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Russian artists on trial

Posted: Tuesday March 08, 2005 12:37 AM EST

By Valery Nikolsky Credo.ru

Problem of Vandalism Unresolved

Russia—On 4 March participants in the trial of the case concerning the “Beware, Religion” exhibit held a press conference in the Andrei Sakharov “Peace Progress and Human Rights” Museum and Community Center. The press conference was titled “Freedom of conscience and art in the scales of Russian justice,” and was devoted to the conclusion of the hearings on this case in Tagan district court.

Statements about the significance of the trial, unprecedented in Russian history, were made by the accused, attorneys, defense lawyers, art scholars, academics, and representatives of rights defense organizations, including the president of the Russian “Pen Center,” Alexander Tkachenko, the leader of the “For human rights” movement, Lev Ponomarev, attorney Yury Shmidt, who also took part in the defense of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the artist Alexandra Mitlianskaia, and others.

In the main, the conclusions were gloomy. “A new hero has appeared in Russia, the Orthodox believer with a baseball bat in his hands,” noted the director of the Union of Journalists, Igor Yakovenko. “As an historian I know that about a century ago there was a regime that allied with pogromists. The life of that regime came to an end in the house of the merchant Ipatiev. Now the present regime should ponder that.”

“The artist has the right to artistic expression. . . . Why is a prohibition being raised against everything?” the artistic director of the State Center for Contermporary Art, Leonid Bazhanov, said bitterly. “How will I be able to work in such an atmosphere? In Britain there was an exhibit, ‘100 artists see God,’ which were works by 100 of the leading artists of the world. I would like to invite this exhibit to our country, but now this has become problematic.”

“I was the organizer of ‘leftist” exhibitions in Leningrad, and for organizing these unsanctioned exhibitions I spent six years in prison,” rights defender Yuly Rybakov stated. “A brown haze has been hung over the country,” he warned. “We are preparing an exhibit, ‘Beware, Nazism,’ and there also could be attacks upon it.”

Commenting on her own experience from the hearings that were conducted, the head of the group for organizing exhibitions in the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Community Center, Liudmila Vasilovskaia, who is now accused of inciting religious strife, said “my view on artistic works has changed. I look at a catalog and I think about whether there is something ‘blasphemous’ here. That’s very dangerous.”

“I feel as if I am a participant in Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial,’” defendant Anna Mikhalchuk noted. “Something absurd has been happening; Nobody is interested in the exhibit, or what the artists wanted to say, or what I initially saw at the opening. In the courts they simply considered us guilty. . . .”

Museum director Yury Samodurov compared this trial to the time when they condemned “degenerate art” that threatened the “unity of the German people.” He also noted that among the almost 400 articles that have appeared during the trial, many were written in a clearly accusatory tone. For example, an article in “Nezavisimaia gazeta” was titled “Artists offend Orthodox believers.” And “Moscow News” published “The last word of the canary,” which were fragments from the concluding speech by defendant Samodurov in the 2 March court session, and it omitted some words from the text without ellipses. The original said that “a guilty verdict will signify that the Russian government and the Moscow patriarchate have announced the beginning of the construction of a ‘religious fence’ between Russia and the rest of Europe in the sphere of freedom of conscience and of the right to free distribution, reception, and exchange of information and ideas, which will negatively affect the reputation of our country.” The next sentence spoke about “religious toleration,” Yury Samodurov noted.

However some press conference participants did not share the general gloomy mood. “I would like to say that this campaign in court is an enormous diversionary move from the trial that did not happen,” declared the head of the department of contemporary movements of the Tretiakov State Gallery, Andrei Erofeev. “The point is that these people committed an act of vandalism,” he said, recalling those who attacked the exhibit. “Imagine somebody with nationalistic views who breaks into our halls and begins tearing up the works of Marc Chagall simply because of his ancestry,” he said, noting that an exhibit of this artist has opened in the Tretiakov. “These people must be punished, not because they are Orthodox but because they are vandals. We should devote all our efforts to seeing that this problem of vandalism is resolved.” “It seemed to me that the judge in the Tagan court agreed with me humanly speaking,” he noted. “Nowadays, when the question of prohibiting Sorokin’s opera ["Rosenthal’s Children"] or taking Marat Gelman to court [for the “Russia 2” exhibit] is being decided, this is a threat to all of Russian culture and is part of a frontal attack on contemporary culture.”

Speaking about the actions of the defense in the event of the issuance of a guilty verdict, attorney Anna Stavitskaia reported that the verdict will be appealed in Moscow city court and if this higher court leaves the verdict in force then in accordance with article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, an appeal will ensue to the European Court on Human Rights. The attorneys intend to show that there is an “egregious violation of article 6 of the convention” by virtue of the lack of specificity in the indictment, attorney Sergei Nasonov noted.

“In the case file there are 5,000 statements from persons calling themselves Orthodox in the form ‘I did not see it, but I know,’” Yury Samodurov said in response to a question about confessional statements to the court. “In court, a representative of the Pentecostals, Riakhovsky, made a statement, and Rabbi Kogan and some Muslim presented written declarations. I think that was in accordance with the principle, ‘I was asked so I wrote.’” Recalling that religion was suppressed by the authorities for a long time, the head of the “For human rights” movement, Lev Ponomarev noted that the “most aggressive, the most radical” representatives of believers have now come to the surface.

A correspondent of the TV program “Russian View,” Alexander Egortsev, tried to provoke discussion of the question of the attitude of rights defenders to the works of Avdei Ter-Oganian from the “New Russian Art” series, but he received a rebuff on the part of the secretary of the federal policy board of the Union of Right Forces, Leonid Gozman, who stated that “it is impossible to discuss the works in this situation where the Russian federation prosecutor’s office has undertaken an attempt to convict the organizers of the exhibit and has made it impossible to discuss these works as objects of art.”

“I would wish that our jurisprudence did not depend upon public passions,” one of the oldest of Russian rights defenders, Vladimir Albrekht, stated in commenting on the trial. He is the author of the book, “How to conduct yourself properly in an interrogation.” “But this trial also has another meaning for Russia; if these works appeared, let’s say, in New York, people will come and see how much freedom there is here.” “This trial revealed Orthodox terrorism,” rights defender Viktor Sokirko summed up the discussion of the trial. “I appeal to our intelligentsia, which should find ways of opposing this.”

The conclusion of the event in the Andrei Sakarov “Peace, Progress, Human Rights” Museum and Community Center was critical in the best sense of the word: the artist German Viinogradov, who recorded all of the hearings, was presented the honor of the museum in the form of a butterfly, “the symbol of freedom,” and also the book “100 artists see God” from the exhibit that was held in the London Tate Gallery in January of this year.

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