No one on Quadra Island is likely to have known Yurii Kerpatenko. He never lived here and he never visited here. Had he been alive on November 15th, 2022, he probably wouldn’t have noticed that his longer life was adding a mere half a second to the arrival of the 8th billion person to Earth’s human population. Yurii Kerpatenko would not have cared because of other pressing concerns.

These concerns were more than symbolic, and they relate to us on our little island in the wholeness of things because we are able to live in a society of law and order, to go about our daily affairs without fear, to trust that one day will be as normal as another, and to freely express our opinions without state censorship or physical oppression.

Yurii Kerpatenko was the conductor of the Gilea Chamber Ensemble, 15 of the best musicians of the Kherson Regional Philharmonic Orchestra in Ukraine. They were popular in the city, perhaps because of the eclectic range of their repertoire, everything from classical to opera, to jazz, to folk tunes and romances from modern to ancient.

Because of his leading role as a musician, he did not welcome the invitation from the Russian Special Services to conduct a special “international” concert on October 1st. They wanted something light, cheery and uplifting to give the impression that all was well in Kherson. Well, all was not well. Since March 2nd, Kherson had been occupied by the invading Russian army. The city had been bombed and shelled. Many people had been killed or displaced. Others had simply disappeared. Screams of torture were heard coming from the headquarters of the military-civilian administration. Any protests were brutally suppressed, and any opposition to Russian authority had proven to be fatal.

Yurii could have left the city with the thousands of refugees who had already fled. But he was loyal, stubborn and principled. This was his city and his country, even though he was raised on Russian culture, spoke Russian, had Russian friends, and had been educated at the Kyiv Conservatoire on Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, his two favourite composers.

He understood the depth and power of music, conducting it with the focus and dedication of a samurai warrior—indeed, his devotion to the authenticity and integrity of music was such that he often explained his loyalty by reciting the samurai code of discipline: “Live as if you do not exist.” He respected himself and music too much to have it used as a propaganda tool.

Sometime in September, it seems, officials from the Russian Special Services visited him at his apartment in an another attempt to convince him that their “international” concert was appropriate and necessary. He summarily refused to comply. They said they would be back. Several days later, sometime near his 46th birthday on September 9th, they returned with machine guns and killed him.

On this island, it’s easy for us to forget that we enjoy the privilege of conducting our lives with civility, dignity and respect. As best we can, we seek and try to live our individual truths, without fear that an autocratic authority will insist that we do not have this freedom. We may have differences among ourselves and with government officials, but we have social and bureaucratic mechanisms for dealing with these tensions in a manner that is humane and civilized. We don’t always get exactly what we want, but we aren’t shot for refusing an “invitation” that conflicts with our principles, or for expressing an opinion that offends the sensibilities of another person.

“In war,” said an insightful Ukrainian woman, “you don’t get accidentally killed, you accidentally survive.” In war, the rules of civilized behaviour are reversed. Truths become lies, and lies become truth. Human ingenuity turns against humanity, and creativity becomes destruction.

• Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
• Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
• The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
• The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
• The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
• Are full of passionate intensity.

So wrote the Irish W.B. Yeats in The Second Coming, a 1919 poem that was his response to the calamity of World War I, the so-called war to end all wars. It didn’t stop World War II, but, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, we had relative peace in Europe for 77 years. We thought we had reached a collective agreement in which political and economic propriety gave nations the freedom to choose their own destiny. This has now changed, at precisely the time in world history when a global climate emergency means that we desperately need peace, focus and cooperation.

This war, known in Russia as a “special military operation”, is an object lesson to everyone, everywhere. It illustrates what happens when power and authority lose control of themselves, when the delicate balance of civility is tipped toward chaos, and when the best attributes of our human character are overcome by the worst. Yurii Kerpatenko is no longer in a condition to remember the better option, but we are.

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra 

Top image credit: Sunflowers for Ukraine – Photo by Niobe Flux via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)