Valentin Silvestrov: "What are you Kremlin devils doing?"

Initially, Valentin Silvestrov did not want to leave his native Kyiv. But, urged by his family and friends, and under the impression of the increasing threat, the 84-year-old composer finally decided to flee to Berlin, where he has been since March 8. Silvestrov is one of the most important composers in Ukraine and Russia both.

DW: You fled Ukraine for Germany. What made you change your mind?

Valentin Silvestrov: Quite honestly, I didn't want to leave. I'm already tired of living in a world where this kind of thing happens. But I have a daughter and a granddaughter, both are young. They have to live! That's why I agreed to leave.

Could you tell us your impressions of what is going on in Ukraine right now?

I have to go further back in time, to the Maidan uprising of 2014. What is happening now is a thousand times bigger, I mean the shelling of the Maidan on the last day. Young people were killed there, both Russians and Ukrainians, all unarmed. And now the whole of Ukraine and the whole world is turning into the Maidan. Maidan was a chamber version, a kind of trio or duet. And now it's an orchestral version.

It is unusual to hear Valentin Silvestrov, a withdrawn composer of soft music, speak about politics...

I have never been involved in politics, that's true. And now I think that an event that seems insignificant against the backdrop of this international horror is the real key — the Navalny poisoning. It was just luck that Navalny called one of the people pursuing him, and that person told him what they had done to his underpants [Ed.: the Russian secret services tried to kill Alexei Navalny with poisoned underpants].

Navalny's underpants is a fact that sheds light on all the atrocities committed and challenged in the Putin regime before, including the murders of Politkovskaya [Ed. Russian journalist, killed in 2006] and Nemtsov [Ed.: Kremlin critic, murdered in 2015]. Suddenly, it was 100% clear! To make people forget the underpants, he decided to move on to geopolitics, to hide his personal disgrace.

We all thought it was some kind of provocation, like Stalin had done with Finland or Hitler with Poland. But no — he [Ed. Putin] just went ahead with the invasion. "Denazification," he called it, and "demilitarization!" What do you know — he wanted to reorganize a different country! He didn't like the fact that they had their own army and their own language. What was he expecting?

And supposedly Putin is carrying out "pinpoint strikes" on military targets. Aren't soldiers human beings? I suppose when he cuts his finger, he howls. People are dying! What are you Kremlin devils doing?

We are speaking Russian, which is my mother tongue and yours, too. Yet you were born in Kyiv and I was born in Moscow. After all, one of the official justifications for Putin's war was the defense of the Russian language.

That is a flat-out lie! When an empire crumbles, it leaves behind a language. The Roman Empire left behind Latin, the British Empire left behind English. The Russian language is like a Latin of the post-Soviet space. But the language of an empire is not only the language of an ethnic group, it is also the language that shaped culture.

Great Russian culture has conquered the world, painting, music and literature. But if you look at artists' and writers' fates in the Tsarist Empire and in the Soviet Union — they were always persecuted.

An open letter on the Internetby people within Ukraine's culture circles urges international institutions — book fairs, festivals, concert halls, etc. — to completely boycott any cooperation with Russian cultural institutions, to ban "Russians from participating in international competitions, exhibitions, forums and other cultural events" and to stop "reporting on Russian culture in the media." You are one of the signatories. Do you really think that boycotting Russian artists and Russian culture everywhere is helpful?

No, it's not, it is akin to adding grist to Putin's mill. Then, he can say, "Look at how the whole world is terrorizing us! What a calamity for us!" That only helps him brainwash his own people. However, when it comes to organizations or people who support Putin personally, that is a different matter.

Currently, everyone in Germany wants to play Ukrainian music, and it turns out that it is almost unknown here. There is no sheet music, no repertoire. And so all you ever hear is the Ukrainian anthem, Myroslav Skoryk's "Melody"— and, of course, Silvestrov. What Ukrainian music should people be aware of?

My teacher Boris Lyatoshynsky was a great composer, his 3rd symphony is world class. But more than anything, you have to understand that Ukrainian music, like Russian music, is first and foremost European music. It is part of the European culture. The surname Tchaikovsky, for example, is very common in Ukraine. Tchaikovsky's work holds so much that is Ukrainian...

Not to mention the role both Ukrainians and Germans played in the formation of the Russian state. Alexander Bezborodko, who determined Russia's foreign policy for decades, was a Ukrainian military officer! And Catherine the Great? She was German. Peter the Great opened the window to Europe, and poetry, philosophy, music and literature came streaming in. Now Putin has gone and stuck his butt through that window, a butt with a red atomic button. But this butt is not the face of Russia. The face of Russia is Russian culture.

A German idiom goes, "better a horrible end than drawing out the agony" — what do you think that end could look like?

It seems to me that if there were a politician in Russia who said, "Sunday at 12 o'clock we'll all go out to the main squares all over Russia!" and everyone went, with their children — then this evil situation would be over. As it is, only few people take to the streets, and ten thousand people or more were arrested. That is not what it should be like. We need a jumping-off point. Otherwise, it comes across as approval of what Putin is doing, which is crafty and ties in with the Russian mentality. Russians are shrewd: "Help yourself, and God will help you." Remember the Soviet Union, how it was propped up by everyone. Then all of a sudden it fell apart, and nobody in the country supported it anymore. Who supports Putin? Criminals — people for whom mother tongue means "flush someone down the toilet." He recruited these criminals and put them in elegant suits.

Of course, the West must respond to the threat with a threat. You threaten us with nuclear weapons — we threaten you with nuclear arms, too. He is a terrorist like bin Laden, only a thousand times more powerful. He should be classified as an international terrorist and put on the wanted list.

You came to Berlin with just one suitcase, and it was full of manuscripts. What did you bring along?

Well, we did have a pandemic.... And the faucet was dripping the whole time, and I put a little cup of music paper under the drip, and now the music paper cup is full.

This interview conducted by Anastassia Boutsko has been translated from German.