Serebrennikov’s firing had been expected, after an article published last week by TASS, the state news agency, quoted an anonymous source in the Culture Ministry saying that Serebrennikov’s contract would not be renewed. Prominent figures in Russia’s theater world intervened to try and stop it: On Sunday, the Association of Theater Critics sent an open letter to City Hall in Moscow calling for Serebrennikov to remain. “The Gogol Center is impossible without Serebrennikov,” it said, adding, “Moscow in the 2020s is impossible without the Gogol Center.”
“What is happening today in Russia as a whole, and in its cultural space, is a very sad picture, with less freedom and more violence by the authorities,” Ludmila Ulitskaya, the internationally acclaimed Russian novelist, said in an email. “My honor and respect to Kirill Serebrennikov,” she added. “He is a worthy representative of Russian culture.”