Yuri Kerpatenko, chief conductor of the Kherson Music and Drama Theatre, dropped out of sight in September. His friends feared the worst – with good reason.
Kherson is one of only two major Ukrainian cities the Russians have managed to seize during their bandit raid launched eight months ago (Mariupol is the other). There and everywhere else they showed the world how to win the hearts and minds of the locals.
Wanton murders, rapes, mass torture, looting, destruction of property – really, a lesson in community relations seems to be in order. Kherson is no exception.
Quite apart from the usual murderous rampage perpetrated on hoi polloi en masse, the Russians have also kidnapped 457 prominent Khersonians, including mayors, government officials and priests.
So much more important it is for them to quieten things down by communicating to the terrified population that normal life will soon return. To that end, a month ago the Russians announced a gala concert to be held on 1 October, which happens to be International Music Day.
Maestro Kerpatenko was invited to conduct his orchestra, and Putin’s bandits didn’t expect a problem. They should have known better.
For Kerpatenko was made of stern stuff. Thus he refused to get out of the city while the getting was good – and now he refused to act as a performing seal to Russian fascists. Having been flatly turned down, the Russian officers left, promising to come back for Kerpatenko.
This is the only kind of promise those ghouls can be counted on to keep. And they have. Shortly thereafter Kerpatenko disappeared, and now reports have come out that the Russians shot him dead in his home.
His heroism stands in stark contrast to the behaviour of many of his Russian colleagues. Gergiev, Matsuev, Bashment, Spivakov, Berezovsky et al., not only happily play at Kremlin concerts, but some of them also make hateful blood-thirsty pronouncements on Russian TV.
Coming to mind is the spineless, sycophantic behaviour of the great Dutch conductor Joseph Mengelberg. When the Germans occupied his country in 1940, Mengelberg gave an interview to the Nazi newspaper Völkische Beobachter.
The conductor spoke glowingly about the cultural bond between Germany and Holland, adding that he had cracked a bottle of champagne to toast the Nazi victory. He then continued to conduct throughout the war all over Germany and the occupied countries, posing for snapshots with Seyss-Inquart (later hanged at Nuremberg) and other Nazi dignitaries.
Meanwhile celebrated German conductors, such as Furtwängler, Strauss and Karajan, happily filled the vacancies left by other celebrated German conductors, such as Walter and Klemperer, who had to flee the country for obvious reasons.
Furtwängler and Strauss also wrote, or rather signed, articles pondering the seminal differences between Aryan and Jewish music, but Karajan went much further. Unlike his pragmatic colleagues, he was a fervent Nazi who joined the Nazi Party twice, first in his native Austria and then in Germany.
When the Führer graced the royal box at the Berlin Philharmonic with his presence, Karajan arranged the audience in the shape of the swastika. That doubtless put a smile under that famous moustache.
Soviet musicians, including geniuses like Prokofiev and Shostakovich, kowtowed to Stalin, but there was a major difference there. The Nazis didn’t kill artists who refused to cooperate with them, but the Soviets did.
Furtwängler and Strauss risked only a hiatus in their careers. Prokofiev and Shostakovich risked a bullet in the Lubyanka cellar or, even worse, slower, torturous death in an Arctic labour camp.
The murder of Yuri Kerpatenko shows where Putin falls in the ranking of murderous European despots, at least in their treatment of artists: as hard as Stalin, harder than Hitler.
When the Russian hordes are driven out of Kherson, which is bound to happen later this year, I hope there will be a statue to Kerpatenko erected opposite his theatre. He wasn’t a musical titan like Mengelberg or Furtwängler, but he towered over them as a moral giant.
As for the moral pygmies among his Russian colleagues, I hope they’ll never be allowed to befoul any civilised country with their presence. In a famous 1772 ruling on slavery, Lord Mansfield stated: “The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in”. And for fascist collaborators.
Too bad we have no laws to apply to our domestic shills for Putin. Otherwise it would be nice to see them deported to the country run by the strong leader they wish we had.
P.S. Yesterday Lieut-Col. Lapin, in charge of training Russian recruits at Belgorod, shared with his trainees his frank, which is to say derogatory, opinion of Allah. Three Tajik soldiers took exception to that theological position and opened up with their AKs, killing Lapin and any number of their comrades. Official Russian sources have owned up to 11 killed and 15 wounded, but the eyewitnesses cite numbers three times as large. Perhaps the Ukrainians should just sit back and wait for the snake to devour its own tail.
P.P.S. Army recruitment centres have so far been set ablaze in 67 Russian towns. The locals must be using the fireworks to celebrate their unreserved support for Putin and his war.
“Army recruitment centres have so far been set ablaze in 67 Russian towns. ”
Red October deja vu all over again? Wars lost by the Russian usually do result in ferment and massive change. 1905. 1917. 2022?
If only more of us would display such moral courage. We have given in to so many perversions of our once grand civilization. It seems, if not innocent, perhaps innocuous: just play some music. But when doing so could be seen as support for a murderous regime, what a wonderful act to say, “No!” I am sure that Kerpatenko new the danger involved. He and his family have my admiration and prayers. Would that I could be so strong.
And you would like to think it is all going to turn out all right in the end. Best as can be. The man is just imprisoned but after the war it will be all over and he will return home safe and sound as can be.
But then they are still trying to find out what happened to Raoul Wallenberg from 1945. So don’t get your hopes up.