Sources: A Cultural Casualty of the War in Ukraine: ‘The Nutcracker’ by Andrew Higgins and Jenny Gross

It is Christmastime at Lithuania’s national opera house. Hiding beneath the red curtains and bustling crowds of people is the murder of a holiday staple. As a supporter of Ukraine in the war against Russia, Lithuania had declared a “mental quarantine” from Russian culture, including classic holiday ballet “The Nutcracker”. This act outraged many, including audience member Egle Brediene, declaring “The Nutcracker” as being superior to the substitute ballet in “the music, the dance,[and the story” (The New York Times 1).

The substitute ballet, a lesser known Italian work called “Les Millions d’Arlequin”, was seen by many as unimpressive compared to “The Nutcracker”. Of those was a Lithuanian of Polish descent named Kristina Borkowska, who took her five-year-old granddaughter to watch “Les Millions d’Arlequin,” but left wishing she had watched Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” exclaiming, “What does Tchaikovsky have to do with the war in Ukraine?” (The New York Times 1).

To some, the exclusion of Russian works such as “The Nutcracker” was necessary. Many Ukrainian officials and activists actively work to promote the exclusion of Russian art and culture, tying them with the Kremlin and Russian atrocities. “The Kremlin has been using classical culture to distract the eyes of the world to the atrocities that it is exercising today,” says Lithuanian National Museum of Art director Arunas Gelunas.

Even the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater has been excluding works by Russian composers, saying that it is “significant and highly influential, which means it can be — and has been — used for propaganda purposes” (The New York Times). Others say otherwise. “I am a patriot of Lithuania, but art and sport should not be mixed with politics,” says half-Ukrainian, half-Russian activist Tatiana Kuznetsova.

Britain’s National Gallery put on many concerts during World War II featuring music from many German composers, such as Ludwig van Beethoven and Felix Mendelssohn. According to The New York Times, the director at the time said that all this was done to show the public that the fight was against Hitler and the Nazis, not Germany as a nation.

While the party that had previously governed Lithuania openly opposed the inclusion of Russian art, the new culture minister, Mr. Birutis, thinks otherwise. As a fan of Tchaikovsky’s music, he has suggested change. This action provoked many, with protests from political enemies and even a warning from Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas.