Dreams about the Black Sea

Abstract

The review of the book by the English researcher Neal Ascherson “Black Sea. The Birthplace of Civilization and Barbarism” (2017) analyzes the contribution made by the author to the study of the Black Sea basin and, mainly, the ethnic, political and cultural history of the tribes and peoples of the Black Sea since the deep antiquity to the present day. To successfully solve the task, N. Ascherson chose the genre of travel writing supplemented by insights into the historical past of the region. A comprehensive comparative approach to the work has revealed that N. Ascherson achieved his goal, but did not manage to avoid a number of serious mistakes. Some of them are caused by the author’s insufficient knowledge of the subject of study and the realities of the Black Sea region. Other errors stem from N. Ascherson’s biased approach to assessing the role of historical figures and entire ethnic groups in the events and phenomena related to the history of the Black Sea region. For example, he fails to consider the biggest drama in the modern history of the Black Sea region — the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944. The heroic pages of the defense of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol from the German and Romanian aggressors are also poorly reflected. Virtually nothing is said about the modern history of the region. The reviewers have made major comments, which, perhaps, will help readers to avoid mistakes in their own perception of the historical past and the present-day reality of the region.