Long read: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers

Among matters of national pride, cultural heritage should rank right up there. But not many of us go out of our way, let along risk our lives to protect it. Here’s a long read about a bunch of Ukrainians who have done exactly that – ventured into war torn areas of Ukraine to rescue art and artefacts that are representative of their nation’s history and culture before they get pillaged by the Russian invaders. Before we delve into the story, there is a parallel closer home in India though not quite as dramatic – the India Pride Project which was set up to bring back stolen Indian artefacts with some degree of success.

The article begins with Leonid Marushchak, a historian by training who loved the modernist works by artist Natalya Maksymchenko

“There were vessels covered with bold abstract glazes in purple, scarlet and yellow; exuberant figurines of musicians and dancers with swirling skirts; dishes painted with birds in flight. The collection was the radiant highlight of the local history museum in Sloviansk, the ceramicist’s home town….as the Russian army inched nearer and nearer to the museum, Marushchak worried that these works in delicate porcelain could be destroyed by a missile in a moment – or, if Sloviansk were occupied, taken by the invaders back to Moscow.”

When his requests to the authorities to evacuate them on priority, he decided to take matters into his own hands:

“Without his own means of getting to Sloviansk, Marushchak had his brother-in-law drive him from Kyiv 300 miles east to the city of Dnipro. From there, friends took him a further 50 miles, to the city of Pavlohrad. Then he walked to the last checkpoint in town and hitched a lift for the last 120 miles – this time, on a Soviet-era armoured personnel carrier….In Sloviansk, artillery boomed alarmingly close; the opposing armies were fighting over a town only 18 miles away.”

And he managed to get there in time to save the national treasure:

“…Aside from the Maksymchenko ceramics and the medals, there was also a natural history collection to deal with – AKA, stuffed animals, which, just to add another layer of danger to the enterprise, had probably been preserved with highly toxic arsenic. Into Marushchak’s ark – in reality, a police van that deputy minister for culture Chuyeva had managed to commandeer for him – went a moose, a bison, a fox, a wild boar, a wolf and a small herd of deer. All were spirited on a long journey west to a safer location….

…He has (since) organised the evacuation of dozens of museums across Ukraine’s frontline – packing, recording, logging and counting each item and sending them to secret, secure locations away from the combat zone. Among the many tens of thousands of artefacts he has rescued are individual drawings and letters in artists’ archives, collections of ancient icons and antique furniture, precious textiles, and even 180 haunting, larger-than-life medieval sculptures known as babas, carved by the Turkic nomads of the steppe.”

And why was it worth risking his life:

“A nation’s understanding of itself is built on intangible things: stories and music, poems and language, habits and traditions. But it is also held in its artworks and artefacts, fragile objects that human hands have made and treasured. Once lost or destroyed, they are gone for ever, along with the stores of knowledge they contain, and potential knowledge that future generations might harvest from them. For Marushchak, his country’s culture, no less than its territory, is at stake in this war: a culture that Vladimir Putin has repeatedly claimed has no distinct existence, except as an adjunct to Russia’s.”

The article goes on to highlight other stories bravery all in the interest of protecting the nation’s heritage.

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