RUSSIAN COMPOSER DID NOT CELEBRATE HIS ANNIVERSARY IN HIS HOME TOWN

The eightieth jubilee of Andrei Eshpai, a well-known Russian composer of Mari origin, was celebrated today (18 May) in the National Drama of the Republic of Mari El, but without Eshpai himself. He did not come for his birthday to Yoshkar-Ola, the capital city of his homeland. Earlier the master rejected a proposal by Aleksandr Sokolov, Minister of Culture of Mari El, to host the celebrations.

The most known Mari composer who is the laureate of many awards and titles of the Russian Federation and the USSR expressed his anxiety about the plans of local Russian-dominated administration to close down the Yoshkar-Ola Music School, the centre of Mari musical culture, and to incorporate it into a local college. He is also indignant about the present cultural and nationalities policy in Mari El and about undemocratic dismissal of the mayor of his home town Kozmodemyansk.

Andrei Eshpai, whom five years ago President Vladimir Putin personally congratulated on his birthday (15 May), has added his signature to the Appeal on Behalf of the Mari People in which a group of scientists, writers, composers and politicians denounced the restriction of cultural and language rights of the Maris and the repressions against the democratic opposition in Mari El. The appeal is open at www.ugri.info/mari for everyone to sign, and people from over 60 countries have already joined it.

The Republic of Mari El is an administrative unit of the Russian Federation located about 500 miles to the east from Moscow. It has the population of 728 thousands of whom the Maris make up now only 43 per cent. The press, radio and television broadcasting in the Mari language have been restricted in the recent years and education in the native language is almost nonexistent. A wide international protest was caused this February by the assault and battery of Vladimir Kozlov, Chairman of the all-Russian Movement of the Mari People. This month, the European Parliament and the Federal Union of European Nationalities called on Russia to stop infringing on the rights of the Maris.