Numerous posters along the entire South Coast of the Crimea invite you to relax with the vodka of your choice - Nemiroff, Myagkoff and Blagoff - and by all means to buy a plot of land or an apartment. But you will have to make quite an effort to learn something about medical services or cultural events on the peninsula.
You are bound to suffer from acoustic discomfort in the evening, pay prohibitive prices on city markets and get stuck in traffic jams; you will also see the difference between glamorous embankments and residential districts with broken roads, garbage heaps and malice of the locals.
On your way to the beach via a familiar park you will no longer see relict trees, which were cut down to build the so-called "club houses." Initially, these deplorable observations are eclipsed by the sun, sea, mountains and unique natural sites. But after a while, you tend to get a closer look at the surroundings, start talking to local people, watch Ukrainian television and even read Crimean newspapers. You will come across a pack of new surprises which used to be perceived in Russia as paid information or ads to attract tourists.
The land issue is a subject of most heated debates. Crimean land is being bought in nature reserves (around the Tsar's Path in Livadia and Ai-Petri Plateau) by the hectare and without any control. Concern over seizure of land by the Crimean Tatars has become all but routine, but this year it developed into pogroms, which was unusual. This was not an attempt to wreck the tourist season, as the Russian media explained to us. The situation looks different from within and is by no means reduced to an excuse for reshuffling on the eve of early elections. After all, loyal-to-Kiev leaders come and go, but the Crimea will always be there. The process of cruel and impudent re-division of property is likely to reach its peak in the period until September 30.
It is no accident that the Crimean Republican Committee on Land Resources has recalled that massive seizure of land started literally the day after the 2004 presidential elections. It was obvious that this effort was orchestrated by well-organized business with a multi-million dollar turnover on the black market. It is an open secret in Ukraine that all Crimean Tatars residing in the Crimea have plots of land or apartments. There are no homeless people among them. Some Crimean Tatars have as many as six to eight plots. In some regions they are already selling illegally occupied lands - $10,000 for a hundredth of a hectare.
Republican Land Committee executives have admitted that a Crimean Tatar pays from $500 to $1,000 to the heads of 'mobile land-seizure groups.' In modest estimate, this totals seven or eight million dollars, which are used to bribe the participants in the actions of protest. It appears nobody is staging them for free.
This solution to the land issue is being supplemented by different political actions. President Yushchenko's decision to pardon Kurtseit Abdullayev has been vigorously discussed in the Crimea for a second month now. Abdullayev organized the beating of journalists in Simeiz and an ethnic slaughter in the Simferopol-based Cotton Club. The parliamentary majority believes that his actions have provoked more ethnic clashes and given carte blanche to the extremists of Mejlis (illegal ethnic parliament).
Representatives of the Crimean Russian Community, the Party of Regions and the Russian Bloc Party have bluntly explained this unexpected decision by Yushchenko's direct agreement with the Mejlis leaders. At a news conference in Sevastopol, politicians blamed Yushchenko for putting political expediency and his personal debts to the Mejlis or the Kurultai above laws, morals and interests of society and the state.
It appears that, as before, the Mejlis is the only support of presidential agencies and Yushchenko wants to win the votes of Crimean Tatars at the forthcoming elections. He is not embarrassed of the Mejlis charter, which is urging the Crimea's national autonomy and independence in total disregard of the Ukrainian Constitution. Nor is the president concerned about the fact that the Mejlis has long become a source of inter-ethnic strife and is breeding tensions between the "old" and the "new" Tatars, or that it is supported by no more than 30% of the Crimean Tatars.
If this is true, it is not surprising that Yushchenko's rule has given rise to concern that the Crimea may become a new Chechnya or Kosovo.
Does this mean that the majority of people will again vote for the White-and-Blue? Are they pinning their hopes on the current leaders or on the Communists (as in Sevastopol)? Who will stop the seizure of lands and re-division of property? Who will bring everyday life back to normal and organize elementary law and order? Right now the police only reacts to shootings.
These hopes are not likely to be associated with the current rulers. The confidence in Viktor Yanukovich and his team is also gone, primarily because the people living on the peninsula have suddenly realized that nobody cares about the Crimea in real earnest. It has become a source of enrichment or a pleasure retreat for wealthy Ukrainians. Nobody has offered a clear-cur program to develop it, restore its former appeal and unique nature, and make it a global rather than national site. But there is still some time left. The election race is entering a decisive phase.
Gennady Bordyugov is a research project manager with AIRO-XXI (Russian Social Research Association) and a member of the RIA Novosti expert council.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
