Why it’s necessary to be with one’s country when it is making a historic turn and choice. Mikhail Piotrovsky answers

This is a victory for the Hermitage, which was under threat, given the prevailing “cancel culture” policy, that they would not come back. A second victory is the opening, the day after tomorrow, of the exhibition “The Birth of Modern Art: Sergey Shchukin`s Choice”, where visitors will see over 30 paintings by Henri Matisse, 40 works of Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin’s celebrated “iconostasis”, made up of 15 of his best paintings, masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. What can counter “cancel culture” today? How can a museum special operation be carried out? What did Shchukin and Morozov change in Europe? How can immunity to ideological malice be developed? Why is it necessary to be with one’s country when it is making a historic turn and choice? Director of the State Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, answers questions from the Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Immunity from cancellation

We are all shaken by the hostilities not only at the fronts in the special operation, but also on the cultural front – all the attempts to cancel concerts of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, the Russian language. What lies behind “cancel culture”? While moving away from an ideological diktat, are we now observing its return in the West?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: The attack on us in the cultural sphere does, of course, bear resemblance to what we had here in Soviet times – when by decree all contacts ceased in a second, when protests arose at the flick of a switch. I have the feeling that the Soviet Union with its ideological diktat has jumped across to the West. I never expected to be reading in liberal western newspapers that “the Hermitage is an imperialist museum preaching an imperialist ideology. Deny it entry anywhere. Don’t on any account open a Hermitage in Barcelona!”

“There are situations when it is completely obvious that a person should be with their country.”

A stream of ultimatums is being directed at me too: “How dare you not speak out against the special operation in Ukraine?! Come out with a protest right now! Why are they not happening over there?”

One needs to understand here, however, that we are being subjected to such a strong attack in the cultural sphere because culture is the field in which we are absolutely able to stand up to competition.

We have initiative here. We have been setting and do set the fashion.

We are an exporting country?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, and our cultural exports are more important than the imports…

Our latest exhibitions abroad have indeed been a powerful cultural offensive. A sort of “special operation” if you will – one that has displeased many people. Still, we are advancing, and nobody should be allowed to hinder our advance.

In response to calls for the cancellation of Tchaikovsky, intelligent people with us are saying, “We will not be cancelling anything. On the contrary, we continue to love the Europe that we came to know when studying at university.” Is that asymmetry of fundamental importance here?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Of course. With our cultural advantage, we do not require strident declarations that in response to their bans we shall denounce some cultural agreement or other. Let them do that unilaterally. In this there is definitely no need for any bilateral actions. Precisely because we are winning.

It's my opinion that under no circumstances should we give in to the temptation of “cancel culture” (nor will we). And I believe in our immunity from that – because we have already had our fill of it. First the entire culture of tsarist Russia got cancelled, then Soviet culture. Monuments were torn down dozens of times. We know something else as well, though: monuments come back, everything gets rehabilitated. The knowledge that memory and culture will come back again is in our blood. The more so because Tchaikovsky can’t be cancelled anyway. Unless in the sense of performances by our orchestras playing Tchaikovsky. That, though, is all dishonest competition.

Why is the West so taken with “cancel culture” and the diktat of “public opinion”?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: I would not exaggerate the difference between those diktats – the Soviet ideological one and “public opinion”. Public opinion is nonetheless connected with those in power or regulated by them.

As for “cancel culture” in the West, that is part of a major wave that originated within that same BLM movement and is bound up with a culture of guilt and repentance. It suddenly came surging. People began pulling down monuments, not standing for the American flag. Voltaire, too, is bad in their eyes, so is this figure, and that one… It is already becoming a little comical: just how much is it possible to repent for horrific colonialism, not everything about which is so straightforward in point of fact? Or over the wretched slave trade that, in any event, began not in Europe but in Africa.

Those people themselves, it seems, had already started to sense that this was a road to nowhere, and then Russia came along. And there you go: “Let’s ‘cancel’ Russia!” Although the delight with which they rushed to condemn us, tear us to pieces and banish us, again speaks to how powerful we are in culture.

When the “Bizot group” puts our museums’ presence among them on ice, that’s plain funny. I was among those involved at its inception, and I know that in point of fact we created the group in order to help museums carry out cultural exchanges without concern for politics. Now, however, its ideologization along Soviet lines too is there for all to see. If that Soviet contagion has taken such a hold with them, though, let them be the only ones to catch it. We ought not to. We have a historical immunity to that – and I think that we will also extend it to others.

Special operation “Exhibitions”

The Hermitage did not succumb to the pressure for cancellation and let its exhibitions remain abroad?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Not just the Hermitage. When the special operation began in Ukraine, Russian museums had exhibitions all over the place. We had the Morozov exhibition in Paris and exhibitions in Italy. In London there was the most concerning exhibition of Fabergé. The Russian Museum had an exhibition going on in Spain.

That was our “special operation”, if you will, a major cultural offensive.

As soon as all the ideological sirens started sounding due to the special operation in Ukraine, we at first announced that we would withdraw everything immediately, but then we thought it over and said, “But we have been given guarantees.” The organizers made haste to confirm those. We had organized that Morozov exhibition in Paris with the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and we suddenly realized that in today’s “Soviet” Europe that world-ranking commercial company is a far better partner than state institutions. Having no room to manoeuvre, those began breaking off relations with us “by decree”, while people from the business world who had made promises to us did EVERYTHING in order to keep them. It was a matter of honour for them: they had given us their word that everything would be returned on time.

But then cries started going up from Russia: “Why did you take our treasures there? They are worth so much money!” While from the other side we heard: “Since they are worth ‘so much’, let’s impound them.” People with a mindset tortured by mercantilism could not really grasp the essence of the matter, but they shouted out some very provocative things – on the one side and the other. I must say that provocation on the part of the press was the chief complication in the whole of this special operation. Yesterday I was sent the FT containing discussions by arts section(!) journalists on the topic of whether Russian paintings should be impounded or not. And due to such a clamour from journalists, our artworks were held up at the Finnish border. This happened at the weekend and the Finnish customs officers had been reading the papers that stated that everything ought to be confiscated from the Russians… Although before and after that, ten convoys of ours came past them.

“Matisse was asked whether he would have painted his Dance if Shchukin had not existed. ‘Who would I have painted it for?’ he replied.”

Well, on our side it was more the bloggers doing the shouting. You have educated the journalists.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Only there are just a few real journalists left. Just a couple of newspapers. Everyone nowadays is a blogger of sorts. And bloggers can’t grasp that this is a cultural offensive. That the Shchukin and Morozov exhibitions in Paris mean the Russian flag flying above the Bois de Boulogne… Do you know how all this was regarded in Italy? They said that since the Hermitage is capable of leaving its paintings with us at this moment in time, that means that people there in Russia know what they are doing.

It is very important as well that the heroes of our exhibitions were Shchukin and Morozov – Russian businessmen from the Old Believer milieu who were to a considerable extent ahead of the development of European culture. Matisse was asked whether he would have painted his Dance if Shchukin had not existed. “Who would I have painted it for?” he replied. Shchukin prompted, commissioned, acted capriciously and great artworks were born… I was recently presented with the Demidov Prize, and that was the occasion to recall how Nikolai Demidov and the great French jeweller Pierre-Philippe Thomire created our Russian style of malachite combined with bronze. Thomire said things should be done one way, Demidov insisted on another, and as a result we have the malachite rotunda that stands in the Hermitage…

Does a producer really have the right to interfere in an artist’s concept?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Absolutely. Yes, at times it may be a bad intervention, but at times it’s good. In the case of Shchukin and Morozov, it was good. They were the RIGHT sort of commissioning customers.

Let’s not forget, either, that it was the Old Believers who revealed the beauty of ancient Russian icons to us. They were the first to clean and preserve them – and Shchukin brought Matisse Russian icons, among other things, in order to break the influence of Persian miniatures over him.

Meanwhile, at the Morozov exhibition we also presented the Russian paintings that he collected and showed art through the eyes of a collector. Morozov collected both Manet and Serov, and I really did hear people coming away from the exhibition saying, “You look and realize that Serov isn’t in any way worse than Manet.”

The Fabergé exhibition resonated strongly. That’s another Russian phenomenon which had an influence on the West.

So, we did indeed conduct a major cultural offensive. And we emerged from it, having accomplished all that was intended.

We are Europe, but is the EU Europe?

For a long time, Europe was a cultural model for us. We here at the Rossiyskaya Gazeta were talking with the writer Yevgeny Vodolazkin about attitudes to Europe. It was said, citing Dostoyevsky, that Europe is almost dearer to us than to the Europeans…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: At the Academy of Sciences Board on the History of World Culture, we recently held a round table that they planned to have the title “Is Russia Europe?”, but then called “Is Russia Europe? Is the EU Europe?” The gist of out debates was this: we are Europe, as much a part of it as France or Germany, and perhaps more so than the United States. If we weren’t Europe, then Gogol would not have written Dead Souls while in Italy. We recently held another round table on visual art and recollected there that Dostoyevsky wrote about the Sistine Madonna.

It is our choice from long ago. We are indivisibly connected to European culture and to Europe itself. The special military operation in Ukraine changes nothing of that. Within Europe there have been more than enough disagreements and wars – from the 30 Years’ War to World War One. We are Europe, and at some moments more European than many of its classic countries. And unarguably more than the EU, which is now turning into a Soviet Union.

We do, of course, also have an Asiatic face, but Peter the Great already in his time managed to balance all of this wonderfully. We in the Hermitage understand that better than anyone, because that is our main theme – world culture in a Russian context. And I am constantly talking about our right to be Europe because we have the legacy of Classical Antiquity in the south of Russia – Chersonesus, Kerch, the Taman peninsula. Anyone who has Classical heritage is Europe. In Norway, for example, there is no Classical heritage. There were no Greek colonies or Roman legions there.

Because all that is ours, we should make use of it as something of our own and not consider that we stand in opposition to Europe. We have different values? But they all have disparate values. We have distinctive Orthodox Christian ones? But in Europe, too, there are Orthodox Christian values, and in many ways they are consonant with Catholic ones and not consonant with various secular ones. We will never be isolated, as we are part of Europe with absolutely full rights and equal worth. That is simply our sense of ourselves – and the Hermitage is a symbol of that sense of self. I repeat all the time: the Hermitage is an encyclopaedia of world culture written in Russian. The Hermitage’s Rembrandts, which have been in Russia for 300 years, are Russian Rembrandts. Our Shakespeare would be impossible without Kozintsev and Smoktunovsky. Other doors as well – to Asia – are always open, but that does not annul our presence in Europe.

Since in Europe people who value Russian culture are not as yet gaining the upper hand, should we ourselves now be forming a European model for ourselves?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: We should be forming that model. And we are doing so.

Although we don’t seem to have Shchukins or Morozovs…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Shchukin and Morozov shaped tastes, while we nowadays are shaping international law, for example. Over many years, we thoroughly worked out guarantees of the return of our paintings, changed legislation worldwide, created immunity from seizure. All of that was first created for Soviet exhibitions back in the day, but then, in my own time already, we constantly developed it further. The descendants of Shchukin and Morozov tried taking us to court. I had paintings urgently brought back from Rome by plane. With each passing year, though, we bolstered our legal protection. We said, “You want exhibitions? – Provide proper guarantees. Write into the contract that the exhibition will be returned on time, no matter what legal actions are brought.” Europe accepted all that. The Americans didn’t and so for ten years now we have had no exchanges with the Americans. Although people keen to seen exhibitions from Russia over there did introduce a new law in the USA that permitted the government to issue us with guarantees and immunity. It came too late, though. Now that is not enough. In the case of Europe, however, all the guarantees worked. In particular, when our paintings were detained at the Finnish border, we were assisted by our own diplomats… and Italian businesspeople. They immediately forwarded all the documents to the Finnish government: “We gave guarantees. How can you not believe in them?!”

At the last moment – when sanctions were already in force – our western partners introduced a provision that forbidden luxury articles do not include items shown in Russian museums’ exhibitions abroad. It was even stated that Russian haulage companies have the right to transport exhibitions across the whole of EU territory. We did not take the risk and used foreign vehicles, but that stipulation was specially included. So, we don’t just look to Europe as a model, but also shape international rules ourselves. That is very important, especially right now, when there are disputes about every single artwork under the sun, over who is its actual owner.

Our “blacklist” has changed

Have attitudes to the Hermitage changed among its western admirers?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: In recent times we have often been stabbed in the back. We have had dirt slung at us there by the Khodorkovskys, while here, as ever, there are some who long for draconian audits and probes. On the other hand, though, we have a better idea of who is a friend of ours, and who is an enemy. The “Hermitage Friends’ Societies” have revealed themselves, too. In Israel, for example, they have behaved superbly. They immediately put out a statement: “How is it possible to be friends of the Hermitage, to use that honourable title, and then suddenly cut off ties?”

Now we see everything. We see that there are people who break off relations, but are tormented by it, in mourning. Then there are those who joyfully exploited such an opportunity. Evidently those were friends exclusively out of political advantage. Now we have a fine “blacklist” of journalists, politicians. And that’s very important. The world is not the same all over…

Has your “blacklist” expanded greatly?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: It has changed greatly, but besides those who have written about us with malice and keep doing so, some unexpected friends have also appeared – those same French and Italian businesspeople.

What should we be doing now in the cultural sphere?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: I think that we need to be doing everything in such a way that everyone sees us… and for that it is not at all necessary to travel somewhere. On becoming director of the Hermitage, I introduced a moratorium on exhibitions within Russia because it was not safe to transport things at that time: bandits all over, no money, no proper insurance either. For ten years, we didn’t take exhibitions around Russia. And now we are declaring a moratorium on exhibitions abroad.

I am calling on everyone just now to look back to the experience of the siege, to the ability acquired then to care for things in an organized manner, to the understanding that when the guns speak, the muses ought not to fall silent. On the contrary, they should speak up loudly. And one more thing the siege taught us is to address those outside the encirclement. During the Great Patriotic War, that was done with the exhibitions of Nizami and Navoi, the evenings in the Hermitage. They showed the Soviet Union and the whole world: starvation and warfare all around, yet we are remembering great poets. For that reason, now, as part of the Greater Hermitage programme, we will be doing everything in such a way as to have everyone see us and, to put it crudely, envy us as well.

Now, for example, we are opening an exhibition of one of the most famous Danish artists – Eriksen. He painted Catherine [the Great] and her court and earned himself a huge exhibition with us for the 300th anniversary of his birth. We asked for items from Denmark for it. They did not give us them. Well, so what – we have more of Eriksen’s works here than there are in Denmark. So, in the Nicholas Hall an excellent exhibition is opening now with enormous portraits of Catherine and the Orlov brothers, with the amazing stories, too, of how they were created, how they were repainted, with the decorations worn on the uniforms being changed. The exhibition is on the Internet. Lectures in English have come out. And we are broadcasting from here to Denmark: look, a small, but very important slice of European culture, the great portraitist Eriksen in the Hermitage.

On the need to be with one’s country

Have you replied to those who are demanding repentance from you for Russia’s policy?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Now our country has moved into a different time. The first period of the Scythian War has come to an end. We retreated, retreated, now we are not retreating. A turn has been made. And it is already clear that it is a decisive one. It all began in 2014 in the Crimea. The Crimea produced a situation in which there was no longer anything else that could be done. A turn had to be made.

Our country is carrying out great global transformations. Accordingly, we too are within them and with the country. Our position is to work in a calm regular manner.

The Hermitage has put on many exhibitions about war. What would you say about the perception of war? I, for example, feel no sympathy for a totally pacifist reaction. Evidently, I am a militarist…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: We are all militarists and imperialists (laughing).

The first and most important thing is this is my country, and I should be with it. I sometimes repeat the jingoistic formula “My country, right or wrong.” There are situations when it is totally obvious that a person should be with their country. In the West, too, people understand that these are all real things, that we are with our country. When a serious issue is being decided by force, there are no alternatives.

Just now, I am reading Alexei Varlamov’s remarkable book about Rozanov. In it he writes about the year 1914 and its mood of hurrah-patriotism. Everyone knows about that patriotism on the outbreak of war in 1914, but it is not really explained. We regard it somehow disparagingly, while in actual fact it was something very important. We people of culture need to understand our involvement in everything that is taking place. A person involved in history should first of all do what they do well. Following the principle that when the guns speak, so should the muses. And understanding that culture, which for us stands above politics and everything else, will afterwards want us to account for what we did for it. Just as we were asked after the war, after the siege: “What did you do by your own efforts?”

For me the attitude to war is defined by the great Pushkin in A Journey to Arzrum. Where is he rushing throughout the plot? To see the Decembrists reduced to the ranks and… into battle?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: For Pushkin, Arzrum was, moreover, his sole visit abroad. It was an expansion of his world. There is nothing bad in a person wanting to gain the most complete set of impressions. And it is especially right when he wants to give some sort of embodiment to his profound feelings, To see, to do something new. And if he has cause for it, then he throws himself into it. That is an element of a sense of one’s own dignity. I always say that patriotism Russian-style is a sense of one’s own historical dignity. One person understands that he should go off to war; another that they should do something else, no less important. And behind that is a sense of one’s own historical dignity a desire to measure up to one’s history and one’s country’s mission. That sounds very high flown, but we do understand our country’s historical mission. And just that impression that our country is changing world history and that you are involved in that process is key right now.

With attitudes to military operations things are not that straightforward either. On the one hand, war means blood and killing, on the other it is people’s self-affirmation, the self-affirmation of the nation. Everyone wants to assert themselves. In their position with regard to war they undoubtedly do assert themselves. Well and we have all nonetheless been brought up in an imperial tradition, and an empire unites a large number of ethnic groups, unites people, finding things that are common and important to all. That is very tempting, but it is among the, let’s say, good temptations. Although one should not give into it completely. You have to be able to govern it within you. And not forget the principle that a person should do what they should, come what may. For museums “doing what they should” means being preservers, tenders and bearers of culture. And remembering constantly what is beyond the encirclement. And to speak not just to people here, but to those “over there” too.

The original Russian text of the interview can be found here.