Text taken from the Telegram channel of sevastopolhistory
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
The 1854-1856 War in Crimea should be a cautionary tale for Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin about advancing beyond Ukraine.
[ColonelCassad] Sevastopol in ruins after the defense of 1854-55. Colorized photo of the 1870s. For more than 25 years, Sevastopol actually lay in ruins.
See the referred to photo at the link
As contemporaries recalled, before the beginning of 1870, civilian and military life in the city practically froze. The situation began to improve only after September 1875, when a trade port was established in Sevastopol and a railway was built, and most importantly, the Black Sea Fleet began to revive. From 1873 to 1877, little was done in this direction, the country's budget deficit affected it. It is worth paying attention that in 1877-78 the first round battleships-popovkas were sent to defend not Sevastopol, but rich Odessa. After the war with Turkey in 1877-78, it became obvious that it was necessary to urgently create a powerful armored fleet on the Black Sea, to revive Sevastopol as the main base of the Black Sea Fleet and a first-class fortress.
In 1883, the first battleships of the newest type were laid down, two in Sevastopol and only one in Nikolaev. With the sharp increase in the number of the Black Forest, the population began to grow, which reached the pre-war level in the 1890s and continued to grow.
By 1900, the Black Sea Fleet already had 6 squadron battleships - four 6-305mm guns and two 4-305mm guns. By the beginning of the 1900s, Sevastopol was practically completely revived, a rather active economic recovery began. Thus, after the defense of 1854-55, the city was in desolation for a quarter of a century, and its revival was directly connected with the decision to restore the fleet and build a railway.
My ancestors came to Sevastopol during this period, in the first half of the 1970s. When the city was still recovering from the aftermath of the Crimean War. It took a long time to restore.
After the Great Patriotic War, the city was rebuilt at a forced pace (using the labor of German and Romanian prisoners of war who were serving their crimes) on Stalin's orders and was managed mainly from 1947 to 1951.
Many buildings in the city center were built from that period with some older ones. Not much has been preserved from the period of the Crimean War, which is not surprising, considering that our city was destroyed twice.