Crimea: from Tavrikiya to our days - on the Presidential Library website

March 18, 2017, marks the third anniversary of the accession of the Crimea to Russia. There is The Republic of Crimea: pages of history electronic collection on the Presidential Library website, which includes the studies, essays, archival documents, photographs and other materials that introduce the administrative, socio-economic, socio-political and cultural development of the region during the period from the most ancient times until the 20th century.

“In ancient times this peninsula was called Tavrikiya, Tauris, Tauric Chersonesos. Later, it was renamed in barbarian languages as Khazaria, then by Crimea, and after all as Perekop,” according to the rare edition of 1788 Tavrikiya, or The known in ancient times and currently about the condition of the Crimea, and its inhabitants up to our times. The author of this large-scale work, the Polish bishop Adam Narushevich, believes that the current name of the peninsula comes from the Cimmerian city of Cimmerion: “And as the Greeks, who use the barbarian words in their language following the form of their own language, have changed, perhaps, Cimmerian, Cimmerion to the Crimnea, the Greek one; so it could be that later the Russian successors of the Greek rites and customary, remembering the ancient city of Crimnea, could call the Crimea an entire peninsula.”

Diplomatic relations with the peninsula began in 1480, when the Moscow prince Ivan III concluded a military-political alliance with the Crimean khan Mengli Gherai, directed against the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of the Lithuanian and Polish Kingdom: “This was the first step towards Russia's rapprochement with Tauris: our diplomatic relations with the Crimea ascended from this. Called to life, on the one hand, due to far-sighted politics, and on the other - due to personal interests, and therefore necessary for both princes, they grew and developed with each passing year wider and wider,” - writes I. K. Kalugin in the 1855 edition Diplomatic relations of Russia with the Crimea, in the reign of John III. Documentary evidence of this event was the An ancient Book of the Crimean Embassy Affairs, 1474-1505, information about which can also be found in the electronic collection.

The Crimea was integrated into the Russian state during the reign of Catherine II in 1783. The 1883 edition of Concerning the Centennial Accession of the Crimea describes this historical moment in this way: “Khan Shagin-Giray in his letter to Empress Catherine expressed his consent and, having entered the Crimea with Russian troops, has solemnly before all his people abdicated from the khan's throne. Then Catherine the Great announced with her manifesto on the accession of the Crimea to Russia.” A digital copy of the manifesto on the accession of the peninsula is presented on the Presidential Library website in the 21st volume of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire. In this edition, in particular, said that all Crimean residents are assured with “sacred and unshakable care of them evenly with our natural subjects, the protection and the defense of their persons, property, churches and their natural faith, from us personally and for successors of our throne…”

The management of the new territory was entrusted to the companion of the Empress Grigory Potemkin, who later received the title of Prince Tavricheski for his work on the organization of Tauris: “Potemkin tried to revive the industry of the Crimea: he patronized sheep and silkworms breeding, built roads, founded Sevastopol, which, according to the Empress, was supposed to play on the Black Sea the same role that Petersburg played in the Baltic,” - as we can read from the above-mentioned book Concerning the Centennial Accession of the Crimea. The visitors of the Presidential Library website have a unique opportunity to learn more about the activities of Prince Potemkin through his correspondence, decrees, reports and other documents that were collected in one edition, published in 1894.

The Republic of Crimea: pages of history electronic collection also included rare books, owing to which you can look at the peninsula through the eyes of another century travelers. “Bakhchisarai is quite extensive, located in a shape of an amphitheater on both banks of the Churuk-su River city, which remains the only one in the Crimea that has saved a completely eastern face. It has the same Asian curve and narrow streets, on which the triple carriage can hardly pass… On the main lateral street, coming from the entrance, there is a row of stone houses with wooden annexes. There are shops and studios at their first floors… When you move from one shop to the other, along the streets and lanes, you are surrounded by stained and dressed in rags children, who are begging for money,” – that how one of the cities of the peninsula is described in 1855-year edition” named Crimea, with Sevastopol, Balaklava and its other cities: With the descriptions of its rivers, lakes, mountains and valleys; with its history, inhabitants, their customs and way of life. “Nature here has not spared itself: it wanted to show off with its master's hand, to prove that art is just weak imitator of it. Everywhere here your vision is delighted, your heart feels pleasure and the soul, full of rapture, soars,” – P. I. Sumarokov described the local beauties with excitement in his book A journey throughout the Crimea and Bessarabia in 1799.

Aside through the printed word, a beauty of the nature of the region with its architectural masterpieces can be seen through widely represented on the Presidential Library website visual representation of the Crimea. There is the Ai-Petri, the famous embankment of Yalta, the views of Sevastopol, the Balaklava Bay, the Livadia Palace, the beaches of Evpatoria and many other beautiful places on the peninsula.

The Presidential Library has been developing cooperation with the Crimea for several years. Thus, the regional center for access to the resources of the Presidential Library is located in the Crimean Republican Universal Scientific Library named after I. Y. Franco. Several electronic reading rooms were opened and successfully operate in Sevastopol. In the nearest future it is planned to open an information and educational center of the Presidential Library in Simferopol.

In addition, on March 27, 2017, in St. Petersburg, in the building of the Presidential Library on Senate Square, there will be a cultural and educational event dedicated to the 3rd anniversary of the accession of Sevastopol and Crimea to the Russian Federation and the 80th anniversary of the Black Sea Higher Naval School named after P. S. Nakhimov.