Yemeni artist Thiyazen Al-Alawi uses his craft to shed light on the destructive situation in Yemen through street art campaigns. He hopes to inform the public of what the war has done to his homeland.
Moe Moussa is a journalist, podcaster, poet, and the founder of the Gaza Poet Society. He uses various forums and mediums to amplify the voices of Palestinians.
Fatoş İrwen is a Kurdish artist and teacher from Diyarbakır, Turkey working with a variety of materials and techniques.
Hamlet Lavastida has been described as a political activist by way of art. Lavastida uses his art to document human rights abuses in Cuba and to criticise Cuban authorities.Index relies entirely on the support of donors and readers to do its work.
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Today’s dissidents in Russia: tech savvy and willing to risk it all
Evgeny Kissin, one of the most famous pianists in Russia, has described Vladimir Putin as a “bloodthirsty criminal”. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Gkobe
The world in which Index on Censorship was born seems to be reemerging. In August 1968, after the blossoming of freedoms in Czechoslovakia known collectively as the Prague Spring, the Soviet Union invaded the country. Protesters were brutally crushed. Despite the violence and the stranglehold on freedoms back in Russia, eight fearless dissidents took to Red Square in Moscow to demonstrate.
One of the bold demonstrators was Pavel Litvinov, a young physicist at the time. In that same year Litvinov had co-authored a pamphlet entitled Appeal to World Public Opinion, asking those in the west to fight against the suppression of dissent in the Soviet Union. The poet Stephen Spender responded, suggesting the creation of an international committee whose goal would be to support the democratic movement in the USSR. This committee would engage writers, scholars, artists and public personalities from countries like the UK, the USA and also Latin American nations.
This is how Index on Censorship was brought into life, responding to the call of these dissidents and giving them a voice.
More than 50 years later, the USSR doesn’t exist anymore, but Russia has shocked the world with the invasion and consequential brutal war in Ukraine. What remains is the courage and bravery of people and dissidents defying the regime of Vladimir Putin. Below are just six of the noticeable Russian citizens who’ve spoken up against Putin and the war in Ukraine.
Russian artist Victoria Marchenkova, who’s been using Facebook to encourage people in Ukraine to flee to Canada. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Na4ya
“STOP THE WAR” – that’s what the Moscow-born artist Victoria Marchenkova wrote on her website. Marchenkova works with different styles, but with one thing in mind: approaching the economic situation of the world, international traditions and its heritage. After the war in Ukraine began, she announced on her website that her solo exhibition at a Moscow gallery had been delayed until the end of the Russian invasion. Her exact words? “Please let’s save the world all together. STOP THE WAR”. Very active on Facebook, she has also encouraged people in Ukraine to flee to Canada.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”2. Evgeny Kissin – pianist”][vc_column_text]The pianist Evgeny Kissin has been an important name from Russia who declared himself against the war. In a solemn video titled Note of Protest, Kissin called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a crime that has no excuse and also described Vladimir Putin as a bloodthirsty criminal. “Sadly, far from all who initiate criminal wars are punished, but none escape the judgment of history,” Kissin said. The video was published on his Instagram account and was viewed around 100,000 times.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”3. Mikhail Gelfand – biologist”][vc_column_text]Renowned Russian biologist Mikhail Gelfand is considered one of the most important people in the area of molecular evolution, comparative genomics and systems biology. He was the main person behind a letter signed by approximately 7,000 Russian scientists against the war in Ukraine. It’s a bold move. The Russian president has said that every Russian citizen who questions his invasion of Ukraine will be treated as a traitor and that a necessary self-purification of society will help to strengthen the country.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”4. Marina Ovsyannikova – journalist”][vc_column_text]
Daughter to a Russian mother and an Ukrainian father, Marina Ovsyannikova is a Russian journalist who had a job on the Channel One Russia TV channel. She gained prominence after she broke into a state-controlled Russian TV news broadcast and protested against the war. As a result, she was arrested and fined, but was released afterwards. Today, while she waits trial for interrupting the news programme, she is very active on her Instagram account. If convicted, she could be sentenced to 15 years in prison. In a recent post on Instagram, she wrote: “I wanted to demonstrate to the world that not all Russian people believe the same and I believe that many people… are against the war.”
This video grab shows Russian Channel One editor Marina Ovsyannikova holding a poster reading ” Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. Here they are lying to you” during on-air TV studio by news anchor Yekaterina Andreyeva, Russia’s most-watched evening news broadcast. Photo: Zuma Press/Alamy
[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”5. Ilya Varlamov – blogger”][vc_column_text]The Russian Youtuber from Moscow has been speaking openly about the war in Ukraine on his Youtube channel, which is focused on analysing politics in Russia. Often critical in tone he has interviewed people such as Alexei Venediktov, the former editor-in-chief of the now-closed Ekho Moskvy. He has more than 3.3 million subscribers, where he’s been publishing videos almost daily. At the time of print, Varlamov had not been detained for his criticisms. He does have some experience of this though; he was briefly arrested in South Sudan after security found the remote control of a drone in his luggage, accusing him of trying to film military activities with the drone.
Russian Youtuber Ilya Varlamov. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Mitya Aleshkovskiy
[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”6. Youri Doud – blogger”][vc_column_text]Born in East Germany in 1986, Youri Doud sees himself as Russian by identity. He’s worked as a freelance journalist and in 2017 he launched a Youtube channel with the purpose of interviewing Russian celebrities. After Russia began its so called “mission” in Ukraine, Doud shared on his Instagram account a song called 100-year War, written by the group Noize MC, which has achieved millions of likes and reactions. The song discusses what artists should do when it’s not within their power to change a political catastrophe which is developing. The conclusion of the band is short and clear: “We have no other choice than to honestly speak up about what is happening. So that’s what we are doing.
Andrei Kurkov on Russia’s war against Ukrainian culture
Celebrated Ukrainian author Andrei Kurkov. Photo: Juerg Vollmer
After five days of silence, my friend, a writer, journalist, and historian in occupied Melitopol, finally sent me a message. I’d been afraid something had happened to her, that I would never hear from her again. But, thank God, it turned out that she’d simply had no internet access or telephone reception. I asked her to keep a diary of life under occupation, to take photos on her smartphone, and to send all that to me. I would keep it safe. The original diary could then be destroyed.
She’s been living under occupation for more than two weeks and doesn’t set foot outside, for fear of being captured. The director of the Melitopol History Museum, Leyla Ibragimova, a Crimean Tatar, has already been kidnapped. They terrorised her, interrogated her, confiscated her and her family’s phones and computers — then released her. The next morning they picked her up for another interrogation. Activists and journalists are disappearing in the occupied territories. FSB agents walk the streets with lists of names and addresses in hand. These lists were prepared before the start of the war.
Oleg Baturin, a journalist from Kakhovka, was abducted by the Russian military. Eventually, he was released — after eight days of beatings and torture, of demands to go over to the Russian side, of hunger and thirst, of humiliation. Those who beat him hid their faces and forbade him to raise his head and look at them. Is this today’s Russia? Yes. But it is also the Soviet Union of the 1930s. These are the practices of the Gulag. The Ukrainian author Stanislav Aseyev wrote an entire book about the torture camp in Donetsk. After two years of captivity in this camp and in the prison run by separatists, he had plenty of material. He studied closely those who beat and abused Ukrainian prisoners of war and others who had been seized on the streets and brought to this already infamous concentration camp, called “Isolation.” Years ago, the place had been a factory for the manufacture of insulation for electrical wires. Later, under the same name, it became a contemporary art centre. When the separatists, aided by the Russian military, captured Donetsk, they converted it into a concentration camp, with a set of chambers in which all their detainees were tortured. Stanislav Aseyev’s book has already appeared in several languages, including English. I highly recommend it to anyone who seeks to better understand what went on and continues to go on in the separatist “republics” since 2014. And now the same things are happening in the territories occupied by the Russian army.
We’re well into 2022. Books about what is happening now in Ukraine are already being written, but are not yet published.
The unsuccessful attempt to annex or, to put it plainly, occupy all of Ukraine has angered Putin and now, judging by the military actions of the Russian army, Russian generals have been ordered to destroy cities and villages, to kill civilians, and simply to make sure that Ukraine ceases to exist.
This is not the first attempt to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. In the late 1920s, Ukrainian peasants refused to join collective farms, and for this the Soviet government deported 250,000 families to Siberia. In 1932-1933, as punishment for the same individualism and unwillingness to become part of Soviet collective agriculture, all reserves of wheat and, indeed, all sources of nourishment were confiscated from Ukrainian peasants, leaving them with no food for the winter. Some seven million Ukrainians perished during this artificial famine organised by Moscow.
In those same years, the Soviet government decided to destroy Ukrainian culture. Nearly all the country’s leading writers, poets, and playwrights were arrested, sent to Solovki in the north of Russia, and shot. In Ukrainian literary history, the authors of this period are referred to as the “Executed Renaissance.” These people had tried to revive Ukrainian culture after decades of official prohibitions on the use of the Ukrainian language and on anything distinctly Ukrainian in tsarist Russia. Soviet communists had decided that the revival of Ukrainian culture posed a danger to the Soviet Union. And alongside the writers, poets, and playwrights they executed, the NKVD also shot many artists and theatre directors. The works of Mykhaylo Semenko (1892-1937), Maik Yohansen (1895-1937), Mykola Zerov (1890-1937), and dozens of other Ukrainian writers killed in that purge could only be published again after the collapse of the USSR.
Today’s Ukrainian intellectuals face the same danger. That goes for writers and journalists and historians. Anyone who believes that Ukraine should remain independent and become part of Europe is already an enemy of Russia. Culture is what cements a nation. Ukrainian culture has only just begun to revive after 70 years of Soviet rule, 70 years of censorship and persecution.
But today that culture and its representatives are the targets of Russian bombers. The attacks on Kyiv have killed Artem Datsyshyn, the principal dancer of the National Opera of Ukraine, and the famed actress Oksana Shvets. Near Kyiv, in the village of Bucha — home to a number of writers and composers— Oleksandr Kislyuk, a well-known translator from Ancient Greek and other languages, a teacher at the Theological Academy, and a professor at the Drahomanov Pedagogical University, was shot by Russian soldiers on the threshold of his house. It is thanks to him that Ukrainians can read the works of Aristotle, Tacitus, Thomas Aquinas, and other classic authors in their own language.
Now Oleksandr Kislyuk has been murdered and one wonders who will finish the translations he was working on in his final days.
Among those killed in this war are at least three painters. There are also photographers and scientists, musicians and architects, schoolteachers and university professors.
For almost a month, now, Russian bombers have been aiming directly at schools and universities, theatres and libraries.
Near Kyiv, in the village of Ivankiv, a bomb hit a historical museum that housed the works of famous Ukrainian primitive artist Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997). While the museum burned, locals carried her paintings out of the fire. Now those canvases are kept in the homes of people who live next to the ruined museum.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture has sent an order to all museums to prepare their exhibits for evacuation to Western Ukraine. Some museums managed to pack up their collections, others simply lowered them into basements and underground rooms. But none have so far been evacuated. The most important thing is to evacuate people from cities under constant bombardment and artillery fire.
For two weeks, Ukrainian writers tried to extract their colleague, the Russophone prose writer Volodymyr Rafeyenko, from the village of Klavdiyevo, which was practically destroyed by the Russian army. He is a refugee twice over. First, in 2014, he had to leave his apartment in Donetsk. Since then, he and his wife had been living in Klavdiyevo, at the dacha of the Ukrainophone writer and translator Andriy Bondar. Klavdiyevo has been all but flattened by Russian artillery and is surrounded by their tanks. Volodymyr and his wife spent more than a week in the basement of a half-collapsed house. At long last, they managed to break out of encirclement and volunteers took them to Kyiv.
Kyiv is also being hit by rockets, but not so intensively. The chances of survival are greater in Kyiv. There, in his apartment near the railway station, the publisher Mykola Kravchenko* sits at his table and works. He’s editing a novel by a young woman from Lutsk, titled Porcelain Doll. The novel concerns domestic violence. He knows that he won’t be able to publish it anytime soon, but he continues to work in order to preserve his psychological balance, in order to think less about the war.
Yet the war, including the violent attack on Ukrainian cultural heritage, continues. The number of bombed-out churches is already in the tens.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture is still at work and every day its employees collect new information about the historical sites and cultural institutions destroyed by the Russian army.
The list of Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian culture is constantly being updated.
* Editor’s note: Not the Ukrainian political figure of the same name who died in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Marighella’s delayed release shows censorship is alive and well in Brazil
There is a highly symbolic scene in Marighella, a Brazilian film that has only reached movie theatres now, even though it has been ready for release since 2019. An American agent (Charles Paraventi) praises Police Chief Lúcio (Bruno Gagliasso) for the inventiveness with which the revolutionary group Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN) infiltrated radio stations, broadcasting a subversive message using only a tape recorder and circumventing the censorship. The sequence fulfils at least two functions: to reinforce the deep ties between the brutality of the Brazilian military dictatorship and North American imperialist interests; and reinforcing political and social resistance through creativity, a typically Brazilian trait often described as jeitinho or malandragem – a way of circumventing the bureaucratic norms.
I evoke this idea of trickery because it is at the centre of the imbroglio involving the release of Marighella, a political biopic of Carlos Marighella, a Brazilian Marxist-Leninist communist, politician and writer.
Marighella, born in 1911, was regularly in and out of jail between the 1930s and 1950s for criticising the Brazilian government as an active member of the Communist Party.
In 1966, he published The Brazilian Crisis, which argued for an armed struggle against Brazil’s military dictatorship which had been installed as a result of the 1964 coup in the country. Two years later, Marighella was expelled from the Communist Party and he went on to found the ALN, which became involved in robbing banks to finance guerilla warfare and the kidnapping of high profile individuals to win the release of political prisoners.
After the ALN’s involvement in the kidnapping of US Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick, Marighella became a target. On 4 November 1969, he was ambushed by the police in São Paulo and shot dead.
The release of the biopic during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, an apologist of Latin American military dictatorships and nostalgic for the bloodthirsty Brazilian regime that acts as the de facto villain of the film, is timely.
Marighella was supposed to be released in early 2020 but Ancine, the government agency that works to promote national cinema in Brazil, withheld funding of R$1 million (roughly £134,000) for its distribution, alleging a problem in the accounts for another production by O2 Filmes, the film’s producer.
Celebrated actor Wagner Moura, who debuts here as the director, had no doubt that the film was censored.
“It was a time when Bolsonaro was talking about filtering and regulating Ancine,” Moura said at a press event about the movie.
Brazil hasn’t had a censorship department since the end of the military dictatorship, which ended with popular elections in the mid-1980s. The constitution that was enacted at that time was so influenced by the “years of lead” (as the times under the regime are known) that censorship was expressly prohibited by the law.
There are, of course, age rating systems and, with the justification of “protecting the innocence of children”, certain films, events or exhibitions are only released for certain ages, and/or with parents’ authorisation, very much alike the ratings systems in the US or the UK. That’s why, as long as it feels the need to comply with the Constitution, the current far-right Brazilian government needs to be at least as creative as the speeches it seeks to curb.
Hence Moura’s revolt, saying that there would be “veiled censorship”, different than what happened during the dictatorship, applied as a state policy.
“Today they infiltrate people in these agencies, and they make anything impossible to happen. That’s what they did with Marighella. They found a way to make the release impossible, from a bureaucratic point of view,” he said in an interview with Veja magazine.
Without this being state policy, made official by documents, it is difficult to say that there is de facto censorship. Carlos Marighella symbolises much of what the radical wing of the government despises, finding it absurd that public money is used to finance “non-aligned” works.
Bolsonaro himself has even threatened Ancine with extinction because the productions it finances are no longer “aligned” with the government. His government’s special secretary of culture, former actor Mário Frias has even tweeted a response to Moura’s statements: “Did you think I was going to get public funds for this pamphlet garbage?”
This type of declaration by a state representative helps to understand the Brazilian Government’s relationship with culture. Its origin lies in one of the ideological consequences of the end of the military dictatorship, in which some far-right intellectuals and disgraced military personnel came to the conclusion that the left had “won” the “cultural war”, infiltrating universities and fostering ideologically aligned artistic production .
This conclusion was, in part, a reaction to the establishment of the National Truth Commission, dedicated to revealing and documenting the crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship, and the result of a bad reading (and also in bad faith, it should be said) of the theories of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist intellectual.
The rise and permanence of the extreme right in power, they think, would be conditioned to the dismantling of an apparatus of cultural incentive and promotion, developed over the years of redemocratisation. This explains the presence of someone like Frias in charge of culture and the use of jeitinho to impede the exhibition of “misaligned” films such as Marighella.
This institutional trickery, in this case at least, has backfired, since a work is not an isolated object of its historical context. Since release – without the benefit of government funding – Marighella has become the most watched Brazilian production of the last two years, with 100,000 spectators in 300 theatres across the country. This is low in a historic context, as the screen quota which usually ensures that cinemas show a certain amount of locally produced content to counter the influx of foreign films is currently suspended while a new proposal, suggest by Brazil’s opposition parties, is considered.
Despite its success, the film has problems – from the annoying overacting to the lack of real interest in its main character – and it perhaps wouldn’t be so celebrated in another time. In Brazil at the end of 2021, with all the absurdities committed by action or inaction of the Bolsonaro government, Marighella has become the film to be seen.