By Olga Efimova
Probably, it is difficult to find another such area in Ukraine, where many peoples and civilizations left their marks. There was a large variety of nations at different times – Tauri, Scythians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Genoese, Tatars… Every nation left a small or large piece of its world and culture on the peninsula. Today, this cultural heritage is endangered: from the banal destruction of archaeological monuments by the Russian militarists to the conscious and deliberate moving-out of the Crimean cultural wealth from the peninsula.
Cultural-historical wealth of Crimea
According to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, there were 6 cultural-historical reserves, including the National Nature Reserve “Chersonese” (Sevastopol), the State Palace-Park Museum-Reserve in Alupka, the State Historical and Cultural reserve in Bakhchisaray and others located in Crimea as of January 1, 2014. There were 54 museums, including 35 state and community in AR of Crimea and 5 in Sevastopol, where more than 1.2 million units of main reserves and about 400 thousand scientific subsidiary units in Crimea before the annexation. Add to this more than 2 million archival materials – paper and audiovisual materials.
According to preliminary estimates, Ukraine has lost 11.5 thousand historical, cultural and architectural monuments, 150 historical and architectural sites listed in UNESCO catalogs, including the Tauric Chersonese, the Bakhchisaray Palace of the Crimean Tatars, Chufut-Kale, Sudak fortress and others, in Crimea.
Annexation of cultural heritage
Having annexed Crimea, Russia declared historical and cultural monuments of the peninsula as its own property de facto.
On August 8, 2014, the ‘State Council’ of Crimea adopted the Law “On Cultural Heritage Sites of Crimea”, according to which all the cultural monuments of the peninsula received the status of a national acquisition of the Russian Federation.
On January 27, 2015, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a law simplifying the procedure of including the Crimean heritage in Russian registers. Moreover, on October 17, 2015, the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree, by which more than 220 cultural and historical Crimean monuments have been included into the list of list of federal sites, including cave towns, the remains of medieval fortresses, monuments of the Khan Palace and the Chersonese, churches, mosques, architectural monuments and so on.
However, the “federal status” does not help preserve the Crimean cultural heritage: monuments are destroyed themselves and by occupants, and cultural values are actively moved out to Russia.
The Tauric Chersonese that was among the UNESCO World Heritage sites in 2013 faced with the saddest fate. However, the international organization refused to recognize the Russia’s status of this monument after the annexation, and in 2016, it included the Chersonese into the list of dangerous places to visit, along with the monuments of Syria or Afghanistan.
Museum-Reserve “Tauric Chersonese”
Meanwhile, the occupation authorities started to reformat the Chersonese to their own needs. First, they decided to change persons having senior management positions by appointing the priest Sergey Khalyuta as a director on July 29, 2015. The scientific team of this reserve were strongly against such an appointment and the city ‘authorities’ were forced to back down: on August 6, Khalyuta resigned and a former deputy director Larisa Sedikova headed the museum complex. However, she was working just for a year: in June 2016, Svetlana Melnikova, who previously headed the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve, became the new director of the Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve “Tauric Chersonese”. By the way, the director of the Museum of the Heroic Defence and Liberation of Sevastopol Aleksandr Rudometov who was forced to submit a letter of resignation found himself in the same situation. He gave this position to a man from the mainland – Nikolay Musiyenko, who has previously worked as a deputy director of the Museum-Reserve “Battle of Stalingrad”.
“As you know, this is a general trend to appoint the people from the mainland for all positions,” Rudometov commented on his resignation.
Secondly, given the special strategic location of the reserve, the military decided to build the helicopter-landing site on the cape. They destroyed the ancient manor not paying attention to ruins during the concrete works.
“Supposedly, there is the ancient manor, the federal cultural heritage object of the Tauric Chersonese reserve. We assume that this object has been destroyed,” the ‘head’ of the cultural heritage protection department Denis Protsenko said after visiting the reserve.
Although there are no military objects at territory of the Bakhchisaray Museum, better known as “Khan’s Palace“, this monument is destroying and the ‘authorities’ are not eager to perform restoration works.
In early June 2016, the Crimean Tatar photographer Ildar Ibragimov posted photos clearly demonstrating the current state of the world’s only monument of the Crimean Tatar palace architecture on Facebook.
“My publication is devoted to the Khan’s palace. I made a report on the state of this architectural monument on December 22, 2015. Today, on June 2, 2016, I decided to take a picture and show you what has changed. However, nothing has changed. There is still no lighting, the workers used a self-made pillar to fix the roof, the second floor is blocked…,” the photographer says.
In 2015, Crimea was sounding the alarms because of the Crimean landmark – the Swallow’s Nest, the architectural monument, which was also included to the list of federal monuments. Therefore, in January 2016, the Crimean ‘authorities’ informed that they are forced to close the monument, which was being actively restored by the Russians, for visits.
“The place where the balcony is hanging was closed. It poses a serious emergency danger,” the ‘Minister of Culture’ of Crimea Arina Novoselskaya said.
In this context, the Russian authorities have promised to allocate big sums of money for Crimea to restore historical and cultural sites. For example, in 2015, it was supposed that the peninsula would get 1.6 billion rubles (about 26 million dollars). However, the attempt of Russian journalists to find the allocated money was not successful: Moscow said that Crimea got the money, but they failed to find someone who could give comments to journalists in Simferopol.
In 2016, the ‘state committee’ on protection the cultural heritage of Crimea scheduled the repair and restoration works amounting to 1.2 billion rubles (18 million dollars). According to the committee’s ‘head’ Aleksey Belyantsev, the MK journalists couldn’t find and meet with in winter, 20 objects, including the Swallow’s Nest (132 million rubles – $2 million), the Livadia Palace (83 million rubles – $1,3 million), Khan’s Palace in Bakhchisaray (148 million rubles -$2,2 million) and others, will be restored.
Recently, it became known that the ‘state committee’ finally chose the monuments, which should be repaired on a first-priority basis. They are two buildings in Evpatoriya – “the former kenesa building of 1896” and “the gymnasium building (Ruschinskoy)”. As for the Khan’s Palace and the Swallow’s Nest, the committee experts just gave the recommendations concerning the further works.
If emergency response works are performed at such pace, the number of cultural and historical heritage sites can be reduced dramatically by the de-occupation of Crimea.
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