Culture Siege of Saint-Petersburg and Crimea annexation to Russia

Today the museums of Saint-Petersburg are mostly closed because of COVID-19 and we are in a culture siege. No museums, notraveling, no sneezing, no coughing.
Here in our wet and windy Saint-Petersburg we got used to get cold or flue or tonsillitis in spring. It is so romantic. To sit, sneezing and drinking warm tea with honey and listen to the wind and rain outside. And know that you have reason to stay at home while your friends have to go somewhere under the rain;). Now a lot of people can stay at home officially and won't be punished for that. You don't feel priority in case of cold. Moreover it is not safe, if you cough or sneeze, the person sneezing or coughing will be taken to the hospital and imprisoned there. That is why it seems that this very spring is the one with minimum sneezing and coughing people in Saint-Petersburg. We can not let us have our traditional Saint-Petersburg spring cold.
What can we do? No museums! No trips. We can travel virtually, we can dream and imagine our future trips and we can remember our past once! So many things to do. I'm going to do all three.
Now it is time to relax and remember and think it over. Today is a very special day!
On the 18th of March in 2014 Crimea became part of Russia.What is it? Is it the day today of reunion with or annexation to ... Russia? Ukraine was upset. What Crimeans think you can just ask them. They name this day the day of reunion of Crimea and Russian Federation which is out of Russia and Crimea is called Annexation of Crimea by Russian Federation. If you are searching for the correct word you should go to Crimea and ask the people in Crimea. What do they think. How do they have their business now.
As soon as the Crimea is Russian people there can earn money. For Ukrainians it is not so big attraction to go to the Black sea in Crimea from the Black sea in Ukraine. It is not so interesting to go from The Black sea in Ukraine to the Black sea in Crimea. For people from Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, for people from the North it is interesting and something for a change. They are ready to pay for hotels and food and service. (Of course people from Moscow are not so polite and nice like people from Saint-Petersburg);) New hotels are growing in Crimea with enormous speed. Now simple people of Crimea can earn good money. They are so happy to meet new guests, this is the first generation of russians after the Soviet time who are really owners of their business, who really cares about their hotels, cafes, when the hotels are their kids. The owners of the mini hotel are making design and buying the furniture and I see how happy and inspired they are. I think it worths it. Worths making the quarells with all the world - to see the people in Crimea happy.
You know Russians are not always active enough when it comes to elections. But I had tourists from Crimea and they told me that on the day of voting for Crimea annexation to Russia, which took place in 2014, there was no indifference. Everybody went to vote to become a part of Russia. The people who had work on that day woke up earlier to go and vote before the working day.
About the business by the way. It is interesting. I think almost all over the world if you go somewhere there they are growing apples – apples are cheap there, if you go to the motherland of grapes you can buy the grapes cheap. That was our intention to buy fruit cheap when we went to Crimea. But it was far from it. Prices for fruit were the same like in Saint-Petersburg. How it comes? But we should pay tribute to the fact that the taste is completely, completely different – it is much much better in Crimea than in our big grey city.
To bring the fruit to Saint-Petersburg and the other big cities to the North they take them unripe and hard to bring them safe and not rotten to the shop, passing the long road, the warehouses. The whole sellers and so on. Here it is different, they are selling them here where they are, the fruit is really perfect there. The only thing you should pay attention to – they are sometimes not local but from Turkey. It means delivered from the other land and not so fresh.
Originally Crimea was neither Russian nor Ukrainian, and not even Turkish it was its own.
The oldest tribes living here had the name Tauri. Who knows who they were – it was the name which Greeks gave to them. That is why later in the 18th century they started to call Crimea - Taurida.
Starting from the 12th century BC the tribes living there had the name of Cimmerians.
Then in 8th - 4th century BC Greeks came to the place and founded a number of towns like Panticapeum (in the end of the7th beginning of the 6th century BC). Nowadays here we can find the town of Kerch which was long ago known as Bosphoro Cimmerio.
In the 6th century BC they founded Feodosia – which in Greek means "Given by God". And Chersonesus which in Greek means “Peninsula” was founded by Greeks in 424-421 years BC.
They also founded Bosporan Kingdom. In the veld are there were Scythians – they were of Iranian origin.
The 3rd- - the 2nd century BC – Sarmatians are coming from the east and making Scythians move deeper into the Crimea and move the center to the place where Symperopol town is located now – at that time there was capital city – Scythian Neapolis.
Then Bosporan Kingdom became part of Greek-Persian Kingdom of Pontus or Pontic Empire. It happened during the time of tsar Mithridates the 6th (lived 132 – 64 year BC) in the 108 year BC.
There are different legends about Mithridates in Crimea. He was one of the Greatest rulers of ancient times and he was also cruel, self-assured and unfair. He loved life so much that and was afraid that he might be poisoned he took a small portion of poison every day. People suffered because of him so much that from time to time there were uprisings in his lands. At the same time Rome was trying to get his lands.
In the end he was losing the battles against Rome, without possibility to rely on his people and his army because they just hated him Mithridates, he got to Panticapeum (modern Kerch town) and succeeded to assemble a small army somehow. It was so difficult to collect the people that he even let his former enemies sarmats and scythes to participated in his army. Then he asked his son Farnak to lead the army against the enemy. But the son also hated the father and the turned the army around and fought not against Rome but against his own father.
Mithridates learnt about it, realized that it was not possible to believe or trust anybody and ordered to execute i.e. murder all his closest friends and his son Eksipodre. Then he ordered to close and lock all the gates, climbed up the highest tower and tried to persuade his son Farnak not to fight against his own father.
It didn’t work, so he went down the palace, collected all his wives, concubines and daughters, gave them poisoned vine and ordered to drink in the name of the victory.
Then, he put on the clothes of a simple solider and drank the poison himself. But it didn’t work. No poison was able to murder him because he got trained not to be influenced by poison. He remembered about it, ran out of the palace and let one of the soldiers coming murder him, he just put his throat under the knife of the soldier. There is a mountain on Kerch peninsula which is called Mithridates in his memory.
The year 63 BC – the Kingdom of Pontus is captured by Roman Empire.
The year 257 – the lands are under Crimean Goths
Huns came to the place in 370-380 years
The 4th – 5th Century – Roman (Byzantium) Empire resurrection. Remaining goths accepted power of Byzantium.
The end of the 7th century – nomadic Khazars are almost all over the Crimea.
The end of 8th – beginning of the 9th century – Russian Prince Bravlin became the ruler here. He was especially famous for capturing Byzantium town Surozh (modern Sudak).
The 10th – the 11th century South-East of the Peninsula with the center in Kerch is the old Russian Tmutarakan place (modern Taman in Krasnodar Krai). Tmutarakan is mentioned in the Tale of Igor’s Campaign – the poem dated back to the late 12th century. You might know famous opera Prince Igor written by Russian composer Alexander Borodin. Borodin died in 1887 and left the opera unfinished, so it was finished by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov.
As far as for a long time they were not able to find the town and didn’t know the location of Tmutarakan they though it a fictional town until in the year 1792 when they found the Stone of Tmutarakan with ancient inscriptions. You can now see the stone in The State Hermitage museum in Saint-Petersburg (in the main complex). The stone is located in the department of Russian culture, the second part of the 18th century, the time of Catherine the Great. It is written on the stone that in the year which corresponds to 1068 AD Prince Gleb measured the distance from Tmutarakan to Kerch across the ice over the sea.
They were digging under the stone and found the Tmutarakan town. But for so long they didn't know there the Tmutarakan was and if it existed at all so even now Tmutarakan means some too far away place which may be doesn’t even exist, it might be somewhere on the edge of the land. Moreover, if I literally translate it you will see – the meaning is also quite romantic – Tmutarakan sounds for Russians like – Darkness(=Cloud) CockroachPlace. We can hear here altogether – darkness – “tma” – and also “tma” means – a lot of, too many. So it sounded both like Dark place with too many cockroaches or the place with Clouds of Cockroaches and who knows what else because the place is too far away and nobody knows what one can find or meet there. It is wilderness.
Really the name Tmutarakan came from Turkic language and originally sounded like Taman-Tarkan, which means The town of Takran Taman. Tarkan Taman is just a name. It reminded me of the German and Turkish pop singer and songwriter, his full name is Tarkan Tevetoglu.
The 13th century – Byzantium power is getting weaker, part of the lands went to Genoa capital of the Italian region of Liguria. The Genoese fortress Caffa was the center of Genoese trade here and the center of Genoese Crimea, now it is one of the oldest fortresses (1340- 1352) in Crimea. It stands in Feodosia town on the Quarantine hill. On this very hill they kept the slaves for 40 days on quarantine.
Notwithstanding the precautions though this very port the Black Death got from Italy to Europe. Caffa was one of the main centers of slave trade. The citadel was just for the Genoese people and not for everybody.
In that very 13th century the other part of Crimea became an independent small orthodox Principality of Theodoro.
From the 12th to the 15th century Armenians come to several regions of Crimea and Armenian settlement was founded. There was so many Armenians that some geographers started to name them Crimean peninsula – Armenia maritima which in Italian means Armenia Seaside.
1239 year – Batu Khan a Mongol ruler and founder of the Golden Horde captured the lands. The veld part of Crimea was under the Golden Horde. It was quite convenient – they brought the captured people to Genoese fortresses and sold them there.
1299 year Golden Horde Nogai Khan destroyed some of the big towns in Crimea.
The 14th – the 15th centuries Orthodox principality of Theodoro is fighting Genoese fortresses to get access to the Black sea.
During this time a lot of Circassians came to the eastern part of Crimea.
The year 1441 – independent Crimean Khanate was founded by Haci the 1st Giray– it was also called Little Tartary or Tartaria Minor – the state of Crimean tatars. The state was considered to be descendant from The Golden Horde and Cumania (Turkic confederation). It existed till 1783.
The Crimean Khanate still exists you remember it existed till 1783 but starting from 1475 it is under the power of Ottoman Empire so under Turkish power and became its vassalage. Ottoman Empire captured the Orthodox principality of Theodoro and Genoese domains.
In the beggining of the 18th century Peter the Great was fighting Ottoman Empire without big success. We remember the story how our army of 39 thousand russians and headed by Peter the Great was surrounded by Turkish army of 120 thousand people and Crimean army of 70 thousand people. 39,000 Russians against 190,000 enemies. The official version is that they gave 150.000 rubles from the treasury money to let Russian army go. Turkish people more believe our and their own legend about jewelries.
According to the legend the wife of Peter the Great Catherine (Nee Marta Scavronska) who was with Peter on this tour, collected all her jewelries and use them as a bribe to give to vizier Baltaci Mehmet Pasha.
I heard the Turkish version. In one of the palaces of Saint-Petersburg my guests from Turkey pointed at the portrait of Catherine the 1st, Wife of Peter the Great and said – oh, we know her, everybody in Turkey knows her - she had sex with our Sultan Ahmed the 3rd. I told them the stroy about jewelries.
They said - no, just the jewelries wouldn't work. Then some time later people from Europe said it is not correct – they saw the jewelries in one of the museums of Turkey. The famous jewelries were also represented on one of the auctions. Then the others said it was both – sex and jewelries. Who knows.
For her deeds during that campaign Peter the Great granted Catherine the Order of Saint Catherine.
The years 1768 – 1774 one of numerous Russo-Turkish wars.
There is an old fortress Yeni-Kale next in Kerch. It was made by turkish people in 1699 in the narrowest part of Kerch strait between Azov sea and Black sea it was to block russian army here. Turkish people were building it for 7 year and 100 years later gave gave it up without any battle. It happened in 1771 during the war with Russia. It was time of Catherine the Great.
Like Peter the Great Catherine was eager to get access to the Black sea. Russia is fighting Ottoman Empire again. One of the most important battles took place in the year 1773 next to the place which is now part of modern northeastern Bulgaria and called Kaynardzha. Turkish army lost 5,000 people during the battle and just 19 Russians were murdered. Next to this village the year 1774 the signed the agreement according to which Kerch and Yeni-Kale fortress went to Russia and the Crimean Khanate was to be independent both from Russian and from Turkey.
The 19th of April of 1783 Catherine the Great signed the Manifest of Annexation Crimea Khanate to Russian Empire. This story also has connection to sex. Potemkin - main lover of Catherine the Great. The last Crimea khan Sahin Giray abdicated under the pressure of the main friend and lover of Catherine the Great – Potemkin. And they founded here the Taurida region, as it was historically named. For that Potemkin got the nickname Potemkin of Taurida.
Nowdays if you go to Crimea you will see the memory of different folks and people which used to live here. This poor and at the same time rich land used to be the land of so many rulers and countries. Let's let them just live their own life and chose the country to live in and earn their money!