Insult to injury: Russia’s cultural appropriation of Ukrainian artists
- Res Publica
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
Clichés about countries, their cultures, and their histories influence the way we see and judge the world. For that reason, soft power is globally important. Yet, history is more complex than clichés. For example, Russian culture is part of European culture. But it is also the product of an empire composed of multiple influences and talented people of many nationalities, not just Russian.
Toxic exceptionalism in another name
The myth of the Russian soul is still strong in Western countries despite being a blurry and at times specious concept. For example, the 2009 US film Cold Souls purported to describe how large, expressive Russian souls are different from small Western souls. In this telling, a Russian soul is pure, with an infinite capacity to suffer and experience feelings fully. But under the veneer of seeming moral depth and poetic pining, the idea of the ‘Russian soul’ also hides a facet of toxic, imperialistic exceptionalism.
A painting can say a thousand misleading words
Some art exhibitions seek to solidify this idea of the Russian soul in the Western minds. A telling example was the 2021-2022 exhibition of Ilya Repin in the Petit Palais in Paris. The exhibition was originally curated in Russia and came to France after a stay in Finland. Overall, its depiction of Repin exaggerated the stereotype of Russians as a simple, obedient, devoutly orthodox, and blissfully non-Westernised people with big, sensitive souls. But more alarmingly, the exhibition also sought to mislead the audiences about the painter’s origins and the cultural heritage he represented.
For example, the exhibition presented the painter as an innocent rustic, born to a serf family in a small village, who first studied icon painting. But this portrayal is misleading. The Moscow-born Olga Medvedkova, a director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, offered a point-by-point rebuttal of its claims. Her trenchant critique deserves quoting at length:
We almost jumped at every sentence. No, Repin was not born into ‘a family of serfs’! Absolutely not. His paternal grandfather was a Cossack… No, Chuguyev, where Repin was born, is not and never was a ‘village’, but a town in the Kharkiv Governorate. Generally speaking, Repin was very strongly attached to his Ukrainian origins, often painting pictures on Ukrainian and ‘Cossack’ subjects… No, Repin did not begin by learning the art of icons there, but first studied at the School of Military Topographers. No, he did not then study at the School of Drawing in Chuguyev, but at the one in St. Petersburg after his move… Why so much imprecision, so much false information, when Repin’s biography is so well studied? Why portray Repin as a Russian peasant-serf, a master icon painter? Why all these clichés? Probably out of love for ‘Russia’. But for which Russia?
Cultural appropriation or wilful destruction of Ukrainian heritage?
Indeed, Repin’s art is more complex than any cliché, and it resists attempts to promote a chauvinistic idea of ‘Russia’. His life shows his attachment to his Ukrainian roots and his distaste for Russian or Soviet imperialist schemes. This 2023 article in the Kyiv Times, for example, relates how Repin was alienated by the 1876 Ems Ukaz. This was an imperialistic decree signed by Tsar Alexander II that banned the use of the Ukrainian language when printing new documents and staging new plays, among other areas.
In response, Repin painted ‘Verchornysti’ – a gorgeous and exuberant portrayal of the so-named Ukrainian agricultural festival – in 1881. Lest anyone doubt his intentions and views on the Russian imperialists attempts to eradicate Ukrainian culture, he signed his name on the painting in Ukrainian.
Museums all over the world now label Ilya Repin as Ukrainian. This act, of course, irritates Russian so-called ‘anti-Fake’ publications that argue that since Ukraine was not an independent state in 19th century, Ukrainians did not exist at the time as a nation.
An empire eroding nationalities
In fact, the Russian Empire was composed of many nationalities. The artistic creativity of the capital Saint Petersburg owed a lot to them, and to Ukrainians in particular. The Soviet Union celebrated Repin as a famous master of realism and described him as Russian. But as the Kyiv Times article also relates, Repin spent the last decades of his life in Finland and refused to move to Russia after Finnish independence. The Soviet government tried at least three times to bring Repin back from Finland, with Stalin himself making an attempt. All were in vain.
Repin’s case was not an isolated example. Ivan Aivazovsky was another painter that Russian soft power Russified for its needs. Ukrainian with Armenian roots, Aivazovsky spoke Ukrainian and Polish, besides Russian. Although well known for his marine works, he also painted many other landscapes, though Moscow’s disinformation narratives have less interest in them.
Not just paintings
Recently, Russia’s cultural appropriation of Ukrainian artists and works has continued. Radical Russian propagandists regularly troll Ukrainian artists and other cultural figures by taking famous pro-Ukrainian songs and setting them to nationalist Russian lyrics or images. For example, a famous song by the Polish group Enej, ‘Near the Poplar’, is about Ukrainian defenders. Fellow artists such as Shumei have performed covers of the song, respecting the copyright. But a Russian artist stole it.
Other instances of theft abound. A Russian provocateur shamelessly pilfered the satirical song ‘Vanka-vstanka’ by Masha Bondarneko that mocked Russian militarism. A member of the Spartan Battalion turned ‘Hear the Anthem’, a song about the Bucha massacre by the Ukrainian rapper Skofka, into a song praising the Russian Army. Yet another song – ‘Plyve Kacha’, about fallen participants in the Revolution of Dignity – became a music video filmed in Azovstal by Akim Apachov, a pro-Russian propagandist and rapper. Scriabin’s song ‘Mom’ was adapted in Russian without mentioning the original work.
Only Russia can do great things
Russian artists and propagandists have appropriated many other songs, sometimes totally reversing their meaning to serve imperialist goals against Ukraine. A list is even available. The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation made a compilation of iconic Soviet songs translated from Ukrainian into Russian. Today many people still don’t realise that they were originally Ukrainian. They embrace the cliché that Great Russian culture produces amazing songs while countries like Ukraine or Belarus have little creativity and lack culture. This stereotype is wrong.
We must recognise that Russia purposefully pushes such harmful cultural clichés as a form of manipulation. Sure, Russian cultural history includes many great artists. But sometimes, what is assumed to be a celebration of Russian art is actually an attempt to repress, or even erase, the cultural identity of Ukrainians, Armenians, Latvians, Estonians, Georgians and many other peoples who suffered at the hand of Russian imperial expansionism. Don’t be deceived.
Article and pictures first time published on the EUvsDisinfo web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
