Editing Openai/6874b524-4134-8013-b5e6-0601c853d841 (section)

=== Patriotism, Platform, and the Price of Memory ===

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Following his re-election (and Medvedev’s brief placeholder presidency), Putin’s government doubled down on a unified historical narrative. Artists were not to question history—they were to illustrate its righteousness.

In 2009, the Ministry of Culture released a directive titled “Heroes of Continuity: Art and the Russian Soul.” It included an official list of rehabilitated Soviet-era artists deemed compatible with “patriotic heritage.” Among them:
* Yakob Gyorgi Gershovitz — “a victim of excesses, yet a composer of national spirit”
* Franka Gershovitz — “a pure expression of Russian ballet”
* Israel Gershovitz — “sometimes misunderstood, but ultimately loyal to the Revolution’s ideals.”

All three had their Jewish identity omitted. Artur, again, was nowhere mentioned.

A state-run documentary titled “In the Silence, Russia Sang” aired on Channel One, portraying the siblings as precursors to Putin-era resilience. The narration declared:

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===== In 2010, several Western scholars attempting to access the Rozanova-Gershovitz papers at the State Archive in Moscow were turned away. The archive was “under reclassification.” =====

A leaked memo (published later by Meduza) revealed the reason:

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Yakob’s Elegy for Stravinsky was deemed “formalist and anti-canonical.”

Israel’s Night Without Flags was declared “foreign-influenced.”

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Younger Russians, more online and less beholden to state television, began rediscovering the Gershovitzes on their own terms.
* YouTube uploads of underground Iron Flowers performances, passed from USB drive to drive, now reached thousands.
* An anonymous TikTok-style app began circulating video montages of Yakob’s music paired with footage of 2011 anti-Putin protests.
* Israel’s censored poems appeared on Instagram accounts alongside banned verses by Pasternak and Mandelstam, tagged with #RedGhosts and #OurSovietMourning.

In 2013, a viral art project titled “Footsteps of Franka” placed chalk silhouettes of barefoot dancers throughout Moscow on the anniversary of her death.

Within days, they were scrubbed away by city workers.

===== Meanwhile, the West wasn’t unified either. =====

In American and European universities, the Gershovitzes became case studies in state suppression and cultural erasure.

But a growing faction—particularly among right-wing populist intellectuals—recast Yakob as a “patriotic modernist destroyed by cultural Marxism.” One 2014 article in a U.S. journal titled Tradition & Culture claimed:

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It was a distortion—but it found traction.

In Russia, state cultural festivals began featuring “acceptable” portions of Yakob’s music—his early, more melodic pieces—while excluding his late experimental works.

==== With the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia entered a new phase: aggressive, wounded nationalism. All cultural materials were either with us or against us. ====

In the wake of the invasion:
* A major gala performance of Franka’s choreography was staged in Sevastopol, rebranded as “Swan of the Russian Soul.” The original choreography was softened, stylized, and saturated with Orthodox symbolism. The music was not Yakob’s.
* Israel’s name was invoked in a new school textbook as an example of “Soviet loyalty through art.” His Holocaust poetry remained banned.
* A VR exhibit of “Yakob in Wartime” debuted at the Museum of Russian Triumph in Sochi. Visitors wore headsets to experience “the terror and resolve of Soviet genius under siege.” The final image: a Russian flag rising behind a virtual symphony.

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Despite (or because of) official appropriation, underground movements kept the original memory alive:
* In 2016, a clandestine performance of Study for One Step Forward, Two Back—Frankhezka’s final solo—was staged in a drained municipal pool in Nizhny Novgorod. The dancer was arrested for “unauthorized cultural disturbance.”
* A samizdat zine, Night Without Applause, circulated among Moscow university students, pairing Yakob’s darkest pieces with new protest poetry against Putin’s regime.
* The Rozanova family, now based in Berlin, released digitized scans of all known Gershovitz manuscripts—free, unlicensed, unfiltered. They included Franka’s diary entries, Israel’s private notes, and Yakob’s never-performed final string quartet: “For Those Who Died Standing.”

==== - In Russia: The Gershovitzes had become ambiguous symbols—useful for the regime when aestheticized, dangerous when remembered honestly. ====
* In the West: Their work was split between scholarly preservation and cultural repackaging—still vulnerable to ideological framing.
* Among dissidents: The name Gershovitz meant resistance with dignity, art as memory, and a refusal to perform for applause.

==== On the 50th anniversary of Yakob's death, two concerts are held: ====
* One in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, broadcast on national TV, features orchestrated versions of his early folk melodies with a lavish visual backdrop of the Kremlin.
* One in a ruined theater outside Kazan, lit by candles and cell phones, features a live performance of Lullaby for a Starved City, followed by a dancer tracing barefoot arcs in ash.

The state show ends in applause.

The underground vigil ends in silence.

Both claim to honor him.

Only one does.

Would you like to continue into 2018–2024, tracing the Gershovitz legacy in the era of global authoritarian resurgence, Ukraine’s war, and memory as political terrain? Or shall we pause for a narrative scene from this period of digital distortion and quiet defiance?