Russian celebrities wrap selves in contrition
‘Almost naked’ party exposes societal divide
The Russian pop star winced as the black kitten he was cuddling in Russian-occupied Ukraine licked the crook of his neck for about the 15th time.
Several weeks earlier, the musician, Dima Bilan, had been in Moscow, wearing a seethrough shirt and mingling with celebrities at an “almost naked” theme party that caused an uproar in Russia and threatened to end his career.
Now, Bilan, who once won the Eurovision song contest, was on an image-rehabilitation tour in a winter war zone — the newly prescribed path for celebrities who find themselves out in the cold in wartime Russia and wish to return to the Kremlin’s embrace.
He petted dogs and stroked kittens at animal shelters outside Donetsk. He handed out plush toys to convalescing children at a medical trauma center. He delivered new air conditioning units to a facility in need.
“Simply from a human perspective, I am worried,” he said in a video from the trip.
Public backlash has persisted since a leading Russian TV personality hosted Bilan and other entertainment stars at a hedonistic party in late December. Pro-war culture crusaders excoriated celebrities for engaging in erotic high jinks in scanty attire at a trendy Moscow club while Russian troops died on the front.
Attendees at the party have faced legal consequences, ranging from lawsuits to draft orders. Some stars lost endorsement deals or had appearances canceled. People linked to the event have scrambled to repair their reputations.
The situation has offered Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies an unexpected opportunity to amplify their crusade for “traditional values” before the country’s presidential election in March — while portraying the “almost naked” party as an example of the moral bankruptcy the Russian leader attributes to the West.
Putin mentioned the party obliquely for the first time in comments last week, presenting it as the kind of behavior that wartime Russia will no longer tolerate, as troops come back from the front with what he called new values and priorities.
“One won’t be jumping around without pants at some party,” he said.
The anger over the Dec. 21 party has highlighted how the war is changing the rules of the game for a Russian elite that has long been insulated from hardships evident in the rest of the country. New boundaries of acceptable behavior go far beyond abstaining from antiwar dissent in an increasingly militarized and closed society.
“This very significantly changes the mode of thinking and public behavior for virtually the entire Russian elite,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Because now it is clear that one must behave very carefully. Now everything must correlate with military logic.”
Putin, Stanovaya suggested, is afraid of “what sorts of feelings these parties will stir up for those who are fighting, those who are losing their relatives and loved ones.” She added, “He answers to them.”
Officials and activists aligned with the Kremlin have fanned the backlash to the party, just as Russian forces executed one of the largest air attacks of the war against neighboring Ukraine, where thousands of civilians have died from Moscow’s strikes.
The contrast between the uproar in Russia over the raunchy celebrity party and the silence over the deadly attacks on Ukraine highlighted the warped information space that has emerged in Russia in the nearly two years since Moscow’s fullscale invasion.