Yalta - the Ukrainian Riviera

When I first heard of the name Yalta I was convinced it was a misspelling of Malta. Such imperious ignorance. In terms of appeal they aren't all that different. Both attract tourists by the droves to their sunny climes and their beaches. There is one key distinction though. In December many still head to Malta to escape falling temperatures further north. In December Yalta and its touristy surrounds pretty much shut down.

To be fair Yalta is warmer than many places in its primary tourist catchment area - Russian and Ukrainian tourists make up the bulk of its visitors. Restrictions on foreign travel for many Soviet citizens meant then that the Crimean coast became a popular destination for many. It has led to the luxuriant growth of high-rise concrete thickets all along the Yalta seafront, and on the adjourning slopes of the Crimean Mountains.

The development hasn't ceased today, nor has Yalta's charm been irrevocably marred. And it's easy to see why. Yalta's enviably beautiful location between mountain and sea has been drawing visitors, and mostly distinguished ones at that, since the nineteenth century. The numerous dachas and palaces that are today overshadowed by the cookie-cutter hotels and resorts attest to a more polished past. The honours roll include the acclaimed playwright Anton Chekhov, the Tsarist subduer of the Caucasus Mikhail Vorontsov (who built a palace west of Yalta in Alupka) and the Romanovs themselves. One of these palaces (at Livadia) hosted that epochic summit between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in May 1945 which saw them partition post-war Europe.

The proletarian break with this rather un-Marxist past came with Lenin's 1920 decree On the Use of Crimea for the Medical Treatment of the Working People. Aristocratic assets like estates, spas and the like were seized by the government, and their gates flung open to the workers. But privilege, even if barely acknowledged, never went away. Yalta was repopulated by the CPSU neo-aristocracy. Stalin spent his summers in Massandra Palace. Khrushchev loved his summer bobs on a rubber float in the tepid Crimean waters, surrounded by three diver bodyguards. Gorbachev found himself stuck in his dacha near Foros as the hardliners bungled their coup back in Moscow. All were in the Yalta's vicinity.

Above: Lenin in Crimea. No decapitation, this is Yalta!

Today, it has become fashionable once again to embrace privilege. Ukrainian families still arrived in their marshrutkas to enjoy their Black Sea holidays. Yet these were now openly upstaged by the modern nouveau riche seeking to reacquaint themselves with the pleasure world of the ancien regime. Hoteliers and restaurateurs pounced by charging over the odds. (It also meant hotels were well beyond our budget. We eventually got a cosy little apartment right next to the beach from Black Sea Crimea for US$60 a night.) History is coming full circle, as it frequently does, with mordant irony.

Below: Compare and contrast, nineteenth century versus twenty-first century.

Things were inevitably livelier than Sudak. We spent our evenings after our day-trips strolling along the promenade and Lenin's Embankment, two boulevard beloved of the Yalta folks. There seemed on the whole a joie de vivre about the place which we haven't observed elsewhere. Joggers huffed and puffed the length of the promenade, families pushed their perambulators unhurriedly and skateboarder teens strutted their stuff. All were unbothered by the cold, snow and ice which stalk the lands further north.

Below: life on Yalta's favourite streets. Spot the rainbow.

One particular evening, we wandered into the Tourist Information Centre, the one tourist facility which has not gone into self-declared hibernation. It was manned by a helpful young man, Slava, who spoke English and Spanish as well as his native Ukrainian and adopted Russian. We chatted briefly after he helped find out the timings for our onward bus journey.

Slava's parents, both teachers, hailed from central Ukraine and met in Soviet Yalta. And here he was born. He has one degree in Business Management and is studying for his second one in Law. He bemoaned the scarcity of jobs in the country, and expressed his desire to develop his career overseas, possibly in Dubai. I pointed out that his proficiency in four languages opened doors for him. The number of competently multi-lingual Europeans I've met on my travels this side of the world has always impressed me. The extent to which linguistic diversity is recognized in Europe is a product of its long-entrenched political pluralism. Here was an embrace, in some places unanimous and in others uneasy, paid for dearly by the cataclysmic upheavals of two world wars in the previous century.

The same pluralism, albeit here more cultural than political, can be observed in Crimea itself, towards which my conversation with Slava drifted. Russian is the lingua franca here, recognized as the first language by more than 90% of the population. This includes the majority Russian and a smaller, insignificant number of Russified Ukrainians.

Politically, Crimea seems to be in a state of stasis. Russian until 1954, Khrushchev gifted the peninsula to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to mark the 300 years of friendship between the two nations since the 1654 Treaty of Pereiaslav. Under the overall Soviet federal straitjacket back then it didn't matter. But the 1991 unravelling of the Soviet Union led many Crimean Russians to feel stranded. The subsequent recognition by Kyiv of Crimea as an Autonomous Republic and the granting of extensive political autonomy eased matters somewhat, and an uneasy truce ensued.

The one bonus for the traveller was the complete absence of any of the Euromaidan hullabaloo in Crimea. Nobody talks about it, Slava says. Nobody wants to be branded a traitor. And Kyiv is far away.