Black Sea Currents

THEME SECTION Black Sea Currents Edited by Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja Introduction Th e Black Sea as region and horizon Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja Abstract: Th e introduction fi rst outlines diff erent perspectives on the Black Sea: in history, as a site of imperial confl icts and a buff er zone; in area studies, as a “region”; and in anthropology, as a sea crisscrossed by migration, cultural infl uences, alternative visions, and oft en a mutual turning of backs. We then discuss the Black Sea in the context of maritime ethnography and the study of ports, “hero cities”, pipelines, and political crises. Th e following sections consider Smith’s notion of the “territorialization of memory” in relation to histories of exile and the more recent interactions brought about by migration and trade. In the concluding section we discuss how the Black Sea has appeared as a “horizon” and imaginary of the be- yond for the peoples living around its shores. Keywords: maritime ethnography, regional study, Russia, trade, Turkey, Ukraine Th e Black Sea has long been described as a place non-NATO member states were key adversaries of mixed cultures and allegiances.1 For centuries but sometimes also temporary allies.2 a playground and a battlefi eld of the Russian Th ere is no single geopolitical defi nition of and Ottoman Empires, as well as a buff er zone the Black Sea region. It ranges from a core com- between their successor states, it was a crucible prising the six coastal states (Russia, Ukraine, for cosmopolitan practices (Ascherson 2007; Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria, and Romania) to the King 2011; Humphrey and Skvirskaja 2012). A so-called wider Black Sea region, which also good example is the continuing presence in Is- includes some of their neighbors—Albania, tanbul of the leadership of the Greek Orthodox Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Greece, Serbia, Church—the ecumenical or “Roman” patriarch- and Montenegro. Th e region is also envisioned ate of Constantinople. Yet the Black Sea has at diff erently by the diff erently positioned political times hampered instead of facilitated the move- powers. Th us, whereas for Turkey it is the zone ment of people, goods, ideas, and imaginaries. that connects the Caspian, the Aegean, and the Like Braudel’s (1986) Mediterranean, the Black Mediterranean Seas, for the United States it is Sea in the longue durée could be seen not as a the area “stretching from the Caspian Sea to the single sea but a “complex of seas”, where Chris- Black Sea to the Baltic Sea” (Baran 2008: 87). tian and Muslim civilizations, later socialist and Th e recognition of “subjective” visions in de- nonsocialist regimes, and currently NATO and lineating regions has become commonplace in Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 70 (2014): 3–11 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2014.700101 4 | Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja scholarly literature. King (2008), for instance, our conceptualization of regions: “[W]e can only writes that the key means of conceptualiz- recognize the region through understanding ing a “genuine” region is not a set of objective the specifi c localities and movements between traits, but the region’s self-conscious attempts them, and we understand the localities and to be(come) one. Th ese attempts are usually movements better as components of a regional manifest in a number of projects aiming at co- system” (2007: xiv). We also implicitly acknowl- operation and region building. “In the end,” as edge the legacy of regional analyses in anthro- King puts it, “regions exist where politicians pology (infl uenced by Skinner’s [1964–1965] and strategists say they exist” (ibid.: 3)—they work) that focus on the ways in which regions are “imagined” by elites, in much the same way are created through processes of social interac- as Benedict Anderson’s nations (2006). Since tion rather than on a priori criteria and existing the end of the Cold War (and the Soviet Union political units. Th us, the Black Sea region is a in 1991), there has indeed been no shortage of fi eld of research where habitual disciplinary international initiatives to achieve regionalism boundaries that separate the post-Soviet, the and greater integration—from the Black Sea Middle Eastern, and Eastern European societies Economic Cooperation (BSEC) forum to the are blurred and overlap. project of the Black Sea Ring Highway.3 Yet, At present, the anthropological literature on if we consider the academic construction of the Black Sea is relatively sparse and confi ned “geographies of knowing and geographies of mainly to individual countries (e.g., Pelkmans ignorance,” the Black Sea region can be seen 2006; Ghodsee 2005). By contrast, the rich his- as one of those that did not make it as a world tory of the anthropology of the Mediterranean area, because it lacked its own single center of exemplifi es a great range of approaches and state formation and was politically ambiguous highlights controversies surrounding the idea (Schendel 2002: 647). of Mediterranean distinctiveness and unity Th is section aims to start to redress this sit- (see Gilmore 1982), which might fruitfully in- uation by studying anthropologically the idea form the study of the Black Sea region. What of the Black Sea as a common region. It is an comes to the fore is scholarly recognition that attempt to refl ect both evolving geopolitical re- the “unity” of the Mediterranean does not stem alities in the redrawing of regional boundaries from a list of shared traits or identical cultural and conceptual areas of research within our patterns (be it the “honor and shame complex”, discipline. Th e articles raise questions of how the evil eye, or peripheral positioning). Instead, the Black Sea should be seen today—which as Gilmore argues (ibid.: 200), a similar, some- themes and ethnographic emphases should be times contradictory, dynamic “fi t” among such foregrounded in regional study—looking not traits in the lives of actual communities may in- so much at grand geopolitical visions but rather dicate regional distinctiveness. trying to understand the interactions, move- Th e Black Sea has played diff erent roles for ments, and imaginaries of the people living the surrounding communities, and it has some- around it, while keeping a watchful eye on inter- times illuminated the “incommensurability” linking local histories. Does geographical prox- of their ideologies and cultures. A recent such imity to the Black Sea and the partial removal scenario can be identifi ed with the Cold War, of former political divides generate certain sim- which established the Black Sea as a barrier be- ilarities, or must these peoples be understood tween diff erent cultural/imperial/political tra- as engaging with one another mainly through ditions. It became a frontier of the Cold War, a mutual turning of backs, diff erence, comple- and its ports and ships became repositories of mentarity, or even enmity? the “territorialization” of national memories. In posing questions in this way, we draw on Although the Cold War is now over, lingering what Lambek calls “the hermeneutic spiral” in barriers and resistance to cultural or political Introduction: Th e Black Sea as region and horizon | 5 integration remain to be investigated (discussed to bear the name of the admiral and the ideas he further below), as well as the emergence of dy- represented. Th e fi rst ship named aft er him was namic processes of regional mixing and new an armored cruiser built in 1883, serving both economic interdependencies. Taken as a whole, in the Baltic and in the Far East. Aft er World the contributions to this special section, written War II, a German passenger liner turned hos- before the annexation of Crimea by Russia and pital ship, the Berlin, having been mined and civil unrest in Ukraine, scrutinize cross–Black beached, was taken over by the Soviets, refi tted, Sea mediations that can broadly be designated and renamed Admiral Nakhimov. Th is ship was as fl ows of people (labor migrants, small-scale to be the pride of the Black Sea passenger fl eet, traders and sex workers, transnational entre- serving the Odessa–Batumi line from the 1950s preneurs and sailors, repatriates and refugees) onward. But later, disaster struck. In August or, among less mobile actors, as imaginaries of 1986, with 1,234 people on board, a freighter a better life, or alien lifestyles and authoritarian, rammed her two miles off Novorossiisk, and oppressive regimes. well over 400 people lost their lives.4 In all, there have been six ships named Admiral Nakhimov, some of them concurrently, of which one is still Maritime ethnography active with the Russian Northern Fleet. Th us, some ships become mobile vessels for the pres- Maritime and terrestrial histories have always ence of a “myth”; such ships are active joggers been entangled. Whether the sea works as a of memories in their ceaseless comings and go- border or a bridge between diff erent cultures ings, and in principle are containers of moral and locales depends on particular historical cir- qualities. cumstances, but it is never “a neutral blank en- Th e maritime world encompasses not only vironment, an empty space or a liminal period” ships, but also shores, ports, and naval bases (Phelan 2007: 5). Yet, in anthropologies of Black (see Humphrey, this issue). A key example is Sea locales we only rarely fi nd analyses of lives Sevastopol, whose signifi cance as a naval base oriented toward the sea (Knudsen 2006) or ex- has been a constant amid the dramatic changes periences of the sea and seaborne sociality. We in the political status of Crimea.

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