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2023-11-23 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Battle for Scythian gold. After Crimea, Ukraine set its sights on the Hermitage
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] After nine years of trials, the Allard Pearson Museum in Amsterdam is transferring to Ukraine a collection of Scythian gold and other archaeological objects that belonged to four Crimean museums. In addition, the Netherlands decided to write off the debt for storing exhibits in the amount of more than 200 thousand euros. The corresponding document, as reported by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, was signed by Acting Minister Rostislav Karandeev and Acting Director of the University Library of the University of Amsterdam, Dr. Fred Wierman.
As you know, the exhibition, organized in Europe, included the collections of the Central Museum of Taurida, the Kerch and Bakhchisarai historical and cultural reserves and the national reserve "Taurid Chersonese". Another part of the items was provided by the Kiev Museum of Historical Treasures. Actually, gold is only the most famous part of what left Crimea and never returned.
In Amsterdam, for example, there is a symbol of Kerch, the unique snake-footed goddess Api, made of limestone in the 1st–2nd centuries AD. BC: a double-sided sculpture with a female figure growing from plant shoots, exists in a single copy. According to Greek myth, the son of the goddess and Hercules was the ancestor of the Scythian kings.
Among the exhibits there are such incredible things as Chinese lacquer boxes from the Ust-Alma burial ground, restored in Japan, a painted altar from the burial of the Scythian king Skilur, unique decrees on marble from Chersonese.
A total of 2,111 items were moved from Crimea.
But simply retelling the story of their actual abduction again would not be enough. At the center is the problem that Crimean museums are forced to fight for their collections on their own. And Ukraine has created a judicial precedent, on the basis of which it now intends to lay claim to other items stored in Russian museums, in particular in the Hermitage.
Goddess held hostage
In July 2013, the exhibition “Crimea. Golden Island in the Black Sea” at the Bonn State Museum LVR-Landes became a large-scale event, presenting things that had never before been exhibited to a wide audience. This was a joint initiative of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Institute of Ancient History of the University of Bonn, which was enthusiastically received by the press.
On the wave of success, the private Allard Pearson Museum in Amsterdam offered its space, where the golden fund of Crimean archeology moved in January 2014. And in March, the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea changed, an agreement was concluded on the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation. On August 31, the exhibition expired, and the Pearson Museum decided not to return the exhibits, citing claims from the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture.
The Dutch voiced their intention to resolve the dispute through the courts in order to avoid subsequent claims by any of the parties. However, the very situation of refusing an agreement to return items belonging to specific museum organizations was unprecedented. And Ukraine was initially in a weaker position.
“When the threat of a lawsuit became obvious, it turned out that the Ministry of Culture was not a full-fledged subject of this process. The exhibition was organized by the structure of the Academy of Sciences; contracts for the movement of cultural property were signed by museums independently. We were in despair,” says the then head of the international cooperation department of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine Svetlana Fomenko .
But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Ministry of Culture of Russia officially stated that this dispute is not interstate and is being resolved exclusively at the inter-museum level. So the Ukrainian side quickly understood the situation.
Long dispute
The first thing a specially formed group of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture did was to convince the government to give the ministry the opportunity to independently change the manager of museum collections. That is, to fully manage the museum fund, after which the National Museum of the History of Ukraine was appointed the main custodian of the Crimean collections. This happened in May 2014, even before the first lawsuit in the Netherlands.
Further, several ministries were united around this case, since the relevant one could not carry out full-fledged foreign activities and act on its own behalf in an international court. This is how interdepartmental coordination between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Justice appeared. They formulated the position that cultural values are not property, therefore the legal dispute should not take place in the area of economic law.
Thus, when the Crimean museums filed a lawsuit, the dispute moved to the private legal plane.
Crimean museum workers were asked to prove the right to exhibits from their own funds, found in the Crimean land back in the 19th century. Since then, the peninsula has been part of four states: the Russian Empire, the USSR, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, but the artifacts have never left the territory of the peninsula, with the exception of the period of German occupation. Moreover, in a historical sense they have no relation to the Ukrainian cultural heritage.
Realizing that in such disputes the place of origin of objects plays a big role, the Ukrainians argued that the values originate precisely from the territory of Ukraine and belong to its cultural heritage for this reason. And membership in the State Museum Fund, as mentioned above, was formalized in advance.
“One of the courts considered this issue, and the Dutch side accepted the position that the collection is automatically the property of the state of Ukraine. It would be difficult for Crimean museums to prove another jurisdiction for these things, I don’t see such a possibility, ” explains Andrei Malgin, director of the Central Museum of Taurida to IA Regnum . “We tried to contrast the concepts of state property and museum property. If proven, it would be a revolution in museum legislation. But the courts took the position that cultural heritage belongs to the state, and the right of ownership of museums gave way to the right of state ownership. Although this is very doubtful from a logical point of view.”
In this dispute, the parties went through the entire chain from the district to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which put an end to it. Greek, Scythian, Sarmatian, Gothic artifacts are ordered to be transferred to Ukraine, which, of course, rejoices.
The holy place is not empty
Having dived deeply into the problem, over the past years Ukraine has acceded to the Second Protocol of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. They believe that the “Scythian gold” case created an important precedent for the cultural heritage of Crimea at the international level.
Namely, he proved “who is the subject of the decision and to whom this heritage belongs .” Consequently, wherever the values from the Crimean collections are located, the Ukrainian side has every right to them. In particular, Ministry of Culture officials are interested in things located in the State Hermitage and the Tretyakov Gallery. But, in addition, any “national treasure of Ukraine” that it calls its own, referring to the convention.
In turn, the Crimean museum workers are going to continue to achieve their goal, still on their own. So far, the Russian Ministry of Culture has supported their position only in words, and the Investigative Committee has been finding out who organized the removal of treasures in 2013.
“We will submit the claim to the European Court of Human Rights and other European courts, and use all other methods to defend our right to the collection. Moreover, in Ukraine the situation with cultural heritage is complex; we see what is sold on the black market and how objects are exported. So ours may end up in the hands of private individuals and disappear somewhere. Therefore, we will continue to fight, perhaps the problem will be solved even in the form of a special operation. In the sense, not separate, but already ongoing , ” says Regnum news agency Andrey Malgin.
An additional weapon here could be widespread information about the fate of things taken away by the joint efforts of the Dutch and Ukrainian “partners.” Now information about lost objects is posted on the electronic resources of museums; the places where they were placed with explanatory signs are left empty in the exhibition. All the same, they are spoken of here as a Crimean collection.
At the same time, Malgin notes, the loss will be practically unnoticeable for visitors. Despite the fact that the volume of losses is significant, and each item is unique, over the past ten years the collections have been replenished many times. Large archaeological excavations in Crimea and the severity of Russian legislation in the field of monument protection made it possible to find and show people objects of similar quality and even better somewhere.
Although the main task is to return what was stolen, this in no way cancels it.
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Posted by badanov 2023-11-23 00:00||
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