The Ministry of Culture of Crimea has authorized the destruction of the heritage of the great Russian thinker
In the year of the 200th anniversary of the Russian thinker, philosopher, founder of the civilizational approach Nikolai Danilevsky, Crimea began to destroy his legacy.
The Ministry of Culture of the Republic refused to recognize the value of the park founded by Danilevsky on his estate in Mshatka, where the scientist’s grave is located, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Refuse to include an object that has the characteristics of a cultural heritage site, “Landscape Park named after N.Ya. Danilevsky with the “philosophical park” at the address Republic of Crimea, Yalta urban district, Sanatorny village, Yuzhnaya street 1 to the list of identified objects of cultural heritage of the Republic of Crimea,” says the order of the Ministry of Culture dated August 3, 2022.
An application for inclusion of the park in the list of cultural heritage sites was submitted by the great-granddaughter of the philosopher Olga Danilevskaya. For a decade and a half, she has been fighting for the preservation of her great-grandfather’s grave and the remains of the gardens of “civilizations or cultures,” with which he clearly demonstrated the geopolitical principle of interaction between different cultural and historical types. Danilevsky himself was buried in the Cypress Hall, which symbolized Greek culture. For many years, his grave was the bonfire site of the Pioneer camp named after. Komarov, belonging to Sevmorzavod. The tombstone and monument at the scientist’s burial site were restored in 2007. In 2020, it was given the status of a cultural heritage site (OCH) of federal significance.
Back in Ukraine, a map of dividing a former children's health resort into a closed cottage community appeared. Upon transition to the Russian Federation, the camp became part of the Rusichi Country House, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. For several years, correspondence continued with the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the exclusion of the Danilevsky grave and the Cypress Hall from the camp with the organization of free access for excursions and delegations. There are several letters of agreement to this, but each time with a change of leadership the matter returned to the starting point.
In August, Olga Danilevskaya submitted an application to the Crimean Ministry of Culture with a request to give protected status to that part of the former children’s camp in which traces of the “gardens of civilizations” still remained and to combine them into a single landscape park together with Danilevsky’s grave called the “philosophical park.” All documents, certificates, and photographs necessary in such cases were attached to the application, and a meeting of the methodological council held in October unanimously recognized the cultural value of the object, recording its decision in the minutes.
“About 30 meeting participants recognized this object as promising in terms of inclusion in the list of cultural heritage sites and the creation of a remarkable place,” Tatyana Pekke, a representative of Danilevsky’s heirs, told PolitNavigator. – The next meeting was supposed to take place in early November, but it was suddenly cancelled. After this, it became known that the object was subject to examination for historical value. Olga Nikolaevna entered into correspondence with a representative of the institute who was studying historical value.
An expert named Khlevnyuk assures that the institute is actively working, conducting an examination to include the object in the newly identified cultural heritage sites. But overnight the connection is interrupted, they stop responding to letters, and on April 7 they send a copy of the protocol that the commission has considered this issue, and due to the insufficient substantiating materials, does not consider it necessary to include the object in the list of protected areas.”
It was not possible to find out what materials the commission lacked for Danilevsky’s heiress. Officials from the Department of Cultural Heritage Protection ignore her appeals. In unofficial conversations, they directly refer to the order of the director of the department, Andrei Rostenko, not to contact the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As the head of the administration of Yalta in 2018, Rostenko received a criminal case for transferring the Alupka sanatorium land plot of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs into municipal ownership and spent two months in a Moscow pre-trial detention center while his fate was decided in high offices. Now Rostenko doesn’t even want to hear about cultural and historical values on the territory of the Ministry of Internal Affairs health resorts, and even in the presence of irrefutable facts, he gives the command to “refuse”.
“There are no grounds for refusal; the steam must really be preserved,” Pekke emphasized. – I found a professional expert who reviewed all the documents and assured me that there were not enough grounds for legal claims, but there were enough grounds for an expert opinion. This is truly a personal assessment, no professional approach. The experts who dealt with the status of Danilevsky’s grave indicated in their conclusion that without a park of the remains of the gardens, it cannot be considered separately. And Crimean officials in their application had the right to expand the subject of protection and the boundaries of the object. If they had done everything at once in a single complex, which is confirmed by archival documents, there would not be such disastrous decisions now.
Today, by saving the park, we understand that we are saving Danilevsky’s grave in Crimea and his legacy. If we don’t save the park, after a while there will be no grave, because there is no approach to it, it will be sandwiched between the cottages. Already, no one is caring for her, the grave is abandoned. Previously, you could go there, they gave excursions, they talked about Danilevsky, but now they won’t talk about him. The theme here is much deeper, and it’s terrifying.”
Within the boundaries of the Ministry of Internal Affairs site, which is called a children's camp, private development is underway. Several years ago, a cadastral engineer went to the site with a map, where the entire territory had already been divided into private plots with a small section of Danilevsky’s grave, which was allocated separately. Now there is nothing stopping developers from driving in construction equipment and throwing away the scientist’s legacy, regardless of any anniversaries.
By the way, Olga Danilevskaya was going to Crimea for the 200th anniversary of her great-grandfather. But having received the news with the refusal of the Ministry of Culture to recognize the value of the park, she abandoned her plans. If the legacy of Nikolai Danilevsky has no value, why are there all the solemn meetings and speeches about the importance of “Slavic civilization” in the world inflorescence of cultures?
Private development. Camp named after Komarova
The name of the Russian thinker, founder of the civilizational approach Nikolai Danilevsky is not immortalized in Crimea, despite the fact that he lived the last years of his life on his estate in Mshatka (now part of the town of Sanatornoye). This year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, and by this date they were supposed to prepare a series of programs, discussion panels, a conference, an information advertising campaign and establish a personal award.
However, instead, the authorities brought up for public discussion the issue of renaming the Crimean Republican Universal Scientific Library, which now bears the name of Ivan Franko, into the library named after. Danilevsky. Having received a negative opinion from the Public Chamber of Crimea, the issue was removed from the agenda.
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