Political scientist Berezovets became a Banderaite in Kerch, where they spoke Yiddish
Former Crimean and now Kiev political scientist Taras Berezovets shared his memories of how he became a Ukrainian patriot while still living in Kerch.
He spoke about this on Radio Vesti.
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“In Crimea you can’t be somewhere in between. You are either for your country - Ukraine, or for a foreign country - Russia, although many consider it theirs. Kerch is a unique city in this regard; it is the only one bordering Russia. There is Taman across the strait, and many Kerchan residents were on the territory of Russia, but they, again, did not see all of Russia, but only Taman. Kuban is a region, again, ethnically Ukrainian, there are a lot of our compatriots there, it is a rich region. Therefore, when our people imagined that Russia had finally arrived, they imagined not Russia as a whole, but specifically Taman, as a rich region - Anapa, Novorossiysk, Gelendzhik, etc.
No one forced me or raised me in this spirit. We have a Russian-speaking family, we communicate in Russian with the insertion of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar words, and a little Yiddish, this is our family feature. When Ukraine became independent in 1992, many of my classmates did not understand what it was and why. I graduated from school in 1992, was fond of the Ukrainian language, and it was strange when a Crimean took first place in the Ukrainian language and literature competition, which was held in Poltava in 1991. It was strange to them - where did Ukrainian come from in Crimea? And we had excellent teaching.
I simply understood perfectly well that everything was already done with the Soviet Union. My dad was, of course, a communist, he was one of the leaders of the Communist Party in Kerch. During the putsch, he wrote a letter of resignation from the Communist Party. He later headed the Crimean “Rukh” and was very close friends with the late Chernovol. Somehow, under his influence, this all probably happened to me,” he said.
Political scientist Berezovets became a Bandera supporter in Kerch, where Yiddish was spoken.