Contemporary Russian Literature and Music in the Bracket of the Ukrainian War

Sanctions have also been imposed on Russian Literature and Music:

I think the applications that caused the most controversy and reaction about the sanctions applied to Russia during the Ukraine crisis were the removal of the Russian writer Dostoyevsky from the textbooks taught at Bicocca University, one of the public schools in Milan, and the Russian conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra Valery Gergiev's Putin. He was dismissed on the grounds that he was a friend of . . and did not condemn the Russia-Ukraine war.

It has been criticized by the public that the embargo and sanction decisions applied by the Western world in every field, especially in the economy, also spread to Russian literature and music. Although the decisions were withdrawn, art lovers were deeply saddened by the decisions taken.

In this article, we will take a look at contemporary Russian literature and music. When we read and listen to it, we will commemorate the masters of Russian literature and music, who left traces in our lives, and we will remember the works they produced around the world.

Russian Literature:

Those who are interested in Russian literature and those who follow know that there is a Slavic hero who is in control of the lives of the heroes of 19th century Russian novels and stories, has mystical beliefs, does not reconcile but is not active, and we cannot say exactly realistic. Sometimes a person appears before us as an officer of the Tsarist army, sometimes as a town aristocrat, sometimes as a poor official. The economic and social changes that developed in the world presented the heroes of Russian literature as realistic figures. Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Chekhov and others presented their works, each of which is a world-class masterpiece, one after the other, through these realistic heroes. It is possible to find traces of this realism in poets such as the national poet Pushkin and Lermentov.

“Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the thought that he was destroying his own life and poisoning the lives of others. Moreover, far from diminishing, this poison was gradually taking over his entire being.” (Death of Ivan Ilyich Lev Tolstoy)

“Oh, my endless clumsiness. Again, I put hope in my torn pocket…” (Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

TO THE POET (Alexandr Sergeyevich Pushkin)

O poet!

You the people's love of valuing
The swift passing noise of triumphant praise;
To the fool's judgment, the cold crowd
Never mind your smile, be careless, calm down.

With the 1917 revolution, some of these powerful pens fell silent and migrated. The collapse of tsarism, the rule of socialism and the war-filled years also affected Russian literature. However, the revolutionaries did not throw away such a strong tradition, they tried to create the literature of the revolution, especially Maxim Gorky. Mayakovsky wrote fiery poems of the revolution, Boris Pasternak is not only the author of Doctor Zhivago, but also the author of the most lyrical poems in Russian literature.

The environment of the civil war that took place after the revolution brought Sholokhov's masterpiece to world literature: And the Still Flowed Don…

“Gregor had trampled on her matured golden flowers with his heavy rawhide sandals. It had polluted his feelings, incinerated it, and passed away." (Still Flowed Don, Mikhail Sholokhov)

In the process until World War II, works with both literary and documentary quality emerged. The new regime was also creating writers. We started to read the lives of factory and construction site workers and agricultural laborers in novels and stories. At the beginning of the war, it was possible to count the giants of Russian literature as Aleksey Tolstoy, Ilya Ehrenburg, Fadeyev, Sholokhov, Ostrovsky. Simonov, the greatest writer of the war years, was also included in this list. Agayev and Fedin contributed to both Russian and world literature with their works in the post-war years. Of course, political developments also affected literature, but the works of a Solzhenist in the novel or Yevtushenko in poetry had universal qualities.

Zima Junction (Yevgeny Yevtushenko)

…

If I scream my anger

No screams of despair like yours

'Cause I have faith

to my own country.

…

Of course, great writers and poets were not only coming from Russia in this land that embraced the great Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet. Kyrgyz Chingiz Aitmatov, Azerbaijani poet Resul Rıza was distinguished as the masters of the Soviets.

IF I CAN (Resul Riza)

…

I would like

Let the branches bend from abundance;

But man should not bow his head

Out of shame or weakness

I would like

Springs flow like tears

Clear on the ground;

But let the tears not flow like springs,

nowhere on earth

…

Russian Classical Music:

Russian music before the 19th century was not peculiar. Italian, French opera singers, and Austrian and German composers brought European music to its peak. However, the Russian national consciousness awakened by the influence of the Napoleonic wars directed the Russian musicians to their own music. Especially when Glinka started to work on Russian folk songs in Western music format, Russian classical music has also been mentioned. Tchaikovsky, a contemporary of the composer group known as the Russian Five, started to use Western music in his works like a Western composer. Tchaikovsky is a European rather than a Russian voice in the musical sense. There is no one who does not know the melody of Swan Lake.

Russian composers, who were silent for a while after the revolution, had a voice in European classical music again in the 1950s with names such as Prokopiyef, Shostakovich and Miyaskovski. Recently, Aram Khachaturyan and Azerbaijani composer Karayef, who blended Armenian folk music with Tchaikovsky's romanticism, are noteworthy musicians.

Our hope is a world where artists are not silenced no matter what the political conditions are…