Cultural Heritage and Human Rights in Ukraine
March 2022 | Vol. 10.3
By Andrew Overman
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. The human toll and the cruel inhumanity displayed before the eyes of the world has stopped many of us in our tracks. As an archaeologist who directed a project in the 1990s in ancient Chersonesus on the Crimean Peninsula, I can speak first-hand about the damage war wreaks on cultural monuments and sites. Along with the attack on the lives, liberty, and sovereignty of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin also aims to dismantle and destroy Ukrainian cultural heritage and identity.
As stated in The International Declaration of Human Rights, “Cultural heritage must be preserved, developed, enriched and transmitted to future generations …. Such obligations include the care, preservation and restoration of historical sites, [and] monuments…” Despite being a signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the event of armed conflict, Russia is bombing iconic buildings and institutions that help shape the cultural landscape and memory of Ukraine. This is how Putin wages war; Ukrainians know it all too well. In Putin’s version of Russia the rich culture and history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people cannot stand alongside that of Russia’s. It has to be recast, destroyed, or erased.
Map of Ukraine. by Lencer via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Take for example Chersonesus on the Crimean Peninsula, where my team and I worked during the 1990s. Founded as a Greek colony nearly 2,500 years ago, Chersonesus lies on the outskirts of the modern city of Sevastopol, home to the Russian Black Sea fleet. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2013.
For much of the Classical and Hellenistic periods Chersonesus was a democracy, famously had its own constitution, and the citizens swore an oath to the city, themselves, and to the goddess Parthenos. During the Hellenistic period Chersonesus was incorporated into the Greco-Scythian Bosporan Kingdom, a unique melding of Hellenistic and indigenous culture, and later became subject to Rome. The city had a diverse population, which included Jews, whose own communities stretched across the Crimea, including Kerch, ancient Panticapeum, the gateway to the Sea of Azov and one of Putin’s most desired prizes today.
Chersonesus: The roman period Basilica with St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in the Background. Photo: Demmarcos via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Chersonesus flourished during the Byzantine period and was eventually the site of St. Vladimir’s conversion to Christianity in 988, the traditional date given for the Christianization of Kievan Rus’. But this status, not to mention the entire history of this distinctive city, is in a very real sense anti-Putin in spirit and style. It therefore must be recast. Ukraine and Kiev cannot be the people who brought Orthodox Christianity to the Slavic people. And the diverse cities of ancient Ukraine that experienced such a cultural and intellectual efflorescence cannot be allowed to stand alongside, if not occasionally against, Russian history and culture.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2018 Putin arrived in Chersonesus and declared the city “Russia’s Mecca” and opened a “patriotic theme park” called Russia My History with the active support of the local Russian Orthodox leadership. There are also plans to open a “Museum of Christianity” in Chersonesus. Putin wishes to place his predictable Russifying, or Putinizing stamp on Chersonesus and the other sites in occupied Crimea. Gone is the history that includes religious and cultural diversity, economic and cultural cosmopolitanism, and any memory of a democratic polity.
The Bakhchysarai Palace in Crimea. Photo by Chapultepec via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain
In September 2021 a UNESCO report detailed illegal, non-licensed excavations in the ancient city and in other locales in the Crimea. There has also been widespread appropriation and theft of Ukrainian cultural property in Crimea exported to Russia. Archaeological and heritage sites are also being commandeered for religious or entertainment purposes.
The report also discusses the poor restoration practices used on heritage sites since 2014, including replacing original ancient materials with modern concrete. Heavy equipment is regularly used on ancient sites to quickly develop them with the hope of enhancing Russian tourism at the sites. The Bakhchysarai Palace, a historic Muslim site dating from the 16th century, has suffered from some of these destructive practices. Original materials such as oak beams were simply removed rather than restored while paintings were damaged by cleaning with high pressure water jets.
The Ukrainian government protested to UNESCO about the Russian treatment and care of this historic palace of the Crimean Khans and Tartars. The September 2021 report also presciently links this cultural degradation with myriad reports of human rights abuses in the Crimea. Putin’s regime is not just plundering and destroying sites, architecture, and art tied to Ukrainian history and culture. The regime intends to rewrite the history, or if necessary, erase it.
The Sviato-Pokrovska Church of the Lavra.Photo by Konstantin Brizhnichenko via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Direct attacks on Ukrainian heritage and populations are increasing. The Svyatogorsk Lavra, a Ukrainian Orthodox monastery dating from 1526, was attacked while a thousand civilians sought shelter inside. In Kiev a Russian missile struck the memorial to the 1941 massacre of 33,771 Jews at Babyn Yar. The site of the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust was not memorialized until the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Soviet tradition there was little mention of Babyn Yar and no memorialization of that horrifying event in Ukrainian Jewish history. A 100-million-dollar museum complex at Babyn Yar that includes a church, a synagogue, a research center, and two museums was slated to open in 2026. But we will never see such a complex in a Kiev run by Putin: part of the trumped-up pretense for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the manipulation of Holocaust history and language.
At this moment staff at the National Museum in Lviv are removing and sheltering artifacts in anticipation of Russian shelling of the historic Old Town of Lviv, a World Heritage site. People in Odessa have been working to protect and surround the historic Opera House that overlooks the iconic Potemkin staircase, made famous in Sergei Eisenstein’s epic 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. And St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, founded in the 11th century, along with its famous frescos, will likely be a Russian target should they decide to try and raze the city.
Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial in Kiev. Part of the memorial was struck by a missile fired at a nearby radio tower. Photo by Віктор Полянко via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Cultural heritage is inextricably linked to human rights. Failure to acknowledge or care for cultural heritage is a statement that people in the present do not matter. And when someone aims to wipe out that heritage, timeless expressions of a group’s history, culture, and memories, then they mean to erase you.
Memory is a powerful weapon. If dictators and barbarians can manipulate history and erase memories, it becomes easier to erase the people who created the history and memories. This is what Putin is trying to do to Ukraine. Not all of us have the chance to go to Ukraine to celebrate that marvelously rich culture and heritage, but we can fight to protect the cultural heritage and memory that is being systematically destroyed and erased right now.
Andrew Overman is Drake Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Fine Arts at Macalester College.
How to cite this article
Overman, A. 2022. “Cultural Heritage and Human Rights in Ukraine.” The Ancient Near East Today 10.3. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/overman-ukraine-heritage/.
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