“In 1821, a round medallion was found near Chernihiv; it was said to be related to Prince Volodymyr Monomakh. The precious find was taken to Saint-Petersburg, and now is kept at the Russian museum.”
This and many similar stories started Stolen Treasures for me—the project about Ukrainian valuables in the Russian museums, published in September 2023 on Texty.org.ua. In this project, we presented the database on 110 000 archeological finds of Ukrainian origin in two Russian museums: The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Russian Historical Museum in Moscow.
I read about the Chernihiv amulet, as well as many other treasures, taken from Ukraine in various historical periods, in the monograph by the Ukrainian historian Serhii Kot, that I came across on the Internet in the late fall of 2021.
In his 900-page work on the problems of restitution, the author meticulously described how Ukraine lost its cultural valuables in different historical periods and the role Russia played in this process: under the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and during the invasion in 2014.
Icons, jewelry, weapons, books, valuable archaeological finds—Russians have been exporting all of this from Ukraine for centuries.
Something is still kept in their museums or private collections, something has been sold, melted, or lost. Something, too rarely and highly reluctantly, was returned.
Everyone stole—soldiers during their assaults on the Ukrainian cities, tsars and governors-general, then chekists and communists, along with museum workers and scholars. They stole with the help of purposefully implemented laws, decrees, and rules, through exhibitions, expeditions, and excavations, or simply by taking advantage of a disaster and a good opportunity.
“Civilized Europe was shocked by the monstrosities of the Russian army in the hetman’s residence—the city of Baturyn, which was taken and burned, with more than seven thousand people were murdered regardless of age or sex… Huge collections of antiquities, weapons and Mazepa’s book collection were looted,”—reads the monograph by Serhii Kot on the capture of Baturyn.
It is known that later this weapons collection laid the foundation for the private collection of Menshykov, kept at his palace on the Neva River embankment in St. Petersburg.
In November 2021, approximately when I was reading those lines, Russian troops were gathering at the Ukrainian borders again.
A few months later, it became clear that nothing had changed in three centuries. Civilized Europe was once again shocked by the monstrosities of the Russian army—this time in Bucha and Mariupol. Russians killed and robbed yet again.
I would return to the topic of the stolen cultural valuables only in April 2023.
It occurred to me to try to embrace and systematize all that had been taken from Ukraine to Russia in different historical periods: from ancient times to independence, from 1991 to 2014, from 2014 to the present. Particularly, what, when, where from and under what circumstances. And where it is now kept.
The idea was, frankly speaking, too crazy to be implemented. At least as the journalistic project that presupposes some measurable deadline and limited resources.
But I had a plan: to turn for help to the author of the monograph that struck me so deeply.
However, it turned out that there was no one to write or call. Serhii Ivanovych Kot died unexpectedly back in March 2022. He was a leading Ukrainian specialist on the issues of exported heritage and the prospects for its return. In the 1990s, he was a member of the commission on the restitution of the cultural valuables, including those from Russia, which worked until the Russian federation reneged on its commitments. His role on the future restitution of the Ukrainian cultural valuables from Russia to Ukraine could have been invaluable.
On March 12, in his last blog on the website of “Den'” (“Day”) newspaper, Serhii Kot wrote that after our victory Russia would have to return everything it had stolen from us over centuries: “These demands should be a mandatory part of Ukrainian claims against the Russian authorities. It should be worked upon right now, without any delay.”
I do not know if and how anyone is working on this issue on the state level—except for law enforcement officers who investigate war crimes of the Russian army in this area (and they are silent about their work). I’ve received no reply to my request to the Ministry of culture. But, as far as I know, there exists no unified registry of cultural property located in Russia and claimed by Ukraine (including that taken out before independence).
There are only a few initiatives that deal with specific areas.
Thus, there is the project “The Cultural Heritage of Crimea” that tracks the illegal transportation of the cultural treasures from Crimea. Denys Yashny, the scholar (who, by the way, helped us greatly with his consultations), names a figure of 540,000 exhibits from Crimea that have been added to the registers of the Russian federation. It means that the exhibits along with the local museums are registered in the Russian museum funds.
The Kherson Art Museum, which boasted the richest collection among the Ukrainian regional museums, lists 11,000 items stolen by the Russians (the list is not published, while the investigation is ongoing).
There is a portal called Forgotten Heritage, authored by art historian Artur Rudzycki. It tracks the fate of artworks and aims at the creation of a single consolidated catalogue of displaced and lost cultural property. Currently, the task is far from being completed. I’ve heard from the experts that there are such lists in the Khanenko Museum and the National Art Museum, though I did not receive any response from either of them.
We haven’t given in and tried to find and embrace something on our own by researching the Russian museum collections.
In fact, the story about 110,000 archeological finds in two Russian museums is an attempt of such systematization.
Why archeology?
The description of the finds mostly includes the place of origin, the archaeological site—markers that indicate their Ukrainian origin. So, it is clear what we are looking for, as it is enough to filter the Ukrainian toponyms. We did not trust this work to the algorithms entirely, not to miss the names of villages, hamlets, tracts, archaeological sites that could be missed by automatic filtering.
That was justified, as the database contained the names of hamlets buried somewhere at the bottom of Kremenchuk water reservoir, some disappeared or renamed villages, or locations that could not be found on any maps, but lived only on the pages of the textbooks on archeology. These were often the only indicators proving the Ukrainian origin of the exhibits.
Finally, we were able to “sift” more than 33,000 items in one museum and over 77,000 in another. But this is far from all, for sure.
This is but a small part of everything that should be systematized and published. Separate topics for research could be found in manuscripts, old prints (by the way, we have separated 1,500 old prints in the Russian Historical Museum into a separate dataset), weapons, paintings, church relics. Each direction requires processing huge amounts of poorly structured data, as well as clear methodology. Still, the main thing here is to understand what exactly to look for and by what criteria.
There are also collections of ancient vyshyvanky (embroidered shirts), pysanky (painted eggs), and ceramics from different Ukrainian regions, or scientific literature published in Ukraine in the late XIX and early XX centuries. That’s what I noticed when I tried to make sense of the consolidated catalogue of the Russian museum fund of 870 museums. It all requires high professionalism and deep immersion.
Surely, it will be unbelievably hard to return all the treasures taken before Ukraine gained its independence. But the world knows such precedents.
Thus, in 2021, France returned 26 valuables and cultural artefacts that were taken by the colonial army in 1891, to Benin [West Africa — Ed.].
Although Russia, no doubt, will not give anything away voluntarily.
Moreover, not only Russian museum workers do not intend to return the museum items to the country of origin, but they also started to plant a historical basis for it.
In particular, in September, the Russian Historical Museum in Moscow opened an exhibition “Novorosiya.” Working along the historians and propaganda activists, the museum staff took to creating the new historical myth: “the history of Novorosiya,” that they treat as “the vast area in the Northern Black Sea region, that became a part of the Russian empire in 1764.” No wonder this construct never mentions anything about the Cossack past of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, or the Ukrainian history of the region altogether. Correspondingly, there is seemingly no need to return anything from this area to Ukraine.
Moreover, the museum director boasts of his staff going on “delegations” to Luhansk region after the beginning of the full-scale invasion and collecting there some “items” they now present on this exhibition.
Does this museum have a right to be a part of the world museum community?
That is why we need to draw the experts’ attention, to explain to the world, to show how the Russian culture now serves the Russian propaganda.
I am reluctant to use the phrase “cultural front,” but the Ukrainian “cultural rear” has a lot of work to do now.
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Some examples from the monograph by Serhii Kot on the restitution of the cultural property:
“Prince Menshikov’s house church had a silver cross with the name of the legendary Ukrainian hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, a silver tabernacle, two Gospels—one printed in Lviv in 1644 and the other in 1698—in precious frames, and two gilded crowns. Subsequently, these items were kept in the First Cadet Corps located in Menshikov’s house, from which they were partly transferred to the Hermitage and partly to other museums in St. Petersburg.”
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“In 1871, the ancient cannons of the Kyiv Fortress were taken to the Moscow Polytechnic Exhibition. After the exhibition was over, they were not returned. They are stored in St. Petersburg, in the Artillery Museum.”
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“Mosaic “Fragment of an ornamental frieze,” XII century, from the walls of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral was taken by the Nazis from occupied Kyiv in 1943. After the war, it was handed from the American zone of occupation of Germany to the Soviet military administration in Germany. It was returned to the USSR in 1947, and, through the suburban palaces of Leningrad, moved to the Novgorod Regional Museum of Local Lore. In 1952, it was transferred to the State Russian Museum.”
Inna Hadzynska, media coach, editor and journalist in Texty.org.ua.
Translation — Olha Dubnevych
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[The translation of this publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework “European Renaissance of Ukraine” project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation]
