For centuries, Soviet and Russian historiography has promoted the narrative that southern Ukraine was a “civilizational void,” a wasteland where culture only emerged with the arrival of the empire. But Yaroslav Chentsov, the creator of the “Crimea Beyond Empires” project, uses modern 3D technology to prove the opposite, turning digitized artifacts into weapons in the cultural war.
In an interview with Intent, he explained how this works, why he came up with the idea for such a project, and what myths the Russians have been perpetuating.
“Most people—ordinary citizens, not scholars, not historians, not archaeologists—basically lack a deep understanding of what happened in Crimea during the Middle Ages and the early modern period; perhaps they cling to these imperial myths— Russian imperialor, later, Soviet ones— that Crimeawas bought and sold, and that it has always belonged to the Russians. And even if that’s not the case, to deepen our understanding of the complex, ethnic, and diverse processes that took place in this territory, we need, in principle, to examine the artifacts that have been left behind. “By providing context for the artifact itself, I believe people will gain an understanding of how these processes unfolded and that everything is much more complex than we might have imagined or than Russian imperial narratives portray,” noted Yaroslav Chentsov.
The 3D models were created using photogrammetric surveying and have already been made publicly available on the SketchHub platform. SKWFW is an open online platform; access to it is completely open and free for anyone with an internet connection and a smartphone or laptop. The platform features a page for the Odesa Archaeological Museum, where various models from different projects have been published for several years. The latest project is presented as a collection. You can view the collection, titled “Crimea Beyond Empires.” These 50 artifacts have been published there.
Кирило Бойко