Maksym Eristavi’s Russian Colonialism 101 is an effectively written, sprightly illustrated romp through the last few centuries of Russian colonialism, the last of the undeconstructed European colonialisms still standing. His Russian Colonialism 101 substack continues Eristavi’s work in deconstructing that colonialism in all its forms.
In “david: and why not platforming russian culture is justice,” Eristavi writes evocatively about Ukrainian anarchist artist David Chichkan, his illustrated Ukrainian Code on Administrative Offences, so-called “cancel culture,” and Western imperialist complicity.
A few quotes:
An anarchist artist illustrating a legal code – in that mind-blowing contradiction, there was the essence of modern Ukraine: wild creativity, obsession with the rule of law and democracy, unapologetic cult of sovereignty. […]
Just days before the 2022 full-scale invasion, [Chichkan] opened a show called “Ribbons and Triangles,” where he reimagined Ukraine if it had never been recolonised by Russia in 1920: a progressive, revolutionary, socially liberal and independent European country; an unrealized modernist project, the ideological foundations of which were laid by Mykhailo Drahomanov, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka and other Ukrainian left-wing intellectuals. Amid the pre-genocide anxiety in Ukraine, David invited us to find comfort inside his escapist world of fictional Ukraine. Where Russian red fascists did not destroy the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and now Ukraine thrives as a European social democracy. […]
Anyone can name Russian artists – “Tolstoyevski” and whatnot. But how about David Chichkan, Victoria Amelina, Maksym Kryvtsov, Pavlo Li, Nika Kozhushko? Any of the 200+ Ukrainian artists Russia killed recently? How about Vasyl Stus or Alla Horska, or tens of thousands of Ukrainian artists murdered during three centuries of Russian colonial occupation?
You probably haven’t heard of these names representing a 40-million-nation with a history dating back a millennium. This isn’t accidental.
By contrast, “The mechanism” of “great Russian culture” has, over the decades and centuries, been “simple”:
eliminate local artists, appropriate surviving art, rebrand it Russian, flood cultural space with “great Russian culture” – from Pushkin, Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn, all vocal imperial myth promoters. Finally, convince everyone that the conquered never possessed an authentic culture, anyway.
While Eristavi is critical of the “lavish publicity” the West showers upon prominent Russian figures like Yulia Navalnaya, and cites Lia and Andrii Dostliev’s warning that even “good Russians” are unaware of their imperial privilege, he doesn’t call for the “cancellation” of those Russians — that would be repeating what Chichkan’s far-right critics tried to do to him — so much as he calls (citing Oleksiy Radynski) for the continued “deconstruction” of the theory and practice of “great Russian culture.”
“Deconstruction” and “cancellation” will always be, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder, and the conversation will call for nuance in specific situations. But this piece is a good starting point.
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