{"id":40572,"date":"2014-03-10T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=40572"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:10:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:10:59","slug":"steeped-in-its-bloody-history-again-embracing-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/03\/steeped-in-its-bloody-history-again-embracing-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Steeped in Its Bloody History, Again Embracing Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drawing on his experiences as a young artillery officer in imperial Russia\u2019s military during the Crimean War<\/a> in 1853-56, Leo Tolstoy described in \u201cSevastopol Sketches\u201d how a Russian soldier whose leg had been amputated above the knee coped with agonizing pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chief thing, your honor, is not to think,\u201d Tolstoy\u2019s amputee remarked. \u201cIf you don\u2019t think, it is nothing much. It mostly all comes from thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is advice, however, that virtually nobody in Crimea, particularly here in Sevastopol, shows any sign of heeding. With nearly every other main street named after a Russian military hero or a gruesome battle, its lovely seafront promenade dominated by a \u201cmonument to sunken ships\u201d and its central square named after the imperial admiral who commanded Russian forces against French, British and Turkish troops in the 19th century, Sevastopol constantly feeds thoughts of war and its agonies.<\/p>\n

Bombarded with reminders of the Crimean War, which involved a near yearlong siege of the city in 1854-55, and World War II, when the city doggedly resisted Nazi forces until finally falling in July 1942<\/a>, Sevastopol has never stopped thinking about wartime losses \u2014 and has never been able to cope with the amputation carried out in 1954 by the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev.<\/p>\n

\"Soviet<\/a>

Soviet troops in Kerch, in Crimea, on Dec. 1, 1941. Credit Yevgeny Khaldei, via Corbis<\/p><\/div>\n

Wielding a pen instead of a knife, Khrushchev ordered Sevastopol and the rest of Crimea transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic<\/a>. At the time, the operation caused little pain, as both Russia and Ukraine belonged to the Soviet Union, which chloroformed ethnic, linguistic and cultural divisions with repression.<\/p>\n

When Ukraine became a separate independent nation<\/a> near the end of 1991, however, Sevastopol \u2014 the home of Russia\u2019s Black Sea Fleet since the 18th century \u2014 began howling, culminating in the Crimean Parliament\u2019s decision on Thursday to hold a referendum<\/a> on March 16 on whether to break away from Ukraine and formally become part of Russia again. Jubilant residents gathered in Sevastopol.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re returning home,\u201d said one of them, Victoria Krupko. \u201cWe\u2019ve waited a long time for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining the city\u2019s agonies this week to a group of visitors, mostly Russians, at Sevastopol\u2019s Crimean War museum, Irina Neverova, a guide, recounted how Britain, France, Turkey, Germany and other nations had all tried, and ultimately failed, to loosen Russia\u2019s grip over the centuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery stone and every tree in Sevastopol is drenched in blood, with the bravery and courage of Russian soldiers,\u201d said Ms. Neverova, who complained that school history textbooks written under instructions from Ukrainian officials made scant mention of Sevastopol\u2019s heroics and focused instead on the deeds of Ukrainian nationalist fighters in the west of Ukraine, whom many Russians view as traitors, not heroes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is obviously Russia, not Ukraine,\u201d Ms. Neverova said later in an interview.<\/p>\n

For many years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the loudest voices calling for Crimea\u2019s return to Russia were a motley collection of Afghanistan war veterans and fringe political groups. Wrapping themselves in the Russian and Soviet flags, they regularly called for a referendum on Crimea\u2019s status but got nowhere, widely dismissed as dangerous crackpots nostalgic for the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

But that all changed last month when protesters in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, drove President Viktor F. Yanukovych from power<\/a> and Russian television, which is widely watched in Crimea, and local news media controlled by pro-Russia businessmen began portraying Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s ouster as a fascist coup.<\/p>\n

This turned what had been a marginal and seemingly doomed cause into a replay of heroic struggles, allowing Sevastopol\u2019s enemies of Ukrainian statehood to cast themselves as heirs to their city\u2019s wartime resistance to Hitler\u2019s invading armies.<\/p>\n

Ukraine Crisis in Maps – <\/b>A visual survey of the ongoing dispute, including satellite images of Russian naval positions and maps showing political, cultural and economic factors in the crisis. <\/a><\/p>\n

Thousands of Sevastopol residents gathered outside the office of the Kiev-appointed mayor, located in the shadow of a gargantuan World War II monument on the edge of Nakhimov Square, named after Crimean War hero Pavel Nakhimov, and forced him to resign in favor of Aleksei Chaly, a Russian nationalist and businessman known for his sponsorship of war memorials.<\/p>\n

Across the city rose a rallying cry resurrected from past sieges by foreign powers: \u201cStand Firm, Sevastopol.\u201d The slogan now decorates a stage set up in the central square for pro-Russia rallies and concerts featuring the Black Sea Fleet choir and Cossack dancers.<\/p>\n

Not everyone here has been swept up by the tide of Russian patriotic fervor, but those who have not are keeping their heads down. Viktor Negarov, a lonely voice of dissent who organized a series of thinly attended rallies in support of protesters in Kiev, was badly beaten last month by pro-Russia activists. He has gone into hiding for fear of being attacked. His picture, address, mobile telephone number and even car license plate details have all been posted on the Internet by pro-Russia groups that label him a traitor in league with fascists.<\/p>\n

Mr. Negarov, a 28-year-old computer programmer, caused particular fury by giving an interview to Ukrainian television in which he challenged Sevastopol\u2019s self-image as a city of ever-victorious heroes, noting that it fought fiercely but ultimately lost to foreign enemies in both the Crimean War and World War II.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, Sevastopol is a city of losers,\u201d he said in a telephone interview from his hiding place. \u201cPeople here don\u2019t like to hear this, but that is the reality of our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Ukrainian military facilities in Crimea now besieged by heavily armed gunmen whose uniforms bear no markings but whose vehicles have Russian license plates, Mr. Negarov sees little hope that Ukraine will be able to quickly recover its own now-amputated territory. \u201cIt is a really bad situation,\u201d he said despondently. \u201cMany support the pro-Russian forces here. I don\u2019t know how to fix this. Nearly everyone has been brainwashed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia insisted this week that the unidentified gunmen who now control Crimea have nothing to do with the Kremlin and are local self-defense volunteers who bought their uniforms off the shelf, pro-Russia residents in Sevastopol celebrated their arrival as evidence that Moscow had mobilized to force Crimea\u2019s separation from Ukraine. \u201cLet\u2019s continue what we started. We have Russia behind us,\u201d reads a banner hoisted outside the mayor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Balaklava, near Sevastopol, was the site of one of the Crimean War\u2019s most famous battles. It was a rare Russian victory during the conflict and delivered a devastating blow to the morale of British forces, which launched the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade<\/a> across what the English poet Tennyson<\/a> called the \u201cvalley of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

The appearance over the weekend of a long convoy of Russian military vehicles stirred rapture among many residents of Balaklava, nearly all of them Russian speakers raised on stories of Russian military valor against foreign invaders.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s takeover of Crimea is already so complete that commercial flights to Kiev from the region\u2019s main airport, located outside Simferopol, the regional capital 50 miles from Sevastopol, now leave from the international terminal instead of the domestic one as they did until last week. The shift suggests that Kiev and the rest of Ukraine are now classified as foreign territory.<\/p>\n

Russian soldiers patrol the airport parking lot and, although still without markings on their uniforms, have dropped all pretense that they are not Russian. Asked where he was from, a masked soldier at the airport said he was with the Russian infantry and had been sent to Crimea a week ago on a mission to protect the region \u201cagainst the enemy, Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Patrick Reevell contributed reporting.<\/i><\/p>\n

A version of this article appears in print on March 7, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Steeped in Its Bloody History, Again Embracing Resistance. <\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excellent historical perspective on the depth of Russia’s ties in the Crimea. Required reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}