Historic task force in South Ossetia

By Vestnik Kavkaza

Five years ago South Ossetia was recognized by Russia as an independent state. However, the events of the post-war period show that Tskhinali has neither the resources nor the time to pay attention to all the details of statehood. This concerns history, which is called the face of a state. Today there is almost no systematized information of the history of South Ossetia. Moscow historians help the South Ossetians.

Historian Vitaly Semenov says that in his projects he is interested in all people of all nations and faiths who are connected with the history of the former USSR.

Recently Semenov has held a unique expedition to South Ossetia, where he copied materials from all military commissariats of the republic.

“Depending on the political situation, in national military conflicts the monuments of history, culture, world heritage sites that belong to humanity, suffer first of all. And therefore there is a need for people that are sufficiently educated, that is, are historians or archaeologists, and at the same time are so determined, that, at a time when war is happening, a conflict is ongoing or immediately thereafter, they do not get lost and take necessary primary actions to preserve archival documents and historical monuments. Because archival documents are as unique as a human life, these documents in principle cannot be reproduced, they exist only in one copy,” the historian explains.

Being in Tskhinvali, Semenov understood that when a man or a small area has experienced the shock of a military conflict there is no communication between ministries: “We come for example to a conscription center, and there we are shown, as a joke, a full unguarded metal cabinet with the personal dossiers of officers, probably 3000. Nobody is guarding it, even the department that was responsible for them has been disbanded a long time ago, and they just show it off as if you know some interesting tree growing in their yard: "Oh, look! Do you know what interesting documents we have here?” I said, “Guys, have any of you thought that these are the case files of Ossetian soldiers, they should be transferred to an archive?" They do not even understand what you are saying. War creates a tunnel consciousness. That is, people see only what they are responsible for and only what matters to them. But almost no one is addressing the issue of how to rescue, evacuate and copy cultural heritage in a situation of war. There is no such organization. There is the so-called World Heritage Organization associated with UNESCO, but it generally deals with top-level organizations, those that are on the UNESCO list and so on.”

The situation in South Ossetia is difficult due to its peculiarities: “When the ethnic conflicts started in 1991 and up until 2008 it was and partially still is a very mixed territory. It is very similar to the former Yugoslavia. It represents a mix of Georgian and Ossetian villages. Traces of war are seen very clearly five years later, starting with the terrible state of the roads. But traces of recovery are visible. You can see them in a very interesting way, by the red roofs. For some reason, all the houses have the same roofs of the same color and metal, that is, it’s very easy to discern that a building has been restored. There are a lot of them.

Sometimes you see very stupid things - for example, plastic manhole covers, which break all the time. We have seen on many streets holes that are not covered, the cover simply fell through and the cars go round the holes on the pavements. Our firms renovated everything and for some reason they decided that it would take too long to transport iron covers through the mountains, so we have plastic ones.

Here we see a huge number of houses without even traces of repair. On the other hand, we see most clearly that houses were shot at and all the talk it was not a war but some kind of nonsense, that someone was hurt accidentally, it's not true. The city was completely bombarded.”

The historian is very sorry about that, because Tskhinval is a historic city: “There is very little to read about it, but there was a monument there, I do not know if it had national status or not, but there was the oldest Jewish quarter. A  Jewish quarter that was known since the 10th century OE. It was the closest to the area of fire and it suffered the most. Nowhere could I find any work which would be related to it. Shall we say, that was a set of old photos from the Soviet time, and here is a new one. This is what’s been damaged, lost, etc. But the quarter itself can be traced easily. That is, you can figure out where it used to be, you can even imagine how it looked like and what has been lost. Because the Jewish population of Tskhinvali, the Georgian Jews who speak Georgian but whose religion is Judaism, they accounted for about 30 % of the population of Tskhinvali. Now, I think, there is one old Jewish woman left. One. This is an area that is absolutely not thought about. It doesn’t cross anybody’s mind that Tskhinvali, like Kutaisi or Tbilisi, is a historic city. For example, very interesting brickwork is visible. When a historian comes by, he sees it, what used to be here.”

Semenov and his team copied military documents in South Ossetia: “The republic has four districts: Dzhava district, fully Ossetian; Znaursk district with 50% Georgian population, Leningorsk district is almost entirely Georgian, and the Tskhinvali district, which was a mix of Georgian-Ossetian population, Georgian and Ossetian villages. What have we seen? Very different scenes. For the Dzhava and Znaursk districts, about the same number of papers survived, about 3 or 4 war folders. Of roughly the same volume, although the Dzhava district is larger. What have we found there? By the way, it has been scanned, soon these documents will appear on the database of "Memorial". The most valuable materials are the death notifications of soldiers sent from their unit. A man fought in the war, in the 375th Infantry Regiment, and from there the funeral notification was sent. Why is this document important? Because it gives information about where a person was killed, in what military unit. If you are able to find such funerals, then an expedition has been successful, because, as a rule, they always provide new places, new names. It always turns out that for example a person was listed as missing in action, i.e. there was no information, but now it turns out that actually we know where he served, it is possible to establish where he is buried, etc.”

According to Semenov, the work in South Ossetia was a testing ground, and that helped us to understand the need to go to places, in particular to Syria, because now there is a situation when monuments of world heritage, of national and global importance, are dying uncontrollably. “There are sites associated with the Bible, monuments related to the first centuries of Christianity, and the first centuries of Islam, not only buildings, but also manuscripts, archival documents. And the question arises, how can we save them? The question arises and with it the need for historic special forces, which would operate effectively in life-threatening circumstances, and understand clearly why they do it. Because if something is not done today, it may be too late to do it tomorrow. The South Ossetian expedition was dedicated to perfecting these skills.”