{"id":251078,"date":"2014-03-24T11:39:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T07:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=251078"},"modified":"2014-03-24T11:40:20","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T07:40:20","slug":"when-democracy-ends-on-the-word-ukraine-composer-to-epress-am-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2014\/03\/24\/when-democracy-ends-on-the-word-ukraine-composer-to-epress-am-in-ukraine.html","title":{"rendered":"When Democracy Ends on the Word Ukraine: Composer to Epress.am in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Runchak spoke with the Epress.am team about recent events in his country, Ukraine-Russia relations,&nbsp;and Russian cultural workers.&nbsp;<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;Democracy for the Russian intellectual ends on the word Ukraine,&quot; he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em>Video in Russian only. Transcript below translated into English from Armenian.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n\t<iframe width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hnKqdci7WLQ?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;There are cultural workers who actively participate in the life of their country, and there are those who sit in their foyers like snails. I belong to the former.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;I organized a huge campaign criticizing the actions of famous Russian accordionist Friedrich Lips, who was one of the first to sign the Russian cultural workers&#39; famous letter to President Putin. I asked him &mdash; though I knew he had signed it &mdash; whether that was true. He wasn&#39;t responding to me, so I disseminated this information throughout the entire world, from America to Poland, so that people can join the campaign. After this he responded &mdash; because, roughly speaking, that&#39;s where he earns his real money &mdash; in the West. As a result of all this, his acquired reputation might&#39;ve had negative consequences. He responded, confirming that it was true, and presented several arguments as to why he did it, which was even more terrible. A person can make a mistake and then admit his mistake. In his case, his position, according to him, was justified.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;I got all the accordion fans in Ukraine up on their feet. Now there are mass discussions online; people write letters to him; children write letters.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;In any case, I give people the option of choice; I say they can do nothing [if they want]. The letters to Lips, however, won&#39;t dissuade him, since the disease of chauvinism is incurable &mdash; people die with it.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;We need these letters: We have to rise up from the level of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Khokhol\"><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong>khokhols<\/strong><\/span><\/a> [a Russian pejorative term for ethnic Ukrainians] to the level of Ukrainians.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;[Russia] is that country which was always considered our brother: older or younger [brother] &mdash; it doesn&#39;t matter. When it comes to Ukraine, however, this is coming to an end.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;I&#39;m sorry.&quot;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em><strong>Photo<\/strong>: Volodymyr Runchak (left) with Azerbaijani composer and publicist Elmir Mirzoyev.<br \/>\n\t<strong>Photo credit<\/strong>: Ahmed Mukhtar<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Runchak spoke with the Epress.am team about recent events in his country, Ukraine-Russia relations, and Russian cultural workers. <!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":251058,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,21],"tags":[54239,53522,53452,12920,54238],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}