“An orchestra conductor has been killed after refusing to cooperate with Russian occupiers, Ukrainian officials say.” That is a headline from the New York Times, over this article. Yurii Kerpatenko was born in 1976. He studied at the Kyiv Conservatory. He went on to lead orchestras in Kherson. Apparently, occupying forces in Kherson demanded that Kerpatenko conduct a propaganda concert. When he refused, they shot him dead, in his home.
This is something important to know. It is emblematic — emblematic of the general attitude of the Russian state toward Ukraine and its people.
An article in the Guardian quotes Semyon Bychkov, the Leningrad-born conductor. I have written about Bychkov for many, many years (to speak personally for a second). In fact, I first heard about him when I was a kid, and he was a kid, practically: He had gotten out of the Soviet Union, and had taken over the Grand Rapids Symphony, in my home state (Michigan). He went on to greener pastures, bigger podiums. Today, he is the music director of the Czech Philharmonic.
Said Bychkov, “The tragic irony of this is that talk about the superiority of Russian culture, its humanism. And here they murdered someone who is actually bringing beauty to people’s lives. It is sickening.”
Bychkov added, “The bullets don’t distinguish between people. It didn’t make me feel worse that this man was a conductor, it just confirmed the pure evil that’s been going on even before the first bombs fell on Ukraine.”
A novelist, Andrey Kurkov, said, “Now the name of Yurii Kerpatenko will be added to the list of murdered artists of Ukraine. I increasingly think that Russia is not only seeking to occupy Ukrainian territories, but also diligently destroying Ukrainian identity, an important part of which is Ukrainian culture.”
Of course. Every Ukrainian I have talked with has said just the same. The latest is Oleksandra Matviichuk, the executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties — a group that is a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
When I saw the news about Kerpatenko, I was flooded with thoughts about musicians past, and conductors in particular. In the Soviet Union. In Nazi Germany, or Nazi-occupied Europe.
I have mentioned Bychkov, who is the music director of the Czech Philharmonic. So was the great Karel Ančerl, one of my favorites. In 1942, he and his family were sent to Theresienstadt. He conducted the orchestra there, in the camp. He was forced to participate in a propaganda film. Eventually, he and his wife and son (Valy and Jan) were sent to Auschwitz. (Jan was born in Theresienstadt, by the way.) Wife and son were murdered in the gas chambers, but Ančerl survived.
He lived on until 1973. How he managed, I don’t know. A lot of people did. (A lot of people didn’t.)
I also think of Shostakovich — the great, haunted, hunted Shostakovich, who would sleep on the landing outside his apartment, fully clothed, with a packed suitcase by his side. He was waiting for the NKVD to pick him up. When they came, he did not want them to disturb his sleeping family. Also, he did not want to go through the indignity of having to change hurriedly from his pajamas.
For decades, the Kremlin demanded that musicians participate in propaganda concerts (and compose propaganda pieces, etc.). There are many books on this subject. Even cooperation with the authorities did not guarantee your survival.
Michael Carpenter is the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Today, he tweeted,
When Ukrainian conductor #YuriyKerpatenko refused to take part in a concert showcasing the “restoration of peaceful life in Kherson,” Russian forces shot him. This cruelty and duplicity has become the hallmark of the Russian occupation and harks back to the Soviet era.
True, completely so.
I will paste a paragraph from the New York Times article that I linked to above:
The city of Kherson, on the west bank of the Dnipro River, was the first to fall in Russia’s invasion. It is the only regional capital in Ukraine that is held by Russian forces. Ukrainian forces have been moving toward the city in recent weeks in an attempt to retake the region, placing the Russian troops and local officials under pressure.
Here is another paragraph, or two:
Yaroslav Yanushevich, the head of the Kherson regional military administration, said that Russian troops had shot the conductor in his own home “because of the man’s refusal to cooperate with the enemy.” He added that the regional prosecutor’s office was investigating the killing.
It would not be the first time that someone in Kherson’s arts community had been targeted by Russian soldiers.
There are a thousand things to say — a thousand more — but I will conclude. For all of us, there comes a time to pick a side, I think: freedom or unfreedom, democracy or dictatorship, civilization or barbarism. Temporizing should be temporary. We must pick a side and get on with things.