My Stance on Whether It's Acceptable to Enjoy Russian Art

Dostoevsky, Pedro Pascal, Anora, etc

*If anyone is confused as to what my stance on Russia as a country is, I suggest you read: Russian Chauvinism is Disgusting and I Hate Russia

I recently saw a video of an international sports competition for adolescents. The Ukrainian (keep in mind, these are children) boy refused to take the stage to be photographed next to the Russian participant (also a boy). For anyone with a working brain, it should not be difficult to surmise why the Ukrainian boy did not want to have his photo taken with his Russian. Open up the comment sections and, Jesus Christ, what a nightmare. Typical comments included “Keep politics out of sports”, “Not very sportsmanship behavior”, “The Ukrainian kid should be disqualified for his disrespectful behavior,” and so on.

Now, other comments explained (I’m summarizing) “This kid and his entire country have been living under constant attack for over three years (over ten in the east). The opponent’s country has committed mass murder on an unfathomable scale. Since being unable to take Kyiv at the beginning of the war, most of their bombings have been against civilian infrastructure (schools, hospitals, maternity wards, shopping centers, train stations, apartment blocks), and the opponent’s president has said in no uncertain terms that “Ukraine doesn’t exist.”

The Ukrainian people are collectively traumatized, and this trauma will last for generations. If people’s only view on the situation between the two athletes is “That wasn’t sportsmanlike behavior”, well, they are missing the forest for the trees. It is not my place to tell a Ukrainian what they are or are not allowed to be upset by. Until your country is being continuously bombed, I feel you don’t have much say in the matter either.

That preamble wasn’t exactly how I wanted to start this piece, but it served to set the tone.

Whenever I read statements along the lines of “People online are outraged over X,” I have to stop and think, is it actually an outrage? Is it possible that it was merely five people on X vocally voicing their discontent, and all the clickbait articles written about this actually outnumber the number of the aggrieved? I don’t know. Case in point, (some) people are pissed off at Pedro Pascal because he listed Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky as one of his favorite novels.

Here are some comments summarizing the “controversy”:

So is the man a mouthpiece of Russian imperialistic rhetoric? Is he merely a product of his times? Anecdotally, it isn’t just Jordan Peterson circle-jerkers who love Dostoevsky (I highly doubt any of them have actually read Dostoevsky, but in between crying at his own profundity, Peterson mentions Dostoevsky almost as much as he brings up post-modernism destroying the world). I went to uni in both Russia and the US during my bachelor’s and master’s years. I’ve read Dostoevsky and dissected him to the point where his work has lost all meaning for me.

The academic sphere of Russian Studies is obsessed with Dostoevsky in Russia and abroad. Russian Studies programs, in my view, are very limited and not allowed to evolve beyond established dogma. They want to promote the established canon, i.e., Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, etc, and have little to no desire for innovation or deviation.

Case in point, Russia Studies, Slavic Studies, Eurasian Studies, whatever name you choose to call the discipline, focus very much on the “Russian” aspect of all this. What I mean is that the various cultures of Russia or the former USSR (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Georgia, Chechnya, Tatarstan, etc.) barely get a mention. Why is this problematic? It posits that Russia is a homogeneous entity, which it isn’t. Russia is home to hundreds of distinct cultures with their own languages and histories. Russian imperialism has worked hard at either eliminating these cultures, whether by means of forced assimilation or genocide. When an impressionable young scholar enters the field of Russian studies, all they are presented with is the tried-and-true Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy.

I said earlier this is anecdotal, so I don’t want any of the “Well, actually” crowd to come here and tell me how different their experience was. My master’s thesis was on the topic of problems of instability and security in the North Caucasus. No advisor wanted to touch it. It was incredibly frustrating trying to find support or sources when, at every turn, I was being told to choose a different topic. Furthermore, I was told I could only use Russian-language sources, and that these sources were incredibly biased. All of the good material was written in other languages. It is not hyperbole when I say I was the only one in my graduating year not writing a thesis on Russian literature. What more is there to be said about Dostoevsky that hasn’t been said already?

Am I saying this is all part of a grand conspiracy promoted by the Kremlin to push a very specific and narrow view of what Russia and its contributions to the world are (especially when viewed by foreigners)? No, but also yes.

Russia, always obsessed with how it's viewed by the rest of the world, gets a hard-on every time a foreigner praises Dostoevsky. It doesn’t matter if his views are imperialistic and propagate Russian exceptionalism; Russia gets a pass because the Russian Soul is just too complex and can’t possibly be comprehended by an outsider, so instead of criticizing, we just have to accept it.

Was Dostoevsky a piece of shit? Yeah, I think so. He was a xenophobic, Slavophile imperialist who wholeheartedly believed in Russia’s exceptionalism. Does that mean we can’t enjoy his work? Led Zeppelin is one of my favorite bands, but that doesn’t change that Jimmy Page dated a 14-year-old. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. John Lennon beat his wife. Will Smith beat Kid Rock within an inch of his life in front of millions.

My point is that when we truly examine artists throughout history with a fine-tooth comb, many of them are huge pieces of shit. It is not my place to tell Ukrainians they shouldn’t be upset if someone likes the works of Dostoevsky, but by that same token, many people who read Dostoevsky have a lack of context or understanding of the centuries of dynamics between Russia, its neighbors, and its colonial subjects. There’s no way to truly get a full grasp of Dostoevsky and the times he was living in without understanding Russian thought and its own view of its place in the world. Just as Russia is obsessed with how others view it, it is also obsessed with its own sense of exceptionalism.

For all of Russia’s introspection of the soul and suffering and turmoil, it is quite incapable of turning those same reflectors on how its policy, philosophy, and actions have subjugated and led to the deaths of other nations and cultures. Russian thought is incapable of allowing the idea of it having any blemishes on its glorious past, because if people began to question the past, they’d in turn question the present.

Dostoevsky is wrapped up in all of this. The average book enjoyer won’t have the context of Russia and its imperial nature when reading The Brothers Karamazov. It’s unfair to require readers to take a test before reading a book from a specific country, proving expert knowledge of all geopolitical events over the past five hundred years. On the other hand, it’s not fair to tell Ukrainians to “get over it”. They have every right to be upset.

I think Crime and Punishment is a phenomenal book, because of and in spite of who the author is. I find the rest of Dostoevsky’s catalogue interminably dull. The Idiot is among the most boring books I’ve ever read, and I’m tired of dudes in their fifties getting pissed off that my book tastes don’t align with theirs.

Yukio Mishima is one of my favorite writers, and he’s arguably a bigger piece of shit than Dostoevsky was.

Lastly, do any of us even believe Pedro made that list of favorite books himself? He probably asked his publicist to find books that made him look deep and cultured and ran with it.

Earlier this year, Anora won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In addition to a Best Actress win, Yura Borisov was nominated for Supporting Actor for playing a gopnik, something I didn’t expect to ever see. This also caused anger among many Ukrainians.

I enjoyed Anora. I wanted The Substance to win, but that was never going to happen. Part of what I liked about Anora was that the Russian-speaking characters were actually Russian-speaking actors, whether they were Russian or Russian-speaking Armenians, it was refreshing. The average audience member likely doesn’t notice, but Hollywood has made cartoon characters of its “Russian” characters. Watch the John Wick movies. The Russian the actors speak is atrocious. It’s obvious that the actors have no idea what the language actually sounds like. I’m not angry about it, I love schlock. Seeing “Russian” characters in movies played by Americans or Brits with terrible accents is hilarious. The Shape of Water also had some truly cringeworthy Russian characters.

In Anora, the experience was enhanced by the realistic portrayals. Characters reacted to situations in ways only people from that part of the world who are from those cultures would. I think it’s unfair to say Anora is somehow pro-Russia just because it has Russian actors in it. I mean, nearly everyone in that film is a piece of shit. Vanya’s oligarch parents are the epitome of New Russian wealth, people so obscenely rich and self-centered that they don’t even register the existence of others who aren’t on their level.

I think there’s something to be said about a movie having Russian actors or being about Russia versus actors who are blatantly pro-Putin and war endorsers.

I still listen to Viktor Tsoi. Having said that, I have since stopped listening to the Russian rock band Nautilus due to Butusov’s vocal praise of Putin. I don’t imagine I will ever listen to him again.

I still watch and enjoy Balabanov’s cult classics, Brother and Brother II. The films are extremely racist, antisemitic, and anti-Ukrainian, and present a hero who is the epitome of the violent, anti-intellectual, solve-all-problems-with-killing because he’s a true Russian patriot. Was Balabanov holding a mirror to Russian society with extreme satire, or was he endorsing these views? I have no idea.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I will not watch any new movies produced by the Russian Federation. I’ve seen enough propaganda films to last a lifetime and won’t waste another second on them.

The point I’m trying to make here is that I pick and choose my battles, which hill I’m ready to die on. It’s likely I’ll continue to read Dostoevsky in the future, where it’s also likely I’ll never listen to Butusov again. I’ve been vocal about Russian Studies programs abroad perpetuating the myth of Russian exceptionalism, and it’s always fallen on deaf ears. While I might not agree with Ukrainian takes on Anora, I will never tell them their feelings aren’t valid. A Russian having their feelings hurt on the internet or seeing “Russophobia” everywhere pales in comparison to civilians being bombed on a daily basis.