Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Forget the nouveau-riche tackiness of seaside resorts! This is the place to stay with
local families, drinking Turkish coffee on their verandahs and gorging on homemade
Tatar sweets. But that's not all - the place is full of remnants of past civilisations and is a
great base for outdoor adventure in the Crimean mountains.
THE STRONG LINK
When you disembark from an elektrychka(electric train) in Bakhchysaray, you
might notice a plaque on the left side of the station building. It commemorates
Crimean Tatars who were herded here on 18 May 1944, forced into cattle cars and
sent on an arduous journey to Central Asia. Stalin had decided to punish a whole
people for collaboration with German occupiers, ignoring the fact that 9000
Crimean Tatars fought in the Soviet army and thousands more joined Soviet partis-
ans.
Ayder Asanov, 82, is one of the few who lived to return from the exile in the
1990s. Sitting in the Usta Workshop, he is only 50m away from the place he was
born. 'It was a jeweller's district,' he explains. 'My father, my grandfather and my
great-grandfather all were filigree silversmiths.' Aged 16 when he was deported to
the desert known as Famine Steppe, Asanov had already mastered the craft, but
there was little chance to develop his skills in exile. He faced punishment for mak-
ing jewellery and there were no materials anyway. Still, from time to time he
worked secretly, procuring little pieces of wire at the machinery plant, where he
was forced to work.
By the time he returned, Asanov was the only person who knew the secrets of
Crimean Tatar filigree. But this last link to the past proved very durable. 'I am
amazed how my hands remembered it after all these years. Tatar filigree is much
finer than, say, Russian, but I could still do it,' says the old man. Nowadays he has
about a dozen students, guaranteeing that the craft will not be facing extinction
again anytime soon.
A total of 180,000 Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea, followed by
37,000 members of smaller minorities - Greeks from Balaklava, Italians from
Kerch, Bulgarians from Koktebel, Armenians from Feodosiya and all ethnic Ger-
mans. They were usually given only a few minutes to take vital belongings and very
few of them lived to see their homes again.
