Season of Scandals

As summer turned into fall, a series of highly public spats broke out in Russia, with celebrities and cultural figures demonstrating deeply polarized attitudes about the crisis in Ukraine, the Kremlin, and history.

In one such spat, famed Russian rocker Andrei Makarevich gave a concert in Slavyansk, a city in eastern Ukraine that had been under the control of pro-Russian separatist forces but then was recaptured by Kiev.

Makarevich, who publicly opposed the annexation of Crimea, faced a barrage of accusations. Pro-Kremlin film director Nikita Mikhalkov said that Makarevich’s concert was “as if [Soviet megastar] Claudia Shulzhenko sang in Nazi-occupied Minsk or Kiev, with swastikas hanging in the background.” Mikhalkov further chided Makarevich for not giving a concert for the rebels and for not rejoicing in Crimea’s annexation.

On the program BesogonTV (literally ExorcistTV), Mikhalkov gave an account of an interview with Marakevich in which he asked. “Why do you take advantage of everything good that is given to you – deserved of course – but by people you don’t respect and whom you condemn?”

Kseniya Sobchak, the socialite journalist who is the daughter of Putin’s former St. Petersburg boss, Anatoly Sobchak, fired back at Mikhalkov on Makarevich’s behalf: “You call on Makarevich to return his honors, but, Nikita Sergeyevich, I ask you to be consistent. Give back your Oscar to the vile Americans.” (Mikhalkov’s Burnt By the Sun won the 1994 Oscar for Best Foreign Film).

Mikhalkov retorted with another attack, this time on Sobchak. “How are [US Department of State Spokesperson] Jennifer Psaki and Kseniya Sobchak different?” Mikhalkov asked during a long tirade featuring pictures and videos aimed at Sobchak. “Jennifer Psaki definitely knows nothing, while Kseniya Sobchak knows everything, but not precisely.”

“I invite you to speak directly and live,” Sobchak wrote back, promising to answer any and all of Mikhalkov’s questions if he appeared on her TV talk show. Mikhalkov has yet to take her up on the offer.

Meanwhile, on an entirely different front, the widow of Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote a furious letter in response to a vituperative editorial penned by the editor of Russia’s Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Newspaper). The publication, once among Russia’s most respected, has fallen on hard times and been revamped into a paper with radically pro-Kremlin views.

Writing about the upcoming centennial of Solzhenitsyn’s birth on the Kultura website, Literaturnaya Gazeta editor Yury Polyakov wrote:

“The hullaballoo about the upcoming Solzhenitsyn centennial is inappropriate… Solzhenitsyn not only left the Soviet Union, but essentially appealed to the Americans to wage war against it. Nobody is suggesting we eliminate Solzhenitsyn from the list of honorary compatriots, but one should not make him into a cult figure, so that those in the younger generations do not arrive at clearly harmful conclusions.”

Natalia Solzhenitsyn responded by writing:

“I am appalled by the disgraceful slander toward Solzhenitsyn... You cannot be unaware that Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his citizenship and deported from the country. If you know this, you are lying on purpose. If, however, you aren’t aware of this universally known fact (at least in the history of twentieth-century literature), then it is strange that you are in charge of Literaturnaya Gazeta.”

As to Polyakov’s claim that her husband encouraged the United States to start war with the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn said it was “unbecoming” of Polyakov “to repeat accusations originally made by the KGB’s Fifth Directorate,” referring to the secret police branch charged with suppressing dissent.

Clearly stung, Polyakov wrote an open reply that tried to appease Solzhenitsyn, calling her husband a great figure worthy of “respect and emulation.”

Yet, strangely, he added that, “because of Solzhenitsyn’s virulent hatred of the Soviet version of our history, I am inclined to believe the Fifth Directorate of the KGB.”

For this follow-on insult, at press time the famed actor and director Evgeny Mironov, previously known for his pro-Kremlin views, came out publicly in defense of Natalya Solzhenitsyn, calling Polyakov a “scoundrel” for “insulting a noble woman.”