Alexandr Nevzorov: Laima Vaikule, Crimea and a funny doll circus

On a scandal around Laima Vaikule’s words about Crimea

Nowadays Russia suffers from a palpable, serious deficit of scandals it can’t get away from. That’s the reason why they laid into poor Vaikule. And this appeared absolutely out of nowhere because an artist’s opinion by no means should be taken into account.

Even when artists cutely compare themselves to children, they flatter themselves too much, because an artist is sillier than a child. Speaking about children, we imply a certain level of brain’s underdevelopment, a lack of knowledge and ability to navigate the world. But a child has everything to look forward to while artists often can only look back. There’s no room for development in their case because they feel comfortable with their niche, their big or humble stardom. They realized that in order to earn money and be in demand, what they already know and can is enough for them. Actors are the most difficult and ignorant people in an intellectual sense.

That’s why I’m a little amused to hear artists’ remarks being discussed.

My worst fears were confirmed in this Vaikule scandal. Vaikule belongs to a civilized part of the world that dictates its own rules in regards to ideas of beauty, human relationships, Crimea, racism, Nazism, antiquity and modernity. And being a product of her environment, she expressed an absolutely normal for a civilized person thing. In essence, she said of Crimea that it’s not Russian, that from a point of view of a civilized Europe it doesn’t belong to Russia in any way, and named this as the reason why she can’t go there.

And everything would have been fine if these words hadn’t been uttered by an artist. A couple days later, being under the pressure of the erupted scandal, she started to waver – take her own words back, shove them in different places, look for double and treble meaning in them, manoeuvre, fidget and apologize. And this again demonstrates that any artist’s opinion should be ignored. An artist isn’t a journalist, writer, philosopher, scientist or political scientist. It’s a person who under the influence of the general mood can say anything and then with the same success and easiness take his words back.

This story also has a political aspect to it. People who don’t work in a political sphere shouldn’t have anything to do with it. But it’s only possible if politics is absolutely civilized and can be inconspicuous. The main goal of any normal politics is to guarantee prosperity and security for all who live in an area of particular politicians’ responsibility. It’s their profession, their job. There’s no need to participate in that.

More than that, it’s better not to know anything about it, because all these relationships between humans are not a very intellectual line of work. And it’s better if these relationships would take place at some professional level, on their own. The majority of people doesn’t know and are not interested in how neurosurgical operations are carried out, although it’s a very important thing too. We’re not really interested in the pressure in the sewerage, although disruption of this pressure would likely cause big problems in our life, common to all. And there are a thousand similar things that only professionals should really know and do.

In this regard, politics does not differ from neurosurgery, sanitation or pot-making. The only important thing is a product they provide, and it doesn’t matter how they make it. A discussion of political nuances is an activity for a deeply unintellectual public as well. I do it because I’m paid money for it.

Going back to the Vaikule scandal, it should be taken into account that in present-day Russia there’s no unified ideology that could sum up people’s fallacies. For example, in the past, the Inquisition and the Roman Catholic Church published and updated the so-called indexes of heresies in which there were clear instructions on what one mustn’t think or say, how one mustn’t imagine particular things. It dictated which opinions can’t not only be disseminated but simply exist inside a person’s mind. And it was great because everyone knew precisely what can and can’t be done.

There’s no such thing in Russia. Here everything is very illusory, fluid, fuzzy and vague. Some people are allowed to do things others can’t do. What others can’t do, some third party can. Let’s take Vaikule’s words about her being a citizen of the world as an example. Who says that? If Vladimir Putin came out and said that we are the citizens of the world, everybody would immediately pick up these words, start repeating them, and they would become a motto of the week. Eventually, everything would be forgotten of course. But if some person from the opposition said them, everybody would immediately brand him a Russophobe. So everything totally depends on who says particular words. There are no clear rules. In the Soviet times, there was a state ideology – the very same that is banned by Constitution right now. And all attempts to bring an ideology back are hampered by the fact that nobody has come up with a new one yet. Nobody has yet formulated an idea or a meaning of modern Russia, its purpose, the attitude to its past or dreams of the future. And as a result, we have the chaos that can be exploited if one has a certain degree of professionalism.

But when some showbiz doll appears and, opening her artificial eyelids, suddenly declares something, this doll, as we see, gets attacked by similar dolls. And a funny doll circus begins that isn’t dangerous to anyone and doesn’t matter but allows all sides to feel important, remind of themselves, create hype. They think that this way they can curry favour with the Kremlin, but the Kremlin doesn’t care about their toadying. It doesn’t even notice it. But a media world strongly depends on the reactions to certain events, so one can remind of himself only by precisely such reaction. And when such opportunity arises, everybody, of course, takes it.