Sure, the orchestra can fire or not fire the guy, and they can also do so on the basis of whether they think this will fill seats. What really rubs me the wrong way here is the performative "you're with us or you're against us" demand for a
written denouncement: AFAICT he has not said a peep either way about the Ukraine invasion, he is just being required to publicly renounce his
past beliefs to keep his job.
For what it's worth, you're also doing some pretty selective reading of the link: he's Ossetian himself, claims he never actually signed the Crimea annexation statement, and the Pussy Riot/LGBT stuff is really an irrelevant tangent here.
Finally, no, McCarthyism was not (just) about government persecution, things like the MPAA blacklist on "Communist" actors and directors were private initiatives, and artists bore much of the brunt of that particular witchhunt.
For what it's worth, you're also doing some pretty selective reading of the link: he's Ossetian himself, claims he never actually signed the Crimea annexation statement, and the Pussy Riot/LGBT stuff is really an irrelevant tangent here.
Finally, no, McCarthyism was not (just) about government persecution, things like the MPAA blacklist on "Communist" actors and directors were private initiatives, and artists bore much of the brunt of that particular witchhunt.