Dhe wave of emigration of Russian writers, artists and musicians as a result of the Ukraine war, like that after the Russian civil war a hundred years ago, marks an epochal turning point and has a lot in common with it. That was immediately clear to the Russian film director Roma Liberov, who now lives in London and deals with the question of artistic freedom in repressive states. The 42-year-old Liberov, whose friends now live in Berlin, Prague, Paris and Istanbul, is again observing the same escape routes as back then. And a new dispersal compounded by Russia’s notorious failure to consolidate, Liberov testifies over the phone to the FAZ.
The filmmaker says he considers it his duty to preserve the dispersed culture and to fight to ensure that it is not equated with the criminals at Russia’s head of state. That’s why he founded the music project “After Russia” (“Posle Rossii”, in English “After Russia”) last autumn, for which émigré pop singers set lyrics by poets who emigrated at the time to music. The album, which has been available on YouTube, Spotify, AppleMusic and other platforms since January, to which a website of the same name contributes lyrics and biographies, made it into the top ten in the popularity list of Russian-language music publications, was positively reviewed by the state-loyal media but also because of its “treacherous attitude “ of the artists involved attacked.
That sane section of Russian society
As then, many authors and intellectuals who will not be able to maintain their level far from home, Liberov is convinced, are leaving. The poem “Return to Russia – in verse” (Wernut’sja v Rossiju – stichami) by Georgi Ivanov (1894 to 1958) tells of the glowing longing for cultural affiliation, which the only 22-year-old Dagestani singer RA Svet (Ramazan Akhmedov ), who fled to Australia, with tender, delirious singing. Ivanov, who died in Paris and actually only returned to his country posthumously in verse, had a special position as the “first poet” of the Russian émigré scene. The rock singer and frontman of the group “Nogu Svelo!”, Max Pokrovsky, set Ivanov’s poem “Ice March” (Ledjanoj pochod) to music, which outlines the emergence of the White Army from the annihilation experience of the civil war chaos.
The 54-year-old Pokrovsky, who moved to New York in 2016, sings the gallows-humorous verses about going under together as a brash dance song, which is accompanied by a choir with sarcastic sweetness. The poem – and its music – convey the attitude towards life of his relatives, band members and acquaintances, Pokrovsky writes to us from a tour. That is the sane section of Russian society that is trying to save itself from a rabid mob. According to Pokrovsky, most of them felt as if they were on the “ice march” of an entire generation.
The singer Monetochka (Elisaveta Gyrdymowa), who fled to Lithuania and was declared a “foreign agent” in January, chose the poem “Erschießung” (Rasstrel) by Vladimir Nabokov, the only person who left the country at the time to have an international career. To the pounding retro piano accompaniment, the 24-year-old artist intones a harsh waltz song by the exile, who is haunted by nightmares of his execution at home, but who secretly almost longs for it. Another musician, the rapper Schym (Mikhail Epifanov), now living in Lisbon, interprets the legendary poem “Sorrow is the beginning of man” (Tschelowek natschinajetsja s gorja) by Alexej Eisner (1905 to 1984), who emigrated as a child, which was written in the Prague Exile came into being and gained cult status in émigré circles. Eisner, who was enthusiastic about Eurasianism, ultimately followed his homesickness, also driven by poverty. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1940, only to spend sixteen years in the GULag and in exile. Schym’s sonorous baritone, accompanied by improvisational piano playing in the style of a late night bar, declaims Eisner’s suggestive verses about departure, grief and vanishing traces, in which the title line returns at varying intervals or is played around like the human figure in a snow flurry.
Some of the musicians involved still live in Russia. Such as the folk singers Mischa Dymow and Mila Waravina, who recorded a farewell poem by the Don Cossack and White Guard Nikolai Turowerow (1899 to 1972), who fled in 1920, as a rough a cappella duet in Rostov-on-Don. The Trochaic verses depict a Cossack who, like Turowerov, leaves the Crimea by ship and shoots his horse, which is faithfully following him. Turowerow, who continued to publish and archive the cultural legacies of escaped Cossacks in Paris, was considered the leading literary voice of the destroyed Cossacks.
The rapper Noize MC (Iwan Alexeyev), who lives in Lithuania, chose a poem by the Ukrainian artist Sergej Bongart (1918 to 1985), who fled German-occupied Kiev in 1943, came to the USA in 1948 and was successful there later. They are tragi-comic verses about the “Russian Parnassus” in exile, in a foreign country dead poets and writer-mad princes whose works feed mice in antiquarian bookshops. Bongart’s bitter irony had the effect of a sobering slap in the face, writes Noize MC of the FAZ. You and Bongart’s fate forbid any self-pity, teach historical distance to yourself and inspire you to dare the impossible.