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While I’m writing the answers to your questions and the continuation of the story, I’ll share a link.
https://pikabu-ru.translate.goog/story/otdyikh_kryim_2025_13122589?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wappSomeone on Pikabu describes their trip to Crimea, and he takes photos much better than I do.
In that article, cave monasteries, the sea coast, the Crimean observatory.
https://cs20.pikabu.ru/s/2025/08/27/22/yro2wenz.jpg
https://cs18.pikabu.ru/s/2025/08/27/22/yfordebj.jpg
https://cs19.pikabu.ru/s/2025/08/27/22/35mux4mf.jpg
https://cs20.pikabu.ru/s/2025/08/27/22/3vm2xxbm.jpg
https://cs19.pikabu.ru/s/2025/08/27/22/jnyuxvyj.jpg
https://cs19.pikabu.ru/s/2025/08/27/22/yfouwvqo.jpgIn the text, the author shares current prices for food and fuel and compares them with prices in his home region (Kazan city, Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation).
@Brian Red, you may have missed the answer about Cossacks here
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/08/ukraine/comment-page-2/#comment-1084843Cossacks was a lyfestyle. The closest analogue is Robin Hood and Сo 🙂
A community of people who do not live by the laws of any of the neighboring states, self-governing paramilitary group.This is how the Zaporozhian Cossacks emerged. Kievan Rus dissapeared, and the Crimean Khanate and the Principality of Poland-Lithuania, who occupied the land, were alien in ethnicity, culture and religion.
Cossacks could hire themselves out to perform services for those who paid them money – some time by Khanate, other time by Principality.
Later, this group of people (sometime during the rule of Bohdan Khmelnytsky) joined the reviving Russian state. Thus, it can be said that from this moment on, the Cossacks became a subethnos – part of a larger ethnic group, with its own distinct differences.
The Wild Field – territory occupied by the Cossacks, had many Russian toponyms since Kievan Rus. Now it’s Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhie, Nikolaev, Odessa, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkov, Kherson, Transnistria, Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov and some more.
About bread – Catholics perform communion with unleavened bread (*Latin word hostia), and Orthodox Christians perform communion with yeast bread (*Greek word πρόσφορα. By the way, if you studied physics, algebra and astronomy well, you will be surprised to find that you know the names of many Greek letters and can read a Greek word.)
As for the bread that people ate every day – rye was common in Russia. Wheat varieties were not widely acclimatized here at that time. Rye was more stable and gave a harvest more reliably, so rye (black) bread with sourdough is a national product.
There are many varieties of this bread in our stores, including Finnish, Lithuanian, Belarusian. The most popular is Borodinsky loafs, a USSR recipe for mass production, with coriander seeds.
If time permits, and I’m counting on a short standstill while people are busy preparing for September 1, I’ll try to make a video right around my house. Just so you don’t believe the Ukrainian propaganda that we’re catching hedgehogs here for food 🙂
@ET,
Thank you for your praise, I’m so proud to hear!
But I must say that my stories cannot be compared with those of professional guides. In Bakhchisarai there’s a park of miniatures, where you can see models of Crimean landmarks. The guide who led us there was old-school professional.
She told about the historical building, the reconstruction of which was sponsored by the Umerov family. Umerov is now the Minister of Defense of Ukraine.
She said bluntly: “despite what is happening between us now, we must tell the truth and give credit where it is due”.That’s how we were educated in USSR, that’s why I use ‘old school’.
There is an opportunity to continue 🙂
Among other peoples who inhabited Crimea were the Scythians. A mysterious tribe whose origin has not been convincingly proven. A nomadic people with a unique culture, who inhabited the territories from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and under whose hegemony was the territory from the Dnieper to the Don.
The Scythians disappeared by the 4th century, before the Slavs appeared on these lands in the 5th century. The remaining burial mounds yielded many art objects, the most impressive of which are probably the Scythian gold items.A unique collection of 565 gold items belonged to the Crimean Museum and was provided for exhibiting in Allard Pierson Museum in the Netherlands. Due to the fact that Crimea changed its affiliation, and the Netherlands believes that Crimea should be subordinate to Ukraine, the collection was transferred to Kiev.
—
Btw, in the 6th century the Byzantine historian Jordan mentions the Slavs (latin Sclaveni) in his work ‘De origine actibusque Getarum’.
Another historian Procopius Caesarensis, recorder of the wars of Emperor Justinian, described in some detail the character, way of life and appearance of the Slavs.
He makes an interesting mention that earlier the Sclaveni were one community with the Antes, and bore the same name – the Spores, because their homes were scattered far from each other.
Procopius wrote that the Slavs didn’t have one ruler, but decisions were made collectively. They didn’t believe in fatum, that is, the predetermination of destiny. They considered the God with Lightning to be the supreme one and sacrificed a bull to him. They had single language and uniform appearance – neither light, nor red, nor black.*Sounds convincing to me, considering the Slavic deity Perun, and the typical appearance of a brown-haired person with gray eyes.
There are actually many museums in Crimea, and there is even a Museum of Peace and Harmony. I noticed that people there emphasize tolerance for all cultures and religions.
Of course, there are also museums dedicated to the history of the Crimean Tatars. One of these is located on the territory of the Tekkie Dervish. In addition to ethnographic things, there’s also an exhibition about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
This is undoubtedly the pain and tragedy of the people. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, with respect, I’ll simply tell you how it feels from the inside:My ancestors were Kuban Cossacks, who were also deported from their native land with their entire families. My grandmothers told me about that when they were still alive, and my father retold what he knew from his parents, and he is alive and relatively healthy now, may his years last as long as possible.
We’ve already talked about the Cossacks, these are people who, if I may say so, “signed social contract with the monarch”. The empress gave them tne right to own land in exchange for military service to protect this land.
People lived here as militarized agricultural communities (stanitsa) with self-government and an elected position of the head of the settlement (ataman).
The social structure assumed large families of several generations, which were not isolated. Remaining in the region, living on their land, in one house or in several in the neighborhood. In my family, one of the great-grandmothers became a widow, and married a brother of her deceased husband, to avoid dividing the land into 2 smaller parts.At the beginning of the 20th century a revolution happened in Russia.
Private property was abolished and the state took the land of the entire country.
Of course, this caused discontent among that part of the Cossacks who were successful and wealthy landowners. The other part of the Cossacks, the poorer ones, might think that taking everything away and dividing it up is a good idea.Similar processes took place throughout the country, a civil war broke out. In my great-grandfathers’ family one of the brothers fought for the Whites (monarchists), and the other for the Reds (Bolsheviks).
When the Red government considered the Cossacks an unreliable stratum and a threat to the new social order (which is logically quite justified), the Cossacks were repressed. And here’s what I want to say.
Firstly, women were not emancipated.
That is, if a man was deported, then all the women dependent on him were forced to follow him. Simply because without men’s hands it was impossible to survive in the household of that time.
Secondly, undoubtedly, their underage children followed the men and women, for the same reasons mentioned above. Thirdly, disabled and elderly people joined, for the same reason.I asked my father, and he expressed himself very clearly – the family was a well-coordinated mechanism with assigned roles and an established way of life. It was easier to move with the whole family and try to live in a new place than to split up. This is how my great-grandfather, who fought for the Whites, was repressed, and with him the whole family ended up in Kazakhstan.
What distinguishes the stories of my ancestors about the deportation of the Cossacks from the stories of the guides about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars – my relatives reported ALL the prerequisites for what exactly happened, and why everything happened exactly the way it did. They told me their personal opinions that it was a great injustice, that people found themselves in insurmountable position.
But they did not say that it was simply the tyrannical Soviet government that viciously threw people out of their homes because Stalin was the devil and he wanted it that way because of his vile character.—
Okay. These are long-gone matters. My ancestors returned to their land, the Cossacks were rehabilitated, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.Myself, a descendant of deported Cossacks, stayed at a hotel of descendants of deported Tatars, and the hosts were very hospitable to us, and we had interesting conversations.
On my trip to Crimea, I expected to try the national cuisine of the Crimean Tatars, and our guide and bus driver highly recommended and praised the local dishes.
Of all the food associated with Crimea, I only knew the Yalta onion.
This variety is a well-known throughout Russia, it’s ideal for salads. The plant develops a flattened purple bulb with thick, juicy scales that have a sweet and not too spicy taste. Traditionally, onions were woven into wreaths and hung on the wall; they can be stored like this all winter.
If you are interested in why Yalta onion should only be from Yalta (well, like champagne should be from the Champagne region, and the rest is just sparkling wine) I refer to this article and photo by gardener Tasha. It’s machine translation via Google Translation and it replaces ‘onion’ with ‘bow’, because in Russian these words are homonymous.
https://tasha–jardinier-livejournal-com.translate.goog/60626.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wappSuch an onion perfectly complements tomatoes, ripening under the southern sun into huge fleshy fruits, which, when broken, resemble the pulp of watermelons, looking like sprinkled with melting sugar grains. Add salt and oil squeezed from fried sunflower seeds (a traditional product of my region), maybe cucumbers in one variation, or boiled potatoes in another, and you will have the most authentic village salad of the south of Russia.
In general, I expected to find Yalta onions and Tatar cuisine on the table. Tatar cuisine is very popular in Russia, I mean the regular Tatars, whose khanate became part of the Russian state in the 16th century, when the Golden Horde fell and Tsar Ivan the Terrible conquered the capital city Kazan.
Tatar cuisine doesn’t include pork. I think that the refusal of pork should be common among many nomadic peoples, that is, those who moved their homes to new pastures when the herd devastated the current one. Pigs with their thick bodies and short legs are poorly adapted to such movements, unlike sheep, goats, cows, horses, camels and other long-legged cattle.
ah, and also pork is prohibited by their religion.The inter-penetration of Russian and Tatar cultures is enormous, but traditional features are carefully preserved. Modern youth sing songs about echpochmak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlrFZ0QvTmU
🙂 The song in in Russian and Tatar, a young guy who came to America in search of a better life is hungry and misses national cuisine 🙂
A real hit, look at the comments, people write that if you didn’t drop a tear listening to this, then you have no heart. I testify, it is so!There is also a very popular joke that goes like this:
*the text starts in Russian* My name is Andrey *Russian name*. I live in a dorm with my neighbor Azat *Tater name*. Once I treated him to some sauerkraut from my mother, and he handed me a triangular pie, saying that it was Echpochmak. I broke off a piece, put it in my mouth and *further in Tatar language* Bu éhpočmak bik tämle bulyp čykty, min any söt belän ašadym häm bik arydymSo, continuing with the herds of long-legged animals, they usually give milk, so dairy products are present in the cuisines of Turkic-speaking peoples, who traditionally lead a nomadic lifestyle. The amount of milk varies depending on the season, so people have long known ways to “preserve the milk harvest” by making cheese.
Briefly and without technical details:
You must know that milk without heat treatment sours naturally, thanks to the lactic bacteria present in it. Acid provokes the coagulation of milk proteins and the formation of a clot. This process can be accelerated by adding lemon juice or rennet to the milk.If you strain the clot from the liquid part, you will get cottage cheese. If you press it, you will get fresh cheese. In my region, this is Adyghe cheese. If you want to store this cheese longer, you will place it in a solution of salt and spices. Cheese of this type should be known to you as Greek Feta, and in our country it is Brynza cheese.
However, weak heat treatment inevitably reduces the shelf life of the product, so other types are stored longer:
if you warm up your curdled milk well, you’ll get cheeses similar to mozzarella or burrata. In our region, these are Suluguni and Chechil.The Tatars have a popular dish called Cheburek, a flat pie made from very thin unleavened dough with a filling of meat, onions and herbs, deep-fried. I tried Yantyk from the Crimean Tatars, a much more gentle version, mine was with a filling of Brynza cheese and fried in a frying pan without oil.
The dish Dolma is probably popular in many countries, the Crimean Tatars have a separate name Dolma for bell peppers stuffed with meat, and Sarma for stuffing wrapped in young grapevine leaves.
We also tried a dish that was highly recommended but I can’t remember the name of – tiny dumplings in hot broth. It was delicious and the size of the dumplings was amazingly small, probably a dozen in one spoon!
Also on the menu was Lagman, in two varieties: Uyghur and local Crimean Tatar. I started with the second, and forgive me, Uyghurs, I didn’t take anything else the entire time we were there. It’s love.
I tried to understand the ingredients so I could try to cook this dish at home. I looked at the bottle of vinegar, which had vegetables and spices added for the aroma, which goes as a seasoning for this Lagman.
On returning home I only got along with vinegar, and I don’t have the qualifications for that Lagman. My two attempts were such a pathetic parody that I decided to better go to Crimea again.The Lagman dish is present in all Asian nations in one form or another. Even the Japanese. Their language don’t know the sound R, so their phonetic tactics is to replace it with L. Ramen soup is a type of Lagman.
There’s a popular food blogger and gastro-historian Stalik Khankishiev, who is in love with traditional cuisine, writing about dishes cooked in a cauldron and on a grill. He is a real poet of Lagman!
I leave the link to the video here. It is in Russian, but for a culinary video it doesn’t really matter, people are able to recognise the meat, flour and onion when they see it, no translation is needed. After all, there’s also YouTube subtitles.
https://youtu.be/mGt-Cz4N9yo
At the 3-minute mark, he tells about the Crimean Tatars.Please, if you read this, post ‘yes’ to let me know.
This site has no like/dislike reactions and I feel like talking to the void 🙂 This can’t be. I know 100% that there are living people running around here.Anyway, I’ll finish my story, whether you like it or not.
I also made a video for you of what everyday life in Russia is like today. Filmed myself and the surrounding streets, I’m sewing the pieces together and will share it as soon as I finish. I’m wondering if it would be appropriate to link to the video in this thread.Tatyana, thank you for telling us about The Crimea.
It has been most illustrative.
Were they growing Sunflowers?What sort of fish are consumed, caught from The Black Sea?
When I was growing up, they told us quite a bit about
The Crimea, it was supposed to have been the inauguration of proper hospitals and proper nursing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
Florence Nightingale during the war in Crimea, mainly between the British Empire and the Russian Empire.
We were also fed the story of
The Charge of the Light Brigade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QFuX-
The Skids, Into The Valley Of DeathThe Victoria cross medal is made from the bronze of a captured Russian canon, taken during the Crimean war
The Great Game
The United Kingdom thought they should be the rulers of the World.
The U.K. had invented the Industrial revolution – the U.K. was the modern world.
Russia was part of the Old World, we thought we could push them around.Hi, Michael 🙂
Interesting questions, thank you!I didn’t see sunflower fields similar to those in my region. Instead I saw grape fields there.
In my region, vineyards are closer to the coast, mostly in the Taman Peninsula. Remind me to tell you about the Massandra winery of Crimea.The thing with fish is, I’m used to my regional cuisine, and our fish is river fish – carp, crucian carp, perch. My husband grew up in the Northern region and loves fish from the cold northern seas – cod, hake, pollock, sebastes and cannot stand freshwater fish at all. Black Sea species like mullet and flounder simply do not suit our tastes and we have not tried them in Crimea.
If I were making dinner, I’d prefer White Amur to Mullet. Flounder is a strange fish in general. It’s tasty only when fried, and I know better types of fish for frying.
There is also the Black Sea red mullet (barabulya), but I don’t know why the price is so high for a small and bony fish with unremarkable taste qualities. Apparently, good marketing.
For this money, I’d prefer sturgeon, which are found in the estuaries of the coastal parts of my region, and sit in aquariums in every store nearby.Michael, our conversation reminded me that today is Saturday and there is a weekend market nearby. I filmed some local fish and local cheese for you 🙂 Greetings from Krasnodar!
https://youtube.com/shorts/XDEwEf33ecc?si=Nd3OME7mVjDorVgJ
*Mullet in Russian is /ke-fal’/
/pe-len-gas/ – sort of kefal
/karp/ is carp
/tol-sto-lo-bik/ – silver carp
/sa-zan/ – wild carp or golden carpTatyana, well, I have just learned something new and interesting.
https://fwfarms.com/what-is-the-difference-between-white-amur-and-grass-carp/
White Amur eat vegetation.This story seems to suggest the only species that people eat that only eats vegetable matter.
Really interesting, Michael, thank you! Wow! I didn’t even know that fish are used like this to control vegetation in reservoirs. Educational.
A few more of my observations:
The people relaxing at the hotel and the people coming to the restaurant were very different. At the neighboring tables there were groups of bearded men sitting on special benches with their legs crossed in the Turkish style, with backgammon and hookah. Family couples were having lunch, with women in hijabs. Cheerful groups of ladies in rather revealing dresses were relaxing, with alcohol on the tables. And no one made any comments to anyone or expressed dissatisfaction in any other way.In the evening we heard the call of the muezzin, the mosque was very close. We asked the owners about the rules and traditions, and perhaps the scarf that I tied on my husband in the Arab manner inspired our host to tell a story. But most likely it’s just part of the hospitality and sincere joy due to the interest in their cultural heritage.
We had a long and very interesting conversation, learned what a Friday mosque is, looked at albums with historical photos, there used to be more than 40 mosques in Bakhchisarai!The next day I walked along this street. Here is the employment center, on the sign there are inscriptions in three languages - Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. At the public transport stop there is an inscription in Arabic.
On the fence of the mosque there are inscriptions in Russian.
One of them says:
A Muslim is one from whose tongue and hand there is no danger. Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Behind the fence of the mosque, on a bench by the wall sat a woman in a hijab and a woman in a standard Russian dress with her head uncovered, they were talking about something.
I was very impressed by this whole atmosphere.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/AvzSs7UAgjLyManG9I think I also made conclusions about myself.
I participate too much in online discussions and read too much news and opinions. I expected that maybe our hosts are radical, maybe they belong to some extremist movements and go to secret meetings where they discuss how to revive the Crimean Khanate and enslave the non-Muslim population 🙂
No, there is no sign of that.
Also they don’t seem to expect that Russians may want to revive the Soviet Union, Communism and repressions against their people.
People there just don’t care about these historical things, they live in the present, build their lives and look for a better future for their children.I also didn’t notice a single reason why these people would suddenly want to speak Ukrainian, dress themselves in Ukrainian vyshyvankas, start going to the church that Poroshenko made for them, shout in the streets that Ukraine is Uber Alles and Russians should be raised to knives.
It seems to me that being in Russia, multicultural and multi-confessional federation, meet their expectations more than being in Ukraine, which is going through a stage of radical nationalism.In general, if you form your opinion from different publications on the Internet, it may not only be paranoidly biased, but also quite radicalized, that’s what I want to say. I felt it personally and it’s good that I didn’t voice these thoughts out loud, so didn’t get into a stupid situation.
Reading opinions on the Internet without visiting the place makes wrong opinion, friends. For example, I know that in London there lives a man who calls himself the Prime Minister of independent Tatarstan.
That Turkey actively sponsors Crimean Tatar radicalism.
And that in Ukraine there is a radical Crimean Tatar organization, which during the events of 2014 actively participated in the blockade of Crimea on the side of Kiev.Historical events may be presented biasedly, or completely omitted, or interpreted very freely by people who pursue personal gain.
A recent example is Zelensky’s statement in response to the claims of the Polish authorities, Ze said that he had never heard of the Volyn massacre!Here I finish my story. It’s a pity that your governments do not allow to visit Crimea, and your journalists do not make truthful reports of what they personally saw first-hand.
Thank you Tatyana for this introduction to the changing peoples of Crimea and the legacy they have left in the cultures and cuisine.
Scythians interest me because of their connection to Britain.
It is my considered opinion that the Romans employed Scythian warriors and craftsmen, and that they brought them to the area which is now called Wales, to mine gold, and to manage mounted archers who could travel the length and breadth of the country, fighting off Saxon and Viking invaders, and thereby allowing the old Brythonic language not to be lost to Saxon invaders and later other races from Europe.The Romans officially left in the 4th century but they appointed Dux Bellorum leaders and commanders to protect their assets.
An interesting book called Apples are from Kazakhstan provides more information regarding holy apple groves, called Avalon, grown on holy islands where a lady in a lake holds the sword named Excalibur which King Arthur won when he came to lead the Welsh against the Saxons. The legends are the same and the holy grail is grafted on to the legends.
Artyr is son of the ancestors in Kazakh but Arth is bear in Welsh. Circassian women are also possibly included as they are very beautiful with very long hair and their traditional dress illustrates Arthurian legends too.
The Romans organised their empire by moving people with skills and knowledge to where they were best employed. A find of ornate gold worked armour and helmet in middle England is claimed to be Saxon but the mysterious Scythians seemed to have highly refined aesthetics and a worship of the goddess whose patronage won them their battles.
So much is lost to the record and Genghis Khan and his hordes erased much of what had been settled in different regions.
Thank you for sharing your insights
Thank you, Alyson, for your very interesting post about the Scythians! I will look into this topic in more depth, it’s fascinating and unusual.
The trip and excursions to historical sites prompted me to learn more about the history of the Slavs.
Now the radiation in the Chernobyl and Pripyat River area has subsided, so archaeological research is underway there. Ancient finds are being discovered, which allow to call the Polesie region the ancestral homeland of the Slavs. (Polesie is now divided between modern Poland, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine).
Archaeologists report that the ethnic community of Slavs was formed by the end of the 4th century.
The first culture that is clearly and universally defined as Slavic is called Prague-Korchak. It united a number of Slavic tribes and occupied a huge territory from the Elbe to the Danube and the Dnieper. The representatives of this culture called themselves Slovene. Their language had no writing, they used some signs called ‘lines and cuts’, as well as letters of the alphabets of the neighboring Greek and Roman civilizations.Only in the 9th century, the Byzantine Christian monks Cyril and Methodius created special alphabets for writing Slavic speech.
One of them is known today as Cyrillic. The other, Glagolitic, has fallen into disuse by today, last time it was used by the Croatians somewhere near the 19th century.Btw, alphabet was another reason for the split in Christianity. Rome did not like this mission of the monks. Rome believed that one can pray to God only in three languages - Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Nevertheless, the Holy Scripture translated into Slavic languages became the basis of the Old Church Slavonic language, in which services are still conducted in churches in Russia.
I looked at the textbook for priests and I want to say that it is extremely interesting! I can read almost everything without translation. And there are terribly curious grammatical techniques, archaic, but intuitively understandable.Sorry for being late.
I did catch up!
I stil have image of Tatyana the cat on the bus 😂.
Tell me more about those ladies?😃
As a South Slav it’s fascinating to compare languages and food and Ottoman influence.
I have never been to Russia but now instead of Leningrad I want to go to Crimea and of course to Krasnodar!
Well done!I believed that Cyril am Metodije only influenced my part of the world.
I was a bad boy in lessons!
I have to read again you posts and try to remember.
Btw I made big mistake. I started from the back and there was more and more and bit more. Txs for crazy effort.
I am truly enjoying the journey.
I nearly forgot to mention my story.
My wife convinced me to rent a car and do a French Riviera. She doesn’t drive!
“Look at this look at that and so on”
Let’s go to the Wine Chatou.
Great idea! You can’t drink and drive!!!
I was so posh! Just tasting like a professional.
how old is my son again??? It must have been 24 years ago. Can’t complain but no more car tourism since.Hi, Pigeon English!
Тice to see you here and thank you for liking the story!
I agree that tourism by car probably won’t interest me as much as traveling with a group 🙂
