The removal of Potemkin’s remains from St Catherine’s Cathedral in Kherson was not without irony, given the flimsiness of Putin’s version of history. On the meaning of Russia’s macabre new ideology.
Konstantin Akinsha
Ukrainian–American art historian, curator and journalist. He is an expert on art expropriated during World War II. His books include Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe’s Art Treasure (1995, with Grigorii Kozlov and Sylvia Hochfield). Since the beginning of the war, he has been publishing the blog Culture in Peril: The Destruction of the Cultural Property of Ukraine by the Russian Occupiers.
Articles
In true Stalinist manner, Russian culture is being weaponized in the war against Ukraine. But instead of cancelling Russian writers, should we read them with a critical eye – just like other European classics?