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<\/p>\nThe Communication Manager of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center had the opportunity to recently talk with Oleksii Savchenko and Esma Adzhieva and learn details about the creation and distribution of the exhibition and catalogue \u201c\u0421\u043f\u0430\u0434\u0449\u0438\u043d\u0430. Miras.The heritage!\u201d. The authors of the publication are Oleksii Savchenko, Candidate of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Treasury of the National Museum of History of Ukraine, and Tetiana Savchenko, senior researcher at the museum, employee of the funds. The exhibition project and the publication MIRAS. THE HERITAGE. \u201d was implemented jointly with Esma Adzhieva, head of the Crimean Tatar public organization \u2018Alem\u2019, within the framework of the project \u2018Senses that unite\u2019, with the support of Switzerland.<\/p>\n
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Tell us what inspired you to create the publication and exhibition <\/strong>\u201cM\u0130RAS. Heritage\u201d publication and exhibition. How and when did you<\/strong>start this large-scale work?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of creating the publication and exhibition \u201cM\u0130RAS. Heritage\u201d has a special background, which began in 2019, when we organized the exhibition \u201dOrnek. In the Lace of Crimea\u201d at the National Museum of History of Ukraine. This exhibition, dedicated to the Crimean Tatar ornament Ornek, became more than just an exhibition project for us – it realized our dream of introducing people with the intangible cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatars. We realized that we need to continue working in this direction, because it is initiatives like this that help to reveal the authenticity and uniqueness of our heritage, bring it closer to a modern audience through the museum space and live communication with different categories of visitors, preserve it for future generations, and promote its integration into the all-Ukrainian cultural context.<\/p>\n Our team of NGO \u201cAlem\u201d always strives to share the acquired knowledge about the \u201cliving culture\u201d of the indigenous people of Ukraine – the Crimean Tatars, which is reproduced every day by people who carry knowledge, practices and traditions, preserve and pass them on from generation to generation. According to UNESCO’s definition, intangible cultural heritage is not artifacts or exhibits, but a holistic way of life rooted in everyday practices, rituals, customs and crafts,\u201d – Ms. Esma said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe exhibition \u201cMIRAS. Heritage\u201d exhibition began in October 2022, during the full-scale invasion, when the museum collections were completely evacuated and the museum halls were left empty. From the first day of the Russian aggression, we initially evacuated the exhibits, but soon there was an urgent need to talk about the heritage, its fate, and to display museum exhibits to emphasize that they are part of living history and participants in events. Even despite the difficult conditions in which the museum was at that time.<\/p>\n It was then, together with the museum team and the NGO \u201cAlem,\u201d that we came up with the idea to show the Crimean Tatar heritage from the inside, as seen by the Crimean Tatars themselves, the bearers of culture. Without \u201cexoticism\u201d and \u201chyperbolization of otherness\u201d, as is usually the case,\u201d added Oleksiy Savchenko.<\/p>\n Why are historical aspects so important for your exhibition? What <\/strong>criteria did you use when selecting the exhibits so that each of them <\/strong>could become a part of this exhibition?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cMuseum collections, historical and cultural aspects of the Crimean Tatar heritage cannot be demonstrated separately from the important historical events and circumstances experienced by the community.<\/p>\n After all, even the way museum collections were acquired, who researched the Crimean Tatar heritage and in what conditions, is inextricably linked to tragic and heroic events. At the exhibition, we presented perhaps the largest collection of original Crimean Tatar artifacts currently on display in mainland Ukraine. This is mainly the collection of the National Museum of History of Ukraine and its branch, the NMU Treasury. Part of these collections come from the so-called \u201cpre-war funds\u201d collected by our founders.<\/p>\n They also include items that were transferred from Crimea in the 1950s and 1960s after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. They come from the Bakhchisaray Museum, the museums of Akmesdzhit (Simferopol) and Yalta, where the Kyiv museum staff traveled to take part in restoration and research work. These collections have a direct connection with the founders of the museums, such as Usein Bodaninsky and Osman Ak\u00e7okrakly, who conducted ethnographic and research expeditions in the 1920s and early 1930s. They tried to professionally study the Crimean Tatar heritage, being at the same time carriers of this culture. The collection presented at the exhibition and in the publication consists mainly of exquisite examples of jewelry, elements of traditional dress, embroidery, and copper crafts, which represent the versatility and diversity of Crimean Tatar culture. Understanding the social context of these objects, as well as the experience of their creation, use and perception, reveals the interconnections between the material world of the Crimean Tatar people and their customs, etiquette, worldview, intellectual and spiritual life, forming in their unity this deep meaning of the word \u201cHeritage\u201d.<\/p>\n Other partners of the exhibition are the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine, which has exquisite examples of Crimean Tatar embroidery from the early twentieth century, and the Institute of Manuscripts of the Volodymyr Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, whose collection includes a handwritten interpretation of the Qur’an, copied in the 19th century in the famous Mengli Gerey Madrasah (Zindzhirli Madrasah) in Crimea.<\/p>\n Esma Adzhieva, Elmira Seit-Ametova, and Vitalii Provolovskyi provided some items from their own collections. It is from the collection of Vitalii Provolovskyi, one of the museum’s employees, that the Crimean Tatar copper cauldrons, which had holes in them after Russian shelling of the city of Irpin in March 2022, when one of the shells hit his house, come from.<\/p>\n This case is yet another example of how museum collections and artifacts are inextricably linked to people and their fates. So is Heritage as a whole. With those who at different times created, used, researched, and preserved such things. We tried to create the publication and exhibition in such a way that you could always see people behind things of historical or artistic value. To tell about their fates. It is this context that distinguishes living heritage from, so to speak, \u201carchaeological cultures\u201d that have remained only on the pages of history.<\/p>\n Artifacts of the Crimean Tatars were lost for various reasons in the 20th century: due to migration, wars, and deportation. We are talking not only about well-known museum exhibits or jewelry, but also about everyday items, photographs, family heirlooms, etc. For the exhibition and publication, we have also collected photos from the family archives of our friends and partners – these are not tourist postcards, but family photos of Crimean Tatars, where each picture tells a whole story. And the combination of such small stories creates, so to speak, a \u201ccollective portrait\u201d of the history of the Crimean Tatar people. This perspective allowed many visitors, both Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, to revisit the past of their families, learn more about the older generations of their families, and discover new details of the events they once experienced. To feel the value of everyday testimonies of the older generation.<\/p>\n This approach allows us to move away from the established exotic image of indigenous peoples, whose culture was frozen in the times of ethnographic expeditions. We show that the culture of the Crimean Tatars did not stand aside from the various cultural trends of their era, including modernization. For example, fashion for clothing is constantly changing. We do not take things out of the cultural context; it is important for us to show them in the cultural environment. For us, as researchers, and for Esma, as a carrier of culture, each object is valuable not only for its material, but also for its connection with the cultural environment, with the craftsmen who created it, and with the people who used it in everyday life or in rituals.<\/p>\n Each object is part of a broader context. For example, the same piece of jewelry can be a jewel, an object of financial relations, but also a visual sign of social status, religious affiliation, age, origin, or even part of a wedding ceremony. In particular, temporal jewelry that was attached to the fez headdress as a sign of a married woman. The same is true for belts and buckles that help to understand whether a girl is married or not. This optics distinguishes the way we look at the same objects, but from the point of view of not only an outsider, but also a carrier of cultures,\u201d- said Oleksii.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea was to show, first of all, the continuity of the tradition, because the exhibition features both items dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries and some items created by contemporary craftsmen living in their native land, Crimea. Although the number of modern exhibits in the exhibition is small, they still illustrate the transmission of traditions, the preservation of knowledge about manufacturing techniques and the context of the use of these objects.<\/p>\n During the author’s excursions, it is very important for us to tell the stories associated with each of these objects, at least the ones we know about. The exhibition also features a photo collage.\u00a0 Together with Oleksii, we collected photos from Crimea through our friends and acquaintances who had such family photos. These are not just photos from the Internet – under each photo there is a caption that explains the story behind the image and what the descendants know about these people. Several of these photos with their respective stories are also featured in our publication,\u201d – Esma added.<\/p>\n What is the significance of Friedrich Gross’s lithographic album for <\/strong>understanding the culture of the Crimean Tatars? Are there other <\/strong>images that document the life of Crimean Tatars before the <\/strong>colonization of Crimea?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cPart of the exhibition and the publication are views of Crimea from an album of lithographs of paintings by Friedrich Gross. Gross was born in Crimea in a family of German colonists. From 1839 to the 1940s, he traveled around Crimea, painting its sights, views, and people. Although many of these views reflect oriental types of the time, many of the sights and customs are recorded in important detail.<\/p>\n And some monuments have not survived to this day, remaining only in the artist’s works. These lithographs are presented in the publication with a context, including the colonial one, which shows how the empire used art to reinforce the desired image of the conquered peoples in the nineteenth century. Along with this, we explain the subjects depicted: the struggle of the Kuresh, the view of the Bakhchisaray Palace, or scenes of the economic life of the Crimean Tatars, etc.<\/p>\n These images are valuable for us because they allow us to conduct a virtual journey through important places in Crimea, showing how Crimean Tatars looked at them and how external observers of the time saw them,\u201d said Mr. Oleksii.<\/p>\n The project \u201cSenses that unite\u201d is unique in that it presents <\/strong>professional, verified information about Crimean Tatars. Does the <\/strong>exhibition and this publication help to debunk the myths about Crimean <\/strong>Tatars spread by the Russian authorities?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, the exhibition is built on showing the Crimean Tatar heritage from the inside. To look at Crimea not as a place of pleasant travels, but as a single home, the historical homeland of the indigenous culture. We talk a lot about the symbolism and significance of individual objects, as each of them reflects not just a thing, but a whole cultural process or phenomenon.<\/p>\n The exhibition features a certain number of embroidered items, such as kisetas or decorative towels. We are talking not only about the aesthetic or technical side of their production, but also about deeper things: the craft structures of Crimea, urban space, traditional economy, and the cultural context of these processes. It is about how certain types of techniques were used to make prestigious objects with gold embroidery: saddles, camping tents, clothes, which in the Khan’s era were an expression of status and were presented as diplomatic gifts. This is a story about the existence of a political elite, intellectual culture, and ancient traditions. It is also about how this \u201cworld\u201d changed with the Russian conquest of Crimea in the late 18th century.<\/p>\n The Crimean Tatar jewelry tradition is particularly interesting. We have few collections that fully reveal this topic, and previously it was often shown only as evidence of exotic customs or \u201corientail luxury.\u201d In fact, we are talking about a complex workshop structure where generations of jewelers passed on knowledge about the techniques and secrets of making highly artistic items that were an important part of everyday life, customs, economic relations, and cultural processes. Even after the deportation, this tradition survived, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent. But there are still families who continue to practice traditional crafts and preserve knowledge about them,\u201d Savchenko emphasized.<\/p>\n \u201cAs Oleksii correctly noted, we are not talking about the fact of destruction, but about a state of decline caused, for example, by deportation, when the opportunity to practice traditions was limited. It is currently known that the catalog is published in three <\/strong>languages. How can the dissemination of the culture of the Crimean <\/strong>Tatar people outside of Ukraine influence the world’s understanding <\/strong>and preservation of its wealth?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt is important to note that the publication includes about six chapters covering various aspects of the Crimean Tatar heritage: \u201cIslam in the culture of the Crimean Tatars,\u201d \u2018embroidery and weaving,\u2019 \u2018jewelry and traditional costume,\u2019 \u2018fountain culture in Crimea,\u2019 \u2018gastronomic traditions,\u2019 and \u2018the coffee tradition of the Crimean Tatars\u2019 as an element of social communication. All of these topics demonstrate Crimean Tatar culture in its multifacetedness and diversity. It is not only about the external manifestations of culture in the form of elements of dress or food, which are in fact only the \u201ctip of the iceberg.\u201d It is also about the deep cultural context of phenomena, their significance for identity and everyday life.<\/p>\n This publication is conditionally called a catalog, as it consists of about 300 pages: photographs of artifacts, their attribution, and accompanying texts with translations into English and Crimean Tatar, which have been subjected to scientific review. There were two reviewers for the texts and the publication, and one reviewer for the Crimean Tatar translation. We wanted Crimean Tatars to have the opportunity to learn about their own culture in their own language.<\/p>\n This took a lot of time. That is why our team worked on the publication for almost two years, including the translation and adaptation of the text from the Ukrainian and English versions. Due to the specifics of the Crimean Tatar language, the structure of sentences and the use of highly specialized terms, this process was quite difficult.<\/p>\n This is especially valuable for me, as I am learning the Crimean Tatar language myself. In particular, this year I took an 8-month course in Do you conside<\/strong>r the possibility of cooperation with international <\/strong>organizations or museums to hold exhibitions abroad?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cM\u0130RAS is a partner publication. It was created as part of the project \u201cSenses that unite\u201d with the support of Switzerland. We distribute the publication free of charge to universities, libraries, and research institutions that study the culture of the Crimean Tatars. These include various educational institutions in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro, Cherkasy, Kropyvnytskyi, and other institutions that will find the publication useful in their work. Whenever possible, we also cooperate with foreign partners and educational centers, sending individual copies to foreign institutions or researchers either on our own or through friends and partners. Thus, the publication has already been sent to Canada, the United States, Turkey, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries. We have already handed over some copies to the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in small quantities so that they can also present them during their work events. I hope that these books will find their use and audience.<\/p>\n We would like the exhibition to continue its journey through international museums. We plan to use this experience in the future when we rebuild our permanent exhibition in the museum, which is currently under evacuation. However, we also plan to organize the exhibition in other regions of Ukraine and abroad, so that more people can experience the Crimean Tatar culture and unique artifacts.<\/p>\n The exhibition consists of original artifacts, which means it is more difficult and time-consuming to implement. We have been negotiating with our foreign partners for some time now, but the final decision will probably be made at the beginning of the new year, when the plan for the exhibition year is formed.<\/p>\n The M\u0130RAS exhibition will definitely travel abroad, as we see great demand, and many virtual tours conducted as part of the project confirm this interest. We have organized a high-quality Internet connection for the museum. Over the past two years, together with Esma Aliyeva, I have held more than 200 events, including workshops, lectures, and tours for various target groups. Some of them were held online, showing our collection and telling about the exhibits in real time. Among the participants were many people from Lithuania, England, Poland, Germany, Turkey, as well as scholars, researchers, and representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora. They invited us to bring the exhibition to them, so this process is at the planning stage,\u201d- Please tell us more about your interactive exhibitions. Do you and<\/strong> \u201cIt is a common practice to record museum exhibitions on video and upload them to the website to make them available as an online tour. I would also like to add about our second hall, which we created for special events. We tried to make it more cozy to be able to hold interactive events there. It is a place for communication, exchange of information, experience and knowledge. We are actively working on psychosocial support for people affected by the war. As part of this project, we organize events for soldiers who are in rehabilitation programs after returning from war, for different target audiences, adults and children.<\/p>\n These are special art classes on creating Ornek ornamental compositions. Participants of the art classes (yes, these are not art therapy sessions, because we are not psychotherapists or psychologists) have the opportunity to create their own ornamental composition – a wish for themselves or their loved ones – while getting acquainted with the elements of Ornek, each of which has its own meaning and significance. People come to this site for 1-2 hours, where an open emotional space reigns, and everyone can freely express their thoughts, share their experiences, and find support. \u201cActually, we start from the idea of a museum as a contact zone. That is, our exhibition \u201ccomes to life\u201d: it is not created for a month or two, but operates on a permanent basis, constantly receiving visitors in different formats. We are experimenting, combining science and the public sector, and through the elements of intangible cultural heritage we are even trying to help people using such methods.<\/p>\n We organize thematic excursions on weekends for different groups: educators, families who come to learn about Crimean Tatar culture. A lot of culture bearers come to various thematic events. Events dedicated to certain elements of intangible cultural heritage included workshops on Crimean Tatar ornamentation and coffee tradition. We look at these topics from different aspects.<\/p>\n We also give people the opportunity to be creative, interact, and communicate. For me personally, as a researcher of indigenous culture, it is very important that the culture bearers themselves are involved in this process. There are people who have visited our exhibitions and events five, six, ten times over the course of two years. On October 30, it will be two years since we started working, and during this time I have already met many visitors personally. These are people from Crimea, Crimean Tatars, who tell their family stories, show photos, and share family relics. During exhibitions and excursions, they begin to reflect, look for answers, turn to their own history, recall family artifacts, jewelry, elements of traditional costume that might not have aroused their interest before. For example, it could be some copper or bronze thing, a towel or a belt. After learning about the contexts lost due to deportation, people become more interested, write down family stories and share them with us. This is extremely interesting because heritage is not just something that collects dust in a cupboard somewhere, but something that lives with us. It’s not just external manifestations of rituals or costume elements, but meaningful things that help us better understand ourselves and our place in the culture today. This is what distinguishes an indigenous people with an unbroken tradition from the archaeological cultures that are represented in museums: Cimmerians, Scythians, Alans, Goths, \u00a0hings from mounds, etc. These are also important artifacts, but we understand that these are different phenomena: living culture and archaeological culture. Also, one of the practical consequences of our exhibition and activities was that I, together with Esma Khanum, joined the creation of an account card for the element \u201cCoffee Tradition of the Crimean Tatars,\u201d Oleksii said.<\/p>\n What elements of the intangible cultural heritage of the Crimean <\/strong>Tatars are currently documented and included in national lists?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cInitially, Ukraine had a single list for documenting and registering all elements of the intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine. But since this year, we have a more modern National List of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine, which contains 5 inventories, one of which concerns the culture of indigenous peoples. Therefore, today, at the national level, the team of the NGO \u201cAlem\u201d managed to submit and register 4 elements of the intangible cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatars, namely:<\/p>\n \u201cOrnek – Crimean Tatar ornament and knowledge about it\u201c, which was also inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021, \u2018Practice and cultural context of cooking \u2019chiberek\u201d and \u201cyantyk\u201d – traditional dishes of the Crimean Tatars\u201d – an element included in the National List of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine in 2022,\u00a0 \u201cCoffee tradition of the Crimean Tatars\u201c and \u2018Agyr ava ve Kaitarma – traditional dance of the Crimean Tatars\u2019 are included in the newly created \u2018Inventory of elements representing the culture of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine\u2019 of the National List of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine in 2024,\u201d said Esma Alzhieva, head of the Crimean Tatar organization \u201cAlem\u201d.<\/p>\n The Communication Manager of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center had the opportunity to recently talk with Oleksii Savchenko and Esma Adzhieva and learn details about the creation and distribution of the exhibition and catalogue \u201c\u0421\u043f\u0430\u0434\u0449\u0438\u043d\u0430. Miras.The heritage!\u201d. The authors of the publication are Oleksii Savchenko, Candidate of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Treasury of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/ctrcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/45.jpg\")
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\nThe deported masters survived and adapted to the new conditions. After returning to their homeland, Crimea, they began to restore the processes that created the conditions for the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation. This emphasizes the importance of the continuity of traditions, which is critical to understanding intangible cultural heritage”, – Adzhieva said.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/ctrcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/%D1%8Dsma-v%D1%8Bstavka.jpg\")
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\nCrimean Tatar and received an A2 certificate at Taurida National\u00a0 University. I hope that in the future there will be more content in the native language for Crimean Tatars from the NMPU Treasury – perhaps even excursions or other specialized publications,\u201d – said Oleksii Savchenko, a leading researcher at the Treasury of the National Museum of History of Ukraine.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/ctrcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/k1-scaled.jpg\")
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\nsaid Oleksiy Savchenko.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/ctrcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/38.jpg\")
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\nyour team plan to create new thematic exhibition programs for<\/strong>
\ndifferent audiences, such as children or people with special needs?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nWe are unique in that we conduct tours in real time. People can join from both abroad and Ukraine and see every element, every exhibit. That’s why it was important to provide high-quality Internet – the museum has more than 20 routers thanks to the support of Switzerland. This allows us to approach each artifact during the tour and show it in detail, so that people, even if they are in the UK or the US, can look at the items on display, ask questions and communicate. It is a live, very interactive event.<\/p>\n
\nParticipants communicate and create in an atmosphere of trust, which helps to relieve emotional stress and relaxation,\u201d – said Esma.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/ctrcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/18.jpg\")
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