The Real Russia. Today. A theater merger leads to a major political scandal, Yekaterinburg’s mayor snatches victory away from protesters, and Russia’s censor says what could trigger RuNet isolation

Thursday, May 23, 2019

This day in history: 32 years ago, on May 23, 1987, the Soviet Union stopped jamming Voice of America and several other Western radio stations. The following year in November, the USSR fully abandoned all efforts to jam foreign radio transmissions.

• How a planned merger between Russia’s two oldest theaters turned into a region-wide political scandal
• Yekaterinburg mayor rejects governor’s proposal to rule out controversial construction site for new cathedral
• Russian newspaper publishes recording of purported call from poisoned former spy Sergey Skripal to his niece
• Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation accuses Russian culture minister’s family of owning 200 million-ruble Moscow penthouse
• Russia’s Communications Ministry lists threat categories that could trigger RuNet isolation
• Opening of Moscow LGBTQ film festival marred by extremist aggression and police inaction, organizers write

The drama behind the drama 🎭

In late March, Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky announced that two of Russia’s oldest and most respected theaters would merge. What had previously been the Volkov Theater in Yaroslavl and the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg would become a single national institution. The Culture Ministry noted that the initiative for the merger came from the artistic directors of the theaters themselves — Yevgeny Marchelli and Valery Fokin, respectively. Nonetheless, the idea did not sit well with the Union of Theater Workers or with local residents and politicians in Yaroslavl. Even Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev came out against the merger and ultimately suspended it.

Marchelli, who has continued to hope his theater will join the Alexandrinsky, now finds himself in conflict with the CEO of his own theater, and in May, local prosecutors began investigating the artistic director’s activities. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev asked why Yaroslavl’s renowned Volkov Theater wanted to merge with its St. Petersburg counterpart in the first place and why the resulting conflict crossed from the arts into the political sphere.

Read Meduza‘s report: “How a planned merger between Russia’s two oldest theaters turned into a region-wide political scandal”

News briefs

• 🏗️ The mayor of Yekaterinburg has rejected a proposal by the region’s governor to cancel the construction of a cathedral at a downtown public park. Alexander Vysokinsky says he’s not yet ready to remove October Square from the list of possible sites for St. Catherine’s Cathedral, and still wants to make it an option in an upcoming citywide poll that’s intended to resolve the controversy once and for all. Read about the protesters’ victory that wasn’t here.
• 📞 Moskovsky Komsomolets published an audio recording of a voice message that it described as a call from former GRU agent Sergey Skripal, who was poisoned in England in 2018, to his niece Viktoria. Viktoria Skripal said she received the message on May 9, 2019. Read about the niece’s latest headlines grab here.
• 💰 The Anti-Corruption Foundation, led by opposition politician Alexey Navalny, argued in a new video that Marina Medinskaya, who is married to Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, acquired a 300-square-meter penthouse in Moscow in 2018. Read about the $3.1-million property here.
• 🔗 Russia’s Communications Ministry has prepared a set of executive regulations that describe how and under what conditions control over the Russian segment of the Internet might be centralized. That process could entail isolating Russian traffic from the World Wide Web under a new law passed by the State Duma in April. Read about the news categories here.
• 🏳️‍🌈 On May 23, the annual Side by Side LGBT Film Festival opened in Moscow with multiple international diplomats in attendance. Within hours of the opening, the organization wrote on Facebook that a group including far-right “activists” from the SERB and NOD movements had attacked attendees as they entered the festival’s first venue. Read about these homophobes’ anger issues here.