg. Photo by Andrey Terebenin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NGV/Hermitage</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The huge <a href="http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/hermitage/">Winter Palace</a> in St Petersburg, completed in 1761, was baroque. Most of its buildings were there already, but Catherine had it rebuilt to harmonise with the neo-classical style she imposed on all the buildings she commissioned, and filled it with works and objects of art from all over Europe. </p>
<p>Her famous collections, both legendary and now publicly accessible, should be seen not as mere displays of her enormous wealth, but as an astute, consummate and successful effort to undo her country’s (justified) reputation for barbarism. </p>
<p>The art was only an example, comprehensible to foreigners, of more extensive projects relevant to her own people: there was also her encouragement of reading, through the distribution of printing presses which multiplied the number of books published; her setting up of Russia’s first magazine, which in turn gave rise to the “thick journals” so influential in the 19th century.</p>
<p>Her Academy of Language was founded in 1783, producing the first Russian dictionary. And she also funded many schools, including some for girls.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, she forged ahead with what many history books see as her most significant contribution to the greatness of her country: her expansionist foreign policy. Under Catherine, Russia continued every year to push out its frontiers to the East and South by acquiring tracts of territory as large as Holland.</p>
<p>Of course there were also shocking lacunae in Catherine’s program, in particular her forthright rejection of political ideas which she refused to promote because of their unpopularity with her cherished “noble landlords”. </p>
<p>Yet even the benighted peasants passively accepted her greatness, because to them, as well as to the nobility, the inequalities of the <em>status quo</em> in Russia were overwhelmingly taken as given.</p>
<p>Greatness is, after all, more like a dimension than a virtue. And Catherine had it in spades.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>The main source text for this article was <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10414941-catherine-the-great">Catherine the Great, Portrait of a Woman</a> (2011), by Robert K Massie, published by Random House</em>.</p>
<p><em>Judith Armstrong will speak at the NGV on Sunday September 6 as part of a special four-part lecture series for Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great. Details <a href="http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/lecture-series-philosophy-literature-and-catherine-the-great/">here</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The University of Melbourne is the education partner of the current National Gallery of Victoria exhibition: Masterpieces from The Hermitage, The Legacy of Catherine the Great.
The main source text for this article was Catherine the Great, Portrait of a Woman (2011), by Robert K Massie, published by Random House.</span></em></p>Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The legacy of Catherine the Great is currently on show at the National Gallery of Victoria. But who, exactly was Catherine II, the Empress of Russia?Judith Armstrong, Honorary Associate Professor in Arts and Languages & Linguistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/364472015-03-06T06:21:14Z2015-03-06T06:21:14ZWar and Peace takes on different meanings in Russia and the West<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73928/original/image-20150305-24696-vc9lcc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cast of BBC Radio 4's adaptation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Des Willie</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tolstoy’s celebrated novel War and Peace has recently been enjoying some fresh attention thanks to a number of adaptations. BBC Radio 4 broadcast a ten-part <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wz7q2">adaptation</a> of the novel. Later this year, the BBC will also screen a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/war-and-peace-casting">TV version</a> penned by Andrew Davies, well known for his adaptations of classic literature. </p>
<p>In contrast with these dramatisations, Russia brought War and Peace to the attention of the world thanks to a <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/leo-tolstoy-s-war-and-peace-highlighted-at-olympics-opening-ceremony">ballet sequence</a> representing one of its key episodes at the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. </p>
<p>All this suggests that Tolstoy’s novel about early 19th century Russia is seen as having a contemporary relevance. But how relevant it is differs considerably in each situation.</p>
<h2>War and Peace</h2>
<p>War and Peace, regarded by some as the greatest novel ever written, tells the story of a group of aristocratic Russian families during the Napoleonic Wars. It charts their lives, loves, and experiences of conflict. </p>
<p>But central to the novel is also Tolstoy’s criticism of the historians of his time for presenting a distorted view of life by focusing on those in power – the monarchs, politicians and generals. He argued that their actions and decisions were not the prime cause of historical events and developments. </p>
<p>Instead, he saw human history as progressing thanks to an infinite chain of small, insignificant moments in which all individuals, mighty or humble, were involved. The novel shows this view through the characters and their interactions, but also through essays inserted at various points in the text. </p>
<p>From its first publication in Russia in 1868, this aspect of the novel has proved controversial. This was not so much because of the subject matter (though this provoked plenty of debate) but more because readers struggled with a style of writing that they felt did not belong in a novel. The difficulty over how to approach the historical essays has beset new editions, translations and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/feb/18/bbc-returns-tolstoy-war-peace">adaptations</a> both in Russia and abroad to this day.</p>
<h2>The Patriotic War</h2>
<p>The period covered in War and Peace plays an important part in Russia’s view of itself, particularly the novel’s climax, the 1812 Battle of Borodino, which proved to be the turning point for Napoleon’s eventual defeat. Russians call the 1812 invasion the “Patriotic War”, and there are numerous works of art, literature and music celebrating the costly defence of the Motherland, which involved terrible loss of life and the temporary sacrifice of Moscow.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73952/original/image-20150305-3327-1b3jwlb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Battle of Moscow, 7th September 1812 (Louis Lejeune, 1822).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But War and Peace is far from a triumphalist tub-thumper. Tolstoy focuses on the horrors as well as the excitement of battle. He shows the physical and mental traumas suffered by both military and civilians. The historical essays show the ultimate futility of so-called “great men” trying to change the course of history by force of will. Tolstoy went on to be an outspoken advocate of pacifism and a critic of power hierarchies and national patriotism, <a href="http://www.las.illinois.edu/alumni/magazine/articles/2009/tolstoy/">inspiring figures</a> such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King.</p>
<p>So it’s unsurprising that analysts sometimes call on War and Peace as a universally relevant comment on contemporary conflicts. This happened during the <a href="http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-bagdikian041203.htm">war in Iraq</a>, and around the same time a number of new competing translations were published. And in the light of the current conflict in Ukraine, and Putin’s aggressive stance towards NATO, <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/global-europe/how-tolstoy-might-have-portrayed-legacies-yanukovich-and-putin-310360">Western critics</a> are again using Tolstoy and War and Peace as cautionary examples from Russia’s own culture. </p>
<h2>The Sochi story</h2>
<p>But the inclusion of a War and Peace segment in the Sochi Olympics Opening Ceremony tells a very different story. Here, the novel was used to present and package the image of itself that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/13/sochi-opening-ceremony-russia-snowflake">Russia wanted the world to see</a>. This is an image that would accord Russia the status of world power, celebrate its history, culture and technological achievements, whilst staying in keeping with the Olympic values of peace, international friendship and inclusivity. </p>
<p>On the surface, it would seem that the scene chosen was appropriate: the War and Peace segment, standing for the grandeur of 19th Century imperial Russia, featured a ball at which the novel’s lively young heroine, Natasha, falls in love with Prince Andrei, observed by rival suitors the good-hearted Pierre and the scheming Anatole. </p>
<p>But why War and Peace specifically, rather than, say, Anna Karenina, another internationally well known Tolstoy novel, featuring an equally important ballroom scene? Was it to acknowledge Tolstoy as a messenger of peace and universal human values? </p>
<p>Russian viewers would associate the novel with the idea of nationalistic patriotism to which 1812 contributes. The older Russian generation also might well remember Stalin’s popularisation of War and Peace during Hitler’s invasion to stir up patriotism and national morale. </p>
<p>These messages are evidently at cross-purposes. The annexation of Crimea and the subsequent bitter conflict in Ukraine following so swiftly after the Sochi Olympics would suggest that Putin has learned no lessons from Tolstoy about the mistaken belief in the will of “great men”.</p>
<p>Whatever the reasons for the choice of War and Peace at Sochi, it is clear that Tolstoy’s novel can be interpreted in different ways for different purposes. That said, its message is especially relevant in the context of Russia’s involvement in global politics today. The example of War and Peace shows that Putin’s administration is skilled in manipulating Russian culture to serve its own agenda, both at home and abroad.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36447/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Hudspith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tolstoy’s celebrated novel War and Peace has recently been enjoying some fresh attention thanks to a number of adaptations. BBC Radio 4 broadcast a ten-part adaptation of the novel. Later this year, the…Sarah Hudspith, Associate professor in Russian, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/310572014-09-01T03:40:18Z2014-09-01T03:40:18ZReviewing Pussy Riot’s aesthetic disobedience as Russian art<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57789/original/rxhk48c4-1409532628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maria Alyokhina (L) and Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot – part of a long Russian tradition. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Reynolds/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the heart of Moscow, a group of young artists prepares to stage a new kind of artistic performance. They paint their faces and don flamboyant outfits of lurid colour. Their performance will be a march through central Moscow, during which they intend to disrupt public order and scandalise the unassuming citizenry with their unorthodox appearance and belligerent demeanour – for theirs is a developing artistic practice that aims to shock the public, to create a scandal, to challenge the status quo. </p>
<p>In an atmosphere of restriction and censorship, such “aesthetic disobedience” is one of the few possible methods for public criticism of the prevailing social reality in Russia. Yet just how far their message will spread remains unknown to these artists. The year is 1913; they are the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Futurism">Russian Futurists</a>. </p>
<p>Russian Futurism would later come to be known as the art of confrontation. By challenging established norms of taste and decorum through their modernist visual techniques, their innovative use of language in poetry, and by scandalising audiences with their public performances, Russia’s Futurists continually risked charges of hooliganism: in late Tsarist Russia, an attack on the official taste was an attack on the officialdom. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57796/original/5pw3vqkj-1409533916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky in 1929, aged 36.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, public appearances by Futurists always attracted a detail of Tsarist agents, and by early 1914 two of the movement’s stalwarts – <a href="http://v-mayakovsky.com/english/biography_e.html">Vladimir Mayakovsky</a> and <a href="http://ukrainianmuseum.org/burliuk/?q=node/1">David Burliuk</a> – found themselves expelled from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Their offence? Repeated defiance of the School principal’s request to cease their critical and agitational activities, and their “extreme artistic theories”.</p>
<p>The aesthetics and politics of the Russian Futurist movement remain a source of fascination for scholars, and public interest in retrospectives of their works has rarely been greater. This should come as no surprise: as the appearance of founding members of the art collective Pussy Riot at Sydney’s <a href="http://fodi.sydneyoperahouse.com/events/pussy-riot">Festival of Dangerous Ideas</a> (FODI) this past weekend demonstrates, Futurists pioneered an artistic method that remains relevant to this day.</p>
<p>Two years ago, the “extreme artistic theories” advanced by Pussy Riot saw three of the group’s members face charges for criminal hooliganism at the Moscow Khamovniki District Court. Pussy Riot had by this time become well known across Russia for their guerrilla performances in public spaces around Moscow, in which they would scream provocative lyrics while wearing brightly coloured balaclavas and dresses. </p>
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<span class="caption">Pussy Riot passing media after being released from a police station in the Adler district of Sochi, Russia, in January.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anatoly Maltsev/EPA</span></span>
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<p>International attention would soon follow: on February 21 2012, during the week of <a href="http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/maslenitsa/"><em>maslenitsa</em></a> (the celebratory final week before Lent), the group staged a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour entitled Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away! Dressed in their trademark outfits, Pussy Riot stormed the cathedral and commenced dancing and singing their punk prayer. </p>
<p>Shortly afterwards, three group members were convicted of criminal hooliganism and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a corrective labour colony, after the prosecution successfully argued that their actions had been aimed against the Russian Orthodox faith.</p>
<p>In their defence, the women insisted their acts were not motivated by a religious view, but had in fact been a work of political art: their performance had been designed to critique what they saw as an inappropriate relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Russian State. </p>
<p>Pussy Riot’s performance had been strategically scheduled during a week of Church celebrations – ordinarily marked by a carnival-like atmosphere in which protest was generally tolerated – and had been designed as an artistic affront that would challenge the Putin regime’s increasing practice of co-opting Orthodox aesthetics to portray itself as a source of stability, traditionalism and masculinity. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As Russian journalist <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-with-journalist-masha-gessen-30998">Masha Gessen</a> explained during her presentation at FODI, while Vladimir Putin’s first presidential term had been characterised by efforts to cast himself as a post-ideological leader, this turn to Orthodox aesthetics has come in an effort to lend a firmer ideological framework to his third term, in which narratives of Russia’s “civilisational mission” and “special destiny” have been paired with the country’s efforts to reassert its status as a world superpower.</p>
<p>Though the court was not interested in the artistic premise of the group’s actions, Pussy Riot’s deployment of the term “political art” was a move of great strategic value. Its use served both to point to a significant intensification of ideological discourse within Russian politics, and to evoke powerful memories of historic show trials in which members of Russia’s “creative class” had been persecuted for their oppositional aesthetics. </p>
<p>By drawing attention to this continuity, Pussy Riot sought to subvert the regime’s tactical and selective approach to history. When group member Maria Alekhina argued in court that her protest against the regime was aesthetic in nature, she voiced a complaint of long historical lineage. </p>
<p>Indeed, after being informed of his expulsion from the School a century earlier, Burliuk had argued that one could not think freely in Russia, not even when it came to art, as oppression extended even to the realm of aesthetic taste. In Russia, where art is politics and politics an art, freedom of artistic expression has long been intrinsically linked with political expression.</p>
<p>After the fall of the Tsarist regime and the onset of the Bolshevik rule, Futurists saw their tactics of scandal had become obsolete, and accordingly developed a new creative strategy. Members of Pussy Riot gave the audience at FODI an insight into their own recent change of method: with their newfound fame rendering their practice of artistic subversion less effective, they have chosen instead to focus on forming an NGO named <a href="http://voiceproject.org/campaign/zona-prava/">Zona Prava</a> (The Law Zone) to promote the rights of prisoners in Russia. </p>
<p>Thus, while Futurists have often been dismissed by historians as flamboyant artistic bohemians who sought to cause trouble simply for the sake of doing so, their fight for freedom of taste, their strategy of artistic provocation, and their willingness to change tactics demonstrates that they were in fact rebels with a clearly defined cause – as well as being responsible for forging principles of political art that remain relevant in Russia an entire century later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iva Glisic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the heart of Moscow, a group of young artists prepares to stage a new kind of artistic performance. They paint their faces and don flamboyant outfits of lurid colour. Their performance will be a march…Iva Glisic, Lecturer in History and European Studies, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.