MOSCOW — After a law went into effect last summer banning obscenities in public performances, the playwright and director Ivan Vyrypaev excised the curse words from one of his plays, “The Drunks,” for its Russian debut at the prestigious Moscow Art Theater. Some actors played the new version straight, he said, while others winked to make clear what was cut.
莫斯科——去年夏天，俄罗斯开始实施一项禁止公共表演中出现脏话的法律。为了自己的剧作《酒鬼》(The Drunks)能在著名的莫斯科艺术剧院举行俄罗斯首演，编剧兼导演伊万·维里帕夫(Ivan Vyrypaev)也删除了剧中的脏话。他说，新版本上演时，有些演员不动声色，也有些演员在脏话被删除的地方挤眼示意。

A quiet man of 40, Mr. Vyrypaev was circumspect about the law. “Of course my plays lost something, but my artistic life hasn’t been ruined,” he said in an interview, adding that he also had to pull three plays by other playwrights from the Praktika Theater here, where he is artistic director.
40岁的维里帕夫生性温和，他对这项法律极为慎重。“当然，我的剧本失去了某种味道，但我的艺术生命还没被毁掉，”他在采访中说。维里帕夫是莫斯科普拉克提卡剧院(Praktika Theater)的艺术总监。他补充说，他还不得不撤掉该剧院其他编剧创作的三部话剧。
Later, Mr. Vyrypaev said, Praktika presented other plays with curse words after President Vladimir V. Putin said in a meeting with writers that while Tolstoy and Chekhov didn’t need cursing, “You, the writers, know best.”
维里帕夫说，弗拉基米尔·V·普京总统(Vladimir V. Putin)在一次与编剧的座谈会上说，托尔斯泰和契诃夫不需要使用脏话，“你们这些编剧最了解这一点”。不过，在那之后，普拉克提卡剧院还是上演了其他一些含有脏话的剧目。
The advance and retreat was telling. Cultural figures in Russia today describe a climate of confusion and anxiety in which the law banning obscenities, as well as a 2013 law that criminalizes acts offending religious believers, are often ignored unless someone wants them applied. Critics say the new laws are stifling free expression and pulling the country backward.
这种时进时退的做法很说明问题。俄罗斯的文化名人们认为当前的文化气候令人困惑和忧虑。2013年，俄罗斯一项法律宣布冒犯宗教信徒的行为属于违法，然而这项法律以及这项禁止使用脏话的法律经常被民众忽视，除非有人想要执行。批评者认为，这些新法律扼杀自由言论，导致国家走向倒退。
During Soviet times, “At least we knew the rules,” said Irina Prokhorova, a publisher and vocal critic of the government. “This is a little bit different, because there are no rules, no official censorship.” Ms. Prokhorova likened the climate to the 1930s, when the Nazis labeled art degenerate. “This is aesthetic fundamentalism,” she said. The law on religious believers is particularly slippery. “Who are those believers? What do they believe in? No one talks about this,” she added.
出版人伊琳娜·普罗霍罗娃(Irina Prokhorova)经常直言不讳地批评政府。她说，在苏联时期，“至少我们知道有哪些规定”，“现在这种情况有点不同，因为没有规定，没有官方审查”。普罗霍罗娃把目前的文化气候比作20世纪30年代，当时纳粹认为艺术是堕落的。“这是审美上的原教旨主义，”她说。她补充说，关于宗教信徒的那项法律尤其模糊。“那些信徒是谁？他们信奉的是什么？没人说明这些。”
This week, a debate has been raging after it emerged on Sunday that Russia’s culture minister had ousted the director of a state-run theater in Siberia on the grounds that a production of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” with a backdrop in which an image of Christ was placed in the crotch of a naked woman, had run afoul of the law against offending religious believers — even after a judge last month dropped the case as groundless.
周日，俄罗斯文化部长罢黜了西伯利亚一个国营剧院的经理，理由是该剧院排演的瓦格纳(Wagner)作品《唐怀瑟》(Tannhäuser)的布景将耶稣形象放在一个裸体女人的胯部。文化部长认为这冒犯了宗教信徒，触犯了法律。不过上个月，一位法官判定该案理由不足。该案引发热烈争论。
Russia has a thriving theater scene and a constitution that bans top-down, Soviet-style censorship. But in a time of economic turmoil and growing nationalism, with society polarized in unpredictable and emotional ways over the new laws and the war in Ukraine, cultural figures say the message from the government is clear: Fall in line with the emphasis on family and religious values, or lose funding, or worse.
俄罗斯的舞台艺术蓬勃发展，宪法禁止自上而下的苏联式审查制度。但是如今俄罗斯经济动荡，民族主义情绪高涨。面对新法律和乌克兰战争，整个社会出现不可预料的分化情绪。文化名人们说，政府的信号很明确：文化界要与政府强调家庭和宗教价值观的政策保持一致，否则会失去资金支持，甚至遇到更糟的状况。
“It’s about betrayal — those who betray are put in the Ninth Circle of Hell, like in Dante,” Kirill Serebrennikov, a prominent theater and film director and the director of the Gogol Center, a cornerstone of Moscow’s theater scene, said in a recent interview here. The result, he said, was to put writers and directors “between Scylla and Charybdis — between censorship or self-censorship.”
“这其实是在惩罚背叛，就像但丁(Dante)的《神曲》那样，背叛者被打入第九层地狱，”著名戏剧和电影导演、果戈里中心(Gogol Center)主管、莫斯科戏剧界巨擘基里尔·谢列布连尼科夫(Kirill Serebrennikov)前不久在莫斯科接受采访时说。他说，结果是将剧作家和导演们置于“腹背受敌的境地，既要接受审查，又要自我审查”。
That day, Mr. Serebrennikov was puzzling over a report in Izvestia, a newspaper seen as close to the Kremlin, that scholars from a research institute were evaluating whether recent theater productions had “distorted” classic Russian texts. They included his production of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” at the Gogol Center and productions of “Boris Godunov” and “The Karamazovs,” based on the Dostoyevsky novel, both mounted by the popular director Konstantin Bogomolov at other theaters.
接受采访当天，谢列布连尼科夫正为《消息报》（Izvestia，该报被认为与政府关系密切）上的一则报道感到迷惑：一家研究机构的学者们正在评估近期的上演的戏剧是否“歪曲”了俄罗斯经典文学著作。遭到评估的作品包括谢列布连尼科夫在果戈里中心排演的果戈里《死魂灵》(Dead Souls)，以及著名导演康斯坦丁·博戈莫洛夫(Konstantin Bogomolov在其他剧院排演的《鲍里斯·戈杜诺夫》(Boris Godunov)和根据陀思妥耶夫斯基(Dostoyevsky)的同名小说改编的《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》(The Karamazovs) 。
“The goal is to show us that we can’t interpret classical Russian literature at all, or to say that it’s not Russian literature, it’s Kirill Serebrennikov’s fantasy,” Mr. Serebrennikov said. He added that if theaters were to lose public funding, they would be unlikely to find it from private sources.
“这项研究的目的是向我们表明，我们完全不能阐释经典俄罗斯文学，或者是说这些作品不是俄罗斯文学，而是基里尔·谢列布连尼科夫的幻想，”谢列布连尼科夫说。他补充说，如果剧院失去公共资金支持，也不可能得到私人资助。
In an interview last month in his office here, Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s culture minister, said it was the prerogative of experts at the research institute to look into Russian culture, such as the plays in question. “Maybe, that’s their right to do this,” Mr. Medinsky said. But he said the academics’ findings wouldn’t have repercussions for the theaters.
上个月，俄罗斯文化部长弗拉基米尔·梅金斯基(Vladimir Medinsky)在自己的办公室接受采访时说，那所研究院的专家们有天然的权利研究俄罗斯文化，包括大家讨论的这些戏剧。“也许那是他们的权利，”梅金斯基说。不过，他说学者们的发现不会对剧院造成影响。
Holding a mobile phone whose case had a picture of Mr. Putin in sunglasses and a camouflage parka above the pop song lyrics “they can’t catch us,” Mr. Medinsky dismissed criticism that the ministry was effectively stifling free expression by funding only projects that it believes meet family- and religious-values standards or that portray Putin’s Russia in a positive light.
当时梅金斯基手上拿着一部手机，外壳上印有普京戴墨镜、穿迷彩大衣的照片，下面还有一句流行歌曲歌词“他们抓不到我们”。有人批评说，文化部只资助那些它认为符合家庭和宗教价值观标准、或者正面歌颂普京统治下的俄罗斯的项目，因此严重扼制了自由言论。梅金斯基否定了这种批评。
“The less they spend their life on Facebook, the less garbage they will have in their heads,” he said of government critics. (Anti-government dissent has been concentrated on social media after the Duma passed a law in 2012 restricting public rallies.)
“他们在Facebook上花的时间越少，头脑中的垃圾就越少，”在提到政府批评者时，他这样说（从2012年俄议会下院杜马通过了限制公开集会的法律后，反政府异见主要集中出现在社交媒体上）。
In the interview, which took place before he ousted the Siberian theater director, Mr. Medinsky was already highly critical of the “Tannhäuser” production. It played four performances to sold-out houses of 1,700 at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater before representatives of the local Russian Orthodox Church complained in February.
接受采访时，梅金斯基尚未罢黜西伯利亚剧院经理，不过对《唐怀瑟》演出非常不满。该剧在新西伯利亚国家学术剧院(Novosibirsk State Academic Opera)和芭蕾舞剧院(Ballet Theater)共演出四场，场场满座，共有1700名观众观看了演出。2月份，当地的俄罗斯东正教教会代表提出抗议。
This week, Mr. Medinsky replaced the theater’s director with a loyalist, Vladimir Kekhman, who said he would remove “Tannhäuser” from the repertory. (Before becoming the director of a theater he renovated in St. Petersburg, Mr. Kekhman was a business magnate who imported bananas to Russia.)
本周，梅金斯基任命忠于政府的弗拉基米尔·凯科曼(Vladimir Kekhman)担任西伯利亚剧院的新主管。凯科曼称，他将把《唐怀瑟》从演出剧目中除去（凯科曼曾在圣彼得堡修复一家剧院，担任主管，之前是往俄罗斯香蕉进口行业的巨头）。
While that case has resonated, with supporters rallying around the theater and critics rallying in support of the Russian Orthodox Church, the law banning obscenities has had a more concrete effect on theater and film. Introduced by a group of lawmakers including Stanislav Govorukhin, a member of Parliament and a popular film and television director during the Soviet period, the law sets fines and 90-day suspensions for violations.
这起事件引起了很大反响，该剧的支持者在剧院外集会，而该剧的批评者们也集会支持俄罗斯东正教教会。不过，禁止脏话的法律对剧院和电影业有更切实的影响。这项法律规定，违反者将受到处罚并被勒令停业90天。提出这项法律的立法者包括下议院议员斯坦尼斯拉夫·戈沃鲁欣(Stanislav Govorukhin)。他是苏联时期的著名电影和电视导演。
In the interview, Mr. Medinsky defended the law and said there were no plans to revise or revoke it.
在采访中，梅金斯基维护了这项法律，称没有计划修改或废除它。
Unlike the average English-language expletive thrown into everyday conversation, in Russian, cursing resonates as extremely crude; it has its own grammar and is never used in polite conversation. It is not uncommon for some older theatergoers to gasp when curses are uttered onstage.
不像英语，脏话在俄语日常对话中极少出现，被认为极其粗鲁。脏话有自己的语法，在礼貌的交谈中从不出现。当舞台上出现脏话时，年长观众感到惊讶的情况并不罕见。
Some directors see the anti-obscenity law as a distraction from far more worrisome issues. “Imagine Tony Soprano ruling the country, and Tony Soprano issues a law against obscenities,” said Alexander Zeldovich, the director of the critically acclaimed 2011 dystopian film “Target.”
有些导演认为，禁止脏话的法律是在转移人们对其他严重问题的关注。“想像一下，如果是托尼·索普拉诺(Tony Soprano)统治这个国家，而他颁布法律禁止说脏话会是什么情形，”导演亚历山大·泽利多维奇(Alexander Zeldovich)说。他2011年的反乌托邦影片《标靶》(Target)广受好评。
But film professionals are divided. The director Valeria Gai Germanika, 31, known for her coming-of-age films, said she didn’t mind cutting the cursing from her 2014 film “Yes and Yes.”
但是电影专业人士对此意见不一。31岁的导演瓦列里娅·加伊·(Valeria Gai Germanika)以成长电影闻名。她说，她不介意去除她2014年影片《是的是的》(Yes and Yes)中的脏话。
“We dubbed it again, and I actually think it became even better,” she said in a telephone interview. Asked if such choices should be made by artists themselves or the government, Ms. Gai Germanika said: “There’s a law, and I’m not going to fight against it. Actually, all those great films made in the Soviet era had no swearing, and people learned about the country through them.”
“我们重新配音，实际上我觉得修改之后反而变得更好了，”她在电话采访中说。当被问及这样的选择应该由艺术家还是政府做出时，她说，“有这样的法律，我不打算对抗法律。实际上，苏联时期所有精彩的电影都没有脏话，人们通过那些电影去了解那个时代。”
Some theaters say they’re simply ignoring the law. “We don’t abide by it, because we think it’s anti-constitutional,” said Yelena Gremina, a co-founder of Moscow’s scrappy Teatr.doc, known for its politically charged productions inspired by real-life events.
有些剧院称，他们不理会这项法律。“我们不遵守它，因为我们认为它违反宪法，”敢作敢为的莫斯科Teatr.doc剧团的联合创始人叶连娜·格里米娜(Yelena Gremina)说。该剧团以上演受真实事件启发创作的政治剧目闻名。
But there is genuine concern, especially after members of the performance group Pussy Riot were jailed in 2012 on charges of hooliganism after singing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church.
不过，人们的确感到忧虑，尤其是在2012年表演团队Pussy Riot在莫斯科一座教堂演唱反普京歌曲被判处流氓罪入狱之后。
“After Pussy Riot, everything is serious; they put those girls in jail for two years,” said Alexander Rodnyansky, a leading film producer, most recently of the Oscar-nominated “Leviathan,” which Mr. Medinsky had criticized for its negative portrayal of Putin’s Russia. (Before it was shown last fall, the film was redubbed to remove the curses.)
“在Pussy Riot事件之后，一切都变得很严肃。他们判那些女孩入狱两年，”著名电影制片人亚历山大·罗德尼扬斯基(Alexander Rodnyansky)说。他最新制作的影片《利维坦》(Leviathan)获得了奥斯卡提名。梅金斯基批评该片对普京统治下的俄罗斯的描绘过于负面（去年秋季该片上映前，重新配音，去除了脏话）。
Creative artists say they are deeply worried about the direction of the country, but they find no shortage of material.
创意艺术家们说，他们为俄罗斯的未来感到极为担忧，但他们绝不缺乏素材。
“Putin is a process,” said Mr. Vyrypaev, the director. “I treat him like hydrogen sulfide. If you breathe too much, you’ll die. But it’s still part of nature.”
“普京是一个过程，”导演维里帕夫说，“我把他看做硫化氢。吸入过多硫化氢，人会死。但它是大自然的一部分。”