History of Sudak

Sudak is one of the oldest towns in Crimea: more than eighteen centuries have passed since it was founded on the shore of a small bay between the spurs of the Crimean Mountains. Over that time the settlement went through several names and rulers: Greek Sougdaia, Old Russian Surozh, Italian Soldaia, and finally Ottoman Sudak. Caravans of the Great Silk Road passed through its harbour, the fortress withstood raids by Seljuks and Mongols, and at the end of the 19th century the vineyards of the surrounding valleys produced Russia’s first domestic champagne.

The history is best told epoch by epoch: this makes it easier to see how a small Black Sea port grew into one of the leading trading centres of medieval Crimea, lost its significance under Turkish rule, and came back to life again as a resort.

Foundation and Antiquity

The year 212 is considered the official founding date of Sudak. It was then that the Alans — Iranian-speaking tribes from the Northern Caucasus — settled on the shore of the bay. The site was chosen perfectly: a sheltered harbour, sources of fresh water, and the rocky ridge of Fortress Mountain, which with minimal additions could be turned into a citadel protecting against steppe raids. Thanks to their advantageous location, the Alans quickly established trade with the cities of the Bosporan Kingdom and the Roman provinces.

In the first third of the 4th century the Romans built the first fortifications here — watch “burgi” fitted into the rocky terrain. They controlled both the sea approaches and the mountain paths. In the middle of the 5th century the settlement was destroyed by the Huns, but by the 560s the Byzantines, restoring control over the southern shore of Taurica, rebuilt Sougdaia anew. From then on the fate of the city was long tied to Constantinople: bishops were appointed here, and from here caravans set out deep into the steppes carrying Byzantine coins and fabrics.

Sougdaia on the Great Silk Road

By the 8th–9th centuries Sougdaia had become not just a harbour but one of the northern hubs of Black Sea trade. It is here that the plot of “The Life of Saint Stephen of Surozh” unfolds: the army of the legendary prince Bravlin comes from Novgorod to Surozh (as the eastern Slavs called the city) and converts to Christianity right at the saint’s tomb. This text is one of the earliest mentions of the Rus in written sources, and without Sudak this page of history might have remained unwritten.

By the 12th–13th centuries Sougdaia had reached the peak of its importance. One of the northern stretches of the Great Silk Road ran through the port: from the east came fabrics, spices, musk and Chinese silk, while furs, salt and slaves were sent north. Arab geographers described the city as wealthy and populous, Venetian merchants kept their trading houses here, and the Byzantines collected duties and maintained a garrison. The name “Surozh” became a common word: in the 15th century Moscow merchants who traded with Crimea were called “surozhane” — a whole privileged estate.

The peaceful life came to an end in the first half of the 13th century. Around 1222 the Seljuks fell upon the city for the first time: Sultan Ala ad-Din Kay-Qubad sent an army from Asia Minor which sacked Sougdaia and forced it to pay tribute. A few years later the Mongols swept along the coast, and from the 1230s the city effectively fell under the rule of the Golden Horde, while retaining its autonomy and trading importance. The Venetians, who had entrenched themselves here after the partition of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, kept their colony going, but their place was gradually taken by more insistent neighbours — the Genoese.

Genoese Soldaia

In 1365 the Genoese, who already held Caffa (present-day Feodosia), drove the Venetians out of Sougdaia after a short military campaign and turned it into the centre of the consulate of Soldaia. The following century became a time of major architectural reconstruction for the city: walls and towers rose above the bay, which today are known as the Genoese Fortress. A double belt of fortifications, the barbican at the main gate, the Consul’s Tower, the keep on the cliff — all of this was built between 1371 and 1469 under the direction of consuls whose names have been preserved on carved slabs above the gates.

Soldaia was one of the four Genoese consulates in Crimea, together with Caffa, Cembalo (Balaklava) and Vosporo (Kerch). Eastern goods still passed through its harbour, but the economic priority was gradually shifting to Caffa. The Sudak fortress, meanwhile, remained one of the most impregnable on the coast: it was hard to reach from the sea because of the shoals, and hard to take from land — the walls stood on sheer rocky cliffs.

The Ottoman Century and Annexation to Russia

In the summer of 1475 the fleet of Sultan Mehmed II under the command of Gedik Ahmed Pasha approached Crimea. Within a few weeks the Ottomans took Caffa, Cembalo, and then Soldaia. So the Genoese consulates ceased to exist. The city was given the Turkic name Sudak and became a minor place within the sanjak: the harbour silted up, the trade routes moved east and to Istanbul, and the population shrank to a few dozen households. The fortress turned into a small Turkish garrison, and the surrounding valleys passed to the Crimean Tatars, who continued to grow grapes and make wine, but on a far smaller scale.

This went on for three centuries. In 1783, under Catherine II, the Crimean Khanate was incorporated into the Russian Empire, and Sudak came under the Russian sceptre along with it. The empire quickly remembered its viticultural past: in 1795 the academician Peter Simon Pallas was granted an estate here with a vineyard, and in 1804 the Sudak State School of Viticulture and Winemaking — the first in Russia — opened in the Achiklar tract. The school operated for about forty years and trained specialists who later built Magarach and the Kishinev School of Winemaking. The young botanist Christian Steven, the future founder of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, also visited Pallas’s Sudak estate.

From Golitsyn to the Present Day

A true grape renaissance came to the Sudak shore at the end of the 19th century with Prince Lev Sergeyevich Golitsyn. In 1878 he acquired an estate in a small bay that would later be called Novy Svet. It is a picturesque valley seven kilometres from Sudak, squeezed between the majestic cliffs of Sokol, Oryol and Koba-Kaya. Golitsyn took to the task on a grand scale: within a decade about three kilometres of cellars had been cut into the depths of Mount Koba-Kaya, and in the early 1890s Russia’s first industrial production of champagne using the classic French method was established. In 1900 the Sudak sparkling wine won the Grand Prix at the World’s Fair in Paris, and the name “Novy Svet” became a synonym for the finest Crimean wine for many years.

For the visit of Nicholas II in 1912 a coastal path about five kilometres long was cut into the cliffs above the sea. Today it is known as the Golitsyn Trail, and the grotto where, according to legend, Feodor Chaliapin once sang has become one of the symbols of the coast.

The 20th century brought Sudak severe trials. The Revolution and the Civil War caused serious damage to the vineyards, yet production in Novy Svet was preserved and restored. During the Great Patriotic War the city was under occupation from November 1941 to April 1944; a Soviet landing force went ashore here in January 1942, and partisan detachments fought in the surrounding mountains. After the war the slow transformation of the minor settlement into a resort began: sanatoriums were built, the fortress was restored, beaches were laid out. Sudak only definitively secured city status in 1982, when it became an independent administrative centre.

Today about seventeen thousand people live in Sudak, and the town itself has become the main resort of the south-eastern coast of Crimea. The Genoese Fortress has been turned into a museum-reserve and receives hundreds of thousands of guests a year. Every August its walls come alive during the historical reenactment festival “Genoese Helmet”. The champagne winery is still in operation in Novy Svet, and visitors come from all over Crimea to the Golitsyn House Museum for tastings. A cypress alley leads from the sanatoriums to a long beach of dark quartz sand, and along the edge of the bay an eco-trail winds up Mount Alchak — the same cliffs that once looked out on the ships of Sougdaia and Soldaia.

Over eighteen centuries this shore has changed hands many times: Alans, Byzantines, Khazars, Venetians, Genoese, Ottomans and Russians. Each people left its trace here — in names, in fragments of fortress walls, in coins in the cultural layer, and in old grapevines in the foothills. Few corners of the coast can boast such a density of history per square kilometre.