"The destruction is a deliberate attempt to obliterate Ukrainian history and culture" (Smithsonian Magazine)

 

When we think about war, what comes to mind is that quest for power and territory, the violent use of destructive armaments and the horrific costs incurred in human lives lost and shattered. Russia’s war in Ukraine is particularly cruel in attacking civilian targets, and it’s also marked by a strong cultural element—one that is being met with resistance from not only Ukrainians, but also the international community and the Smithsonian Institution.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has wrongly made culture both a justification and an object of war with Ukraine. As in other regions of Europe, the population of the geographic region of modern Ukraine reflects a diversity of ethnic migrations and cultural influences, as well as a succession of political rulers and changing boundaries over millennia.

Putin, though, claims that Ukrainians lack the history, culture and identity worthy of a national state separate from Russia. While drawing on periods of the czarist Russian Empire and the Soviet era to make his case, Putin denies crucial cultural realities.

The Ukrainian language, the country’s art and its history—including the Slavic-Christian state centered in Kyiv a thousand years ago, the 19th-century flowering of Ukrainian culture and nationalism, the post-World War I Ukrainian republic, the Ukrainian independence movement of the early 1990s and its reaffirming Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Euromaidan Revolution in 2013-2014—all represent an undeniable Ukrainian identity that is centuries in the making. 

Despite this, in 2014 Putin pursued his territorial ambitions by supporting ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbas region and forcibly taking Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

As the one-year anniversary of the deadly 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches, we take a close look at the ongoing work of hundreds of professionals across a landscape of Ukrainian and international organizations to defend endangered cultural heritage.

Crucial investigations are underway that will one day provide an accounting of Russia’s devastating war crimes. These attacks are not just random, nor do they represent collateral damage. Rather, they suggest a targeted attack on Ukrainian history, culture and identity, a means toward Putin’s ends—the destruction is a deliberate attempt to obliterate Ukrainian history and culture.

To support Putin’s wrongful argument that Ukraine doesn’t have a culture and history independent of Russia, his forces figure they can simply bomb away the country’s cultural heritage.

To date, almost 1,600 cases of potential damage to Ukrainian cultural heritage sites have been documented, including some 700 monuments and memorials, and more than 200 museums, archives and libraries. Notably, more than 500 are religious sites—places of worship and cemeteries—with those of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church specifically targeted. 

The greatest number of cases are associated with regions of the most aggressive Russian attacks: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Luhansk. And the work of organizations, including the Smithsonian, mobilized thanks to years of cultural heritage training efforts, is aiding the country in its effort to protect artifacts, books, documents and artworks from these insidious attacks…

For the entire article, click: Dr. Richard Kurin

Dr. Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador at Large, has served as the institution's Under Secretary and as director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, among other leadership roles over his four decade-long Smithsonian career. He founded the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative.