Russia’s Cultural Collapse

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

To say that Russia has a serious “cultural projection” problem seems trivial at this moment. 

After all, Moscow has been bogged down in a war of its own creation for three years, the ruble has lost more than 50% of its value, and inflation is rising whilst Putin concedes that the economy is indeed “overheating”. Factories are reportedly working at 81% capacity, unsurprising given the sheer number of Russian men who have been conscripted into the army, not to mention the hundreds of thousands who will never return home.

From this perspective, writing about a lack of “cultural projection” seems to be describing the least of Russia’s many problems. Only, it is not. The problem for Moscow is that culture is not just a means of showcasing how refined one’s nation is. Cultural projection is an integral aspect of “soft power”, a term coined by Joseph Nye describing “the ability to affect others and obtain preferred outcomes by attraction and persuasion rather than coercion”.

It represents something symbolic: a strong, healthy, cultural power which can project far beyond national borders and reach places soldiers never could. You simply cannot be a “great power” unless you wield cultural power, and this is a problem for Moscow as Russia’s entire identity is built around the fact that it is - or wants to be perceived as - a great power. 

The Soviet Union understood cultural power. The Soviet state actively promoted cultural contributions, including those preceding the Bolshevik Revolution, as a means of showcasing the supposed superiority of the socialist system. Even during the height of the Cold War, the Soviet government was able to project an image of Russian culture across the globe with the express strategic aim of shaping Western perceptions of the USSR and enhancing its superpower status. 

This all occurred against a backdrop of state repression and crimes against humanity so severe they make even Vladimir Putin’s autocracy look restrained. Yet today, Russian culture has grown increasingly remote from Western audiences. This raises the question, why has the Kremlin allowed this cultural decline?

It should be an easy strategy. After all, Russia has a storied cultural history. The Soviets, aware they could never compete with American “pop culture” leaned into Russia’s sophisticated “high culture” as a diplomatic tool: Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, home to ballet and the opera, was widely viewed as a major cultural icon of the Soviet Empire. The Soviets sent ballet companies on global tours to showcase the cultural and intellectual sophistication of socialism, and the music of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and a whole litany of other composers was eagerly embraced by impressed Western audiences. 

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

Today, Russian ballet performers have fled Russia en masse, while “Russian music” is becoming ever more associated with the Hardbass scene, which, if known at all, is mostly viewed by Westerners with semi-ironic curiosity rather than awe.

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy stand atop the literary period, while the innovative films of Eisenstein and Tarkovsky gained international acclaim. These historical works are revered to this day and will outlast Putin just as they outlasted the Soviet regime. However, Russian presence in contemporary global literature and cinema has diminished - and had done so long before the war. Few Russian literary works have garnered mainstream Western attention, outside perhaps Metro 2033, made famous by its video game adaption and written by the now-exiled Dmitry Glukhovsky. Russian cinema, once groundbreaking, now lags behind the global influence of film industries in Korea, Japan, India, and Latin America. 

The issue lies in Putin’s inability to understand soft power, and thus the utter failure of the Kremlin to grasp the importance of a global cultural influence. Russia views soft power as little more than an instrument of information and hybrid warfare. A supplement to military power, not an alternative. This point was made expressly by Putin, who described soft power as a “matrix of tools and methods” and blamed “illegal instruments of Western soft power" for “provoking extremist, separatist and nationalistic attitudes” abroad. For Moscow, soft power revolves around manipulation, not cultural projection.

Because Moscow does not understand soft power, it struggles to cultivate it. Consequently, the Kremlin has let Russian cultural influence deteriorate, a decline worsened by Russia’s economic struggles and further exacerbated by the war: Russian culture has been heavily restricted in the aftermath of the invasion, heeding the call of Ukrainian Culture Minister Tkachenko to boycott Russian arts. 

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

As such, while few modern Russian works make their way Westwards, classical works have been sanctioned. Neither Dostoevsky nor Tchaikovsky have been spared, and Russian art exhibitions have closed down. Having realised the mistake of allowing Russia to host the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 World Cup after its annexation of Crimea, Russia has been banned from hosting or participating in global sporting events. Not only has this likely angered Putin on a personal level - he appears to prefer sports to the high arts - it severed a source of cultural pride for Russia, which has always achieved high levels of sporting success in judo, wrestling, fencing and above all rhythmic gymnastics: from Atlanta 1996 until Rio 2016, Russia won gold in every Olympics rhythmic gymnastics competition.

Without cultural projection, Russia’s claim to great power status rings increasingly hollow. The Kremlin’s failure to wield soft power has left its influence in freefall. Until Moscow moves beyond manipulation, its cultural decline will only accelerate, deepening its isolation on the world stage.