Ukrainian pianist Dr. Taras Filenko captivated audiences at Tulane University in late October with a series of performances and lectures, showcasing Ukraine’s rich musical heritage and using visual art and commentary to express the resilience and cultural identity of the Ukrainian people in a time of war.  

Through his music, Filenko conveys the endurance of Ukraine’s culture in the face of centuries of Russian and Soviet oppression, appealing to American students to support Ukraine’s fight for independence amidst the ongoing war. 

Filenko gave four of these performances throughout the week of Oct. 28, presenting to students and faculty at Tulane as well as to the public. 

Lidia Zhigunova, senior professor of practice in German and Russian, invited Filenko to present to her TIDE 1011: Exploring Russia course and encouraged her Russian language students to attend. He also performed at Tulane’s Music at Midday weekly concert series and at Trinity Episcopal Church. 

Filenko performed Ukrainian piano pieces spanning the 18th to 21st centuries and presented striking images of the war-ravaged country, Ukrainian artwork and historical commentary. Despite the talent of the composers Filenko highlighted, most remain unknown worldwide due to extensive Russian and Soviet attempts to suppress Ukrainian artistic expression. 

Although Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe, second only to Russia, most Americans and Europeans are unfamiliar with Ukrainian music and culture.  

“It’s not the fault of the Americans or French or Germans,” Filenko said. “It’s a fault of the oppressors.” 

Filenko emphasized that the war in Ukraine today is not a solitary event, but a continuation of centuries of Russian imperialistic oppression. He showed students an extensive list of Russian and Soviet oppressive policies, starting in the 18th century. Most were prohibitions of various national and cultural institutions, such as the Ukrainian language, national holidays, church music, school or theater. 

Filenko highlighted the 1863 Valuyev Circular decree, which banned the state from printing any Ukrainian-language educational literature. Pyotr Valuyev, the Russian Empire’s minister of internal affairs, wrote, “a separate Little Russian language never existed, does not exist, and shall not exist.” 

“They denied the Ukrainian language to exist at all,” Filenko said. 

Russians restricted musical works as well as language.  

“Artists and… in particular, composers, formed… a sense of resistance,” Filenko said. “Music was an extremely powerful tool and weapon for centuries against oppression.” Even if artists were banned from performing their music, they could write it.  

Illustrating this, Filenko performed a captivating rendition of Mykola Lysenko’s sorrowful “Elegy,” Op. 41, No. 3. It was written in 1902, a time when independence felt impossible for Ukrainians. Although Russian restrictions prevented Lysenko’s music from being performed in his lifetime, he nevertheless wrote forty volumes of music, incorporating traditional Ukrainian folk melodies into his compositions “to create a distinctly Ukrainian sound,” Zhigunova said.  

Filenko urged students to remember Lysenko’s name, as he dedicated his life to “preserving and developing Ukrainian music.”  Filenko, along with his mother, wrote a book about Lysenko, detailing the musician’s profound impact on the Ukrainian musical tradition. 

Filenko also performed the whimsical, impressionistic piece “Capricious Sea” by Fedir Akimenko, whose name was prohibited by the Soviet Union and remains widely unknown. Russian and Soviet governments banned hundreds of other composers and musical works for patriotic or “nationalistic” content. 

This long history of cultural erasure continues today. The ongoing war in Ukraine is an extension of efforts to wipe away the nation.  

“This war is not just war for land, for resources,” Filenko said. “This is genocidal war. Russian imperialists want to destroy a Ukrainian identity, and a Ukrainian identity based upon art, culture, language and music.” 

He displayed an image of a china teacup and saucer, half of it formed of barbed wire, symbolizing the “double life” of Ukrainians. 

Зовні means “on the outside,” в душі, “in the soul.”  

In Ukraine, opera houses and dance clubs remain open every day while missiles and bombs fall relentlessly overhead, he said.  

As of Nov. 11, Russia has fired 145 drones at Ukraine in the past 48 hours, more than any previous nighttime attack in the entire conflict, and killing many.  

Filenko described how students go to school, take exams and spend time with friends, even while attending classes in air raid shelters and decorating the walls with artwork to make it feel like home. They dance, party and attend concerts, while fearing for the lives of their friends and family.  

“This is daily life in Ukraine,” Filenko said. He saw this duality firsthand during his trips to Kiev, where he presented to Ukrainian students. 

Filenko displayed many other Ukrainian artworks and musical works throughout his presentation. Music and art are not just political statements, he said. They are ways of communicating a shared human experience and tools to combat apathy.  

Filenko’s ability to appeal emotionally to his audiences is a crucial element of his presentations. His “combination of music, which is very emotional, and visual elements, which is very informative” is the “most potent vehicle to present this very complex issue,” Filenko said.  

“Very often people connect emotionally more than logically,” he said. 

This is an important observation amidst the slew of newspaper and academic articles covering the Russia-Ukraine war, reporting missile launchings and death counts as statistics.  

Filenko showed students a photograph of a demolished theater, where 650 families were bombed while sheltering beneath it. He pointed out images of Russian poets and writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol plastered across the billboard that was placed around the ruins. The display, he noted, is an example of Russia’s assertion of cultural superiority to Ukraine. 

When asked why the Russian state has gone to such lengths to suppress Ukrainian culture, Filenko said, “Very simple. National identity rests upon the shoulders of the poets, writers, historians, artists, musicians, [who] maintain the backbone of the culture and national identity of the nation…. this is why constant oppression against intellectuals… has been in the policy of the Russian imperial state, and later under the Soviets, and now under the Russian Federation.” 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created the largest forced migration in Europe since World War II, with about a third of its population displaced. Russian forces have destroyed or damaged around 210,000 buildings, 500 culturally important sites and 2,500 educational institutions in Ukraine, including one-fifth of the country’s higher education institutions. None of these facilities have military value.  

“At the beginning of World War II, nobody expected that the fascist state like Germany would cause such tremendous destruction… And now, exactly the same thing happened to Russia,” Filenko said. 

Contacts in Ukraine told Filenko that in some occupied areas, “if you speak Ukrainian on a street in the places that have been occupied, you can be taken and disappear.” 

Filenko’s mission is to promote Ukrainian culture around the world amid Russia’s brutal war.  

He encourages Tulane students to explore modern Ukrainian music, such as the Ukrainian band BoomBox’s rendition of “Chervona Kalyna (Red Viburnum),” a patriotic folk song that the Soviet Union banned. Since 2022, Ukrainians have been fined or arrested for singing it in occupied Russian territory and it has become a popular symbol of Ukrainian freedom. Filenko’s piano album “Ukraine: Notes of Freedom” is also available on Spotify.  

“Ukrainian people and culture are fighting for their survival — both on the battlefields in Ukraine and in concert halls worldwide,” Zhigunova said.  

“The country is bleeding,” Filenko said. As bombs fall daily, preserving Ukrainian identity through music, art and language is an act of survival. It is not just a country’s sovereignty on the line in this war, but also the preservation of a culture that has resisted erasure for centuries. Filenko believes that support from people and students worldwide is crucial as the future of Ukraine remains uncertain.