It’s impossible to get used to this stress. Chongar, checkpoint, our side of the “border”. The martial law, it should be even harder and more intense than usual. A man in camouflage stands at the entrance – before they just checked passports here – he asks the name and address of the registration and sends SMS to someone. In a minute he nods: you can go. Actually, that’s all. The rest, as usual, they even don’t look through belongings very thoroughly on either our side or “theirs”. Cats of different colors are sitting in the sun. I’m in the Crimea. It’s time to breathe out.
Winter. The time of approaching holidays
Last February here, in Chongar, the icy wind with snow was knocking you down, pulling bags out of your hands, people were sliding on ice, which no one not only cleared but even didn’t put some salt on it. People fell, barely breaking their legs, stood up and walked further. Now, only those who really need to go to Crimea are visiting it. They visit home or relatives and friends.
On the “Russian” side there is a shuttle minibus – two minutes to warm up a little before the queue at the checkpoint. At the bus, the radio was on then. The excited man’s voice said that it was a great honor for him to present this very candidate for the presidency of the Russian Federation. And then it was all about little Vladimir, who since his childhood had decided to work in intelligence, about his simple but not noble family and the uneasy road to dream…
Stylistics of the USSR is the era of stagnation. A time machine that brings you back.
Elections were approaching the Crimea. This year it seems they’ve been accidentally connected to the date of the annexation in March, which now claims to take a prominent place in the pantheon of state holidays in Russia. And the holiday was threateningly approaching. Every minute they were talking about this from the loudspeakers, installed on the central streets of the Crimean cities, on radio and television, on billboards and other carriers of the outdoor advertising. Even on the intercity bus ticket, I read a reminder to come to the polls.
Because at the horizontal, human level, these elections don’t seem to be perceived by anyone as an event at all. Nobody talked about them in Crimea – neither in transport, nor at the market, nor among the neighbors. What can you talk about, if there was no plot, there was no intrigue, there was not even a slim chance to change something? On souvenir stalls, they were selling calendars for 2018 with a portrait, the relevance of which manufacturers hadn’t risked at all.
When on social networks they were writing that people of Crimea voted for Putin in one voice, it was ridiculous. It is hard to imagine what a huge administrative resource was applied to achieve exactly this result, how many bureaucrats’ careers, welfare, and cushy jobs depended on it, what various levers of power were involved in it on the one hand – and to what extent that had no sense on the other. There is no relation to the civic position of a particular person and to real life in general.
It’s not even a topic for discussion.
When there is one everything is completely different. Crimeans don’t know and do not want to know that in Russia it is prohibited to gather in groups of more than two. Crimeans are well aware that their rights can and must be defended.
When at the end of winter, also, probably, for the elections, Crimean bus terminals were circled with so-called “anti-terrorist fences”, the Feodosian public rebelled. Owners of nearby stores, whose businesses were threatened by the fence, residents of homes that could have become inaccessible for firefighters, stood up in one voice – and stopped construction. Already drilled holes for the fence were filled with cement, for several weeks fence’s elements were laying stocked, it even seemed that it was a local victory.
Then there were public hearings, the fence was moved considerably but nevertheless installed, as well as in other cities of the peninsula. Now it is really scary at Crimean bus stations. The walk through metal detectors that should have exposed terrorists (which is also doubtful) are still not installed, however, the fence is present. In case of something, there is no place to run.
Spring: the Crimean bridge
Crimea is currently in the informational space. The truth, which Ukrainians from the mainland want to hear full of endless negativity, there is no social demand for the other. However, everything is symmetrical: Russian mass media provide their audience with a positivity.
However any space distorts reality, and it’s unacceptable.
The Crimea is beautiful – this is the first thing you see and feel, leaving the “border” behind as a terrible dream. It’s beautiful, no matter what. Especially in spring
This year the spring was very warm as if it had been moved for a month: March is like April, April as May, and May is similar to summer. On the fourth of May, I and my younger daughter opened swim season in a cool, transparent bay. Peaches and tulips were blossoming already. Roses started to bloom.
A car stopped at my house, the driver asked whether I know if there is something for sale in the village – probably, he had a real estate in mind. I briefly replied “I do not know”: in these wild lands, aborigines are surly.
In our garden village construction works are ongoing for the second year. People from another informational space are buying land here, ignoring the obvious risks, which simply don’t exist in their reality. On the social media, they post photos at wooden verandas of their new summer houses. This is the third, after the military and officials, a wave of invaders – peaceful “settlers”, who also allegedly love Crimea.
The population of Crimea is changing, Russia in every way contributes to this process, but Ukraine, the state and society give it a carte blanche. Ukrainians from the mainland are ready to sympathize with displaced Crimean – but those who remained on their land, they see as traitors and collaborators altogether, except for the Crimean Tatars. A distorted information space is working against the return of the peninsula to Ukraine, which, unfortunately, is a fact.
In the Russian information space, the Crimea lived this spring with a solid and grand construction. The roads, first of all, the Tavrida highway, new terminal of the Simferopol airport and – ta-da! – opened in advance for the cars’ traffic in May, according to Putin’s direction this very bridge.
Our informational defeat: after all Ukraine has argued that this is impossible, I personally lost a couple of chocolates in bets, because I knew for sure – in no way they could build it there. However, everything is possible – if your resources are unlimited, the order is not a subject to discussion, and on the ground, everyone reports to their immediate superior, but nobody is responsible for the quality of the final result.
It is unknown how long this bridge will last, but in the information warfare, it is Russian victory. Occupation forces that build and don’t destroy are allegedly not so occupational, this argument is constantly heard from those who still believe that Crimea “returned to Russia” on its own.
The main thing is not to mention those who built the previous Crimean bridge.
Summer. Great drought and tourists-betrayers
I come back in early June – and I see dry, like hay, grass on the hills and in the garden. Entire spring there was no rain in the Crimea. A striking contrast with 2016 (last year I wasn’t here in June), when there were heavy rains in May, everything was green and roses were in bloom in the garden, and a peach tree that seemed to dry out showed new shiny leaves.
Satellite maps are spreading on the Internet: green Crimea in 2016 – and the desert of 2018. Blatant manipulation: if it was only about the blocking of the North Crimean Canal was, it should be compared to the situation in 2013. Weather is a complicated thing – it’s just now Crimeans are vulnerable more than ever to it.
Nothing is so tense as a total lack of reliable information. Ukrainian mass media depict Crimea as a scorched desert – at the beginning of summer even controlled Crimean press commenced panicking: reservoirs weren’t filled during the spring, it’s necessary to do something. Someone from Feodosia officials offered to limit the irrigation of private farms.
One day I found out that I have an empty tank for water. Failure of the pipeline – I didn’t know about it and continued to water the garden. Or maybe “failure” is an official version, and in fact, the water has already been blocked, forever? Several days are in a state of terrible stress, I’m using a plastic bottle next to the sink to wash hands before my eyes flowers are dying in the garden. Then the water is on again. During summer it happens several times – failures of the pipeline become a common thing, and the rumors of the muddy reservoirs are becoming more and more panic. In the end, an ecological catastrophe at the Crimean Titan plant near the Armyansk, which, too, was instantly covered with rumors. It’s far away from us, I don’t know what’s really there. Crimea balances between two propaganda realities and more and more is accustomed to believe only its own eyes.
To come and see is not the only motivation for tourists who chose Crimea this summer to have some rest.
Here should have been a quantitative analysis of tourist traffic, but there is no reason to consider any published figures as valid. Russians thoroughly count “Ukrainian tourists”, those who enter the Crimea through the checkpoint Kalanchak, Chongar, and Chaplynka. For example, I have been counted ten times for this year. My mother who has her Crimean registration as well was counted.
In the summer on these checkpoints, there is a burning sun and heat, from which there is no place to hide. Long lines of cars. Russian customs officers demand to completely free the car from belongings, check each bag and carefully inspect the car: one car is at least an hour, so it’s impossible to have no queues, it does not mean that Ukrainians massively go here on vacation. I repeat over and over again: no one goes to the Crimea for no reason, just because of indifference. They go to relatives, to their own homes. Or they are people who love the Crimea too much and are ready to sacrifice: in the end, there are very few of them, within the margin of error.
However, every year, the Ukrainian patriotic community explodes with righteous anger toward “treacherous” people. When in the summer in the Crimea the Ukrainian family with young children disappeared, almost nobody sympathized with these people on social networks: it’s their own fault, why did they go there ?! They say that for a long time FSB was torturing them for testimony; they’re making new “terrorists” out of them, it could not have been otherwise. The family, fortunately, was found. They just got delayed and didn’t buy a SIM-card for the phone.
The Ukrainians who deliberately “closed” the occupied Crimea for themselves, are right: it is patriotic, safe and quite. However, there is no heroism in it. As well as a private trip to Crimea there’s no treachery.
But is there a real danger?
Repressions in the information society are arranged somewhat differently than in the pre-Internet era. Crimean political prisoners are few – there are only dozens of them. However, the absurdity of accusation proves that everyone may be in their place. An old repost on Facebook, being in a wrong place at a wrong time – and you are a “saboteur” and an “extremist” already. The only thing that protects us all in the Crimea is the law of large numbers. However, there is a risk for everyone, it’s a fact.
And you have to live with it.
In another reality, according to the Russian propaganda, there is no risk, of course. But there is a bridge and this summer, closer to August, long-awaited tourists started to arrive at Crimea.
Nevertheless, they couldn’t complete the access road to the bridge in time, so on the narrow two-lane Kerch highway, cars immediately got into a huge traffic jam: a hundred kilometers from Kerch to Feodosia it stretched for seven-eight hours. Wast majority of these tourists are no longer moving to Feodosia: the city took hit itself. Jammed-up roads, daily traffic accidents, polluted air. Neighboring Koktebel, where they can’t solve the problem of sewage, welcomed many guests with an outbreak of gastrointestinal infection.
Let’s see how many of this year’s “Bridge Witnesses” will reach Crimea the next year.
Autumn: battleship
On the penultimate day of the summer, I’m leaving Crimea. Autumn is a time of my nostalgia, acute, unbearable. I watch the Crimea at a distance, on the Internet. The hunger strike of political prisoners, for whom Ukraine can do nothing, but can’t fail to forget. Sale of new objects at the coast. There is information that Tyha bay under Koktebel goes to FSB and is closed. No, there is a mistake, they are talking about another Tykha bay, next to Simeiz, and ours in Koktebel is only covered with construction works – they wanted to do it before the occupation, but back then we managed to defend it.
Full of optimistic reports Krym-inform – yes, I was reading it as a window into another information space – was blocked in Ukraine.
And suddenly – the Kerch Shooter.
The main version of the Ukrainian social networks is that it was a conspiracy, an artificial terrorist attack by FSB. And I immediately recall commercials of the Crimean military-patriotic camps, children and adolescents in military uniform during holidays, and demining training for schoolchildren. The militarization of consciousness has an inevitable side effect: if the weapon is available, and the interest in it among the younger generation is socially acceptable and even approving, sooner or later someone will definitely start shooting. And this is much more terrible than conspiracy versions, where an enemy deliberately cover ordinary provincial college with blood without any purpose, just because he is an enemy.
During my autumn trip to Crimea, I didn’t keep track of news and public mood, I fell out of the information space in general – I was planting a garden and was happy. This is an option, it’s an exit – internal emigration. And I understand very well the Crimeans who choose it.
Next time the Crimea appears in the spotlight at the end of autumn. Sea battle, seizure of our ships, captured sailors. For one day, the Crimeans gathered for them a six-digit amount of money and several boxes of supplies that had to be taken to Moscow later. Are you going to continue talking about the indifferent, inert Crimea?
And at the same time – a new wave of already familiar, purely Crimean stress, which accompanies the life of the fifth year. Martial law, living in limbo. “Don’t you think that Crimea will be closed now?” benevolent people ask. They don’t care, but I do.
Winter comes again.
P.S.
I’m in Crimea. I take pictures of a stormy sea, of a lonely tree with ornaments in tricolor in front of the ancient house of culture, of Lenin who is pointing at hills in the distance. Time is stopped.
The New Year is soon.
In fact, we all know, it’s impossible to stop time.
Text and photo by Yana Dubynyanska
