I will now try to formulate at least something.
The problem is that syntax is supposed to serve thought, to reflect some kind of coherence, and there is none of that, and nothing is known. But the moment you realize that you understand nothing, when you are stunned by what’s going on, you need to—especially if you are responsible for someone/something—formulate at least some proxy terms to help explain to yourself what you are doing, and why, etc. So that’s what I’ll try to describe briefly. Don’t treat it as a “position,” as something ultimately thought-out, as a recommendation for others, and so forth. This is just what little I manage to loosely clarify in my mind, on a tiny patch that is by constant effort kept spared the inner cry. And it is unlikely I’ll avoid contradictions. Let’s begin.
What to do? The question arose instantly, and there is still no answer. The day the war started, I decided I needed to go out. I searched the Internet to see if there was something organized to take place somewhere, but didn’t find anything, so I printed out a slogan “War Is a Crime, Article 353 of the Criminal Code,” grabbed a Ukrainian flag, and went out to Pushkin Square where I got arrested in 30 seconds. After that, several times I joined spontaneous demonstrations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which were regrettably few. I will, of course, keep using every opportunity to participate in protests wherever I am; however, it seems that (and this is quite unexpected, because these things, just like any other things, have never been “political” for me) what I do as a musician may also matter in the current situation. Or it may not any longer. I don’t know. Over the recent years, I’ve been visiting Ukraine frequently, cooperating with Ukrainian musicians, singing in Ukrainian, and so on. For instance, the song I composed for Anastasia Shevchenko (aka Stasik) to her lyrics has already reached over a million views, although I’d definitely prefer it doesn’t have its terrible relevance now. Here is the song for you to watch and to listen to.
Nastya Shevchenko fought in 2014; I think you can hear that in the way she sings.
Several years ago in Kyiv, together with the Amici Quartet, we released Psalms and Dances, an album of songs to the verses by Ukrainian poets; and some time later, the album’s first song to Zhadan’s poem was sung by Spring Voices, a children's choir from Kharkov.
Another song program based on poems by futurist poet Mykhaylo Semenko was first performed by my Kyiv friends and me in August 2021.
I have just written and started rehearsing in St. Petersburg (and after the victory, I hope, it will be possible to rehearse in Ukraine as well) a chamber opera about Hryhorii Skovoroda. I mean, in recent years I have been considering myself (inter alia) a Ukrainian composer. But the point is that all my Ukrainian friends, colleagues, listeners, my Kyiv relatives are now under Russian bombs, missiles, and shells falling on their heads. No notes, songs, or operas can protect them from this. As if out of spite, an exacerbation of a chronic health problem doesn’t allow me to lift my right arm properly now, otherwise, I think, I should have tried to get to Ukraine and apply myself not as a musician but in accordance with a specialty stated in my military ID (a shooter). The most painful thing for me personally these days is precisely that I cannot be with those who are being killed, and I cannot stop those who are killing.
I felt it made sense to try doing something in Russia. I have neither a scarf nor a snuffbox, but throughout all these years, the audience of my concerts in Russia was happy to sing along in Ukrainian. It seemed to me that perhaps this side of the frontline is the one where it still makes sense to counter dehumanization by love, and anti-Ukrainian propaganda by the Ukrainian language, etc. But our work is very slow, while a rocket targeting a maternity hospital or a residential area flies very quickly. Eventually, nothing of what I did has ever helped with anything. When you are texting with people sitting in the subway or in a cellar under bombardment . . . . I don’t know how to put it in words and complete the sentence.
I don't know how to make the Russian people behave differently. We, the protesters of the last 10 or 20 years, have been successfully neutralized by the state machinery of repression. Indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of them; it seems to be an unprecedented arithmetic; what a powerful army has been created to oppress its own citizens. But, of course, if everyone “rose,” it would have changed everything. But “everyone” isn’t yet “rising,” and with their tacit compliance, despite our desperate discordant voices of disagreement, the war goes on.
What can be done, I ask myself again. Everything possible at the moment, maybe? Go out for a demonstration. Send money to Ukraine if there is a way to. Talk to someone who replicates TV nonsense; try to make them change their mind. Repost the truth about the war, tell the truth about the war, and resist the lie about the war. And (this instinctive impulse seems to reflect not only panic, but also a natural desire to disengage from evil) try to leave Russia, at least for a while. At least children clearly need to be saved as they are now being brainwashed in schools in a completely totalitarian Nazi way. Even if the children understand what it's all about (mine understands, for example), they shouldn’t be put to such torture. Well, this is how I’m acting, that's all I do.
And none of this stops the war, and it’s absolutely unbearable.
No matter what further developments are (I hope for the Ukrainians to win and for the bloodshed to end), my personal family world has been blown up, my country has fallen into the abyss, and today it seems to be no longer reversible. I will do what I’m doing wherever I go; my role model now is perhaps the robot WALL-E. What is it I’ll do? Work on the ruins, in the hope that in a thousand years something will sprout on them. What if it happens not in a thousand years, but earlier.
Alexander Manotskov, composer, March 11, 2022 Translated by Galina Raguzina-Andreevskaya