John Thornhill in “Soviet-style ‘inner emigration’ is no escape from today’s reality” (Opinion, March 7) recalls the story of the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who was summoned back to Moscow to play at Stalin’s funeral.
Thornhill uses the story to highlight how “inner emigration”, a coping mechanism for those who have to live under totalitarianism, has re-emerged in Russia today.
Richter was a fellow traveller in the “society of the mind”. Some people are just born into this fellowship. What their opponents, the “materialists”, don’t realise is that the people who live in their mind are actually quite satisfied. They have pleasures that cannot be manipulated by the external. The external is just a place one has to be, physically, to exist.
Richter, in the documentary film discussed in Thornhill’s piece, questioned whether he was a satisfied person. Yet he had Bach, he had Chopin, he had Tchaikovsky.
He didn’t need brutal Stalin, or racist Churchill or dystopian Trump.
Sandip Tiwari
Charles N Mellowes Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, US, Distinguished Visiting Professor, IIT Kanpur, India
