“If one tries to make a bourgeois from a Russian person, one stops the person”

Interview by Oleg Kusov. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza

Today Vestnik Kavkaza’s guest is the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kultura, Elena Yampolskaya.

- Hello, Elena! You are also a member of the Presidium of the Presidential Council on Culture and Arts, the secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia and an author of several books. I got the impression that your favorite creation is the newspaper Kultura. It is made with love.

- At the moment, certainly. Although at some point leaving Izvestia for Kultura was hard for me, since I am an old school, Izvestia-type of person. Nevertheless, it has been three years since we dedicated ourselves to this cause. We have a backbone of the team and we have been working for three years, we are working very hard. And as you have rightly said at the beginning of our meeting, the newspaper is made with love. I am very grateful to you for noticing it. Yes, with great love. With all the love that can be invested in something.

- I began as newspaperman myself, and I know what is behind every line, every page, what great work you do. Your subtitle is 'The spiritual space of Russian Eurasia'. Is the Caucasus part of this spiritual realm?

- It certainly is. Of course. I believe that our newspaper occupies quite a successful niche. There are newspapers that do not pay any attention to multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionalism, which simply remain outside of their focus, and there are patriotic newspapers with an explicit nationalist orientation. It can be lesser or greater, but it still stinks. We don't have anything like that in our newspaper. The focus is even wider. In principle, every country under Russian influence is considered part of Russian Eurasia. Again, 'Russian' is not in the sense of the purity of the blood, but Russian in spirit.

- I noticed while living in Europe that the Ossetians, the Ingush, the Kabardians consider themselves Russian.

- Of course. I think, once we go abroad, all of us become Russian, regardless of our ethnicity.

- When was the last time you were in the Caucasus? What are your impressions from this trip?

- I've never been to our North Caucasus. I am familiar with the Transcaucasus, that is, I travelled a lot in Georgia even before all our problems unfortunately started, I've been to Armenia several times. As I see it, the North Caucasus is awaiting me. I am proud to say that last year all of a sudden I got a call on my birthday from Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and he said some unusually warm words to me. I was so proud of it,. Because when a person you do not even know, and don't think that you will ever... He is a Hero of Russia and what are we, the newspaper Kultura? It seems like nothing in comparison. And when someone like that calls you and says the things he said, then later you will remember this and think "yes, probably we have achieved something if people like that tell us things like that. Therefore, there is an agreement with Yevkurov that I will probably go there. A preliminary agreement like that about an interview exists also with Mr. Abdullatipov. So I think for me a knowledge of the North Caucasus is yet to come.

- Last year, the newspaper turned 85 years old. As far as I understand, it has nothing to do with Sovyetskaya Kultura or with Kultura, which existed until 2012. What adjective can be applied to your newspaper? Which one is it now?

- Russian. It is in general a very patriotic publication, but then again I flatter myself that we do not fall into any extreme, because, in fact, the norm for us humans and for a newspaper, for a country, is when you do not fall into any extreme. If a person never takes a shower, you'll find him to be an outcast, if he runs to wash his hands every three minutes, you will find that there is something wrong with him. We try to be one of these normal people who wash their hands when necessary. Therefore, we have a patriotic publication without any extremes. But it is an absolutely pro-Russian publication. I would say, it is not Russian Kultura, it is Pro-Russian Kultura.

- We touched upon the topic of ideology, let's talk about art, to which you are directly related, particularly cinema, being a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia. You took part in discussions of the acclaimed movie "Leviathan." What is your forecast? Will this picture be watched in ten years with the same interest as today?

- I think no one will be watching it today. I understand that this discussion and bloggers' disputes led to the fact that cinema directors began to buy copies of the movie, it became necessary to make more copies because they had decided that people would want to watch it in the wake of the scandal. But I predict that people would want to see it only on one weekend in the wake of the scandal. Those who have heard about it, those who would like to see with their own eyes. After that, word of mouth will begin to operate and people will tell their friends that it doesn't matter whether you agree with Zvyagintsev or not, because it is simply a very bad movie. It is simply a very bad movie, regardless of the underlying ideology. Therefore, I give Leviathan one weekend and that's it. Discussing it in ten years sounds like a joke.

- The movie has not been released yet, but everyone has already seen it.

- I think that this was the point. In fact, as far as I know, Andrey Zvyagintsev accused the Oscar committee of leaking the movie on the Internet. But frankly, I think that the team of Leviathan did it themselves, perhaps its producer, because it was clear that it would not gross a lot of money. This is normal, and, by the way, I am not passing any judgement, very often there are good movies which do not bring any profit, but this was done with a different purpose in mind. The movie was made to produce some sort of reaction, and they had to make up a scandal. In order to make it up, it was necessary to give people the opportunity to watch this product. So I still believe that the creators of Leviathan uploaded the movie onto the internet.

- Do you think the Oscar is an ideological award?

- Today it is. I don’t doubt that when Mikhalkov got the Oscar in 1994 for “Burnt by the Sun”, it wasn’t ideological. There were no reasons to give us the Oscar in 1994. They awarded us because the film was outstanding.