The principle is that of a mailbox set up, as during the Cold War, by a network. For the reference to be clearer, the texts appear to be typed on a typewriter, like the samizdats of yesterday, these writings distributed under the cloak during the Soviet era. Except that it is not a question here of secret plans, nor even of accusatory novels, but of rage. Since April, the site Russian Oppositional Arts Review (ROAR) welcomes all those among the intellectuals who cannot express themselves freely, in Russia, against the war in Ukraine. Everyone can submit an essay, a poem, music, an illustration. Translated from Russian into English, these testimonials are now also translated into French thanks to a team of volunteers.
“This abominable nostalgia”
How to be heard, indeed, in a country that forbids even the word “war”? How to survive in a violent universe full of propaganda? “The ability to laugh is by far one of the last things we are allowed to lose. suggests Lev Rubinstein, a dissident Russian poet and writer, creator of Russian Conceptualism, a 1970s movement intended to undermine Soviet ideology. Because it is not only a life-validated defensive reaction to the mighty onslaught of sinister absurdity that surrounds us, a reliable gauge of our remaining moral and aesthetic standards, but also a universal means of exchanging, or at least of sending signals to each other amidst the murky emanations of the swamps that we call the information space. »
“The ability to laugh is by far one of the last things we are allowed to lose,” Lev Rubinstein, writer and poet
The Russian imperialist heritage, which still claims to enslave Ukraine today, inspires historian Ekaterina Degot with these cutting words: “Russian emigration is again in Istanbul. God save us from nostalgia for the “Russia we have lost”, the poetry of Gumilev, the play “The Days of Turbines” and the Art Deco style. It is with this abominable nostalgia (…) it all started (…). This Russia must be destroyed to the core. »
A young draftsman from Ufa (a city in the Urals) who went to Armenia, Aidar Bekchintaev, for his part, produced a photomontage called So daddy, are you winning? : a father watching on television a tank bearing the letter Z, an emblem of Russian war propaganda, while his son, on the doorstep of the living room, is about to leave, a suitcase in his hand. Cruel portrayal of “the abyss of misunderstanding between generations”… The writer Alekseï Oleïnikov chose poetry: “To hell has peace gone, war is everywhere/Squares, houses and hospitals hit by shells/It’s stupid and ridiculous to ask this question/How do I get into Georgia with my hedgehog?” »
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