ABKHAZIA in 2008; Crimea in 2014: both are territories rudely seized by Russia, Abkhazia from Georgia and Crimea from Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has formally annexed Crimea, while leaving Abkhazia in a netherworld of quasi-independence. But the two places have something else in common: they were both elite holiday resorts during the existence of the Soviet Union. This, I submit, may be more than a trivial coincidence.
In his speech of March 18th Mr Putin explained Russian sentiment towards Crimea in terms of religion and war. The peninsula, he said, was where, in 988 AD, Prince Vladimir was baptised. He talked of the military heroics of the Crimean war of 1854-6, and the terrible siege of Sebastopol by the Nazis during what Russians call the Great Patriotic War, listing those conflicts’ legendary battlefields.
I don’t entirely buy it. Sebastapol was designated one of the Soviet Union’s “Hero Cities”, and certainly its endurance of the Nazi bombardment is revered in Russia. But there is another aspect of Crimea, not mentioned by Mr Putin, which springs more quickly to the minds of most Russians than Prince Vladimir when the place is mentioned: its Black Sea beaches and sanatoria, which, for many Soviet citizens, represented something close to nirvana.
For many Russians of that period, holidays meant a spell in a Soviet sanatorium in the vicinity of their home cities (you can still visit many of these facilities outside Moscow and elsewhere, and imagine what those vacations were like). A fortnight in sunny Crimea—or in balmy Abkhazia, across the Black Sea—was a privilege reserved mostly for high-ranking officials or productive, well-behaved workers deemed to have earned it. There were special children’s camps where the offspring of such people were indoctrinated in dialectical materialism, but also in the giddy delights of youthful flirtation and liberation from parental oversight. For everyone, both places meant exoticism, warmth and freedom. Even those who never made it to Crimea or Abkhazia knew of these charms and longed for them.
