It is entirely understandable that the barbaric attack on Ukraine launched a year ago by Vladimir Putin has sparked enraged reactions among Ukrainians as they endure Russian missile strikes and await Putin’s much anticipated spring offensive.
Attacking the culture of an enemy nation has a long and ignoble history, and it rarely ends well
But in spurning and destroying Russia’s incomparable musical and literary culture the long-suffering Ukrainians are hitting out at the wrong enemy.
The Times reports that Kyiv Opera House is deleting the music of the Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev from a ballet, The Snow Queen, that is currently in rehearsal. The work’s director Serhii Skuz calls Tchaikovsky ‘a symbol of Russian culture and Russian aggression’ and cites that as the reason for cancelling him.
At the same time, books by great Russian authors like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev are being withdrawn from Ukraine’s bookshops and libraries to be pulped and recycled, and a statue of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in Odessa has been removed and hidden in a museum basement.
This extension of the war on the battlefields to an attack on culture is completely comprehensible in view of the agony that Russian aggression has inflicted on Ukraine over the past 12 months.
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