Newspeak How Russia blurs reality with the newspeak: “Walls of Free Creativity”
Since 2014, so-called Walls of Free Creativity have begun to appear in Russia at the initiative of government structures. In this way, the Russian authorities had the goal of “getting closer” to amateur artists creating graffiti on the walls of street buildings and supposedly legalizing graffiti as art. However, this is not exactly about “free creativity”, since artists, for example, in St. Petersburg had to coordinate their street art projects with city authorities. Thus, street art turned into street propaganda. Unwanted murals were painted over by utility workers.
That same year, as part of the project Two Thousand Houses of Russia in Russian cities, they decided to “decorate” two thousand walls with drawings on patriotic themes. The first graffiti was the inscription “Crimea and Russia - together forever” on the facade of one of the Moscow buildings.
Creative jingoism reached its peak on October 6, 2014 – Putin’s birthday. Seven buildings in different cities of Russia were decorated with murals with letters that together spelled out the word “thank you”. Thus, the pro-Kremlin youth project Network decided to congratulate its president on his 62nd birthday. In St. Petersburg, for example, a giant letter P (corresponding to the Russian word “Memory”) was depicted on one of the buildings. The Network project explained this action as “a feeling of gratitude to the president as the main architect of our victories”.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, the Walls of Free Creativity continued to exist. For example, in Krasnodar, a major from Anapa, who died in the war in Ukraine, was painted on the wall of one of the buildings. As reported by TV Channel Krasnodar, local residents responded positively to this decision.
The Walls of Free Creativity initiative is a way to “tame” Russian amateur street artists so that they paint graffiti that is not “aggressive” but acceptable to the Kremlin. It is worth noting that not all murals are patriotic, but the mass appearance of pro-Russian drawings is evidence of the success of this Kremlin project.