ST. PETERSBURG, March 13 (RIA Novosti) - Vandals spray-painted the word “pedophiles” on the wall of a modern art museum in St. Petersburg ahead of a performance based on “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous book, the museum’s press secretary said on Wednesday.
“We saw the inscription made with black paint in the morning as we came to work,” the Erarta museum's Anastasia Blokhina said, adding the graffiti has already been erased from the wall.
The performance scheduled for Wednesday evening will go ahead but certain security measures will be taken, she added.
Nabokov, who lived in St. Petersburg until 1917, is best known for “Lolita”, the story of a teacher who becomes sexually involved with a 12-year old girl.
The Nabokov museum on Bolshaya Morskaya street in downtown St. Petersburg has already been vandalized twice this year by protesters. Vandals broke a window at the museum on January 9, throwing in a bottle containing a threatening message.
Workers at the museum also said they had been threatened, with several letters accusing Nabokov of propagating pedophilia and threatening “God’s wrath,” Fontanka.ru reported.
Three weeks later, vandals claiming to be from the same from group, calling themselves “St. Petersburg Cossacks,” spray-painted the word “pedophile” on its wall, local media reported.
A one-man show in St. Petersburg based on “Lolita” was canceled by its author in October 2012, after he received threatening letters from anonymous “Cossacks.” The organizer of the performance, which went ahead in December and January at the Erarta museum, was beaten by three unidentified attackers.
