Burials of Crimean khans found near Bakhchisaray

Tatar-Inform news agency reported yesterday that the archaeologists working in Crimean village Salaciq (Salachik), near Bakhchisaray, found eighteen coffins with the remains of first khans of Crimea. The coffins were found in the basement of the mausoleum of khan Haci Giray (Khaji Giray).

This is the first burial of the khans of 15-16 centuries that was found intact, not devastated by the robbers in the last 500 years. It was located near the Zincirli (Zinjirli) Medrese university, founded by khan Mengli Giray in 1502.

The scientists say that among those buried there are Haci Giray, the founder of the Crimean khanate, his son Sahib Giray, who founded the town of Bakhchisaray, his grandson Gazi Giray and others. The tomb was found by serendipity, during the restoration works in the mausoleum. The entry was blocked for the time being and the research will continue later.

Source: В Бахчисарае обнаружены ханские захоронения

X century burial in Kiev

Kyiv Post newspaper reports of a burial site discovered in Kiev during the construction works:

A burial ground dating back to the 10th century was found on the construction site of a new office center alongside the Dnipro River in Kyiv’s Podil district. City officials backed the construction company’s right to continue building at the location, while the developer has pledged Hr 300,000 ($60,000) to help investigate the site thought to be an early Christian cemetery near the Poshtova Ploshcha metro station. Archeologists uncovered 12 distinct burials in the last month. The cemetery “possesses significant Christian characteristics,” according to Mykhaylo Sahaydak, head of the Podil archeological expedition.

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Odessa — the motherland of the wheel

It has been long known among those born in Odessa that this southern city on the Black Sea is the motherland of jazz, elephants and hundreds of famous writers, poets and artists. Recently, Ukrainian archaeologists used carbon dating to explore a wooden wheel found in 1968. The wheel was made of oak or birch and was found in a burial of the so called Yamnaya culture. The people of this culture inhabited large territories of modern Ukraine in Early Bronze Age (around 2900-2300 BCE). The carbon dating gave the result of approximately 4500 years ago. There were two other wheel in the burial, but they fell into pieces when they were found. Archaeologists think that the people of the Yamnaya culture buried their dead with all things necessary for the life after death. So, while this wheel is not as old as the one found in Mesopotamia (app. 5,500 years old), it will definitely add to the pride of the Odessans :).

Cossack ship

Ukrainian archaeologists have found and recovered the last part of a single-masted Cossack ship near Khortitsa island on Dnieper. The XVIII century ship was found in 1999 and recovered in 2004. It was conserved in a specially built hangar on the Khortitsa island. Unfortunately, during the 1999 spring flood the stern of the ship was torn away and carried by the current some kilometers down the river. The search can only be performed in winter, when the water is clearer than in summer, and in February 2007 the missing part was found. In March the works started. The recovered stern will be conserved and added to the remains stored in the museum. Besides, the archaeologist say that during the search they found remains of more ships. The remains of another, smaller, Cossack boat are already in the Khortitsa National Reserve (link in Ukrainian) and taken together, these ships could make a good exposition.

Earlier, the director of the Institute for Underwater Explorations Maxim Ostapenko found a Scythian settlement on the island. Greek amphorae are sometimes found near Khortitsa, and it makes the archaeologists hope that some traces of the Greek ships may found -- anchors or other parts. Unfortunately, Ostapenko says, the riverbed is changing fast due to the construction of water reserves in XX century and the ships remains may be lost forever if not recovered as fast as possible.

March 12 in Russian history

1899: The first international ice hockey match in Russia. Russian team Sport plays against the team of British citizens living in St.Petersburg. The game took place on the ice of Neva. The score is 4:4.

1940: The end of the Soviet-Finnish war known as the Winter War. On the one hand, USSR reached all the planned goals: the border was moved farther from Leningrad and Murmansk, obtained the Karelian isthmus, islands in the Gulf of Finland, Ladoga lake and territories in the North. On the other hand, the international prestige of the USSR both as a partner and as a possible enemy was seriously damaged. The consequences were much worse for Finland. The worst being that this war forced Finland to co-operate with the Nazi Germany, turning the country into the losing side of the WWII.

1964: General Pyotr Grigorenko is sent to the psychiatric investigation. General-major Grigorenko was born in 1907. In 1934 he graduated from the Academy of Military Engineering and in 1939 from the Academy of the Army General Staff. In 1939 he was granted an audience with A.Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor General of the USSR and informed him of "abuses of power" by the NKVD officials in Zaporozhye. The information was provided by Grigorenko's brother Ivan, who was arrested, and later released. Some time later a number of the organizers of repressions in Zaporozhye were arrested themselves. Grigorenko wrote later: "Only many years after I understood that the case ended to my satisfaction only because it coincided with the change of the leaders in NKVD. It was the new broom of Beria." After the war General Grigorenko works in the M.Frunze Military Academy. In 1961, he says a speech on a regional Communist Party congress, where he says: "We approve the draft programme where the cult of personality is condemned, but do we do everything possible to avoid the restoration of such cult?" He proposed to democratize the elections, to promote the accountability of the party authorities and their rotation, to abolish high salaries of the party officials. He was fired from the Academy after this speech.

In 1962-1964 Grigorenko works in the army on the Far East. In 1963 he creates "The Union of Struggle for Restoration of Leninism". He wrote leaflets where he demanded to dismiss bureaucrats, called for free elections, for the control of the people over the authorities, for the "replaceability" (is this the word for the possibility to dismiss the officials unable to cope with their tasks?) On the February 1, 1964 he and his sons who were also members of the Union, are arrested. He was excluded from the party, discharged to rank-and-file soldier, stripped of all awards and sent to the Leningrad special psychiatric hospital. After the resignment of Khrushchev he was release from the hospital. He wrote a book published only in Samizdat, where he accused Stalin of many errors in the first years of the war, which led to many tragedies. In 1967 he unofficially read lectures on the history of the World War II to the students of the Moscow State University.

The experience of the "Union of Struggle for Restoration of Leninism" led him to the conclusion that the underground resistance to the Soviet power is useless. "We know that in the underground one can meet only rats," he wrote. These words became the title of his book, which is available online in Russian (see В подполье можно встретить только крыс). In 1967 he supported the national movement of the Crimean Tatars, who demanded to allow them to return from deportation to Crimea. In 1969 he was sent to the psychiatric hospital again, where he was diagnosed in the following way: "suffers from a mental disorder in the form of pathological (paranoid) personality with reformatory ideas."

In 1974 under the pressure of the international community he was released. In 1976 he joined the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group and becomes a co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. In 1977 he goes to the USA to meet with his son, who emigrated earlier. Some months later his Soviet citizenship was cancelled and he lost the right to return to the USSR. The US army offered him a position in the West Point academy, but Grigorenko refused: "I am a Soviet -- former Soviet -- general and I cannot teach our enemies." In 1987, Pyotr Grigorenko died in New York.

In 1997 President Yeltsin signed the decree "On the perpetuation of the memory of Grigorenko P.G.". President of Ukraine L.Kuchma awarded P.Grigorenko with the order "For the courage". An avenue in Kiev is named after P.Grigorenko. Crimean Tatars built a monument to the general in Simferopol.

March 7 in Russian history

1573: Ivan Fyodorov (Moskvitin), known as the first Russian book printer, founds a typography in Lviv. It is assumed that he was born around 1510. Probably, it happened in Petkovichi, somewhere between Minsk and Brest in modern Byelorussia. In 1529-1532 he studied, it seems, in the Kraków university in Poland).In the end of XIV century, there was a typography in Kraków, run by Szwaipolt Feol (spelling may be wrong. Does anybody know the correct spelling?) and Ivan Fyodorov could learn printing there. Till 1550, he lived in Ukraine, where he became known as a cannon maker and he is said to be the inventor of a multibarrelled mortar. In 1550 he comes to Moscow, where he joins the retinue of the metropolitan Makarius and becomes a deacon in a church and participates in a "commission" to agree variant versions of church books. Fyodorov also works in the so called Anonymous typography, founded on order of metropolitan Makarius. This typography never produced any books, only some sample pages. In 1553, Ivan the Terrible orders to organize another typography. On the request of the tsar, the king of Denmark sent a specialist to assist and advise, but when the typography finally starts working in 1563, it is not managed by a foreigner, but by Ivan Fyodorov. On April 19, 1563, Ivan Fyodorov and Pyotr Mstislavets begin working on a book call Acts and Epistles of the Saint Apostles (or simply Apostolos). In this book, Fyodorov and Mstislavets developed the rules of Russian bookprinting, new fonts and other principles which defined the appearance of Russian books for centuries.

In 1563, Makarius died and the printers lost their patron. Clerics and, of course, scribes, start persecuting the innovators. They print other books, but in 1566, the fire destroyed the typography and Fyodorov and Mstislavets decided to leave to Lithuania. Ivan the Terrible lets them go and they come to the great hetman of Lithuania, H. Khodkevich, who welcomes them and organizes a typography in his estate in Zabludovo. In 1569 Mstislavets goes to Vilnius and Fyodorov keeps working in Zabludovo. By 1570, Khodkevich loses his influence and Fyodorov cannot continue his business and decides to go to Lviv. Here, in 1573, he organizes the first typography in Ukraine. In 1575, he meets knyaz Konstantin Ostrozhsky, the owner of a large estate Ostrog (or Ostrih). Konstantin supported the Ukrainian national movement and tried to collect the Ukrainian intellectuals. While living in Ostrog, Fyodorov prints a number of religious books, the Chronology by Andrei Rymsha, a dictionary by Timofey Annich called The Book, etc. He often visits Kraków and Lviv. In 1576 he visits Turkey. In 1582 he decides to establish a new typography in Kiev, but in 1583 Ivan Fyodorov died.

1757: The first joint stock company in Russia is organized, "Russian company trading in Constantinople". Only members of the royal family were allowed to buy shares. Public joint stock companies appeared only after 1805, when Alexander I signed the decree "On the public liability of joint stock companies". By 1829, 19 new companies were working in Russia.

1891: Diplomatic relationships are established between Russia and the Great Duchy of Luxembourg

1960: Sailors of the USS Kearsarge notice a barge in the middle of the Pacific ocean. They find four Soviet soldiers on the barge. Askhat Ziganshin, Anatoly Kryuchkovsky, Filipp Poplavsky and Ivan Fedotov were on the barge when on January 17 it was driven by a storm into the open ocean. It had happened before but they had managed to use the diesel engines to get back. This time the wind was too strong. They had a loaf of bread and a small bag with grain. They found some kilograms of potato smelling with diesel fuel. For more than a month they survived on these scarce resources. When they finished with it, they boiled and ate leather wrist watch straps. Then came the belts. Then came the boots. They boiled them a number of times, "till the water stopped to get black", cut them in small pieces and fried these cuts using the sea water instead of salt. "It was like potato chips," Ziganshin recalled later. They tried to eat toothpaste and soap, but the idea was rejected. They also drank the rain water. 5 gulps per day. Later the norm was lowered to 3 gulps per day.

During the storm, a wooden box with the name of the barge was lost and later found on the beach, so the Soviet army authorities were convinced that the four had drowned and sent the notifications to their families.

There were so many holes in the hull that every day they spent hours trying to pump away the water.

They were often asked if they had conflicts, quarrels or even why they didn't eat each other. Kryuchkovsky recalled later: "None of us had a nervous breakdown. Under those conditions, if I tried to raise my voice, I wouldn't be talking to you now." When they sailed on Queen Mary to Europe, a sailor told them that he was in a similar situation and a number of people died. Not because of starvation or thirst, but they were killed in fights.

On March 2 and 6 they saw ships passing by, but they were not noticed. On March 7 they saw helicopters. Some hours later the aircraft carrier Kearsarge appeared, but stayed on a distance. The pilots offered them to climb up, but they refused. When asked, why, Kryuchkovsky shrugs: "We hoped that they have elevators on Kearsarge to lift the barge. We wanted to save the socialist property". On the other hand, Ziganshin recalls that when asked why the ship didn't come close to the barge the Americans answered that they were a bit afraid of Russians. A journalist from Life magazine asked them if they would like to sell their story. The notion of selling a story must have been even more weird to them as it is now to me, and they refused. He asked then if they would like to ask for an asylum in the USA. "God forbid," Ziganshin answered, "we want to go home."

This adventure was incredibly popular in the USSR. There was even a song, called Ziganshin-boogy ("Ziganshin-rock, Ziganshin-boogy, Poplavsky ate a letter from his girlfriend! Ziganshin-boogy, Ziganshin-rock, Poplavsky eats his second boot!")

Kryuchkovsky lives now in Kiev. Ziganshin lives in Lomonosov, near St.Petersburg. Fedotov and Poplavsky died.

An archaeological park to be built in Crimea

The local authorities of Kerch, a city in the Eastern Crimea, are developing a plan to create an archaeological park. The park is to be located in Arshintsevo, a district of Kerch. This place is known as the ancient town Tyritake (Τυριτακε). The Greek colony was established in mid-VI century BCE. It was captured and destroyed by Huns in the IV century CE. The first arhaeological expedition started excavations in Tyritake in 1932. The park will include reconstructed walls and towers, houses and wineries, an early Christian basilique. It is planned that the park will open in five years. Currently, the restoration works in Tyritake are performed by Crimean department of the Ukrainian Institute of Orient and the charity foundation "Demetra".

From newspaper Kommersant.

Ukrainian archaeologists find an ancient settlement in Rovno

Last December, when checking the territory before the construction works in a forest near lake Basov Ugol not far from Rovno (Rivno), a group of Ukrainian archaeologists, led by Bogdan Prishchepa, has discovered an ancient settlement. They found pottery, bone and stone ornamentation, flint arrowheads and a place for sacrifices, which contained a bull skeleton. Altogether, about 100 artifacts were found. There are three layers in this settlement. The first one is dated by III millennium BCE, the second -- by III-II centuries BCE and the third one belongs to the Slavic tribes, VIII-X centuries CE. Bogdan Prishchepa assumes that the settlement belonged to the tribes which were predecessors of later Germanic, Baltic and Slavic tribes. He thinks that the find proves the theory that all these ethnic groups originate from the territory of modern Ukraine.

Sources in Russian:

E-news
Gazeta in Ukrainian
Novy Region