Mirga: My father ran at a Russian tank with a kitchen knife
OrchestrasIn tonight’s Lebrecht Interview, the conductor Mirga Grazinte-Tyla remembers the night the Russians tried to reimpose their rule on her native Lithuania. Mirga ran barefoot into the night behind her father, who was determined to drive the Russians out.
The memory was awoken by a question of mine, asking why she felt it necessary to declare her own independence, quitting a conventional role as music director in order to devote her mid-30s to bringing up children.
Mirga is a one off, altogether her own creation.
Listen tonight at 21.15 on BBC Radio 3, later on BBC iPlayer.
Her father’s bravery is just one side of the story, but aren’t you amazed by the fact that Russian tankers did not crush him? I am always baffled, why in 1991 Soviet authorities haven’t done anywhere in Soviet Union anything like what the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square in 1989?
What’s most impressive is that he managed to find a “Russian tank” at all, given the Russian Federation didn’t yet exist in January 1991. Must have been a time traveller!
Meanwhile, we still don’t know who the Tiananmen Square ‘tank man’ was in 1989 or what happened to him.
Do not credit Russians for not killing as many as they could have. 14 Lithuanias lost their lives because of the Russians in 1991. As to why more weren’t killed, the most likely reason is that the Soviet Union had collapsed and there simply were no orders. In Ukraine today we can see Russia as it truly is.