Media contributions
1Media contributions
Title Why the Cultural Boycott of Russia Matters Media name/outlet The Atlantic Media type Web Country/Territory United States Date 2/03/22 Description But that doesn’t mean these kinds of cultural sanctions are completely ineffectual. Sports matter to Russia—so much so, in fact, that in 2010, when the country won its bid to host the 2018 World Cup, then–Prime Minister Putin spoke enthusiastically about the impact that soccer had had on his native Leningrad during the Second World War and how “it helped people to stand tall and survive.” Vera Tolz, a professor of Russian studies at the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, told me that the Kremlin is disproportionately sensitive when it comes to sports because they’re something that ordinary people care about. While Putin may be able to ignore being snubbed by highbrow cultural institutions such as the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Cannes Film Festival (Russian officials “believe that a lot of people within the cultural elite don’t like Putin, so he doesn’t like them in return,” Tolz said), the same is not true when it comes to Russian athletes being barred from the world’s major sporting arenas. “It’s around Russian successes in sport that Putin wants to project his power inward,” Tolz said. “That’s why he resorted to this incredible level of deception around doping—in order to ensure great successes of Russian sportsmen.” URL https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/03/ukraine-russia-culture-boycott-putin/623873/ Persons Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic
Keywords
- Russian politics
- sport
- doping
- sanctions
- culture