The Role of Creativity in the World
Voices on Peace & War
Creativity has always played a great role in the world by defending and promoting peace and upholding core values of life, such as love, goodness, and justice.
There is enough evidence in history about the role of creativity in building, fostering, and fighting for peace. Paintings, music, poems, novels, movies, even cartoons and children's touching drawings wield tremendous power that can influence the minds and image of people, awaken feelings, nourish confidence, and also give power to achieve peace.
Recent Russian history offers clear examples. The song “Khochu Peremen!” (Russian - “I Want Change!”) by Viktor Tsoi, rock band “Kino”, prompted many Soviet citizens to demand change in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The London-based magazine “Time Out” put the song on their list of “100 Songs That Changed History.” Recent graffiti of Vladimir Putin's personal computer painted by an unknown artist on the facade of an old building in a minor town in Russia went viral on social media in less than 24 hours.
On the wall is a desktop with the "downloads" and "deleted" folders. Among the "deleted folders" are what Russia has lost over the past 20 years: "a happy future", "decent pensions", "economic development", "freedom of speech", "civil rights", "independent media", and "justice."
Despite the fact that this masterpiece was painted out, local residents were not afraid to take numerous photographs against the background of the art piece and still continue discussing it. Most commentators supported the author. “In authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, it is the only way to support the freedom of speech: a talented person, hurting for his country, spends money, time and effort to make a meaningful facade drawing at night. Under a free regime, he would have gone out to a rally, written a newspaper article, joined an opposition party, etc.
And the choice of the building is not accidental: it is an old building with dilapidated façade, needing renovation for the past 20 years. This is not vandalism. This is a way for an ordinary person to express his pain,” wrote a resident of Komsomolsk.
Erich Remarque's novel On the Western Front Without Change was burned by the Nazis in 1933 because it delivered a creative rebuke of German acceptance of the horrors of war. The novel opened the curtain and clearly explained that war was a death marathon killing not only civilians and generations of people but also souls. On May 10, 1933, books by 94 writers were burned in Germany. Later, books by another 200 writers suffered the same fate.
Today, we see the Kremlin authorities withdrawing George Orwell's book throughout Russia because of military events in Ukraine. Putin and Aleksandr Lukashenko are horrified because the novel 1984 vividly describes the arbitrariness of tyranny, revealing their faces, bloody motives, totalitarian aims, and the dictatorial regime they have built.
During Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraqis were deprived of freedom of expression. Saddam, in dictatorial ways, tried to manipulate the people through poetry and literature and even published three books of his own. In the late 1970s, he gave famous Iraqi writers apartments and cars, hoping that literature would galvanize popular support for the ruling Ba’ath Party. Literature, according to Saddam's plan, was also supposed to motivate people during the Iran-Iraq war. Ultimately, many writers fled the country. Even silence was considered a crime.
Similar trends can be seen in Libya. After Italy's defeat in World War II, Libyan writers fought for independence and the right to express themselves freely through writing. After the coup d'état in 1969, however, Muammar Gaddafi and his government established the Union of Libyan Writers forcing writers to support the dictatorial regime. Opponents either migrated or were put in jail. Like Saddam, Gaddafi published a book of his own entitled The Green Book. The main content of this book is the rejection of the traditional form of democracy, such as parliament, parties, elections and referendums.
Real creativity, unlike propaganda works (aimed at reinforcing evil), reveals people’s spiritual and moral qualities that dictatorial regimes are working hard to eliminate. Fates of the oppressed, philosophical thoughts, and characters’ heroic actions described in a novel can prompt readers to rethink the world and the common threats to humanity and encourage their sense of justice in the struggle against evil. Moreover, creative works can induce unity and universal peace. One high-quality novel can even help maintain peace. The different emotions that arise in readers often re-educate them and point the way to truth and a better world. A noble author reflecting on his or her pain, suffering, loss of loved ones, love, imprisonment, and the consequences of war, effectively influences the human mind, causing many people to come to their senses and warning them in advance against warfare and crime.
Creativity teaches people to love, create good, support each other, and strive for worthwhile goals. It teaches not to give up. Creativity clearly shows that good always triumphs over evil. Therefore, in no way should the tyrannic repressions be allowed to affect or censor great works.
The story of the Turkmen author and dissident Ak Welsapar clearly shows these dynamics. He wrote about infant mortality, large-scale famine, and environmental disaster in Turkmenistan, but the Soviet authorities banned his poems and stories. Welsapar recalls censors reducing his prose and calling him anti-Soviet. One of Welsapar's works, “The Melon Head” is about a teenager, Annaly, who guarded a melon field. When the chairman of the collective farm came to pick up melons and watermelons to sell them and profit from other people's labor, the teenager pointed a double-barrelled gun at him and accused him of stealing. “They told me it could not be a Soviet teenager and Soviet reality. Would the chairman of a collective farm steal? And I kept telling them: ‘Yes, they steal, all right!. The censors crossed everything out back then,” says Welsapar.
Soviet censorship was completely abolished by Gorbachev in 1990. But a year later, Saparmurat Niyazov re-launched it in Turkmenistan. Over time, he banned theaters, ballets and even libraries. He believed that there was “no need” for books other than the Quran and his personal work, “Ruhnama.” Perhaps ironically, 40,000 copies of the Quran in Turkmen were seized because the Turkmen religious scholar Khodjaakhmet Orazklychev, who translated it, fell out of favor with Niyazov after appearing on the Turkmen Radio Liberty. On February 7, 2000, Orazklychev was detained and charged with a criminal offense.
The situation in Turkmenistan has not changed: Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's son Sardar Berdymukhamedov, who recently came to power, presented his father's 57th book.
Mullahs in Turkmenistan read a new book by ex-President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov The Meaning of My Life during the festive prayer on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr. His books are studied in educational institutions of the country, read live on the state media, and health lessons are taught on them.
We may observe a similar state of affairs in the North Korea. An author who dares to write a work that does not glorify the North Korean dictatorship will never be published but will be put in jail for political prisoners. However, thanks to the secret shipment of manuscripts to foreign countries, the world became aware of North Korea’s truth-telling writers. One of them, the author of a collection of short stories titled Accusations, writing under the pseudonym of Bandi (Korean – firefly), turned out to be the “North Korean Solzhenitsyn.”
Finally, a story from my own life shows how important art and literature are in the struggles for peace and justice. When I was a high-school student, I watched the Soviet movie “White Bim Black Ear,” which was nominated in 1979 for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I was deeply stressed. A dog that faced betrayal by humans, pain and cruelty in their worst forms, motivated me to stand up for animals’ rights. Now I motivate the people around me to love animals and appreciate them. I make them realize that defenseless dogs are shot every day in some countries, while most people remain indifferent. I try help animals in every way I can. It took about 20 years for my thinking to transform to the point when I started respecting animals’ rights as much as human ones. And the process of rethinking began the very moment I felt the stress and pain of the dog from the movie, and then from the novel White Bim Black Ear.
In 2010, when I visited China, the Chinese secret service at the passport checkpoint took me to a room where I was thoroughly searched and interrogated. After that I was released and continued to the city of Urumqi. It is still a mystery to me why I was regarded with such suspicion – I was not a writer back then and had never spoken out against the Communist Party. If the Chinese secret service knew or even suspected that I would be publishing a novel in twelve years, timed to coincide with the centennial of the Communist Party, I would have certainly got in trouble. When I wrote the novel Devil's Jubilee, I was well aware that I might be persecuted. But creativity knows no fear. I forced myself not to be afraid but to act. And I chose writing as the best way to reach the minds of thinking people. Even tiny seeds produce great fruit. And this is something that reiterates the importance of all-round protection for creative people against dictatorial regimes.
Khabibulin Kurmanbek
Screenwriter, writer, author of the novel Devil's Jubilee