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.
