Since the arrival of the Russian Y2K bug in the unexpected form of President Jelzin\'s resignation on December 31, 1999, quite a few things have doubtless changed in Russia. This is especially true of the political arena, while concrete consequences for art and culture have been limited and of an atmospheric rather than substantial nature.
[b]Bear vs. Beaver[/b]
Jelzin\'s resignation was preceded by Duma elections in which the two parties that had supported the then prime minister and future president Putin had been the most successful. A few months before these elections, the situation had looked completely different, with most observers expecting a victory for »Fatherland – All Russia«. This movement, led by the mayor of Moscow, Luzkov, had distinguished itself in the nineties by its cultural politics explicitly aimed at national restoration.1 During the search for a national ideology – in 1996, Jelzin had especially organized a public competition for the best »Russian idea,« but only under Putin is this idea regarded as having been found – a variety of national stereotypes came back into play, which the semi-official spin doctors put to increasing use. According to two experts, in their book about election campaign technologies2, the world of Russian fairytales became a central motif for the elections 1999/2000. Luzkov\'s image as a »manager« corresponded to the Beaver, who, however, in constrast to the Bear, never rules the forest in Russian fairytales. Putin\'s strategists took this to heart and, within an extremely short space of time, constructed two parties at the drawing board that were to guarantee Putin\'s election win: one of them with the resounding name »Medved/Edinstvo« (»Bear/Unity«), with an ex-wrestler and Olympic medallist as frontman. Taken together with Putin\'s announcement after the Moscow terrorist attacks in the fall of 1999 that »Chechen terrorists [would be] done in even on the toilet,« and a new Chechen war, which has basically been going on ever since, there was no doubt that the image of the strong bear was being closely approached.
[b]Politics as a Continuation of Art with Other Means[/b]
There was a great need for creative potential in the election campaigns for the Duma, or the presidential elections 1999/2000. In particular, the campaign team for »Soyuz pravich sil« (»Union of Rightist Forces«), the second Putin party, with a liberal/intellectual veneer, took, under the leadership of gallery owner Marat Gelman, a large number of its recruits from the Moscow art and cultural scene. Together with ex-dissident and professed Pinochet-follower Gleb Pavlovski, who was to be promoted to the chief ideologist of Putin-style politics, Gelman had been active in the political field ever since the presidential elections of 1996. At that time, the »action artist« Anatoli Osmolovski had been working on the image of the patriotic, reactionary General Lebed\'3, but concrete »artistic« contributions to election campaigns are not shouted about from the rooftops, in contrast to the »glasnost« practiced in the cultural industry; and any detailed questions about these »more-than-bread jobs« receive answers that are at the very least unfriendly. Gelman himself seems to see his political activities as a continuation of art, or of his activities as a gallery owner, using other means. His most recent political project, among others, also illustrates this. Gelman is at present involved in a semi-official mission to bring about a political rapprochement between Russia and the Ukraine; one of the first steps was opening a branch of the Gelman Gallery in Kiev.
As far back as December 1999, Ekaterina Degot wrote, in a commentary that was the subject of heated discussion4, that by supporting politics, one also carried some of the responsibility for these politics, including Chechnya. She asked whether this price for a possible political recognition of contemporary art might not be too high. At any rate, the expectations many people had of recognition by the state were disappointed; from a politico-cultural point of view, everything basically stayed the same. Although some professionalization can be seem in various areas, a professionalization which up to now has been restricted mainly to a few official gestures such as visits to some large exhibitions, culture and art are, on the whole, not important to the ex-spy and technocrat Putin. Obviously, concrete decisions are very much dependent on a the opinion of a public that is not exactly enthusiastic about art: this could explain, for instance, the return to the Soviet national anthem – with a new text by the old author Sergei Michalkov. Or a catalog text for this year\'s Petersburg documentary film festival »Message to man« that seemed rather out of place in an international context. It stated that people were sick of politicians and pop stars who had practically no ideas, soul or heart, and that responsible builders of a new Russia were needed for a »glowing future.«
[b]Functionalism with Putin in a Submarine[/b]
According to architecture curator and artist Yuri Avvakumov, with the political defeat of Moscow\'s mayor, Luzkov, whose party »Fatherland« had now been merged with Putin\'s »Unity,« the aggressiveness of tendencies towards national restoration decreased. Avvakumov says this can also be felt in architecture, which is why there is talk of a new functionalism in Moscow architecture. He goes on to say that, with the question »Will a president who spends the night in submarines like something like this?«, Putin can be also used in concrete discussions as an argument for functionalist approaches.
[b]Provincialization of »Contemporary Art«[/b]
While state art schools are still caught up in the spirit of the 19th century, one can now observe many initiatives that aim at compensating at least in part for the lack of art schools with a contemporary orientation. There is a large number of such projects in the expanses of the Russian provinces; this increasing »provincialization« has been one of the most noticeable innovations in the past years. The Moscow artist Nikolai Polisskii has been organizing workshops for the mostly unemployed population of the village Nikola-Lenivec, a few hundred kilometers south of Moscow, for three years. Last summer, an impressive tower was built in a team effort, using 160 cubic meters of timber, and Polisskii has promised further activities by new contemporary artists from Nikola-Lenivec. Activities are also being carried out in Niznii Tagil on the Ural River. According to the Moscow art critic Vladimir Salnikov, this industrial city has excellent chances of becoming an important regional center for »contemporary art« in Russia: recently, a large number of Moscow artists traveled there at the instigation of the local museum of contemporary art to support the local scene or to attend workshops and an exhibition with the theme »Ecology of Art in an Industrial Landscape.«
[b]The »We-Are-Also-Europe« Sensation[/b]
In conclusion, I will briefly mention the consequences of September 11. Apart from the right-wing extremist journal »Limonka,« which outed itself as being pro-Taliban, printed old anti-American poems by Eduard Limonov5, and was proud to publish the first portrait of Bin Laden in Russia, most of the media seem to follow faithfully Putin\'s »we-are-also-Europe« course. Sometimes, this takes on absurd forms: the »Nezavisimaya gazeta« wrote recently about the so-called sensation of an academic lecture in which the Viennese Slavist and Russian patriot Sergei Averincev had, very much in the spirits of the new zeitgeist, only talked about past cultural interactions between Russia and Western Europe.
Translated by Tim Jones