Russian musicians demanded to stop pressure on them for their civil position

“Pressing musicians and canceling concerts by 2021 has become a common practice in Russia”, - wrote the authors of the petition. “Every week we read the news: the concert was canceled. The reasons are different: the promotion of drugs, violence, same-sex relationships, the use of swearing, disrespect for the feelings of believers. Recently, this list has been supplemented with covid restrictions that can justify anything".

The authors of the petition believe that all these are just formal reasons, and the real reason is the musicians' disagreement with the political situation and their active civic position. They expressed dissatisfaction with the intimidation by the security forces and the transformation of concerts into police raids, with calls from officials to clubs demanding "not to get involved" with such performers. "Whole tours of musicians known throughout the country were disrupted, and with less well-known musicians they generally do whatever they want", - the message says. At the same time, officials "rob the citizens of their country", depriving not only musicians of earnings, but also many other people working on events, including drivers and cleaning ladies. The concert industry is once again deprived of the opportunity to survive after the disastrous pandemic 2020, and the budget receives less taxes.

By 21:30 more than 700 people had joined the petition.

"In February of this year, Noize MC (aka Ivan Alekseev) announced that representatives of the Moscow VTB-Arena stadium had canceled his concert, and at the end of April he said that his concert in Orenburg was also disrupted. In Chelyabinsk club refused in holding a concert to the punk group "Pornofilmy", and the leader of the group "Nogu svelo!" Max Pokrovsky stated about the cancellation of his tour of the cities of Siberia also due to pressure on the organizers", - said the TV channel "Rain".

Morgenstern's concert, which was supposed to take place at the site of the Street Art Museum on May 16, was canceled in St. Petersburg. Earlier, parental organizations, fearing the propaganda of drug use at this event, asked about this, - said Yekaterina Mizulina, director of the Safe Internet League. According to the organizers, this statement is a lie: the performance was only postponed.