‘They put us in the pot and slammed the lid’

What people in Crimea have to say about the peninsula's mood

Crimea has become one of the most problematic provinces of the Russian Federation. The main difficulties on the peninsula this winter have been power outages. Regional deputies blame Ukraine and consider the supply cuts to be an “act of genocide,” and a survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) on New Year's Eve and Day (at the request of Vladimir Putin) even indicated that Crimeans are willing to endure further inconveniences, in order to remain indisputably Russian. Despite rising prices and a falling standard of living, most residents are still happy about their republic joining Russia. Interested in the other side of this story, Meduza spoke with some of the Crimeans who dissent from the majority view.

Alisa, philologist (Simferopol)

As we've discovered, shuffling the order of the addends doesn’t really change the sum. As part of Ukraine there was much we were missing, but just the same is missing even now. The lines got longer, a great number of new bureaucrats appeared. Basically the only thing I like now [about having joined Russia] is that we no longer have the hypocritical “donations” in hospitals that the Ukrainian authorities used to plug gaps in the free medical system. But the alcohol isn’t good, and tobacco products got worse. The juices are disgusting. Rent for apartments is exorbitant. The prices are like Moscow, but not the wages. In spite of that, many people are happy. They’re constantly organizing one festival or another with dancing and fireworks for the grannies. But Simferopol has always been provincial, and entertainment here has always been hard to come by.

Since I have a diploma certifying that I’m a Russian language and literature teacher, I haven’t really experienced any changes in the professional sense.

In many ways, I’ve even been lucky; I got a bonus Russian Masters’ [in addition to my Ukrainian degree].

The situation with electricity is pretty interesting. In some parts of the city, there was no light whatsoever, and in others they weren’t even aware that there were any problems. Then they started more or less uniformly cutting everybody off. I was really “lucky”; I live in the center of Simferopol, and my building got power at the exact time I was away at work.

Businesses, by the way, never stopped operating. Despite the state of emergency, all of my friends kept going to work, as usual. I’m not sure what they all did there without power, but there were no extra holidays. The authorities put a curfew in effect for the city, and eating establishments were open until 8 p.m. It doesn't seem like a big deal, except if you cook on an electric stove and your stomach wants warm food not only when there’s power—then it can be a problem. When I found out all the cafes were closed, I thought they must be punishing us for the fact that we have no electricity.

As far as the New Years’ survey by VTsIOM, nobody asked me then. If they had asked me, I would have said that I wouldn’t give up electricity. But you see they called my mom, and she really did come out against the conditions Ukraine put forward. [Ukraine would only agree to continue supplying electricity if Crimea's authorities agreed to a contract stating that the peninsula remains part of Ukraine.] Her objection was on principle and she had no regrets. The brainwashing on television is thorough. Everybody is very proud for some reason that they’ve become “Russians.” As if it were a badge of personal honor.

Sevastopol was always proud of its “Russianness.” I myself was raised in a family that respected Ukrainians, but always considered itself distant relatives with a completely different culture, traditions, and worldview. When [Russia’s reunification with Crimea] had just happened, I saw a friend of mine give up his seat on public transit to a grandma who then chattered with delight about how he “must be Russian,” just for acting so nobly. It seemed like the highest of compliments to her.

It just so happened that I was acquainted with Aleksandr Kolchenko [accused of participating in a terrorist plot and imprisoned for 10 years last summer]. It was terrifying to be that close to danger. We waited, expecting them to raid our home at any moment. The first signs showed that it was worth conducting yourself more carefully. Then a world-class professor was fired from the university. Doesn’t that make you stop and think? It’s scary and strange. From a relatively free Ukraine we wound up in a country that is famous for its punishments.

After the unification, people frequently said, “That's it with Ukraine—now we’re really living!” All the wonder fell silent when they encountered reality.

Konstantin Felonenko, teacher with Artek

I came to work in Crimea just last summer. Also, a significant part of my family lives here. The living standards remain roughly the same as they were two years ago, except for the fact that a number of products have disappeared and some others now cost more.

The changes aren't the same everywhere, and things depend a lot on the location.

At Artek, where I work, the pay level actually dropped, though they’re building actively and doing various upgrades.

A sort of emotional upswing is noticeable on the whole, at least in the sense that many small private enterprises are opening in various places. For example, quite a few new alcohol distilleries have popped up. There wasn’t much stopping them from appearing earlier, under Ukraine, but they weren’t here on this scale.

In terms of the electricity situation, you shouldn't underestimate how accustomed Crimeans are to problems with utilities. Today, people are recalling their experiences from years past, when they learned to stock up on water in advance, for instance.

Popular discussions of the reasons for the blackout suggest that it's the work of either [Crimean] Tatars [deported under Soviet rule and generally opposed to Russia's annexation] trying to achieve some sort of justice, or [Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny] Yatseniuk, using agents in Right Sector [a Ukrainian nationalist group] to damage Crimea on orders from Washington, which wants revenge on the Kremlin because Syria.

The most widely expressed feeling right now is Ukrainophobia. All the flaws of the current regime are attributed to previous administrations in Kiev. Past authorities are blamed for imposing the Ukrainian language, theft, and the intentional worsening of the Crimean standard of living in the service of certain selfish objectives. Some people are skeptical of manifestations of excessive enthusiasm about joining Russia. They don’t think that the change in power really changes anything.

And it is worth identifying yet another social contingent: those who deliberately avoid commenting on political issues. Usually this goes unnoticed, but now it has become a definite civic stance.

Also, some of my acquaintances, who usually drank their fresh-poured brandy with Coca-Cola, switched over to Pepsi. Doing so, they think they “aren’t helping the Americans.”

Maria Pigulevskaya, Copywriter (Simferopol)

Life has changed rather significantly, yet people get used to everything, especially when you're talking about someone's home. There are positive and, of course, negative aspects. There isn't really a whole lot that's positive: the roads got better, and free medicine appeared. But what I noticed most of all was that, throughout society, there emerged a strange belief in some grand future.

Before, everyone understood that neither tomorrow nor the next day would be any different, knowing that literally anything could happen on a given day.

On the other hand, people now fear the authorities and the bureaucracy. You hear about various complications, whether it's finding a job or trying to get service at a clinic. A while back, my head was aching badly and I decided to go see a doctor. Before, you could just go to the neurologist. Now, in order to get to him, you have to get a referral from a general practitioner. Only the wait to see the general practitioner was so long that I couldn’t even get in before the end of my workday.

Generally, people who made an average living before are now finding it necessary to tighten their belts. But the strangest thing is that practically nobody is against it. In a conversation with colleagues, I said that life had clearly become worse. Not all of us can now satisfy even the basic needs (not to mention any higher, cultural ones). In response, I was told: it's no big deal if we have to buy imitation instead of real leather boots, soy instead of meat, or a one-room apartment at the outskirts of town instead of a two-room.

Once, I witnessed a woman—a pensioner—yell at somebody in an argument, “I may have to eat dirt, but Crimea is Russia!”

Everybody has already grown accustomed to the electricity outages.

The situation has hit me rather hard since my work is tied to the Internet, and the pay is per piece. If I don’t write the texts, I don’t get paid. Nobody cares why I didn’t get something written.

When I hear talk that we don’t need power from Ukraine, I’m shocked. I need it. And I don’t see anything bad about taking it. But people watching the television and listening to all the obviously propagandistic nonsense think otherwise.

Stanislav Petrov, law firm partner (Simferopol)

Before, there was an almost excessive feeling of freedom—a sense of the importance of the individual, opportunities, and prospects. There was a healthy tolerance. What you think and what you say, what you do or don’t believe in, are you a fervent patriot or not as much—it made no difference.

What do we see after two years?

There’s not even the hint of freedom in comparison with the past. It’s as if they put us in the pot and slammed the lid. What happened to civilization? You won't find it here, and you don't feel any connection to it, anymore. The borders are supposedly open, but you feel walls all around. There's a sickly tension in the air. Society is polarized, and there's this aggressive patriotism everywhere.

You’re either with us or against us; everyone else is an enemy of the people. It's all black and white, and there is only one right answer.

Corruption hasn't gone anywhere—it's adapted. All that happened was that one “office” was traded for another. But at least the old crooks observed some rules; they took from us, but they also gave back. Today, they take more, and they don’t always give back. Sure, “low-level” corruption may be down, but the higher-level stuff has ballooned several times and it all costs the state even more.

The bureaucracy has also ballooned. There's a lot of motion, noise, papers, memos, and periodicals—for what, not everyone knows, and whoever does know can’t seem to remember. It's a sort of imposed, general passivity, and it's killing us. Everybody seems to be on the job, busy with something, but work efficiency is near zero.

Before some Moscow friends invited me to join their legal firm, I worked in a leadership position in the Crimean prosecutor’s office, at the rank of Judicial Counselor. Back then, they demanded initiatives, innovations, and real impact on the status of the law. They generally encouraged us to seek out conflicts and stand up for our principles.

Now it's more about the process than the results. Two workers from the prosecutor’s office are accompanied by three supervisors, just to monitor the price of bread. Before [the annexation], we'd have have been booted out for staging something like that. Now, these shows are what the job is all about. Nobody’s thinking about being effective, anymore.

The referendum [on joining Russia] happened almost two years ago, and while many may not have voted, they also did not object. At first, it was just a fairytale—there was a sense of security. All payments of state benefits jumped up several fold. But, already within a year, the prices also jumped up many times. Good-tasting food products got crowded out by far less tasty ones. And then incomes sank to the Russian average.

That and the cost of the Russian currency itself changed, which cancelled out the recent benefits.

With the first jump in the exchange rate, a year ago, Crimeans bought up everything they could get their hands on, traveling to the Russian mainland, where prices were 25 percent lower, so they could get rid of their dollars. People were retelling each other what they heard in Krasnodar and other Russian regions:

“Why are you keeping your prices in rubles? Haven't you seen how the exchange rate keeps jumping?”

“It's the dollar that's jumping around. Everything's fine with the ruble. My salary is in rubles, and I pay for my groceries in rubles.”

You can feel the sanctions in Crimea. They’ve set back development by a decade—even according to the all-powerful state electronic database for information and services. Where procedures had been automated, they’re now carried out on paper.

I’d gotten used to paying by credit card, but now I pay for things with cash. I’d gotten used to the European-level wide variety of groceries, but the selection has collapsed. There isn’t a single Western brand in Crimea. All plane travel since the passport switch [from Ukrainian to Russian] is always through Moscow, which means you add at least four hours to any flight—and it costs more.

In Ukraine, online stores have whatever you’d want with three-day delivery. In Russian Crimea, there is still no such thing.

Meanwhile, Russian television reinforces the idea that the war, chaos, and impoverishment in Ukraine. The TV's claims that “they have it even worse” have a strong calming effect.

But I'm not going anywhere. I am a native Crimean, and this peninsula's history, its complications, and its future—that’s my history, my complications, and my future.

Georgii Pereborshchikov

Moscow