Jewish pianist was first political prisoner in modern Russia to die in hunger strike
For posting anti-Putin videos on YouTube, Pavel Kushnir was imprisoned in Siberia. He died of starvation in protest of the war in Ukraine while awaiting trial; 11 people came to his funeral
Reporter at The Times of Israel
A Jewish classical pianist became the first political prisoner in modern Russia to die in a hunger strike at the end of July.
Pavel Kushnir, 39, was arrested by Russian security services in May for allegedly inciting terrorist activity.
He died while in detention awaiting trial in Birobidzhan, the administrative center of Russia’s far-east historical Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which is close to the border with China.
The death of Kushnir — whose nickname was Pasha — was first reported by a Russian news site on August 2 and confirmed by the independent publication Mediazona. Kushnir’s mother — Irina Levina — spoke to another independent news organization about her son’s untimely death.
“I certainly wanted him to conduct himself in a quieter way and to stay out of politics altogether,” Levina told Okno. “I am very sorry that he gave up his life, apparently for nothing,” she said.
Kushnir conducted several anti-Putin hunger strikes in recent years. This time, however, he was said to have refused liquids. Already a slight figure, Kushnir appeared “skeletal” to people who saw him before his death.
“His death has now become symbolic. It’s about thousands of unknown people being kept in prisons and dying without any protection or interest from the world,” said concert pianist Maria Nemtsova, Kushnir’s longtime friend.
“People should know about Pavel’s death to make them aware of suffering and injustice in the world,” Nemtsova told The Times of Israel.
Born in 1984, Kushnir was an accomplished concert pianist who studied at the elite Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. Both of his parents were music teachers who came from artistic Jewish families, and Kushnir was labeled a musical prodigy at an early age.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put Kushnir’s activism against Putin into hyperdrive. In addition to creating anti-regime flyers and videos, Kushnir urged others to partake in hunger strikes alongside him. He reached out to the female rock band Pussy Riot and other famous dissenters to build a network of support.
“Don’t get used to fascism, don’t get used to war. And even if there is no future, let’s believe in the present,” said Kushnir in a video posted to YouTube. “But there is a future. Putin will rot. The fascist Putin regime will collapse. My love will live on. Let’s continue the struggle. Let’s go all the way, stay true to our past,” he said.
Human rights activists say about 1,000 Russians have been put on trial or imprisoned by the government since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Activists who work to free political prisoners were not aware of Kushnir’s situation, according to the independent Siberian politician Svetlana Kaverzina.
“We could not pool money to send him a lawyer — we just didn’t know,” Kaverzina wrote in a post on Telegram. “We didn’t write him letters of support — we didn’t know. We didn’t dissuade him from sacrificing himself — we didn’t know. He was alone. Let’s at least symbolically tell him after his death: ‘Forgive us and rest in peace.’”
The official cause of Kushnir’s death was listed as “dilated cardiomyopathy, congestive heart failure.”
’12 years in Birobidzhan’
Kushnir preferred touring with provincial orchestras over performing in large cities, and a key reason was that the lifestyle meant he did not have to perform at pro-regime war concerts in the metropolises. Kushnir told friends that he hoped to spend 12 years in remote Birobidzhan, playing with the local philharmonic, as long as he was “not imprisoned, drafted into the army, or fired.”
Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created between the World Wars to settle Jews in the inhospitable far-east. At the time, Jewish Communists believed Birobidzhan, the region’s administrative center, was “the only true and sensible solution to the national question.”
Today, fewer than 1,000 Jews live in the region, with most of the community having emigrated to Israel in recent decades.
Kushnir did not seek fame as a musician and believed the arts should be free and accessible to everyone. He did, however, organize a weekly radio program to discuss Chopin’s folk compositions. On the show, Kushnir greeted listeners with anti-fascist slogans and repeatedly intoned, “The truth is out there.”
“Scatter leaflets, post fliers, write huge posters, put them up on benches, leave them somewhere, paste them on the walls of buildings,” said Kushnir. Another area of focus for the activist was LGBTQ rights, with the Russian government known for persecuting sexual minorities.
In January, Kushnir was fired by the Birobidzhan Philharmonic for his activism. The tipping point of his agitation came when Kushnir posted four antiwar videos on his YouTube channel. While he had an audience of only five subscribers, Kushnir was observed by authorities, arrested, and imprisoned at the jail on Karl Marx Street in Birobidzhan.
“He was a man processing every death as his own personal loss,” said Olga Shkyrgunova, a childhood friend.
In one blurry, muffled video, Kushnir — wearing Christmas tinsel around his neck — spoke about Russia’s massacre of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha.
“The Bucha massacre is a disgrace to our homeland. Fascism is the death of our homeland. Putin is a fascist. The peoples of our country gave millions of their best lives so that fascism would never exist, and we will not accept it, we will not bow to the Beast,” Kushnir said.
The activist was particularly disturbed by Russia’s labeling of dissidents as “foreign agents,” according to Kushnir’s friends.
“Down with the war in Ukraine! Down with Putin’s fascist regime! Freedom to all political prisoners! Freedom to all prisoners in general — and freedom to everyone,” said Kushnir.
In one of Kushnir’s previous hunger strikes after the Bucha atrocities, he refused food for 100 days while working and performing in concerts. In his free time, Kushnir created and handed out “Putin is a fascist” leaflets around town.
“I have no trouble dealing with the hunger physically. I chose this form of protest when I thought people had begun to get used to the war, to accept it, in order to set an example, to attract attention,” said Kushnir in an interview.
Since Kushnir’s death, there has been radio silence from Russian authorities, said Olga Romanova, head of the “Russia Behind Bars” civil rights group.
“Unfortunately, there is no news on this case and it is unlikely that there will be any. And there is no reaction from the Russian authorities,” Romanova told The Times of Israel.
Only 11 people attended Kushnir’s funeral and no one delivered a eulogy, according to reports. Photos show Kushnir in his coffin with a bruise around one eye and bloody lips.
In the months since his death, Kushnir’s artist friends around the world have been compiling the dissident pianist’s letters and writings to commemorate his life and disseminate his message.
“Pavel definitely sacrificed his life for us. It is almost a biblical story,” said Nemtsova. “He was trying to scream, but it was so muted,” she said.
