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Film screen­ings of a K-pop concert, an anime festival, and a concert by Russian rapper Kreed — all cultural events cancelled in recent months after pressure from those claiming to be defenders of Dagh­es­tani culture and religion. But for those wishing to attend such events, the backlash has little to do with tra­di­tions and more a ‘desire to feel sig­nif­i­cant’.

On 25 November, a mob of around 100–150 angry young men gathered outside a theatre in Makhachkala, the Dagh­es­tani capital. The men were upset that the AniDag Festival, a cel­e­bra­tion of Japanese animation — anime — was about to start inside the theatre.

The men promised to ‘bury’, ‘shoot’, and ‘kill’ the par­tic­i­pants of the festival, accusing them of ‘cor­rupt­ing’ the youth of Daghestan.

The organ­is­ers and par­tic­i­pants of the festival, held up inside the theatre, were publicly threat­ened with reprisals and accused of debauch­ery.

According to AniDag organiser Saida Tuchalova, police officers who were called to ensure public order remained inside the theatre. She says that not only did they not intervene in the con­fronta­tion, but two of them also began insulting the festival par­tic­i­pants ‘repeat­ed­ly and loudly’, saying that ‘this is an LGBT gathering’.

Tuchalova was herself detained by police, and held until the evening before being released.

Tuchalova tells OC Media that trouble began after a video appeared online of par­tic­i­pants in costume as anime char­ac­ters rehears­ing just before the event was due to begin.

She says the theatre’s press secretary secretly shot the video on her phone, despite a request from the organ­is­ers not to do so. Tuchalova says the press secretary then published the video in a closed group on Instagram.

The reaction was almost instan­ta­neous, with posts appearing on social media calling for the festival’s par­tic­i­pants to go home.

According to Tuchalova, despite receiving payment from the organ­is­ers in advance, the director of the theatre, Magome­dra­sul Magome­dra­sulov, refused to follow through with the contract and allow the festival to go ahead. She said he accused the organ­is­ers of ‘deceiving him’, and ‘walked around the hall insulting the girls, telling them they looked like pros­ti­tutes’.

‘He said that “here you have a striptease and debauch­ery”, and called us drug addicts’, Tuchalova says.

A lawyer for the festival’s organ­is­ers, Patina Nuradi­no­va, told OC Media that on 27 December, the organ­is­ers appealed to the Dagh­es­tani Prosecutor’s Office over the dis­rup­tion of the event, the insults, and the threats. On 16 January, the Prosecutor’s Office forwarded the complaint to the Centre for Coun­ter­ing Extremism.

Nuradi­no­va reported that the anime festival was now planned to be held in April, and the organ­is­ers were seeking to have officers from the Centre for Coun­ter­ing Extremism guarding the event.

According to Tuchalova, six events dedicated to comics, animated cartoons, and Asian geek culture have pre­vi­ous­ly been held in Daghestan; the last one in 2017. This festival was meant to be the seventh.

Daghestan’s Ministry of Culture and the Avar Theatre declined to comment on the incident.

The theatre’s director, Magome­dra­sul Magome­dra­sulov, told OC Media he did not consider the event to have been disrupted since an exhi­bi­tion and sale of hand­i­crafts took place.

‘The riot of losers and gopniks’

At the centre of the social media outrage over the AniDag, was Dagh­es­tani actor Eldar Iraziyev, founder of the Pure Heart Foun­da­tion. The foundation’s website says it is dedicated to ‘sup­port­ing the poor and needy in difficult life sit­u­a­tions’.

Speaking of AniDag, Iraziyev made a post on his Instagram, which he later deleted, warning that ‘the festival of gays and trans­ves­tites in this city is not far off’.

Iraziyev — who describes himself in one Instagram video as ‘a person who stands out for the preser­va­tion of moral clean­li­ness and for the preser­va­tion of spiritual values’ — has long been a vocal opponent of ‘immoral­i­ty’ in Daghestan.

Svetlana Anokhina, a jour­nal­ist from Daghestan and senior editor at Daptar, a local online women’s journal, believes the ‘pro­hib­i­tive movement’ has nothing to do with religion or tra­di­tions and has even less to do with morality, although the movement is based in this cultural framework.

‘I call it the “riot of losers and gopniks” ’, Anokhina tells OC Media.

‘I think that the main initiator here is the state. It was the state that built the myth that there is such a beautiful and moral Russia in a wreath of forget-me-nots, which is sur­round­ed by a flock of vile enemies. Enemies, of course, seek to undermine spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and morality.’

According to Anokhina, even Russia itself, except for the North Caucasus, is often portrayed as ‘immoral’ in Daghestan.

She says that many young men who are ‘stupid, but very pas­sion­ate’, have a ‘desire to express them­selves and feel sig­nif­i­cant’. This, she says they do through threats and sup­pres­sion of various ‘immoral events’.

‘Religion, tra­di­tions, and morality, in the name of which every­thing is sup­pos­ed­ly done, are only candy wrappers, empty covers. In fact, the goal is col­lec­tive harass­ment. The boys from the working outskirts will always persecute, pursue, and humiliate the boy with glasses and a violin’.

According to Anokhina, the harass­ment first began in 2006, after an appeal by the imams of Daghestan telling any artist who included Makhachkala in their tour schedule should ‘think carefully before coming to Daghestan’.

At the time, Anokhina says, no one was upset by this statement. A few years later, ‘an organised group of young, athletic-looking men broke into the assembly hall of the Dagh­es­tani State Uni­ver­si­ty during a rock festival and beat up several local bands.

‘They beat up both guys and girls, and in the name of morality, of course. No inves­ti­ga­tion was initiated and no one was punished’.

‘I happened to encounter such groups of “athletes” in the last election, in which I was an observer. They entered the crowd, pushed or carried out inde­pen­dent observers from the polling station, and threw ballots in boxes, all with complete indif­fer­ence to the police and other author­i­ties’, Anokhina says.

In her opinion, recent attempts to prohibit cultural events are rehearsals for future crack­downs on cultural life in Daghestan. Anokhina says she wants people to consider the question of who is behind this sup­pres­sion.

‘Immoral activities’

The ‘pro­hib­i­tive movement’, as Anokhina calls it, clearly enjoys a level of public support in Daghestan. Rashid Absalamov, a resident of Makhachkala, says he opposes per­for­mances by both Russian and local Dagh­es­tani pop groups. He says that these concerts harm the public, espe­cial­ly the younger gen­er­a­tions, and have no benefits.

‘There are only lies and debauch­ery in the songs; there is no use for this music,’ Absalamov tells OC Media. ‘It turns out that bureau­crats benefit from ordinary people degrading over time, but I don’t under­stand why we support this!’

Though he opposes the per­for­mances, Absalamov says such events should be dealt with ‘delib­er­ate­ly and with wisdom, not reck­less­ness and aggres­sion’.

Despite Absalamov’s peaceful con­vic­tions, November’s aborted anime festival was not the first cultural event to be cancelled in Daghestan after being met with threats of violence.

A film screening of a concert by Korean-pop group BTS was supposed to take place in cinemas across Daghestan on 26 January. The concert was organised in cities where more than 100 people showed interest.

Several Dagh­es­tani groups spoke out against the show on Instagram, calling it a film about ‘Korean homo­sex­u­als’.

Due to an onslaught of threats on social media, movie theatres cancelled the screen­ings.

In September, on the eve of a per­for­mance by Russian rapper Egor Kreed, the organ­is­ers cancelled the concert despite it being sold out — again, following online threats. The organ­is­ers said they ‘couldn’t guarantee the safety of visitors’.

In this case, as with the anime festival, tensions were stoked by a local celebrity. Khabib Nur­magome­dov, a mixed martial arts star from Daghestan, entered into a social media spat with Kreed and fellow rapper Timati, the owner of his record label.

[Read on OC Media: Cancelled rap concert sparks freedom of speech debate in Daghestan]

The previous month Nur­magome­dov took to Instagram to criticise the behaviour of con­cert­go­ers at a per­for­mance In Daghestan by Azer­bai­jani hip-hop per­form­ers HammAli & Nava.

In November, there were calls for the closure of Dagh­es­tani night­clubs after a Russian National Guard officer was killed in one. Dagh­es­tani actor Eldar Iraziyev was again at the forefront of these calls.

‘Who appointed them the guardians of morality?’

Aida Ibrag­i­mo­va, a student in Daghestan who had planned to attend the Korean BTS film, says interest in Korean and Japanese culture is on the rise in the republic.

Ibrag­i­mo­va says that upon learning that the screening had been cancelled in Makhachkala, she intended to go to Chechnya because they were still selling tickets there. However, the show was sub­se­quent­ly cancelled in Chechnya too. Now, she and her friends are thinking about going to the city of Rostov-on-Don, where the film is still showing.

‘There is already a group of young people who are addicted to Korean life. We gather together and study Korean culture, Korean language, and, naturally, attend and take part in the AniDag festival. There is nothing depraved about it’, Ibrag­i­mo­va tells OC Media.

Vazipat Satiyadzhiye­va, a Dagh­es­tani pho­tog­ra­ph­er, argues that everyone should be free to do what they want as long as it does not overstep the bounds of the law.

Satiyadzhiye­va says she is not a fan of anime culture, but believes that the problems in Daghestan don’t come from anime festivals or other similar ‘temples of depravity’ — an ironic reference to the cancelled events — but rather because people ‘just don’t mind their own business’.

‘Their care for other people’s “sisters, mothers and wives” is a very con­ve­nient excuse for their actions. But I per­son­al­ly am irritated by it’, Satiyadzhiye­va tells OC Media.

‘All these so-called righteous [people] take too much upon them­selves. Who appointed them the guardians of morality?’

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