DEAD CHILDREN BENEATH BATURYN:
Archeologists find evidence of a horrendous crime from the time 

of Peter the Great

In Baturyn city, on the site of a ruined fortress, scientists have excavated a mass grave of crippled children. Local historians consider the find to be evidence of a war crime committed by soldiers fighting for Russian king Peter I. They express surety that the crime was carried out by Russian soldiers under the command of Alexander Menschikov. 
Of the 70 burial mounds found by Chernigiv archeologists in the Baturyn mass graves site, nearly 30 contained exclusively children. Volodymyr Kovalenko, an archeologist and teacher from the Ukrainian History Department at Chernigiv State University, says, "This year, in the excavation site we saw children's graves. There the dead bodies lay in rows, without coffins, along a coal vein in the ground. At some burial sites, the corpses' skulls were smashed, others had been shot through. There are bodies of both children and teenagers, the age of the buried ranges from 2 to 15 years. This shows that the slaughter was total - nobody was left in Baturyn." 
In November 1708, after a plot was formed by Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Karl the XIIth, Peter I set out with his army for the hetman capital of Baturyn (in present-day Chernigiv oblast). Fifteen thousand civilians hid from him in the capital fortress. 
A traitor is suspected of having shown the Russian soldiers a secret entrance to the fortress. After entering the fortress, the soldiers first burned and razed it to the ground. After that, the slaughter began. It resulted in the deaths of at least six thousand civilians. The next day the corpses were buried in the frozen ground. 
All the graves that have been found are quite shallow and filled up with earth, clay, and ash. The efforts to excavate these mass graves are funded by a Canadian Diaspora group called Baturyn Ukrainian Troja. Those working on the project state that the dead citizens of Baturyn will not be reburied. Their graves will be consecrated and again filled up with earth. A stone cross with no inscriptions on it will be placed near the burial site. 
For the present, only historians refer to the events at Baturyn as a war crime. 

CREATING CULTURAL CAPITAL 

            The three C method-Creating Cultural Capital-has long been a European strategy for developing small burgs and quiet small towns into major cultural centers. As an example, Strasbourg first commenced its development with the help of local initiatives and arrangements: first it organized art exhibitions, next came classical music concerts and rock festivals, and then later came tourists and tourist-related infrastructure accompanied by economic growth. At the end of the process, Strasbourg was chosen as the center for the European Council.
Mayors from eight smaller towns and seven district centers in Ukraine have recently studied the experience of the European Council in regards to issues of cultural development. All of these mayors earned this chance by winning a peculiar contest organized by the European Council with the support of the Ukrainian Parliament. They sought possible ways to use economics to increase cultural development, and, conversely, ways to use culture to improve economic development. They realized that in the modern world, economic success is often measured using cultural factors and culture is becoming the engine of the economy. Cultural activity has helped other European countries to develop; they bring in continental tourists to learn about the historical and artistic achievements of cities, regions and even entire countries. According to Ukrainian Parliamentary Deputy Les' Taniuk, Head of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, culture can drive social-economic reforms and thereby promote Ukraine's growth. "Our committee," he has said, "is making efforts to change our country's cultural space, modernize alternative approaches and introducing new principles and mechanisms. In particular, we support the initiative by the International Center "Democracy Through Culture" and the European Council's project "Creating Cultural Capital". We attach great importance to these projects, as they each target local communities themselves. This is a case in which we can say 'There will be no fair wind. In order to sail on we need to row with our own hands rather than expect the central authorities to help us'." 
Experts from the European Council have confirmed that the European Community will gladly help Ukrainians develop their culture in order to return to a "European family of cultures" and establish a respectable presence on the international level. According to the First Secretary of the British Embassy, Martin Harris, the British experience may be helpful for Ukrainians: "Both in Ukraine and Great Britain, culture plays an important role-a role whose importance for the economy and the development of our countries is currently increasing. Kiev has been a capital of culture since ages past, but today, in my opinion, culture also plays an important role for all Ukraine. This is not only true for its economy but also for the process of democratization and on the whole for expressing Ukrainian independence."
The meeting of the European Council with the winning mayors resulted in new uses of internet-technologies to aide cultural development. The towns and district centers, the "creators of cultural capital" for Ukraine, have interlinked themselves into internet-portals, called "Gates of Art" by Les' Taniuk. 

Bogdana Kostiuk