How Putin’s warfare destroyed a golden age of Russian tradition

Someday in March final yr, Oleg acquired a name at work from an official on the Russian tradition ministry. The federal government wished the theatre director to ask his actors in a distant nook of Siberia to report video statements in assist of President Vladimir Putin and his “particular navy operation” in Ukraine. “No,” Oleg responded, with out giving the request a second thought. “We don’t have anybody right here who desires to do this.”

The director, who’s in his forties, straight-talking and energetic, with lengthy hair pulled again in a bun, had come there from Moscow to this distant nook of Siberia in a bid to show the native theatre into one of many nation’s nice cultural establishments. 4 years later, Oleg was certain he may converse for his staff.

Because the begin of the warfare, he had been in a state of horror and shock. He was glued to his cellphone, reposting petitions and photographs of bombed-out buildings in Ukraine. He’d continued coming to work on daily basis, performing on autopilot, however the reveals he placed on evening after evening more and more made him sick. The worst had been the comedies. Audiences had began piling in to see them, every one taking part in to a full home. “Individuals weren’t simply coming to the theatre, they had been coming in droves, as in the event that they had been in a state of mass hysteria,” Oleg instructed me of the primary weeks of warfare. “I’ve by no means seen audiences giggle like that. It was a form of frenzy.”

He dragged himself by rehearsals anyway. His assistant and buddy ended every run-through with a cry of “Glory to Ukraine!”, assuming that, like Oleg, everybody agreed. (Some names and particulars on this article have been modified to guard the identities of individuals concerned.)

A number of days after the primary name, officers reached out once more. This time, they threatened to strip the actors of their honorary titles in the event that they didn’t comply. Oleg had seven “merited artists of the Russian Federation” on his employees. He felt he ought to at the least go on the request. “Guys, have a assume. It’s as much as you,” he stated at a unexpectedly known as assembly.

The director knew that his “merited” actors had lengthy prized their standing, which confers status and a better wage. He knew, too, that residents of areas removed from Russia’s capital tended to be extra supportive of the state. However when the actors current responded “Why not?” and instructed him they might fortunately report the assist movies, Oleg was dumbstruck. The actors didn’t simply need to shield their honorary titles, they had been earnestly pro-war. “They instructed me, ‘However the authorities is doing the whole lot proper,’” Oleg recalled. “I understood then that it was throughout.”

After the assembly, a number of the actors got here as much as him to precise their condolences. They knew Oleg’s politics and pitied him. They may inform that, throughout the nation, a robust tide was turning towards individuals like him. Over the next months, that tide would crash into Russia’s cultural world, particularly the theatre, an establishment that holds a near-spiritual standing within the nationwide creativeness, its actors akin to Hollywood stars.

Dozens of its main figures can be demonised by pro-war politicians, denounced by colleagues and purged from their jobs. Many would flee the nation. Censorship would smother inventive life and Russia’s freethinking theatre scene — thought-about one of many best on this planet simply months earlier — can be devastated. Those that selected to remain within the nation would battle to maintain working and keep true to their antiwar beliefs. It was a battle of unimaginable selections, one which many, together with Oleg, would ultimately lose.

Hours after Russia’s invasion started, the Meyerhold Centre, an experimental venue within the centre of Moscow, turned the primary theatre to protest. “We are able to’t not say it,” learn a press release posted on-line. “We are able to’t not say: No warfare.”

One after one other, actors, administrators, ballet dancers and conductors adopted swimsuit. Inside days, about 2,000 Russian cultural employees had signed an open letter to the federal government opposing the warfare. Some went into the streets to protest, together with younger playwright and competition director Yury Shekhvatov, who was detained by riot police, overwhelmed and spent 15 days in jail. A handful of theatres added peace doves to their logos. Russia’s prime Shakespeare students issued a joint assertion. Legendary St Petersburg director Lev Dodin pleaded with the Kremlin on the pages of business journal Teatr: “I urge you, cease!”

The sense of collective resistance didn’t final lengthy. Lower than two weeks into the warfare, Oleg acquired a name from a former official with whom he had been on pleasant phrases. “What the hell are you doing?” she requested. “Don’t you realise they’re already digging a file on you — and really totally?” She warned him to delete his antiwar posts on Fb. A number of days later, representatives of the tradition ministry got here to fulfill with Oleg in particular person for a “disciplinary dialog”.

Such warnings are important in Russia, since most theatres are formally authorities establishments. The tradition ministry has closing say on budgets and hiring and firing employees, a hangover from the Soviet Union. Again then, theatres must run scripts by the state censor. If authorized, officers may attend rehearsals, modifying as they noticed match.

As soon as the bloc collapsed, these limits had been swept away. Oleg may recall no occasion of meddling in his work or speech throughout his profession. Although some instances of repression and censorship within the business did happen as Putin’s regime turned extra authoritarian, Russian theatre flourished.

The warfare upended this order virtually instantly. Hours after the invasion, Elena Kovalskaya, the Meyerhold Centre’s inventive director, resigned. 4 days later, the ministry fired her colleague, director Dmitry Volkostrelov. The brand new director appointed in his place ordered the theatre’s media staff to delete all antiwar statements. The media staff give up too. By March 1, per week into the warfare, the ministry had subsumed the theatre below one other establishment, that means that, for a lot of, the Meyerhold Centre was useless in all however identify. The final time a theatre bearing the identify of early Soviet director Vsevolod Meyerhold was shut down was in 1938, throughout Josef Stalin’s Nice Terror.

In Ukraine, Russian forces had been nonetheless trying to grab Kyiv. On March 16, missiles destroyed the theatre within the southern Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol. On March 17, the famend Ukrainian actress Oksana Shvets was killed throughout an air strike. The identical day, the Ukrainian nationwide opera’s lead ballet dancer additionally died from accidents sustained in an earlier strike.

Oleg agonised about what was taking place in Ukraine. Developments nearer to residence shocked him too. In Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Buryatia area in Siberia, officers not solely eliminated Sergey Levitsky, a neighborhood theatre director, but in addition started authorized proceedings towards him. He was accused of breaking the regulation by posting antiwar sentiments on social media. “They received him right away, and over precisely the identical factor,” Oleg stated, including he didn’t need to get fired for a similar cause. “Then I’d by no means discover a job in Russia once more.”

Levitsky continued to talk out towards the warfare, undeterred by threats, police visits to his residence or the truth that a case was quickly introduced towards his defence lawyer as nicely. “Don’t be afraid to talk the reality,” Levitsky wrote on his Fb web page one night. “Be afraid as a substitute of shedding your humanity, be afraid of your conscience, be afraid of turning into unfree inside.” Self-censorship, he argued, was the start of the tip.

Oleg weighed his choices. His daughter had cystic fibrosis, and he had spent the primary days of the warfare scrambling to get her and her mom out of Russia, fearing sanctions may minimize off entry to essential medical provides. Mom and daughter settled in Bulgaria. He had them to contemplate and assist. “This was the primary purpose,” Oleg recalled. He thought it over for some time longer after which deleted virtually the whole lot he’d written towards the warfare.

Zhanna, a dark-haired, dark-eyed younger set designer, perched uncomfortably on her chair in a busy café in St Petersburg. Her gaze measured the gap between our desk and the others close by. All of them had been inside earshot. Ought to we go for a stroll as a substitute, I advised. She laughed. “Issues that after appeared fantastical have now turn out to be actual,” she stated, as we stepped exterior. “It’s a dystopia come to life.”

A number of weeks into the warfare, Zhanna discovered that proceeds from one in every of her performs had been to be directed to a charity for the Donbas, the Russian-occupied area of japanese Ukraine. Point out of the Donbas had turn out to be a byword in Russia for pro-invasion views. Zhanna tried to protest the choice, however was overruled. On the bottom in Ukraine, the warfare was rapidly turning disastrous for the Kremlin. It wanted to ramp up assist at residence, and the cultural ministry used a string of patriotic charity occasions it known as “Open Curtain” — some fundraising for the households of Russian troopers who died, others providing free seats — to power theatres into publicly taking sides.

One after the other, Zhanna’s colleagues and mates selected to go away the nation. Nearly all of Russia’s star administrators left. Kirill Serebrennikov to Berlin. Yury Butusov to Paris. Dmitry Krymov to New York.

Then got here the letter Z. It was first utilized by the Russian military as an figuring out tag on the perimeters of its tanks invading Ukraine, however swiftly migrated on to T-shirts, billboards and bumper stickers, adopting new that means: unwavering assist for the warfare. Academics made youngsters pose for footage in Z formations. So did the director of a youngsters’ leukaemia ward.

On March 29, a Moscow theatre caught a large model of the letter to its facade, three storeys excessive. The theatre’s director, Vladimir Mashkov, a longtime Putin supporter, claimed the ornament was his personal initiative. Others adopted swimsuit, whether or not by order of the ministry or of their very own accord. Inside days, dozens of Russian theatre buildings had been marked with a Z.

In Moscow, director Nikita Betekhtin started to collate a public Google Doc record of each theatre within the nation that had hooked up the Z to its facade. Betekhtin, who remained a vocal critic of the invasion, known as them the zigateatry, that means “the theatres that had completed the Sieg Heil Nazi salute”.

Each morning on his technique to work, Oleg questioned if he’d arrive to search out the letter put in by officers. “I made a decision for myself then that in the event that they did hold the Z, I’d write my resignation letter the identical day.” One April morning, he arrived to search out the employees in his carpentry store had handmade a big Z out of Scotch tape within the theatre courtyard. It hung there on a workshop wall. He questioned what to do. If he ordered them to take away it, he could be denounced. Oleg paced, mulling it over.

Lastly, Oleg received the employees collectively and instructed them the DIY brand needed to go. “Guys, what are you doing?” he requested. On the time, native malls and colleges had been receiving bomb threats and being evacuated, a truth he determined to make use of. “You need us to begin getting bomb threats too?” The employees agreed to take the letter down with out seeing by the ruse. For a time, Oleg waited for blowback, however nothing occurred. “I felt like a hero,” he stated.

By the summer season of 2022, the our bodies of Russian troopers killed in Ukraine had been arriving at Oleg’s city. Its Philharmonic orchestra constructing was changed into a makeshift funeral corridor. Coffins had been positioned on a desk and draped with the Russian flag, troopers lining the stage. Providers began early within the morning, Oleg recalled, three or 4 a day.

Quickly, authorities requested a few of Oleg’s actors to participate within the memorials by studying eulogies and mournful poems, with out consulting him. They agreed. “I couldn’t even have a look at these individuals,” Oleg recalled. “I didn’t perceive the director of the ­Philharmonic in any respect. How she may let these occasions be held in her venue.”

We’ve gone again 30 to 40 years. The patriotic factor, it’s all crawling again to the floor

He couldn’t keep out of it for lengthy, nevertheless. Oleg acquired a letter from native authorities, ordering him to pay the actors for his or her time working on the funerals from the theatre’s finances. Funding funerals for troopers killed because of the invasion crossed Oleg’s private crimson line. “I made a decision for myself that I wouldn’t pay, it doesn’t matter what.” Once more, he looked for a manner out. “It is a navy organisation,” he protested to the politicians. “It’s their funerals; allow them to pay for it.” He stalled for weeks, leaving the matter unresolved.

Within the meantime, Oleg had one other downside. He’d agreed to host a play at his theatre by a visiting Moscow director who’d spoken out towards the warfare. As banners for the manufacturing went up, native ­newspapers accused Oleg and his theatre of “supporting fascism”. “They stated that anybody who purchased a ticket was a Nazi, and so forth,” Oleg stated. And but, the present went on with out additional incident.

Nonetheless, throughout Russia, an off-the-cuff blacklist was being compiled. The Golden Masks, Russia’s Oscars for the theatre, started to take away reveals from its annual competitors by administrators who had left the nation or spoken out towards the warfare. It minimize so many who it needed to cancel the 2022 prizes for greatest director and playwright. State theatres additionally purged performs by some antiwar writers and administrators. The credit of those they stored had been edited to take away the offending identify, leaving some performs directed by “director”.

Sitting in my Moscow kitchen one night, Alexander, a theatre actor in his sixties and far beloved in Russia, described life on the blacklist. On tour with a light-hearted comedy, he’d travelled to a smaller Siberian city, able to play the starring function. When he arrived on the theatre, he found that his face had been crossed out on the posters and playbills. They had been all marked with the phrases “actor changed”. Native police took selfies with the star, earlier than realising they needed to detain him.

At Oleg’s theatre, when a lighting designer was employed from one other metropolis, authorities banned him from coming. He’d written one thing antiwar on Fb up to now. “There’s a literal record, and this record is used to examine who can and can’t come,” Oleg stated. “I’ve little doubt.”

In August, some members of Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament and different pro-war figures arrange a “group for the investigation of anti-Russian actions” within the cultural sphere. Its acronym was Grad, just like the missile system being utilized in Ukraine. Grad started to call individuals it believed ought to be purged from their jobs. “We have to pull this scum out with the roots,” one member stated in a televised dialogue. “They need to all be re-educated,” one other agreed.

The group zeroed in on a handful of individuals, together with theatre director Alexander Molochnikov. Inside days, the Bolshoi Theatre had cancelled Molochnikov’s upcoming premiere, and others rapidly adopted swimsuit. After receiving threats, the director left for New York. Chatting with me on the cellphone at some point, Molochnikov stated that his friends, Russia’s nice administrators in exile, can be remembered as the celebs of this epoch of Russian tradition. They had been the brand new Meyerholds, “whereas the large bastards . . . the Grad officers . . . they don’t stick round”. In the long run, he stated, “they’re those that get erased”.

Betekhtin, the writer of the crucial Z-theatres record, rapidly discovered all his performs throughout the nation shut down. The Meyerhold Centre, below its new administration, additionally wiped his identify from its web site. Quickly, law enforcement officials had been coming to his residence. Not lengthy after, Betekhtin left Russia for good. “I don’t remorse something,” Betekhtin wrote on Fb. “A profession as a theatre director vs an try to frustrate the regime’s plans to make theatres swear allegiance to the Z — the selection was apparent. And between jail and compelled emigration, I select to wander the world.”

The story was repeated in whispers, all through Russia’s inventive world. “It has been an unprecedented purge,” stated Zhanna, as we walked circles in snowy St Petersburg. Much less within the public eye, she selected to remain within the nation. However she revisits that call on daily basis. “In all this nightmare I really feel OK, figuring out that my suitcase is [packed and] mendacity within the wardrobe,” she stated. “Everybody feels the identical manner: I’m right here . . . for now.” She used to worry the warfare, she stated. “Now I largely simply worry that my very own nation might destroy me.”

On the finish of summer season, as Russia ready to stage annexation referendums within the 4 areas of Ukraine its troops occupied, Oleg acquired a cellphone name from the FSB, the state safety company. An agent requested him for the personnel information of all theatre workers who had Ukrainian heritage or Ukrainian surnames. They listed just a few names of curiosity.

Oleg couldn’t refuse. However he discovered a technique to warn the people prematurely. Oleg felt he’d completed what he may, however “it was one more killer closing straw”.

On September 21 final yr, the Kremlin introduced a mass navy mobilisation of 300,000 males. Recruitment places of work kicked into gear. Conscription notices got to employers handy out to their employees. Males scrambled to safe exemptions or get in another country. Flights out of Russia bought out. Queues of autos many kilometres lengthy shaped on the nation’s land borders. Throughout Siberia’s theatres, “they grabbed violinists, they grabbed ballet dancers”, Oleg recalled. One among his workers, a stage supervisor, merely disappeared. “I consider he went into the forest.”

He occurred to be visiting one other Siberian metropolis that week, assembly with the native theatre director, a colleague and buddy. She had simply acquired seven conscription orders for her employees. She went to the authorities, demanding or not it’s minimize right down to 4. They settled on 5. Oleg listened to her account of the bartering with disgust. “She was deciding who of her staff can be despatched to be killed and to kill others.”

Oleg didn’t obtain any notices handy out — or exemptions. Calling the tradition ministry to demand them, he was instructed: “Exemptions? What exemptions? In the event that they name your individuals up, they go. Everybody goes.” Oleg determined to go away the nation and reunite along with his household.

The mobilisation drive continued throughout Russia for weeks. Alexander, the actor in his sixties, got here to work at some point to search out his theatre’s foyer had been changed into a conscription centre. The identical occurred to the Roman Viktyuk Theatre in Moscow, resulting in protests from the coming conscripts: the theatre was nonetheless draped in a banner promoting its subsequent present, Gogol’s Useless Souls.

At a comedy theatre in a serious Russian metropolis, two dozen actors had been introduced collectively by their inventive director. “Expensive mates,” the director says on a recording of the assembly, which was shared with me. “The division of tradition has requested to borrow you to kind three live performance brigades.”

The brigades can be despatched to entertain the troops. “We’re a comedy theatre and shall be there to create extra optimism, pleasure and blissful smiles.” On the recording, actors might be heard starting to protest. “I remind you, that the [culture ministry] is our superior and we report back to them . . . We are able to’t refuse this,” the director says. “And, generally, I consider that is our responsibility.”

She offers them homework: put together repertoires of songs and humorous skits. “What occurs if somebody doesn’t need to go?” one particular person asks.

“Our boys are there, our individuals. We have to elevate their spirits . . . Do you actually not need to go to these locations the place our boys are struggling?” the theatre’s director says, cautious to keep away from the phrases “warfare” and “entrance line”, including that male actors who comply with entertain the troops will obtain official exemptions from navy service.

“What occurs if somebody doesn’t need to go and carry out?” one of many actors asks once more.

“If you happen to resolve you don’t need to go,” the director concedes, “you lose your exemption.”

A protracted silence falls.

“So it seems nobody really has a selection,” one other actor says. “If we refuse to take part, we lose our exemptions and could possibly be grabbed . . . at any second.”

The inventive director responds: “We’re doing this that will help you.”

Final November, individuals crowded into the Moscow Artwork Theatre, unravelling scarves and checking fur coats. The theatre, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, was placing on a premiere of a brand new play written because the starting of the warfare, and the corridor was packed. Within the story, a theatre is run by a star director who all of the sudden dies. His substitute, appointed by the tradition ministry, involves the job from the FSB. Courageous, I believed. Till the message started to show. Over the course of the efficiency, the theatre troupe is more and more introduced as sordid, paedophilic, corrupt. Whereas the FSB graduate-turned-director is merciless, however clear and pure all through.

Konstantin Bogomolov, the play’s director, sat within the viewers. Husband to a girl believed to be Putin’s goddaughter, the 47-year-old’s work was clearly heralding the beginning of a brand new period in Russian tradition, with new individuals and new authoritarian values centre stage. The play appeared to welcome all of it, together with the disposal of the previous order. The uproarious laughter of the viewers at jokes about blackface and homophobic slurs was nauseating.

Related modifications had been happening elsewhere. The director of Moscow’s most vital museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, was fired by the cultural ministry and changed by Elena Pronicheva, the daughter of an FSB normal, who had a profession at state fuel firm Gazprom. “The vacuum left behind by those that fled the nation or had been blacklisted shall be stuffed in a short time by those that are extra loyal to the whole lot occurring,” Zhanna, the St Petersburg set designer, defined. “It’s only a query of how rapidly it’ll occur.”

For Ivan, a director in St Petersburg, the harm feels whole. “Russian theatre in recent times was really the most effective on this planet. We had learnt a lot from Europe. We had been hovering; it was hovering,” he stated, as we met in a quiet café on the outskirts of St Petersburg. “And on the very second when it was at its peak, it was minimize down. It was dealt a deadly blow. We misplaced the whole lot.”

His theatre firm, constructed over a decade, was blacklisted final yr and fell aside. His star actor started taking over building jobs. Most of the individuals he revered within the business, notably within the capital, are gone. Worry, he stated, has “contaminated the whole lot. The worst factor that occurs is that self-censorship switches on. It’s actually arduous to combat it. As a result of throughout you, persons are being arrested . . . I hear that voice in my head too.”

Although the steadiness can skew in the direction of the pro-war patriots in regional cities like Oleg’s, Ivan feels that in virtually everybody round him within the business in St Petersburg — “95 per cent” — is towards the warfare. It’s the minority, the denunciation-writers, the informers, that has taken management of tradition. “We’ve gone again 30 to 40 years. The patriotic factor, it’s all crawling again to the floor,” Ivan stated. “The time of the talentless. It’s their second.”

A handful of individuals gathered in a tiny bookshop at the back of a St Petersburg constructing. A Donetsk Individuals’s Republic flag held on the wall. A modified Kalashnikov was propped up under it. They had been attending a studying by Alexander Pelevin, a feverishly pro-war poet, who has cultivated a following writing poems which are directly lewd and patriotic. “Beg for forgiveness, bitches! So that you’re not chopped up like swines!” He was studying in a theatrical tone, a poem addressed to Ukrainians. As he spoke, he squeezed a toy pig that the gathered occasion had nicknamed Taras, a typical Ukrainian identify.

In the meantime, individuals handed round trophies: Ukrainian schoolbooks they stated had been introduced from Mariupol, the town pulverised after which occupied by Russia. They joked about acts of violence in the direction of Europeans. Bookshop employees collected donations for Russian troopers in Ukraine. The group was small, and a few of its members had been clearly on society’s margins. However they had been consuming champagne. No matter was taking place on the entrance strains, at residence battles had been being gained.

The subsequent day, Liya Akhedzhakova, one in every of ­Russia’s best residing theatre stars who carried out for 46 years at Moscow’s Sovremennik Theatre, was stripped of her stage roles. She’d spoken out a number of instances towards the warfare. “The director instructed me that I’ll not be within the repertoire, after some letters from enraged individuals,” Akhedzhakova instructed a journalist. “I’m sitting and crying. I perceive who’s writing and organising this, however nothing might be completed.”

Hours later, Pelevin weighed in on Telegram, celebrating her departure. “When the inventive intelligentsia, which hopes for the defeat of the Russian military, is lastly pushed from the ­Russian stage, that’s solely ever factor.” There have been extra purges to return, he wrote, including, “The broom will attain everybody.”

It’s one thing the youthful technology of Russian theatre employees anticipates too. Censorship could be removed from whole but, however “the rakes will proceed, and they’ll begin raking smaller fish in quickly”, Ivan stated. “In the end, they may get everybody.”

Oleg remained in Bulgaria along with his household, debating whether or not to return. Ukraine was recapturing swaths of territory on the time. Confronted with humiliating defeats, Russia’s home propaganda was reaching new heights. In late September, Putin introduced his elite collectively in a chandelier-studded corridor to announce his annexation of 4 Ukrainian areas. “Rus-sia! Rus-sia!” the assembled group bellowed. Putin and his officers joined in on stage, holding fingers.

Oleg known as the tradition ministry and instructed them he wouldn’t be returning to his job. He didn’t make it political, saying solely, “I’ve to take care of my baby.” Then, in a message, he introduced his departure to his employees. Type responses flooded in, bidding him farewell and wishing him luck. “I used to be sitting there crying. Considering, wow, how pretty.”

However the subsequent day, the tradition ministry advised he take an unpaid, six-month depart as a substitute. The thought appealed to Oleg because it gave him time to discover a respectable substitute. He wrote to the employees saying the reversal of his determination. “That’s when it received brutal,” he stated. Some individuals had a watch on his job; others had been towards him since lengthy earlier than. Then, one of many title-holding actors denounced Oleg. In a letter written to the native governor, he acknowledged that Oleg had fled Russia to Bulgaria to flee conscription and that he’d repeatedly stated that he was towards the warfare. Inside days, Oleg was fired.

Final summer season, Anna, a dressing up designer, and I headed to the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. A number of months after the beginning of Russia’s invasion, the FSB had paid her a go to throughout play rehearsals, and Anna left the nation. She ended up in Germany, a hard-won residence card in hand.

We had been en path to see a brand new play by director Kirill Serebrennikov, one in every of his first since formally leaving Russia and because the Gogol Centre, his world-famous theatre in Moscow, was shut down. Lots of his actors had been on stage once more. The corridor was packed. One actor learn lengthy monologues in German — he didn’t converse the language however had learnt the sounds. Through the rounds of applause after, I may see Anna was moved virtually to tears. Maybe she too may make a brand new inventive life right here.

You assume, nicely, what was all this for? You’re sitting alone in Bulgaria. It’s scary to leap into nothingness

However over the winter, her funds started working low. She was supplied a brief theatre challenge again in Russia. We sat for hours speaking over the choice to return. In Ukraine, Russia was shelling energy stations, forcing each household to confront the freezing chilly. As they suffered, Russia’s patriots cheered.

Oleg has no want to return. He can’t think about producing work that doesn’t instantly deal with the warfare. Some in Russia, he believes, will be capable of proceed making theatre that opposes the state — subtly, someplace between the strains, like they did in Soviet instances. Generally he stalks his previous work WhatsApp group and sees his former colleagues posting patriotic memes. One of many theatres he used to work with is now placing on a propaganda play concerning the warfare. His personal theatre has simply held a charity occasion to assist Russian troops. In these moments, he’s certain that he was proper to go away.

However then he sees acquaintances — individuals who give up in protest, individuals who fled — trickling again to Russia after failing to discover a place for themselves within the west. “As if nothing is going on there. As if it’s regular . . . This actually throws me,” Oleg says. “As a result of, shit, I left the whole lot behind. I’ve nothing left.”

In Moscow, audiences have began going to the brand new Gogol Theatre, which has changed Serebrennikov’s blacklisted centre. The venue’s final premiere bought out. Additionally they go to the brand new Meyerhold to observe performs the place the director’s identify has been erased. “That’s probably the most horrible factor. It makes you assume, then, nicely, what was all this for? You’re sitting alone in Bulgaria. What for?” Oleg says. “It’s fairly scary to finish up nowhere . . . to leap into nothingness.” Then, he will get one other reminder. The letter, for instance, from the Kremlin addressed to all theatre administrators about what was acceptable to stage in honour of final yr’s Day of Unity, celebrating Russia’s destruction, occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory. Then it turns into clear once more.

Polina Ivanova is a overseas correspondent for the FT masking Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia

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