Monika Górka / Dominik Napiwodzki Thinkings. »Akkerman steppes« by Adam Mickiewicz
Monika Górka / Dominik Napiwodzki15 Thinkings. »Akkerman steppes« by Adam Mickiewicz In Polish literature, the meaning of steppes was associated with wild nature, mystery, fascination of the unknown, the steppes were a gateway to the other, Tatar and Turkish, oriental world) but the steppe was also a place of isolation, overwhelming loneliness and a feeling of loss. All of that can be found in “The Akkerman Steppes”16 by Adam Mickiewicz. This poem opens the "Crimean Sonnets", itself not being their part, because it was written earlier than the cycle of poems, being a collection of impressions from the stay in Crimea. This poem, created by a Polish poet, became a beloved poem of other nations (Lithuanians, Belarusians). It also became a poem of the Ukrainians as well as the Crimean Tatars themselves. The poem united these nations in a feeling of love for nature, freedom, beauty and at the same time in a feeling of loss for something elusive. Why did we choose this poem? We chose it in honour two of our friends, who passed away in 2020, and who loved Crimea as much as we did. Our friends, Ali Khamzin and prof. Swietłana Czerwonnaja, they, like the Akkerman Steppes, were the links between west and east, with their actions and their lives they connected the Crimea and the Crimean Tatars
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Monika Górka and Dominik Napiwodzki are ICATAT fellows since 2019. They are former students of Professor Swietłana Czerwonnaja at Nicolaus Copernicus Universtiy in Torun, Poland. They are Cultural Anthropologists and Ethnologists. Since 2011 they have been active in the field of research, with publications in various scientific anthropological journals. Monika Gorka's main interests are indigenous cultures, history of colonization in the Russian East and the Americas. Dominik Napiwodzki is additionally a pianist. His anthropological interests are Islamic nations of the former Soviet Union areas, urban anthropology and corporate anthropology. They are living in Germany since 2015. 16 Akkerman is a fortress and city in Odessa Oblast in southwest Ukraine and is now called BilhorodDnistrowskyj (Ukrainian Білгород-Дністровський; Romanian Cetatea Albă; Turkish Akkerman; German Weißenburg). The city has 50,000 inhabitants (2015) and belonged to the historical region of Bessarabia. In the sixth century BC the colony of Tyras of the ionian city of Milet was founded on the site of today's city of Akkerman. In the 15th century, as well as between 1918 and 1940 and from 1941 to 1944, the city bore the official Romanian name Cetatea Albă. From 1503 to 1918 and from 1940 to 1941 the city was called Akkerman (Аккерман). Ak means "light / white" in Tatar and other Turcic languages and kerman means "rock". Historically the city was also known as: in Greek Asprokastron or Maurokastron and Latin Mauro-, Moncastrum, in Hungarian it is called Dnyeszterfehérvár ("White City on the Dniester"). Destroyed during the Migration Period (better known as the Barbarian Invasions), the city was later rebuilt by the Eastern Slavs as Belgorod ("White City"), but destroyed again by Cumans and Tatars. Genoese rebuilt it in 1261 under the name Maurocastro. Then the Moldovan Prince Stefan the Great expanded the fortress into an important military base, which was conquered by Sultan Bayezid II. velī in 1484. Some inhabitants were deported to Constantinople. In 1812, like all of Bessarabia, Akkerman became permanently part of Russia through the Treaty of Bucharest. In 1918 the city was Romanian, occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, and Romanian occupied 1941–1944 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union; 1944 through the advance of the Red Army Soviet again and as Belgorod (Russian) again part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic of the USSR until 1991. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the declaration of independence of Ukraine, the city remained as Bilhorod part of Odessa Oblast and thus Ukrainian territory.
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