Two Russian theater workers – a director and a playwright – have been arrested in Moscow, the first time since Soviet times that a high-profile criminal case has opened over the content of a play.
Director Evgeniya Berkovich was led into a Russian courtroom in handcuffs on Friday, accused of ‘justifying terrorism’ in a play first staged several years ago about Russian women who joined Isis, with state-appointed experts also decrying “radical feminism” in the text. The author of the play, Svetlana Petriichuk, was also arrested.
The purges and persecutions have torn apart by the Russian cultural scene since the start of its full scale invasion of ukraine last year and the corresponding nationwide crackdown on dissent. Many cultural workers who spoke out critically against the war found themselves kicked out of their jobs, while a handful saw legal action brought against them for their speech.
But the arrest of the two women for the themes of a play, rather than protests or anti-war speech, marks another milestone in the crackdown on Russia’s cultural scene.
The game, Finiste, the brave Falconbased on transcripts of real-life police interviews with Russian women who formed online relationships with ISIS fighters and traveled to Syria, was released in 2021 and won two Golden Mask Awards, the equivalent Oscar winner for the stage.
Marina Davydova, editor of Teatr, a trade magazine, said the persecution of individuals for the content of a respected play was meant to send a warning to everyone.
To specifically target a Golden Mask play is “an attempt to destroy Russia’s most important theatrical institution,” Davydova wrote. It marks “a final and irrevocable cleaning of all that remains of our theater”.
To all theater workers who have remained in Russia and attempted to continue producing free-thinking works, Davydova added, the case sends “a clear signal: no one is safe.”
Deputy Chairman of the Culture Committee of the Lower House of the Duma Parliament, Alexander Sholokhov, defended the idea that the content of a work of fiction could be a cause for the opening of criminal investigations into political opinions of its author.
“Any cultural work expresses the point of view of its author,” Sholokhov said, according to Russian news outlet Lenta.
The arrests followed tips written by members of the public, local media reported. Denunciations have spread in Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion, and informants have become an essential pillar of support for the Kremlin and a tool of control.
Berkovich is a member of the avant-garde studio team of acclaimed Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, who spent more than a year under house arrest on bogus corruption charges, and is also the single mother of two adopted daughters.
Berkovich and Petriichuk each face up to seven years in prison. Both have strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Statements of support were presented in court and included letters from top Russian theater directors who are still in the country, as well as Nobel laureate and Novaya Gazeta newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov.
At a hearing in Moscow court on Friday, the judge decided to keep Berkovich in pretrial detention for two months. The court is likely to make a similar ruling in a Friday session on Petriichuk’s pretrial detention.
Petriichuk’s husband, Yury Shekhvatov, a playwright and theater festival director who spent 15 days in jail after protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last spring, spoke to his wife on Friday in a message posted on social networks.
“You wrote one of my favorite plays, and for this they now want to put you in jail,” Shekhvatov wrote. “ . . . Sveta, you are the best.
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