A year ago, on July 27, 2024, Pavel Kushnir died in detention in Birobidzhan, the administrative center of the Jewish autonomy on the Russian-Chinese border. A thirty-nine year old graduate of the Moscow Conservatoire, Kushnir was raised in a musical family and proved an exceptional musician, perfoming as a soloist in the philharmonics of Yekaterinburg, Kursk, and Kurgan before becoming a soloist with the Birobidzhan Regional Philharmonic in 2023.
In 2024 Kushnir was arrested by FSB for posting four videos on his YouTube channel, which had five subscribers. For these videos, in which Kushnir called Putin’s Russia ‘a fascist state,’ he was accused of public calls to terrorist activity.
Talented pianist had a long history of civil activism, which included taking part in protests at Bolotnaya in Moscow in 2011-2013, pickets against the annexation of Crimea and protests against the war in Ukraine in 2022. In 2024 he became the first political prisoner in modern Russia to die in detention from a hunger strike while his case remained unknown to human rights defenders.
Not seeking publicity and fame in life, Kushnir became widely known in death, with listeners greatly appreciating his surviving recordings. In 2024, a scholarship named after Kushnir was created in London by producer Roman Liberov and entrepreneur Eduard Panteleev. The goal of it is to help student musicians from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus continue their studies abroad. This year, thirteen students were supported in their musical studies by the new Pavel Kushnir scholarship.
UPD: The video with Pavel Kushnir performs Rakhmaninov:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4fu53vaRJA
