1 10 510 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Abandoned Villages Description An account of the resource At the moment, this collection presents the contents of a list of sites abandoned in 1778 by various elements of the Christian population of the Crimean Khanate. Between July and September 1778, a grand total of 31,098 people (half the Christian population of the khanate) deserted Crimea and moved to Russian territory on the shores of the Sea of Azov. Empress Catherine II and a handful of powerful men on the ground clearly engineered this relocation, which has been described as everything from an episode of deportation to one of voluntary migration.  Catherine II's government spent 130,000 rubles in the process, but the results were priceless. The loss of thousands of Greeks, Georgians, and Armenians dealt a heavy blow to the khanate's economy (they tended lucrative gardens and orchards, cultivated vineyards, and dominated maritime trade through the Black Sea and beyond). Sahin Girey Khan's position was weakened beyond repair (already perceived as a lackey of the empress, his inability to halt the migration made clear Russia's lack of concern for the khan's ability to rule). An anxious Ottoman government deployed a fleet to Aktiar (the future site of Sevastopol) in August, only to be repulsed. Negotiations for a new peace settlement between St. Petersburg and the Porte got underway soon thereafter. The resulting Treaty of Ainali-Kavak secured the independent status of the khanate and required the removal of all Russian troops. This was no favor to the khan however. His position was tenuous at best; without the support of the empress's troops, he had precious little support. It wasn't long before the political situation in Crimea deteriorated, necessitating the return of Prince Potemkin and, by April 1783, the annexation of the khanate to Russia. <hr /> Abandoned place Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Zui Description An account of the resource 5 Greeks abandoned this area in 1778. Greek settlement Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Abandoned Villages Description An account of the resource At the moment, this collection presents the contents of a list of sites abandoned in 1778 by various elements of the Christian population of the Crimean Khanate. Between July and September 1778, a grand total of 31,098 people (half the Christian population of the khanate) deserted Crimea and moved to Russian territory on the shores of the Sea of Azov. Empress Catherine II and a handful of powerful men on the ground clearly engineered this relocation, which has been described as everything from an episode of deportation to one of voluntary migration.  Catherine II's government spent 130,000 rubles in the process, but the results were priceless. The loss of thousands of Greeks, Georgians, and Armenians dealt a heavy blow to the khanate's economy (they tended lucrative gardens and orchards, cultivated vineyards, and dominated maritime trade through the Black Sea and beyond). Sahin Girey Khan's position was weakened beyond repair (already perceived as a lackey of the empress, his inability to halt the migration made clear Russia's lack of concern for the khan's ability to rule). An anxious Ottoman government deployed a fleet to Aktiar (the future site of Sevastopol) in August, only to be repulsed. Negotiations for a new peace settlement between St. Petersburg and the Porte got underway soon thereafter. The resulting Treaty of Ainali-Kavak secured the independent status of the khanate and required the removal of all Russian troops. This was no favor to the khan however. His position was tenuous at best; without the support of the empress's troops, he had precious little support. It wasn't long before the political situation in Crimea deteriorated, necessitating the return of Prince Potemkin and, by April 1783, the annexation of the khanate to Russia. <hr /> Abandoned place Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Zhemrek Description An account of the resource 372 Greeks abandoned this area in 1778. Greek settlement Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gardens Description An account of the resource This collection describes 43 garden sites considered to be the property of the Russian state in the 1790s. The gardens described here contain 821 individually documented parcels. Together they covered 351 acres along the prime southern coast and river valleys, and contained nearly 20,000 trees (19,193, to be precise).  17 species are documented in the reports: plum (слив), hazelnut (фундук), walnut (волошские орехи), pear (груш), European pear (дулина), rowan (рябин), apple (яблон), cherry (черешен), cherry (вишне), aiva (айва), mulberry (щелковиц), olive (маслин), fig (инжер), date (фурма), medlar (мушмоль), peach (персик), and almond (миндал). The collection is based on a set of reports "<a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/939" target="_blank">on the composition of the lands and gardens of Tavrida Province held as quitrent properties</a>" (freehold properties in return for which lessees paid a land tax) compiled between 1791 and 1794. <hr /> Garden location Ethnicity of owner Greek Arrangement gardens: 1, parcels: 2 Area not recorded Trees not recorded Species present not recorded Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Zalankoy (Zalankoi) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/939" target="_blank">Report on state-owned fruit gardens and vineyards along the Belbek, Kacha, and Alma rivers</a> Belbek River gardens: state-owned Greek property Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dachas Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context gazetteer Description An account of the resource In simplest terms, a dacha was a portion of land given out by the tsar. The apportioning of land to servitors and favorites was hardly an innovation, but over the course of the eighteenth century the dacha became ever more closely associated with the expansion of the empire. Early in the century, Peter I imbued the dacha with a distinctly strategic character, distributing grants both as a form of incentive and a coercive strategy for affecting the physical transformation of his new capital at St. Petersburg. Devoid of any associations with wellness, leisure, comfort, or domesticity – this came later in the nineteenth century – the earlier iteration of the dacha referred to a plot of uninhabited, unbuilt, uncultivated land located some distance away from the proprietor’s primary residence. A diligent proprietor might convert it into an usad'ba (country estate), with formal or mature gardens and permanent dwellings, or into an agriculturally-productive site – a farm, an orchard, a cultivated woodland. The essence of the dacha was that it implied a dynamic relationship between owner and property and the conversion of empty spaces into usable, definable places. Related narration: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/exhibits/show/dachageo" target="_self">Dacha Geography</a> <hr /> Dacha property Property Note Display Description 2,000 desiatinas of land and 4 desiatinas of orchards in the Otuz Valley. Ownership Note Lt. Colonel Bekariokov and Collegiate Assessor Karatsenov Dacha Grant Year 1796 Attestation 1802 Dacha Reports Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Zakharevskaia gardens: private orchards Otuz Valley settler property https://s3.amazonaws.com/atg-prod-oaas-files/beautifulspaces/original/e2480af4b0d3d7b889ba99602c00376e.jpg e903e26fd4d092f851d640f500d3e9ae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Demidov's Voyage Illustrations Description An account of the resource Illustrations from a volume held at the John Hay Library, Brown University Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anatole de Demidoff Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale et la Crimee Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context demidov-voyage Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 56 cm Repository John Hay Library, Brown University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Karaite Woman Description An account of the resource Karaite woman with children. Crimean Karaites are an ethnic group derived from Turkic-speaking followers of Karaism found in in Eastern Europe. Karaism is a denomination of judaism. Demidov notes that on a visit to the home of the rabbi of Chufut Kale, the "favorite wife blushed agreeably at the entrance of the foreigners" and he was "fascinated by the woman's elegant attire," which he describes in the following detail: "A striped silk dress outlined a well-proportioned figure which no foreign artifice had ever deformed. A wide belt hung on her hips and closed in the front through an ornate clasp composed of finely worked silver plates. A turban perched on her beautiful braids, and a necklace of stones, gold, a slight silk tie, and a yellow satin embroidered black caftan completed this picturesque toilet." 18 August 1837 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Anatolii Demidov, Album du Voyage dans la Russie méridionale et la Crimée, par la Hongrie, La Valachie et la Moldavie>, ed. Ernest Bourdin (Paris, 1838) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Denis Auguste Marie Raffet Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Image courtesy of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library domestic life lithograph Tatar culture Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Portrait of Antiquity Description An account of the resource Crimea was (and still is) uniquely studded with fallen slabs, old foundations, ancient walls, gravestones, and mounds of earth that have grown incrementally over the years to cover the bones of past lives. On my first visit to Sevastopol a friend explained that every good rain dislodged chards of pottery, the occasional coin, and other sundry treasures. And sure enough, when we went trekking in the mountains above Laspi later that week - keeping a sharp eye out for wild boar - I found three small bits of pottery, the edges worn smooth but the greens and blues of their surfaces still vivid. My friend chuckled and dismissed them as insignificant - the pieces dated to the fourteenth or maybe fifteenth century, after all - but I savored the extraordinary feeling of that small weight in my palm, sun-warm and heavy with historical memory. In 1837 the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg published a remarkable study On the Antiquities of the Southern Coast of Crimea and the Tavridan Mountains. The book's author, Peter Keppen, spent 5 years living in Crimea while serving as assistant to the chief of silk production (shelkovodstvo). During that time he traveled almost obsessively, collecting material for his geographical and archaeological projects. In the dedication (addressed, of course, to Tsar Nicholas I), Keppen describes Crimea as "the most charming of all the countries prospering" under Romanov rule. His book lovingly documents the location, history, and status of inscribed stones, marble columns, churches, and tombstones, but the bulk of material details defensive towers and walls. Keppen saw Crimea - in antiquity - as a territory divided between a savage, predatory north and a luxuriously beautiful south hemmed in by the Tauride (or Tavridan) mountains on one side and the Black Sea on the other. The fortified line that separated one from the other was, to him, one of the two organizing features of Crimean space (or of its antique space anyway). The second feature was sedimentation. Keppen was acutely aware of the way in which the passage of time imprinted itself on the landscape. At one point he describes finding the remains of an ancient fortification with thick walls of "wild stone" on the heights of Ayudag. "And is it surprising?" Keppen asks. "One must remember that this place has not been inhabited since 1475. And since then the spring sun has warmed the mountain tops and new growth has sprung from the depths of the earth no fewer than 360 times. 360 times over autumn storms have torn the leaves from trees and ripped the grasses, each year creating a new layer to cover any traces of human existence!"(170) Keppen would tell you that to see Crimea, one had to dig.  This collection contains all of the sites (though not all of the individual stones!) discussed in On the Antiquities of the Southern Coast. It includes 4 mausoleums, 9 Greek churches, and 58 fortifications. Each and every one was a ruin even before Keppen laid eyes on it.  Related gallery: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">Uvarov's Antiquities</a> Related narrations: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/37" target="_self">Among the Ruins</a> & <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/40" target="_self">A Monumental Inscription </a>Related source map: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/item/898" target="_blank">Keppen's Antiquities</a><hr /> Antiquity Building or item from the past. In most contexts, an antiquity belongs to the ancient, classical, or possibly medieval period. In Crimea and in the Russian south more broadly, archaeologists and collectors used the term to describe the material legacy of the ancient Greeks, Byzantines, Genoese, Karaims, Ottomans, and Crimean Tatars who inhabited the region prior to Russian conquest. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yalta Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Petr Keppen Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Petr Keppen, O drevnostiakh IUzhnago Berega Kryma i Gor Tavricheskikh (Sankt Peterburg, 1837) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1837 Description An account of the resource At Marsanda the remains of a church are visible down near the sea, but Keppen is unsure whether this site was fortified. The church on the cape of St. John was behind walls. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource The Stanford Library copy of Keppen's work was digitized by Google Books. church fortification ruin Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gardens Description An account of the resource This collection describes 43 garden sites considered to be the property of the Russian state in the 1790s. The gardens described here contain 821 individually documented parcels. Together they covered 351 acres along the prime southern coast and river valleys, and contained nearly 20,000 trees (19,193, to be precise).  17 species are documented in the reports: plum (слив), hazelnut (фундук), walnut (волошские орехи), pear (груш), European pear (дулина), rowan (рябин), apple (яблон), cherry (черешен), cherry (вишне), aiva (айва), mulberry (щелковиц), olive (маслин), fig (инжер), date (фурма), medlar (мушмоль), peach (персик), and almond (миндал). The collection is based on a set of reports "<a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/939" target="_blank">on the composition of the lands and gardens of Tavrida Province held as quitrent properties</a>" (freehold properties in return for which lessees paid a land tax) compiled between 1791 and 1794. <hr /> Garden location Ethnicity of owner Greek Arrangement gardens: 47, parcels: 76 Area 9207 square sazhens (10.36 acres) Trees 2,551 Species present plum, hazelnut, walnut, pear, rowan, apple, cherry, mulberry, date, medlar Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yalta Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/939" target="_blank">Report on state-owned fruit gardens and vineyards along the Belbek, Kacha, and Alma rivers</a> apple cherry date gardens: state-owned Greek property hazelnut medlar mulberry pear plum rowan southern coast walnut https://s3.amazonaws.com/atg-prod-oaas-files/beautifulspaces/original/dd41f207b70cf6ecf12fe3f82d76ee32.png ef615ebab5295f7c743a7fdde4ce869d https://s3.amazonaws.com/atg-prod-oaas-files/beautifulspaces/original/f2e1983ed504b4af0f477f9799bc83bc.png 988d89e823b7c1a4dd13bc01c3cae265 https://s3.amazonaws.com/atg-prod-oaas-files/beautifulspaces/original/be4e7349e012149acee641c649b2ff13.png 84c20d62ce21df38d3cbaa78d0d33016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Original Maps Description An account of the resource The "snapshots" collected here pair an insight or a question (sometimes both) with a map (or two). They occasionally address matters of idle curiosity but often point to the significance of map design and the challenges of mapping historical data. Original Map Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Wrinkles in village geography Description An account of the resource Vil'brekht's map is the best cartographic source I have found for the early post-annexation years. It is quite unique in its almost single-minded devotion to mapping villages, and I took the opportunity to digitize every point on the map, along with the corresponding toponyms. How good a record of Tatar village geography does it provide? It is hard to say. I can say the the village names taken from the map and those listed in the 1805-1806 registers of inhabited villages (produced by the provincial government) are not a perfect match. 807 of the villages from the registers appear, so far as I can tell, on the map (a match rate of 67%). The "mislocation" is clear in this map pairing, where villages shown on the Vil'brekht map appear as translucent yellow points. The smaller green points represent villages described in the registers. The second image is a detail map of Feodosiia district, where the match rate was particularly bad. The third image suggests that there was a good deal of continuity (or simply better documentation) along the major rivers such as the Salgir. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Primer Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Why did Empress Catherine II annex Crimea in April 1783? Why did the Russian Federation annex Crimea in March 2014? Description An account of the resource One late-autumn morning in 1782 Empress Catherine II sat in her study in the Winter Palace drinking coffee and contemplating the fate of Crimea. In her hand was a carefully-crafted letter from Prince Grigory Potemkin, president of the War College, commander-in-chief of Russian armed forces, and grand admiral of the Black Sea and Caspian fleets. For some months Potemkin had been urging his sovereign to declare an end to the interlude of Crimean independence (which began in 1774) and annex the lands of the khanate, but Catherine was reluctant. With mounting frustration, Potemkin informed her that she should act soon, else “there will come a time when everything that we might now receive for free, we shall obtain for a high price.” What, exactly, was at stake? Potemkin’s list was short but compelling: the security of the empire’s borders from the Bug river to the Kuban (in other words, from just east of Odessa to the foothills of the Caucasus), the allegiance of the Russian inhabitants of the empire, and unimpeded access to the Black Sea. “Believe me,” wrote Potemkin, “with this acquisition you will achieve immortal glory such that no other Sovereign in Russia has ever had.” And if that were not enticement enough, Potemkin assured Catherine that annexation would “pave the way to still another even greater glory: with the Crimea will also come supremacy over the Black Sea.” Here it is then, a timeless observation packaged up in a handwritten note sent from one palace to another in the bone-chilling cold of eighteenth-century St. Petersburg. The significance of Crimea is now, as it was then, as much about security as it is about symbolism. Just as important, it is as much about Crimea itself as it is about the projection of Russian power well beyond the peninsula. The turmoil of the past 3 years attests to the intimate cultural and economic linkages between the peninsula and much of eastern Ukraine. One need only consider Crimea’s utter dependence on the pipes and power lines carrying gas, water, and electricity across the narrow spit of land at Perekop to get a sense of how deeply embedded Crimea is within Ukraine’s infrastructure and economy. The question becomes, is it possible to administer Crimea without also administering the territory running northward from Kherson (or perhaps even Odessa) to Mykolayiv, Zaporizhia, and Dnipropetrovsk? The purported $20 billion savings that will accrue to Gazprom from rerouting the South Stream Pipeline overland across Crimea rather than across the deep Black Sea would certainly defray the cost of governance, but Vladimir Putin might well follow in the footsteps of Catherine, who linked Russian security with control of Ukrainian territory. As Potemkin’s letter suggests, possessing Crimea allowed the empress and the long line of male Romanovs, Bolsheviks, and Chekists who succeeded her, to assert influence over even broader swaths of territory than those constituted by modern-day Ukraine. By virtue of its geography Crimea is a portal to the world of the Black Sea – to coastline and hinterland, the watersheds of the Dnestr and Danube, and even the Bosporus. As a former vassal of the Porte and home to some 300,000 Muslims, Crimea gave tsarist Russia entrée into the fractious politics of the Ottoman Empire. And as the last remnant of the Mongol commonwealth in the west, Crimea provided grounds for Russia to claim the mantle of inheritor of the imperial legacy of the Eurasian steppe. There are echoes of these grandiose claims in the discourse emanating from Moscow. Putin has gestured toward the idea of Russia as a “Eurasian power” in the past, perhaps most prominently in his speech commemorating the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the city of Kazan. His plan for the Eurasian Economic Union, which up until very recently was slated to open in January 2015, offers further evidence that Putin defines Russian power as both apart from and opposed to that of the rest of Europe. In this context Crimea is the necessary western hinge on which turns the economic and geopolitical projection of Russian power. But Crimea is more than simply a portal onto other, more strategically significant terrain. Crimea conjures a very particular meaning in the minds of government officials and private citizens alike. It is, for a host of complex and often contradictory reasons, a crucial site for exploring and articulating Russian identity. As proof of this one need only consider the extraordinary ideological investment of the state since the formal annexation of Crimea to the Russian empire on 19 April 1783. At that point Catherine set about renaming the towns and rivers of her southern provinces and thus converting an unstable and threatening Turko-Islamic landscape into one infused with Classical Greek and Orthodox Christian meaning. Of course, Catherine was not content with toponymic renovation. She set about redefining the landscape by planting groves of olive, citrus and grapes imported from Tuscany and the Greek islands. She built Orthodox churches and sprawling villas. She spent outrageous amounts of money choreographing her tour from Petersburg through Kiev to Bahçesaray, the capital of the khanate – a tour designed with the express purpose of taking possession of Crimea through ritual and ideology. Catherine and Potemkin concerned themselves too with demographics, settling tens of thousands of Slavic peasants as well as Bulgarian, Mennonite and Lutheran immigrants in what we think of as the Ukrainian steppe. Only 15,000 ethnic Russians had settled on the peninsula itself by the outbreak of the Crimean war, but the forced resettlement of two thirds of the Crimean Tatar population to Ottoman lands in the 1860s made it possible, at long last, to begin transforming the complexion of the population as well as the landscape. The events of the 1860s pale in comparison to the scale and trauma of the deportation of roughly a quarter million Crimean Tatars during the course of one night in May 1944. But the government’s investment didn’t end there. Stalin channeled exorbitant amounts of money to Crimea so that Sevastopol, the hero-city (and now home of the Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea fleets) destroyed during the German occupation of 1941-1944 could rise again, clad this time in elegant neo-Classical architectural stylings. Former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, the Moscow Patriarchate, and countless oligarchs have continued the tradition of sponsoring the construction of elite residences, improved infrastructure, and gleaming upscale maritime oases. Indeed, if contemporary Russian ideologues want to make a convincing case for why Crimea is now, has always been, and must always be part of Russia, they ought to cease making spurious claims about the need to protect the human rights of the ethnic Russian (majority) population. Instead, why not fortify their claims by referencing the enormous investment the Russian state has made over the last 231 years in making Crimea Russian? They haven’t succeeded – not yet, anyway – but surely it is not for lack of effort. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Primer Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Where is Crimea?