Posted at 11:00 a.m.
(St. Petersburg, Russia) If one does not follow the news, it is difficult to know that Russian forces are engaged in Ukraine. Opinions on this differ, and I have heard many times that people, to avoid unnecessary quarrels, rarely discuss the conflict in the office or even with their family members. The situation is no different in Quebec. A married couple from the former USSR that I know in Gatineau avoids the subject, as does another couple of young professionals that I know in Montreal.
In St. Petersburg there are no patriotic slogans, no pictures of soldiers on the walls, no change in the daily rhythm of the big city. I observed the same thing in Novgorod, a medium-sized city, medieval trading center and former member of the Hanseatic League, which I visited earlier this week. The only allusion to the conflict that I have seen a few times is a rather simple poster representing the letter Z and the hashtag “We do not abandon ours”. Z is the sign painted on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, and the hashtag refers to Russian speakers in the eastern and southern regions of this country. But to understand this sign, you still have to follow the news a bit.
This restraint contrasts with the Russian/Soviet tradition of visual propaganda in past wars. The best poets and artists produced biting posters ridiculing the Kaiser and his ally Franz Joseph during the First World War. Many of them redoubled their enthusiasm to glorify the Bolshevik Revolution and the heroic exploits of the Red Army in the civil war that followed. Their works have been plastered on the walls of every city. Similarly, in response to the Nazi attack in June 1941, thousands of slogans, signs and posters drastically changed the cityscape. One could not fail to see that the country was at war.
Even this massive propaganda did not degenerate into ethnic hatred. Works by German composers continued to be performed, the German language was taught as usual in primary and secondary schools, and no one thought of “purifying” public libraries of books by German authors. This could be due to the sacrosanct status of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans, in the Bolshevik pantheon. Another, perhaps more important, reason was the international character of the Nazi invasion. For example, in Novgorod, I was shown historic buildings requisitioned for housing by the Blue Division (División Azúl), made up of Spanish volunteers who had joined the fight against communism. Nazi forces included not only soldiers from allied countries like Hungary, but also entire SS divisions made up of French, Belgian, Dutch, Latvian, Ukrainian and other volunteers. A Russian detachment (Vlassov’s Army) was also formed by the Nazis at the very end of the war, but these were mostly starving Russian prisoners of war who cannot be called volunteers.
In my conversations with people, I couldn’t detect any anti-Ukrainian feelings. For example, no one is calling for the demolition of the monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko, considered one of the founders of Ukrainian literature and promoter of Ukrainian national feeling.
The monument, inaugurated by Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart in 2000, is a gift from Leo Mol, a Canadian sculptor of Ukrainian origin, author of several monuments to Shevchenko around the world, notably in Ottawa and Washington. Passing, in Zagorodny Avenue, in front of a memorial plaque indicating that Shevchenko lived there from 1832 to 1838, I even noticed a flower stuck on it.
In Novgorod, when I inquired about a good place for lunch, I was directed to Malinovka, a Ukrainian restaurant. At the entrance stood a plastic figure of a mustachioed Ukrainian peasant, dressed in an embroidered Ukrainian shirt (vychivanka). The walls were adorned with Ukrainian art, including sayings in Ukrainian, the waiters wore Ukrainian costumes, but unfortunately the menu, while decent, had little Ukrainian influence.
The scarcity of visual martial propaganda matches the Russian government’s insistence on labeling the military conflict in Ukraine a “special military operation” rather than a war. So far, this conflict has not required massive military and economic mobilization. The economic fallout is indirect and is mainly due to Western sanctions, which have hurt automotive and other industries that depend on imported parts and ingredients for their production. But, above all, there are no Ukrainian missiles and shells falling on St. Petersburg and Novgorod. We can afford not to follow the news when it does not disturb our daily life.