The exhibition “North Azovian Greeks: Paths of Identity” has opened at the Museum

On 8 August, the anniversary of the beginning of the violent expulsion of the Urumi and Roumeans from Crimea by the Russian Empire, the Holodomor Museum opened a multimedia exhibition entitled ‘North Azovian Greeks: Paths of Identity.’ The Urumi and Roumeans are an indigenous people of Ukraine, formed in medieval Crimea based on the unification of Crimean Christians of various origins (Greeks, Goths, Alans, Turkic peoples, Georgians, Vlachs). They were called ‘Greeks’ in the Russian Empire primarily because they adhered to a Greek rite of Christianity.

In 1778, the Russian government issued an order for the forced displacement of the Urumi and Roumeans from their home, the Crimean Peninsula, allegedly with the aim of ‘saving’ the Orthodox population from Muslim oppression. Not everyone was able to survive the journey; many died along the way from exhaustion and disease. As a result, these people became the ‘North Azovian Greeks,’ settling in Mariupol and other settlements in the North Azov region. In our time, history has repeated itself. The Urumi and Roumeans have once again been forced to leave their homes and cities. As of August 2025, almost all places of dense settlement of the Urumi and Roumeans in the Donbas region are currently occupied by Russia, which includes 75 settlements in the Donetsk region, including the city of Mariupol, as well as the village of Novomlynivka in the Zaporizhzhia region. Once again, Russia has deprived these peoples of their homeland.

The head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Oleksandr Alfiorov, emphasised that the following year, 8 August should be established at the state level as a date to commemorate the violent deportation of Urumi and Roumeans from Crimea. The opening ceremony of the exhibition was also attended by Lesia Hasydzhak, head of the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide, Ihor Lossovskyi, Deputy Head of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, Tamila Tasheva, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Eskender Bariiev, Chairman of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre and member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People.

Prominent historians discussed the past of the Urumi and Roumeans, and historical parallels with the present in detail during an open dialogue entitled ‘The Path of Identity,’ which took place as part of the exhibition opening. The discussion was moderated by Larysa Yakubova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Ukrainian History of the 1920s–1930s at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Valerii Tomazov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Head of the Department of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Oleksandr Maiboroda, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Deputy Director of the I. F. Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Yuliia Konstantinova, PhD, Dean of the History Department at Mariupol State University; Andrii Ivanets, PhD, Senior Research Fellow at the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide; Olha Tsuprykova, co-founder and chair of the NGO ‘North Azovian Greeks: Urumi and Roumeans’.

The exhibition will run at our museum until the twenty-eighth of September. We invite everyone to check it out and learn more about the Urumi and Roumeans. We are also planning free curated tours, and we will announce the dates later. Stay tuned for our announcements!

For more information, please visit the page of our partners, the NGO “North Azovian Greeks”.

Photo: Dmytro Holovchenko / NGO ‘North Asovian Greeks: Urumi and Roumeans’.