Constantine Pleshakov - The Crimean Nexus

In the words of Osip Mandelshtam, the exodus of 1920 provided Crimea with a permanent “guilty look.” Guilt coupled with nostalgia became the emotional core of Mikhail Bulgakov’s play Beg (Flight), which became a cult phenomenon for its cinematographic rendition in 1970. One could call it a Russian Gone With the Wind , a sentimental snapshot of a civilization cut short. Flight is a love story, but it starts with the evacuation of Sevastopol in 1920, and one of the protagonists is a White general. Bulgakov’s Roman Khludov is based on a real-life character—another Crimean “demon,” General Yakov Slashchov (1885–1929). [23] Mandelshtam, “Kholodnaya vesna…” (“A cold spring…”): Mandelshtam, 224; Mikhail Bulgakov, Flight and Bliss (New York: New Directions, 1985), 1–96. The movie Beg (1970): directed by Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov.

Thirty-five in 1920, Slashchov was so critical to the defenses of Crimea that Wrangel awarded him the honorific last name “Krymsky,” and the town of Yalta made Slashchov an honorary citizen. A gifted strategist, he was also a brutal warlord and a maverick. An American military observer hitching a ride with Slashchov reported to Washington that the general’s adjutant “was practically unconscious… as he was suffering from a severe head wound he had received the previous day. This is the third adjutant General Slashchev [ sic ] has had in as many months, the first having been killed outright and the second having died of wounds; in both cases the general was within a few feet when the accident occurred. The previous day a shell had landed beneath the general’s horse but had not exploded. The general attributed his luck to a large black crow, which, with two ducklings of which he is very fond, shared the front seat of the automobile with a very plump young lieutenant who had given up skirts for red breeches and Hussar boots, and never stirred without rifle and revolver.” [24] Slashchov, Belyi Krym , 179–180, 194–195; P. J. Capelotti, ed., Our Man in the Crimea: Commander Hugo Koehler and the Russian Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 111–112. (The latter misogynistic description refers to Slashchov’s wartime mistress.)

As described by witnesses, the flight of the Whites from Odessa and Novorossiysk was just as brutal, chaotic, and inhumanely final, but what remains of history is a story, and in the contemporary narrative it is the evacuation of Sevastopol that concludes the Russian Armageddon of 1917–1920.

The origins of the town of Yalta are modest and unclear. It may have started as a Greek fishing village or a tiny Genoese post, but it cannot be found on a map until the mid–nineteenth century, when it was incorporated. At that point, Yalta was a sad little affair: in the words of contemporaries, a “village of some forty white houses, forming a single street,” an “abode of poor fishermen,” surrounded by “extensive woods.” Its industry was a handful of boats harvesting oysters. Half a century later, it was an established resort with all the expected “European” amenities, including snow and ice delivered from the mountains by the Tatars. [25] Thomas Milner, The Crimea, Its Ancient and Modern History: The Khans, the Sultans, and the Czars (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855), 322; Henderson, Biblical Researches , 361; A. Bezchinsky, Putevoditel’ po Krymu (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1908), 214–215.

Romanticism revolutionized this inconspicuous coastal town. Before the age of Byron, when natural beauty was worth nothing, settlements were built where they were built because the location was either secure or profitable, preferably both. People started coming to Yalta because that was what the upper classes were doing in Europe—going to small coastal places to relax in style and meet other people who also relaxed in style. Yalta got incorporated because it had potential for the new resort industry.

A visitor in the 1840s wrote: “Nothing can be more charming than the sight of that white Ialta [ sic ], seated at the head of a bay like a beautiful sultana bathing her feet in the sea, and sheltering her fair forehead from the sun under rocks festooned with verdure. Elegant buildings, handsome hotels, and a comfortable, cheerful population, indicate that opulence and pleasure have taken the town under their patronage; its prosperity, indeed, depends entirely on the travellers who fill its hotels for several months of the year.” A Western writer called it “one of the most charming places in Europe for the invalid.” [26] Xavier Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, etc (London: Chapman and Hall, 1847), 202; Charles Henry Scott, The Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Crimea (London: Richard Bentley, 1854), 240.

After the Crimean War, not just the tsar but his brothers, uncles, and cousins thought it patriotic to build estates on the Russian Riviera. In 1867, the passengers of the first American cruise ship ever to visit the Black Sea were given a tour of several royal residences and an audience with Emperor Alexander II and his wife. One of the passengers was Mark Twain, who registered the imperial couple’s strong desire to impress the American “innocents” with “handsome” gardens, “grand old groves,” and “Grecian architecture.” [27] Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 286–289; Perry and Pleshakov, The Flight of the Romanovs , 46–47, 176–177.

Another visitor observed in 1874: “For twelve miles after leaving Yalta, there is a succession of highly-cultivated estates, and the palaces attached to them glimmer white upon the mountain side. More delightful abodes it would be impossible for the imagination to picture. One would almost believe that neither sorrow nor sickness could enter their doors; and yet, if it were so, how hard it would be to leave them for the grave!” Among the last generation of the Romanovs, almost every member of the royal family had a residence in Crimea, and in 1919, when the survivors were leaving Yalta on the British battleship Marlborough , the separation was hard indeed. [28] Katharine Blanche Guthrie, Through Russia: From St. Petersburg to Astrakhan and the Crimea (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1874), vol. 2, 160; Perry and Pleshakov, The Flight of the Romanovs , 216–218.

The scenery of the South Shore has been variously compared to Amalfi and the Maritime Alps; one group of visitors agreed that “never, on the coasts of Italy, Spain, or Northern Africa had we seen such a combination of the magnificent and the beautiful, united with such a glow of colour, as on this seaboard.” Another visitor argued that even Switzerland could scarcely compare with the “tremendous granite precipices” of South Shore. To Mark Twain, a “beautiful spot” of “Yalta, Russia” resembled a “vision of the Sierras.” [29] Guthrie, Through Russia , vol. 2, 159–160; Mrs. William Grey, Journal of a Visit to Egypt, Constantinople, the Crimea, Greece, &c in the Suite of the Prince and Princess of Wales (London: Smith, Elder, 1869), 186; Twain, The Innocents Abroad , 285.

But now let us listen to another witness: Anton Chekhov, who very unhappily spent the last years of his life in Yalta, exiled there by tuberculosis. Visitors and vacationers admired the South Shore’s looks; Chekhov abhorred its soul. Yalta, he wrote in a letter, “is a cross that not everyone can bear. It abounds in drabness, slanders, intrigue and the most shameless calumny.” [30] Chekhov’s letter to Ivan Orlov, February 22, 1899: Lillian Hellman, ed., The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2007), 236.