(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – May 18, 2016) Charities are no longer to be classified as “foreign agents” if they receive money from abroad, according to a new amendment approved by the Russian State Duma. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in areas such as art and culture will also be exempt from the “foreign agent” label, the Interfax news agency reported […]
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While Russian officials lost no time in lashing out over Ukraine’s Eurovision victory with a song about the Stalinist deportations of the Crimean Tatars, the results of the public vote suggest that Russia-Ukrainian enmity doesn’t extend to the general public. But the overtly political nature of the winning song may mark a watershed for the competition. (Russia Beyond the Headlines […]
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One of the sections of the international journalistic investigation into corruption offshore networks used by the world’s rich and powerful is devoted specifically to Russia. It focuses on renowned cellist Sergei Roldugin, who is also godfather to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA, RBTH – April 5, 2016) On Sunday […]
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Why is Russia’s intellectual, spiritual and cultural strength concentrated in Siberia? What is happening today at this world-renowned research center? Why do people here refuse to believe in a new brain drain? (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – MARINA MOSKALENKO, SPECIAL TO RBTH – March 28, 2016) Akademgorodok was created in 1957 by decree of the Soviet leader, Nikita […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Ksenia Turkova – March 24, 2016) Ksenia Turkova is a journalist and presenter on Radio Vesti and Hromadske.tv. She writes for Snob.ru and pravmir.ru, and is based in Kyiv. The average viewer of Russian television has long had the impression that Russia no longer has any links to Ukraine – whether in terms of transport connections (direct flights […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – March 15, 2016) The Levada Center has recently published the results of a nationwide survey asking Russian citizens to name their favorite writer. Lev Tolstoy took first place with 45 percent of the vote, Fyodor Dostoevsky came in second with 23 percent and Anton Chekhov took third place with 18 percent. Russia is known worldwide […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Raymond Stults – February 9, 2016) [DJ: Bolshoi Babylon available on HBO in the US] In the summer of 2013, a British film production team was given unprecedented access to the Bolshoi Theater for purposes of making a documentary about the theater’s inner workings. Titled “Bolshoi Babylon,” the film made its debut on cable television […]
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In Russia, 2016 has been designated the Year of Cinema. But any new films are likely to be ‘silent’, lacking any voice of their own. (opendemocracy.net – Eleonora Zbanke – February 3, 2016) Eleonora Zbanke is a filmmaker, videographer, producer, human rights activist and a speaker at the 2015 World Forum for Democracy on “Freedom vs Control”. Russia’s cinema industry […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Des Brown – January 27, 2016) British screenwriter Andrew Davies is television’s best English literature lecturer. He introduced homicidal British Prime Minister Francis Urquhart to BBC viewers in the “House of Cards” trilogy between 1990 and 1995. Just over two decades ago, a wet-shirted Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy captured the national imagination in Davies’ […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Andrei Muchnik – January 26, 2016) This past week Moscow, news has been dominated by events at the Valentin Serov retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery. First the television shows broadcast President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the show, then the ever-growing crowds of people who came to see the exhibition in its final week, followed by […]
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RBTH’s pick of the best comments made by Tolstoy’s compatriots. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – NATALIA MASHINISTOVA, SPECIAL TO RBTH – January 26, 2016) Although BBC’s new War and Peace adaptation hasn’t aired on Russian television yet, the most curious Russians have found a way to check it out on the internet. Any foreign attempt to adapt what […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Vasily Kolotilov – January 18, 2016) A rehearsal is being held in a large hall – light streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows onto the performers. Some dance, some sit sprawled across the floor watching their compatriots. “Kostik, stand up, you’re going to get cold,” the choreographer scolds. A young man slouched on the wooden parquet […]
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The decorations are up, the nights are drawing in – in the northern hemisphere, at least – and gift-hunters are braving the crowds ahead of Christmas. In Russia, however, this celebration has a different meaning. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – PETER BEECH, SPECIAL TO RBTH – January 7, 2016) The majority of Russians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Eva Hartog – December 31, 2015) “It’s theater. We were just playing.” That’s how Boris Mezdrich, his tone simultaneously apologetic and defiant, described the avant-garde production of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser that got him fired. “Blasphemy!” – was what the Russian Orthodox activists shouted as they protested outside the State Opera and Ballet Theater in Novosibirsk, […]
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RBTH has selected eight people and things from various fields of Russian life who had a significant influence on domestic and global affairs in their spheres in 2015. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – ALEXEY TIMOFEYCHEV, RBTH – December 30, 2015) Statesmen Sergei Shoigu – the operation in Syria Russian Defense Minister since 2012. Previously Minister of Emergency Situations […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – December 28, 2015) 1. Have dinner on an ice-breaker yacht Take in the stunning Christmas lights of Moscow whilst meandering on the Moscow River on one of the new Radisson Hotel flotilla of ice breaking yachts that ply the water 365 days a year. You can dine in the on-board restaurant or simply just come […]
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This year brought mixed fortunes for Russian culture, with successes in the realms of literature, art and ballet offset by the growing interference of the Orthodox Church in the cultural sphere. RBTH looks back at 8 important events in Russia’s cultural life in 2015 that had an international impact. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Oleg Krasnov – December […]
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(Kremlin.ru – December 25, 2015) Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art in the Kremlin. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues. This meeting is taking place ahead of the New Year, so I want to begin by wishing you a Happy New Year. Greetings to all of you! The year of 2015 […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daria Litvinova – November 13, 2015) More crafts shops are appearing in Moscow every day, with more young men trading lucrative office jobs for the opportunity to make things themselves. In recent years, Moscow dandies have been moving away from cafes, barbershops and Internet-related startups toward trades like blacksmithing, printing and woodworking, putting down their […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ali Sar – October 26, 2015) HOLLYWOOD – Nikita Mikhalkov’s film “Sunstroke” will be the director’s sixth submission to the Oscar competition and will give the renowned Russian moviemaker a chance to capture his second Academy Award. Unlike last year’s awards entry “Leviathan,” the story about a corrupt mayor of a small seaside fishing village, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Guido de Boer – October 21, 2015) [Photos here http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/the-sakharov-centers-direct-view-on-real-life/540002.html] With all the big exhibitions that opened this autumn as part of the 6th Moscow Biennale or as museum season openers, one small but interesting show might have been overlooked. It is an exhibition of photographs at the Sakharov Center called “Direct View.” The 11 […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Galina Stolyarova – October 20, 2015) If you ask the average person what comes to mind when they think of Yekaterinburg, they’ll probably say that it’s a highly polluted industrial city and the site where the Romanov family was executed. But the truth is quite different. This town in the Urals has established itself as […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – October 15, 2015) I wrote my first article in August 1990 for a newsletter that transformed in 1992 into The Moscow Times. I publish my last article as theater critic of The Moscow Times today. Between those dates I wrote about 1,600 reviews, interviews, features, op-ed pieces, columns and personal observations for […]
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What Americans know about Russian architecture is mainly thanks to the work of one man, who has photographed the country since 1970. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Lara McCoy Roslof, RBTH – September 25, 2015) It’s not easy to get William Brumfield to talk about himself. For Brumfield, 71, the foremost authority on Russian architecture in the U.S., […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Raymond Stults – October 5, 2015) The 2015-16 season of opera in Moscow enjoyed a rousing start last month when Novaya Opera Theater brought to its stage a new version of Richard Strauss’ “Salome” that came as close to getting everything right – singing, conducting, orchestral playing and staging – as any local production of […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Oleg Krasnov, RBTH – September 16, 2015) A new book published in Russia called “Mikhail Piotrovsky” consists of an interview with the renowned director of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, who is an authoritative Middle East and Arabic scholar. RBTH has selected 10 quotes on world culture and heritage from the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Jordan Reed – September 15, 2015) The Russian Internet giant Yandex put its literary research hat on to conduct a far-reaching survey into the habits of Russians who search for poets and their works online. After analyzing the 37 million Yandex searches related to poetry over the period of one year, April 2014 to March […]
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When asked what to bring home from Russia as a souvenir, there’s one thing people are guaranteed to say: “A Russian doll, what else?” But the lacquered wooden “matryoshka” is not an exclusively Russian creation – and it is also a lot younger than many people believe. RBTH finds out a little about the history of the doll, a history […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Henry Meyer – August 9, 2015) Since it opened in March, the Russian Museum in Malaga, the southern Spanish coastal resort, has been thronged by visitors who line up to see centuries-old icons and works by 20th century avant-garde artists Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Marc Chagall. The St. Petersburg landmark’s only foreign branch is part […]
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This anthology is ambitious – in scope, biographical apparatus and in what it expects of its translators. Although the chronological arc is shorter than that of the granddaddy anthology, Dimitri Obolensky’s The Penguin Book of Russian Verse (1965), which included medieval oral poetry and a pair of important 18th-century literary writers, Lomonosov and Sumarokov, the present editors generously r
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 29, 2015) On Monday evening, Rustam Rakhmatullin, the coordinator of the social movement Archnadzor, brought together eminent architects and architecture experts to discuss the proposals to erect a 24-meter monument to Vladimir the Great in the capital. Also present was Yury Nikiforov, a representative of the Russian Society of War History, which has started […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – July 23, 2015) Words can be fashionable. They may be dangerous. The word of this year in Russian culture, I would argue, has shades of both. The lexical item of “obscurantism”-“mrakobesie” in Russian, suggesting demonic murk and gloom – is everywhere to be found in discussions of art these days. “In […]
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(Interfax – July 8, 2015) By way of implementing the law On Amendments to Certain Laws on the Protection of TV and Radio Space of Ukraine the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture has made a list of 117 performing artists from Russia that has been submitted to the relevant authorities, the ministry’s website says. The report notes that by way of […]
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These days, Mr. Piotrovsky, 70, has a dual mandate: Maintaining the Hermitage’s centuries-old ties with the wider world amid the chill, and making the case to the international art world that Russia is still a respectable partner. The loan of the Elgin marbles helped on both counts. He is also hoping to help resolve an impasse that has blocked all […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – May 8, 2015) Fourteen percent of Russians do not support state intervention when it comes to the content and dissemination of artistic creations, the survey also showed. A vast majority of Russians think the state should censor artistic creations believed to be vulgar, immoral or harmful to society, according to a survey […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 7, 2015) Many members of the Russian intelligentsia do not support Vladimir Putin and his repression at home and aggression abroad, but a significant and surprising number of them do, the result of a complex combination of their experiences over the last generation and Putin’s actions as well, according to Kseniya […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman, Moscow Times Theater Critic – April 3, 2015) How many bulls does it take to trash a china shop? We may have an answer by the time the dust settles in a seemingly self-refueling controversy that keeps swirling around an opera house in Novosibirsk. Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said this week on […]
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… In an interview last month in his office here, Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s culture minister, said it was the prerogative of experts at the research institute to look into Russian culture, such as the plays in question. “Maybe, that’s their right to do this,” Mr. Medinsky said. But he said the academics’ findings wouldn’t have repercussions for the theaters. …. […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Maria Fyodorishina, special to RBTH – February 14, 2015) The Russian ballet tradition is one of the most influential in the world. Despite the fact that most ballerinas stop performing by their late 30s and dancers have less than a five percent chance of becoming a soloist, parents still enroll their children in […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – January 15, 2015) A prominent Russian public figure has slammed the country’s culture minister for overseeing a deepening crackdown on artists critical of authorities, quitting a ministerial commission in protest. Yevgeny Savostyanov, the head of Russia’s Coordination Council on Intellectual Property Protection, said in an open letter that he was “ashamed” of Culture […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Layli Foroudi – January 15, 2015) Hundreds of Russians paid their last respects to renowned and much-loved opera singer Yelena Obraztsova in the Bolshoi Theater on Wednesday. Roses, carnations and sunflowers in all sizes and quantities were tearfully and lovingly carried up the theater’s dark aisle to be placed at the base of her casket, […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Alexey Krizhevsky – January 14, 2015) Alexey Krizhevsky is culture editor at gazeta.ru and member of Teatr.doc Teatr.doc is on the move. Having performed its last plays and a holiday evening, the theatre packed its bags and left the tiny basement in the centre of Moscow – its home for many years. The director of the independent theatre, […]
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(RFE/RL – Robert Coalson – January 5, 2015) In the film Leviathan, a drunken mechanic in a far northern Russian town clashes with a greedy, drunken mayor who is determined to expropriate the man’s land for his own mansion. The mayor contemptuously refers to his subjects as “insects” and, in a fit of vodka-fuelled honesty, pulls back the curtain on […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Phoebe Taplin, special to RBTH – December 3, 2014) Book reviews: Great Russian reads sparkling with wit, humor and drama that should be on your Christmas gift list. 1) ‘Crime and Punishment’ Fyodor Dostoevsky Hailed by AN Wilson in The Spectator as a “truly great translation” that captures the novel’s “knife-edge between sentimentality […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Kit Rees – November 21, 2014) He’s the head of one of the seemingly most conservative art institutes – St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum – but Mikhail Piotrovsky has been in the middle of a dispute about contemporary art this year as the museum hosted the 10th biennial Manifesta art festival. The festival, which finished earlier […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – September 4, 2014) It’s not quite true that the Lyubimovka play festival is the first real event of each theater season in Moscow. This year, for example, some 10 top venues, including the Moscow Art Theater, the Mayakovsky and the Gogol Center, are already up and running. Historically Lyubimovka wasn’t even held […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – September 2, 2014) With Russia’s political opposition either sidelined or splintered over Russian policy in Ukraine, dissenting cultural figures have become the new focus of pro-Kremlin witch hunts, with state media treating them as a political force and accusing them of treachery. The practice has echoes of Soviet times, when cultural figures […]
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