section_path: Politics
section_name: Politics
paragraph_text: Politics
  
  A strong relationship between the arts and politics, particularly between various kinds of art and power, occurs across history and cultures. As they respond to events and politics, the arts take on political as well as social dimensions, becoming themselves a focus of controversy and a force of political and social change.
  
  One observation is that an artist has a free spirit. For instance Pushkin, a well-regarded writer, attracted the irritation of Russian officialdom and particularly the Tsar, since he "instead of being a good servant of the state in the rank and file of the administration and extolling conventional virtues in his vocational writings (if write he must), composed extremely arrogant and extremely independent and extremely wicked verse in which dangerous freedom of thought was evident in the novelty of his versification, in the audacity of his sensual fancy, and in his propensity for making fun of major and minor tyrants."
  
  Artists use their work to express their political views and promote social change, from influencing negatively in the form of hate speech to influencing positively through artivism. Governments use art, or propaganda, to promote their own agendas.