A Fractured History and Politics of Sevastopol, & Balaclava Marmara Saraylar, Marmara Adasi, Sea of Marmara August 8, 2004 Hi Folks, We have just done 2/3rds of the Sea of Marmara from Istanbul on our way to the Dardanelles and the Aegean. It was a quiet motor sail during which I was able to complete this log, a long opinionated discourse on the politics and history of Crimea and the Ukraine. We have not encountered another bureaucrat since entering Turkey at Zonguldak, a refreshing change from the tensions of Ukraine. Enjoy the log, with my apologies to persons of Ukrainian descent who may disagree with my opinions and observations. All the best, Aubrey ****************************************************************************** ***** Log #32y A Fractured History and Politics of Sevastopol, & Balaclava Marmara As mentioned in my last log, Sevastopol is a beautiful city of museums, memorials, broad avenues, parks, and a maritime tradition friendly to both the navy and fishermen (more so I may venture than are Halifax, Esquimalt, or Victoria naval bases in Canada, not to mention our nautically negligent government). I appreciated all the nautical and naval motifs on many of their buildings, balconies, memorials, fountains, wrought iron and concrete fencing, and in the roundabouts throughout the city, with symbols of anchors, chains, ropes, friezes of modern and sailing ships, Triton, tridents, fishing gear, and other nautical paraphernalia. Abundant are memorials, statues and busts of seamen, captains and admirals over the past 220 years since Sevastopol was made the focus of the Russian Black Sea Fleet by Catherine the Great after the end of Ottoman control in 1783. Historically, there was no country called Ukraine before its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. There was of course a cultural region of Ukraine populated by the Cossacks of the steppes, and Tartars, remnants of the Mongol hordes that overwhelmed the region in the 12th and 13th centuries, as well as Kievian Rus, Moldovans, and others. Especially in Crimea, because of its strategic location, it was dominated by the influences of the political, military and economic interests of the ancient Scythians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Genoese, Poles, Lithuanians, Ottomans, Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Chersonessus, now part of Sevastopol (the remains of which we visited), was one of the most important city states on the Black Sea for 1800 years, from 422 BC to 1399 AD when it was finally put to the sword and razed by the Mogul khan Adigey. The Crimean Mongol Khanate existed from 1443 as a vassal state of the Osman (Ottoman) Dynasty, until Crimea was attached to the Russian Empire in 1783. This is the significant starting date for the development of Sevastopol as we know it today (and Crimea and the southern coast of what is now Ukraine), as the Russian Empire needed year-round ice-free ports, and access to the Mediterranean. In fact Sevastopol was to have originally been called Kherson, and Kherson Sevastopol; the names were switched due to a mixup in Catherine's instructions during the founding of these ports. By the time the empress found out about the error, the names had been accepted, and she decided to leave them as they were. (Remember, we visited Kherson up the Dnieper River a few days ago {see Log #32w).) Thus Crimea and the coastal areas of Ukraine were developed by Russia. In our travels along the coast of Ukraine, we have heard only Russian spoken. The first time we encountered Ukrainian was in Kiev. Today 70% of Crimea's population is Russian. Although Ukrainian is the official language, many Russian speakers in Crimea do not speak it. Sevastopol acknowledges its contribution to the communist revolution 1917 to 1920, and in most cities throughout Crimea and the Ukraine statues and parks named after Lenin are common. Stalin has been erased not just because of communist revisionism, but because of the horrors he inflicted upon Ukraine such as the mass starvation of 1932-33 he caused when 5 to 7 million people died, as well as the forced deportation of Tartars and Cossacks from Crimea and the Ukraine. In 1921 Crimea became part of the Soviet Union as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (not part of Ukraine). It was not until 1954 that Crimea was joined to the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (in a drunken gesture by Khrushchev, we have heard from a couple of local Russians). Pardon my bias, but I think it is unfortunate that Crimea is not part of Russia. I also think it unfortunate that Ukraine and Russia separated (1991), to the detriment of both countries. It would be analogous to Quebec separating from Canada, a horrible situation that would be to the disadvantage of Canada, but far more so by economically and culturally marginalizing the 8 to 10 million Quebec French in a North American sea of 300 million English speaking people. Both Canada and Quebec are stronger and better with each other in a single nation. Back to Sevastopol, noted for resistance to two great sieges! The first was in the Crimean War when Russian sailors and army and local populace held out for 349 days from Sept. 13, 1854 to Aug. 27, 1855 against the British, French, Turks and Sardinians, devastating the city. The Black Sea Fleet did not have any mechanized ships at that time, and knew they were no match for the Royal Navy. However to deny the port to them and to ensure no close-in bombardment, the Russian fleet sank its major ships at the entrance to Sevastopol harbour (commemorated with a pillar and statue erected in 1904 on a rock pinnacle off Artillery Bay in downtown Sevastopol). The sailors had moved the cannons from the ships to reinforce the bastions, and manned them in support of the army, under the guidance of Admirals Kornilov and Nakhimov, heroes who led the defense of Sevastopol and who are commemorated with statues, parks and memorials around the present day city. Both were killed during the siege. The British forces had the aid of Florence Nightengale and her nurses to tend to the wounded. Similarly the Russians had a famous surgeon, Dr. N.I. Pirogov, as well as their equivalent of Florence Nightengale in the person of Nurse Prashovja Ivanovna Grafova to tend to their injured troops, especially at the final stages of the siege at Malakhov Hill. An additional heroine was a local citizen Dascha who brought water to the front line troops. Having learned of the Crimean War only from Canadian and British perspectives, it was quite interesting to see it from "the other side". The Panoramic Painting and Museum of the final defence of Sevastopol on Malakhov Hill is an extremely good account of that last battle before the fall of Sevastopol. The second siege was during WW II, a double blow devastating the city once again, caused by the heroic defense of the city against the Nazi armies in 1941-42, and again in 1944 with its liberation by Russian and Ukrainian forces. In 1941-42 the city held out against the Germans for 250 days. In 1944, the whole of Crimea was liberated by the Russian and Ukrainian armies with the assistance of the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Naval Flotilla in a two month period. At Sevastopol, the Germans held out for only 10 days in May of 1944 from the onslaught of the Ukrainians and Russians, the final battle fought at Sapun Hill, a strategic fortress between Sevastopol and Balaclava. The statistics of the battles, deaths and destruction are horrendous with 90% of the city destroyed and less than 10% of the population still alive. I may be subject to Russian and Ukrainian propaganda, but the statistics of WW II I have read are probably accurate. Let me quote from a (propaganda) pamphlet called "The Great Exploit of the People" put out in 1990 by the Novosti Press Agency Publishing House in Moscow (given to me by a club member at the Russian Navy Yacht Club); "From June 1941 until the middle of 1944 (when the second front opened in Europe), 190 to 270 enemy divisions continually fought on the Soviet-German front. The Anglo-American forces were opposed by 9 to 20 divisions in North Africa, and by 7 to 26 divisions in Italy. In the most difficult years (1941 and 1942) Hitler's Germany committed over 70% of its land forces and most of its aviation against the Red Army. Prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, 182 out of the 237 German divisions (or 76.7%) were concentrated on the eastern front. After the second front opened in Europe in the summer of 1944, the Anglo-American forces were confronted by 56 to 75 divisions, while 195 to 240 divisions, including more than 170 German ones fought on the eastern front. Of all the human losses Nazi Germany suffered during the war (13.6 million), 10 million (or 80 %) were ones suffered on the eastern front." I have no reason to doubt these statistics. The Soviets lost over 20 million dead in that war! We sailed around to Balaclava, on the south coast as we did not have to go through any more bureaucracy, other than informing Lebed of our movements. Good winds allowed us to sail 3 of the 5 hours the 21 mile journey took. We have actually had better sailing this year in the Black Sea than we have had for the past three years in the Med or Aegean. The scenery was more dramatic with mountains, and cliffs plummeting hundreds of feet into the clear waters of the Black Sea. At the still a-building marina (hah!) we moored bows to using our own anchor, with no other services, but still paid 28 grivna (about $7.00 Canadian) a night for two nights. We met our first foreign boats since Varna, a Brit by the name of Malcolm single-handing on a 38 foot ketch called Pittulie, and an enjoyable Dutch family on Sally Lightfoot, with two delightful children ages 2 and 3, both born on board. Edo on the Dutch boat has been reading my logs on the www.searoom website and knew of our experiences in Ukraine. Both Pittulie and Sally Lightfoot had major problems when they entered at Yalta, being asked for 40% and 60% of their hull value as a deposit to transit Ukraine! Neither of course had that kind of money to put up, and both fudged a few things to get a 30 day permit and got out of that port before more questions were asked or the deposit was required - a scary situation as their paperwork might be questioned at a later port. Apparently this is a new requirement as of July 1/ 04, and will be a further detriment to sailing yachts wanting to visit Ukraine. Each boat seems to have a different but difficult story and there seems to be no one way in which a private yacht is supposed to legally enter Ukraine. Malcolm regaled us with a tale of being arrested in Batsumi, Georgia. It was enjoyable meeting other cruisers. Balaclava has a long narrow bay with an s-shaped entrance making it a good naturally sheltered harbour, overlooked by a 14th century Genoese fortified wall. This was a closed town for 50 years, until about three years ago, as it was the main port for a Black Sea Fleet submarine repair depot with a complex of a long semicircular submarine pen with maintenance and supply facilities for an earlier generation of nuclear powered and nuclear armed SSN's and SSBN's. It is too small for their Typhoon class boomers. We had the opportunity to tour through the facility, seeing the remains of the workshops, trestles, and storage vaults (for the nuclear warheads and for the gold used in some of the technologies), as well as the inner entrance and long semicircular submarine cavern cut through the mountainside. There is an outer entrance at the beginning of the s-shaped entrance into the bay. Both entrances could be camouflaged, and I understand that the submarines could enter and possibly exit while submerged, out of view of the local populace. The idea of a semicircular design was to reduce any pressure wave from a nuclear attack at one end or the other. From Balaclava we took a taxi ride up into the hills to overlook the valley where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place on Oct. 25, 1854. From a small solitary white obelisk in a farmer's vineyard, the only monument to that slaughter, we were able to look over the valley through which the doomed cavalry galloped to glory and death. Within a half hour of the start of the charge, there were only 195 cavalrymen left alive out of a brigade of 673. This futile order to charge down the valley, with Russian guns on both hillsides and at the end catching the brigade in a hopeless crossfire, was given by Lord Raglan via Captain Nolan to Lord Lucan, who in turn tasked Lord Cardigan who had to lead the ill-fated sortie into the Valley of Death. There was considerable animosity amongst the British nobility in the cavalry. One had to be rich in order to be in the cavalry, having to provide the funds for your own horse, uniform and weapons. Thus this massacre depleted Britain of hundreds of its aristocrats. As well as the obelisk in the vineyard, there was only one other small monument to the men who died on that day at the site of their burial. There was another memorial in a dried out hilltop field on Sapun Hill that commemorated all the units, cavalry, infantry, medical, naval, engineers, sappers, etc. whose men had given their lives in this conflict. There were more than 30 units each with its own slab of remembrance ending in the words "and those who fell in battle and died of disease". Frankly, I was disappointed in the lack of care and dedication the British gave to the thousands who died in that conflict. It is most inadequate when compared to the battlefield memorials in the US for their Civil War in 1860 to 1864, or to the European war memorials for the First or Second World Wars, or to the dignified memorials to Turkish, Australian, New Zealand, British and French forces in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. As a French general said watching the charge, "It's magnificent! But it's not a war, it's madness!" Next log