Crimea in the Focus. What is Left Behind the Frame?

We invite you to a conversation between Martin-Oleksandr Kisly and Mavile Khalil around the newly digitized collection of photo slides from the 1940s from Crimea. 

What did Crimea look like before 1944, when all Crimean Tatars were evicted? It is difficult to understand this from the window-dressing Soviet chronicles, which hide more than they show. Therefore, every new visual source from that period is a real treasure, even if it is just one photo. 

Some photographs have long been known to researchers and the community, while others have been miraculously discovered to this day. This is the case with the collection that was accidentally found in the attic of a house in Germany and transferred to the Center's Urban Media Archive for digitization. Images from the German occupation of Crimea are of great ethnographic value: they are usually not staged and demonstrate the life of one of the indigenous peoples of Crimea, the Crimean Tatars.

The introduction to the previously unknown collection of slides of the peninsula during the German occupation is the beginning of a conversation about Crimea in the period between Soviet indigenization and the deportation of 1944. In particular, we will try to answer the question: what do we know and what knowledge is lacking about the history of the indigenous people of Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, during this period? 

We invite you to a conversation about what has been erased from memory, what remains hidden, and what we can bring back to the modern Crimean narrative.

The event will be held as part of the [unarchiving] program and the HeritEDGE: Digital Archiving and Research project of the Center for Urban History with the support of the University of St. Andrews.