Bakhchisaray-Berlin Express: Part 1. "Simferopol" Station

On the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, we publish the memoirs of Elnara Letova, a Ukrainian Crimean Tatar who is currently residing in Berlin. The war for her began not a year ago, but with the occupation of Crimea in 2014.

February 23, 2014. I will probably remember this evening until the end of my day. The long-awaited victory of the Maidan. I have visitors, we watch a live broadcast from Kyiv on TV and rejoice through tears. My guests are American friends, volunteers from Window on America, and teachers from the university in Simferopol, which was then called KIPU. I myself studied at KNEU and attended the “clubs” organized by Window on America to improve my spoken English.

We cried, shouted, and hugged at the table, which I laid in my tiny cozy apartment in Simferopol. We managed to buy it with my (now ex) husband in the summer of 2013. The plans included a grandiose renovation and it seemed that life was already all planned out and stable - I worked in a prestigious American company, and my career was rapidly going up. My ex-husband, a talented artist and web designer, had a lot of clients. And for the first time in my life I, the one who has been dreaming of living in Berlin since I was 13 years old, thought that it was not so bad in Crimea. That we had found a way to develop and grow in interesting and new areas in such a depressive region of Ukraine, because in Crimea, apart from the tourism business (not sure though one could call it a business) there was nothing much else to do. It was already in the 2010s in Ukraine, as well as throughout the world, that the tech industry began to grow at a tremendous pace. To what extent exactly it had grown in Crimea, I realized only after the annexation: the company where I used to work was one of the few that remained on the peninsula to the last, and crowds of specialists from those companies whose offices were closed came to us to apply for the job.

My American friends who stayed with me that evening left on the day when the Council of Ministers in Simferopol was captured. First to Odesa, and then to Moldova. Their 9-year-old son did not even put on shoes, they all just jumped into the car and left, leaving everything in Crimea. I, of course, stayed in Crimea. But I neither could eat, nor drink, nor concentrate on my work. My system got completely shut down and I had a good chance of getting anorexia.  

I simply could not believe what was happening, and then, for the first time in my life, I had the idea to go into journalism. I wanted to shout to the whole world about what was happening in Crimea, how serious it was, and most importantly, how unfair. At least to those who did not ask and did not wait for Russia to come.

I've never been particularly interested in politics. In the “Political Views” column on my page of the then very popular Russian social network “VKontakte” in Ukraine, it was listed as “Indifferent”. Many people asked me how come. Well, I'm not proud of that, but I really just didn't care. But 2014 changed everything, I began to be interested in things that had never bothered me before, in particular, the history of Russian/USSR/Russian Empire invasions of neighboring states. Only in 2014, I learned about the existence of Pridnestrovie. Only in 2014, I became interested in what exactly happened in Chechnya, Georgia, and Afghanistan. In the end, my modest journalistic career began with a long Facebook message, which I then sent out to all my English-speaking friends. The Americans who were visiting me then even sent it to their senator. And yes, instead of "peace" I typed "piece". The Freudian slip I guess. Cause no peace is possible when it comes to dealing with Russia.

When I was sharing my thoughts about the possibility of a third world war with colleagues and friends, I was called a dystopian and an alarmist. I was sure that a large-scale war was now simply inevitable. Then, when the war did not go beyond the borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions for years, I myself began to think that I was just nervous and therefore pictured the worst-case scenario. But on February 24, 2022, I realized that I was very unfortunately right 8 years ago. Even on this day, I experienced less shock than in February 2014. Even then, all possible scenarios for the possible development of events in vivid pictures lined up in my head. For 8 years I was haunted by nightmares with scenes of war. Apparently, my brain survived a full-blown invasion long before it actually happened. I didn’t have such a shock back in 2006 as in 2014 when I was in a car accident at the age of 16, and the doctors said that I might never be able to walk normally - or maybe even walk at all. It seems that I coped with that situation better than with the Russian invasion in Crimea. I could not imagine that in the 21st century, this is possible in principle. That we have here rubles instead of hryvnias now. That from now on my capital is Moscow, not Kyiv. And I also could not imagine that such things could end well.

Back then I thought that either intellectually handicapped, mentally unhealthy, or totally out of their minds and therefore nostalgic for the soviet union old people could shout “Crimea is Russia!”. I was thinking, well, how many of them are there, these outcasts, like 5 percent maybe? It was to my very unpleasant surprise and even shock, when my colleagues, employees of an American company with higher education and a very decent dollar salary, rejoiced in the same way as these outcasts in the plots of Russian TV channels.

I heard some total insanity from our leading specialists then - from black transplantation right on the Maidan to amphetamines, which the Americans gave out to all the protesters. “What do you think, Elnara, would a person in a normal state go with just bare hands against armed Berkut soldiers?”

It took me a very long time to understand and accept the fact that, unfortunately, there is no correlation between the level of professionalism of a specialist in a certain field and their ability to think critically and analytically. But even then I realized how pro-Russian citizens differed from pro-Ukrainian ones. After all, everyone judges by himself: for them standing for their country and for their values was possible only by being completely drunk or/and drugged.

And I, as a Crimean Tatar, then heard from my own (as it seemed to me then) Crimeans, how Stalin took pity on the “Tatar traitors” and “simply sent” them to some good and warm places instead of shooting them. That “these Tatars have never been here”, and “this all is fiction, let them go to their Uzbekistan.” I myself heard the conversation of two women who were walking around our neighborhood choosing houses for themselves, which “they will take when the Tatars leave Crimea”. There was an “interesting” case in my life, I’ll screenshot it and probably stop here. At least for now.

"Dear friends, this is what happened to me personally this morning.  I really regret that I neither filmed it nor recorded it on a dictaphone.  I parked near Velana (in Bakhchisarai), got out, and then some man came up to me. He was about 60 years old, and we had such an interesting and completely incoherent conversation:

 - Will you give me a ride, daughter?

 - Umm, why should I drive you somewhere?

 - I will pay you, and you will drive me where I need to go.

 - Sorry, you got it wrong, it's not a taxi.

 - You can't park your car here!

 - Hm.  Why?  This is a parking lot where everyone leaves their cars. 

 - I told you, you have 10 minutes.

I was pretty confused already and wanted to avoid any interactions with crazy people.

 - No problem, I'll go to the children's store, buy what I need and be free even earlier. 

I also thought oh wow, the rules in Bakhchisarai are now just the same as they have become in the center of London. And then that man changed in his face and began to yell at me:

 - I told you, you will soon drive us all!  And our Putin has already agreed with the Mejlis and all of you Tatars will be sent to the Kuban! That's all! I said everything!

You know, friends, even if this whole story, which has already annoyed everyone, ends really peacefully, the question stays. How can I continue living with these terrible people who neither you personally nor your relatives have done anything wrong, but for some reason, they hate you for simply being a Crimean Tatar. I would not be surprised if that crazy man still lives in the old part of our town, in a crumbling tiny house of the pre-war years, built by the Crimean Tatars, who did not consider it necessary to expel it when they returned to the Crimea, but having arrived on the bare Crimean ground, built themselves a new house."

Read next chapters: 

Bakhchisaray-Berlin Express. Part 2: “Simferopol-Kyiv”

Bakhchisaray-Berlin Express: Part 3. "Kyiv" Station