Street musicians singing Russian songs in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv could soon face problems. Likewise, bars and restaurants playing Russian background music may end up getting in trouble.

The reason is that Kyiv city council has issued a temporary ban on performing or showcasing Russian-language art and culture — such as books, music, plays and concerts — in public. This ban also encompasses cultural and educational programs. The restriction not only applies to works by Russian authors and creators, but to all cultural products publicly presented in or translated into Russian.

Ukrainian MPs said the move was designed to protect Ukraine from Russian influence. “Russia is the language of the aggressor and it has no place in the heart of our capital,” said Vadym Vasylchuk, the deputy chairman of the Standing Committee on Education and Science, Youth and Sports. Mere symbolism?

The move is backed by Ukraine’s Vidsich (Defense) movement, which began calling for a ban on the Russian language and Russian goods, films and music in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea. “A ban on Russian-language cultural products is necessary,” Vidsich activist Kateryna Chepura told DW. “This is an additional lever for activists working to boycott everything Russian, so we can say: shut it down, remove Russian from public life.”

The Kyiv city council ban, however, is temporary, lending it a symbolic quality only. A permanent, legally binding ban would require support from Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

As a result, Chepura calls Kyiv’s temporary ban “an ineffective instrument, because you cannot be held accountable for disregarding it.” She regards it as a “moral factor encouraging people who do not want to continue tolerating Russian music on the streets or in theater.”

In fact, certain Russian-language cultural products are already prohibited in Ukraine. The bans date back to September 2019, when the first restrictions were imposed in the region of Lviv. Subsequently, other cities like Ternopil and Zhytomyr in the Volhynia region, followed suit. Cause for controversy

Human rights activist Volodymyr Yavorskyy of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, however, said such bans are discriminatory and unconstitutional. “These are illegal decisions, because local authorities have no right to regulate such issues and impose such bans,” Yavorskyy told DW. “That is why they have no legal consequences.” The judiciary, he added, had already deemed such local bans illegal.

A person violating the Kyiv city council moratorium on Russian cultural products cannot be held accountable, Yaworskyy said. “These bans issued by local authorities are nothing but political gestures — only the Ukrainian parliament can turn such bans into law.” Only then, he said, would they become legally binding and enforceable.

In June 2022, the Ukrainian parliament already banned publicly playing songs by Russian artists. The restriction does not, however, apply to Russian singers who condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine. Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also signed a law banning the import and distribution of Russian books. It was passed by parliament last year.

Regardless of whether or not local bans are in place, playing Russian music in public is bound to cause controversy. Take, for instance, a recent disagreement between a 17-year-old busker and Ukrainian MP Natalya Pipa. She complained when the teenager performed songs by Russian rock legend Viktor Tsoi on the street in Lviv, who in return insulted the woman, saying he was allowed to play whatever music he liked. Later, however, the busker published a video in which he apologized to the lawmaker.

Another altercation occurred in the village of Pohreby, in the Kyiv region. There, a young woman was thrown out of a cafe for complaining that the establishment was playing a song by Russian pop singer Grigory Leps supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. Do not copy Russian aggression

Yevgenia Belorusets, a Ukrainian artist, translator and author who works in Ukrainian Russian and German, says the Russian-language ban is discriminatory. “These bans perpetuate the myth that Ukrainian culture is always being discriminated against,” she told DW. “This then supposedly gives it the right to discriminate against other forms of cultural expression.” Yevgenia Belorusets is seen looking into the camera

“Ukrainian-language culture knows too well how discrimination feels,” she added. “It should not try to overcome this trauma by inflicting similar pain on others.” The creator said Ukraine should not mirror Russian aggressors and refrain from “projecting Russia’s aggressive intentions onto Ukraine’s complex cultural situation.”

Belorusets said language bans could divide Ukrainian society, warning that “it’s getting harder and harder to talk about this in Ukraine, because doing so is immediately labeled as a hostile act.” Ukraine’s future as a democratic state, she said, depends on granting everyone their rights and accepting their own complicated past. “The challenge consists in accepting competing views within society.”

  • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s horrible. Art is one of scarce things that builds bridges over intolerance and differences.

    • cowpowered@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      For context: The UK and US did not ban German classical music during WW1 and WW2, and works by Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Brahms etc were performed and broadcast on radio.

      Unsurprisingly the Nazis did censor a lot of music. Don’t be like the Nazis is the lesson, I guess.

            • Scroll Responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Around 2019, Malkin began to distance herself from conventional conservatism and instead publicly support members of the extreme right, including Nick Fuentes,[3][4][5] as well as other white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Groypers, including Identity Evropa leader Patrick Casey.[3][5][6] In November 2019, she was dropped by conservative organization Young America’s Foundation (YAF), citing her support for individuals associated with antisemitism and white nationalism.[5][7]

              From the author’s Wikipedia page. I hope her opinion is not main stream by any means.

      • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Bit of bad news love… we locked up a FUCK LOAD of Japanese immigrants and descendants during WWII, and took their property.

          • Willer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You can take away my house you can take away live but you will never take my EEEEEEERIKA

      • hypelightfly@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        While the US government didn’t. The people did.

        The coming of World War I brought with it a backlash against German culture in the United States. When the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, anti-German sentiment rose across the nation, and German American institutions came under attack. Some discrimination was hateful, but cosmetic: The names of schools, foods, streets, and towns, were often changed, and music written by Wagner and Mendelssohn was removed from concert programs and even weddings. Physical attacks, though rare, were more violent: German American businesses and homes were vandalized, and German Americans accused of being “pro-German” were tarred and feathered, and, in at least once instance, lynched.

        https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/german/shadows-of-war/

    • Sibelius Ginsterberg@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Nope, its not art by itself. Its Artists that create art with the intention to build bridges and recipients enjoying and spreading the art because they like to see those bridges being built.

      • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Then it’s good that I said that Art is one of scarce things that builds bridges over intolerance and differences, rather than made the claim that it’s the only thing that does and needs no people to do that, yes?

    • Quokka@quokk.au
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      1 year ago

      Russia is committing genocide against the Ukrainians and you’re worried about building bridges over “differences”?

      • djsaskdja@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        The Russian government is doing that. Russian culture is much more than just their government.

            • Quokka@quokk.au
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              1 year ago

              Should they be in charge of toppling the Russian government?

              I’d think the Russian citizens should be the one deciding their own fate, but hey embrace imperialism all you want.

            • Quokka@quokk.au
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              1 year ago

              Ah yes the Russian military and intelligence agencies, staffed by aliens than?

      • Walt J. Rimmer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Of course, the unprompted violence against a people must be the first thing to be addressed. But this new policy does nothing to actually help in that fight while doing harm to the peace which one would hope would happen afterward. There have been nations in perpetual states of war, and it’s rather horrible. No one should want this to become one.

      • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m worried about great many deal.

        The bridges that might help in bringing the war to its end is one of them, yes.

        • Quokka@quokk.au
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          1 year ago

          The only thing bringing this war to its end is the collapse of the Russian state.

          WW2 didn’t end with the Jewish and Nazis shaking hands and sharing songs.

          • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Russia survived far worse problems and crises.

            It will survive this one too. And we’re going to have to find the way to live together on this blue-ish piece of rock, again. Too many people express nothing but anger, hate and rage towards them. It’s understandable, given what their soldiers do on the battlefield. They call for total destruction of Russia, predict the world without it, assume that everything Russian is wrong and they never gave to the world nothing important (hello, mr. Mendeleev).

            But that’s shortsighted approach. We will wake up one day in the world, where the war has ended and neither of the sides was eradicated.

              • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                No, but here’s the news for you: Israel and Germany have quite good relationships now and don’t call for the eradication of one another.

                Strange world, isn’t it?

                • Quokka@quokk.au
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                  1 year ago

                  Gee and Hitler died and the Nazis were smashed out of power through violent conflict.

                  • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    And yet, Israel and Germany have good relationships. In fact, plenty of former WWII enemies have good relationships now.

                    No dancing around the fact - reality can’t be avoided just because you don’t like it.