Everything about Balaklava totally explained
» For the article about the South Australian town see Balaklava, South Australia. For other uses, see Balaklava (disambiguation).
Balaklava ( ) is a
town in the
Crimea,
Ukraine which has an official status of a district of the
city of
Sevastopol. It was a city in its own right until
1957 when it was formally incorporated into the municipal borders of Sevastopol by the
Soviet government.
History
Balaklava has changed hands many times during its history. A settlement at its present location was originally founded under the name of Symbolon (Συμβολον) 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 battle, where soldiers first wore them.
During the
Second World War, Balaklava was the southernmost point in the Soviet-German lines. In
1956 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 couldn't 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.
Image:Balaklava-camp.png|Army camp at Balaklava during the Crimean War
Image:Balaklava.jpg|Modern Balaklava - view from the Genoese fortress
Image:Balaklava entrance of the submarine base 2006.jpg|Exit from the secret submarine base
Further Information
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