From liberal to conservative: shifting cultural policy regimes in post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Russian cultural policy from the end of the Soviet era through the current against the framework of welfare state regimes. The end of the Soviet Union 25 years ago ushered in a decade of liberalization marked by a withdrawal of the state from cultural responsibility and hopes that market demand and private support would emerge to fill in the void. With the latter hampered by the economic hardships of the transition and the loss of philanthropic traditions after more than 70 years of communism, a liberal policy regime did not take firmly hold and has gradually been replaced by a new cultural policy consensus more akin to a conservative welfare regime, marked by a return of the state to a more dominant role with the support of core cultural policy constituencies.

Keywords:

• cultural policy
• Russia
• welfare regimes
• Soviet cultural policy

Notes

1. The relationship between welfare and culture is perhaps most commonly recognized in the context of the Nordic countries (e.g. Lindberg 2012).

2. Anatoly Lunacharsky was the first Commissar for Enlightenment who headed the education and culture department in the first Soviet government.

3. Among the most salient examples is the famed ‘Bulldozer Exhibition’ of 1974, in which a number of informal artists organized an outdoor exhibition of their work in a public park in Moscow that was broken up by police with bulldozers and dump trucks.

4. The prominent poet Konstantin Simonov (2004) provides a detailed account in his memoirs of how the Stalin Prize, which served as a mark of highest distinction for people of artistic professions, was awarded. Final decisions were made by Stalin himself at narrow format meetings, which, along with his entourage, were attended by a few cultural figures. These conferences generated a strange mixture of political and esthetic judgments. Volkov (2008) shows based on dozens of cases that the fates of whole art movements and the standing of artists and other cultural figures were determined by an intricate combination of Stalin’s, Khrushchev’s, or Brezhnev’s pragmatic considerations, aesthetic likings, and respect for acclaimed talents (the latter, however, was far from always being a decisive factor). In particular, Volkov convincingly argues that it is Stalin’s personal decisions that helped such authors as Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, or Dmitry Shostakovich, who were never known as ardent supporters of Communist ideology, avoid reprisals. On one hand, however, Stalin authorized and even initiated persecution of cultural figures for so called political errors and on the other hand, he even enabled them to enjoy relative security and prosperity, openly claiming that he valued their talents.

5. Nikolai Gubenko was a prominent actor and film director, who served as the last Soviet Minister of Culture. Appointed during perestroika, he was also the first non-bureaucrat to serve in this post since Lunacharsky.

6. http://www.litsovet.ru/index.php/material.read?material_id=192498&fullscreen=1 (last accessed: 25 June 2014). The Appanage period in Russian history lasted from the eleventh century to the Principality of Moscow’s rise to prominence in the fourteenth century.

7. Hereinafter the indicators of expenditures of the organizations belonging to the Russian Culture Ministry system are calculated based on information contained in yearly statistical reference books published by the Culture Ministry’s Main Information and Computation Center.

8. http://www.litsovet.ru/index.php/material.read?material_id=192498&fullscreen=1. Last accessed 25 June 2015.

9. See, for example, the Address of the Academic Council of the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, on the Concept of the Fundamentals of Cultural Policy, available at http://iph.ras.ru/cult_polit.htm; also ‘Russian Intelligentsia criticises new draft government policy document, “Foundations of State Cultural Policies”’ at http://hro.rightsinrussia.info/hro-org/culturalpolicy

10. See http://harryrizq.com/russia-state-culture-policy/.

11. Putin Briefs Ministers on Implementing Unified Cultural Policy. 25 January 2016. http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150125/1017322187.html.

12. In a recent interview with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Vladimir Urin, director of the Bolshoi, denied the existence of political interference in programming decisions, but noted that ‘we do feel the polarization of our society and the international tensions. There is also pressure from religious organizations [such as the dismissal of a theater director in Novosibirsk by the Minister of Culture pursued by the Orthodox Church which] … did not exist before.’ http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/wladimir-urin-bolschoi-direktor-im-interview-a-1072833.html.