A view of Yalta

A view of Yalta

We went to Crimea a few years ago, and very much enjoyed our time there. 

Speaking to our guides, and to other locals, it was obvious even then that many of the people living there wished to go back to being part of Russia. Many had already obtained Russian passports.  They resented having been  'given' to Ukraine (then part of the USSR of course) by Nikita Khruschev, himself a Ukrainian, who was thought to have been drunk at the time, or possibly suffering from a feeling of guilt in those post Stalinist days.

The area was secured for Russia on behalf of Catherine the Great in the mid 18th Century by her lover Potemkin, although Peter the Great had almost got there some 70 years earlier.  To this day it has great strategic importance, giving the Russian fleet access to water that remains unfrozen all the year round.

Yalta, pictured above, has been much valued by Russians as a holiday destination since the 19th Century. One of Anton Checkhov's greatest short stories, The Lady with the Little Dog, is set there and the great writer lived in the town towards the end of his life.  Today it is a rather tawdry seaside resort, but the surrounding countryside is lovely and in former days it must have been stunning.

The photograph is taken from the balcony of the Tsar's appartments in the Livadia Palace, where the Yalta Conference was held in 1945 at the end of World War 2.

Finally, for those interested in the politics of linguistics, there is an interesting article about the Ukrainian situation in the Moscow Times,here.