Cultural cringe

Ilya Klishin

There’s a specific genre of Russian journalism that has no counterpart in the West – it essentially involves asking foreigners who live in Russia to give their opinions on anything and everything.

Not necessarily famous or talented individuals, just any old foreigners. Russians studiously pretend that they couldn’t care less how they’re thought of abroad, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a collective psychological complex – call it cultural cringe.

As we all know, there are people (usually teenagers) who really do fret over what others think of them – growing up pains – people who plan every move through, in advance, while eyeing the potential reactions of those who surround them. In Russia, it’s a whole nation … Can you imagine the Americans suddenly developing an obsessive preoccupation with the opinions of some Russian emigrant from Brooklyn, about Americans as a whole, so much so that the New Yorker starts publishing his pontifications? Madness, but that’s exactly analogous to what actually does happen in Russia.

Once we take this into account, the Russian obsession with the Eurovision Song Contest becomes rather easier to understand. It’s got nothing to do with the housewife-friendly pop tunes, and everything to do with the nations-grading-each-other aspect: finally, a chance to find out what the rest of Europe REALLY thinks of Russia!

Things have got so bad that dozens of serious, geopolitically-themed articles are penned after every Eurovision in reaction to that year’s voting patterns (to say nothing of what happens on social media, with Eurovision-related posts proliferating in their hundreds of thousands).

People seem to be writing even more than usual this time round – a conspiracy theory is at play to boot. Ordinary folk voted us winners, write “patriotic” columnists, but clandestine mechanisms robbed us of our victory; well, there’s the “rotten essence of European democracy” for you. But the voting system is by no means the only Eurovision talking point in Russia – the lyrics of the winning song have generated even greater controversy.

Admittedly, these do stand out against the backdrop of meaningless, generalised blather about “love” that has always been a staple of the contest (and this year’s Russian entry is no different). The winner, for those still not in the know, was Jamala, the Ukrainian singer (of Crimean Tatar descent), who scooped the Eurovision title with a song about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars (its title, “1944,” referring to the year when the ethnic cleansing of the peninsula began). Jamala herself was born in Kyrgyzstan, which is where her father’s family was deported.

The singer declared that she’d channeled the pain of her people, and resolved to share it with the world. And it would appear that she’s succeeded: following her win, the harrowing history of the Crimean Tatars has once again been brought into the spotlight – not least in Russia. Commentators on federal channels congratulated the winner through gritted teeth before asking whether the decision could, you know, possibly be political – the question addressed to no one in particular.

Next morning, pro-regime tabloids featured editorials wondering who might have benefitted from this provocation against Russia. Stalin’s repressions and Russia itself were being equated by means of a cunning journalistic subterfuge, which would allow the tag of “national slanderer” to be slapped on anyone decrying the various iniquities of Soviet totalitarianism.

Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin bloggers really let loose – no need to hold back online. Their primary argument (a vile one, but honest in its vileness) was that the Crimean Tatars were rightfully deported on account of their collaboration with the Nazis; whence the inevitable (putinist) conclusion that the current Ukrainian government also consists of Fascists …

But here’s a question. If (almost) the entire country took such euphoric delight in the annexation of Crimea, why has a song about a difficult chapter in the history of the peninsula’s indigenous inhabitants elicited nothing but hatred and anger? Furthermore, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Mejlis (the Crimean Tatars’ representative body in Crimea) was banned, and the Tatar TV channel shut down. It’s all looking very much like a trend.

Generally speaking, how can you call yourself master of a land whose inhabitants you clearly detest? For Russia didn’t even need these people; an empty chunk of land would have suited us down to the ground. Only this isn’t even about land (something Russia possesses in greater abundance than any other country on earth). It’s about giving the finger to the West – the selfsame West whose opinions we value so much.