Posts Tagged ‘Yuri Norshteyn’
Artists’ spat over Putin joins a Russian tradition
When famed viola player Yuri Bashmet declared that he “adored” President Vladimir Putin, he stirred little controversy in a country where classical musicians have often curried favor with the political elite.
But political drama spilled into the orchestra pit last month when Bashmet refused to condemn a new law prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children, and in response the beloved singer Sergei Nikitin canceled his appearance at a concert celebrating the violist’s 60th birthday.
The spat joins a long Russian tradition of artists who have jumped — or been dragged — into the political fray. From composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who lived in fear of arrest under dictator Josef Stalin, to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who returned to a liberalizing Soviet Union in 1991 and took up arms to defy Communist hardliners, Russian musicians and other artists have had a habit of becoming politicized figures.
At the core of the argument today is a question about what an artist’s role should be in Putin’s Russia: Attracting generous state funding for bigger and better artistic projects? Or challenging the political system in a way most ordinary citizens cannot afford to do?
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Anti-Putin jibe wins applause at Russian awards ceremony
A prominent Russian cartoonist won loud applause at a usually politics-free awards ceremony when he suggested President Vladimir Putin shared responsibility for the death of an anti-corruption campaigner in a Moscow jail.
Putin’s opponents frequently lambast him during protests and on the Internet, but criticism of the president is rare at mainstream cultural events and in most broadcast media.
Cartoonist Yuri Norshteyn broke that taboo when he took the stage on Saturday and criticized Putin over the jailed lawyer’s death in 2009 that prompted the U.S. Congress to impose sanctions on Russian officials.
Commenting on a previous speaker who had said Russia did not have enough doctors, Norshteyn said: “Immediately, I linked this … with when Putin said Magnitsky died of heart failure.”
“I think he died of a failure of heart on Putin’s part and on the part of the prison boss,” he said.
The comment was a reference to Putin’s statement, at a news conference in December, that Magnitsky had “died not from torture, nobody tortured him, but from a heart attack.” The Kremlin’s own human rights council has said he was probably beaten to death.
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