Friday reviews: the end of the year but not the war

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There’s always a place for bittersweet sentimentality at the end of the year as we sum up our best and worst times to see how high this year ranks in our personal highs.

This year, many people cannot think of something like that at all.

Obviously, it’s the Ukrainians. Those who live with only two feelings firmly anchored in their hearts, fear and hope. Scattered across the world but united as never before. Ukrainian artists and musicians bring their truly great and proud culture all over the world. Sadly, it’s not just that, but a whole lot of pain, condemnation, and curse that’s also present (and very powerful). And no one (especially me) can blame them.

And yet, perhaps the end of the year is the time to look out for the victims of this terrible war and cry out that they are so much more than we are allowed to say. I’m talking about the victims of the horrible covert operation of Putin’s assassins.

I’m talking about those who were lucky (or foolish) to think they walked away from the regime years before this war started. Those who finally felt free to express their thoughts and art. Those who have taken their well-deserved place on the international scene and served it well. Those who were the stars of the shows and the wonderful singers of the second cast, the chorus members, the stage workers and many more.

Those, who never shared the proposed path ordered by the Tsar. With all the different stories behind their escapes, they all have the same origin that they are Russian. And, as I can tell from my own experience, they paid the price for their new chance in life.

By losing relations, friends and habits, by assimilating in new countries, and only after a few years returning in their minds to their native lands quite idealized at that time, the lands of childhood happiness, of tall trees and some funny ice cream that they understand now was horrible. And yet it was the best. This inner world was also shaped by the Silver Age of poetry, Prokofiev’s arias and Brodsky’s nostalgia.

But this war is so terrible that it penetrates so far. He covered everything with shame, blood and pain. It doesn’t matter if these people in their new countries have ever been attacked because they are Russian. It was the Russian army that attacked them inside.

It was easy for them to declare (in all honesty) that they did not support Putin and to condemn the war. But could it help them? Do you know that feeling when you’re afraid to speak your native language in public? Or when your children say they no longer want to be from their origin?

We were all afraid of the cancellation of Russian culture and Russian music in European and American theaters, but as I have said many times during the pandemic crisis, art is bigger than that. And certainly he has survived all the (luckily) brief (political) attacks and even now gained some (political) support. But as we mentioned during the pandemic, the art is its people. And this is where Great Russian Art was most damaged.

So many lives and especially artistic lives have been shattered on either side of a fresh new iron curtain. Some big names, like Anna Netrebko, have been condemned or used for demonstration executions (either to teach others a lesson or to show their position accurately), while others, like Tugan Sokhiev, have not found it possible to continue their artistic activity. And how many unknown artists have never had their first little job? How many of them couldn’t get out of bed just to try?

A young baritone who is still in Russia told me last November that after all these months, the only feelings he carries are fatigue and despair. He expressed the idea that he is somehow envious of the Ukrainian people who “stand together and fight for the truth and one day will be victorious, while here we can only rot”.

And he’s right. While the whole world understands how important it is to help Ukraine and a lot has been done for this, no one ever talks about the Russian people, Russian artists, especially young artists, for whom all the doors are now closed. The only education available is full of propaganda and any resistance is punishable by the total destruction of life.

Today, Russia’s major theaters only have open seats for loyal young Putin supporters. These people on (and behind) the stage will, very shrewdly and profoundly shape through their art, the consciousness of the younger generation of a country of 140 million people (although I think it must be a lot less after the 10 last years of the regime). The country that is cursed by the whole world and cannot expect help from anywhere.

I don’t know if it’s good or bad, or if I have the right, but this time, after Christmas and before the New Year, I want to raise my voice for the first time since the beginning of the war to say this that makes my heart bleed every day. I want my people to be helped too. I want young Russian artists to have their future without having to kneel before Putin.

And I hope that this useless war ends soon.

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