Ruins
For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Crimea was seen by many as one sprawling, glorious ruin, strewn with burial sites, ancient walls, churches, fortifications, and the foundations of cities that had fallen into various states of disrepair, suffered catastrophic destruction, or otherwise been subsumed within deep layers of soil and rock.
Ruins have shaped Crimean space in meaningful ways. Like cliffs and streams, they were an important source of placenames. And for much of the tsarist period, the surest way to navigate the rocky and tumultuous southern coast was by following rough directions and goat paths, calibrating one's course according to rocky outcroppings, views of the sea... and ruins. Perhaps (but only perhaps!) most importantly, claims to these ubiquitous, treacherous, and essential sites were empowering. Knowledge of them was valuable, even vital, to any claim to possession of the peninsula.
To search for ruins was, in many ways, to search for the meaning and value of Crimea - a meaning and value determined by the alchemy produced by the passage of time, the nuances of climate and topography, and the trajectories of culture and politics.
One of the early seekers, Petr Keppen, was acutely aware of this. He described finding the remains of an ancient fortification with thick walls of "wild stone" on the heights of Ayudag. "And is it surprising?" he asked.
"One must remember that this place has not been inhabited since 1475. And since then the spring sun has warmed the mountain tops and new growth has sprung from the depths of the earth no fewer than 360 times. 360 times over, autumn storms have torn the leaves from trees and ripped the grasses, each year creating a new layer to cover any traces of human existence!"
Keppen knew that Crimean history ran deep. He would have told you that to know Crimea, one had to dig.
