2004: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The 150th anniversary of the Crimean War

There had not been so much European battle armament or officialdom in the area around Sevastopol probably since the Crimean War ended. While three Turkish cruisers, a British frigate and three Italian naval ships, including the historic tall ship, the Amerigo Vespucci, anchored in the bay just off the coast, official representatives of Russia, Turkey, Britain, Italy and France gathered on land on September 9-10, 2004, in the historic city, located at the tip of the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine. They were there to commemorate 150 years since the beginning of the Crimean conflict, in which all the great powers of Europe took part.

The war, which was memorialized in Tennyson's epic poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," is considered by many historians one of the seminal moments for the development of a Ukrainian national self-awareness and the independence movement that culminated in statehood in 1918. Russia's defeat in the conflict also led directly to the elimination of serfdom in the Russian Empire in 1861.

The commemorations, which occurred on a series of cold and rainy early autumn days, consisted of visits to the vast cemeteries of the Russian, English, French and Italian soldiers that lie in the hills around Balaklava, located some 12 kilometers (8 miles) from Sevastopol. More than 1 million combatants lost their lives in the three-year conflict, a third of whom were Ukrainians in the Russian force.

The culmination of various events of the anniversary program, which also included a parade of ships, came on September 10 when a new memorial to the fallen, which was also dedicated to maintaining lasting peace among the nations that were involved in the Crimean War, was unveiled in Sevastopol.

Among the dignitaries present in addition to Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk and Minister of Defense Yevhen Marchuk, were Prince Michael of Kent, cousin to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, and former Russian Prime Minister and current Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin. Also on hand were the ambassadors to Ukraine from the countries that participated in the war, as well as a large Turkish military delegation and thousands of curious Ukrainians.

In the days prior to the commemorations, the cities of Sevastopol and Balaklava undertook a much-needed facelift of the war memorials, the cemeteries and battle sites in the area, financed by the government in Kyiv. In July President Leonid Kuchma had declared that Balaklava, one of the oldest and most historic cities in Ukraine, which also has a scenic deep water bay and mountainous vistas, should be transformed from a naval base into a tourist site.

The 150th anniversary of the Crimean War occurred as Balaklava celebrated the 2,500th anniversary since it was founded as a Cimmerian city. More recently it was a closed city and the home of what during the Soviet era was the world's most secret underwater submarine base, home to the Soviet Union's Mediterranean Sea nuclear submarine fleet. Today it harbors both the Ukrainian Naval Forces and the Russian Black Sea Fleet within its several deepwater bays.

Balaklava was also where one of the largest European conflicts of the 19th century began, after Russia attempted to take parts of current-day Moldova and Romania and extend its influence onto the Balkan Peninsula. It ended when the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which controlled the Halychyna (Galicia) region of Ukraine at the time, told the Ottoman Empire and its allies that it was ready to enter the war on its side. Russia, well aware that the addition of the Austro-Hungarian forces presented an insurmountable force that could have led to the dissolution of the southwestern portion of its empire, mainly the Ukrainian territories, quickly agreed to the Paris Peace Treaty.

- Danylo Kulyniak and Roman Woronowycz

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 16, 2005, No. 2, Vol. LXXIII

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