In a televised address Friday with top cultural figures, Putin said the West was “trying to undo an entire 1,000-year-old civilization, our people,” citing the cancellation of events with Russian artists in protest of the invasion of Ukraine. “Now they are dealing with the culture of cancellation, removing even Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff from the posters. “Russian authors and books have now been canceled,” Putin said. Several events in which Russian cultural figures voiced support for the war were canceled, including concerts by award-winning Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a friend and supporter of Putin, who was part of the meeting on Friday. Some events involving dead Russian cultural figures have also been abandoned, with the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra removing Russian composer Tchaikovsky from its program, a decision widely criticized by Western cultural figures. Putin said in his speech that the last time such a campaign against “unwanted literature” was launched was when Nazi supporters burned books in the 1930s. He went on to compare Russia’s treatment to the controversy surrounding Rowling’s comments about trans people. “Child author Joan Rowling was recently fired because she – the author of books that have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide – was disliked by fans of so-called gender freedoms,” Putin said. Rowling on Friday distanced herself from Putin’s comments by sharing an article about jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Twitter. “Criticisms of Western culture of annulment are probably no better than those slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance or imprisoning and poisoning their critics,” the British author wrote, adding the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine. Putin has repeatedly expressed contempt for Western “liberal” values in the past, comparing the culture of annulment with the coronavirus. Asked by a Russian journalist about Rowling last year, Putin said he “took part in the traditional approach – a woman is a woman, a man is a man, a mother is a mother, a father is a father.” Andrei Kolesnikov, of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, said Putin’s speech on Friday gave a different picture of the “distorted” view of the Russian leader on the West. “Putin uses the information he receives from advisers and then creates his own reality for the West,” Kolesnikov said. “He hears about some extreme examples happening in the West and then convinces himself that this is the trend. He does not like the shade “. Kolesnikov said Friday’s meeting with the Russian cultural elite was intended to show the Russian public that the West was waging a parallel cultural war against the country, four weeks after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “Putin wants to tell the Russians that he is under siege, and culturally. “In his eyes, the West is in a ruthless war against traditional Russian values.”
