Is the backlash against Russian culture going too far?
In New York City, the challenge of landing a reservation at a coveted restaurant on a weekend night has more or less returned to pre-Omicron levels of difficulty — unless the restaurant in question happens to be known for its blinis and caviar. |
As Alyson Krueger reported this week in The Times, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has created a public relations problem for the city's Russian restaurants. Even though many owners and workers — some of whom are themselves Ukrainian and have ties to victims of the violence — have spoken out against the war, they are getting deluged with cancellations, negative online reviews and harassing emails and phone calls. Some establishments have even been vandalized. |
"There is a lot of stigma out there," Vlada Von Shats, the owner of a Russian piano bar in Midtown, told The Times. Reservations have plunged by 60 percent, she said, and her door was kicked in during the night. "These people don't realize that we have nothing to do with Putin." |
But what does seem fairly novel about these campaigns — thanks at least in part to the organizational power of social media — is the speed and ease with which they have taken off, as well as the sheer number and diversity of nonstate actors who have chosen to wage them. |
Some commentators, like Yasmeen Serhan of The Atlantic and Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post, believe that cultural boycotts have the potential to drive a wedge between the Russian people and Putin in a way that state-instituted economic and political sanctions cannot. |
Others, like the political scientist Samuel Goldman and the economist Tyler Cowen, argue that the backlash could actually obstruct a path to peace, all while stigmatizing an entire population for the crimes of one autocrat. |
There's another danger to this kind of decentralized resistance movement that the Times columnist Thomas Friedman raised: When a leaderless movement decides to sanction a culture, whom does the culture call to broker a peace deal? |
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