By
MOSCOW — The Eurovision Song Contest became the
latest, and perhaps least likely, front in the renewed East-West rivalry on
Monday after a singer from Ukraine unexpectedly upset the odds-on favorite, a Russian.
The result had barely been announced on Saturday night
in Stockholm when the habitual Kremlin propaganda machine found its voice, with
the main television news shows, various members of Parliament and even the
Foreign Ministry weighing in to smear the contest.
Yelena Drapeko, an actress turned member of
Parliament, summed up the general mood by attributing the loss to what she
called the demonization of Russia.
“Partly, this is a result of the propaganda and
information war that is being waged against Russia,” she was quoted as saying
by the TASS news agency. “We are talking about the general demonization of
Russia, about how everything with us is bad, about how our athletes are all
doping, our planes are violating airspace, all of this.”
The loss was the top news story on the weekly Sunday
night news program hosted by Dmitry K. Kiselyov, the Kremlin’s main
propagandist. Mr. Kiselyov sees the dark arts of the United States operating
everywhere in the world, and the Eurovision contest was no exception, never
mind that it is not an American event.
The Logo network, a
cable channel supportive of gay rights, broadcast the event for the first time
in the United States, and that was enough to give birth to a conspiracy theory
in Russia.
“I don’t exclude the fact that Americans’ having
bought broadcasting rights has changed the voting system,” Mr. Kiselyov said.
“Money talks, as they say, in this case in political interests.”
Politicians were not the only ones crying foul, of
course. Among the viewing public, Sergey Lazarev, the Russian singer, enjoys a
staunch following among teenage girls. They were among the most vocal critics
of his loss.
In point of fact, Russia’s complaints began even before
the final event on Saturday night, with some officials claiming that the
eventual winner, a Ukrainian of Crimean Tatar origin, had violated contest
rules against political content in songs. The song she sang, called “1944,” describes the plight of the Tatar minority deported from
Crimea under Joseph Stalin. Many deportees did not survive to make it back to
Crimea after the collapse of the Soviet Union .
But many observers felt Russia’s basic problem was
this: Before the show, Mr. Lazarev, a pop star in Russia, was favored to win,
but the prize went to the Ukrainian, Susana Jamaladinova, who goes by the stage
name Jamala.
Certainly, her song was interpreted by many as an
oblique comment on theRussian annexation of Crimea in 2014, not to
speak of most ethnic Ukrainians’ and Tatars’ general distaste for anything and
everything Russian.
It was allowed because Ms. Jamaladinova framed it as a
personal anthem devoted to her grandmother, who was among the deportees. But
there was a distinct undertone of current events given that Russia has been
accused of discriminating against the Tatar minority all over again since 2014,
recently shutting down their independent legislature.
“When strangers are coming, they come to your house,
they kill you all and say we are not guilty, not guilty,” says the opening
verse of the song.
The Moscow establishment has always coveted a winning
entry in the Eurovision contest and was eagerly anticipating a moment of
triumph after bookies established Mr. Lazarev as the favorite.
This year, however,
contest organizers changed the balloting system, ranking contenders by both a
poll of viewers and a five-member jury in each participating country. Mr.
Lazarev won the popular vote, but ranked fifth in the jury vote.
The complicated system put Russia in third place,
behind Ukraine and Australia and its contestant, Dami Im. (Australia was a “special guest” for the second
year.)
In the tumultuous aftermath, Russia has suddenly
emerged as the unexpected champion of a popular vote.
Every Russian news program and various senior
officials maintained that Mr. Lazarev, as the popular favorite, had been robbed
in what they denigrated as a clearly political decision.
Aleksei K. Pushkov, the head of the State Duma’s
committee on international affairs, said on Twitter that Eurovision had “turned
into a field of political battles” and suggested that Russia now had the right
to send a politically charged entry to the next contest.
The winner gets to host the contest the following
year, which means in 2017 it will be in Ukraine. That brought endless
suggestions from Russia to either boycott the contest or send the most
nationalistic crooners possible.
Maria V. Zakharova, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman,
said that next year, Russia would come up with a song about President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria that was sure to carry the day. “Assad bloody, Assad the
worst. Give me prize so that we can host,” she wrote as a suggested lyric on
her Facebook account.
A deputy prime minister, Dmitri O. Rogozin, proposed
sending Sergei V. Shnurov, the frontman for a popular rock band known for its
use of foul language and celebration of alcoholism. Others suggested that
Russia send its contestants to Ukraine next year on the back of tanks.
Across the border,
Ukrainians saw the win in political terms, too, but they were often jubilant
about it. Many Ukrainians aspire to membership in the European Union, a goal
that has driven their country into a civil war with Russian-backed separatists
in the southeast, leaving more than 9,000 people dead.
About a thousand fans, many bearing flowers, greeted
Ms. Jamaladinova when she flew into the Kiev airport. “Crimea is Ukraine!” they
shouted, and then sang the national anthem. Politicians starting with President
Petro O. Poroshenko posted congratulations on social media.
Of course, there were conspiracy theories in Ukraine,
too. Given the high number of votes from within Ukraine for Mr. Lazarev,
Ukrainian nationalists wondered if perhaps Russia had found a way to manipulate
the vote across the border. Others took it as a “Kumbaya” moment indicating
that there should be no war between the two countries.
Mikhail Pavliv, a Kiev-based political scientist,
pointed out in a post on Facebook that while viewers in Russia and Ukraine had
voted in favor of each other’s singers, the jury in each country had given the
other’s contestant zero points.
“This is better than any sociology,” he wrote.
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