The ‘cancel culture’ that has swept some parts of the world is now claiming not only the living but also the dead. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its newest victim is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a Russian composer who died in 1893. Cancelling Tchaikovsky - as well as Fyodor Dostoevsky and other dead Russians - shows, in the words of one commentator, that the collective West has lost its “relationship with the very values by which we define our culture. In their place we have “hate week“ as described in Orwell‘s 1984. It is devoted now to Tchaikovsky‘s music.”

This cancellation campaign has brought back memories of a trip to St. Petersburg three years ago when I met a living Pyotr Ilyich during my visit to the Tikhvin Cemetery where Tchaikovsky was buried. As I entered the cemetery, I saw a cat casually walking around. Then I saw it lounging on a tombstone.

Later, I saw it sitting on an obelisk, carefully surveying its territory.

It was then that I decided to approach and pet it. The cat didn’t run away and gladly subjected itself to my petting.

It was clear to me that it wasn’t a feral cat. It was very calm and exuded the sense of belonging to the place. I decided to ask cemetery’s attendant about the cat. What I was told was a fascinating story filled with the element of pure mysticism. For years, five female cats lived at the Tikhvin cemetery. One day, a male cat appeared out of nowhere and chased the female cats away. It then proceeded to the grave of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and stayed put there for two years without leaving it for a single moment.

It was that fact that prompted cemetery attendants to call the cat Pyotr Ilyich. Two-year vigil Pyotr Ilyich kept at his namesake’s grave ended around the time of my visit to the cemetery. I guess I was lucky he had left his post and was making rounds of the cemetery grounds that made it possible for us to meet close-up and for me to pet him.

The Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Convent is a burial place of other great Russian composers, writers, painters, actors, singers of mostly 19th-early 20th century.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is interred at the cemetery too. Other well-known composers, whose ouvres are performed worldwide (perhaps, in line to be cancelled too?), buried at the cemetery are Mikhail Glinka (opera A Life for the Tsar), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (opera The Golden Cockerel, ballet Scheherazade) and Alexander Glazunov (ballets Raymonda and The Seasons).

Also interred at the cemetery is Marius Petipa, Ballet Master and principal choreographer of the Imperial (Mariinsky) Ballet, who was the first to choreograph Tchaikovsky’s ballets such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.

Thinking back to my visit visit to the cemetery amidst the campaign to cancel Pyotr Ilyich The Composer, it makes me happy to know that no one can cancel Pyotr Ilyich The Cat.