The legal import of books from Russia (previously massive in scale) has practically stopped. Photo: grunechka / Flickr. All rights reserved.In recent months, the wave of bans and blacklists in Ukraine’s cultural politics since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in the east of the country has reached new heights. Last November, Ukraine’s State Film Agency revoked registration for a popular sitcom, “In-laws” (Svaty), banning it from the country’s TV channels: one of the Russian actors had been put on a security service blacklist for publicly supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and regularly visiting the peninsula, making him an official threat to national security.
Then in mid-January, the agency banned the Russian film Matilda, which depicts a love affair between the future Tsar Nicholas II and the half-Polish ballet dancer, Matilda Kshesinskaya (Valery Gergiev, the film’s musical director, had already been blacklisted for a long time). And two days later, The Guardian published an article by historian Anthony Beevor protesting the decision to ban the Russian translation of Stalingrad, his historical account of the 1942-1943 battle. An expert committee at the State Committee for TV and Radio Broadcasting included the book on a list of works that are banned from being imported to Ukraine from “the aggressor state”, because of its “provocative nature”.
In the Ukrainian media world, news about yet another Russian cultural figure, film or book being blacklisted is hardly world-shattering. Over the last four years, the list has lengthened to include 118 people. The legal import of books from Russia (previously massive in scale) has practically stopped, and although the expert committee above regularly publishes lists of banned books (there are 25 at present), there is no indication of either the criteria used or checks on its effectiveness. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian public has split into two clear camps. One will support any action that limits Russia’s media and cultural presence (especially of the mass produced kind) in Ukraine’s public sphere. The other argues for a “ban on bans”, on the grounds that freedom of speech is an essential element of democracy, or that in our age of global communication it’s basically impossible to ban anything.
