YALTA, Crimea — My quest to unearth my Russian roots brings me regularly to Crimea, where my ancestors cultivated a vineyard along the spectacular southern coast for generations until the 1917 Revolution.

This resort was the summer playground of the czar and the aristocracy during the last gilded decades of the empire. In 1954, the Kremlin offered Crimea as a gift to what eventually became an independent Ukraine, and then seized it back in 2014.

Squinting past the Soviet-era concrete excesses, one can sense what drew the elite here: the glittering sea, the mountain air mingling with the perfume of cedar trees and pink mimosa.

On my last visit, I had unexpected company in trying to uncover traces of that bygone era: the Crimean viceroys running the place under President Vladimir V. Putin are now presenting themselves as the heirs to that history.