NY Jewish Week - 09.03.2008

NY Jewish Week

Dark Clouds Over Picturesque Crimea

As Russia bears down on Ukraine’s Black Sea Coast, Jews debate what’s next.

By Walter Ruby

Simferopol, Ukraine — Yefim Trahtenberg and Leonid Tupilov, two lay leaders of Ner Tamid Progressive (Reform) Congregation in this sunny city that serves as the administrative capital of Crimea — a stunningly beautiful peninsula on Ukraine’s Black Sea Coast — are longtime friends and collaborators. They have worked together harmoniously for years in rebuilding the Jewish community here since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yet Trahtenberg and Tupilov found themselves in sharp disagreement when they got together last week with several other lay leaders of the congregation for a discussion of Russia’s recent war against Georgia and what it may portend for Crimea. The predominantly Russian-speaking section of Ukraine is widely touted by political observers as the next piece of the former Soviet

Union that Russia may seek to bring under its direct control. 

Tupilov, a 73-year-old retired metal worker, opened the exchange by maintaining that Georgian President Mikhel Saakashvili started the Russian-Georgian war by invading South Ossetia and killing hundreds. That drew a heated response from Trahtenberg, a 63-year-old businessman, who said, “Russia’s actions in Georgia, including its wholesale violation of Georgian sovereignty, were very sad to see.”

Trahtenberg scoffed at the idea that Russia sent its troops into Georgia to free the Ossetians, pointing out that Russians leveled Grozny, the capital of nearby Chechnya, and killed thousands there in order to prevent that region from seceding from Russia.

Tupilov expressed the hope that Russia would extend its citizenship to Russian-speakers living in Crimea as a first step to annexing Crimea, which was part of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic until then-Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev peremptorily ordered the region transferred to Ukraine in 1954.

But Trahtenberg shot back, predicting that the adverse international reaction to Russia’s attack on Georgia will deter the Kremlin from seeking the return of Crimea anytime soon. “I don’t believe the international community will put up with it,” he said.

The exchange between the two Crimean friends could mirror, in miniature, a “Jew vs. Jew” scenario that may play out in the near future if areas like Crimea become flashpoints as Russia pushes a more aggressive stance toward its neighbors, experts say.

“We are concerned about the possibility of Jewish communities getting in the middle of something initiated by their governments, whether in Crimea or other potential flashpoints,” said Mark Levin, executive director of NCSJ, the foremost American Jewish advocacy group on behalf of Jews in the former Soviet Union.

“So far there has not been a lot of tension between the Jewish communities of Russia and Ukraine, but we are concerned about what might happen if things heat up.” Levin said. “American Jewry has tended to see the Jewish communities of the FSU as a monolith, but that has not been true for years.”

On a visit to Crimea last week, conflicting emotions were in evidence among members of the 5,500-strong Jewish community here about the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine over their homeland. In interviews in Simferopol, home to the largest Jewish community in Crimea, and in Alushta, a resort community 40 miles to the south, several Crimean Jewish leaders said they would prefer to live under an increasingly totalitarian Russian regime they perceive as strong and effective rather than under a more democratic Ukrainian government widely seen as corrupt and dysfunctional.

Yet other Jews expressed fears that increased Russian-Ukrainian tensions could lead to violence and that the authoritarian Russian government dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might institute controls inimical to the free expression to which they have become accustomed.

A mélange of majestic mountains plunging into the sea and ruined cities and castles extending back to the ancient Greeks and the Khazars, Crimea seems an unlikely conflict zone. Especially given that it is now brimming with tourists from around the former Soviet Union enjoying beach holidays.

Yet the peninsula, while geographically contiguous to Ukraine, was considered to be a part of Russia from the time it was wrested from the Ottoman Turks by Catherine the Great in the late 18th century until Khrushchev awarded it to Ukraine. Khrushchev’s act was a largely symbolic one at a time when Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Soviet Union, but assumed great significance when the Soviet state abruptly dissolved in 1991. Crimea suddenly found itself part of newly independent Ukraine, despite having an ethnically diverse population of about 2.5 million with a considerable preponderance of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers of varied backgrounds.

In addition, Crimea has considerable strategic importance as the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, which leases port facilities in the Crimean city of Sevastopol and last month used that base to direct naval operations against the Georgian coast. Ukraine’s pro-western President Victor Yuschenko, who has denounced Russian military operations in Georgia, and like Saakiashvili has applied to join NATO, threatened last month to ban Russian warships from returning to Sevastopol, but has made no military moves to back up his words. 

Andrey Ovcharov, a 55-year-old tour operator in Alushta, a bustling resort town on Crimea’s southern coast, is an unabashed advocate of what he calls “the hope” that Russia will eventually take Crimea from Ukraine.

Ovcharov, who moved to Alushta with his parents from the Urals region of Russia as a teenager and today serves as president of the 100-member Jewish community of Alushta, said, “A transfer of sovereignty to Russia would be a positive thing, especially if it happens in a civilized way.”

Ovcharov resents having to live in a society where all local television is in Ukrainian and all films are in Ukrainian with Russian subtitles. This, despite a paucity of Ukrainian-speakers.

“Of course, we can watch cable television and read newspapers from Moscow, but nobody knows when the government in Kiev may further step up the pressure of ‘Ukrainization.’ At the same time, life is becoming progressively more difficult here with soaring inflation, bribery and corruption. In Russia, the government has been more successful in imposing order and building a strong economy.”

But haven’t Russians paid a heavy price for that success in terms of the imposition of authoritarian government and loss of press freedoms? Ovcharov replied, “In Ukraine, you have a so-called democratic press that delights in reporting nothing but crime and sensationalism. Frankly, we prefer the more positive news we get in the Russian media.”

What about the idea that Jews as a people do not fare well in non-democratic societies? “In modern-day Russia,” Ovcharov replied, “a disproportionate number of the wealthiest businesspeople, doctors, scientists, and show business personalities are Jews. I think Jews have proven over the past 15 years that they can live quite successfully in Russia.”

In contrast, Ovcharov’s father, 79-year-old Boris Berland, who maintains that “Russia overdid it in Georgia,” would prefer Crimea to become an independent republic, separate from both Russia and Ukraine, pointing for inspiration to “The Island of Crimea,” a 1970s novel in which anti-Soviet novelist Vassily Aksyonov imagined a free Crimea adjoining the totalitarian Soviet Union.

Trahtenberg, a lifelong resident of Simferopol, who helped to found the first Jewish Culture Society there in 1989, agrees an independent Crimea would be ideal. But he says, “Sadly, there is no chance of that happening. So the question becomes, ‘Which country is better for the Jews? Where is there less anti-Semitism?’

“Regrettably, there is plenty in both countries,” Trahtenberg continued. “Let’s not forget that in Moscow, skinheads beat up Uzbeks and Armenians with impunity. If that can happen to them today, it may be Jews tomorrow.”

Other leaders of Ner Tamid seemed less concerned about the relative justice of the Russian and Ukrainian claims to Crimea than with the belief that a way must be found to avoid violence over the issue.

Eduard Kunitzer, a 72-year-old artist, noted, “I moved here in 1990 from Uzbekistan after witnessing the violence that erupted there between various nationalities as the Soviet Union fell apart. I hoped it would be more stable here. Now I am deeply worried about what might happen here due to the so-called ‘national question.’”

Mikhail Lambrosa, a 49-year-old jeweler, is a Krymchak, one of about 300 remaining members of a nearly extinct, ethnically Turkic community that practices Judaism and saw 80 percent of its members massacred by the Nazis during the German occupation of Crimea in late 1941. Lambrosa lived for years in Israel and Germany but returned to Simferopol because, “In the end, I realized that Crimea is the place closest to my heart.

“Whatever happens here, we pray that it won’t involve blood,” she continued. “Ultimately, what we need here is a strong, non-corrupt government here. Is that Russia? I don’t know. I haven’t been in Russia in 15 years. Moscow is very expensive these days. It’s cheaper for us to travel to Turkey or Egypt.”

Ultimately, everyone at Ner Tamid agreed that no matter which country governs Crimea, the survival of a vibrant Jewish community is essential to their own psychic well-being.

Grigori Zeitzer, a 59-year-old agronomist, remarked, “I come to synagogue Friday night tired and frazzled from work and leave a couple of hours later refreshed and uplifted by the feeling of togetherness I find here.”

For his part, Trahtenberg said, “If we didn’t have our synagogue, many of us would find it impossible to go on living here. Since 1989 we have learned to live openly as proud Jews. That feeling of connection to each other and to Jews throughout the world is what will sustain us whatever the future may bring.”