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For the 36-year-old Ukrainian videographer and musician Alexander Demianenko, Kazantip became the highlight of his 20th birthday. It was the largest electronic music festival in Eastern Europe, which took place in August from 1993 to 2013 in Crimea.
"I've been thinking about Kazantip all year," says Alexander, who now lives in Tbilisi (Georgia) and became the organizer of the festival in 2009. As the event approached, the spring and early summer caused stress, and then after the festival, in the fall and winter, there was "creativity, ideas and plans for next year," he says.
Crimea, with its warm climate and Mediterranean landscape, has for decades been an ideal summer destination for Russians and Ukrainians, as well as for festival-goers during the Kazantip years. This event took its name from its first location on the Kazantip Peninsula in Crimea in the Sea of Azov and had the letter "Z" as its official symbol.
When the letter Z became a symbol in support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Alexander said he felt "pain and grief".
For people like Alexander, Z meant more than a week of chatter. It was a temporary lifestyle that celebrated personal freedom, self-expression and joy.
KaZantip started in August 1993 as an underground event where a few DJs would mix after a surfing competition. Soon the mathematical measurement disappeared, and soon the chattering arrangement of an unfinished nuclear reactor began. The event was established as a festival in 2001, when it moved 200 kilometers (124 miles) west to the town of Popovka on the Black Sea coast.
Kazantip is seen as a social utopia and a safe space for young people who value diversity and creativity. Luck was the main thing. The "Republic of Kazantip" or "Republic of Z" had its own land, several hectares of fenced beaches. Its self-proclaimed president is a Russian citizen, former sailor Nikita Marchunok.
According to the previous organizers, "Kazantip" received international recognition in the second decade of its existence, attracting up to 100,000 visitors and lasting from 10 days to one and a half months. Around him grew a multinational community with loyal fans mainly from Ukraine and Russia, but also from other countries of the post-Soviet period and beyond.
"I would like the letter Z to remain on our flyers on Popovka, on posters, on T-shirts," says Alexander. "The letter Z and the letter Z of the Kremlin are the same letter, but we see radically different uses."
Many organizers and former festival attendees, both Russian and Ukrainian, were horrified to see the symbol of their endless summer parties become an icon for those who support Russia after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
"About 10 years ago, all fans of electronic music associated the letter "Z" exclusively with the annual Kazantip festival, and now this symbol appears on the tanks and armor of the so-called "liberators" Anger and Pain. - Russian musician and blogger Kirill Bagus wrote in his Telegram channel.
There are various theories about how the letter Z became a symbol of war for Russia, including the letter that gained notoriety after it was used to mark equipment and vehicles in the Russian military district.
While the meaning of the letter "Z" painted on military equipment is controversial, the letter has become part of pro-Russian propaganda. Z was used to replace the Cyrillic letter "z" in slogans such as For Victory.
Kazantip was "a road to freedom," says Oleg Michoris, a Ukrainian IT specialist who was the festival's spokesperson from 2012 to 2014, when the festival was last held in Georgia following Russia's annexation of Crimea.
"We really have the highest density of happy people per square foot," Marchonak told CNN in 2011. What Marchonak called the "dictatorship of happiness" had a constitution with reference to the Soviet language, where Kazantip's principles were laid out.
In the articles, the national food is corn and sunflower, and the national sport is kitesurfing. Anyone with an old yellow Soviet suitcase gets in for free, and the festival ticket is called a "visa". Article 6 states: "To be who you want and live as you want is an inalienable constitutional right of a citizen." A criminal code was added, which declares the expulsion from the country of those guilty of chauvinism, sexual harassment or "urinating in an inappropriate place".
"For both Russian and Ukrainian youth, Kazantip was a cult phenomenon," says Natasha Kto-Nadzeva, a Russian-Ukrainian creative director from Kyiv, who worked at Kazantip from 2003 to 2011. "I first came in 1998 from a city in the south of Russia, and Kazantip was as cool and cool as Lollapalooza," he says, referring to the music festival in Chicago, USA.
During the year, Kazantip actors organized events in major cities of Ukraine and Russia, performed with one group of resident DJs.
The sphere of activity of Kazantip has gone beyond such cities as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Odessa. Alexander, who was the organizer of "Kazantip" until 2014, spent his youth in Mirhorod, a city located between Kharkiv and Kyiv. When he was in high school, he worked as a computer club manager and often visited festival grounds. "He was always ahead of his time and inspiring," he says.
Online media were not yet widely available and widespread. For many, Kazantip is rumored to have become a holy place. "They created a really attractive brand for those who were trying to find a new identity to escape the Soviet Union or the legacy of their parents," Mikola Siuszko, 39, from Barcelona, told Zoom. Blue room, stand on one wall. Chushko grew up in western Ukraine and first rode Kazantip in 2005 after borrowing $100 from his mother.
The dance, which took place mainly at night in Kazantip, was a significant part of the escape from the Soviet legacy as various forms of electronic dance music made their way to Crimea.
The festival grew every year and by 2013 it had at least 15 halls, and the number of DJs and performers exceeded 300 people. In the second decade of the festival, leading international technical artists such as Ricardo Villalobos, Armin van Buuren, Carl Cox and Elaine Allen came to Popovka.
Many of the bars and dance floors had futuristic designs, but the main columned stage had a more Greco-Roman feel. Festival-goers wander the avenues with artificial palm trees, many in swimsuits.
A lot happened during the day. "People ate watermelon, talked, flirted, read books, slept," says Natasha. "The most active ones participated in some creative process, parties, high-speed meetings or ready-made performances."
People lie on the sand in a Z shape to take pictures. Some of them brought their children. The inflatable rubber ducks had hoses and floats. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly.
To rest, the participants of the holiday left the fenced area and spent the night in one of the hotels or guest houses that appeared on Popovka. Some stayed in tents and stationary modular homes in Kazantip or slept on the beach.
"In 2010, my girlfriend and I did not leave the zone for 21 days," says 33-year-old DJ Nastya Ulyanova from St. Petersburg, who prefers to perform under the pseudonym Nemo Flashback. Since 2008, he has participated in all festivals.
"We slept on the beach, guarded our property and heard many interesting stories from life. We watched movies on Mars [near Kazantip], listened to piano concerts at the Earth Bar...went to foam parties, met and filmed every sunset. Shams," he recalls.
The constant techno music playing from the speakers was the soundtrack to a collective experience that was meant to be unique and intense.
KaZantip is often compared to the legendary Burning Man festival, which takes place every year in the Nevada desert in the United States, because it also provides an opportunity to experience some kind of alternative reality. "KaZantip was definitely addictive, first of all, because it was a space of freedom, a place where you could get away for a few weeks from stressful everyday life, household problems and work everyday life," says Radzivon Nagorny (38). Work at the event. and media industry in Moscow, and was in Kazantip and Burning Man. Radzivon says that Kazantip was a place where you could express yourself freely and find eccentric like-minded people.
Alternative reality Kazantip was also a ritual subculture. At each sunset, the president, ministers (festival organizers) and participants would gather on the beach to listen to the sound of the gong as the sun sets. "On some days, we also wrote wishes to friends and loved ones on balloons, which were released into the sky at sunset," says Nastya. - Everything was done.
For example, he says he would like his friend's favorite DJ to come and he did.
"Another tradition was to throw mobile phones into the water from the dance floor above the sea. It was an expression of absolute freedom," says the DJ, who sports a Z-shaped tattoo between his shoulder blades. He cherishes the tattoo and insists that it will only depict Kazantype and have nothing to do with politics.
Often the contestants were in exotic costumes. The group, known for their exotic and elaborate costumes, was called the Freaks. They often wore brightly colored handmade clothing, favoring the yellow and orange colors of KaZantipa. Skirts were popular among freaks, along with wigs, glitter makeup, angel wings, plastic jewelry, and silly hats. "They were the pride of a great nation, they had to be protected, respected, cherished and loved," says Nastya. "At some parties, only married couples were allowed, or regular dancers would quickly dress up in improvised costumes to be mistaken for freaks, but it didn't always work out."
Eight years after the last edition, many former members are nostalgic for what Kazantip used to be. "It was a celebration of complete, unbridled, childish madness, like everything else in the 2000s. It was like a glittering snowball. It was a Russian designer and architect who first came as a participant before becoming a festival partner." - says Masha Kuznetsova, a Russian designer and architect who first came as a participant before becoming a partner of the festival, - it was an incredibly amazing event.
Today, KaZantip's soul seems far away. Olga Lannik (35), who participated in "Kazantip" with her boyfriend Nikit Tuchinsky (36) in 2004 and 2005, has only good memories of the festival.
"For me, there is no bitterness in these memories," Olga says of Zuma, sitting next to Nikita in their kitchen. The couple met in Odessa, and now lives in Kyiv, where they stayed throughout the period of the Russian invasion.
These memories have not disappeared. Of course, they will always be with us. But today is not the time when we can even think about parties or dancing or anything like that. Nikita, who has a short beard and long dark hair, adds that it is a part of our lives that we have lost until now.
In Ukraine, the electronic landscape took an active part in the war. "I know several DJs who have gone to the front, such as John Object, Raavel or Detkom," says Maya Baklanova, a music journalist from Berlin to Kyiv.
He notes that Angels of Kyiv, a volunteer initiative that provides humanitarian aid to civilians and supports the military with donations, was founded by a music coordinator, and the nightclub established a community fund to support various initiatives, such as a shelter for displaced persons. and financial assistance. Ukrainian artists. : They lost their income. "Now it's quieter in Kyiv, I opened some clubs not as hangouts, but as community places," he says.
Maya, who has also been in contact with some clubs, says that in 2019, event organizers increasingly boycotted Russian musicians unless they spoke out against the government.
After the start of the war, he wrote an open letter from hundreds of members of the Ukrainian electronic music community calling for an international boycott of their Russian counterparts. The text reads: "We in the music community see the actions of Russian promoters, DJs and artists who continue to hold events and perform while their country's army is bombing our cities. We also note how our Russian partners, including the largest platform at the international level, express their concern and pretend that they do not notice the situation."
In 2014, the summer paradise of Kazantip collapsed after Russia annexed Crimea and tensions in the Donbas escalated into an armed conflict. Kazantip, as a cultural and social enterprise located on land whose new status is not recognized by Ukraine or the international community, will not withstand geopolitical upheavals.
The divorce of the Republic of Lithuania from Ukrainian society was rapid. After President Kazantip Marchonak publicly supported the annexation of Crimea on social networks, many Ukrainians turned away from him. Meanwhile, the new Russian authorities banned Kazantip that summer, citing fire safety violations. "This is the end of Kazantip's story," says Ilya Voronin, a music journalist and former editor-in-chief of Mixmag Russia.
Marshunok was looking for alternative places where DJs and guests from all over the world could come. In the summer of 2014, the festival moved to the eastern Black Sea coast of Georgia. The republic singled out a beach near the seaside resort of Anaklia, which has a pedestrian suspension bridge and many quirky structures, including a red Chinese pagoda, when former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili tried to create a mini-Dubai on it. Build a swampy beach. But while the Caucasian country of 3.7 million people has a limited number of clubs, few Russians make the cut, and even fewer Ukrainians. CaZantipus Anaklius was a commercial failure.
When Marchonak turned to Southeast Asia in search of new locations, many members of the team did not follow him. In 2015, Cambodian authorities revoked permission to hold a festival on the island, citing "outrageous tourism."
A Russian businessman has found a new vacation home on the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc. The first trimester of the "KaZantip" application "Episode" took place on the eve of the New Year 2016 and lasted for two weeks. It will resume at the end of the year after being suspended during the coronavirus pandemic.
But even with its tropical and idyllic atmosphere, for former KaZantip-goers who say the festival's magic is finally gone, Epizode is unlikely to revive the spirit or appeal of the original festival.
Even in Crimea, the territory of the Kazantip Republic was not abandoned by fake palm trees and futuristic buildings. I got a project called Z.CITY. The exotic elements have been modernized and while DJs play on the dance floors, sports and wellness activities are offered, as well as plenty of entertainment for children.
A former participant of the Radzivon festival fondly remembers Kazantip, but does not regret its end: "Kazantip appeared at the right time in the right place, on the ruins of the Soviet empire, when people who were changing were inspired. , simply. There was a feeling. The first sips of freedom, and we still believe in a better future."
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