Catherine the Great decree for Greeks in Mariupol lost
Empress Catherine the Great’s decree ordering the Greeks of Ukraine to relocate from Crimea to present-day Mariupol has vanished after Russian troops occupied the city and bombed the museum housing it.
The document, written in Russian and Greek and deemed the most important historical relic of the Greeks of Ukraine, may have been burned, according to museum officials, as it has been in the underground crypt that caught fire. Other possibilities include someone moving it to a safe place or it being “transferred” to Russia.
“When the Greeks, exiled in essence from the (autonomous region) of the Crimean Khanate, arrived in Azov, after the Russian-Turkish war (1787-91), they received, in May 1779, the official document from Catherine the Great, which ensured their voluntary resettlement and settlement,” the interim director of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore, Oleksandr Gore, told Kathimerini.
