One Black Square

 Vladimir Putin's ongoing criminal invasion of Ukraine provoked a lot of misguided backlash against Russian people who had nothing to do with the Kremlin's actions. Suddenly, Russian opera stars were being subjected to new political tests that were not (to my knowledge) demanded of any non-Russian performers. Political actors around the world have called for measures that would collectively punish the Russian people for the crimes of their government—such as legally-questionable proposals to expropriate frozen Russian central bank assets for use in the reconstruction of Ukraine. 

But a story published in the New York Times yesterday illustrates just how wrong we are to tar all Russians with the same brush. It describes the fate of one of Russia's most popular entertainers—Ivan Urgant—who lost his job and livelihood merely because he dared to post a black square on Instagram alongside the message "No to War!" Immediately after he had issued this innocuous statement, the channel that ran his program canceled his show, citing "important sociopolitical events." 

"There was once a TV presenter, wealthy and known everywhere," as Urgant himself reportedly put it—in a song he sang on a recent international tour; "But one day he went out online, and put up a tiny black square."

And of course, he got off easy. How many other Russians who condemned the war are now in prison or quasi-permanent exile? 

Now, contrast the sacrifice that Urgant made, simply for the sake of uttering a basic humanitarian sentiment, with what is happening in this country: where billionaires refuse to criticize the president, even though they face far fewer consequences for doing so. Even when all they risk is the loss of a few lucrative business deals to add to their treasure trove, they still don't do it.

Contrast the Russian people who have risked prison and exile to speak truth to power with the major companies and broadcasters that agreed to cancel late night comedians or compromised their editorial integrity merely in order to curry favor with Trump—or in the hopes that he will wield a newly-politicized FTC in order to punish their business rivals and tip the scales in their favor in an ongoing acquisition fight.  

Contrast the Russian people's defiance—in the face of the age-old Czarist weapons of prison and torment and exile—with our own elite's "anticipatory obedience" to Trump—even when he lacks the legal power to wield all of those weapons—and ask: who here is fighting for the cause of freedom? Who shows courage? Who "thinketh no evil but sings," though "alive ensepulchr'd," to borrow a phrase from Thomas Hardy? 

It is certainly not our corporate billionaires or media executives, falling over themselves to flatter our self-appointed king. It is the people languishing in Russian prisons for daring to speak out against the war. 

In his open letter to Jules Michelet in 1851, the Russian exile and social prophet Alexander Herzen protested against the French historian's sweeping broadsides against the Russian people. Michelet had been writing in condemnation of Russian atrocities in Poland, where the Czar had brutally suppressed the Polish people's movement for autonomy. In a fit of outrage at the spectacle of the Czar's crimes, Michelet had declared that the Russians "are not human" and "have no moral sense." 

Herzen—who shared Michelet's feelings entirely about Polish independence and the crimes of the Czar—felt the need to step in to defend the Russian people from such an unjust calumny. If Michelet means only to condemn the Russian government, Herzen writes, then he surely agrees with him. "But it is not only official society that you deal with in your book." 

He writes: "You talk about loving Poland? Surely we all love her, but can we not do so without having to persecute some other country no less wretched in its fate—and persecute it merely because it was press-ganged into serving its tyrannical government in a career of crime? Let us be generous. Let us not forget that only recently we were offered the spectacle of a country that boasts of universal suffrage and a citizen army, none the less prepared to help in the maintenance of ORDER from Warsaw to Rome..." (Wollheim trans. throughout)

Herzen was talking there of France—the ostensibly free republic that had just empowered an autocrat by means of a plebiscite (Louis Napoleon) and had brutally suppressed an uprising of workers in June of 1848. But the parallels to our own country today are unmistakeable. We could just as well update Herzen's words for the year 2025 by means of only a few key substitutions: 

"You talk about loving [Ukraine]? Surely we all love her, but can we not do so without having to persecute some other country no less wretched in its fate—and persecute it merely because it was press-ganged into serving its tyrannical government in a career of crime? Let us be generous. Let us not forget that only recently we were offered the spectacle of a country that boasts of universal suffrage and a citizen army, none the less prepared to [mortgage its birthright of freedom to a tinpot would-be autocrat merely for the sake a few paltry dollars]..." 

The American people in 2025 have no right to blame the Russian people for the crimes of their government—when it threatens them with imprisonment and exile, and yet even then some of them still dare to speak out—when we flatter and fawn over the crimes of a government that cannot even punish us for our criticism (at least not yet—Trump is obviously trying). "Let us be generous" indeed. 

"It is quite clear," Herzen writes, "that any difference that may lie between your laws and our Ukases lies almost entirely in the wording of their preambles. Ukases start with a painful truth—'The Tsar commands...'—whereas your laws start with an insulting lie, the triple Republican motto." 

So too, in both the United States and Russia today, a petty bullying autocrat gets to dictate what comedy we hear on television; what viewpoints he is pleased to allow. The only difference is "in the wording." The only difference is that in Russia, an official decree comes down to overtly silence a disobedient late-night comedian through state channels—whereas in America, the president's henchmen in our national trade and broadcasting regulators drop hints, and suddenly our media CEOs scramble on their own initiative to eliminate the cause of Trump's displeasure—lest they lose their chance at a lucrative business tie-up. 

Where is the courage of our vaunted free press and free citizenry? And where is the mindless obedience of the much-maligned Russian people? I see neither in evidence. 

Herzen tells at one point the story of a Russian officer who risked his life and freedom in order to rescue a Polish revolutionary, out of sympathy with the justice of the Polish cause. "[H]e was put in chains and sent to the mines of Siberia," Herzen writes, "there to expiate his crime, the crime of having obeyed a call higher than military orders." 

How many Russian war resisters face the same fate today? How many have taken the same terrifying risks for the sake of the call of conscience? 

"The young were heart and soul for the Polish cause," Herzen writes—just as many young Russians took to the streets to express their support for the Ukrainian cause in 2022: only to be beaten, jailed, and deprived of their livelihoods for their efforts. 

"Both Russia and Poland go down before a common enemy," Herzen wrote. So do Russia and Ukraine today!

"From time to time one of these lone champions is dragged off to prison, tortured, deported to Siberia," Herzen wrote—of the young people who dared to defy the Czar's regime—"but his place does not stay empty for long: fresh champions step into the breach, our inalienable inheritance." 

Urgant honored that inalienable inheritance of the Russian people when he posted that black square, and lost his job for it. So too did all those young people beaten, shackled, and caged for resisting Putin's invasion. 

Where are the Americans prepared to so honor their own birthright of freedom? Where are the Americans who will claim our own inalienable inheritance—so often propounded in the abstract, so little in evidence today—to be willing to suffer and accept martyrdom for the sake of freedom? Will this land not defend its freedoms, after so long boasting of them? Will we "alone sink to the rear and the slaves"? (Browning). 

The Russian people risk losing their lives and freedom; all we risk is a few measly dollars. Will we not even risk that much, when they are willing to risk all? 

Will the Russians—so often besmirched as obedient dupes of their ruling regime—be the only ones to sacrifice themselves so that the light of freedom will not perish from the Earth?