Russophilia

While many of Borisov’s Russian peers have expressed their surprise at his nomination given the widely held belief that the West has turned its back on all things Russian since the invasion of Ukraine, the scant official acknowledgement of Borisov’s nomination from Moscow has focused on the West’s alleged Russophobia.

Maintaining this image of the West as aggressive, Russophobic, and radically pro-Ukrainian is vital for the Kremlin regime, and Vladimir Putin has often accused the West of “cancelling” Russian culture since 2022. But it is precisely this idea of a Russophobic West that films such as Anora, with their depiction of charismatic, multifaceted Russians, undermine. As Russian classical musicians return to top billing at European concert halls and opera houses, is it finally time to retire the myth of the West’s cultural Russophobia?

Who is Yura Borisov?

Borisov, 32, made his name playing the type of everyman for which Russian cinema audiences appear to have a boundless appetite, a niche occupied until the early 2000s by Sergey Bodrov Jr, the star of the cult film Brother, and during the 2010s by Alexander Petrov, who starred in T-34, a World War II action film that also features Borisov himself, in which a captured Soviet soldier leads a tank crew as they undertake a daring escape from German captivity.

Tending to go for roles in which he depicts romanticised outlaws who challenge societal norms, Borisov played a revolutionary in the film Salvation Union about the 1825 Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nicholas II, enamouring himself to Russian cinema goers whose need for social justice 200 years later can only be met on celluloid.

Prior to his international breakthrough in Anora, in which he plays an intelligent and sensitive Russian gopnik (thug), Borisov played the role of Anton Bykov, the leader of a criminal gang who goes on a crime spree to feed his family, in 2019’s The Bull.

Though his name appeared on an anti-war statement issued by the now defunct independent Russian film actor union Kinosoyuz on 24 February 2022, Borisov himself has never made any subsequent public comments condemning the war in Ukraine.

Since his Oscar nomination, Borisov has been subjected to criticism for his roles in various controversial WWII action films, though, one of which was filmed in occupied Crimea and has been accused of attempting to justify Russia’s aggressive foreign policy.

Cultural skeletons

The moral indignation expressed in the West at the various skeletons in many Russian artists’ closets in 2022 were used by Russian propagandists as evidence of what they liked to describe as Russophobia, as evidenced, they argued, by the cancellation of a number of high-profile performances, such as a new production of Boris Godunov at the Polish National Opera, and recitals by pianist Denis Matsuev and conductor Valery Gergiev in New York.

Similar moves, such as the Hermitage Museum’s Amsterdam outpost severing ties with the St. Petersburg museum itself, made headlines during the first few months of the war in 2022, but to characterise each one as a sign of Western Russophobia is, of course, a ridiculous overstatement. In the case of Gergiev, his recital was cancelled not because he was Russian, but because he refused to issue a public statement condemning the invasion of Ukraine and continued to head the state-run Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

Like many of her peers, Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko found herself unable to satisfy the demands made of her by both the West and her native Russia, with her condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine not being considered strong enough for either the Bavarian State Opera or the Metropolitan Opera, while still being seen as sufficiently disloyal for her performances in Russia to be cancelled and for her to be accused of betraying her homeland.

In a now deleted Instagram post responding to the cancellation of her performances across Europe in 2022, Netrebko accused the West of “despicable” hypocrisy, for pretending to be brave while sitting “comfortably in their homes” and getting “artists who asked for nothing in trouble”.

While until recently, most Western cultural institutions required Russian artists to denounce the actions of their homeland in order to be able to perform or collaborate, it appears only to be Ukrainian media outlets that have taken issue with Borisov’s Oscar nomination.

Paradigm shift

Neither cries of hypocrisy nor Russophobia are really fair here, however; the apparent evolution of attitudes being a direct consequence of the changing context of the war in Ukraine. The various steps taken by different cultural institutions in 2022, which came to be known as the “boycott of Russian culture”, were the result of two things: the desire to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people, and the belief that this type of soft power would put pressure on Putin to end the war.

At the time, it didn’t seem as totally implausible as it now does that a strongly worded statement issued by a well-known conductor, opera singer, or actor could sway Russian public opinion, or even influence the Kremlin itself.

However, by the time Borisov’s Oscar nomination was announced on 23 January, the Kremlin had already demonstrated just how adept it had become at circumnavigating the economic sanctions placed on it by the West, and it had become widely understood that soft power was no realistic substitute for military assistance.

The West has therefore moved from its initially emotional response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which saw it issue ultimatums to Russia, to a more rational approach, with an increasing awareness that the Kremlin regime is continuing to thrive and that the ostracism of Russian cultural figures does little if anything to catalyse political change in Russia.

Prominent Russians began calling on cultural institutions to rethink their approach to Russian artists just weeks into the war, with Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose 1977 nomination for Best Supporting Actor was the last time a Russian got the nod from the academy, telling The Guardian in March 2022 that it wasn’t right “to put the weight of a country’s political decisions on the backs of artists … who may have vulnerable family members in their home country. For people in those exposed positions, neutrality is a powerful statement.”

Similar arguments have since been made by various other cultural figures, including the artistic director of Berlin’s Komische Oper, Philip Bröking, who in August said he was opposed to Russian culture being “cancelled due to Kremlin policy”, adding that: “When we create art, we are not Germans, Ukrainians, Russians or Americans, we are artists. And artists have no nationality.”

The cautious embrace of Russian cultural figures by some institutions in the West even when a public denouncement of the war in Ukraine has not been forthcoming has robbed the Kremlin of the evidence it needs to effectively play the Russophobia trump card so beloved by its army of propagandists.

In an op-ed for The New York Times published in April 2022, Kevin Platt, a professor of Russian at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that the outright cancellation of all Russian culture reflected the same mindset that led Russia to invade Ukraine in the fist place. The best way to thwart “the world that Mr Putin seeks to create”, Platt argued, was to demonstrate that Russian culture could flourish outside Russia.

Without a doubt, Borisov’s unexpected Oscar nomination caught Kremlin officials and propagandists off guard. When asked if there was a connection between Borisov’s success in the West and the end of the West’s attempts to “cancel Russian culture”, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov simply answered “no.”

By the time the Kremlin had come up with an acceptable spin to the news of Borisov’s nomination, Russia’s main propaganda channels — Channel One, Rossiya-1, and NTV — had elected to stay silent on the matter, while smaller Channel Five, which did address the news, urged its viewers to be wary of the nomination, stressing that Borisov was a mere supporting actor, that Anora was little more than a plagiarised version of Pretty Woman in which Russians were painted as “dumb brutes”, and that Hollywood was on fire anyway.

Lines in the sand

Not everyone is happy with the West’s apparent change of tack on Russian artists, and Borisov’s nomination has drawn the ire of Ukrainian media outlets, many of which see the honour as indicative of the West’s growing war fatigue.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Ukrainian video journalist Olga Sydorushkina suggested that the success of Anora, which stars several Russian actors, was a sign that “there is no cancellation of Russian culture” and called it “a victory for them” that the West was “tired of talking about the war.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most vociferous advocates for “boycotting” Russian culture are Ukrainian. For example, it was due to Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv that HBO recast a much sought-after role in the new season of White Lotus that had been given to Russian-Serbian actor Miloš Biković and the Vienna Festival removed Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis from its line-up in 2024, after she accused both of failing to distance themselves sufficiently from the Russian invasion.

Currentzis, a Greek citizen who was granted dual Russian citizenship in 2014, the same year Russia annexed Crimea, has remained silent about the war, neither condemning nor defending Russia, though in July 2023 Vienna Festival director Markus Hinterheuser defended Currentzis by saying he had “never heard” him give “a positive assessment” of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In 2004, Currentzis founded MusicAeterna, a St. Petersburg-based orchestra that he heads to this day, which came under scrutiny shortly after the full-scale invasion after it was revealed that the orchestra was sponsored by Russian government-controlled bank VTB.

Currentzis appears to have been welcomed back into the European artistic fold just a few months after his cancelled Vienna appearance, however, performing in Salzburg in July and currently partnering with director Peter Sellars at the Opéra Garnier in Paris for a new production of Castor and Pollux which opened earlier this month.

The reintegration of Russian culture into the global cultural mix is a process that leaves many questions to be answered. While the position of those who have condemned the war in Ukraine is perhaps more secure today, doubt inevitably remains about Russian artists who have chosen to remain silent. How much did Borisov’s role in a past propaganda film glorify Russian military actions? And to what extent did the financing of the VTB orchestral hall silence Currentzis?

These questions and more will now have to be answered by Western cultural institutions as they grapple with a new reality in which Russian flags are once again being proudly waved at Alpine ski resorts, and US President Donald Trump publicly praises Putin’s intelligence.