Tracey’s Piece of Stuff this week was a little piece of women’s jewelry from the period of the Great princes of Kievan Rus’ in the tenth to twelfth centuries. As the Mongol-Tartar armies advanced on Kiev (modern Kyiv) in 1240, the temple pendant (so-called because it was worn dangling near the temples) along with two sacks full of other jewelry and church gold plate was hidden in a niche near the altar of Desiatynna Church, which had been built by Prince Vladimir to celebrate the conversion of the Kievan Rus’ to Christianity in 988 CE. Given the current war in Ukraine we wanted to explore how Russians are targeting Ukraine’s cultural treasures as well as how Ukrainians are going to great lengths to protect them.
Both looting and the intentional destruction of cultural heritage during a time of war are considered war crimes under the 1954 Hague Convention. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has been keeping a sad tally of damage to Ukrainian cultural properties by cross checking multiple credible sources; and as of 19 June 2023 they verified damage to 260 sites since 24 February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine – including 112 religious sites, 22 museums, 94 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 19 monuments, 12 libraries and 1 archive.[1] Moreover, within months of the invasion Charlotte Mullins writing for the The Guardian reported with the headline: “Ukraine’s Heritage is under direct attack: why Russia is looting the country’s museums. 2000 stolen artworks attest to Putin’s desire to erase a nation’s history – like so many despots before him.”[2]
Putin seemed to be particularly interested in Ukraine’s golden treasures from its Scythian period dating back to the fourth century BCE, not only for its intrinsic beauty and value, but also because it is central to Ukraine’s deep cultural identity. Putin wants to erase Ukraine’s independent cultural history and instead include the Scythian gold within his notions of Russia’s cultural past and his promotion of an imperialist, expansionist Russia.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, curators all over the country secured, moved, or hid the nation’s treasures. One such was Leila Ibrahimova, the director of the Museum of Local History in Melitopol in the south-east of Ukraine, arranged for her museum’s collection of Scythian gold to be hidden. She was kidnapped and interrogated by Russian troops, but refused to cooperate. The Russian troops then targeted the museum’s curator, sixty-year-old Galina Andrivna Kucher, taking her to the museum at gunpoint to locate the gold, she also refused to cooperate. On 30 April 2022, Kucher was kidnapped from her home and she remains missing.
Photo credit: Levan Ramishvili in the public domain accessed 26 July 2023 at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scythian_gold_comb_with_the_image_of_a_battle_scene,from_the_Solokha_kurgan,_430-390_BC(47362587962).jpg
[1] https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/damaged-cultural-sites-ukraine-verified-unesco accessed 7/11/2023
[2] Charlotte Mullins, Ukraine’s heritage is under direct attack:” Why Russia is looting the country’s museums,” The Guardia, 27 May 2022, accessed 26 July 2023 at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/27/ukraine-russia-looting-museums