Sindeeva: The Sindeeva program is back in the studio of the Dozhd TV channel. It is a great pleasure to welcome my acquaintance and friend, Marat Guelman, who flew in to visit us from Montenegro. Marat, you know, I was wondering how to introduce you... Tell me, how do you define yourself these days?
Guelman: I define myself as a humanitarian engineer—formulated with a bit of a question built into it, so that people immediately ask: "And what is that?"
Sindeeva: Yes, what exactly is that?
Guelman: In the mid-18th century and the late 19th century, what did the figure of the engineer do? There were scientists who wrote formulas that only ten other scientists could comprehend—essentially outliers—and there was real life, where people fought wars, plowed fields, and mined gold. An engineer was someone who understood those formulas very well, but was constantly thinking about pragmatic applications. My profession today is that of a humanitarian engineer—meaning I understand art deeply and have spent my life working within it, but I am constantly thinking about pragmatic things. Frankly speaking, I am the person who is supposed to take this post-industrial world by the hand and lead it into the 21st century. I deal with the pragmatics of culture. Culture used to be considered the most non-pragmatic sphere imaginable, but I am proving that today, in the 21st century, for various reasons, culture is an economic driver, as well as a way to solve highly practical tasks faced by both government and business.
Sindeeva: To whom are you broadcasting this message, and to what territory? Let's get into that...
Guelman: Well, naturally, I’ve spent three years in Montenegro... When you are in Russia, you work for Russia; it’s a massive country. When you are in Montenegro, you work either for the Balkans or for Europe, because the country is small. In essence, I am realizing a project in Montenegro—you visited me there, you saw everything.
Sindeeva: Yes, I visited you. Let's make sure we have enough time for everything: tell us the essence of it, what it has evolved into now, where it is developing next, and whether this experience can be extrapolated to something else later down the line.
Guelman: First of all, I want to note that I extrapolated to Montenegro the exact experience I gained here within the framework of the "Cultural Alliance." Following the rather resounding success of the Perm project, we had an association of eleven cities here that wanted to develop through culture. I headed this association, and we developed specific projects for each city. So, when I originally arrived in Montenegro, I was developing a similar project, and then I stayed to implement it.
The core idea is that in the 21st century, art must change its partner. In the 20th century, an artist—whether we are talking about theater, museums, writers, or painters—had two potential partners: business or the state. Both of these partners, first of all, look down on you, operating with a mindset of "we are helping culture," and second, they always want something in return. Business says: "Make things pretty for us," or "Organize a corporate party," which is not at all what the artist wants. The authorities say: "Be loyal, propagate our narrative." Thus, both options represent a forced partnership for art, carrying that distinct stench of compromise that stifles creativity.
In the 21st century, a new partner emerged: let's call it the territory, or the city. What does a city want, for instance? It says: "Listen, create an event that will make our city famous worldwide, so that tourists and investments start flowing our way." And the artist says: "I want to create an event that will echo worldwide." Or the city says: "Make it so that the residents, instead of heavy drinking, stand in lines for your exhibitions or pack the theater halls." I, as an artist, also want to be popular, I also want that... So, our interests align.
Furthermore, if you take a relatively small city—not Moscow, not a megacity, but a city under a million people—its center is always a theater, a museum, and a park. Meaning, the city's infrastructure and its visual face are practically the exact same thing. What happened in the 21st century is that the city changed its function. Today, the function of a city is not defense, like 2,000 years ago when it protected people with walls; it is not a marketplace, like 1,000 years ago when you came to exchange one type of goods for another; it is not merely a place where people look for a livelihood, like 400 years ago when agriculture ceased to sustain them. Today, the city is a business that caters to free time. The city is a territory where you spend your leisure time, of which there is now a vast amount, and culture constitutes half of this business. Consequently, my method is very simple: I arrive at a territory—be it a country, a city, or a region—and ask: "What are your problems?" And then I map out how these problems can be solved through culture. It’s an entirely non-artistic approach...
Sindeeva: Tell me, am I right in understanding that after the absolutely spectacular project in Perm—which, unfortunately, was never fully brought to its logical conclusion...
Guelman: It was a matter of time.
Sindeeva: ...due to the fact that Oleg Chirkunov was removed and the times changed. Has this approach not been developed anywhere else in Russia?
Guelman: Well, you can't really say that. The fact is, one of the primary achievements of the Perm project was that it shattered a deeply rooted prejudice. It wasn't about Guelman having some kind of golden touch or doing something nobody else could. Rather, before that, everyone was absolutely convinced that anything interesting in culture could happen exclusively in Moscow or St. Petersburg. We shattered that prejudice in Perm. Following that, while a vibrant situation remained in Perm, active pockets also stayed alive in Voronezh, Krasnodar, and Yekaterinburg—the cities I worked with still have people driving things forward. The point is, sharing an understanding is easy; sharing a specific skill is difficult. I would say that today, more and more people understand the new role of culture, and they are implementing projects in various cities. As for the execution skill, I believe I was the best at it. I follow what my colleagues are doing, and many of them are my former students. I don't think there is any other path anyway. Right now, the political climate is such that the word "modernization" is out of favor. But this, too, shall pass.
Sindeeva: You touched upon politics indirectly there, and I want to return to it in just a moment. You know what feeling I had when I visited you in Montenegro? On the one hand, everything is comfortable: a gorgeous climate, a wife, three young children, a kind of beautiful, relaxed "retirement" aesthetic. On the other hand, the project you were running there, compared to your ambitions, compared to how massive Russia is and the sheer number of its cities—it felt to me like it was far too small for you. Was it difficult for you to recalibrate to this scale? Why did you ultimately make the decision to move there?
Guelman: Well, for example, I curated the Art Riot exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which generated a resonance that was perhaps greater than anything I had done before—comparable in scale to the Perm project.
Sindeeva: When was that?
Guelman: It was this past November. During this time, I’ve also done three exhibitions in Vienna, one in Milan, and I am curating more right now.
Sindeeva: Were they tied to your Montenegrin project, or were they independent of it?
Guelman: Some were independent, some... It's just that when you become a European curator, it shifts your perspective, which is very important. Montenegro is a small country, and understanding this, nobody sets up boundaries for me stating that I can only work within Montenegro. You are positioned in Europe, or at the very least, the Balkans. To give you an idea, twice a year we host an open house day for gallerists from the Balkans and broader Europe, who come, look at the artists, and select them for their own exhibitions. But a certain recalibration certainly took place, and you know, I think it is highly beneficial. Even if we imagine a scenario where the political climate here changes and I return, this experience is vital. For instance, I didn't include cities with a population under a million in that "Cultural Alliance" program; I used to say: "I don't know what to do there, I don't know how to develop culture in a small town." Now I do.
Sindeeva: Three years ago, in one of your interviews, you said: "That’s it, I don't want to deal with politics anymore, I am tired of fighting, and that’s essentially why I left—because nothing changes." Yet right now, literally just the other day, you attended a forum called... what is it called...
Guelman: Free Russia.
Sindeeva: Yes, Free Russia, which took place in Vilnius. And looking at this forum from here, from the outside, it evokes such a strange feeling...
Guelman: What kind of feeling?
Sindeeva: You know what kind? You look at the roster of participants: on one hand, they are all pleasant people, for the most part—you, Volodya Ashurkov, Khodorkovsky...
Guelman: Kasparov.
Sindeeva: Kasparov. On the other hand, it feels like a collection of people who were either pushed out or fled from what is happening here. And from out there, much like people did before the Revolution, they sit and ponder the fate of Russia. For us living here, who haven't despaired, who still continue to somehow believe and hope, it looks, to put it mildly, strange. Let's change things here, let's not despair.
Guelman: At this last forum, more than half of the participants actually came from Russia—they traveled from the regions, mostly, not from Moscow. In a way, the forum has been given a certain reputation, though it does indeed consist partly of people living abroad. They go there because they cannot hold such forums here, so they meet there. It’s not about someone out there deciding the fate of Russia. Of course they aren't deciding the fate of Russia; they are discussing it. This latest forum—I literally just flew here from Vilnius—was organized by the government, meaning Vilnius itself. The first day was closed to the press, entirely off the record, and it was a very candid conversation. It was analysis, after all. By the way, Yevgenia Albats was there, so people from Moscow were present. Yevgenia actually made a rather wise observation: she said that we, the people living abroad, tend to live by a Facebook-driven agenda, whereas the real agenda on the ground is slightly different. So there was a genuine dialogue.
As for my participation, I did indeed avoid it previously, but a debate ensued afterward. I have friendly relationships with Navalny, Ashurkov, and Ksenia Sobchak. During the last election, I wrote somewhere that yes, the situation surrounding Sobchak's participation is clear to everyone, but act as a spoiler is a legitimate method of political struggle. And in how things turned out, there is a certain degree of blame on Navalny's part—for not creating a system of communication with people. He has proposals that boil down to two things for any of us: either give money or go out into the streets. For instance, you and I are not billionaires to finance his useful activities, and we are no longer the youth who are ready to sit in police vans. We would like to do something for Russia, but since you are the leader, please organize a more complex structure tailored for people like us. And I told him this precisely because we are friends. I said it, and Kasparov saw it and said: "Would you like to state this publicly over there?" At the forum, we were discussing the strategy of the opposition, and I expressed my thoughts. They weren't entirely new, but metaphorically they stood out from what everyone else was saying.
Sindeeva: Is this about the three-stage rocket?
Guelman: Yes.
Sindeeva: Tell us about it. I really liked that metaphor too.
Guelman: And they invited me to join this committee, and within this committee... let me explain. When I was wondering why on earth I needed to join this committee, I thought that, to a certain degree, I bear responsibility for the current situation. I constantly feel awkward because things are going so well for me—as you correctly pointed out: young children, health, work. It’s not retirement; I’ve organized 150 exhibitions over these three years. I didn't work this intensely in Russia even during the nineties. Yet, out there, it all feels easy. That’s why I decided I must do something. What I can do is not decide the fate of Russia, but simply participate in activities for the benefit of Russia.
Regarding the three-stage rocket, it’s just that people of my circle tend to look at Alexei Navalny with suspicion—not regarding what he is doing today by opposing the authorities and fighting them, because in that phase everyone supports him. They are afraid of what happens if he wins, fearing he might become the same kind of authoritarian ruler.
Sindeeva: Yes, there are a lot of such doubts and questions. Furthermore, he occasionally gives grounds for these concerns.
Guelman: Exactly, those are the people of my circle. When I break it down with them, my idea was that we need to present three distinct parts of the opposition to the public simultaneously. The first part, the first stage of the rocket, consists of those who are actively bringing closer the day of the regime change—Navalny and his structure. The second stage consists of those who ensure the transition, meaning the transit from the current state into a bright future. These are people who do not covet power for themselves, who refuse to participate in future democratic elections or hold permanent positions in state institutions. And the third stage is, let's call it, the shadow cabinet—the people who possess a clear vision of what that future should look like and are ready to compete to become the future government in a fair electoral race.
I argued that we need to show people the entire monitor at once, despite the actions being sequential. Then people will view it calmly: "Ah, I see, Navalny plays a leading role in the first phase, and in the second phase, he steps aside." Hypothetically, the idea was that people like me or Kasparov, who absolutely do not want to hold state power, prepare the transition to democratic elections and guarantee the process. In the third phase, Navalny participates in the elections on equal footing with other political forces, while we ensure that the game remains fair. It’s a three-stage system: activists at the beginning, authorities of trust in the middle, and experts in the third phase. The future government represents the third stage. I proposed this model, and it resonated, so to speak.
Sindeeva: What comes next? What is the ultimate outcome of these forums and meetings?
Guelman: As of today, it's about refining our understanding, which naturally leads to further expert evaluations and debates. For example, since this took place in Vilnius, the Lithuanian government was involved, and a crucial aspect was the expert assessment regarding the strategy Europe currently employs toward Russia. There are highly diverse views on this, and the forum is an attempt to explain what is actually happening. The pivotal problem remains how to separate Russia as a whole from its government, because it's clear that the current sanctions policy, despite aiming to target specific individuals...
Sindeeva: It actually impacts ordinary people.
Guelman: It impacts many. Consequently, there are entirely different frameworks here. I consider these discussions highly useful. Furthermore, we hear...
Sindeeva: Useful in what way?
Guelman: It is useful for European experts and European MPs to hear the perspective of people from Russia who cannot simply say, "We welcome the sanctions in their current form." They explain where the sanctions work, where they fail, how, and why. Second, we get a glimpse into the current internal situation within Europe, shared in a completely off-the-record setting, and we begin to understand how the mechanics operate over there. Therefore, the first part is interaction with the European community; the second part is cultural resistance.
Look, right now I am organizing a forum of Russian culture in Europe, which will take place in Montenegro at the end of September. I am drafting the guest list. Writers: Sorokin is in Berlin, Shishkin is in Switzerland, Akunin is in England, Ulitskaya is in Italy, Pelevin is in Kyiv. Even Zakhar Prilepin is outside Russia. These are all the top figures—numbers one, two, and three. Artists: Kabakov is in New York, Komar and Melamid are in New York, Chuikov is in Cologne, Bulatov is in Paris. You shouldn't dismiss us with an attitude of, "Oh, you are out there just talking." A significant portion of Russian culture is already out there—a massive portion. We aren't saying it is in exile, because we participate in the cultural life of Moscow as well, but we are physically located out there.
At this upcoming forum, I want to demonstrate exactly that: if you want to separate things—just as you asked at the beginning, "What are you deciding out there?"—then you need to separate Russian culture from what is happening politically within Russia. I’ll tell you this: in Sorokin's latest novel, the action takes place in Berlin, meaning he is actively trying to sever that connection from himself. Yet at the same time, the majority of these people—the writers, the artists, and myself included—we live and breathe Russia. Of course, we have a different perspective, which is distorted in its own way, but your perspective from within is distorted too.
Sindeeva: Well, of course.
Guelman: Therefore, I think it's just a matter of scale. I told Garry literally yesterday the exact same words you just said to me: "Garry, we need to adjust the proportions. Let's aim for at least two-thirds from within Russia and one-third from abroad." He agreed with my arguments. This movement has its growing pains; it started as a perhaps too deeply personal project of Kasparov, but today everyone is joining. At the level of representatives, we now have Khodorkovsky's structures and Navalny's structures. We do not claim to be a shadow government, at least not yet.
Sindeeva: Be careful with that formulation, please.
Guelman: We are currently just discussing the existing situation, and we would very much like this imbalance toward people located abroad to change. One must bear in mind that people inside Russia have begun to feel afraid. Many people are genuinely scared.
Sindeeva: Of course, and they have solid grounds for that fear.
Guelman: And nobody is judging anyone.
Sindeeva: You mentioned feeling a sense of responsibility. What exactly do you feel responsible for? At what point?
Guelman: Well, from 1995 to 2004...
Sindeeva: You participated very actively in political life. How did you get pulled into it...
Guelman: You know, looking back... Unfortunately, I perceived it much like lawyers who defend criminals do; I treated it merely as a job for money, meaning rather irresponsibly. There was only one instance—with the Union of Right Forces, with Kiriyenko, Nemtsov, and Khakamada—where I stepped out into the open and acted as the head of the campaign headquarters, becoming a public political figure. The rest of the time, I operated as a political strategist—a person who performs a specific job for money, just like a lawyer.
Sindeeva: Without questioning the principles or values too deeply...
Guelman: I had certain boundaries—for instance, since 1996, I wouldn't work with the Communists, and so on—but overall, I viewed it cynically as a source of income to support the gallery. Because back in the nineties, the gallery naturally couldn't sustain itself; there were major financial difficulties. In the process of this work, 1996 brought the most significant doubt regarding the correctness of the strategy we employed...
Sindeeva: To stop the Communists at any cost?
Guelman: To stop the Communists at any cost. As a result, the system of independent media was broken. Granted, the media outlets belonged to oligarchs, but since those were different oligarchs, the sum total yielded a relatively vibrant media landscape. That was one turning point. The second moment was 1999–2000.
Sindeeva: You joined Putin's campaign headquarters, didn't you? In any case, you were involved there...
Guelman: I joined Putin's campaign headquarters. In some ways, it was a formal inclusion, because if you recall, Putin's actual campaign essentially concluded alongside the Duma elections—meaning by August 1999.
Sindeeva: Right, as soon as he was appointed prime minister.
Guelman: Yes, prime minister. The entire campaign was built on the premise that everyone participating in the Duma elections was a clown, and against the backdrop of those elections stood the prime minister, who was actually getting things done. By December, his rating hit 60%, whereas in August, his name recognition was at a mere 2% at the moment of his appointment. It so happened that Chubais and Kiriyenko then ensured that Putin's nomination came not just from Unity, but from several political forces, including the Union of Right Forces. We officially entered Putin's campaign headquarters, but...
Sindeeva: What did you feel back then? Okay, previously you treated it partly as a way to make money, but here?
Guelman: The same. For me, it was... In essence, as a citizen, I probably felt the same way the majority of people did back then, following Yeltsin, who was already incapacitated. It was a sense of relief from seeing a vibrant, capable man, and a satisfaction that your efforts contributed to it. This was despite the fact that even then, older democrats from St. Petersburg were visiting our headquarters from the Union of Right Forces, warning us: "What are you doing..."
Sindeeva: They were warning you? Why? Because he was a KGB alumnus?
Guelman: Yes, because of the KGB.
Sindeeva: Not because of what he was doing...
Guelman: You know, back then it sounded like a very extreme, left-wing critique...
Sindeeva: And who were these democrats from St. Petersburg? Who exactly?
Guelman: Members of Democratic Choice of Russia, Gaidar's people. We had a large coalition... The old guard, though incapacitated like Yeltsin, was still around. And they were signaling...
Sindeeva: So it wasn't Chubais, conventionally, back then...
Guelman: No, Chubais was rather the recipient of that signal. No, these were messengers.
Sindeeva: You know, this is incredibly fascinating, and I want to dive into details, but we won't have time. Have you watched the film A Too Free Man about Nemtsov by Vera Krichevskaya and Misha Fishman?
Guelman: Yes.
Sindeeva: Now Vera has made a film with Sobchak about her father, Anatoly Sobchak. We literally just watched it at a private screening in St. Petersburg. I am under an embargo and cannot share any details before its premiere at Kinotavr. Both films, in my view, are not even just about the individuals, but about the era—explaining why we ended up where we ended up. But I still have a global question. The films offer certain answers, but in your opinion, what was the primary error of the reforms of the nineties? I find myself asking this question constantly to eyewitnesses of those events, and to myself. Because when people say, "Forgive the phrasing, but we completely blew this country," I look at myself and think, "No, not me, I didn't..." But where do you think the main mistake lay? Perhaps a practical one, or maybe a worldview mistake? It’s about the worldview, after all. What was it?
Guelman: I have a few such reference points; I think about this constantly. There is a man named Gennady Burbulis. He was Yeltsin's State Secretary for a while, before Yeltsin dismissed him. He was the first person to insist on lustration—targeting the security services and the leadership of the Communist Party. He also insisted on removing Lenin's body from the mausoleum.
Sindeeva: Everything that we now look back on and feel was a tragic omission.
Guelman: It wasn't just a feeling. I interacted with him, we debated constantly in various situations. He was a man not alien to culture; he loved poetry. I think the first mistake was that we should have listened to Burbulis. To put it in a personalized way, he felt these things acutely. He foresaw constitutional issues and so on. Second, we were far too prone to compromise across the board—we wanted to move fast, resulting in personal, compromising choices. I look at myself in this regard too.
As for the worldview errors: a massive country, and the federalization approach—Yeltsin saying "take as much sovereignty as you can swallow"—frightened people. But on a broader scale, the problem is hyper-centralization. This problem is three hundred years old. I believe that to this day, this is the main issue for the country. It is impossible to govern it effectively from a single center.
Sindeeva: Meaning there should be true federal structures...
Guelman: Naturally. Furthermore, you can govern from the center ineffectively, but only when there is a "bad guy" in charge, a strict ruler. Consequently, this acts as a sort of curse upon the country. Peter the Great started massing everything in the center for the sake of grand overarching goals, and this hyper-centralization persists to this day. Paradoxically—and I said this to Medvedev back when I was in the Public Chamber—they continue this centralization even more zealously. For example, they have a program called the "Golden Thousand," the government's talent reserve.
Sindeeva: Yes, I know of it.
Guelman: Meaning, instead of delegating people to the regions, they want to gather the thousand best minds from the regions back to Moscow, essentially stripping the regional elites. We do not have regional elites in the broad sense of the word. Montenegro is a small country; what is a local elite of a small town? They bear direct responsibility for that town. Because everyone knows each other, they cannot simply walk away. In our country, we failed to cultivate people who view themselves as true custodians of their city or country to the point of placing the city's interests ahead of their own.
Sindeeva: I feel that Putin views himself exactly as a custodian in that sense.
Guelman: There is a problem with Putin. The presence of one such individual is no guarantee of exiting a crisis, because that individual can become disconnected from reality. He can genuinely inhabit... I don't know how to phrase this without jeopardizing your TV channel, but he lives in an illusory world. This world does not correspond to the actual world at all. He inhabits a virtual 19th century, because it was only in the 19th century that a ruler's success was measured by territorial expansion. He is immersed in a form of historicism; he is thinking not about the country, but about the pages in the Russian history textbooks that will be dedicated to his era.
Sindeeva: You think that's how he thinks?
Guelman: I am certain of it. Look at when he started heading the Historical Society, the Geographical Society... Furthermore, imagine if you or I sat in the Kremlin for fifteen years, in that St. George's Hall with that massive table...
Sindeeva: Yes, losing touch with reality is quite easy if you don't build mechanism to prevent it...
Guelman: Exactly. Perhaps I would have become the exact same way. That is the problem we are dealing with.
Sindeeva: You noted centralization as a worldview error. What else?
Guelman: The second thing is what happened in 1996. I formulate it for myself like this: democracy is a procedure. It would have been better for the Communists to win, but win honestly.
Sindeeva: We are saying this now, with the benefit of hindsight...
Guelman: Yes, we are saying this now. But that is my conclusion.
Sindeeva: We don't know for sure, but back then everyone was genuinely terrified of that prospect. Nobody wanted a bad outcome.
Guelman: True. We were incompetent. We were overconfident, in that sense. The older democrats who came to see me—I looked down on them a bit, labeling them "dem-shiza" (democratic eccentrics), thinking they were stuck in their old ways while we had the future ahead of us. This overconfidence was biographical. The thing is, our generation was uneducated. We started out in the eighties as enthusiasts, as heroes, getting things done, but we didn't receive a proper education—neither political nor otherwise.
In the eighties, it was about heroism, and in the nineties, we carried a model of Europe, the West, and capitalism in our heads, and we skated through quite successfully on those templates. Lacking deep knowledge of our own, we just said: "Okay, I am opening a gallery, let's call it the Marat Guelman Gallery." Why? Because in Europe, galleries are named after their founders. My gallery was the first of its kind here. Frankly, I think half of the initial success was tied to the name, because people trusted a person. If a gallery is named Moscow or Palette, you come one day and arrange things with the director, and a month later there is a different director.
Sindeeva: Right, whereas here...
Guelman: But in the 2000s, when this Western template stopped helping us automatically, we turned out to be poor students.
Sindeeva: Why wasn't Burbulis listened to back then? Who ignored him? Why did Yeltsin ultimately fear making those decisions?
Guelman: I cannot peer into Yeltsin's mind to know why. It seemed to him that Burbulis was a bit out of touch with the real world, too academic. Burbulis justified his positions exceptionally well, but Yeltsin felt: "Here is real life, and somewhere up in the clouds is Burbulis, telling us we urgently need lustration and must bar them from power." Furthermore, they themselves were completely surrounded by those exact people.
Sindeeva: You know, I think I’ve mentioned this on my show before, but I think about it constantly. The late Daniil Dondurei, who was also a guest on this program and a true philosopher of our time, told me: "You know, it seems to me the main error of that time was that the task was simply to save the country." Understandably, they needed to feed the population, so economic reforms took center stage. They were brutal, but nobody back then thought about what I want to discuss with you—culture and changing the cultural code.
Guelman: Thank God they didn't think about it.
Sindeeva: Why? He argued that we rushed into this raw form of capitalism without formulating or articulating the underlying values for the population—the values of the market, the values of capitalism, and why it is beneficial.
Guelman: Daniil was a close friend of mine; we had joint projects, but I argued with him on this point constantly. First of all, the nineties, when the state didn't meddle in culture, were the best, most fruitful years for culture.
Sindeeva: But I don't think he meant "meddling" in the sense of the Ministry of Culture managing it.
Guelman: You see, you first had to let the private individual into culture. Culture is always about diversity, and it is always driven by the private individual. Even the Tretyakov Gallery started with Pavel Tretyakov as a private collector before it became a state institution. If you start actively managing culture or utilizing it for utilitarian tasks—for example, to plant the understanding that a wealthy person isn't necessarily a bad person... Daniil Dondurei had this idea; he kept telling Chubais: "Let's produce a TV series showing that the capitalist is a good guy..."
Sindeeva: Ah, he wanted to use that kind of language?
Guelman: But if you start glorifying the wealthy man through state narrative, you inevitably open the door to glorifying the policeman, the prosecutor...
Sindeeva: Which is exactly what we are seeing today.
Guelman: That is the method. I have always argued that culture is the most un-modernized sphere, which is true. But the main issue is that they refuse to let the individual in, because a person who enters culture with their own money will also want something. There are many such people, and if you pass a law on patronage that grants them tax exemptions, or if you build a public-private partnership framework...
For instance, I am currently promising a gift to the Odesa Museum. Before that, I made a gift to the Centre Pompidou. In return, I am granted a seat on the board. If you don't build this framework, culture will merely solve utilitarian tasks. Today it will solve the grand task of saving the country from the Communists, and tomorrow it will solve a different state task. Art does have vital tasks it can solve. Education should be solving them, but it isn't. Across the world now, there is a shift toward mentorship, where instead of standard drawing lessons, children are taught art appreciation. Why teach everyone how to draw?
Sindeeva: I wanted to discuss this briefly! But we are out of time.
Guelman: Why teach everyone to paint? Everyone needs to be taught to understand art. Children need to be taken to museums. Education, diplomacy—there are many applications.
Sindeeva: So, one way or another... Daniil might have formulated it differently, but essentially you are saying the same thing: not that we should shoot propaganda series, but that we should pass a specific law to allow culture to develop from below, while providing the necessary infrastructure and base for it. People simply weren't thinking about this back then.
Guelman: Yes. We needed de-Sovietization. First of all, in Soviet times, the individual was absent from culture; if you look at Soviet films, a private collector is always portrayed as some kind of crook.
Sindeeva: Always a crook, of course.
Guelman: The individual was absent. The second issue we had was an uncritical attitude toward the printed word. "Marat, what about this?" I would say, "Mom, they are lying." "But how can they lie, it's in the newspaper..."
Sindeeva: Yes, critical thinking was entirely absent.
Guelman: We acquired this critical gaze through immense pain, and only a narrow segment of population developed it; a significant portion of people still lacks this critical capacity today. If you look at Europe, all politicians want to deceive or entice you. All authorities try to utilize culture for their own ends. But it doesn't work there. It fails not even because cultural figures resist it, but because the public rejects it and doesn't believe it. I have my own vision for the modernization of the cultural sphere, and I will share it... though there are no platforms for it here anymore.
Sindeeva: Actually, the Economic Forum would have been a wonderful platform for such a speech.
Guelman: You see, I was recently asked: "The current government is terrible, surely you would refuse to work in a state museum if offered?" I replied: "You know, if it were possible to work in a state museum without being barred from criticizing the authorities, I would work there." But when the prerequisite is that you must maintain loyalty and remain silent, that is unacceptable to me. If I see the government acting terribly, I must be able to say so. As a result, they have ensured that people of my profile—not politicians, but people who are ready and know how to work, yet respect themselves as citizens and wish to retain the right to speak their minds—these people will either leave or resign. What awaits us tomorrow is a severe deficit of competence. I consider this a looming threat; it will start manifesting very soon. Aside from them being villainous in various aspects, there simply won't be competent people left in certain places.
Sindeeva: I don't want to end the program on such a pessimistic note, but our time is up. As a humanitarian engineer, give us a solid engineering piece of advice on how we can all dig ourselves out of this hole.
Guelman: I think "decentralization" is the key word, and this applies not only to territories. If we could manage to make certain spaces sovereign...
Sindeeva: Oh, are we running afoul of the law here, I wonder? We aren't, right?
Guelman: No, what do I mean? Take the book publishing business, for instance.
Sindeeva: Well played.
Guelman: It’s a fact. Suddenly it turns out the state isn't interested in it because there is no big money to be made there. The only method is to carve out spaces where the state is absent. I recently listened to a wonderful report stating that in post-war Italy, there wasn't a single good government. Yet Italy developed, because from one government to the next, the space in which the state could influence anything kept shrinking. Naturally, we are seeing the exact opposite process here today, but if we could begin establishing autonomy from the state within certain spheres, that would be...
Sindeeva: You know, the most vivid example—to simplify this slightly—is the restaurant business. Until the state and the authorities interfered in it, we witnessed an absolutely incredible flourish. There are several spheres where competition, the market, and a free entrepreneurial spirit save and improve things.
Guelman: And within restaurants, for example, one could introduce a tradition of hosting theater performances or poetry readings on Fridays.
Sindeeva: That is actually starting to happen quietly now.
Guelman: Since they are attempting to control traditional theaters, vibrant, living theater will migrate there. Guerrilla tactics are fine for you and me individually, but it’s not a path for the country as a whole. On a grand scale, the main positive signal remains globalization—what is termed "glocal," global-local. Their defeat in this Telegram-blocking battle is a signal. It signals that they face one defeat after another, and their space will inevitably shrink. Yes, the military sphere will presumably always remain state-controlled, but as for the rest... I walked in here today, looked at this little corner of Moscow, and it made me happy.
Sindeeva: Flacon?
Guelman: Flacon. It is alive, it is interesting, and this feels like the Moscow where I would gladly hang out and rent an apartment as a tourist. I’ve arrived at my own home, but effectively as a tourist.
Sindeeva: My guest was humanitarian engineer Marat Guelman. Thank you so much. Good luck with your projects, and come back someday—things are bound to change eventually.
Guelman: Well, the kids have school soon.
Sindeeva: Yes, three young ones still, and three adults. A father of six children!
