Part Three:

Creativity, markets and cultural policies

Cultural policies in post-Soviet Russia  - Nickolay Anastasyev

During the 1980s, the perestroika process broke down much of the repressive climate which had surrounded the arts and culture in the former Soviet Union for many years. The changes were largely due to a discarding of obsolete ideologies and had little to do with economics. But the collapse of Communism and the transition from a state-controlled to a market economy turned the arts upside down almost overnight. The winds of economic change then blew sharply on the cultural sector.

Before 1992 publishers did not have to worry about the cost of paper, materials and printing facilities. Theatre administrators and directors did not need to worry about rent, the price of sets, electricity and so on. Librarians could order new books within their budgets without hesitation. Everything was controlled by the State, and so the State was responsible for financing all such cultural activity.

Many professional workers in the cultural sector were not prepared for the suddenness of the change, and the economic effects on the sector have been catastrophics. Although many theatres, publishing houses, film studios, museums, libraries and so on are still state property, subsidies have been either cut to a minimum or terminated altogether. Print runs of literary magazines have fallen from hundreds of thousands in the late 1980s to ten thousand or less now. For example, The Urals, one of the most reputable journals in Russia outside Moscow and St Petersburg, now has a circulation of only 1,600. Theatre Monthly, the only title in the country focused on the dramatic arts, has now ceased publication. Print-runs of books have been drastically reduced. The film industry is in ruins; the leading Russian studio, Mosfilm, which used to produce up to fifty films a year in the 1970s and 1980s, brought out only three films in 1997. Libraries have no money to maintain their holdings, and the administration of the Tretyakov Gallery, with its unique collection of Russian paintings and drawings, has twice had to reduce its security service.

Thus, whilst spiritual freedom may be an absolute value and an undisputed blessing, economic freedom, in the form of the free market, has proved to be a curse.

Yet the picture of the cultural sector in present-day Russia is not an entirely gloomy one.

For instance, the number of private publishing houses is growing steadily, and some of them are bringing out what may be termed serious literature. The theatre is slowly picking itself up. Some of the drama companies that first appeared with the dawn of perestroika are now coming of age; the most striking example of these is Oleg Takakov's ‘Tabakerka', and some of the older theatres too, such as the Arts Theatre and the Sovremennik, are regaining public attention.

In fact, the process of transition has meant that the place of the state in subsidizing cultural projects is being taken over by various foundations, sponsors and patrons from abroad. For example, the Tabakerka company is generously supported by Incombank, one of the most respected of Russian financial institutions. Logovaz, a leading company in the Russian automobile industry, has been supporting the activities of the Triumpf Foundation which gives annual prizes for high achievements in Russian arts and letters. Another major financial group, Oneksim, has just signed an agreement with the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg to finance an ambitious publishing programme. The contributions from outside the country of George Soros's ‘Open Society' Institute are noteworthy, as is the ‘Pushkin' programme inaugurated six years ago by the French Government to stimulate Russian translation of French literature.

Against this background, the cultural policies of the state look unimpressive, to say the least. True, the government has to look to countless urgent priorities elsewhere. It is true too that a democratic state in a free market system cannot be the sole, or even the main, patron of the arts. However, it should be said that the government is making an effort to support libraries, museums, theatres and publishers, and has taken several commendable initiatives in the field of culture, including the federal book-publishing programme and the recently-launched state-owned TV channel called ‘Culture'. But it is clear none the less that culture is fairly low in the order of state priorities.

Culture in Russia will of course survive. But it also needs certain facilities if it is to function normally. It remains for Russia to reconsider its priorities and to adapt cultural policies to the changes that have intervened in the economy since 1992.