In the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater, the performance of the play “One Eight Eight One” based on the work of Boris Akunin was canceled. This was reported by deputy of the city Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky, whose assistant bought a ticket to the performance.
“Today she received a letter that the performance was cancelled. And on the theater website on January 13 and 14 on the main stage — instead of «1881» excursion «The Brilliant Alexandrinsky Theater». One can only guess about the reasons for the cancellation of the wonderful performance,” Vishnevsky wrote in his Telegram channel.
The theater box office confirmed the information about the cancellation of Akunin’s performance to the Rotunda publication: “This is a cancellation of the performance. We don’t know how everything will turn out next. At the moment, this performance is not available.”
Today, January 12, the Ministry of Justice declared the writer a “foreign agent.” According to the department, Akunin “took part in fundraising events” in support of the Ukrainian army. A month earlier, a criminal case was opened against him under articles on justifying terrorism (205.2 of the Criminal Code) and disseminating “fakes” about the army (207.3 of the Criminal Code).
Before this, pro-government pranksters Lexus and Vovan published a recording of a conversation with the writer on behalf of representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, where he condemns the Russian invasion. Akunin himself, after the release of the recording, noted that he had previously publicly opposed the war: “The fact that I supposedly agree with the thesis “a good Russian is a dead Russian” is, of course, nonsense.”
At the end of December, the Moscow The Russian Youth Theater (RAMT) has removed three performances based on the works of Boris Akunin from its repertoire. In addition, after the initiation of a case against the writer, Read-Gorod, Liters and the AST publishing house refused to distribute his books. Security forces also came with searches to the Zakharov publishing house, which publishes Akunin’s books.