The Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition has been held every five years (with breaks for such events as war or the notorious pandemic) since 1927. Artists from all over the world come to Warsaw to take part in the hope of winning the first prize, which will make them famous and enable them to perform in the best concert halls around the globe. This piano competition kind of corresponds to various championships in sports events. In either case the future participants need to prepare themselves many years prior to the competition and prove themselves worthy of the invitation. Quite an effort for an artist, quite a challenge.
We have long been accustomed to the fact that sports events have been tied with politics: sport has emerged as yet another battlefield in the hybrid war between the collective West and Russia. We are all familiar with the fact that Russian athletes are not allowed to compete under the Russian national flag, the Russian national anthem is not played in case a Russian athlete wins, and many a time Russian participants are compelled to renounce Russia’s war effort.
Much the same has been happening in the artistic world: concurrently with the beginning of the hostilities in Ukraine, Russian performers were banned or restricted in the United States or Europe, while in many places Russian artistic creators – composers and dramatists – were removed from theatres and concert halls from one day to the other. If that reminds the reader of banning or burning books and other works of art by various authorities throughout history it is because what we are seeing now is precisely the same phenomenon.
The 2025 Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition is no exception in this respect. It is not only that the event takes place in Europe: it is held in Poland of all the countries, and Poland as is well known is rabidly anti-Russian. The two Russian pianists who were ultimately admitted to the contest were coerced to meet the same demands that are set for athletes: they could only perform under a neutral flag and they were to sign a categorical condemnation of the violation of international law.
Frederick Chopin, in whose commemoration the Competition is held, was born in 1810, in Poland, at this part of Poland which belonged to the Duchy of Warsaw, a puppet or rump state under French rule. This part of Poland was torn off by Napoleon Bonaparte from the Kingdom of Prussia (a German state), which had grabbed hold of most of present-day Poland in 1795. Two years after Chopin’s birth, the French god of war committed his European troops to the Russian campaign, where he suffered a resounding defeat. As Russians pushed the European units back into Europe, they took over the Duchy of Warsaw, turning it into the Kingdom of Poland. This Kingdom of Poland had its own army, its own currency, its own parliament, its own government; Polish was the official language (not Russian!). This Polish state had the Russian tsar as its king: a typical personal union. The tsar’s brother headed the Polish army. All the Polish generals and colonels along with lower-rank officers who had previously fought against Russia under Napoleon were generously pardoned and allowed to hold their high military position within the Kingdom of Poland. One may feel tempted to argue that the Polish state was at that time more independent of St Petersburg than it is nowadays independent of Brussels or Washington.
Thus, young Frederick Chopin grew up in a Poland that was in a political union with Russia, while the other parts of his homeland were semi-autonomous regions of Prussia and Austria, where the Poles did not have their own army. Somehow there is little resentment in present-day Poland towards the Prussian and Austrian rule.
Now young Frederick Chopin played the piano even to the grand prince – the tsar’s brother and received praise from him. The tsar’s brother being commander-in-chief of the Polish army was credited to be a ruthless person, which supposedly provoked a national uprising triggered among the Polish young officers insulted by the grand prince’s behaviour (with enormous resistance to the uprising on the part of the Polish colonels and generals!). A full-scale war erupted in which the Polish forces, being very much outnumbered by the Russians, were eventually defeated after ten months of hostilities (1831). Amazingly enough, the tsar’s brother, the same ruthless prince, emotionally took the side of his Polish troops… Well, he had a Polish wife to boot…
Frederick Chopin had left Poland before the outbreak of the uprising. He had left Poland allegedly because it was impossible for him to live under Russian rule and develop his artistic skills – in point of fact he had left Poland for France because such was the habit of the Polish (and not only Polish) upper classes. In his later biographies this is interpreted as an escape from the occupant… He spent the rest of his life abroad, mainly in France, the same France, which under Napoleon I had created the Duchy of Warsaw, that rump, puppet state that we have mentioned above. Napoleon I or Napoleon Bonaparte, whose name features in the lyrics of the Polish national anthem, was so much afraid of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, or wanted so much to please the three powers – his alleged mortal enemies – that he did not name the Polish state – the Polish state nor did he turn it into a kingdom but a duchy. Still, as already said, it is his name that has found its way into the Polish national anthem, which is sung till this very day. Never mind that in a few years he lost that Duchy of Warsaw to Russians because of his reckless mindless irresponsible adventurous invasion of Russia; never mind that there he had also lost hundreds of thousands of Europeans, among them tens of thousands of the Polish troops.
Talking about Poland’s utmost enemies. After Germany had occupied Poland in 1939, in 1940 the German governor of the Polish lands ordered a complete destruction of the world-known monument to Frederick Chopin along with all its copies and replicas wherever they could be found in museums or elsewhere. The Warsaw monument was blown up and cut into pieces.
When the war had come to its end – that is to say – when the Russians had ousted the Germans out of Poland, the monument was recreated and put in its former place. The Russian occupiers – as they are nowadays often called in Poland – never dared to touch a finger to the monument. The Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition, interrupted by the war, was, of course, resumed. Not even once were German pianists taking part in this competition required to perform under a neutral flag or to sign a political declaration.
