Jurij Galatenko

* 1964

  • "I was watching TV and nothing really, just bits and pieces of news. And it was only when I returned to Kiev after two days, because we were in Moscow for about three days, that we started to realise that something had really happened. But we heard that we didn't have to worry about anything, that it was all over. That practically nothing had happened there and we should be calm. Just don't panic. And now we have heard and seen how all the families of the high-ranking official, those communist leaders, have suddenly started to flee from Kiev. And we thought, how is this possible? Crazy motorcades and everybody fleeing from Kiev. How is that possible? We began to suspect that something was wrong. And somehow, by internal mail, we were told that something really bad must have happened and what we should do. The police started to control the exits from the city, to stop the motorcades, or to turn people back. But there was no mass panic because nobody knew anything."

  • "As soldiers we played at funerals. And I've just seen a lot of hanged men who were not able to survive something like that. They'd served maybe a year and a half, thirty days to civilian life, and they'd hang themselves. Or they ran and froze in the desert because they couldn't get anywhere. And we played almost every week. That's where you really realize everything about your life. And you wonder what kind of country it is. What's the point of it all? You wonder what the Soviet Union is and what kind of a command can support something like that. And if, for example, somebody didn't hold out and maybe pulled a gun on the NCO who was torturing him and went to jail and did five, seven, or ten years, he was still coming back to serve the rest of his time."

  • "Nobody looked behind the Iron Curtain much. And that's why, for example, we perceived language study as a complete uselessness in our time, because you couldn't use the language anywhere. You couldn't meet foreigners. They probably won't let you out, or only once. And if anybody did go out, they usually had communist scouts at their backs and didn't have a chance to look around individually. So our world was closed inside the Soviet Union. We used to travel inside the Soviet Union for our artistic or traveling tastes. And when I went to the Caucasus, we traveled by train all the way across Ukraine to the Donbas. Up to where the biggest fighting is now, that's where we drove through. And when I see a small town on the news, I remember, 'Jesus, I went there by train, and my grandmother sold us tomatoes that tasted delicious.' And now I read that there is practically nothing there anymore."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Ostrava, 23.02.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:58:36
  • 2

    Ostrava, 03.03.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:50:23
  • 3

    Ostrava, 30.03.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:55:11
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When I first came to Czechoslovakia and wanted to socialize, everyone thought I was crazy.

Yuri Galatenko / zero years
Yuri Galatenko / zero years
photo: Archive of the witness

Yuri Galatenko was born on 20 January 1964 in Kiev, in the former Soviet Union. His father was a flutist, his mother a music teacher, his grandmother an award-winning choir director. He graduated from a selective primary and secondary music school for talented children. After a year of study at the Kiev Academy, he received a draft order. He served in the People’s Republic of Mongolia. He studied choral conducting and then orchestral conducting at the Kiev Academy of Music. He experienced how the Soviet government concealed information about the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He led the university choir of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, and conducted the philharmonic orchestra in the city of Rivne. He taught conducting at the Kiev Conservatory. He lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine in 1991. In 1998 he moved to the Czech Republic. He joined the choir of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava. During his tenure he won numerous awards at international choral competitions. In 2023 he lived in Ostrava.