Pride started as a way to give voice to the silenced, but it lost its way. Ahead of its 50th anniversary, a new protest movement has emerged
CATEGORY: Volume 51.02 Summer 2022
Cancelling Russian culture is today’s moral imperative
Putin has used Russian culture to further his aims. Promoting it today risks furthering his agenda, writes Marina Pesenti
Contents – The battle for Ukraine: Artists, journalists and dissidents respond
The summer issue of Index magazine concentrated its efforts on the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine and consequential effects around...
The battle for Ukraine: Artists, journalists and dissidents respond
In the summer 2022 issue of Index on Censorship, people across the spectrum talk about the corrosive effect of the war in Ukraine on freedoms. Viktoria Sedult, a journalist in Hungary, writes about how Europe’s most right-wing leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, used fears of being embroiled in the war to secure a resounding electoral victory. Hanna Komar, an activist from Belarus, tells how she is desperately trying to challenge her parents on the lies they see on their TV. We give space to Ukrainian writers and artists, with a moving essay from Andrey Kurkov on how today, as in the past, Russia is trying to erase Ukraine’s culture, and a discussion with the poet Lyuba Yumichuk on children in Donbas being fed an alternative history. We publish the court statement from student journalist Alla Gutnikova, one of the Doxa Four sentenced to two years’ “correctional labour” in April, alongside an interview with her. Ilya Matveev, a Russian academic, writes about the incredibly difficult environment in his St Petersburg classroom, which eventually led him to flee. And we spotlight the amazing ways people are fighting back.
Cancel Putin, not culture
Artists must unite in their opposition to authoritarian regimes and there should be an end to the blanket boycott of Russian culture