At a recent press conference, a former Russian culture minister, Mikhail Shvydkoi, who now heads the Federal Agency for the Arts and Film, read a brief review of his agency's performance in 2004 and outlined the tasks for the year ahead. Under funding featured prominently on his list of problems facing Russia's institutions of culture. This is hardly surprising, given that the Russian government has been consistently cutting spending on culture and the arts in recent years.
This brings to mind an Oriental saying: If you have a lot of money, eat meat; if you have little money, eat nothing but meat. Sounds like a nice apology of healthy, nutritious food, doesn't it?
There are several options for switching Russia's artistic community over to "a meat diet": cutting the number of arts events, abandoning the principle of giving everyone at least something, prioritizing problems to be addressed, stepping up PR activity to facilitate problem-solving, and, finally, attracting private funds, including through the privatization of cultural monuments.
The argument may sound convincing, but it implies an even higher degree of austerity for cultural institutions. Most of the government allocations will likely remain in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where three major renovation projects are now in progress. In the Russian capital, work is underway to refurbish the Bolshoi Theater and the Pashkov House, an imposing building erected by the Kremlin wall to Matvei Kazakov's designs. And in St. Petersburg, the Mariinsky Theater is undergoing reconstruction. There will be five to seven other ambitious projects to finance in the nation's two largest cities next year, including the Golden Mask Theater Awards, the 10th International Ballet Competition, and the Moscow International Contemporary Art Biennale. But only one large-scale project is planned in the Russian provinces-repairs to the Novosibirsk Opera.
Maybe forthe 60th V-E anniversary, the government will allocate a bit more than it has originally pledged, the minister said with a sigh. His sigh was eloquent enough to stir a storm in the audience: Why do cultural institutions always have to content themselves with leftovers? How will regional culture survive? Who will finance repairs to the Perm Philharmonic's roof? And why have cultural authorities come under a barrage of criticism from ministers?
Russian Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov faced severe criticism at a recent cabinet session, where he made a keynote speech. Fellow ministers and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov blamed him, among other things, for the low quality of TV content. Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu insisted there was a need to reintroduce censorship for television broadcasters. But why should the culture minister be made responsible for too much sex and violence on private channels?
"Well, let's take soccer off air then," Economic Minister German Gref proposed jokingly in an effort to alleviate the tension. "I don't like soccer," he said.
But Mr. Gref's joke passed unnoticed. Premier Fradkov kept silent, encouraging further public humiliation of the Culture Minister.
"We took some stick," Mr. Shvydkoi told reporters. Both he and Mr. Sokolov deserve compassion, as they have to put up a bold front. Government subsidies for culture are on the decline, with conservation and development programs to get 2,238 million rubles less next year than in 2004 and allocations for the film industry cut by 310 million rubles. The figures indicate that the government takes culture and the arts less and less seriously these days and that it does not even bother to encourage private investment with tax breaks.
We are facing a Chinese puzzle here, with federal authorities trying to retain their grip on culture, yet unwilling to support it financially, as they did in the Soviet era.
The federal government wants to teach culture to be self-sufficient, but it does not yet know how. So at this point, it is just trying to shift the burden of funding to local authorities' shoulders.
However, Russia's movie industry has already demonstrated it can survive without state support. Its plans for next year envisage the production of 75 full-length feature films, 572 documentaries, and 52 animation movies. Particular emphasis is being placed on war films, ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in WWII. The movies to be released next year include "Captain," about the hero submariner Alexander Marinesco; "Leningrad," about defenders of the besieged city in 1943 and 1944; "A Time to Gather Stones," about first efforts to interact with German prisoners of war; and "Ninth Company," about the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan.
Thanks to a smart success strategy proposed by Alexander Golutva, Shvydkoi's deputy for the cinema, some of the latest Russian-made movies have been able to outdo Hollywood blockbusters at the box office. It seems quite realistic for the Russian film industry to produce four films that will each gross $10 million in box-office receipts, ten pictures that will garner $2 million, and twenty others likely to fetch at least a million. That money will be enough to keep the industry going and even to help it develop further.
Other sectors involved with culture and the arts should follow suit, to avoid being dependent on increasingly meager government handouts.
