Letter: Russia’s Cultural Warfare In opposition to Ukraine – A Montreal Story

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Letter to the Editor by Nadia Demko

Congratulations to Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and the Montreal Ukrainian neighborhood for standing up for the oppressed in Ukraine. Simon Brault, Director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts stated it greatest. “The actual victims are in Ukraine, not on our levels.”

Though it might be “inconvenient” for the 20-year-old Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev to have his OSM exhibits cancelled, it doesn’t examine to what Ukrainians are dealing with proper now. What in regards to the 20-year-old Ukrainians combating in trenches proper now to defend their lives and their properties? It’s onerous for Ukrainians to really feel unhealthy for a Russian pianist who can’t play in Montreal at this current time: we consider all of the Ukrainians, artists included, who’re dying, residing at risk, and fleeing their properties.

We consider the Kyiv ballet dancers who simply joined the military to defend their nation and right now, can not apply their artwork. We all know of musicians, like well-known composer Valentin Silvestrov, who on the age of 84, needed to escape from war-zone Kyiv to Berlin, however nonetheless discovered the resolve to compose and play this transferring piece (https://www.fb.com/alekseenok/movies/646196599805321). There’s additionally pianist Iryna Maniukina who performed this Chopin piece, maybe on her personal piano for the final time, earlier than fleeing her residence which was savagely destroyed by Russian shelling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDUdK5SYa7w). We consider all these Ukrainian visible artists, a few of whose tales are fantastically curated right here (https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/a-suitcase-a-candle-and-a-hammer-ukrainian-artists-face-the-russian-invasion/).

This battle brings us to a degree of reflection. Arts and tradition have for a few years been used to disseminate Russian propaganda, even right here in Montreal. You don’t should go too far again.

Russian pianist Denis Matsuev and compatriot conductor Valery Gergiev each appeared with the OSM a number of occasions between 2011 and 2020. Each had signed Putin’s notorious letter supporting the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Each musicians get pleasure from open assist by the Putin regime together with state promotion, awards, positions in authorities, and the listing goes on. Malofeev, by the way in which, has collaborated with each of them in joint performances.

In December 2019, the Crimson Military Choir got here to Place des Arts. Individuals even approached me saying they have been going to attend the live performance with an off-the-cuff, “I really like Russian music and considered you, your loved ones’s from there, proper?” You learn that accurately. A choir named after the military of a murderous regime that killed thousands and thousands within the twentieth century, amongst them many Ukrainians, was allowed to tour right here, in Montreal, properly into the twenty first century. And it was even socially applicable to attend.

In December 2020, Montreal’s Ensemble Vocal Circa Terrae held a live performance the place they carried out music by so-called “jewels of well-known Russian composers…comparable to Bortiansky and Tchaikovsky.” Dmytro Bortniansky (1751-1825) was born in Hlukhiv, Ukraine to folks of Ukrainian origin and was recognized for using Ukrainian parts in his musical items. Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) had Ukrainian paternal ancestry, was impressed by his time in Ukraine, and he included Ukrainian melodies into his works, together with the Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23. Sadly, this live performance is only one instance of the pervasiveness of the Russia’s misappropriation of Ukrainian artists. Choeur Classique de Montréal equally appropriated Bortniansky below their “Splendeurs de la Musique Russe” live performance in 2011. Studio de Music Ancienne de Montréal held a “Russia Eternelle” live performance, which included items by Ukrainian composers Maxim Berezovsky and Mykola Dyletsky to accompany an artwork exhibit by a Belarusian Jewish painter, Marc Chagall. All simply lumped into the “Russian” bucket.

These Montreal examples largely replicate public ignorance of the identification and historical past of colonized nations comparable to Ukraine. This theme is all too pervasive in our historical past: an empire tries to subjugate a nation, its land, and its individuals, which incorporates destroying and stealing their cultural identification too. This may be likened to the historic subjugation and cultural silencing of the Indigenous peoples in Canada. It’s the accountability of these on the surface to teach themselves about colonized or previously colonized nations and to pay attention when they’re attempting to talk out. Begin by studying about Ukrainian composers and artists comparable to Vasyl Barvinsky who was imprisoned for expressing Ukrainian tradition through the Soviet occasions; the “Golden three” Ukrainian composers of the 18^th century, Artemy Vedel, Maksym Berezovsky and Dmytro Bortniansky; early 20^th century composers like Mykola Leontovych who was murdered by a Russian agent, Mykola Lysenko, and Borys Lyatoshynsky; and extra modern Ukrainian composers, amongst them Yevhen Stankovych, Svitlana Azarova, Dmytro Klebanov, Myroslav Skoryk and Valentin Silvestrov.

Furthermore, when the Ukrainian neighborhood in Montreal speaks out, comparable to calls to cancel Matsuev and Gergiev, you will need to pay attention and to not flip a blind eye. When Soviet Union’s crimes such because the Ukrainian famine genocide, Holodomor, have been acknowledged in Canada since 2008 and Quebec since 2010, how are we nonetheless venerating Soviet tradition by inviting the “Crimson Military Choir” to carry out?

That is in fact not solely a difficulty in Montreal. Many songs on Spotify, even these distinctly Ukrainian comparable to Leontovych’s “Carol of the Bells” are nonetheless listed as “Russian” (https://open.spotify.com/monitor/1bjDLyRzyiU6fCO5PPbaWi). Past classical music, Ukrainian author Mykola Hohol (Russified to Nikolai Gogol), many Ukrainian avant-garde artists, amongst them David Burliuk and Alexander Archipenko, and even Ukraine’s defining historic figures like Volodymyr the Nice and Anne of Kyiv – have all been misappropriated as Russian. There are additionally numerous examples of modern-day Ukrainian artists or performers visiting nations and being mistakenly categorized as Russian – amongst them Ukrainian electro-folk band Onuka and the Nationwide Opera and Ballet of Ukraine (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-stolen-history-stolen-culture/). A very ironic instance is that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former comedy troup Kvartal 95 being known as a “Russian Comedy Present” in reference to scheduled performances in Germany.

Malofeev was purported to play works by Sergei Prokofiev throughout his lately cancelled live performance in Montreal. Was he going to clarify that Prokofiev too had Ukrainian roots and was born in Donetsk, Ukraine – one of many areas that has endured Putin’s battle for eight years now? Or was credit score as soon as once more going to go to Russia, additional upholding their propaganda of cultural superiority?

In response to his first cancellation by the Vancouver Recital Society, Malofeev had stated that “the reality is that each Russian will really feel responsible for many years due to the horrible and bloody resolution that none of us might affect and predict.” There are a number of points with this assertion. He portrays this battle at “out of nowhere occasion” when there have been many warning indicators, the obvious being that Russia’s battle in Ukraine had already been ongoing for eight years since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas in 2014. Russia additionally has a monitor file of invading nations or destabilizing its personal areas, amongst them Georgia, Syria, and areas within the North Caucasus: the “couldn’t predict” argument is a weak one. He can be clearly blind to the way in which wherein Russian individuals have largely supported and propped up their dictator. He himself benefited from musical coaching, publicity, and assist from this regime.

What took him so lengthy to sentence this horrific part of the battle that began on February 24th? So far as I can inform, he solely vaguely condemned the battle as soon as his Vancouver present was cancelled per week after. With the celebrity and income that he has collected from the West, comes a fantastic accountability to be agency in his values. His inappropriate give attention to “hatred stepping into all instructions” reinforces his must be cancelled at this current time.

This battle shouldn’t be a one-man human rights atrocity: there are at the least 150,000 Russian troopers committing genocidal acts proper now in Ukraine in addition to a nation that largely helps his “particular army operation” in Ukraine. World-renowned conductor Dalia Stasevska identified in her speech on the Nationwide Arts Heart Orchestra in Ottawa lately that dictators don’t develop in isolation. She reminded us of thinker Hannah Arendt’s evaluation about energy belonging to a bunch, and to not a person. The onus is on Russians all around the world to replicate on the way in which that their tradition has oppressed their neighbours all through historical past.

The current battle that Putin began (in 2014) is foremost, a blood-shedding army one. The cultural one which Russia began towards Ukraine has been happening for hundreds of years. Suppression of Ukrainian language and tradition was the norm within the Russian Empire and within the Soviet Union. Ukrainian writers, artists, musicians have at all times been silenced and instructed that their artwork doesn’t exist. It was both banned or absorbed below the bigger “Russian” tradition.

Thus, when individuals get “uncomfortable” or cite this as “cancel tradition” or argue that “music shouldn’t be political,” I believe it’s necessary to replicate on the way in which music and tradition has not solely disseminated Russian propaganda however has additionally tried to erase Ukrainian cultural historical past.

It’s now 2022. The worldwide neighborhood is now not standing for it. It might have taken a literal, bodily battle to understand the extra summary, cultural one, nevertheless it’s time to name it what it’s: Russia is waging a cultural battle towards Ukraine. It’s time to cease enabling the parable of Russian cultural superiority which has been propagated for thus lengthy and at the price of its colonized neighbours comparable to Ukraine.

I congratulate the musical organizations which have taken a stand throughout this part of the battle: Wiener Philharmoniker, Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Corridor, Philharmonics in Munich and Vienna, La Scala in Italy, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Vancouver Recital Society, amongst others. A particular thanks goes to the Orchestre Classique de Montréal, who organized a live performance devoted to Ukraine in early February 2022 previous to the launch of the full-scale battle, entitled “Echoes of the Steppes”, that includes Ukrainian-Canadian composers and artists.

Now, along with turning into educated about Ukrainian cultural historical past and listening to Ukrainian illustration, I additionally name on the humanities neighborhood in Montreal to additional advocate towards Russian colonialism and aggression of their respective organizations and communities. It’s time to set up extra concert events, movie screenings, festivals, and reveals showcasing Ukrainian artists and tradition, in addition to these of different colonized nations. I invite you to contact me must you want to get entangled in serving to to prepare such occasions and supply the stage for Ukrainian voices to resonate additional.