Multiculturalism is a casualty of war
Banning Russo-Canadians from a heritage festival sets a bad precedent.
500 days (!) into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world is still grappling with the question of how we deal with Russian citizens, and people of Russian descent fortunate enough to live outside of the motherland.
Of course, keyboard warriors on the internet would have us herd them all into camps, strip them of citizenship and assets, deport them en masse, or worse. (And Russian state propaganda outlets, in turn, are more than happy to amplify these voices at home. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the most unhinged “Russophobes” are in fact Russian-based trolls stirring the pot.) Here in the real world, it’s much more complicated, and ties into to questions of individuals’ responsibility for their country’s crimes against humanity.
Sanctioning and blacklisting the Russian government, and state-backed and -funded organizations, is a no-brainer. Ditto for Russian corporations, which may be independently owned on paper but operate at Putin’s pleasure in practice.
Russian citizens can’t be allowed to carry on completely as normal, but if you want Russians walled off until they change their government from within, I ask you to find me just one example from history of where a revolution has been carried out by people who were locked into their oppressive countries by the outside world, instead of their dictator refusing to let them leave.
History might have turned out very differently - and Ukraine might still be part of a Russian-dominated Communist empire - had Boris Yeltsin not been allowed to see an American supermarket for himself.
And then there are Russians who’ve long lived in other countries, and their descendants, who likely have no desire to ever return but still like the nesting dolls and those sitting-kicking dances and stuff. In Edmonton, Alberta, organizers of a Heritage festival have informed them that multiculturalism may include respect for and tolerance of all cultures, but not theirs:
Russian culture will not be featured at this year’s Edmonton Heritage Festival due to safety concerns, festival organizers announced Friday.
The Edmonton Heritage Festival Association (EHFA) said they’ve received several threats and were advised by police that the festival would need extra security if the Russian pavilion was included.
“Last year, despite the Russian pavilion organizers deciding not to participate in the festival, there were incidents related to the war that festival security had to address,” EHFA said. “While these incidents did not pose a safety threat, they did highlight the potential for safety risks if the Russian pavilion had participated last year.”
The annual festival features more than 100 cultural groups that share hundreds of cultural dishes and crafts and perform shows on 40 stages. Hundreds of thousands of people from across the province attend the festival each August long weekend.
In May, organizers said they were considering whether the Russian pavilion would be allowed at the festival this year following calls from some in the Ukrainian community to exclude the country in the festivities.
“Allowing the Russian community to partake in the festival without acknowledging the atrocities committed by their government is a disservice to the victims of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and sends a disturbing message that the festival supports or condones such actions,” the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said in a media release.
EHFA said it held meetings with the Ukrainian and Russian communities but couldn’t come up with a solution together.
You know my position on the war - when a shipment of controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine was announced this weekend, my response was, “what took them so long?” - and if the Russian cultural organization in Edmonton openly supports it and/or is a recipient of monies from the Russian state, excluding them from the festival is justifiable.
If that isn’t the case, and they’re being excluded not because of what Russia is doing but because of what Russians are, well, that’s the kind of thinking that takes us to some really dark places.
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