History of Sevastopol
Sevastopol ( Russian and Ukrainian Севастополь ) is the largest city on the Autonomous Peninsula of Crimea , Ukraine .
prehistory
Early representatives of the human race are said to have settled in caves and grottoes near Chersonesos as early as 300,000 years ago .
Antiquity
The first Greek colonies arose in the Crimea in 422 BC . Colonists from Herakleia Pontike settled Kalamita (today Sevastopol ) and Chersonese . They drove out the Taurians , who were considered to be robbers, and built Greek fortresses with associated ports. There is evidence that they grew wine, grain and fruit for the first time in the Crimea and gave their settlement a democratic constitution. The ruins of the Greek city of Chersonese are still on the outskirts of the city.
Modern times
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The city was founded in 1783 when Russia occupied Crimea. It used to be known under the name "Sebastopol", in Turkish it is called "Akyar". Due to its military importance, the flourishing trading city of Sevastopol was hard fought over during the Crimean War . From October 5, 1854 to September 8, 1855, the combined armies of the French, English, Turks and Sardinians shelled and bombarded the port city held by the Russians. After eleven months of siege , the whole city was in ruins. After the Peace of Paris it was gradually rebuilt, but did not regain its former prosperity.
World wars
German troops occupied Sevastopol on May 1, 1918 without a fight; they stayed until December 1918 (see context here ).
During the Second World War , Sevastopol was besieged by German troops . At times, more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians hid in a labyrinth carved into the rock below the city. When German units found above-ground access to the labyrinth in the first week of June 1942, they poured gasoline into it and set it on fire. Thousands of those trapped were burned and suffocated. After the battle, only nine buildings in the city remained undamaged. Because of the persistent resistance against the German and Romanian besiegers and the high number of deaths, Sevastopol was declared a hero city in 1945 .
In the city there was a prisoner of war camp 241 for German prisoners of war of the Second World War . Seriously ill people were cared for in prisoner-of-war hospital 3318.
Postwar and Soviet Union
The fact that Sevastopol is now part of Ukraine is the result of a historical coincidence. In 1954, the then General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev , gave the Crimean peninsula from the hands of the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic . The port city of Sevastopol, the scene of countless Russian legends from the Crimean War to the siege by the German Wehrmacht , seat of the much-celebrated Black Sea Fleet, was also given away . As long as the Soviet Union existed, this was just a political gesture with no consequences.
Post Soviet time
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Crimea and Sevastopol were assigned to Ukraine and thus a subject of dispute. The Russian Federation wanted to "keep" the home port of the traditional Soviet Black Sea Fleet .
The 1997 naval agreement , which allowed the Russian Navy to stay until 2017, at least ostensibly eased the situation.
As the home port of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol was a closed city until 1991, to which even the Crimean residents could only enter with a pass. The small white building of the police station on the city limits still marks the formerly “forbidden city”.
According to an ukase from the first and last Crimean president, the Russian Jurij Meschkov , the city first opened up to the Crimean residents in 1994, and later also to all Ukrainians and tourists.
Sevastopol depended until March 21, 2014 directly to the Ukrainian central government in Kiev and not the government of the autonomous peninsula Crimea . In Ukraine, only the capital Kiev still has this special status.
Since March 21, 2014, after the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia, Russia and the Sevastopol secessionist government have viewed the city as part of Russia (see Crimean crisis and Republic of Crimea ). This is not recognized internationally by resolution 68/262 of the UN General Assembly (“Territorial Integrity of Ukraine”). Ukraine regards Crimea and the city of Sevastopol as temporarily occupied areas of the territory of Ukraine.
The most important data at a glance
| year | event |
|---|---|
| 300,000 BC Chr. | First colonization by early representatives of the human race |
| 422 BC Chr. | Greek colonists from Herakleia Pontike settle Kalamita and Chersonese (city) |
| 1783 | City foundation under Russian occupation |
| 1854 to 1855 | Crimean War |
| 1942 | Destruction of Sevastopol by the German Wehrmacht |
| 1945 | Sevastopol is declared a " hero city " |
| 1954 | Nikita Khrushchev gives the Crimea with Sevastopol to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic |
| 1991 | Collapse of the Soviet Union |
| 1994 | Opening of the "Forbidden City" Sevastopol to Crimean residents |
| 1996 | Opening of the "forbidden city" Sevastopol to all Ukrainians and foreigners |
| 1997 | Naval agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the whereabouts of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol |
| 2014 | Referendum on the status of Crimea , Crimean crisis , annexation by Russia |
| 2017 | The above contract from 1997 expires |
Individual evidence
- ↑ Volker Ullrich : Germany's Reach for the Crimea (ZEIT Story No. 3/2015, August 25, 2015)
- ↑ Erich Maschke (ed.): On the history of the German prisoners of war of the Second World War. Verlag Ernst and Werner Gieseking, Bielefeld 1962–1977.
- ↑ Федеральный закон Российской Федерации от 21 марта 2014 года № 6-ФКЗ "О принятии в Российскую Федерацию Республики Крым и образовании в составе Российской Федерации новых субъектов - Республики Крым и города федерального значения Севастополя"
- ↑ Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine: Law of Ukraine "On Ensuring Civil Rights and Freedoms, and the Legal Regime on the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine". April 27, 2014, accessed August 17, 2015 . (en)