In a project of Suspilne Culture – “No brotherhood – there wasn't one, isn't and will never be” people from across Ukraine's creative and cultural industries explain in their columns, how Russia has been trying to destroy Ukrainian identity for years (or even centuries).
All materials will be published in both Ukrainian and English. Russia's informational aggression has been a part of the daily discourse in Ukraine for a long time, especially after Maidan in 2014. Now we need to make this context available abroad to show that we've been fighting this war for way more than just a month.
In his op-ed, music reviewer Yurii Bereza explores how Russian entertainment bloggers stay hush about the Russo-Ukrainian war and explains why we should stop consuming their content.
Ukrainian version is available here.
Translated from Ukrainian by Inna Makohonova.
A few months ago, Kazakh stand-up comedian Nurlan Saburov couldn't even imagine that he'll become the perfect guest for his own "What came next" show (WCN). His shows in Ukraine sold out, and he admitted his admiration to the public. But in April during his USA tour, he was too scared to say anything about the war in Ukraine, despite his admiration.
At one of the concerts of this tour, Ukrainian Yuliia Kosivchuk ran up the stage in a bloodied dress and urged Saburov to condemn the war crimes of the Russian Federation. Not only did he leave her plea unanswered, but he also made a lame period joke. After that, his Chicago show was canceled. At the Miami show, security was checking phones for war-related content and didn't let visitors in if any was found.
Maybe the story wouldn't have gathered the media attention if not for the popularity of Saburov and WCN in Ukraine. Here are some stats of the show. The YouTube channel which releases the WCN episodes has more than seven million subscribers. Every video gathers 20 to 40 million views on average. According to Forbes Russia, the creators behind the show have become the most commercially successful creators of 2020 on Russian YouTube. They have made more than 3.5 million dollars in ads.
Among the advertisers that made them the most money is "Gazprom Media". Additionally, one of the creators of WCN, Viacheslav Dusmukhametov, works as a creative producer on TNT — a TV channel owned by "Gazprom Media". In 2020 and 2021 episodes of "What came next" got into Top-10 viewed videos on Ukrainian YouTube: here and here. So we can arrive at the conclusion that a lot of Ukrainians watched this show.
But after the beginning of the war, only one of the creators of the show has made a statement regarding it. It was Serhii Dietkov, the Ukrainian-born host of the show. Others decided to ignore this fact and put the show on hiatus.
One can only imagine the disappointment of the fans of the show, who has spent literal hours watching WCN. Only this isn't a tragedy but, on the contrary, a totally expected outcome.
People that seemed funny, contraries to the post-soviet culture with a wide audience, turned out to be cowards. Some of them, like for example Oleksii Shcherbakov, are outright hostile. However, this has happened not only to "What came next".
Another example is Yevhen Bazhenov, more known as BadComedian — the nit-picky reviewer of Russian trash movies, whose videos gather more than 20 million views. It would seem that the person that hates the Russian movie industry would condemn Russia's actions in an instant. But instead, we've got "You don't want to listen to what some clown movie reviewer has to say about this, okay?" as his stand on the matter. Some month after the beginning of the war, Bazhenov has made a statement, but in a horribly condescending tone. In it, he calls himself "half-khohol", which he obviously shouldn't have done.
The infamous Yurii Dud', who has a 10 million subscriber YouTube channel, at first has "pleasantly" surprised the Ukrainian audience with takes about "injustice was done by both sides in Donbas". Then he went ahead and had a conversation about the war in Ukraine not with Ukrainians, but with Russians who had escaped to Hungary.
What about Maksym Kats, who some Ukrainians have also supported. He's supposedly openly against the war and wholeheartedly condemns it. But even he doesn't think of Ukraine as a full-fledged subject doesn't find citizens of Russia guilty and moreover says that we should help them fight for their freedom. Or Oleksii Navalnyi who proposed that the West finance not Javelin for Ukrainians but targeted social media ads with truthful information for Russians.
Let the God keep us from guessing
These are not isolated examples. In fact, there are lots of them. Now we can say that it's akin to the Mandela effect. It can be the biggest case of the effect in human history. Meaning the forming of false memories about something or someone.
In our case, this has happened to big Russian media personalities who had a good share of the Ukrainian audience. These people in fact create content that is in opposition to everything created in post-soviet space for the widest possible audience. It was somewhat progressive, somewhat intellectual. And if not intellectual, then at least somewhat original.
The subconsciousness of Ukrainians who have consumed this content, not only automatically assigned these people to "good Russians". If they create content that can truly be seen as in opposition to the wide masses, they should be in opposition in other spheres. Even in politics. And exactly this is a false memory that can mentally hurt you.
Because in fact, almost every single one of Russian influencers from any field has no noble intentions towards Ukraine. They, of course, don't support Russia's military aggression, but at the same time have some of their own personal interests.
For example, cultural actors dream about restoring the "status quo" so they won't be bothered with questions. "Anti-establishment" journalists and politicians want to score more points and try to save their face in front of humanity by condemning the war and Putin. It goes something like "we have never supported warfare and supported Ukraine the best we could, so don't drag us to the tribunal."
Don't protect but tune out
Not a few people are still protecting Russian personalities, including the aforementioned ones. As an example, the main point in favor of Saburov is that he isn't Russian, but a Kazakh. And he works in a cultural field, and culture is apolitical.
Firstly, one's nationality doesn't matter. If you work for the Russian discourse, nationality can't be your lifesaver. In the case of Saburov, this talking point doesn't work because he lives off Gazprom’s money and has the opportunity to influence millions but doesn't do it. Just as any other Russian influencer that decides to stay neutral. On a related note, the joke has already blown up in Saburov's face, as his concerts in Israel were canceled by organizers.
Secondly, culture and politics have long become complementary to one another. There's no need to give examples of songs and other works because there are hundreds of them. It's enough to mention that the 40th President of the United States Ronald Reagan and a former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger were movie actors. Former Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales and current president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky were comedians. There's no shortage of political stand-up comedians. Bill Maher, Bill Burr, and Colin Quinn are three current examples from the American scene.
Regarding liberal journalists and politicians — they are telling bedtime stories to the adults. They will tell you whatever you want to hear. They will be pro-democracy and pro-freedom, tell you that it should be built. Only they don't have even the faintest understanding of how it should be done.
Their theory of "Russian democracy" is not implemented in practice and probably doesn't work. So we get an imperial narrative of "fraternity" and "joint land" as they try out their teachings on us. It's enough to mention the tweets from Russian journalist Latynina. One about Kyiv "as the center of the Russian culture" and another about her surprise at just how quickly Russian soldiers die in Ukraine.
Therefore, we should stop looking up to them or attempting to explain something. Of course, trying to separate a part of your own cultural life from yourself is difficult and painful. However, we have other options to watch and study that are better and have higher quality among cultural and sociopolitical actors.
Remember what "Russian peace" brought to our home. We will fight it off, but we may not survive "Russian democracy".
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Suspilne Culture.
Further reading
- How Russian culture urges murder – explained by Yurii Bereza
- Music is outside of politics? Tell that to the dead in Bucha
- What could the future hold for Ukrainian music when the war ends — explained by Yurii Bereza
- Against Interpretation: why Russian film critics don't hit home with us
- How did the Ukrainian music market come to be so dependent on Russia for the past 30 years
- What is de-Russification and why it is happening in Ukraine
