Chersonesos: Governing the '*russian World' through Reconstruction and Blagoustroystvo

• In Event: Infrastructures of Occupation I: Apparatuses of *russian (Re)coloniality

Abstract

My paper will focus on the ruins of Chersonesos, an outdoor museum in Crimean Sevastopol, which was transformed by russia into a historical park and a new urban space. By constructing a park, the russian political agenda pursued two main goals: integrating Crimea into russia as a new territory and making Crimea a space for the initiation of russians into the so-called ‘russian world’. I analyze the construction of Chersonesos as a space in Sevastopol, where new tools of blagoustroystvo and reconstruction were developed and applied. In 2022, this form of governing and molding people into russian citizens was used in other occupied territories of Ukraine.

Author

• Aleksandra Simonova, Brown U