Save the Ukrainian People First: They Carry their Culture in their Hearts

Abstract

As editors of an international journal of museum practice and culture, we condemn the actions of Russia, the Russian army, and all individuals in that country who are aware of the war but refuse to thwart the terrorist attacks on the Ukrainian people and their culture. We consider the 2022 Russian assault to be a war crime being conducted in the name of the Russian people. Silence is complicity. Silence will be remembered. At this writing, Ukraine is in the midst of defending itself against an illegal Russian invasion and unprovoked attacks by the Russian Army initiated by its President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. The world is witnessing war crimes, the murder of innocent civilians in their own homes, attacks on UNESCO world heritage sites, religious buildings, hospitals, kindergartens, and nuclear power plants. Three decades after Ukrainians shed the yoke of an oppressive Moscow dictatorship, they are now at risk of once again losing their lives, culture, and independence at the hands of yet another Russian dictator. The actions of Russia again the Ukrainian people recall the darkest days of World War II. Those destroying Ukraine's material culture are in clear violation of the 1954 Hague Convention of the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the preamble of which reads, “any damage to cultural property, irrespective of the people it belongs to, is a damage to the cultural heritage of all humanity because every people contribute to the world's culture.” (“The 1954 Hague Convention of the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and Its Protocols,” n.d.). On March 10th, 2022, our publisher, Wiley, issued a public condemnation of Russia's unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine and the violent actions against its citizens. The publisher pledged $1 million USD to The International Rescue Committee, UNICEF, and other humanitarian organizations to provide aid to those impacted by the crisis. The publisher is mobilizing colleagues in Europe to help with on-the-ground efforts to support refugees. And has committed to making the Wiley Online Library freely available to researchers and students from Ukraine. A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. On this basis, we believe it is essential that the international museum community focus on saving the cultural heritage of Ukraine by prioritizing the safety of its people. To save the people who know, protect, and embody that culture is the responsibility of all museum professionals. We have a collective duty to humanity and the world's cultural heritage. As we have witnessed in Palmyra, Syria and other lands enduring conflicts, it is all of our obligations as museum workers to help secure the safety of Ukrainian culture workers, providing them safe harbor in the event that their devastated lands fall to the terrorists working in the name of Russian people. Our colleagues in museum professional organizations such as ICOM, The Museums Association, and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) have issued heartfelt notes of support for their Ukrainian counterparts (Our Statement on the Invasion of Ukraine, 2022; Statement Concerning the Russian Invasion into Ukraine, 2022) We, the editorial team at Curator: The Museum Journal, cosigning this editorial, acknowledge and share these sentiments but note that statements of solidarity cannot resolve the loss of life, the pain, and suffering of the Ukrainian people. Daily, we watch the horror unfold through video captured live, murder of innocent children, women, men, and the destruction of culture. As a museum community, we gasped at the Іванківський історико-краєзнавчий музей (Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum) burning from Russian bombs, the flames destroying many of the works of Maria Ovksentiyivna Primachenko (1908–1997). Primachenko was a world-famous, self-taught Ukrainian folk artist whose life experience spanned both World War I and II. and created some of her most valuable works of Ukrainian identity while living under the oppression of the USSR (Chow, 2022; Greenberger, 2022). The intentional destruction of cultural property, like the bombing of hospitals and nuclear power installations, is a war crime and can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. We have clear video evidence of these atrocities, and as cultural leaders, we must be on the frontline of documenting these crimes. On March 1, The ФОНД І МЕМОРІАЛЬНИЙ ЦЕНТР ГОЛОКОСТУ «БАБИН ЯР» (The Foundation and Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center) “issued a strong condemnation of Russian President Putin's use of language related to the Holocaust, and loudly condemned the country's aggression against Ukraine, pledging to document and submit war crimes committed by Russian forces to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.” (Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, n.d.). Hours later, a Russian missile struck a TV tower adjacent to the Babyn Yar Memorial site, the site of a two-day massacre of 33,771 Ukrainian Jewish people at the hands of Nazi SS, German police, and Ukrainian Nazi sympathizers. The chair of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center board spoke out immediately in a statement, “Putin seeks to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country is utterly abhorrent. It is symbolic that he starts attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of the Babyn Yar” (“Babyn Yar,” 2022; Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, 2022). In a tweet, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky asked the global community, “To the world: what is the point of saying ‘never’ again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar” (“Ukraine's President Says Russian Missile Hit Site of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial,” 2022). We note for readers that the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center replaced their website https://babynyar.org/ua with an international appeal for donations to support their relief efforts. Ukraine is no stranger to war and has already endured a long history of conflict, displacements, genocide, and attempts at cultural erasure. But these attempts have failed because the Ukrainian people work to preserve the memory of these assaults, including the work of museums dedicated to their culture outside of the current Ukrainian borders. The Museum Crisis Fund was organized by young professionals still in Ukraine, providing direct support to museums and to colleagues (“Art, Culture and War. An Overview of Hot Questions and Quick Answers,” 2022). The Ukrainian museum community has been at the forefront of this effort to preserve and protect the stories and objects that represent those cultural erasures on websites, including “Forgotten Heritage” on lostart.org.au. Forgotten Heritage is a “portal about relocated and lost historical and cultural values of Ukraine” (Forgotten Heritage – a Portal about Relocated and Lost Historical and Cultural Values of Ukraine/Forgotten Heritage, n.d.). Unlike classic memorials, many memorial museums such as the planned Babyn Yar and the Maidan Museum site seek to share the memories of past atrocities as a path to ensuring that future generations will heed warnings and signs of impending genocide (Maidan Museum, n.d.). These sites recount their histories so they can prevent a repeat of historic wrongs. But today, the world is now witnessing a new Ukrainian genocide that replicates the atrocities of the Nazi era. The ICOM-Ukraine's website highlights the local museums promoting peace and understanding. Their project, “Museum on the fireline: from victim to peacemaker” (Archaeology.Odessa.Ua, n.d.; “The Pearls of the Odessa Archaeological Museum,” 2021), is just one example that illustrates past injustices. The Odessa Archeological Museum provides testimony to the democide1 being waged by the Putin administration on the works of his own citizens. The museum in Odessa was a partnership between Ukrainian museum professionals and their Russian counterparts. They state “This website has been created through cooperation of the National Ukrainian Academy of Science and the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation” (Archaeology.Odessa.Ua, n.d.; “The Pearls of the Odessa Archaeological Museum,” 2021).” If nothing else, this example demonstrates that it is possible for all peoples to work together for the preservation of culture. Our international museum colleagues understand that the 1954 Hague Convention was established not merely as a preventative measure but in response to the horrors of two world wars. The professionals attending those meetings could not imagine a future in which these atrocities would be repeated, having witnessed the inhumanity of genocide and cultural erasure perpetrated by the Nazi regime and their collaborators. But Ukraine continues to be attacked despite these international agreements to secure the safety of cultural items. Even within Ukraine, civil unrest led to the Kyiv History Museum was looted on the nights of February 18 and 19, 2014, prompting the Committee of the Blue Shield2 to issue a statement dated February 27, 2014, “Reports regarding damages endured by the Kyiv History Museum have given the Blue Shield and its members reasons for concern. The destruction of monuments linked to the political history of Ukraine is also at the forefront of the cultural community's concerns” (“Blue Shield Statement on Ukraine, 27 February 2014,” 2014; Golubock, 2014). In 2014, the Ukrainian museum professionals called on “both protestors and police to respect the museum as a neutral zone.” But in 2022 at this writing, we are watching near-constant video demonstrating that there are no “neutral zones” in Ukraine, and civilian homes, hospitals, nuclear installations, houses of worship, schools, museums and archeological sites, are targets of a despotic and cowardly terror campaign. It is now apparent that Russia's rulers have abandoned all moral and legal adherence to international rules of law and treaties. Their participation in “negotiations' is a sham that mocks international diplomacy. The Russian government has approved actions that terrorize and victimize their own citizens for speaking truth and opposing international criminal actions. These governmental officials have clearly abandoned any interest in protecting human rights or cultural heritage. In the past, Curator's editorials have spoken out against war crimes, including the heinous kidnapping and execution of archeologist, Dr. Khaled al-Asaad, by the Islamic State, whose scholarship was essential museum work that advanced the global understanding of the significance of Palmyra. We even previewed a full-scale digital reconstruction of that destroyed monument that is now available online: https://www.smb.museum/en/whats-new/detail/experience-ancient-palmyra-in-360-and-in-3d/. That reconstruction illustrates that memory can be captured, in part, through representation in artifacts born digital. It demonstrates that the loss of a person does not destroy their scholarly record. And that preserving records of their work and the memory of the artifacts is, itself, a way of honoring the memory of museum workers who give their lives for cultural memory. In this editorial we acknowledge that we can save the digital record, but that effort cannot compare to what could be achieved if we save the museum workers whose lives are at risk. In observing the barbaric crimes against humanity of the 2022 invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine, we witness a full-scale Russian attack on world heritage. We recognize that our colleagues ARE the embodiment of Ukrainian culture and that their suffering is our suffering. Our fellow curators, museum volunteers, artists, contemporary tradespeople, craftspeople and scholars, educators and learners ARE Ukrainian culture—the living, breathing form of culture. And they are part of our global museum ecosystem. We cannot allow ourselves to accept this loss of our family as part of a political game. We are confident that this editorial will be censored by the Russian government when it is released in 2022 and for some years beyond that publication date. We suspect that Russian culture workers may gain access long after the regime changes. At this writing, our publisher has made this entire issue open access in the Ukraine and will support distribution by whatever channel is possible in Russia. Despite those limitations, we have managed to hear from some of our colleagues in Russia and are aware that some have seen past the censors and propaganda and are concerned about the war being waged in their name. It appears near impossible for museum workers in Russia to pressure their government to withdraw from the invasion or even to avoid cultural destruction. The Putin regime has given our ICOM colleagues little gap to protest or object. We are aware that they and their loved ones are at risk of reprisal, arrest, or worse because the Putin government does not shy from killing and torturing its own citizens. Therefore, we mourn the loss of our colleagues' contributions to the global museum practice and acknowledge the oppressions that are their lot. However, it is also important to recognize that their current experience reveals the degree to which the ICOM Code of Ethics becomes an unenforceable document in the hands of a dictatorship, as functional as the 2014 Minsk accords that the Putin government has ignored before the ink was even dry. It would seem that ICOM Russia never had the power to fulfill its obligations and therefore has lost all standing and authority to commit to our shared work. At this time, we sadly bid farewell to our Russian counterparts while remaining steadfast in the hope that peace and sensibility will someday prevail. At such time we will work to find a path for the return of our Russian colleagues that accept what has been done in their names, and who are willing to participate in reparations and reconciliation. Our Ukrainian colleagues are in possession of unique skills and knowledge of heritage that will preserve Ukrainian memory, cultural practice, craft, and arts. To focus primarily, as we are too apt to do in museums, on material culture, i.e., the inanimate objects of culture, is to miss the full cost of war: Ukrainian culture is at risk of death with each person killed in this act of war. It is time for us to provide aid to our colleagues in their flight to safety, or their decision to stay in Ukraine- this is the ultimate commitment to the preservation of culture as museum work. We must provide direct aid to the culture workers, the living memory and living heritage of their people. We call on museums around the world to step forward and be safe harbors for our colleagues. The refugee crisis is only gaining momentum, and our colleagues in Ukraine are working to protect first their families and loved ones, and the cultural history of their people. At the very least, if all of our readers were to open their homes to the families of our colleagues in the museum sector, we would help those museum workers now defending their heritage against overwhelming force with limited weapons, know that their families will be safe. As an international community, we can look to our Polish colleagues who have stepped up to care for the Ukrainian people, for example, the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews that is currently serving meals to refugees (Cooking for Ukraine|Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN w Warszawie, n.d.). We also call on digital museum professionals to support the protection of digital assets and records of the collections currently under threat. At this writing, the Ukrainian Museum in New York City is coordinating the protection of digital records of all Ukrainian museums (Ukrainian Museum–#StandWithUkraine HOW YOU CAN HELP, n.d.). This herculean task cannot be done by this small museum alone. Therefore, we call on our colleagues to reach out to the Ukrainian Museum of NYC to provide technical assistance, pro bono (of course), to adopt one of the collections they are seeking to secure and provide the logistics and security for this aspect of Ukrainian heritage. We also call on museums to offer support to the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative's (SCRI) Ukraine-related initiatives. SCRI is part of a network of dozens of organizations, including the Prince Claus Fund Cultural Emergency Response, an NGO based in the Netherlands; ICOM US and ICOM Paris; Blue Shield International, the Aliph Foundation, UNESCO, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; and many museums and museum workers in Europe. In Ukraine, work is coordinated with the Ministry of Culture and the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI), founded to organize the local rescue effort. As an example of work underway, the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, VA, created with SCRI, is compiling satellite imagery of Ukraine's cultural sites to help track attacks on them. The goal is to provide information to officials in Ukraine and to document the continuing destruction, damage that is in clear violation of the 1954 Hague Convention. Ukraine is home to seven UNESCO recognized World Heritage Sites: The Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora (2013); Kyiv: Saint-Sophia Cathedral and Related Monastic Buildings, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (1990); L'viv – the Ensemble of the Historic Centre (1998); Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans (2011); Struve Geodetic Arc (2005); Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine (2013); Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe (2007, 2011, 2017, 2021). Therefore, the international community, including the NATO countries, China, and any other member nation of the UN has a responsibility under the UNESCO banner and the UN declaration of human rights to protect those sites. These sites are recognized internationally because they represent sites of shared cultural heritage. The Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora, the Saint-Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians are not simply Ukrainian heritage, they are World Heritage, and therefore we have a communal human responsibility to the preservation of those sites (Centre, n.d.). While these sites are recognized by UNESCO, they are under the stewardship of humanity, protected in trust by the Ukraine, but are the responsibility of the entire world. As museum professionals, we have long relied on the few “Monuments Men” to protect the cultural objects against the ignorance of military leaders who know no limits to their power of destruction (Nicholas, 1995). Since 1954 the entire international museum community are the “Monuments People.” It is our turn, and our time to take on the task of guarding the story of humanity for the next seven generations. We call on the international museum community to save the culture of Ukraine: people first, digital records second, object last. On the following pages, we present an analysis of some of the public statements made by the museum sector, followed by two open letters from the Mysteski Arsenal Art and Culture Museum Complex in Kyiv (n.d.), the public response by Secretary Lonnie Bunch of the Smithsonian Institution, the public response from the International Sites of Conscience, and a perspective from Ophelia Leon, ICOM member and Chair of International Committee for Memorial Museums in Remembrance of the Victims of Public Crimes (n.d.). This journal condemns the war crimes in Ukraine being committed in the name of the Russian people and stands to support the victims of war crimes in Ukraine. Laura-Edythe S. Coleman, Associate Editor ([email protected]) is an American museum researcher and philosopher. Dr. Coleman is in the Fulbright Specialist Program for Library and Information Science and an Assistant Professor & Director of Arts Administration & Museum Leadership Program at Drexel University. John Fraser, Editor ([email protected]) is an architect, psychologist and President & CEO of Knology and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is currently working to develop trauma-informed learning tools to support displaced people in their quest for knowledge and new opportunities to live a life in peace. Zahava D. Doering, Editor Emerita ([email protected]) is an action-oriented sociologist, currently Co-Director, Vaccines & US: Cultural Organizations for Community Health, a collaboration of the Smithsonian Institution with cultural organizations across the nation. She also works with an NGO that provides humanitarian aid and resettlement assistance to refugees.