No. We shouldn’t ban Russian Art. Here are some items we shouldn’t sanction – (1)

As the Russia-Ukraine war unfolds, sanctions toward Russia over the world have intensified. These sanctions represent a message to Putin that many countries are opposed to the war. I don’t oppose the sanctions against Russia; however, in my view, some of the sanctions go too far and shouldn’t be executed. I will discuss the common misconception about the sanctions toward Russia, which governments and media have, too. Then I will provide a list of items that I think we shouldn’t ban.

The Misconception Of Sanctions

In a Facebook post regarding sanctions, when one person commented on that post, “It’s the average citizens that suffer. They don’t affect the politician and rich.”  Here are the replies to the comment:

“It’s the average Russians who need to band together and kick Putin out, then everyone can have peace.” “Russians should stop blaming others for the inconveniences they are experiencing. The sanctions come out because of the policies of the THEIR government. Russians should not preach to the others but focus on their country instead.” (With 527 Likes, already deducted the Angry emoticon symbol.)
“These average citizens should condemn Putin to avoid themselves from starvation.” 
“If Russians feel being punished by sanctions, why don’t they step up against Putin? “
“According to your logic, Russia is not the one who should take their army back home, but Ukraine should not be provided with defense weapons anymore. On Ukrainian land, where Russia has illegally entered and is turning everything into bloody dust. We should stop caring about the average citizens. I remember how, naively, we were trying to announce to them what is really going on, hoping for their support. We got laughter and with every ferocious attack.” ^[1]https://www.facebook.com/20446254070/posts/10159372770604071/?app=fbl 

Ans:
Before you condemn average Russians for not doing anything, you should Google or check Youtube to see if there is any Russian step up against Putin. This should be the most basic thing you should do. However, I will give you an answer here straight away. The answer: Yes. Many Russians have stepped up against Putin, even before the war. They are against not only Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since 2014 ^[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrTq5e5Nv-A, but also Putin’s dictatorship which makes political candidates who are not Pro-Putin can’t succeed in elections or even be forced to drop out before their elections (You may see the reference here which I cited some video news) ^[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeMzp1nT6cQ  ^[4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NrV0UegeuM . For the Russia-Ukraine war, there was even an old lady who joined the protest. It’s not that Russians doesn’t against Putin; in fact, many of them have put their life at risk by stepping up and joining protests. The truth is – even if there have been protests against Putin, it’s difficult to remove Putin from the power positions. The reasons are the following: First, as I said earlier, Putin makes political candidates who are not Pro-Putin be forced to drop out before their elections. Just see one of the news I cited earlier regarding the Russian elections, you will understand it’s difficult. Second, I also explained this Russia issue in my article on the Iraq war. It’s not Russians who didn’t step up against Putin; they did, but failed. Why? If you watched some of the news about protests in Russia, you would see protesters were arrested by the police force. Now, don’t you think that it’s difficult to “kick Putin out”? If it’s that simple, why don’t you fly to Russia and join the protest? That’s why I said Google or check Youtube to see if there is any protest is the first and most basic thing you should do before condemning average Russians. In addition, even if the protesters can beat the police force, they can’t throw out Putin. One thing I mentioned in my article on the Iraq war is that guns can’t beat tanks and warplanes, so it’s extremely difficult for civilians to overthrow Putin’s regime. For details and the solution I suggest, you may read my article on the Iraq war.

By the way, I want to particularly correct the last comment I quote: “According to your logic, Russia is not the one who should take their army back home…..I remember how, naively, we were trying to announce to them what is really going on, hoping for their support. We got laughter with every ferocious attack.” 
First, the part “According to your logic, Russia…..” is not a point that you should make to object to the argument of “The citizens are innocent. “.  As the commentator already said, “They don’t affect politicians”, this phrase should already make itself clear that ordinary citizens don’t affect politicians’ decisions of initiating the war, then why do you still want to punish average Russians when you know they don’t affect politicians?  Try to blame everyone instead of only blaming Putin because you are so angry? How do you get the conclusion of “Russia is not the one who should take their army back home. Ukraine should not be provided with defense weapons” from the thought of  “Citizens are innocent”?  They are completely different things, aren’t they? Nowhere in the “Citizens are innocent” comment convey or hint that “Russia shouldn’t take its army back” or “Ukraine shouldn’t be provided weapons”, doesn’t it? They are not relevant. The meaning is clearly conveyed and just as it is written. I don’t know what your problem with your reading is. If you want to object to the argument of “The citizens are innocent, you have to explain why the citizens are NOT innocent. The above examples I quoted and the latter part of your comment are the right examples to oppose this argument, but the beginning of your comment is just an emotional comment which shouldn’t be used in discussing important topics.
Second, regarding the latter part of your comment which I said it’s the right example, I agree that there are some Russians who support Putin and responded to our explanation rudely. Accordingly, I provide my explanation of why we still shouldn’t condemn some Russians. So you may refer to my point the above.
I hope this explanation to this specific comment can be helpful for the future when you try to object to someone’s argument since I have seen too many such mistakes have been made on the Internet.

If there are many Russians who oppose Putin, why do I see many Russians support Putin? 

This is another common question. In the Facebook post which I cited regarding a  person who commented on Facebook, “It’s the average citizens that suffer.” Another person replied, “The Russian government represents these average Russians because Russians believe what they are being told. Absolutely no sympathy.” No one seems to give a good answer for helping innocent Russians and many people just object to this “innocent citizens” comment, so I will provide my answer.

You should improve your basic mathematical thinking ability. There can be many people who oppose Putin, in the meantime, there can be still many people who support Putin, just as in the U.S presidential election, there are many people who vote for Biden while there are also many people who vote for Trump. Let me give you a deeper mathematical lesson, there are 6% of Americans support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 6% sounds like a very low number, but how many populations in the U.S? 334.7 million^[5]https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ . 6 percent of 334.7 million is still a big number, and even only part of the 6 percents in the U.S is enough to fill up the stadium which Putin had the speech to promote the invasion of Ukraine^[6]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtOSNQRXqU8 , not to mention the majority of Russians supports Putin. Hence, do NOT be fooled by the image you see even on Western media. The Western media indeed did not lie to you, nor did they intentionally hide the fact from you. It’s you have to use your brain to think about what you see.

In Russia, are there more people who oppose Putin or fewer? In one poll shows that Putin’s approval rating is 83% ^[7]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X30TpL9KSHI .  Some suspect that given that there has been an intense atmosphere in Russia, people may be afraid of voicing their opinion genuinely. In a thesis conducted by four professors at Columbia University, it concludes that Putin’s approval ratings largely reflect the attitudes of Russian citizens ^[8]https://scottgehlbach.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/FGMR-Putin.pdf . Nevertheless, even if the data truthfully reflects their support for Putin, in the same logic as I explained above, 17% of Russians who don’t support Putin is still a big number given the amount of Russia’s population, just remember that.

Then many Russians still support the war and Putin, don’t they? Are we going not to ban some sanctions for those Pro-Putin Russians?

In this regard, I agree that maybe we should continue the sanctions when the receiver is a Pro-Putin Russian. Nevertheless, I suggest we go from the categories which we shouldn’t ban, then further consider the revenue receiver of each product, because the sanctions have gone too far on some categories in my view. 

But just as you said, there are still many Russians who support Putin. Sanctions can force them to rethink their views on Putin, stand up, and overthrow Putin’s dictatorship.”

Let me reiterate my point, I support sanctions; what I don’t support is SOME of the sanctions. As long as there are real humans who don’t support Putin in Russia, we should consider not banning some of the categories of products because these people are innocent, and some sanctions have gone too far in my view. 

In addition to this, though it’s not relevant to the current topic, I will explain it since you may have such questions. There has been a popular view of making Russians turn on Putin, then Putin will disappear and the war will be ended. World peace, end of the story. An expert, Bill Browder has a similar statement, “If Putin loses this war, the Russian people are going to say ‘we don’t like a loser, and we particularly don’t like a loser who’s cost us so much money and so much pain and so many dead bodies and that will be the end of Putin. But to get there, Ukrainians have to win the war.” First, do you notice that there is a pre-condition in Bill’s statement? The precondition is Ukrainians have to win the war. This is the precondition that many experts including Bill have said. So it’s not as simple as you think that as long as Russians stand up against Putin, the world will be peaceful; the Russia-Ukraine war still has to be won by Ukraine first in Bill’s view.

Second, Bill Browder’s view is similar to the view of Russia’s exile, Garry Kasparov. Garry’s view is that under the precondition that Ukraine wins the war, sanctions will invoke protests on Russia’s streets. The military defeat and protests may lead to a coup. Bill and Garry’s views come from historical events. Similar events happened in the past: People grow discontent with their government, then a revolution occurs, then a dictatorship regime is toppled, so Bill and Garry think the same logic can apply to the current Russia matter. However, the situation is very different. For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union came from not only the discontent emotions of ordinary citizens but also from each Soviet member’s claim to independence. At the time these Soviet members claim their independence, they have their army. How did they succeed in their revolutions? Peaceful protests, which is unlikely to have the same positive outcomes in Putin’s Russia since Putin can send troops to suppress a revolution. Putin is different from any other leader, just as Hitler is different from us. Romania was the only country in the Soviet Union where citizens and opposition forces used violence to overthrow its regime^[9]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 . Nevertheless, even in Romania’s case of using force, there is a military defection that played a central role in toppling the dictatorship. The dictator was successfully arrested because of his inner circle’s betrayal ^[10]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution . So still, in my view, average Russians can’t succeed in a revolution without military help. Both Bill and Garry have a fantasy of portraying Russians are capable of overthrowing Putin’s regime, just as you have had (though you didn’t think of historical events as they did).  As for a coup from Putin’s inner circle which Garry suggested, yes, it may have a chance to succeed if the revolter has control over parts of Russia’s military or if the revolter succeeds in the assassination of Putin. Otherwise, it will still be difficult. Another example is the Kazakh unrest in 2022, in which Bill pointed out that the protest led to an outcome of political reform. However, the reason that Kazakh success is because the president Tokayev decided to follow his people’s will of removing the dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev ^[11]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Kazakh_unrest ^[12]https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kazakhstan-s-longtime-leader-out-but-regime-he-built-remains . If Tokayev, the man who has had the power, did not make the decision of removing the dictator, the protest may never be successful. Therefore, this is also the case of the inner circle’s defection, and the one who defects also controls military power. In this case, we are discussing a dictator’s inner circle, not ordinary citizens. With respect to average innocent Russians, they shouldn’t be punished by some of the sanctions, because things are not what they can control, and they never support the war.

Another comment in replying to the comment of “It’s the average citizens that suffer. They don’t affect the politician and rich” in the Facebook post I mentioned earlier :
“Are you suggesting Ukrainian give up their country, and land, and live under Putin’s dictatorship so food and gas prices in your country won’t go up?” 
“So you agree with Putin murdering innocent women and children, while Russians live the high life on holidays pretending that the invasion is some kind of made-up propaganda from the west. You live in a dream world if you think Putin wants peace, he wants to restore the USSR, one country at a time. “

Ans:
The quotes I quote are worth explaining, that’s why I write this article. However, in terms of this argument, no. This is the weakest type of argument so I put it in the last part of this section. 
Though the facts conveyed from these comments aren’t wrong, again, these are emotional comments which are not relevant to the argument of “Citizens are innocent. They don’t affect politicians.” As I taught you earlier, why do you still want to punish average Russians when you know they don’t affect politicians?  Try to blame everyone instead of only blaming Putin because you are so angry? What does it matter whether the commentator worries about whether food and gas prices in his/her country will go up or not? He was talking about “Citizens are innocent.” The meaning is clearly conveyed and just as it is written. I don’t know what your problem with your reading is. The previous comment I quote at least has stated something reasonable in the later part to think on whether she is right or not. Do you think your comments are reasonable when you still want to punish average Russians when you know they don’t affect politicians? I guess you just try to blame people instead of blaming Putin and his government officials only. Learn the lesson I taught you: If you want to object to the argument of “The citizens are innocent, you have to explain why the citizens are NOT innocent. Read the above questions I quote; these are good examples to counter the argument of “Citizens are innocent”, and that’s why I provide my explaination. In terms of your arguments, they are just emotional and not worth mentioning and providing an explanation. I hope I won’t need to do this thing and longer my article again.

The Principles We Should Use

Though Putin is definitely a criminal, he is right when he talked about the “cancel culture”^[13]https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-west-trying-cancel-russian-culture-including-tchaikovsky-2022-03-25/ . However, many organizations and people has discarded his view. One of the reasons is probably they hate him too much. Other reasons are probably the ones I listed in above and the ones I will list in the following, which I provide my explanation. The crucial fact behind these reasons is that organizations and people don’t know how to judge “when” should we ban and when should we “not” ban, getting all of their concerns which they haven’t got clarifications (until reading this article) and this fact mixed up.  Therefore, I hope you reconsider “the cancellation of art” if you read this article, and I want to provide some principles as guidance for you to decide whether you should ban an art item or not.

1. No funding for the war

The first principle is very simple and we already have used them: No funding for the war. No funding to people who has ties with Putin, which many countries have a list of who should be sanctioned, is included in this principle since these people would give their money to sponsor the war. Though it seems that this principle has been widely used in the current Russia-Ukraine war case, the principle hasn’t been “actually” used in many fields given that many fields just ban all of “Russian” products regardless of whether the product has a direct link with Russia government; art industry is one example. Even if I point out that we should follow this principle, many organizations do not know how to apply this principle since they just get their concerns and the fact that they don’t know how to judge mixed up, as I explained above. Hence, I will provide examples that we should not ban.

2. Is this a neccessary item in life? 

Some items such as food and water are mandatory to live; out of humanitarian concerns, we shouldn’t ban such items. This principle has been already used by governments and corporations, though this principle is not as familiar as the first princple is to most the people. Nevertheless, the necessities of some items have been missed during this war, I will introduce them.

3. If this is an necessary item in life, do ordinary civilians of the sanctioned country have alternatives in their country without importing this product to the sanctioned country? (Optional)

According to the second point, there are some products that are mandatory to human life. However, there are also some products that are also mandotary for life but not as important as livelihood supplies. For such items, I suggest to evaluate based on whether there are local alternatives for local civilians in the sanctioned country. If there is no alternative, it’s better for you to keep running your business in the sanctioned country for providing important items to local civillians; however, if there are some local alternatives from local competitors, it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to do sanction or not. So I think this point is optional. Yet, most of the time, I will suggest you just stay in the market if you are a seller of such items. Given that many raw materials of the type of your products may be banned in the sanctioned country because of other corporations’ sanctions, local competitors may not be able to get raw materials and countinue to manufacture their products; therefore, it may be important for you to keep providing these products to local civilians since you are not prohibited to get the raw material you need in your country.

Ok. After clarifying the misconception about sanctions and the principle we should use, let’s move forward to the central topic: What are the categories we shouldn’t ban?

1. Russian Art

The first category – Art – is the one in which many people already expressed their objection to the cancellation. In U.K, Russian ballet performances have been canceled^[14]https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/feb/26/ballet-goes-on-as-uk-audience-backs-russian-dancers  ^[15]https://mil.news.sina.com.cn/dgby/2022-03-03/doc-imcwipih6368540.shtml. I think it’s quite apparent to many people that art and war are different matters; we should treat them separately. However, the cancellation still happened, and it has not stopped by the objections of non-Russians. I want to answer some of the questions that you might have in order to emphasize the point that Art is a category that shouldn’t be canceled. 

“If Russian ballet performers or other art performers oppose the war, they can quit their jobs.“

Ans: 
Yes, this is one of the ways. For example, the prima ballerina Olga Smirnova, one of Russia’s biggest dance stars, has quit the Bolshoi Ballet company in Moscow after denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine^[16]https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/16/a-line-has-been-drawn-olga-smirnova-quits-bolshoi-ballet-over-ukraine-war . However, not everyone is a prima ballerina and can get invitations from other ballet companies like Olga does^^. People need to earn money to feed themselves; do you agree with this simple point?Even Olga goes to another company instead; she didn’t quit her job without another job offer, did she^^? So how can you demand other ballerinas quit their jobs without a job offer when even Olga got a job offer before she quited? Most of you don’t quit a job without a new job offer, don’t you^^? You really don’t have sympathy for others. Don’t worry, you are not alone. Those CEOs of the theaters who canceled Russian ballet performances don’t have sympathies, either^^. Not to mention many of you may earn more money than an ordinary ballerina who is not a prime ballerina, so you get more savings than they do if you quit your job^^.

Councillor Rabih Azad-Ahmad from the Aarhus Municipality’s culture and citizen service said, “Normally, I am in favour of keeping culture and politics separate, but there is nothing normal in Russian aggression, and therefore we should step in where we can. If UEFA can move the Champions League final, we should also be able to cancel performances in the Music House.” ^[17]https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/russian-ballet-music-cancelled-ukraine-support/ 

Ans:
No. Art and UEFA’s decision with regard to Champions League are different things. What UEFA did is to move the Champions League final to Paris from St Petersburg((https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11945/12551034/champions-league-final-moved-to-paris-from-st-petersburg-after-russian-invasion-of-ukraine ))), which is a city in Russia. It’s just moving a contest from one place to another place; this is not a culture cancellation. The main outcome of this decision is that UEFA won’t earn money from Russia with its event, so the behavior shows UEFA’s support because it did not want to earn Russia’s money, which is as same as one of the reasons that Apple and many companies stop businesses in Russia. Another outcome is that by not holding the contest in St.Petersburg, UEFA shows that it does not “promote” a city in Russia, which is a country conducting an illegal invasion of Ukraine because a promotion means we support this country, like we support France so we sign Paris Agreement in Paris (We don’t sign a climate agreement in North Korea, do we?) Art performances are different from this matter. Allowing a Russian art performance doesn’t represent we support Russia (though UEFA doesn’t know the difference between its decision and art performance cancellation, either); allowing an art performance simply means we appreciate the art brought or created by the art performers and artists. If there is a case that moving an art performance of countries other than Russia from a city in Russia to places other than Russia like the case of Champion League, yes, we can and should move or cancel the performance, because it is in Russia. Otherwise, we should keep art and politics separate.

“Basic humanity takes precedence over art and history. When the humanitarian crisis is over the discussion about ‘woke’ and ‘cancel culture’ can have its place.” ^[18]https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-west-trying-cancel-russian-culture-including-tchaikovsky-2022-03-25/ 

Ans:
It seems reasonable to make humanity the top priority of item. However, I don’t think humanity and art/history can be compared together under the current situation. This is Putin’s war. Many artists do not support the war, they are not the creaters of this war. If the arts are created or performed by Putin, of course we should ban it. Otherwise, no.

Examples That We Should NOT Ban

So what are some examples that we shouldn’t ban and Putin has reason to feel it’s wrong if he see they are banned? Works of Music and Literatures are two examples. Another example that I would like to point out particularly is paintings. Should Russian paintings and antiques be banned in art aution? Yes, it should, no matter whether the seller is a Russian or not. At first, I want to state only under the condition that “the seller is a Russian”; in fact, the criteria we should only judge is that whether the seller is on the sanction list of our governments, given that a Russian seller also can sell an artwork which is not from Russia. This criterion has been strictly followed by auction houses in the current Ukraine case^[19]https://www.businessinsider.com/how-art-industry-is-weeding-out-sanctioned-russian-oligarchs-2022-3. However, paintings and antiques can be resold multiple times and in the end the money goes into Russia (This is one way that some criminals can do money laundering). Given that Russian artworks have a big attraction to Russian buyers and most of artworks may be in the hand of Russians due to its place of origin, I decided to put paintings and antiques under the “sanction” category. Indeed, some auction houses just canceled Russian art sales out of the fear of attracting Russian buyers^[20]https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/mar/17/elite-auction-houses-christies-sothebys-bonhams-cancel-russian-art-sales-in-london , which is because auction houses are afraid of possible money laundering. Based on the above reasons, I agree with the decision made by these auction houses 

Another relevant question about paintings and antiques is whether should art museums stop exhibiting Russian paintings and antiques? The answer depends on whether an art museum pay fees to borrow those paintings from Russian museums or not. Most of museums are national organizations funded by their governments, so if an art museum needs to pay fees for borrowing a painting from a Russia-funded museum (most museums do^[21]https://www.quora.com/Do-art-museums-pay-other-museums-when-borrowing-their-art-How-do-they-pick-the-rate  ), yes, the art museum should stop exhibiting the painting; otherwise, the art museum shouldn’t “cancel culture” by returning the painting to Russia. Same principle applies to ballet, music, and any other art performance, if a Russian ballet company is funded by the Russian government, yes, we can cancel its performance; if a ballet company is not government-funded (yes, there are some), no, we shouldn’t cancel its performance. Though I personally hope art is completely separated from politic by not even banning performances from government-funded companies, I suggest organizations apply the above principle I propose if you don’t want to fund a product that has a tie with the Russian government. 

Exceptions (Examples We Should Ban)

There are some exceptions we should still ban.

1. Performances and artworks that incorporate Putin’s Pro-war or dictatorship thoughts.

Art is meant to be appreciated. When you appreciate art, you also receive the idea that the artist wants to convey through her/his artwork. If the idea that an artist wants to convey through a specific artwork involves promoting crimes or any illegal behavior, the artwork must be banned. For example, a painting that promotes the idea that killing a people is right and encourage you do it. This is the most obvious example. With regard to many disputed artworks that involve violence or discrimination, they are not the extreme example I pointed out and will not be discussed in the current topic. I will focus on the Russia-Ukraine war.

One example worths citing to discuss the sanctions against Russia is the case happened in the Soviet era. Kremlin used the Bolshoi ballets to promote communism by weaving communist ideas such as collective ownership of the means of production and the elimination of income inequality discretely into the storylines along with pre-revolutionary dance aesthetics during the 1959 US tour ^[22]https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/franthiesco-ballerini-russia-soft-power-ballet-bolshoi-boycott-news-16221/ . While the promotion of communism is acceptable, in my view, we must ban some extreme thoughts such as promoting an unacceptable invasion or war crimes. In the sanction of Russia-Ukraine war’s case, none of the Russian arts that are rejected by countries conveys thoughts of supporting the Russia-Ukraine war. If there is one, for example, a Russian artist who supports Putin and therefore creates a beautiful artwork that conveys the thought of supporting the war, yes, we should ban it. If the topic of an artwork that you see is not relavent to Russia-Ukraine war, no, we shouldn’t ban it.

2. Any art created by Putin, people with strong ties with Putin, or Russia war criminals.

In the TV show Australia Masterchef in 2020, a contestant named Ben Ungermann withdrew from the show because of his alleged sexual assaults. Many Masterchef fans questioned why Ben was not edited out of the show. Social psychologist Dr Karen Phillip explained to The Daily Telegraph that it was ‘unethical’ for Channel 10 to continue showing Ben and that they should have edited him out. “Even if it’s not proven, there is still the allegation (of sexual assault), and the fact is that will probably bring back a lot of memories and fears of the trauma that sexual assault victims may have experienced previously,” she said ^[23]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8339409/MasterChef-fans-left-questioning-Ben-Ungermann-not-edited-show.html . Listening to the voice of fans and experts, Masterchef Australia removed Ben’s images from the opening introduction video^[24]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8345809/MasterChef-DUMPS-Ben-Ungermann-opening-titles.html . Similar to this scenario, if there is an art created by an criminal who caused a psychological pain on victims, it may bring fears of traumas to victims when they see the artwork and know it is created by the convict. Thus, a sanction toward artworks by these main criminals may be neccessary. This reason may be a bit of controversial given that the artworks does not present the image of the criminal and nor does they convey the extreme thoughts that disobey moral values; however since the current situation is that we ban all of the artworks, banning artworks created by main criminals such as people with ties with Putin is the way we can show our support to Ukraine while not canceling Russian culture by banning all of Russian artworks.

Another reason to ban such artworks is to stop funding the war by cutting out revenue sources from the Russian government, Putin, and people who have strong ties with Putin. For instance, New York’s Carnegie Hall removed the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the piano soloist Denis Matsuev from a musical performance of the Vienna Philharmonic and replaced with other musicians, since both musicians have strong ties with Putin ^[25]https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/russian-ballet-music-cancelled-ukraine-support/ . Given the two reasons, under a state that there is an unacceptable war, I suggest that it’s necessary to ban such artworks.

Possible Controversy Of The Exceptions

There are two controversies in my view. For example, Hitler’s books which convey his ideology aren’t banned ^[26]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf , and I agree such books shouldn’t be banned. Some of the readers may not know why. The most popular reason among governments is freedom of speech; my reason is that we can research Hitler’s thoughts through his books. It’s good for academic use and the findings of studies may prevent the next Hitler appears in the world. So if Hitler’s books which satisfy either of the above criteria aren’t banned, why should we ban such artworks under the current Russia-Ukraine war? The answer is no, we shouldn’t ban them. Nevertheless, the current situation is that Russian art is completely removed given that there is a war that we must stop funding; therefore, under the principle of not funding a war we don’t accept, these exceptions are items that we should still ban.

Another controversy is that the taxes that these Russians pay will still go to the Russian government. Yes, we can’t deny that Russians will pay taxes and those taxes revenue may thus fund the war. However, as I said, many Russians are innocent; they don’t support the war but they do not have a say on Putin’s actions, either. Most important of all, they need to make money to feed themselves. We must leave a bit of room for innocent Russians, at least in some fields.

Part 2 is here

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Chrissy Slora

The articles published in this website are all written by Chrissy Slora. Chrissy Slora aims to make people learn about how the world can be better and provide her intelligent and wise insight by writing about various topics from technology to issues happening in the world. Follow her on social media: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin