Someone is very uncomfortable in old Simferopol
"The blooming Crimea was turned into a lupanar."
A. I. Kuprin, from a letter to F. D. Batyushkov
A. I. Kuprin, from a letter to F. D. Batyushkov
We have already written about the numerous investment projects that the new Russian authorities, who came there in 2014, developed in Crimea and Sevastopol. Among them there are many very expedient, but there are also frankly controversial ones.
Color international
Among them, it is simply impossible not to single out the most scandalous and hardly anything useful - this is "renovation", or rather, if you carefully read the plan itself, the demolition of the Old City in Simferopol. Despite the fact that in recent years, and this cannot be denied, the Old Town has become a hotbed of crime and drugs, which has an eerie appearance.
But from an architectural, and simply from a domestic point of view, this is undoubtedly historical heritage. The former Ukrainian authorities did not deal with the old Simferopol at all, pretending that the problem does not exist, while the Russian ones want to solve all problems with the help of excavators.
The old city of Simferopol is the historical center of the medieval Akmesdzhit, the development of which, after the annexation of Crimea to Russia by Catherine II, led to the formation of Simferopol. It is divided into three parts: Lower, Upper and the so-called Shanghai.
The Old City (Ashagy Eski Sheer) is closer to the city center, Karaimskaya Street, where most of the monuments of the history of the capital of Crimea are located. The Upper Old Town (Yukary Eski Sheer) is closer to the Petrovsky Rocks and the Petrovsky Balka; and the notorious Shanghai (Gypsy settlement, Chingene Maallesi) is actually only two blocks of the Lower Old City.
There is the main cathedral mosque of Simferopol Kebir-Jami, a very spectacular tenement house, a Karaite kenassa, a number of mosques less famous than the cathedral Kebir-Jami, the house of St. theology, but for fundamental work on purulent surgery), Gypsy mosque, synagogues, Greek market stalls.
This is a completely incomplete list, but it reflects the multinationality of the region (as well as the whole of Simferopol), which was sung about in a complimentary song of the NEP era, apparently. In it, still sometimes performed at weddings by musicians, there were also words about the Old City with politically incorrect ethnic definitions: “Tatars, Greeks, Ukrainians and various Chuchmeks live here, and Katsaps are also up to ...”
Well, what, of course, is the political correctness of the district hooligans. In the years to which the song belongs, such a harmless presentation of information about its multinational composition did not have any tramp overtones at that time.
Except for the fact that one of the parts of the region - "Shanghai", also known as "Gypsy Sloboda", "Chingene Maallesi" in Crimean Tatar, was populated almost exclusively by Turkified gypsies and the so-called Gurbets.
Dregs and elite
But after the war and a wave of deportations, multinationality played a cruel joke on the region. He was empty for a long time. Settlers were placed anywhere, but not there: after the transfer of the Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR, large-scale housing construction began in Simferopol, for statistics, someone had to be placed there, and Khrushchevs were more preferable than houses without sewerage in the Old Town.
It was there that the dregs of society settled. As the repatriation of the Crimean Tatars and other deported nationalities, they were often given housing in the Old City, someone bought it himself, because he could not buy anything else in Simferopol. Therefore, only the social classes were settled there, who had no opportunity for anything else.
Part of the housing in general is still in the ownership of the Majlis. Well, those who live there have no rights and got their corners in houses with a common yard and no less common log toilet in the middle of it. So it went from the lordly hands of gentlemen Dzhemilev and Chubarov, as well as local functionaries. What to do next with such housing, the Russian administration cannot decide, but rather does not want to.
As a result, what happened: an area a stone's throw from Sovetskaya Square and Kirov Avenue, that is, in the center of the city, where it is better not to go after dark if you are not local or do not know anyone there. Even inspectors from Krymenergo during the day (let alone at night) do not go there with checks without escort or policemen, or just strong men.
Broken, it is not known how many years not repaired roads, tram rails that have been forgotten to be removed since 1970, when the Simferopol tram was liquidated. There are bunches of telephone wires hanging from poles (someone else needs city phones), gatherings of youngsters squatting by the fences - all this is modern Eski Sheer.
Sorry, goodbye, Eski Sheer
If, suppose, only emergency houses are demolished (and there are at least a quarter of them), then most of these shacks were built before the deportation of peoples objectionable to Stalin. It is they who determine the historical appearance of Simferopol, which was once.
The destruction of these low-value houses with a toilet in the common courtyard, straightening and widening the narrow winding streets of the Mediterranean style will only lead to the disappearance of the Crimean flavor in one more corner of the peninsula.
It would be better if they left it as it is - with gas-filled long-distance trucks, sewage trucks pumping feces out of "filthy pits", broken asphalt. But they would give people something else: funding for the renovation of their homes, which does not imply deviations from the regional style.
And let there be at least an apartment of an American billionaire inside - but outwardly save everything. As for the social composition of the Old City, let the police figure it out. But it probably doesn't work well.
This is the last thing - for the sake of investments from the center, ruin your history, bite the breast of the mother who feeds you. But from the Simferopol politicians, apparently, this is more extreme than the last. When and what will be the last is still unknown. And what is the difference between the extreme and the last - ask any person who served.
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