What is behind the closure of Russian cultural programs in Brooklyn

Фото: Depositphotos

Famous Russian programs in the Brooklyn library will no longer be. For two decades, these programs had tremendous resonance and attracted loud names in Russian culture. Thanks to the Russian programs that Alla Makeeva-Roylans oversaw for many years, the inhabitants of the Big Apple were able to communicate with prominent representatives of Russian culture from Russia, the near and far abroad. As part of the program, Naum Korzhavin, Lev Losev, Vasily Aksenov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who lived in America, and Shenderovich, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Garry Kasparov, Yuri Norstein, Veronika Dolina, who were in America visited the library. There were also regular exhibitions, film festivals and literary awards. Russian programs not only represented celebrities, but also introduced the general public with new names. Records of programs constantly appeared on the Internet, and they were watched all over the world.

All of this unexpectedly put an end to the directive of the vice-president for art and culture, Yakab Orshoch. Thanking the readers of the library in the first paragraph for being ardent fans of the programs, in the second paragraph Orshoch reports that now their efforts are focused on making the library one of the leading cultural centers of New York. "All international programs will include an English component." Orshoch promises a new program, new film series in partnership with an unnamed large international festival, everything is already completely English-speaking. He expresses the hope that visitors to Russian programs will stay with them and “give them a chance.”

“To put this in a nutshell, there will be no more Russian programs,” writes Alla Roylance, a long-time curator of Russian programs (now former). She sent out a message to subscribers of the mailing list that from time to time there would be meetings with Russian writers, but in English.

So far, these are not writers, poets and filmmakers, but an American political scientist, author of a book about Gorbachev. “Probably being a political scientist is interesting to someone, but it’s not the same,” a regular visitor to the programs noted in this regard.

“I regularly attended these programs and am very unhappy about their closure,” New York community activist Lyon Geyer told us. – These were meetings with intellectuals of the highest level - Alexander Genis, Dmitry Bykov and many others. When they arrived, the places ran out instantly. The events were free, but pre-registration was required. This is a big blow to the Russian-speaking cultural life of the city.”

Alla Roylance thanks everyone for their support all these years. “It was all sorts of things, but most often it was interesting and great,” she writes. “Please do not think that there is any conspiracy or malicious intent here.” It's a fairly common thing: a new boss came in with new ideas and a new concept and did everything his way. I had several long conversations with him, but in the end he makes the decisions, not me.”

The decisions are really taken by the vice-president of art and culture, Jakab Orsoche. The position of vice president was created specifically for him in 2016. He came to the library from the post of director of the PEN Festival “Voices of the World”, which promoted a liberal agenda for introducing radical racial and gender diversity. After his appointment, Orsos said in an interview that he could not imagine a better place than Brooklyn to create and produce innovative projects that embrace and inspire a "multi-level community of the community." “The Brooklyn Public Library is at the forefront of the new era of librarianship — an era when art is placed in a wider socio-cultural context, turning more widely to diverse communities.”

Unfortunately, cultural programs popular with the Russian-speaking community did not fit into the “wide sociocultural context” of the new concept of racial diversity. The new bosses found no place for them at many levels among the “diverse communities”.

For several years, the Brooklyn Library was one of the venues for the annual festival of Russian documentary films, held under the auspices of the New Journal. This year there will be no hits in the Brooklyn library system, but the festival will still take place from 20 to October 22.

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