I mentioned a few posts back that 2022 had been a bad year for classical music, using the bankruptcy of the San Antonio Symphony as an example. 2022 just got much worse. On the 12th of this month, Russian soldiers murdered Yuriy Kerpatenko, the principal conductor of the Gileya chamber orchestra in Kherson, Ukraine. Kherson is a port city on the Black Sea, the capital of Kherson Oblast. It has been occupied by the invading Russian army since March of this year. In September, there were sham elections there to join the Russian Federation. On October 1, there was to be a concert celebrating Kherson’s new status as a Russian territory. The Gileya chamber orchestra was to take part. Kerpatenko refused. For this, he was subsequently murdered by Russian soldiers.
When you imagine invaders killing artists, the motives tend to be because the artist belongs to the wrong ethnicity or practices the wrong religion, or else because the artist is engaged in subversion. Kerpatenko seems to have been murdered for failing to take part in pro-Russian propaganda. But according to The Guardian, he had “been posting defiant messages on his Facebook page”, so the Russians knew he wasn’t with them.
A nation that conquers another will want to destroy the defeated nation’s memory—hence museums are looted, libraries burned, etc. When you conquer a country, it makes sense to destroy its artists and intellectuals—they are the living bearers of a people’s memory.
“We know the Russian regime is hunting activists, journalists, artists, community leaders, and anyone ready to resist the occupation,” said the prizewinning Ukrainian novelist turned war crimes investigator Victoria Amelina.
For those piles of human shit here in the U.S. who support Russia’s invasion, fuck you all. Fuck you Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Lara Logan, Tulsi Gabbard, J.D. Vance, etc. You all implicitly support the murder of Yuriy Kerpatenko and thousands of other Ukrainians.
[Please consider supporting this publication by becoming a patron, and you can also support it by patronizing our online store. And one more way to support this work is to buy books through The Great God Pan is Dead’s bookstore. ]