Polish- Ukrainian WW2 Heritage Not Just "Wołyń"

In Poland a court has decided, on the request of the Union of Ukrainians in Poland, that the country's controversial Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) must reopen the investigation into the "Vistula" action (the forced resettlement of the Ukrainian population from SE Poland in its post-War boundaries), which was discontinued by the institution's prosecutors several months ago. (Anna Gmiterek-Zabłocka "Głośne śledztwo wraca do IPN. "Słuszna decyzja sądu".." TokFM 24.08.2024).

Operation "Vistula" involved the forced resettlement of Polish citizens of Ukrainian and Lemko ethnicity from southeastern Poland in 1947, affecting approximately 140,000 people. The operation was orchestrated by the communist authorities in Poland. The prosecution of those responsible for the deportations had been demanded by various groups, including the president of the Union of Ukrainians in Poland and the chairman of the Lemko Union Presidium.

The justification given by the IPN for closing the investigation at the end of November 2023 was that there was no evidence to support the claim that "the resettlement under Operation 'Vistula' constituted a crime against humanity or a communist crime". The IPN argued that the decision to implement Operation "Vistula" was made to "ensure the safety of citizens" and that the deportation was intended to protect the population and to disrupt the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's access to supplies and intelligence from local residents. The IPN further claimed that no ethnic criteria were used in the resettlement and that the evacuation was conducted "in a humanitarian manner" (I do not know their documentation, but that the claim about the lack of ethnic discrimination seems dubious - possibly it is based on the fact that if there were any Poles living in Ukrainian villages in the region, they too were expelled before the villages were razed. The Union of Ukrainians in Poland and an association from Gorlice appealed the IPN's decision to the District Court in Warsaw. They argued that the case should not have been dismissed, as the IPN had failed to consider important research findings. The court agreed with their position. The investigation into Operation 'Vistula' will return to the IPN Prosecutor's Office," announced the Union of Ukrainians in Poland. Historians have welcomed the court's decision, considering it appropriate.

]Of course there is a parallel situation, the lands they were resettled to had been depopulated of the remaining German population,(many also had fled the advancing Red Army, never to return), forcibly resettled to Germany after the War. The villages they took over had been German for some 600 years before that and there are whole regions of western, south western Poland where the village structures, architecture and 'grain' of the landscape are "German" in feel. The same goes for large bits of Pomerania and former Ostpreussen, but to a lesser extent because the Belarussian Front of the Red Army was far more destructive (over-enthusiastically destructive) in these regions (not just the buildings, here were egregious episodes of gang rapes and arbitrary shootings, Bucha and Irpin have deep roots in the Russian mentality)].* The tragedy of the War did not end on May 9th(or whenever) 1945 with the capitulation of the Nazis.

*Actually the same thing happened when the Russian "Imperial Army" entered Ostpreussen in the First World War

Stolen Fragments

       policing is one part of           
           the problem that involves          
 wider public attitudes   
      

New book soon to be out:  Stolen Fragments Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts by Roberta Mazza (Redwood Press), 17th September 2024 272 pages. $30.00 Hardcover ISBN: 9781503632509.

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, announced a recent purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus, just discovered, carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how could Green acquire such a rare item? The answers, which Mazza spent the next ten years uncovering, came as a shock: the fragment had come from a famous collection held at Oxford University, and its rightful owners had no idea it had been sold.

The letter to the Romans was not the only extraordinary piece in the Green collection. They soon announced newly recovered fragments from the Gospels and writings of Sappho. Mazza's quest to confirm the provenance of these priceless fragments revealed shadowy global networks that make big business of ancient manuscripts, from the Greens' Museum of the Bible and world-famous auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's, to antique shops in Jerusalem and Istanbul, dealers on eBay, and into the collections of renowned museums and universities.

Mazza's investigation forces us to ask what happens when the supposed custodians of our ancient heritage act in ways that threaten to destroy it. Stolen Fragments illuminates how these recent dealings are not isolated events, but the inevitable result of longstanding colonial practices and the outcome of generations of scholars who have profited from extracting the cultural heritage of places they claim they wish to preserve. Where is the boundary between protection and exploitation, between scholarship and larceny?

I'll be interested to see if, and to what extent, she covers the "investigation" (I am using that term rather loosely) of the British police, bless 'em, into the connections between a former Oxford University scholar and a number of other items of papyri that are reported to have disappeared from the same famous collection held at Oxford University and that have never been seen since. This story is not over.

The book will hopefully provoke some discussion into wider public attitudes, The Museum of the Bible, accumulating THINGS in order to tell a specific watered-down story in the interests of a certain group, but apparently nobody was asking the question (or rather the question was being widely ignored) where those "things" were coming from and whether other stories were being obliterated by this stuff being acquired, that infringes on the interests of not just one group, but multiple groups - and ultimately us all. These are questions we should be asking. Get the book.

China: Three Dock Workers Sentenced for Stealing Cultural Relics

 

            Three Gorges Reservoir              

Global TimesThree dock workers sentenced for stealing cultural relics in Three Gorges Reservoir area Global Times: Aug 18, 2024

Three dock workers have been sentenced to prison by the People's Court of Wushan for stealing cultural relics from Western Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 25) tombs that were exposed in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.

The individuals—identified as Liu and two accomplices—received prison sentences ranging from three years and 10 months to four years and six months. Each was also fined 30,000 yuan ($4,190).

In 2011, Liu and his co-defendants discovered the exposed tombs when the water level in the reservoir dropped. The trio excavated the site and unearthed 20 items, including bronze drinking and ritual vessels from the Western Han Dynasty. They later turned themselves in to the police and confessed to the theft in March 2024.

Archaeologically, the region of the Three Gorges Reservoir contains a large number of buried cultural relics.The region is also known for the Bachu culture as well as cultural relics of the Han and other eras. Also "2 million years ago, the famous Wushan Man lived in this area", the newspaper says.

Play of Euripides on Excavated Papyrus

Imagine if they'd been dug up by artefact hunters and without being transcribed, anlaysed or interpreted sold on eBay to a buyer only interested in having something 'cool' in their ephemeral private collection, that may be saved by the heirs or simply discarded as "grandpa's old junk" (Guillermo Carvajal, 'Previously unknown fragments of two lost tragedies by Euripides, discovered in an Egyptian papyrus' LBV Magazine, August 4, 2024):

Two scholars from the University of Colorado Boulder have unearthed significant fragments from two lost tragedies by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. This discovery, made after months of painstaking research, is hailed as one of the most substantial findings in over fifty years.

The journey began in November 2022 when Basem Gehad, an archaeologist with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, sent a papyrus to Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. The papyrus was discovered at the ancient site of Philadelphia in Egypt

The settlement of Gerza in the Fayoum was known as Philadelphia in the Ptolemaic era. It was established in the 3rd century BC as a central settlement in the framework of an agricultural reclamation project implemented by King Ptolemy II (Philadelphia) in the Fayoum region, with the aim of securing food sources for the Egyptian kingdom. An Egyptian archaeological mission began excavation work here in 2016 and revealed archaeological material from the period from the 3rd c. BC until the end of the 3rd century AD

.

Wealth Distribution

Reportedly, 50% of the world's GDP is produced in the areas coloured green.

Guess where most of the world's portable antiquities are bought and sold. And guess where the majority of the pieces of that stolen history come from....

Edinburgh University Text on "the Göbekli Tepe Calendar": Another Major Media Fail',

Gürkan Ergin, ' The Göbekli Tepe calendar and the Younger Dryas Impact: another major media fail', ArcheoThoughts Posted on August 16, 2024

Major media outlets have recently been reporting on a new sensational claim that animal carvings on a stone pillar at the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey are a very early form of calendar, and that they commemorate a cosmic impact about 13 000 years ago that triggered the Younger Dryas cold snap (Sweatman 2024). This coverage has been almost universally uncritical. I have seen no attempt to actually evaluate the claim, even though it should be obvious to even moderately informed readers that the study is highly speculative and does not support its findings adequately. [...] The press release from the University of Edinburgh starts with “Markings on a stone pillar at a 12,000 year-old archaeological site in Turkey likely represent the world’s oldest solar calendar, created as a memorial to a devastating comet strike, experts suggest.” This is the main message that made its way, usually uncritically, into the coverage from major outlets [...]

[...]

We live in an age in which a sensational speculation consistently gets a lot more coverage than a reasoned, well supported conclusion, even in allegedly serious media. Institutions such as AAAS and public figures such as journalists have a responsibility to inquire before they disseminate, and when they do disseminate, they have a responsibility to be critical.

The media used to consider itself a fourth estate in our body politic, with a role to play in keeping the citizenry informed.

Academics in general have a responsibility to evaluate the ideas they see disseminated, and to help the public make sense of them. I will continue to do so as best I can.

Too bad the Archaeology Department of the University of Edinburgh cannot see their way to doing the same. Or any other archaeological body in the UK ("not my problem M8")

Anyway, the carvings are quite obviously vulvas, lots of them, anyone can see... surely. Prove me wrong.

  

Sweatman, M. B. (2024). Representations of calendars and time at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe support an astronomical interpretation of their symbolism. Time and Mind, 1–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2024.2373876

Language in and Around Ukraine

 What is the relationship between language and culture?

----------------------------------

Olexander Scherba 🇺🇦 @olex_scherba

A Russian TV show introduces the “local dialect” of Russians in Belgorod oblast near Ukraine. The anchor seems to understand nothing, but Ukrainians understand every word.

Because “the dialect” turns out to be Ukrainian.

As putin says, “it’s historically our land”. #StandWithUkraine

A Russian TV show introduces the “local dialect” of Russians in Belgorod oblast near Ukraine. The anchor seems to understand nothing, but Ukrainians understand every word.

‘Cause “the dialect” turns out to be Ukrainian.

As putin says, “it’s historically our land”.#StandWithUkraine

A 🇷🇺 TV show introduces the “local dialect” of russians in Belgorod oblast near Ukraine. The anchor seems to understand nothing, but Ukrainians understand every word.

‘Cause “the dialect” turns out to be Ukrainian.

As putin says, “it’s historically our land”.#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/1XWdR9qyBM

— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) August 15, 2024

Olexander Scherba 🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) August 15, 2024

------------------------------------ -

The funniest part is when the voice over says "you won't find these words in any dictionary in the world!" And then they go back to the studio and the girl just speaks a local dialect of Ukrainian. Once again, we see the Russians refuting the existence of the Ukrainian language but instead calling it a "dialect" (of Russian). This little girl is taking part in this charade.

Within Ukraine there are several linguistic zones, those maps that separate Ukraine into two clearly defined zones of "Russian language" and "Ukrainian language" are in fact misleading and flat out lazy and awful journalism. It's more like this: 

                                     .                                          

Although Central Ukraine is often regarded as having Ukrainian as the native tongue, in truth a large portion of the Ukrainian spoken in central Ukraine consists of Surzhyk, this is a mixed Ukrainian/Russian sociolect due to centuries of Russian domination. The western region is actually the region where the more "pure" form of Ukrainian is spoken. Interestingly, this map actually depicts Kyiv as being Russian speaking. It is true that in that city, day-to-day interactions are almost exclusively in Russian, even if people identify more with the Ukrainian language  (map from Map Porn)

As any Ukrainian will tell you, the modern state, the one the Russians want now to wipe off the map, kill all the people (or forcibly Russianise them), and steal its resources is much smaller than the actual extent of Ukrainianness and the two republics founded after the end of the First World War and then attacked by Poland and the Bolsheviks. It is not just Kursk and Belgorod (Bilhorod - where this girl is from). 

I am actually working today on editing a volume about a site right on the eastern border of what is now Poland that in fact was a centre of the Halych-Volhynian principality. The material culture of the 13th/14th centuries is quite unlike that a few dozen kilometres to the west, there is a very clear difference. Most of the Ukrainians were driven out after WW2 (many forcibly resettled in the east of Poland in areas that Germans had previously been deported from). In the northeast are territories that formed part of the Sloboda Ukraine (Slobozhanshchyna) that is the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk but also parts of the Belgorod, Kursk, and Voronezh Oblasts of SW Russia. Also worthy of also is the large area Ukraine lost to the Soviet Union east of the Sea of Azov and bordering on Georgia and the Caucasus mountains, the lands of the Kuban Cossacks, formerly the territory of the Crimean Khanate in the 16th and 17th centuries.  

(map from here)