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History holds fast in Ukraine
By SI LIBERMAN © St. Petersburg Times, published January 28, 2001
Nearly three generations had passed since those secret meetings, held to get Stalin to agree on zones of occupation after Germany's surrender and to lay the groundwork for creation of the United Nations. But this man apparently was caught up in old emotions. For years, I too have had a fascination for the Ukrainian cities of Yalta and Odessa. It was from Odessa that my father had emigrated 83 years ago.
As it turned out, our half-day Yalta tour and full-day Odessa tour, interesting as they were, hardly sufficed to let us absorb the mood of the seaport cities and their people. Visually, Yalta could pass as the southern Ukraine's answer to Bermuda. It is a hilly summer seashore resort on the Crimean peninsula, with lots of greenery, immaculate pebbled beaches, hotels, health spas and mild winters. About 90,000 people live there. This is where Communist Party bigwigs vacationed in the days of the Soviet Union. Today, the dachas (private cottages) and health spas, most of which have seen better days, cater to anyone who can afford $75 to $100 a day for a room with meals. Add a few more dollars for hydromassages and mud baths. For real luxury -- and if money and ghosts are no problem -- visitors can stay at the palatial, cliffside Yusupov Palace, once the summer home of a pre-Revolution, wealthy family. Stalin stayed here during the Yalta Conference. His four-room suite has 20-foot ceilings, antique furniture and balconies overlooking the sea. Cost for capitalist guests now: nearly $400 a night, meals included. The estate is not far from the three-story dacha in the Yalta suburb where Mikhail Gorbachev and his family were vacationing about 91/2 years ago when he was placed under house arrest and held during an unsuccessful coup. Our young guide in Yalta carefully avoided talking about that site, which has been off-limits to foreigners for years. Yet conspicuous statues of Lenin recall the pre-1991 era, when Ukraine and its 52-million residents were an important part of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics. One statue has a commanding hilltop view of the sea; another appropriately faces left, in the port's shopping hub. These statues "were not torn down like in Moscow and other places," the guide explained, "because they are considered a part of our history." On the road near Livadiya Palace, the architecturally imposing white building where the Allied leaders conferred in 1945, two young men picked at guitars while singing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean in English. The area was lined with vendors, hawking Yalta Conference pictures, tablecloths, shawls, fur hats, Russian army caps, jackets and medals, postcards and local wine. Some residents, in traditional costumes, posed, sang and played instruments, hoping to cash in on their visitors' generosity.
The significance of the site is that this is where Roosevelt and Churchill elicited the promise from Stalin that he would go along with postwar free elections in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. That promise, of course, was not kept, and Communist governments were established in those countries. But the Russian dictator did follow through on his Yalta commitment to join the fight against Japan. Ukrainian customs officers in olive drab uniforms carefully checked us back onto the Royal Princess in Yalta. As we disembarked from the ship in Odessa, we were greeted by a 25-piece brass band, its members decked out in bright red jackets and black slacks, topped with berets. Adorning a dockside wall were painted welcoming signs in a half-dozen languages. From the prevailing mood, a visitor would never know that this was where seeds of the Russian Revolution were planted in 1905, when sailors aboard the Russian warship Potemkin mutinied and were joined by peasants protesting the autocratic rule of Czar Nicholas II. The czar turned loose his troops, who slaughtered the protestors and sailors climbing nearby steps leading up a steep incline from the harbor. Today these steps, named Potemkinskaya in memory of the crew members of the ship, are a historic landmark. They are also a popular meeting place in this 500-year-old city of seemingly neglected, low-rise buildings and about 1.2-million residents. Students, led by their teachers, and tourists with their guides milled around the upper level of the once-bloodied steps as a bearded entrepreneur in colorful czarist military garb vied for attention and rubles from camera-toting visitors. A 15-minute bus ride away is another important site recalling some of Odessa's darkest days: a towering World War II Unknown Soldier Monument. In a parklike setting with the Black Sea as a backdrop, it resembles the Washington Monument. Teenage male and female students, in black-and-white uniforms, served as unarmed honor guards, marching to and fro. During World War II, many buildings in Odessa were destroyed, and for three years German and Romanian forces occupied the beleaguered city. During that period, about 280,000 residents, mostly Jews, were taken to concentration and death camps.
Democracy has taken hold, but our guide said that its fruits are yet to be tasted by the masses. "Yes, there are free elections, a free press and freedom of religion," she acknowledged. "Those in office, though, are former Communists, and some journalists who've criticized government officials have disappeared or been killed. It can be dangerous to be a journalist who's critical of the government." There remains a large Jewish community in Odessa, the guide said, pointing out a Jewish restaurant as we passed, then later a Jewish school. "Our former mayor was Jewish and well-liked," she explained. "He was defeated in the last election. The president helped defeat him. I didn't vote for the president." Before entering an old Catholic church, she cautioned, "You'll see many beggars outside. You can't tell who are really poor and which ones are professionals. Hold on to your purses." But we managed to wade through clusters of beggars without incident while entering and exiting the building. Inside, tourists by far outnumbered the few elderly parishioners. The most memorable part of that afternoon was a visit to the Odessa Opera House, a striking round structure, where we saw two outstanding ballets. The cruise also included visits to Istanbul, where we stayed overnight in a five-star downtown boutique hotel (the Divan) and toured the mosques; Varga, Bulgaria's third-largest city; Kusadasi, a mountainous Turkish resort that dates to 3000 B.C.; the Greek islands of Santorini and Katakolon; Athens; and Venice. Freelance writer Si Liberman lives in Palm Beach.
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From the Times Travel page
From the AP |
The war's ravages are no longer evident. Buildings have been rebuilt and restored. But there are no skyscrapers.
