Pushkin was exiled
Lermontov was exiled
Dostoevsky was sentenced to death, pitied, exiled
Tolstoy was excommunicated from church
Chernyshevsky was jailed and exiled
Radishchev — exiled
Chaadaev — officially declared insane
Mayakovsky shot himself
Yesenin was hanged, by himself or not
Bunin left the country
Nijinsky left the country
Teffi emigrated
Merezhkovsky emigrated
Gippius emigrated
Kuprin lived in exile
Galich was persecuted, then emigrated
Berdyaev emigrated
The entire ship of the smartest was expelled from the country, unwanted
Nabokov emigrated
Kandinsky emigrated
Chaliapin emigrated
Rachmaninoff emigrated
Stravinsky emigrated
Gumilyov was shot
Blok — hounded and shamed, driven mad, died of illness
Akhmatova wasn’t published, husband — killed, son — imprisoned
Mandelstam was exiled and killed
Repin emigrated
Mikhail Chekhov emigrated
Marc Chagall emigrated
Shostakovich was hounded and banned
Prokofiev — denounced, blacklisted, banned, died in poverty
Shvarts’s plays were banned right after he wrote them
Tsvetaeva — exiled and driven to suicide
Likhachev was arrested, exiled, and sacked
Meyerhold was beaten in basements and shot
His wife Zinaida Raikh was murdered in her own flat
Mikhoels — an accident staged, no more Mikhoels
Vavilov was tortured, interrogated, died of hunger
Babel was tortured, denied publication, then shot
Zabolotsky was sent to the camps
Vvedensky died on the way to the camps
Bergholts — beaten while being pregnant, gave birth to a child, already dead
Latvian theatre “Skatuve” in its entirety — shot
Avant-garde artists — persecuted, repressed
Kharms — starved to death in a mental asylum
Jewish Anti-fascist committee — all shot
Tairov’s theatre — closed
Bulgakov was hounded and denied publication
Pasternak was hounded and denied publication
Brodsky was hounded, exiled, pushed out of the country
Parajanov — imprisoned
Shalamov — imprisoned, two times
Solzhenitsyn — hounded, exiled, pushed out of the country
Dovlatov was hounded and pushed out of the country
Korzhavin — exiled, pushed out of the country
Voinovich was stripped of citizenship, pushed out of the country
Baryshnikov didn’t return
Nureyev didn’t return
Tarkovsky was pushed out of the country
Sokolov escaped, never returned
Grossman was banned, denied publication
Litvinenko was poisoned in London
Lyubimov was stripped of citizenship, expelled from the country
Akunin left the country, later was declared an extremist
Yuri Dmitriev was imprisoned
Sakharov Centre — closed
Memorial was liquidated
Bykov was poisoned, declared a foreign agent, left the country
Ulitskaya was declared a foreign agent, books — banned, left the country
Sorokin’s books were pulled from the shelves, banned, left the country
Ozerkov resigned from the Hermitage
Raikhelgauz was sacked, his theatre was destroyed
Ryzhakov was sacked
Zvyagintsev left
Glukhovsky left, sentenced in absentia
Tregulova was sacked from the Tretyakov
Sokurov’s films — banned
Serebrennikov left
The Gogol Centre was closed
Khamatova left
Tuminas left
Vyrypaev was banned
Durnenkov was removed from the posters
Krymov left, his productions — closed
Akhedzhakova was hounded and banned
Nazarov was sacked for poems then emigrated
Dodin’s theatre — sealed
Petriychuk, Berkovich — six years in jail for a play
Bogomolov faced persecution
The Meyerhold Centre was closed
(to be continued…)
The poem is my free translation, interpretation, revision, variation of one popular Russian meme that has been widely recited and circulating in the noösphere as of late. The first, short version, appeared online as an anekdot in 2022, the longer one was popularised by the journalist and blogger Alexander Nevzorov in 2023. Mine is slightly adapted for English-speaking audience and focused on literature, theatre and arts, while some of the versions also very rightfully include copious journalists, activists, musicians, etc.
Yours truly (emigrated).
and Mikhail Kulakov emigrated