Their precarity increasingly resembles Soviet times.
Speaking from outside the country a fortnight after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian rapper Oxxxymiron released a video message saying that: “…there are tens of millions of Russians who categorically disagree with this war – and that should be said as loudly as possible”. Oxxxymiron was announcing a series of charity anti-war gigs under the banner Russians against War. The first concert in Istanbul on March 15 raised $30,000 for Ukrainian refugees. The second concert, at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on March 24, raised $50,000. Oxxxymiron is just one of many Russian musicians who are using their platform to campaign against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sergey Khavro is another. Khavro creates dreamy synth-pop under the name Parks, Squares and Alleys. Writing on his Facebook page, Khavro said: Other influential rappers such as Morgenshtern (who packed his bags in December 2021) and Face have also abandoned the country in protest. The latter stated he would never return to Russia and asked the Ukrainian people for forgiveness. But these are only a few examples of the many cultural producers who have left Russia in the past month. For how long, they do not know: abroad is for now a place from which they can articulate dissent without fearing state retaliation. Even though their situation does not compare to what their Ukrainian colleagues are experiencing, Russian musicians find themselves in precarious conditions that increasingly resemble Soviet times. Once again, artists viewed as “inconvenient” are being relegated to the underground and the independent cultural landscape of Russia is being eroded. Two years of Covid-19 and now the war and its sanctions have crippled a music industry that in the past years had tried to develop infrastructure internally and build bridges externally. The thriving scene of the 2010s, which shaped an alternative community in Russia and offered a different version of the country abroad, feels like a faint memory. “We have lost everything”, writes music journalist Nikolai Redkin, and “those who have not left have no strength left in them to create anything”.
