Mikhail Piotrovsky: Cultural Heritage under Siege

Several years ago now, the charitable Getty Foundation held a series of conferences entitled “Cultural Heritage under Siege”. It was an attempt to come up with legally well-grounded and precise characterization for cultural heritage in conflict situations. How should its importance be correlated with the importance of human lives? What are the limits to cultural heritage’s involvement in politics when that is being pursued by state or non-state entities? Around the world such heritage is becoming a weapon in conflicts. The museum and cultural community is deliberating on this.

Recently, on the initiative of the Russian UNESCO committee, an international scholarly conference was held in the Daghestani city of Derbent that was devoted to an archaeological site within the ancient Naryn-Kala fortress. It concerned the interpretation of one of its buildings. For many years it was considered a water reservoir. Researches have now shown what had anyway been suggested earlier – that it is not a reservoir but the foundations of a Christian church or sepulchre.

The discussion took place in a Muslim republic [within the RF], in a city where there are many religions. Churches, mosques and a synagogue stand there, as well as a fortress built by the Persian Sassanid rulers. At the conference, it was proudly stated that this is one of the oldest churches in the Caucasus – from the 4th or 5th century. The debate was not over whether there was a Christian building on its territory, but about its purpose. The heads of the city and the republic took part in the conference. An example not just of concern for a monument. In the discussion political aspects were played up. The building is Christian, but that pleases Muslims, because they can point to it and say that on this land there were several ancient civilizations, they were intertwined. A splendid illustration of what the Caucasus is like.

That is why I considered it possible to present at the conference the “Derbent Appeal” – an attempt to propose a certain programme of cultural work connected with concern for monuments generally and in the Caucasus particularly. I am referring to the whole of the Caucasus, including the south, what we used to call Transcaucasia [Zakavkazye]. The text of the “Derbent Appeal” can be found on the Hermitage website.

If you take a view “from above”, it is possible to see features of a problem that is much broader than the issue of who guards what monument. Then it becomes possible to find a means of arranging things in such a way that none of them suffer. To have everyone interested in them, concerned about their preservation, recognizing that monuments should be left alone. They belong to humanity, not just to the ethnic group that created them.

The Caucasus in itself is an amazing part of the world where there are a host of monuments of different cultures and different eras, from the most ancient to the present-day. It had trade routes. The armies of Rome, Byzantium, Iran, Turkey and Russia passed through. All manner of things happened. Every era left its mark.

Many ethnic groups live in the Caucasus. Between them there has always been interaction, competition and struggle. There are different religions there. Sunni and Shia Islam. Christianity is represented by the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and other denominations. There are many pagan sanctuaries in the area that are still venerated today. All this together exists in the Caucasus. Exists and resists each other.

Resistance, not only in the Caucasus, is made worse by the existence of different state-level entities. For example, Christianity and Islam exist in Syria, but it is an Islamic state. In the Caucasus there are Christian states and Islamic states. Together it forms a tangled skein with a large number of contradictions. Conflicts can and do flare up. We can see that the latest war over Karabakh is a part of what happened previously too. Everyone understands that today’s status quo is establishing peace, but there is no certainty that that will always be the case.

We need to think what to do about the monuments in the Caucasus. A problem exists there – wars of memory. The ownership of monuments is viewed in different ways. My favourite way of putting things is this – history must not be falsified, but it can be interpreted. Arguments over the ownership of monuments are very vigorous. In the area of the Karabakh conflict there are ancient Albanian sites, Armenian ones of various dates, Iranian, Turkic, Azerbaijani and Georgian ones. All intertwined. Just saying “Don’t dare to touch them!” will not work.

My appeal is addressed to international organizations, the material has been submitted to UNESCO. I proposed carrying out monitoring of the state of monuments in the southern Caucasus. They need to be protected and studied at the same time as the monitoring. Not simply to see what is under threat, but to describe their condition, physical and moral. How the monuments are functioning – as tourist sites, spiritual centres or places of entertainment. How they are interpreted with regard to wars of memory. We need to be discussing not only whether a church or mosque is still on balance standing, but also what arguments are going on around it. To conduct a calm discussion, even if viewpoints diverge.

The events in the history of the Caucasus are known. The interpretations of them are diverse, sometimes irrational, at times unscientific. There is a cluster of scholarly arguments over what we have in the zone of Karabakh. Some remarkable monasteries exist there that have seen many eras and rulers in that land. Today one stands on the frontier with Azerbaijani forces. Another is on the territory of the peacekeepers that has passed to Azerbaijan. A third is in the centre, on the territory controlled by the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities. There is a mosque in Agdam that is under the control of the Azerbaijani Republic. There are several mosques and a Christian church in the town of Shusha.

A whole range of monuments of different periods from Sassanid times to the Karabakh Khanate. They are at the centre of many arguments that might become a basis and subject for international discussions.

Cemeteries of different religions are being destroyed. They need to be preserved, though, also because they are evidence of the endless relocation of peoples in the Caucasus. There you can find the presence of various ethnic groups in various places. The discovery of some text or other is not indicative of the right of ownership over a territory. When cultural lucidity arrives, no-one will use the destruction of monuments as an argument in a dispute over the right to a territory.

We need to construct a dialogue of cultures around the monuments of the Caucasus, to see how they participate in that dialogue and not how they divide people. If we fail to introduce the monuments of the Caucasus into cultural circulation, then they can become a weapon of conflict at any moment.

Sadly, there is such experience in the Middle East, with Palmyra. It has twice been devastated by terrorists convinced that it belongs to a civilization of a different time, a pagan one, and should not exist.

The Hermitage is preparing to hold a Day of Palmyra. We have summoned people so as to discuss online the history of Palmyra and to decide together what should be done with it today. We know that this great city of a great kingdom was destroyed and stood for a long time in ruins. The ruins became an element of world culture. Saint Petersburg is called the Northern Palmyra, in part because the architects who built our city looked to the superb prototypes in Palmyra.

The Hermitage is opening exhibitions devoted to Palmyra. They are about the way it has influenced our city, about the dialogue between Palmyra and Saint Petersburg, about the discovery of the ancient city and its artefacts that are in our keeping. One of the exhibitions will tell about how we study Palmyra.

Ahead lies discussion of a site that has a turbulent history and is now in danger. One of the conferences will be closed with experts discussing whether Palmyra can and should be restored. It is no easy choice. The thinking is that you cannot recreate what has been destroyed – that will be a replica. Yet people need the sense of involvement in that culture; they saw Palmyra being destroyed. We have the splendid experience of the post-war reconstruction of the suburbs of Leningrad. Strictly speaking, such a restoration is against the rules, but it was necessary for our sense of national identity, so that those places would continue to be custodians of our culture. They do that, We see it and so does everyone who travels here.

Public discussion of Palmyra is also planned. we do not intend to adopt resolutions. It is important to conduct a dialogue. Some will see it as a lot of talk, but conversations doo influence attitudes to monuments. After listening to them, military men will think several times before opening fire on a church, mosque or museum. The same can be said of the attitude to monuments among politicians, journalists… We should instil a respect for cultural heritage and seek ways to defend it. Not to force people, but to persuade them.

And the acute situation in the southern Caucasus, in the region of Karabakh, may become the basis for a search for solutions about how to preserve cultural heritage. Today the presence of Russian forces in the Caucasus is preserving monuments. If we look back, there were similar situations in the 19th and 20th centuries. A Russian presence served not only to preserve peace for the peoples of the Caucasus, but also to preserve peace for the monuments.