Vladimir Mirzoyev: “Can Serebrennikov manage the theater? That is the question”

“Let's just say: after the verdict of the Meshchansky court, I have mixed feelings. I am happy that my colleagues received suspended sentences. Thank God they will not lose precious time in the zone. Intellectuals will not sew mittens and pea jackets for police officers, they will not risk health in the shamefully inhuman, Kafkaian conditions of the FSIN. I am happy that the case of Sophia Apfelbaum was reclassified as “negligence”.

But can a wonderful professional Sofya Mikhailovna Apfelbaum work as a director of the Youth Theater? Question. One of the brightest and most talented directors of his generation, Kirill Serebrennikov, will be able to manage his own theater? Or will the Gogol Center be left without an artistic director? Question to the Minister of Culture, the judge and other comrades who are very concerned about the public good: who causes irreparable damage to the Russian state, undermining the reputation of prominent people? The theater and film community expressed their opinion on this shameful process many times: our colleagues are not guilty of anything - they did their work honestly, the Platform was and remains a unique and super-successful project. The first two examinations confirmed this obvious fact.

But it turned out that the opinion of the theater critic Galakhova (she is Mrs. Koroleva) weighs more. Are you seriously? Do you think a theater critic may even know something about how performances are created: from the financial side, from the creative side, from any side? These people come to the premiere and record their impressions. All! IMHO - the Russian state was damaged by the Ministry of Culture, which filed a lawsuit, the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor's Office, and the judge of the Meshchansky court of Mendeleev. Because there is no state separate from society. Must not be. And the so-called "state money" does not exist - there is the money of society, the money of taxpayers. And what is it? Taxpayers, authors and viewers shout at the top of their voice: we love and value the Platform project, we are grateful to its creators! And the "state" gloomily demands its "pound of meat." Dmitry Butrin carefully read the indictment of the prosecutor's office - there is no corpus delicti in it, nothing is proved, everything is sewn with white thread. As always, as we are used to. From the Yukos affair to the Yury Dmitriev affair the same scenario. Since the day of Kirill’s arrest, I have intuitively knew that this is a politically motivated, bespoke business. And personally directed against him. Other defendants were only extras in this performance, a cover for "order". Well, a long term for organized crime groups is also an essential detail.

The court is just a dumb, inhuman machine executing an order. Even the aesthetics of reading a sentence by a judge (in this case, Mendeleyeva) is fully consistent with the mechanical essence of the process. Law and justice did not spend the night here - opponents are being prosecuted in this court. And competitors. Who today is waging an implacable war for the minds of Russians? The Orthodox Church is against the culture of postmodern and metamodern. Archaic versus modernity”.