‘The Kremlin is following Stalin’s toolbook,’ says Russia’s top documentary director

Over 21 years, by turning the dual screws of repression and simulacrum, Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has seized control over most influential public spheres of expression in Russia.

Parliament and public politics have been neutered, the media largely muzzled, and it looks as though the internet is next in line for attack. So it’s all the more remarkable when you see projects of real freedom and free speech finding their way to the light of day.

One project that has consistently defied the hostile environment has been ArtDocFest, a documentary film festival founded and headed by the venerated film director Vitaly Mansky.

Year after year, the festival has trod where others dared not. It has courted controversy and fielded attacks over films on homosexuality, Ukraine and Chechnya. Somehow, it has managed to to hang on.

But serious problems at this year’s ArtDocFest, which closed last week, suggest its days in Russia may be coming to an end.

In a series of attacks of increasing seriousness, the festival was subjected to the offline equivalent of a coordinated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) ambush. In St Petersburg, the festival was shuttered after local authorities bizarrely claimed it had infringed Covid-19 regulations. In Moscow, two screenings were called off following undisclosed threats.

The films, which profiled Ukrainian soldiers and a gay, Chechen MMA fighter, triggered the acupuncture points of the festival’s traditional foes: pro-Kremlin vigilantes, homophobes, and Chechen groups.

On the final day, Mansky, 57, was attacked by a group of pro-Kremlin thugs, whom police allowed to leave the cinema without arrest.

Speaking by phone from his home in Latvia – he moved to semi-exile in 2014 – Mansky refuses to elaborate on the details of the threats. The Independent understands they were communicated to him through a note left on the door at his flat, and concerned the main protagonist of the pulled film.

Suffice to say, concerns over security are such that the director carries a panic button when walking around Moscow at night. But he says his reluctance to offer more details had nothing to do with fears of his own safety.

“If the threats were only about me I’d have no problem telling you. But they concern someone else, and I’ve no doubt that the threats are serious, and I cannot turn to the police for help.”

The director says what happened to this year’s festival was reflective of “global” changes in Russia’s political climate. The state is intensifying a war against independent institutions, he said, deeming their very presence “toxic and impermissible”.

“The Kremlin is acting just like Stalin did in eastern Europe,” he says. “The first thing his occupying forces did was to destroy non-governmental organisations, closing down book societies, stamp-collecting organisations, beekeeping guilds, anything outside the state.”

Putin’s administration was “copying the Stalinist toolbook”, he added.

That said, the documentary director says he didn’t believe the festival’s troubles were down to a direct order from Vladimir Putin.

In St Petersburg, for example, the problems were likely caused by “excited local bureaucrats” wanting to impress the boss. But the Kremlin had sent out “toxic” signals that extremists understand can be acted upon.

“The crazies are told that nothing will happen to them, told they are doing the right thing,” he says.

Mansky certainly speaks with authority when it comes to talking about the country’s leadership. He knows most of the men who now rule Russia by first name – having enjoyed unrivalled, intimate access to them as the Kremlin’s in-house documentarian at the turn of the century.

Then head of documentary making for state TV, Mansky filmed the every secret moment of “Operation Successor”, when Putin took over from the ailing Boris Yeltsin in 1999-2000. He released much of the footage only later in 2018 in a remarkable documentary called Putin’s Witnesses.

The documentary maker says reviewing the raw footage showed him that the signs of Putin’s future trajectory were already evident in 1999.

“I thought the guy should be given a chance,” he says, “but really you can trace the building of totalitarianism from the moment he returned the Soviet national anthem in 2000.”

Mr Mansky says his personal history with the president has provided protection at various points of his career. His connections appear to be why, for example, the Kremlin declined a 2015 request from North Korea to ban Mansky’s Under the Sun, which depicted life – and propaganda – in in the totalitarian state.

“Officially, they condemned the film, but didn’t offer me over as Pyongyang demanded,” he says.

As the screws turned, and Mansky became more outspoken, the privileged position was wound down. And it came to a shuddering halt in December, when the director arrived at the headquarters of the Russian security service with a pair of blue underpants.

His famous protest was a reference to the bungled operation to poison the now jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent, apparently applied on his undergarments. The director told his arresting officer he had chosen the Y-fronts since they were “clean”.

“Everything should be clean – clean conscience, clean underwear,” he said.

The film director says Navalny’s poisoning left him “shocked” and “disappointed”. It has forced him into a re-evaluation of many his convictions about Putin. And it left him in a deep depression about the future path of his country.

Russia could follow evolution or revolution, he says, but the window for evolution has become narrow. “The authorities are doing everything to ensure their rule ends in a terrible and remorseless revolution. I’m not calling for that, but I am saying it looks inevitable.”

As regards the future of the festival, Mansky says it will continue in some form regardless of the Kremlin’s plans. The prospect of the festival moving online, or next door to Latvia, were possible.

“At the very least, we are ready to continue our work,” he says.

“We won’t be the first to raise a white flag over our castle.”