Russia’s Poetry Wars

Few would dispute that poetry holds a uniquely important place in Russian society. Painstakingly memorising the lives of poets and their verses has long been a distinctive feature of Russian education. A quick search on YouTube can lead you to Russian street interviews where passers-by are able to recite entire Pushkin or Yesenin verses with ease. The practical deification of Russia’s national poet, Alexander Pushkin, has been one of the few constants amidst the turbulence of Russia’s recent history. Monuments to Pushkin and his work could be found in almost every corner of the former Soviet Union, synonymous with the Russian language itself and its primacy in the USSR. 

Despite Russia’s heavy reliance on hard power for its global stature, domestic soft power is still a valuable commodity for the Putin regime. Given its prominent role in Russian culture, it seems only natural that poetry has become another tool in Putin’s attempt to restructure Russian popular culture to suit the needs of the “Special Military Operation”. The pervasiveness of the letter “Z” in today’s Russia may seem obscure for those outside the remit of the Russian propaganda machine. After all, the letter “Z” doesn’t even feature in the cyrillic alphabet. The regime has long promoted the “Z” symbol as a representation of loyalty to the regime, with “Z” being short for the Russian word for ‘in favour of’ to symbolise a kind of cult loyalty to the regime and its perceived military goals. The letter is not only pervasive in the Russian army, written on military vehicles and insignias, but also throughout pop culture in the Russian Federation, indicating artists and writers that echo the Kremlin’s talking points, including poets. As a result, Z poetry has developed as a cultural phenomenon that combines Russia’s poetic heritage with the cultish militarism that has characterised Russian propaganda since the war began. 

Z poetry usually revolves around the same themes: the durable spirit of the “Russian soul”, the moral degradation of the fascist West and its imminent downfall, alongside a statement of military prowess. Saving Russians the time and money of seeking these poems out in anthologies, Z poetry is mostly uploaded onto Russian social media sites like VK and Telegram, democratising the process in a way that has led to the release of an overwhelming amount of poetry of varying quality. The Russian Ministry of Defence regularly uploads Z poems onto its Telegram page. Writing on VK, Oksana Moskalenko writes “The East and the West/ will know the strength of the Russian frontier./ Truth is with Russia, and God is with us! And the Cross will shine over the world!”. This was uploaded underneath Eternal Russia, a bizarre painting by Ilya Glazunov of Jesus hanging from the cross in front of the Kremlin with a motley band of Orthodox Saints, Leon Trotsky and other historical Russian figures in the foreground. 

Exploiting the relatively low threshold for acclaim as a Z poet, Russian anti-war journalist Andrey Zakharov decided to create a fake VK profile for a “patriotic” poet called Gennady Rakitin with an AI generated profile picture. Rakitin’s poetry exalting the virtues of the “Special Military Operation” won him quick acclaim, as over 100 members of the Russian government became his friend on VK and his work received a prize at an All-Russian Patriotic Poetry Competition. Following Rakitin’s success, Zakharov revealed that his poems had actually been translations of Nazi poems written in the 1930s, simply replacing references to Germany with ones to Russia and Putin. State Duma member Vladimir Gutenev, one of Rakitin’s VK friends, was quick to deny ever knowing of his work, claiming his military-industrial responsibilities left him little time for poetry. 

On the other hand, the current reality for anti-war poets still living inside Russia is bleak. At a 2022 street poetry reading in Moscow, the young poet Artyom Kamardin was imprisoned for reading poems criticising the September mobilisation law, receiving a seven year sentence for “inciting hatred” against the Russian army. Amnesty International reported that Kamardin was subjected to torture and “gruesome sexual violence” while in captivity. 

The onus for anti-war poetry has fallen upon émigré writers, one of whom, Julia Nemirovskaya, recently visited the University of Leeds. Nemirovskaya, who teaches at the University of Oregon, is the founding editor of the Kopilka poetry project, an anti-war poetry collection of over 1000 poems from the Russophone literary community that has also acted as a safe haven for unpublished works by authors still in Russia.

Disbelief, a collection of Kopilka poems published by Nemirovskaya, conveys the complex range of emotions which Russophone authors have to deal with, particularly the guilt and shame associated with Russia. In particular, Olga Zondberg’s Annexations captures the complicated reality of speaking Russian whilst being aware of the language’s weaponisation against Ukraine: “choking on a word / that simultaneously / signifies / I love you / and snuff it, scumbag”. Zondberg’s scrutiny of everyday language is symptomatic of the radical restructuring of identity that many anti-war Russians have been undergoing, trying to communicate friendly thoughts in a language seen as repressive. 

Poetry is just one of the many areas in which Putin’s Russia is currently being hotly contested, but the art form’s prominence in Russophone culture has made it a particularly important one. The relentless uploading of Z poetry on VK and the 1,000+ poems already in the Kopilka collection testify to this. Belief in the potency of poetry appears to be one of the few things left in common between these seemingly irreconcilable camps. 

Words by George Milne