Russian Opposition Steps “into the Light”

The recent politically-motivated art exhibit “Russian Visionaries. Into the Light,” sponsored by IMR and presented in New York, could not have been more timely. As the latest developments in Russia indicate, the opposition has indeed come “into the light.” The American and Russian media that covered the exhibition couldn’t agree more.

The exhibition was on display at 25CPW gallery from November 29 until December 12, and featured 53 portraits of contemporary Russian thought leaders alongside their written reflections on the country’s future in anticipation of the December 4 parliamentary elections and next year’s presidential elections scheduled for March. The austere black and white portraits were taken by renowned Moscow photographer Kirill Nikitenko and curated by Elena Khodorkovskaya, the former wife of political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The exhibition turned out to be highly timely, given the recent unexpected and unprecedented social upheaval in Russia to protest the parliamentary elections fraud. New York-based American and Russian media outlets took special interest in covering the show, and Foreign Policy even titled their slideshow “Anti-Putin Brigade.”

In his article “Portraits of Defiance” for Newsweek, Owen Matthews described the participants of the project as “brave, marginalized, and maybe a little crazy” because “they battle not just a brutal police, a closed press, and a campaign of dirty tricks from the Kremlin, but also the intransigence of most of their countrymen, for whom ’democracy’ became synonymous with economic collapse and wholesale theft.” When writing his article, Matthews didn’t know (no one could have imagined it) that in a couple of days, those very same countrymen would come out to the streets and protest against the fraudulent elections. Nevertheless, Matthews predicted that today’s opposition will be victorious: “Russian history tells us that eventually, Russia’s revolutionaries always win — for better or worse.”

Alina Braverman at Examiner.com paid closer attention to the tough fates of the portrayed Russian visionaries: “The somber portraits photographed by Kirill Nikitenko show the stress of daily life in Russia. They are hauntingly poignant, and looking at them made me wince and think of all the things the people behind them must have endured and how they have persevered to tell their stories. Why any of them have stayed and fought is interesting, as so many people with their viewpoint emigrated long ago.” She calls for Russia to “reinvent itself” and “shake off its repressive and isolationist self if it hopes to continue to influence and create in the world.” Braverman also insisted that the world should help and support those who fight suppression, tyranny and corruption in Russia.

And as it turned out, a generation of well-educated young Russians was already prepared to put up a peaceful fight. As Pavel Khodorkovsky, President of the Institute of Modern Russia and one of the creators of the “Russian Visionaries” exhibition, wrote in his op-ed for World Policy Journal: “We have learned in recent days that those fighting for a true democracy in Russia – arguably already a critical mass – will not be intimidated.[…]Thousands demonstrated across 122 cities in Russia and around the world, and more than 400 attended a rally at the Russian Consulate here in New York.” Answering the same question that the participants in the exhibition had to answer, he added: “Even if Putin stays in power, and even if he and Medvedev fails to make the most basic election reforms, that these demonstrations are happening at all is a milestone.”