Balaklava
is a town on the Crimean peninsula in a district of the city of Sevastopolwhich
carries a special administrative status in Ukraine. It was a city in its own
right until 1957 when it was formally incorporated into the municipal borders
of Sevastopol
by the Sovietgovernment.
Balaklava has changed hands many times during its history. A settlement at its
present location was originally founded under the name of Symbolon by the
Ancient Greeks, for whom it was an important commercial city. During the Middle
Ages, it was controlled by the Byzantine Empire
and then by the Genoese who conquered it in 1365. The Byzantines called the
town Yamboli and the Genoese named it Cembalo. The Genoese built a large
trading empire in both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, buying slaves in
Eastern Europe and shipping them to Egypt
via the Crimea, a lucrative market hotly
contested with by the Venetians. It is believed that it was on board a Genoese
trading cog sailing back to Genoa from Balaklava
(or Kaffa, according to some chronicles) that the Black Death first arrived in Europe in the mid-14th c. The ruins of a Genoese fortress
positioned high on a clifftop above the entrance to the Balaklava Inlet are a
popular tourist attraction and have recently become the stage for a Medieval
festival. The fortress is a subject of Mickiewicz's penultimate poem in his
1825 cycle of Crimean Sonnets.
In 1475 the
growing Ottoman Empire took possession of Balaklava
renaming it Balıklava ("a fish nest" in Turkish), which was slowly
corrupted over time to its present form. During the Russo-Turkish War,
1768-1774, the Russian troops conquered the Crimea
in 1771. Thirteen years later, Crimea was definitively
annexed by the Russian Empire. After that, Crimean Tatar and Turkish population
was replaced by Greeks from the Archipelago. In 1787 the city was visited by
Catherine the Great.
The town
became famous for the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War thanks to the
suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade, a British cavalry charge due to a
misunderstanding sent up a valley strongly held on three sides by the Russians,
in which about 250 men were killed or wounded, and over 400 horses lost,
effectively reducing the size of the mounted brigade by two thirds and
destroying some of the finest light cavalry in the world to no military
purpose. The British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized this battle in
verse. The balaclava, a tight knitted garment covering the whole head and neck
with holes for the eyes and mouth, also takes its name from this settlement,
where soldiers first wore them.
During the
Second World War, Balaklava was the
southernmost point in the Soviet-German lines. In 1954 Balaklava, together with
the whole Crimea, passed from Russia
to Ukraine.
It became part of the independent state of Ukraine in 1991. Today there are
over 50 monuments in the town dedicated to the remembrance of military valour
in past wars, including the Great Patriotic War, the Crimean War and the
Russian Civil War.
Nuclear submarine base
One of the monuments is an underground, formerly
classified submarine base that was operational until 1993. The base was said to
be virtually indestructible and designed to survive a direct atomic impact.
During that period, Balaklava was one of the most secret residential areas in
the Soviet Union. Almost the entire population
of Balaklava at one time worked at the base; even family members could not
visit the town of Balaklava
without a good reason and proper identification. The base remained operational after
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until
1993 when the decommissioning process started. This process saw the removal of
the warheads and low-yield torpedoes. In 1996, the last Russian submarine left
the base, which is now open to the public for guided tours around the canal
system, the base, and a small museum, which is now housed in the old ammunition
warehouse deep inside the hillside.
