Edgars Raginskis: Cancelling All Russian? Music Censorship during the War in Ukraine скачать в хорошем качестве

Edgars Raginskis: Cancelling All Russian? Music Censorship during the War in Ukraine

Edgars Raginskis (Mag.art., composer, musicologist, journalist / Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music) Cancelling All Russian? Music Censorship During the War in Ukraine From the intensification of the aggressive expansionist politics enacted by the Russian Federation in their neighbouring countries of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014), such claims as “We need to separate art from politics!” and “Art is a manifestation of Russia’s soft power!” have increasingly become a part of public discourse when evaluating possible attitudes towards the Russian music and musicians. These attitudes polarised when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. They resulted in cultural policy changes of varying degrees worldwide and in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, in particular. This paper examines the changing attitude trajectories towards Russian music of the present and the past, the argumentation behind the partial exclusion of Russian music and artists from the concert scenes and public sphere of the Baltic countries, the practical application of the principle of viewing contemporary Russian music environment as a propaganda vehicle of the foreign policy of Russian Federation, and the metamorphosis of the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian cultural landscape since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. KEYWORDS: cancellation, censorship, war, Russian, music, Baltics Edgars Raginskis (b.1984) is a Latvian composer, musicologist, culture journalist, and a PhD candidate at the Hong Kong Baptist University Department of Music, under the supervision of Professor John Winzenburg. He is researching musical censorship in the Composers’ Union of the former Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.