The Armenian genocide memorial, Yerevan

The trauma of the genocide against Armenians in Turkey during World War I weighs heavily on modern-day Armenia. It is a raw wound, kept open by the failure of the Turkish Republic even to acknowledge it, let alone apologise for the huge injustice heaped upon the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. During visits to Armenia, the topic inevitably comes up. The country’s border with Turkey is closed, its relations with its neighbour far from normal. The genocide is a tragic page in Armenia’s long history which it seems cannot be turned.

Genocide memorial, Yerevan

I visited the Genocide memorial and museum in Yerevan in September 2017. The memorial was completed in 1967, following a huge demonstration in Yerevan on 24 April 1965 to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the genocide. Such outpourings of national sentiment were rarely tolerated in the Soviet Union, but this time the authorities bowed to the popular feeling. The memorial sits on a hill overlooking the city, and consists of three main elements. Along the approach to the monument is a 100-metre long wall, on which are the names of the towns and communities whose Armenians were deported and massacred. The centre of the memorial consists of 12 inward-leaning basalt slabs forming a circle, with an eternal flame in the centre, commemorating the victims of the genocide. The 12 slabs represent what Armenians consider to be their 12 lost provinces in present-day Turkey. Nearby, a 44-metre high spire symbolises the survival and rebirth of the Armenian nation, but a fissure represents the tragic disbursal of the Armenian people by the genocide.

It is a solemn and dignified memorial, a fitting monument to the tragedy of the victims. A visit to the memorial is now part of the itinerary for foreign delegations. Nearby are trees planted by foreign heads of state and dignitaries who have been there. While I was there, two groups of visitors, dressed in formal clothes, solemnly walked along the path to the memorial, before standing quietly, heads bowed, around the flame, and then leaving flowers. No words were spoken. None were needed. It is difficult adequately to express feelings about such events, not a tragedy, but the wilful destruction of a people in a land they had inhabited for millennia.

The museum was opened in 1995. A subterranean construction, it tells the story of the genocide in photographs and explanatory texts, as well as artefacts from the time. It begins with exhibits about the life of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire before the genocide, a thriving community with schools and commercial enterprises and a rich cultural life. Photographs of successful businessmen, of happy, optimistic school children. Exhibits evoke the life of those times. The label of a lemonade brand is in four languages, Turkish, Armenian, Greek and English. Postcards marking the Young Turks revolution in 1908 have inscriptions in Turkish, Armenian, Greek and French. At the time, many Armenians shared the optimism of their Turkish compatriots.

The story them moves on to earlier massacres of Armenians in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Each year, the genocide is commemorated on 24 April, because that was the day in 1915 when Armenian intellectuals and other prominent members of the community were arrested, prior to being murdered. As such it marks the beginning of the genocide. But state-sponsored terror against the Armenian community did not begin in 1915. The images of the events in 1915 and the following years tell a harrowing story. Even for people who are already well-informed about the genocide, walking through the museum, looking at the photographs, reading the accompanying texts, is deeply affecting. The pictures of wasted people, starved, in rags, hardly able to stand. Of corpses left by the side of road. Of ranks of children, orphans, having survived the death marches across Anatolia, but having lost all that they knew and loved. It cries out for atonement. But from Turkey, denial.

Nagorno-Karabakh

I arrived in Yerevan in September 2017, in the warmth of late-summer. I had visited Armenia twice before, in 2006 and 2013. During those visits, the tragic past of the Armenian people had persistently loomed. The 1915 genocide in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, and the deep wound left by the loss of territory in eastern Turkey that Armenians consider rightly to be theirs. And the more recent tragedies in the wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-inhabited enclave seized from neighbouring Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union crumbled. This time I wanted to visit Karabakh, to try to understand better the meaning of this remote, sparsely-inhabited mountainous region for Armenians.

From Azerbaijan’s perspective, visiting Karabakh was illegal. I would be unlawfully entering Azerbaijan’s territory. When I had visited Azerbaijan in 2014, there was a question on the visa application form as to whether I had ever visited Karabakh? The answer, at the time, was no. Azerbaijan has adopted a similar policy to Georgia and Ukraine with respect to their lost territories in Abkhazia, Crimea and the rebel-territories in Donbas. While entering those territories from within Georgia or Ukraine was permissible, crossing the border from Russia was an offence. Several foreign politicians and performing artists have been banned from visiting Ukraine after they illegally entered Crimea.

The Nagorno-Karabakh border

Since a referendum in February 2017, Karabakh had taken the name Artsakh, for which an ancient Armenian lineage was claimed. I joined a group of diaspora Armenians, led by an enthusiastic guide from Yerevan. Most of them had originally come from Iran or Syria, but now lived in the United States or Canada. We needed visas to enter Karabakh, but while these could be obtained at the Artsakh embassy in Yerevan, our guide picked them up for us at the foreign ministry in Stepanakert, the territory’s capital. Crossing into Karabakh, the border was marked by a sign welcoming us to the would-be state. A little further on there was a border post, with two flags flying, one of Armenia, the other of Artsakh. The Artsakh flag is the same red, blue and orange tricolour as that of Armenia, but with the addition of a jagged white line running from top to bottom. Our guide told me this symbolised that on both sides of the line, the border, were Armenian lands.

During the journey, our guide was most insistent on the name Artsakh. She fervently spoke of the determination of Armenians to hang on to what she saw as their ancestral territories. My diaspora Armenian companions responded with applause. It was not just the territory of Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh, or mountainous Karabakh, that she referred to, but to the whole territory that Armenian forces had occupied during the war of the early 1990s, including lands around the former autonomous province. The Soviet-era autonomous province did not even share a border with Armenia, and was completely surrounded by Azerbaijan. We crossed into Karabakh via the Lachin corridor, whose capture by Armenian forces during the war had established a vital territorial bridge between Armenia and Karabakh. But for our guide even all the captured territory was not enough. There was still territory that needed to be ‘liberated’ from Azerbaijani control, she asserted.

Ever since the war in the 1990s, there have been on-off talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan to look for a settlement of their longstanding dispute. They have never got very far. At different times, various concessions have been discussed. Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first president of independent Armenia, advocated a phased solution, under which Armenia would hand back most of the captured territory around Karabakh, and agreement over Karabakh itself would be deferred. In return, Azerbaijani and Turkish blockades of Armenia would be lifted, aiding Armenia’s economic recovery. But Ter-Petrosyan did not manage to bring his countrymen with him, and he was ousted from power in 1998. Another idea was a mooted territorial swap, by which, in return for giving up Karabakh, Azerbaijan would receive territory in the south of Armenia, to give it a land bridge to its territory of Nakhichevan, sandwiched between Armenia and Turkey. But our guide had no such notions of compromise. Armenians were determined to hold on to all the territory.

Karabakh is a sparsely populated enclave. While the makeup of its population had fluctuated over the centuries, following its takeover by the Russian Empire from Persia early in the 19th century, its Armenian population was boosted by migrants from lands to the south that remained in Persia, while many Muslims left. By the end of the Soviet Union, the population of the enclave was around three-quarters Armenian. To this day there is much controversy over the decision in 1921 by Stalin, the Bolshevik Commissar for Nationalities, to grant Karabakh to Azerbaijan, albeit as an autonomous territory with an Armenian majority. Armenians note bitterly that the decision nearly went their way. But the Bolsheviks were swayed by their desire to establish sound relations with the new Turkish republic to hand the territory to Azerbaijan, according to the wish of Ataturk. To Armenians, this appears one more example of the Turkish determination to wipe all trace of them from their historic lands. After losing so much territory and so many people during and after the First World War, having now won the war over Karabakh in the early 1990s, they are determined to hold on to their gains.

National Assembly and Union of Artsakh Freedom Fighters

Stepanakert is a small town of a little over 50,000 inhabitants, down from 70,000 before the war with Azerbaijan. It suffered severe bombardment during the war, when rockets rained down from nearby Shusha (Shushi in Armenian), which overlooks the town. The population was forced to seek shelter in basements, and many left. But there is little sign of that now. With the help of diaspora money, Stepanakert has been rebuilt. And it has been rebuilt to be a capital of a state. Karabakh may be small, with a population of around 150,000, but the presidential palace in Stepanakert might grace the capital of a large country. Across the main square is the newly built parliament building, and the headquarters of the Union of Artsakh Freedom Fighters.

This impressive new town centre appears to be an expression of confidence in the future of Artsakh. On the outskirts of Stepanakert stands a monument that symbolises the enduring presence of Armenians in Karabakh. Built in 1967, the ‘We Are Our Mountains’ monument, otherwise known as ‘Grandma and Grandpa’, depicts an Armenian man and woman in traditional attire. Hewn from rock, it represents the steadfastness of the Armenian people of the highlands of Karabakh.

We Are Our Mountains

Stepanakert also holds reminders of the heavy price Karabakh’s Armenian population paid for their victory. The Artsakh State Museum contains artefacts going back to pre-history, as well as photographs and exhibits depicting traditional Armenian life and handicrafts. It also has displays about the recent war. Especially poignant is the Museum of Fallen Soldiers, in a modest little building tucked out of sight in a backyard close to the central square. As well as exhibits of weapons and other memorabilia, the walls of the museum are covered with photographs of the mostly young men, and a few women, who died in the fighting. But still, it is a celebration of victory. In one room there is an Azerbaijan flag on the floor, apparently captured in Shusha. It seems to invite people to trample on it.

We visited Shusha the following day. A short drive up into the mountains above Stepanakert, its strategic importance is clear. Perched on a clifftop, it had repeatedly defied would-be attackers. Shusha’s origins are disputed, but in the middle of the 18th century it became the capital of the Karabakh Khanate, under Persian suzerainty. Following the region’s incorporation into the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, many Armenians settled in the town, and by the time of the Russian revolution they made up slightly over half of the inhabitants. But the town retained its importance for Azeris, and was known as a cultural centre. In the struggle for territory at the end of the First World War, the Armenians of Shusha were among the victims. In March 1920, Azerbaijani forces sacked the Armenian quarter of the town, massacring several hundred and expelling the rest. Shusha’s much diminished population (thousands of Azeris left as well) was predominantly Azeri throughout the Soviet period, an Azeri centre in mainly Armenian Karabakh. In a daring assault in May 1992, Shusha was captured by Armenian forces. We stopped on the road from Stepanakert to Shusha to see one of two tanks that the Armenian attackers used in the attack, now standing as a monument to the victory.

Shusha ruins

The Armenian capture of Shusha relieved Stepanakert from bombardment. But it also brought a new tragedy, the expulsion of the Azeri population and the widespread destruction of the once fine town. Almost all the destruction was caused after the town’s capture. It ensured that Azeris would not be able to return to their homes. I took a walk around Shusha. While there has been a lot of rebuilding, much of the town remains in ruins. The population, which had reached over 15,000, mostly Azeris, at the onset of the conflict (it had been over 40,000 before the First World War), had recovered to getting on for 5,000 by 2015, all Armenians. At a high point in the town, Ghazanchetsots Cathedral has been restored.

Mosque under reconstruction, Shusha

One of the ruined mosques in Shusha was in the process of being restored when I visited. However, this was not necessarily a portent of reconciliation with Azerbaijan. Iranian experts were invited to carry out the restoration. In his book on the Caucasus, Thomas de Waal described how Armenians and Azeris have carried their war over territory into the realms of history, as each has sought to assert prior claims. Thus nationalist Armenian historians denied the historical presence of Azerbaijan. Shia Muslims speaking the Azeri dialect of Turkish had lived in Karabakh and in Armenia for centuries, and Muslim-ruled Khanates had held sway over much of the southern Caucasus. But as the name ‘Azerbaijan’ was not commonly used until the 20th century, Armenians denied there was any Azerbaijani history in the region. Thus Armenians claimed that mosques in Shusha and in Yerevan were Persian, not Azerbaijani. Our guide told me in Shusha that Azerbaijan objected to the restoration of the mosque by Iranians, as if it were a part of the Persian rather than the Azerbaijani heritage.

Blue Mosque, Yerevan

I visited the one remaining mosque in Yerevan before my trip to Karabakh. Yerevan had been a small, predominantly Muslim town before the incorporation of the southern Caucasus into the Russian Empire. Baku and Tbilisi had both been more important Armenian population centres. Yerevan’s Blue Mosque had been built in 1765, and, following the end of the Soviet period, in the 1990s, it too was restored by Iran. Yerevan’s Iranian information centre is at the same site. As well as a religious centre, it is also an Iranian cultural centre, and offers Persian language courses.

Another mosque that has been a subject of contention is in the ruined town of Agdam, north-east of Stepanakert. Agdam was an overwhelmingly Azeri town, situated outside of the territory of Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh. Early in the war, it had been used as a military base by the Azerbaijanis. In July 1993, Armenian forces captured it, sending the entire Azeri population fleeing eastwards. While the town was captured mostly intact, it was afterwards wrecked by people seeking booty. As in Shusha, the destruction meant that Azeris would have nothing to return to. We drove alongside the ruined town, now a ghostly place, almost no building left standing, gradually being reclaimed by nature. This was surely an uncomfortable sight for Armenians, testimony to the injustices suffered by Azeris, a challenge to the notions of Armenian triumph and righteousness. Our guide told us Agdam had been a notorious centre of criminal activity, a criminal town. Thomas de Waal described Agdam as a black-market centre. No doubt it was so. But it is a big step from that to declaring a whole town to be criminal, as if in some kind of justification for its inhabitants’ fate at the hands of Armenian conquering forces. Our guide’s characterisation of the tragedy of Agdam left a distinctly bad taste in the mouth. The mosque in Agdam is still standing. Our guide stressed that Armenians respected religious buildings, although visitors had previously reported that the building had become derelict, and that its floor had been strewn with cow dung. More recently it had been cleaned up, and Karabakh’s authorities announced it was being renovated.

Gandzasar Monastery

Christian churches have also been the subjects of fierce historical dispute between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Azeri historians have sought to portray churches that had served the Armenian community in Azerbaijan as having been, in origin, Caucasian Albanian. The Caucasian Albanians had, before the arrival of Islam, ruled a territory that included much of present-day Azerbaijan. Little trace of them remains today. Probably many of them converted to Islam and were assimilated by the Turkic Azeris, while others who retained their Christian faith came under the sway of the Armenian Apostolic Church. But Azeris see them as part of their heritage. The Christian churches around Azerbaijan are for them Caucasian Albanian churches that had been usurped by Armenians. We visited Gandzasar monastery, north-west of Stepanakert. Monasteries are the of glories of Armenia. During this trip, I visited several in Armenia itself. Gandzasar, with the 13th century church of St John the Baptist, is a fine example, and important evidence for Armenians of their historical presence in Karabakh. In 2015, a manuscript centre was opened at Gandzasar, a museum and library containing old illuminated manuscripts and early printed books. Siting such an important cultural repository in Karabakh was another affirmation of the permanence of the Armenian presence in the region, in the past and the future.

Close to Agdam is the archaeological site of Tigranakert, which was discovered in 2005 and is in the process of being excavated. Armenians assert that this is one of four cities of that name honouring Tigran the Great, who ruled a vast Armenian empire in the 1st century BC. For Armenian nationalists, the boundaries of that empire, including swathes of today’s eastern Turkey, remain legitimate. The site of Tigranakert in the territory of Artsakh (but outside Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh) is an important affirmation for Armenians of their historical right to this land. Our guide thanked God that the site had been found while the territory was under Armenian control, as she was sure that if the Azeris had found it, they would have claimed an altogether different history for the town. Thus the history of archaeological sites, as that of mosques and churches, has become a tussle between competing nationalisms. Walking through the site’s museum, I could not see any concrete evidence for this being Tigranakert rather than some other town. I raised the point with one of the researchers who worked there. The answer was essentially that it made sense that this should be Tigranakert. Maybe it is. But when history is misused for modern political ends, truth is too often lost in the murk.

Karabakh, or Artsakh, remains precarious. De jure, the territory remains part of Azerbaijan. Even Armenia has not officially recognised its independence. What are the chances that a change of borders based on force and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people will be recognised? The viability of this remote land with its tiny population is open to question. Efforts have been made to boost the population. A native of Karabakh, Levon Hairapetyan, who had made a huge fortune as an energy sector tycoon in Russia, sponsored hundreds of mass-weddings in Karabakh, and became the godfather of hundreds of children in an effort to promote population growth. Hairapetyan died in a Russian prison in October 2017, shortly after my visit, where he faced charges of embezzlement. But in his native Karabakh, he was a hero. He had invested huge sums in his home village of Vank, close to Gandzasar. As we approached Karabakh, in the strategic Lachin corridor, I saw an attempt to draw Armenians to settle in the disputed territory. Newly-built houses built in rows, which our guide told me had been built for Armenian refugees from war-torn Syria. It looked a barren, lifeless place, just houses with no sign of how new settlers were supposed to make a living there.

Armenians are determined to hold on to this land, dependent on support from Yerevan and from the Armenian diaspora. After 25 years of economic blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, they appear willing to continue to pay the price for it. Even the most reasonable, most moderate Armenians and Azeris practically never agree on Karabakh. And by no means all of them are at all reasonable or moderate. Most Armenians see little reason to compromise over a land they see as rightfully theirs. For now, they think they have won. But a small, isolated country, in a hostile region, they cannot but feel uneasy.

Travels in Southern Bessarabia

Southern Bessarabia had fascinated me long before I ever went there. A sliver of land south-west of Odessa, sandwiched between Moldova to the north, Romania to the west, and the Black Sea to the south. Located on the Danube delta, its marshlands are among the richest wildlife havens in Europe. But Bessarabia is also notable for the diversity of its population, formed by migrations and the vicissitudes of international politics and warfare over the preceding two centuries. This piece of territory in southern Ukraine is only part of historic Bessarabia, the majority of which today forms the Republic of Moldova to the north. Southern Bessarabia is also known as Budjak, a name that derives from the Turkish word for borderland. Its character was forged in the repeated shifting of borders between the medieval principality of Moldavia, the Ottoman and Russian empires, Romania, the Soviet Union and independent Ukraine.

Southern Bessarabia is linked with the rest of Ukraine by just two roads at either end of the delta, or ‘liman’ in Ukrainian and Russian, of the Dniester river. The route to the north passes briefly through Moldovan territory. As you leave Ukraine, if you are transiting through to southern Bessarabia and not planning to enter Moldova, you are handed a chit by a border guard, which notes the time and the number of people in the vehicle. You are then supposed to drive straight through, without stopping. When you re-enter Ukraine, the border guard checks the time on the chit to verify this. The southern route goes along the seashore, crossing a bridge over the entrance of the liman at the seaside resort of Zatoka. Neither route has a high capacity, and at Zatoka the bridge over the liman opens every so often to let ships pass, closing it to traffic for half-an-hour at a time. During the summer season, Zatoka is choked with tourists, slowing traffic on this southern route to a crawl. As a result, Southern Bessarabia feels isolated from the rest of Ukraine. The main road through the region had been notoriously bad until former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, during his controversial stint as Odessa regional governor in 2015-16, pressed for repairs. There was also talk of a new bridge across the liman, to link Odessa with Romania to the west by a new highway.

Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi fortress

On my first visit to Bessarabia in November 2015, I went to Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, on the western side of the liman. The town is notable for its massive fortress. There had been a fort here for centuries, a strategic hilltop position overlooking the liman. Much of what can be seen today dates from the Ottoman period, which finally ended in 1812, although Russian forces had captured the town more than once in the preceding decades. A striking memento of the Ottoman period is a minaret in the castle grounds, which once formed part of the Bayezid Veli mosque. A stone tablet nearby recalls that an Orthodox church had stood on the site before the Ottoman conquest. Today, Bilhorod-Dnistroskyi has a Ukrainian majority, but historically it was more diverse. Before the Second World War, when southern Bessarabia was part of Romania, the town contained significant Jewish and German populations, as well as Romanians (or Moldovans), Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians and Greeks. There is also an old Armenian church.

Bessarabia’s Jews were mostly victims of the Nazi holocaust. The Germans were deported by Stalin to Central Asia. But southern Bessarabia nevertheless retains its diversity, a fascinating patchwork of nationalities. None forms an overall majority. In some districts, such as Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi and Tatarbunary, Ukrainians predominate. Elsewhere, notably Bolhrad, it is Bulgarians. In Reni, in the far south-west, it is Moldovans. Gagauz, Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkish dialect, are also a significant presence in several areas, especially in the south-western districts of Bolhrad and Reni. Russians are found in significant numbers in several districts, including Izmail, southern Bessarabia’s most important town. There are also smaller groups. Roma are present in many areas, and often face the same kind of disadvantages and discrimination that they experience in so much of central and eastern Europe. Perhaps most surprising of all is the small Albanian community in the village of Karakurt, close to Bolhrad.

Izmail, with statue of Suvorov

Unusually in southern Ukraine, Izmail retains its Ottoman-era name. One of the Ottoman Empire’s most important fortresses was on this site. The fort was first built in the 12th century by the Genoese, who dominated much of the trade in the Black Sea region during the golden era of the Silk Road. In the 15th century, the region was conquered by the Ottomans. The fortress at Izmail was strategically one of the most important in the Empire. Having been briefly captured by the Russians in 1770, it was heavily refortified by the Ottomans, and was supposed to be impregnable. When the great Russian general, Alexander Suvorov, attacked it again in 1790, the Sultan ordered the Ottoman defenders to stand their ground and on no account surrender. Suvorov’s successful storming of the fort in December that year is commemorated at the diorama, a three-dimensional model of the assault on the fortress. It was a terribly bloody affair, and most of the Ottoman defenders were slaughtered. Suvorov later reported that he wept following the victory.

Izmail, surviving mosque

The diorama is located in the only surviving building from the Ottoman period, a small mosque that had stood next to the fortress wall, on the bank of the Danube. The fortress itself was later razed to the ground, and all that can be seen of its once massive fortifications are the remains of ditches that once stood before the ramparts. A statue of Suvorov on horseback stands in the town centre, and one of the town’s many well-preserved 19th-century houses contains a museum with exhibits about Suvorov, and about the great battle for the fortress.

The symbolism of statues is particularly significant in Izmail, as elsewhere in Ukraine. When I first visited the town in November 2015, a huge statue of Lenin dominated the square in front of the administration building. However, here as all over Ukraine in the coming months, in compliance with a new law requiring the removal of all symbols of Communism and Nazism, the statue was taken down. The law caused division and anguish in many places in Odessa Region, as many people mourned the removal of ‘dedushka’, ‘grandfather’ Lenin. But removing Lenin from Izmail proved tricky. The base of the statue was so solid, that when I visited in April 2016 heavy machinery had been brought in methodically to smash it. By that August, the statue had been replaced by a flowerbed, and another smaller Lenin statue had also disappeared without trace. A city government official explained that they decided it was better to erase Lenin altogether than to put up another statue in the place where he had stood.

Izmail, with Lenin

Izmail is an attractive town, its old buildings in good condition, its flowerbeds well-maintained. In this it is a marked contrast to the shabbiness of Odessa. The mayor, a former KGB man, won with more than 90 per cent of the vote in local elections in 2015. Such an outlandish margin invites scepticism, yet even the mayor’s critics among journalist and NGO workers in Izmail acknowledged, when I asked them, that he did a good job, and was genuinely popular. He typifies Ukrainian politics, a chameleon who changes his party affiliation with each change of the political wind direction, and maintains his grip on power. But as an effective advocate for the town, and a successful administrator, his support remains strong. No doubt Izmail’s success is also down to the presence of money. The port is an important employer, and many locals work as sailors, a well-paid profession.

The port in the nearby town of Reni, further up the estuary, is in a less healthy state. When I visited in April 2016, the port was quiet, buildings mainly empty, equipment idle. A manager from the port told us that in Soviet times a larger part of the port’s activity was connected with Yugoslavia. For example, Soviet cars were transported along the Danube to Belgrade. But all that had come to an end. The small amount of activity at the port today is mainly grain from Moldova. The port at Reni is a beautiful spot, especially at sunset, walking along the east bank of the Danube, while the sky blazes red on the opposite, Romanian side of the river. We once had a barbecue on the river bank, grilled trout washed down with red wine from the Shabo winery, close to Zatoka, while the sun gently sank beneath the horizon.

I enjoyed Bulgarian hospitality on several occasions in Bessarabia. The region is renowned for its fine sheep’s cheese, ‘bryndza’, and for lamb, which does not generally feature prominently elsewhere in Ukrainian cooking. On a visit in November 2015 to the town of Artsyz, where Bulgarians are the most numerous ethnic group, two prominent local Bulgarians entertained us to lunch and local wine, toasting us with the words “peace to the world, and money to the Bulgarians.” It was in a way a fitting motto for Bessarabia. While war raged elsewhere in Ukraine, here the various different nationalities continued to live peacefully alongside each other, getting along with their lives. There had been attempts to stir up trouble in 2014, when nearby Odessa teetered on the brink of open conflict, its streets a battleground between pro-Russian forces and Ukrainian nationalists. Leaflets appeared; a Russian flag was painted on the road outside Bolhrad; there was online propaganda. Amid the fear that conflict engenders, scared people in multi-ethnic lands can all too easily be persuaded to draw in on themselves, to band together to confront the feared other. But it didn’t work in Bessarabia. True, most members of minority ethnic communities there did not identify with the Ukrainian nationalism that exploded into revolution in Kyiv. The sympathies of some were undoubtedly with Russia. Yet they continued to rub along together much as before.

Bessarabia’s Bulgarians appeared content to be left in peace. Politically, they dominate in the areas where they are concentrated. In Artsyz, I met a local Bulgarian priest. Full of energy and enthusiasm, his big project was the construction of a large basilica, its architectural style inspired by an ancient church in Bulgaria. I visited it in November 2015. It had been under construction for four years already. He had found investors, and the basilica was being built partly by volunteers. While we were there, a football team from the nearby ethnic-Bulgarian village of Zorya were working on the site. We later heard they were champions of an amateur Ukrainian league. A few months later, in July 2016, I met this indefatigable priest again. This time his attention was focused on building a new clock tower on the town square, where until recently a statue of Lenin had stood, to mark the upcoming 200th anniversary of the town. Behind such projects lay an irresistible optimism, that despite the country’s problems, in Artsyz they could make their lives better.

Bessarabia’s Bulgarians came to the region in the early 19th century, invited by Imperial Russia to fill the empty spaces left by the Muslim population that had departed following its capture from the Ottoman Empire. In many villages, people knew exactly where in Bulgaria their ancestors had come from, which at that time was still under Ottoman rule. A local official in Zorya told me the village had been established in 1830, and had originally been called Kamchik after a river in Bulgaria from where the original inhabitants had migrated. There had already been a village on the site, but it had been abandoned by its Muslim inhabitants. At the beginning, there had been 34 families, and almost all the village’s inhabitants are descended from them. There is a small Bulgarian ethnographic museum in Zorya. The director had originally come from Russia, and had married a local man.

While Zorya’s population is almost entirely Bulgarian, its churches reflect the diverse past of the region. In addition to the Orthodox Church, there are three protestant churches. These had only appeared since the end of the Soviet Union, the museum director told me, but she thought Protestantism may have had deeper roots. Nearby Sarata had been a German-inhabited town until the Second World War, and their influence may have spread to Zorya.

The region’s Bulgarians have close connections with Bulgaria. Many villagers have Bulgarian citizenship, the local official in Zorya told me, giving them the possibility of working in the EU. Many also go to university in Bulgaria. In the village of Kubei, close to Bolhrad, I was told they have a Bulgarian-language school on Sundays. Bulgaria supplies textbooks, as well as funds for traditional costumes and musical instruments.

Holding dual nationality appeared to be a matter of pragmatism for Bessarabia’s Bulgarians. But for the Moldovans it was more controversial. Bessarabia, including present-day Moldova, had been part of Romania in the 1920s and 30s. The Romanian and Moldovan languages are virtually identical, and some in Moldova openly express hopes for reunification. Some see Romania’s offer of passports to Moldovans as an irredentist ploy to take back the territory lost in World war II. Crossing the border into Ukraine from Moldova near the town of Mayaki, an advertisement gave a phone number people could ring to enquire about Romanian citizenship. A local official in an ethnic-Moldovan village near Reni insisted that Romania’s offer was illegal, and that despite the attractions of an EU passport, local Moldovans would not sacrifice their Moldovan identity. A representative of the Moldovan community in Odessa insisted to me that Moldova had its own separate historical identity, and was worried about the influence of Romania in Moldova and in Ukrainian Bessarabia, promoting the idea that all are Romanians. But a shopkeeper in the village close to Reni expressed ambivalence as to whether they were Moldovan or Romanian. More importantly, they were poor. Many would take Romanian citizenship in order to be able to work in the EU, she said. But it was expensive, and few could afford it.

Visiting several ethnic-Gagauz villages in February and September 2016, there was plenty of discontent in evidence, as well as worry about the future. But everyone I spoke to, whether officials or members of the public, said they had no interest in any supposed Gagauz autonomy in Bessarabia, or link-up with the Gagauz autonomous republic across the border in Moldova. Bessarabia is multi-ethnic, they said, with different national groups in neighbouring villages. Such notions about Gagauz autonomy were attempts by outsiders to stir things up. Much of the discontent was economic in origin. A group of farmers in one Gagauz village told me they feared the village was dying. In Soviet times, they had produced a variety of agricultural products. But now they felt isolated from potential markets, unable to compete. People were leaving the village, many of them going abroad, to Turkey and elsewhere. Houses in the village were being abandoned.

Bulgarian-Gagauz village of Kubei, Bolhrad district

There is pro-Russian feeling in Bessarabia, for sure, and evidence of the influence of Russian propaganda. An official in one Gagauz village told me he blamed the EU for interfering in Ukraine, and the United States for funding those behind the Maidan revolution. He said force should have been used to stop them. Either the EU should accept Ukraine as an equal partner, or let them go with Russia, he said. He believed Ukraine had been destabilised by western interference, but that the EU would not accept Ukraine, as it falls short of western standards and is too corrupt. There had been agitation in some Gagauz villages in 2014 about young men being drafted to go to fight in eastern Ukraine. An official in one village told me the military commissioner there had wisely not pressurised people to join the army. But in some villages, he told me, where the military commissioners had been more forceful, there had been conflicts. In another village, a Gagauz official told me people from that village would not go to fight in the east. They had relatives on the other side, he said, so why would they shoot at them?

In one mixed Gagauz-Bulgarian village, a school teacher acknowledged that there was pro-Russian sentiment in the village. They could not forget that two centuries earlier, Russia had given their ancestors sanctuary. But most people kept such feelings to themselves now, he said. That probably summed up the widely held view among Bulgarians and Gagauz, especially the latter. They might harbour pro-Russian feelings, and they might be antagonistic to the Maidan revolution, but as they had no possibility of influencing events, it was wisest just to keep their heads down and carry on trying to live as best they could. Thus had it ever been in Bessarabia. Borders changed, states and empires came and went, but the people who lived there had no say in the matter.

Much the same could be said for the Russian population. I visited the picturesque little town of Vilkovo three times during 2016. The majority of Vilkovo’s population are Russian Old Believers, a breakaway sect from the Russian Orthodox Church following a 17th century schism. Built on marshland on the Danube estuary, and criss-crossed by canals, Vilkovo is somewhat exaggeratedly known as the Ukrainian Venice.

Vilkovo

On a glorious late-summer weekend that September, I took a boat trip through the canals from Vilkovo to the outer edge of the Danube littoral. Among the willow trees and the reed beds, here and there are weekend homes with jetties, moored boats, gardens with fruit trees, and men fishing. The farthest point of the delta is known as ‘Zero Kilometre’, the mouth of the Danube. A map shows how, over the decades, the ‘0 Km’ shoreline that marks the end of the delta has gradually extended out into the Black Sea, as sediment carried down the great river gradually creates new land. As the waters open up at this furthest point, a profusion of birds take advantage of the rich fishing, including swans, herons and pelicans. Later I ate a tasty meal of freshwater fish at a riverside restaurant. My evening meal was accompanied by the croaking of frogs, a particular speciality in the area of Vilkovo and nearby Kiliya. I enjoyed eating them on several occasions, especially cooked in a garlic sauce.

Persecuted in the Russian heartlands, the Old Believers had settled in the outer-reaches of the empire, in places like Bessarabia. There are three churches in Vilkovo, one of them a regular Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), and two others Old Believer. The director of the privately-owned museum in Vilkovo, not himself an Old Believer, told me the town had been established in 1746, while the region was still under Ottoman rule. It had been settled both by Russian Old Believers and by Ukrainian Cossacks from the Zaporizhian Sich, the semi-autonomous Cossack realm which many Ukrainians regard as an antecedent of the modern Ukrainian state. The Sich was dismantled on the orders of Catherine the Great in 1775. Ukrainian settlement of Bessarabia began under Ottoman rule, when the Sultan offered Cossacks from the Zaporizhian Sich refuge in his realm.

In June 2016, we visited one of the Old Believer churches in Vilkovo, and spoke with an elderly lady who was cleaning the church. The priest was not there, she said, and would soon be leaving to join his wife in Italy. They were looking for a new priest, but it was not easy. She clearly asserted that she was Russian, but said the Old Believer community had no problems with the Ukrainian inhabitants in the town. Old Believers who had been called up to go to fight in the east had refused to go she said. If everyone in Ukraine had done likewise, there would be no war, she added. A local official told us the Old Believers had preserved their religious beliefs more faithfully than other religious communities under communist rule. But struggling to replace their priests, how well they would survive the post-Soviet era is another question.

Another endangered minority in southern Bessarabia is the Albanian community. In February 2016, I visited the village of Karakurt, and met local officials and teachers from the village school. They told us the village had been founded in 1811 by migrants from a village close to Varna, on the Black Sea coast in present-day Bulgaria. They said there were around 1,300 Albanians in the village, about half of the population. As with the Bulgarians and Gagauz who came to Bessarabia at that time, they were Orthodox Christians who had accepted Russia’s invitation to settle the newly conquered lands.

The people I met were proud of their Albanian heritage, and determined to preserve it. But it was evidently challenging. Until Soviet times, they said, people did not marry out of the Albanian community. But now there were many mixed marriages, and in such marriages, the children did not generally grow up speaking their native language. The children playing on the school playground, I noted, were speaking Russian. Still, efforts were being stepped up to preserve their language. Following a visit by an Albanian-embassy official, one of the school teachers had spent a month in Tirana, learning how to teach modern, standard Albanian. Now they were planning to include Albanian language as a subject in the curriculum of the village school. However, they acknowledged that their dialect was quite different from the standard Albanian spoken in Albania. The teacher who had visited Tirana had been inspired by her trip, but she had found it hard to understand the language spoken there. She reckoned only half of the vocabulary in their village dialect was the same as in standard Albanian. Lacking words for modern appliances and technologies, they borrowed words from Russian or Bulgarian. But, they noted, standard Albanian also included many foreign borrowings.

I wondered what chance they had of preserving their Albanian heritage among such a small population, many of whom had only a limited grasp of the language, and felt more comfortable in Russian? Not only were there many mixed marriages, but many young people were leaving for nearby towns such as Izmail and Odessa. And if they studied standard Albanian at school, what then of their unique dialect, presumably a lost remnant of the rich profusion of Albanian dialects once spoken around the Balkans, in present-day Bulgaria and Greece as well as the heartland of the language in Albania and neighbouring regions?

The hardship and dislocation that had afflicted all of Ukraine following the breakup of the Soviet Union had hit Southern Bessarabia acutely. Collective farms that had employed thousands had been replaced by modern agricultural enterprises that needed few workers. People are leaving the land, and many villages are dying. What hope then for the intricate fabric of this diverse land, if its people leave?

On top of that are the pressures to conform to the mores of the Ukrainian nation amid a determined surge to homogenise and build a more avowedly Ukrainian state. Among the multiplicity of nations of Bessarabia, Russian has long been the lingua franca. But reforms being introduced since the Maidan revolution seek to promote, even impose, Ukrainian. This policy, perhaps understandable given Russia’s assault on Ukraine since 2014, has introduced new strains. Bulgarian and Gagauz officials and teachers told me in early 2017 that they had no objections in principle to the use of Ukrainian in official documents, or to the switch to Ukrainian as the language of instruction in the region’s schools. Ukrainian is, after all, the state language. But why the rush? There were not enough teachers able to teach in Ukrainian, they said. For them Russian was already their second language, and Ukrainian their third, or even fourth. Such rapid change was simply too demanding. They expressed fears that teachers might under proposed new laws be punished for speaking to children in Russian. One teacher noted that under Romanian rule in the 1920s and ’30s, people had been punished for speaking languages other than Romanian in public. Such heavy-handed attempts to impose linguistic conformity brought back unhappy memories in multi-national Bessarabia.

Southern Bessarabia’s longer-term economic prospects may be better than appear now. The marvels of the Danube delta, the profusion of wildlife, will surely bring tourists. Some already come. Danube cruises bring people down the river from Germany and Hungary. Beach resorts are popular with holidaymakers from Moldova. And the national parks of the Danube delta, around Tuzli and Vilkovo, already bring tourists. In 2016, I twice visited the picturesque ethnic-Moldovan village of Orlivka, near Reni. The energetic head of the village council had big plans for the development of tourism. He was cooperating with a town across the river, in Romania, to boost tourism. Supported by a leading member of the regional administration, a Gagauz, they were planning to establish a ferry crossing. He was pinning his hopes on ecological tourism. He planned to build bird-watching towers, and a hotel complex and sanatorium. Most exotically, he was introducing water buffalo, which, apart from being an attraction in themselves, would, by eating vegetation in the water, improve irrigation and make Orlivka’s streams and lakes cleaner. He also envisaged milk and cheese production.

Many of Bessarabia’s people stand to benefit from such enterprise. However, adaptation is proving difficult. The Tuzli Liman national park has seen violent clashed between the park authorities and local fishermen who claim their traditional rights are being trampled. The future is probably brighter than these disgruntled locals appreciate now, although it may be that not everyone will benefit equally. Southern Bessarabia’s isolation may soon come to an end. What that will do for the delicate ethnic balance of this rich and beautiful land remains to be seen.