Killing Ukrainian artists is Russia's century-old tradition

Killing Ukrainian artists is Russia's century-old tradition

On May 22, 1979, thousands gathered in Lviv to bid farewell to Volodymyr Ivasyuk, one of the most influential figures in modern Ukrainian music. Weeks earlier, the composer had disappeared under mysterious circumstances before being found dead in a forest near the city of Lviv, in what Soviet authorities declared a suicide. Yet for Ukrainians, Ivasyuk's death became inseparable from the broader machinery of Soviet repression aimed at silencing U…