Crimea bids farewell to Oleksa Hayvoronsky. What did he leave behind?

A true friend of Crimean Tatars, historian Oleksa Hayvoronsky died in Crimea. He was 49. What is known about the outstanding researcher of Crimean history?

He dreamed of writing a script for a large project about the Giray Khan dynasty. The monarchs of the peninsula, who ruled the Crimean state for almost 350 years, were the main line of work of Oleksa Hayvoronskyi's life.

His articles about medieval Crimea became a revelation for many Crimeans. Because during the Soviet cleansing of the Crimea from the indigenous people, the Giray khanate was lied to, and history was distorted.

He became a friend of the Crimean Tatar people and probably the most successful manager (deputy director) of the Khan's Palace - the only surviving monument of Crimean Tatar palace architecture.

He was gotten rid of in 2010, after Yanukovych's victory in the presidential elections. His newly appointed "Donetsk" authorities then placed "their" people even in cemeteries. And the Khan Palace was a political institution. They just couldn’t allow an outspoken Ukrainian with pro-Crimean Tatar views to be in charge of such a place.

However, Hayvoronsky found himself in the media. In 2011, Lenur Islyamov restarted the ATR TV channel, and historians became in demand on the first Crimean Tatar television.

Hayvoronsky went out every week with "walks around the Crimea". From now on, a large number of viewers who did not read his articles and books learned about the history of the Crimean Tatar state. He also made a series of programs about ancient Crimea and included it in the general history of the creation of the Crimean Tatar people.

The two-volume "Lords of Two Continents" became a fundamental work of Hayvoronskyi. Most probably today there is no more thorough work in the Ukrainian language on the history of the Girays - from the founder Khadzhi to the last Shagin.

Oleksa did not take the Russian occupation well. Probably, it was one of the reasons that caused the return of the disease which he had been fighting since 2003. He left Crimea for a short time, but already in 2014 he returned to Crimea, to his native Bakhchisarai.

Later, he removed himself from all social networks, but began to fruitfully cooperate with all Crimean Tatar projects that arose during the occupation. The scripts of several documentaries - in particular about the poet Bekir Choban-zade, the educator Ismail Gasprinskyi - were written by him.

Oleksa wrote the script for the first children's feature film in Crimean Tatar - "Khydyr Dede", which premiered in 2018.

During the occupation, he collected his works on the architectural monuments of the Crimean Middle Ages. From his book "Country of Crimea" we learn details about the Khan's palaces in different regions of the peninsula. Hayvoronsky managed to tell about the objects, most of which were destroyed by the Russians 200 years ago, during the first occupation of Crimea.

Oleksa had been learning Turkish in order to work in Turkey, where valuable materials related to the Crimean Khanate have been preserved in the archives. He didn’t manage to live up to that day. He either didn’t live up to the day when Crimea is liberated from the invaders. He was only 49.