The blatant use of art in the service of partisan (and military) politics during the appearance of the famed St. Petersburg Kirov Orchestra in Ossetia startled the West, where this sort of cultural diplomacy is normally reserved for more positive displays.

Cross-cultural harmony, for example. Like when Daniel Barenboim, the Jewish maestro from Berlin, conducted an Israeli-Palestinian Youth Orchestra in the name of peace. Or when Lorin Maazel led, albeit naively, his New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang, North Korea, to foster communication with a so-called enemy country.

Those are the kinds of messages we like tied to our art. Gergiev is deeply beholden and linked to the Russian political and economic elite; Putin and he are godfathers to each others' children. How, then, do we respond to his vigorous celebration of a long-planned military action that the West likens more to the annexation of the Sudetenland than to a peace-keeping mission in Kosovo? - Jens F. Laurson & George A. Pieler @ forbes.com

Как и следовало ожидать, Гергиева в мире просто не поняли.