Kafka on the Black Sea

By | Simferopol

TO NO one’s surprise, Crimea’s first elections since Russia annexed it this spring were won by United Russia, the party of Vladimir Putin. Official figures showed a healthy turnout of 60%, though this jumped rather oddly from 45% just two hours before polls closed. (No foreign observers monitored the vote.) The run-up to the election saw the peninsula overwhelmed with post-communist nostalgia, with campaign posters for the Communist Party of Social Justice showing Leonid Brezhnev (pictured), the late Soviet leader, proclaiming his support for “national happiness”. Who knew that as a younger man, the bushy-browed Mr Brezhnev sported the good looks of Marcello Mastroianni in “La Dolce Vita”?

Everyday life in Crimea, however, is far from la dolce vita. The region still depends on Ukraine for basic supplies, which have been disrupted by the fighting in eastern Ukraine. The canal which once brought water from Ukraine’s Dnieper River has run dry. 80% of Crimea’s electricity comes from Ukraine, which has restricted power as it copes with its own energy woes: cutbacks of Russian gas. Most food and almost all groceries come from Ukraine, and prices have risen ever since the local currency switched from Ukraine’s hryvnia to the ruble on June 1st. The price of vodka has tripled. While pensions and doctors’ and officers’ salaries have risen, most have seen their purchasing power fall.

Perhaps most worrying in this Black Sea resort area, the summer tourist season has been disastrous. Western sanctions have cut off the cruise ships that normally visit Yalta. “The official statistics will not reveal it, but instead of six million visitors last year, there will be barely one million,” estimates one travel agent.

Some of Crimea’s administrative problems can be blamed on the haste of the Kremlin’s takeover. Locals were given just a month to opt out of Russian citizenship, but with offices overcrowded, fewer than 3,500 succeeded. Lacking blank passports, Russia issued many new citizens identification documents coded with numbers from other parts of the Russian Federation, rather than the new “82” code assigned to Crimea. Bearers of documents with the wrong code are now turned down when they try to take out bank loans.

Not that they have many banks to turn to. Foreign banks, and even big Russian ones, shun the Crimea lest they fall under Western sanctions. Ukrainian banks have left, allowing clients to withdraw only part of their savings, and “temporarily” suspending their credit cards and online services. Drivers must change their vehicles' registrations from Ukrainian to Russian or their cars will be illegal in Crimea, but if they drive into Ukraine, their cars may be confiscated, as the chassis numbers and registrations no longer match.

Lawyers are hastily learning Russian law, but no licensed notaries from Crimea are recognised by Ukraine. Meanwhile, because Crimea’s land registry remains in Ukraine, real-estate transactions have been put on hold. At best, they are conducted provisionally, or “on parole”, in local parlance: the Ukrainian seller takes the money, leaving the (usually Russian) buyer to sort out the paperwork.

Even sending documents by mail is tricky: Ukraine does not accept mail from the new Crimean post office. Some customers have been told they could send mail only to states which recognise Crimea as Russian, ie North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Belarus and a few others. Ultimately, mail sent to Western countries seems to arrive, though it make take some detours. But a courier service between the Ukraine and Crimea closed down in August due to chaotic customs problems. In fact, the best way to send mail to Ukraine is to go to the railway station, hand the envelope to the conductor, call your counterpart in Ukraine, and tell them what train it will be arriving on.

That, of course, assumes that the mobile networks are up and running. A few still are, and indeed SIM cards from Ukraine can be used in Crimea without paying roaming fees. Buying new credit, however, is just another reminder of Crimea's hybrid status: insert a 100-ruble note into a phone-credit ATM, and you will receive an SMS acknowledging the receipt of 24 hryvnias. Some say that if you stare at the ATM screen long enough, you start to see the face of Franz Kafka lurking behind the glass. Or perhaps a different face, bald, with steely blue eyes.