| By Timothy Holtgrefe June 2024 For several years prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin had devoted much of his time and effort to promoting false narratives and a revisionist history of Ukraine as early as 2005. However, the rhetorical gaslighting and denial of Ukraine’s rich cultural heritage is actually nothing new. In fact for Russian autocrats it is an historical continuity going back several hundred years in an effort to subjugate a race of people. |  |
What is surprising is not that the Russian Empire ‘russified’ their ethnic minorities, as all colonizers have performed similar practices, but that so many of these false narratives continue to persist into today’s political discourse regarding the current war in Ukraine; even in the West. This is part 7 of an HQ exclusive series to investigate Russia’s relentless attack on history. In this episode, we will explore Russia’s revisionist history and genocide of Crimea’s Tatars.
The Seizure of Crimea
On February 27, 2014, masked Russian special forces in green uniform, without insignia, occupied strategic locations across Crimea as well as the parliament building, thus beginning the Russo-Ukrainian War. Initially, Vladimir Putin denied these men were the armed forces of the Russian Federation and claimed they were groups of local militia inside Crimea. Again in March, Putin denied there was a prewar plan to occupy Crimea. However, in the following month on April 17th and again later in 2015, Putin admitted that Russian special forces were involved stating, “We never said there were not people there who carried out certain tasks including in the military sphere” (cited by Walker, 2015). In the same address, he then denied Russian troops were on the ground in eastern Ukraine and repeated the familiar lie that, “all of this is being done by local residents” (cited by Reeves & Wallace, 2015, p.369).
On March 16, 2014, while under Russian armed occupation, a hasty and illegal referendum was held for the Crimean people to vote for joining the Russian Federation, with allegedly 95.5% voting in favor. On March 18, after receiving a standing ovation from the Russian parliament, Putin signed the bill absorbing Crimea into the Russian Federation, stating that the peninsula had “always been a part of Russia.” In his televised address, Putin claimed that it was the West that had behaved "irresponsibly" in backing the uprising in Kyiv, and denied Russia was interested in annexing more territory (cited by BBC, 2014).
Since Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Putin has made several attempts at historical revisionism through various statements such as “Crimea has always been Russia” and that Nikita Krushchev illegally “gave” Crimea to Soviet Ukraine in 1954. To what extent is there any truth to any of this? Has Crimea always been a part of Russia?
On February 27, 2014, masked Russian special forces in green uniform, without insignia, occupied strategic locations across Crimea as well as the parliament building, thus beginning the Russo-Ukrainian War. Initially, Vladimir Putin denied these men were the armed forces of the Russian Federation and claimed they were groups of local militia inside Crimea. Again in March, Putin denied there was a prewar plan to occupy Crimea. However, in the following month on April 17th and again later in 2015, Putin admitted that Russian special forces were involved stating, “We never said there were not people there who carried out certain tasks including in the military sphere” (cited by Walker, 2015). In the same address, he then denied Russian troops were on the ground in eastern Ukraine and repeated the familiar lie that, “all of this is being done by local residents” (cited by Reeves & Wallace, 2015, p.369).
On March 16, 2014, while under Russian armed occupation, a hasty and illegal referendum was held for the Crimean people to vote for joining the Russian Federation, with allegedly 95.5% voting in favor. On March 18, after receiving a standing ovation from the Russian parliament, Putin signed the bill absorbing Crimea into the Russian Federation, stating that the peninsula had “always been a part of Russia.” In his televised address, Putin claimed that it was the West that had behaved "irresponsibly" in backing the uprising in Kyiv, and denied Russia was interested in annexing more territory (cited by BBC, 2014).
Since Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Putin has made several attempts at historical revisionism through various statements such as “Crimea has always been Russia” and that Nikita Krushchev illegally “gave” Crimea to Soviet Ukraine in 1954. To what extent is there any truth to any of this? Has Crimea always been a part of Russia?
The History of Crimea
The history of the Crimean peninsula has witnessed several rotations of migrations and colonies dating back as far as Ancient Greece. However, at no point had ethnic Russians ever made a significant settlement until the 19th century and were never the majority until the 20th. Greeks and
The history of the Crimean peninsula has witnessed several rotations of migrations and colonies dating back as far as Ancient Greece. However, at no point had ethnic Russians ever made a significant settlement until the 19th century and were never the majority until the 20th. Greeks and
 | Jews have inhabited the peninsula since ancient times and have been there the entire time, being the first literary sources (Snyder, 2022). Not even Kyivan Rus, the slavic polity in the region, reached the Crimean peninsula; however, the Mongols did in the 13th century. Most critically, as the Mongol empire fractured, it created two post Mongol states: The Golden Horde, which controlled Crimea, and the Principality of Muscovy. |
The Kingdom of Muscovy, which was renamed “Russia” by Peter the Great in 1721, was a post Mongol state. Meanwhile, the Golden Horde became the Crimean Khanate. Unfortunately for the Crimean Khanate, they fell under Ottoman dependency just as the Ottoman Empire itself began its own decline around 1650. The Ottomans began their decline chiefly because they failed to break out into globalized trade during the Age of Exploration, whereas Moscow was able to expand eastward into the Pacific.
This decline resulted in Crimean Khanate militarily aligning themselves with the Ukrainian Cossacks of the Zaporizhian Host, which had helped produce the Ukrainian Cossack proto-state in 1649 (Finnin, 2023, p.82). Meanwhile, Ukraine’s political order in the form of the Cossack Hetmanate had to constantly ally itself with neighboring empires to defend its territories from rival empires. Ukrainians would both ally with and fight against the Polish-Lithuanians, ally with and fight the Muscovites, and ally with and fight the Crimean Khanate (and briefly allied with the Swedes against Russia during the Great Northern War in 1708). Meanwhile, each of these empires would do their very best to divide and conquer Ukraine for themselves.
Unlike the post Mongol state of Muscovy, the Crimean Khanate was able to trace their direct ancestry to Ghengis Khan. These Tatar princes ruled over the inhabitants of Crimea who were chiefly turkic people called Cuman. The current Crimean Tatars of today emerged as an ethnic synthesis of these
This decline resulted in Crimean Khanate militarily aligning themselves with the Ukrainian Cossacks of the Zaporizhian Host, which had helped produce the Ukrainian Cossack proto-state in 1649 (Finnin, 2023, p.82). Meanwhile, Ukraine’s political order in the form of the Cossack Hetmanate had to constantly ally itself with neighboring empires to defend its territories from rival empires. Ukrainians would both ally with and fight against the Polish-Lithuanians, ally with and fight the Muscovites, and ally with and fight the Crimean Khanate (and briefly allied with the Swedes against Russia during the Great Northern War in 1708). Meanwhile, each of these empires would do their very best to divide and conquer Ukraine for themselves.
Unlike the post Mongol state of Muscovy, the Crimean Khanate was able to trace their direct ancestry to Ghengis Khan. These Tatar princes ruled over the inhabitants of Crimea who were chiefly turkic people called Cuman. The current Crimean Tatars of today emerged as an ethnic synthesis of these
| two races. Politically, the Crimean princes' system or rule had more similarities with the Polish-Lithuanian CommonWealth than the Moskovites in that their leaders were more or less chosen by the people (Synder, 2022). As the Cossack Hetmanate of Ukraine resisted simultaneous incursions from the Polish and Russian empires, Crimea belonged to the Crimean Khanate, the last remnant of the Golden Horde Mongols. |  |
To put it plainly, at no point did Tsarist Russia have any historic possession of the Crimean peninsula until it was subdued through a series of conflicts and the Crimean Khanate was formally annexed into the Russian Empire in 1783 along with the rest of Ukraine. After this time, Crimean Tatars continued to be the ethnic majority on the peninsula until the 20th century. The indigenous Crimean Tatars have occupied Crimea since 1443.
Ethnic Cleansing Under Tsarist Russia
The conquest of Crimea occurred under the rule of Catherine the Great around 1783 with help from Ukrainian soldiers. This occurred around the same time period that Ukrainian and Polish institutions were being crushed by the Russian empire.
In classic colonial fashion, Catherine’s idea for southern Ukraine and Crimea was to rename it Novorossiya or “New Russia.” In the process, all Turkic names for landmarks and cities in Crimea were replaced by Catherine with Greek sounding names. The idea behind this was to connect Russia with the classical world of the ancient past and obliterate the memory of all peoples and cultures that existed and exist (Snyder, 2022).This moment was in fact the beginning of Russia’s gaslighting of Ukraine and Crimea. With the Russian Empire’s myths of continuity with Greece, Crimean Tatars were treated as aliens in their ancestral homeland. By 1821, they observably lost the freedom to exercise their own customs and cultural traditions (Holderness, 1827, p.49-50).
Ethnic Cleansing Under Tsarist Russia
The conquest of Crimea occurred under the rule of Catherine the Great around 1783 with help from Ukrainian soldiers. This occurred around the same time period that Ukrainian and Polish institutions were being crushed by the Russian empire.
In classic colonial fashion, Catherine’s idea for southern Ukraine and Crimea was to rename it Novorossiya or “New Russia.” In the process, all Turkic names for landmarks and cities in Crimea were replaced by Catherine with Greek sounding names. The idea behind this was to connect Russia with the classical world of the ancient past and obliterate the memory of all peoples and cultures that existed and exist (Snyder, 2022).This moment was in fact the beginning of Russia’s gaslighting of Ukraine and Crimea. With the Russian Empire’s myths of continuity with Greece, Crimean Tatars were treated as aliens in their ancestral homeland. By 1821, they observably lost the freedom to exercise their own customs and cultural traditions (Holderness, 1827, p.49-50).
 | The Crimean annexation captured the Russian public’s imagination as an exotic and mystical land of the Tatar Khanate. However, Crimea’s native inhabitants would be erased from Russian art and literature. Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches (1855) and Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Lapdow (1899), make no mention of Crimean Tatars at all. In Grigory and Nikanor Chernetsov’s painting Pushkin at Bakhchisarai Palace (1837), “Crimea,” as Finnin (2023) analyzes, “is a fantasy in which Pushkin is featured standing next to ruins that are not ruins at all. The space shows no sign of decay. At the same time, it is eerily lifeless, devoid of human activity beyond the small stationary poet; as the place appears abandoned and empty.” (p.32). Such was the effect of cultural texts and art facilitating the politics of imperial expansion. |
As Russia took control of Crimea, roughly 300,000 or ⅓ of all Crimean Tatars were physically displaced from their ancestral homeland. During the Crimean War of the 1850s, another 140,000 Crimean Tatars were additionally removed (Synder, 2022). Successive waves of cultural and physical displacement took place, which spiked after the Crimean War. The Crimean Tatars were falsely accused, not for the last time, of mass treason. In 1857, Tsar Aleksandr II spoke explicitly of “the cleansing of the Tatars from the entire Crimean peninsula” and their replacement by “peasants from internal provinces” of the empire (cited by Finnin, 2023, p.14). The charges of betrayal by tsarist officials, explains Russian historian Alexandr Nekrich (1981), “were meant to divert attention from the inept performance of the tsarist government itself, and its bureaucrats, during the war” (p.105). Russian Poet Maximillian Voloshin called the accusations “barbaric,” a cruel assault on a “hard-working and loyal” people (cited by Finnin, 2023, p.42). This assault was also physical, involving a series of atrocities committed against the Crimean Tatar civilians by Russian troops (p.42).
Crimean Tatar migrations to Anatolia began to flood. Crimean Tatar folk songs trapped the pain of leaving the homeland at this time, “Woe has come to Crimea! On one side, the Muscovite surrounds us. On the other side, we face the mighty Black Sea!” (cited p.43).
Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar Solidarity
In reaction to the decades of rhetorical “de-Tatarization” of Crimea in Russian discourse, leading Ukrainian writers advanced an anti-colonial discourse in common solidarity with Crimean Tatars. For many, Crimean Tatar culture in particular was an object of artistic fascination and close study. A solidary reflection in which the image of the Ukrainian was seen in the image of the Crimean Tatar.
Ukrainian poet Lesia Ukrainka (1871-1913) in particular referred to the peninsula as “the Tatar land” (Finnin, 2023, p.56). Ukrainian literary scholar Ahatanhel Krymsky wrote his colleagues that a “complete multi-sided history of Ukraine is impossible” without knowledge of the Crimean Tatars (cited p.67). The Young Tatar newspaper Servant of the Homeland first published in 1906, stood at the vanguard of opposition to tsarist rule. It denounced autocracy in words: “Tsars and sultans offer nothing of value” marking the revolutionary fervor of 1905, which briefly saw the prospect of a republican democracy and national liberation of the Russian Empire (cited p.54).
Crimean Tatar migrations to Anatolia began to flood. Crimean Tatar folk songs trapped the pain of leaving the homeland at this time, “Woe has come to Crimea! On one side, the Muscovite surrounds us. On the other side, we face the mighty Black Sea!” (cited p.43).
Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar Solidarity
In reaction to the decades of rhetorical “de-Tatarization” of Crimea in Russian discourse, leading Ukrainian writers advanced an anti-colonial discourse in common solidarity with Crimean Tatars. For many, Crimean Tatar culture in particular was an object of artistic fascination and close study. A solidary reflection in which the image of the Ukrainian was seen in the image of the Crimean Tatar.
Ukrainian poet Lesia Ukrainka (1871-1913) in particular referred to the peninsula as “the Tatar land” (Finnin, 2023, p.56). Ukrainian literary scholar Ahatanhel Krymsky wrote his colleagues that a “complete multi-sided history of Ukraine is impossible” without knowledge of the Crimean Tatars (cited p.67). The Young Tatar newspaper Servant of the Homeland first published in 1906, stood at the vanguard of opposition to tsarist rule. It denounced autocracy in words: “Tsars and sultans offer nothing of value” marking the revolutionary fervor of 1905, which briefly saw the prospect of a republican democracy and national liberation of the Russian Empire (cited p.54).
The chaos of the First World war had blown open political opportunities for the non-Russian nations of the Russian Empire. A literary campaign to “re-Tatarize” Crimea suddenly took on urgent political purpose (Kirimli, 1998, p.194-6). In the pivotal year of 1917, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar activists
 | supported one another in what became a risky and often dangerous struggle toward national autonomy. In July, roughly a month after Hrushevsky’s Rada declared Ukraine an independent state, a Crimean Tatar delegation visited Kyiv hoping to follow in its footsteps. According to the Simferopol-based newspaper Voice of the Tatars, “the Muslims expressed a desire for the territorial annexation of Crimea to Ukraine.” One of the Crimean leaders in |
attendance, Amet Ozenbasli, claimed in a passionate speech that “just as the khans forged unions with Ukrainians,....we free sons of the Tatar people extend our hand to you” (cited by Finnin, 2023, p.69). A poem composed at this time, “Ant etkenmen” (I pledge), would become the national hymn of the Crimean Tatars. Later, it would be sung defiantly in KGB prisons (Allworth, 1998). As Crimean Tatar dissident Rollan Kadyev later recalled in a 1968 interview, “Ukrainians understand us better” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.137).
In the first months of 1918, Bolshevik forces invaded Crimea, forcing the Qurultay to disband. They arrested Noman Celebicihan, author of I, Pledge, and took him to Sevastopol’s “Quarantine Bay” where he was tortured and shot (p.71). His murder foreshadowed a new and darker period of violence at the hands of Soviet power.
Stalin’s Ethnic Cleansing
Remembered by Crimean Tatars as “Sürgün”, it was one of the most incredible crimes of the Stalinist period. It claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars, mostly women, children, and the elderly.
When the Nazi threat receded in 1944, Stalin seized an opportunity to obliterate the bond between ethnic minorities and their lands once and for all. Of all of Stalin’s deportations, none compared to that of the Caucasian and Crimean peoples, who were deported down to the last person (Synder, 2012, p.332). Even though the deported Tatars had seen a higher percentage of their youth die fighting Hitler’s army than had the Russians, the Crimea was ethnically cleansed of its native inhabitants on the logic that their entire race was guilty of collaboration with Nazis (p.335).
May 18, 1944, Stalin ordered the Crimean Tatars to be deported en masse. The Crimean Tatars were given minutes to collect their belongings, ordered from their homes at gunpoint, and herded onto the cattle-cars of waiting trains bound for destinations in Central Asia and the Ural Mountains by NKVD officers. According to witnesses, the sick and injured who were not fit for transit were “liquidated.” Those who openly defied the deportation order were shot. This ethnic cleansing also engulfed Crimea’s Greek, Armenian, and Bulgarian communities to ensure a Russian ethnic majority (Fennin, 2023, p.15). Children were forcibly separated from parents. Train cars marked for 40 people were packed with roughly 150 men, women, and children. The doors to the cars did not open for eighteen days. There were no toilets and there was no drinking water: deportees survived off of rain run-off collected through gaps and holes in the cars. As a result, thousands of the deportees died over the course of the journey from inhumane conditions, lack of water and food, and vicious treatment by the NKVD (Williams, 2015, p.401). Nearly 80,000 Crimean Tatars perished in the deportation itself. Even after their arrival, thousands more would perish from hunger, exposure, and disease in the special settlement camps (Rywkin, 1994, p.67). Many Crimean Tatars believe that half of their total population died within the first years of their exile (Fennin, 2023, p.16).
In the first months of 1918, Bolshevik forces invaded Crimea, forcing the Qurultay to disband. They arrested Noman Celebicihan, author of I, Pledge, and took him to Sevastopol’s “Quarantine Bay” where he was tortured and shot (p.71). His murder foreshadowed a new and darker period of violence at the hands of Soviet power.
Stalin’s Ethnic Cleansing
Remembered by Crimean Tatars as “Sürgün”, it was one of the most incredible crimes of the Stalinist period. It claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars, mostly women, children, and the elderly.
When the Nazi threat receded in 1944, Stalin seized an opportunity to obliterate the bond between ethnic minorities and their lands once and for all. Of all of Stalin’s deportations, none compared to that of the Caucasian and Crimean peoples, who were deported down to the last person (Synder, 2012, p.332). Even though the deported Tatars had seen a higher percentage of their youth die fighting Hitler’s army than had the Russians, the Crimea was ethnically cleansed of its native inhabitants on the logic that their entire race was guilty of collaboration with Nazis (p.335).
May 18, 1944, Stalin ordered the Crimean Tatars to be deported en masse. The Crimean Tatars were given minutes to collect their belongings, ordered from their homes at gunpoint, and herded onto the cattle-cars of waiting trains bound for destinations in Central Asia and the Ural Mountains by NKVD officers. According to witnesses, the sick and injured who were not fit for transit were “liquidated.” Those who openly defied the deportation order were shot. This ethnic cleansing also engulfed Crimea’s Greek, Armenian, and Bulgarian communities to ensure a Russian ethnic majority (Fennin, 2023, p.15). Children were forcibly separated from parents. Train cars marked for 40 people were packed with roughly 150 men, women, and children. The doors to the cars did not open for eighteen days. There were no toilets and there was no drinking water: deportees survived off of rain run-off collected through gaps and holes in the cars. As a result, thousands of the deportees died over the course of the journey from inhumane conditions, lack of water and food, and vicious treatment by the NKVD (Williams, 2015, p.401). Nearly 80,000 Crimean Tatars perished in the deportation itself. Even after their arrival, thousands more would perish from hunger, exposure, and disease in the special settlement camps (Rywkin, 1994, p.67). Many Crimean Tatars believe that half of their total population died within the first years of their exile (Fennin, 2023, p.16).
Like all ethnic groups in Crimea, including Russians, Ukrainians, and even Jewish Karaites; a number of Crimean Tatars did collaborate with Nazi forces during the war. However, the scholarly consensus places this number at roughly twenty thousand, or less than 10% of the Crimean Tatar population at the time (Williams, 2004, p.383). Those who did collaborate had already retreated westward with the Wehrmacht by the time of the deportation (Williams, 2004, p.382). The large majority of the Crimean Tatars fought on the Soviet side both on Crimean soil and on other fronts. Many veterans and even partisan fighters who resisted Nazi occupation were among those deported (Fennin, 2023, p.87). Thousands won medals for their service in the Red Army and six became Heroes of the Soviet Union (Uehling, 2004, p.53). One of these heroes was Smail Aladin (1912-1996), a Crimean Tatar who had commanded a Red Army platoon on the south western front. Returning home, instead of a hero's welcome, he found strangers living in his house. His wife, Fatima, and young daughter, Diliara, had been rounded up in the deportation and exiled to Soviet Uzbekistan (Fennin, 2023, p.89).
As Beriia implies in his communique of May 10, 1944, the Crimean Tatars were seen as an “undesirable” Muslim fifth column in a future war of expansion with Turkey over control of the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles (Fisher, 1978, p.169). The goal was to move national minorities away from sensitive border regions toward the interior. Those deported would be separated from their homelands to better assimilate into Soviet society or they would die. In 1943, the Soviets deported the entire Karachai population, some 69,267 people, to Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, along with 91,919 Kalmyks to Siberia. On February 20, 1944; 478,479 Chechen and Ingush peoples and 37,107 people of the Balkar population were rounded up and expelled to Kazakhstan in just over a week. As in Crimea, the old and the sick who could not be moved were shot. Villages were burned to the ground everywhere, in some places, barns full of people were burned as well. The entire Crimean Tatar population was resettled in this way (Synder, 2012, p.330).
Remolding Historical Memory
Erased from Soviet memory was that a group called the Crimean Tatars existed, or had the right to exist, at all. Traces of their existence were removed from maps, street signs, city names and torn from encyclopedias. Their dwellings and property redistributed to the Slavic settlers recruited by the Soviet state to replace them (Fennin, 2023, p.93). In 1944 Crimea also fell in the Soviet administrative hierarchy from an ASSR to a mere oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), where its economy languished without the Crimean Tatars (p.16).
After the Second World War, the revisionist work of Soviet historians, such as P. N. Nadinskii, would eventually frame Crimea as ancient Russian territory. Any mention of the historical existence of the Crimean Tatars was by default evidence of Russia's act of ethnic cleansing. Soviet censors, therefore, banned films and literature depicting Crimean Tatars or Crimea as anything but Russian. Members of the Soviet Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, along with their poets and artists, were either arrested or shot (p.86).
As Beriia implies in his communique of May 10, 1944, the Crimean Tatars were seen as an “undesirable” Muslim fifth column in a future war of expansion with Turkey over control of the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles (Fisher, 1978, p.169). The goal was to move national minorities away from sensitive border regions toward the interior. Those deported would be separated from their homelands to better assimilate into Soviet society or they would die. In 1943, the Soviets deported the entire Karachai population, some 69,267 people, to Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, along with 91,919 Kalmyks to Siberia. On February 20, 1944; 478,479 Chechen and Ingush peoples and 37,107 people of the Balkar population were rounded up and expelled to Kazakhstan in just over a week. As in Crimea, the old and the sick who could not be moved were shot. Villages were burned to the ground everywhere, in some places, barns full of people were burned as well. The entire Crimean Tatar population was resettled in this way (Synder, 2012, p.330).
Remolding Historical Memory
Erased from Soviet memory was that a group called the Crimean Tatars existed, or had the right to exist, at all. Traces of their existence were removed from maps, street signs, city names and torn from encyclopedias. Their dwellings and property redistributed to the Slavic settlers recruited by the Soviet state to replace them (Fennin, 2023, p.93). In 1944 Crimea also fell in the Soviet administrative hierarchy from an ASSR to a mere oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), where its economy languished without the Crimean Tatars (p.16).
After the Second World War, the revisionist work of Soviet historians, such as P. N. Nadinskii, would eventually frame Crimea as ancient Russian territory. Any mention of the historical existence of the Crimean Tatars was by default evidence of Russia's act of ethnic cleansing. Soviet censors, therefore, banned films and literature depicting Crimean Tatars or Crimea as anything but Russian. Members of the Soviet Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, along with their poets and artists, were either arrested or shot (p.86).
In June 1952, Soviet historian Boris Grekov published an essay entitled Concerning a few questions on Crimean history, where he accused western scholars of falsifying Crimea’s history to satisfy “Tatar bourgeois nationalists.” Further stating that “the Russian people” existed in Crimea since antiquity, citing no evidence, but pushing a capitalist conspiracy against the USSR to explain the lack of archeological artifacts (cited by Williams, 2015, p.74). This Soviet Revisionism continued after 1991 as many politicians in the Crimean parliament continued to toe the Nadinskii historical timeline (Uehling, 2004, p.35).
Today when Vladimir Putin presents his reasons for the 2014 annexation, he is echoing an absurd but familiar colonial revisionist history to all who grew up in the Soviet Union. To this day, the very act of calling Crimea “historically Russia” is in fact genocidal language.
The 1954 Transfer to Ukraine
From 1953 to 1954, Khrushchev believed that “Russia had paid little attention to Crimea’s development” and that “Ukraine could handle it more concertedly” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.16). In February 1954 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet accordingly announced the formal transfer of the Crimean oblast from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine describing Crimea as a “natural continuation of Ukraine’s southern steppe,” whose economy was “closely tied” to that of Ukraine (cited p.16-17). Indeed, after Khrushchev had placed Crimea within the administrative boundaries of Soviet Ukraine, it began to emerge from economic depression (Fennin, 2023, p.133).
However, the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine did not happen for all the reasons Khrushchev was giving. According to historian Timothy Snyder, this was done simply because “Crimea lost its special status within the Soviet Union as an autonomous republic. Of course no one could say why…because all the Crimean Tatars had been ethnically cleansed by Stalin. This in turn led to a discussion on what to do with Crimea” (Snyder, 2022). The answer ended up being to attach it to Ukraine. This also made sense not only because of its reliance on electricity and water from Ukraine, but because “....the argument that Crimea should become part of Russia made no coherent sense and Khrushchev knew this” (Snyder, 2022).
Today when Vladimir Putin presents his reasons for the 2014 annexation, he is echoing an absurd but familiar colonial revisionist history to all who grew up in the Soviet Union. To this day, the very act of calling Crimea “historically Russia” is in fact genocidal language.
The 1954 Transfer to Ukraine
From 1953 to 1954, Khrushchev believed that “Russia had paid little attention to Crimea’s development” and that “Ukraine could handle it more concertedly” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.16). In February 1954 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet accordingly announced the formal transfer of the Crimean oblast from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine describing Crimea as a “natural continuation of Ukraine’s southern steppe,” whose economy was “closely tied” to that of Ukraine (cited p.16-17). Indeed, after Khrushchev had placed Crimea within the administrative boundaries of Soviet Ukraine, it began to emerge from economic depression (Fennin, 2023, p.133).
However, the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine did not happen for all the reasons Khrushchev was giving. According to historian Timothy Snyder, this was done simply because “Crimea lost its special status within the Soviet Union as an autonomous republic. Of course no one could say why…because all the Crimean Tatars had been ethnically cleansed by Stalin. This in turn led to a discussion on what to do with Crimea” (Snyder, 2022). The answer ended up being to attach it to Ukraine. This also made sense not only because of its reliance on electricity and water from Ukraine, but because “....the argument that Crimea should become part of Russia made no coherent sense and Khrushchev knew this” (Snyder, 2022).
Khrushchev instead claimed that Crimea was a “gift” from Russia to Ukraine to celebrate how Russia and Ukraine were always together. This also served to reinforce the old tsarist myth that although Ukraine and Russia were separate, back in 1654 Ukraine made a choice to be a part of Russia (Contrary to myth, the Pereyaslav Agreement was merely a military alliance with Russia against the Poles. See Plokhy, 2001). Moreover, one cannot ‘give’ something that never belonged to them in the first place.
In 1956 Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s mass deportations of the Chechen, Karachay, Kalmyk, Ingush, and Balkar peoples and condemned them as “heinous” acts. He also decried the sweeping use of treason to justify such atrocities (Nekrich, 1981, p.136). However, when it came to the Crimean Tatars, even Khrushchev was completely silent. The Crimean Tatars were condemned to be forgotten forever in Soviet memory. When recalling her attendance at a Crimean Tatar poetry gathering in Kharkiv 1967, Lillia Karas-Chichibabin recalled, "I knew nothing about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. No one knew anything about it" (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.4).
The Struggle to Exist (1950-1991)
After the war, Crimean Tatars waged a peaceful and nonviolent struggle during the Soviet era and have incrementally returned to their homeland since 1989. Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar solidarity in literature, primarily poetry, was the spark that lit the way for Soviet resistance and resettlement for the Crimean Tatars.
In 1956 Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s mass deportations of the Chechen, Karachay, Kalmyk, Ingush, and Balkar peoples and condemned them as “heinous” acts. He also decried the sweeping use of treason to justify such atrocities (Nekrich, 1981, p.136). However, when it came to the Crimean Tatars, even Khrushchev was completely silent. The Crimean Tatars were condemned to be forgotten forever in Soviet memory. When recalling her attendance at a Crimean Tatar poetry gathering in Kharkiv 1967, Lillia Karas-Chichibabin recalled, "I knew nothing about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. No one knew anything about it" (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.4).
The Struggle to Exist (1950-1991)
After the war, Crimean Tatars waged a peaceful and nonviolent struggle during the Soviet era and have incrementally returned to their homeland since 1989. Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar solidarity in literature, primarily poetry, was the spark that lit the way for Soviet resistance and resettlement for the Crimean Tatars.
| From the late 1950s to 1965, the first stirrings of Soviet dissent were seen all over Soviet Ukraine. According to Ukrainian poet Iryna Zhylenko, “At this time poetry was the only form of protest. It filled an empty hole in the soul of the Soviet person” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.102). Their literature seized upon a past of the Ukrainian and Tatar encounter as one of |  |
friendship, alliance, and co-operation—which accompanied the emergence of the Ukrainian Cossack polity during the era of Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the seventeenth century (Plokhy, 2014, p.11). “When the Ukrainians sought to defend their political individuality, it was to the Tatars that they turned most often for support” one wrote (cited by Subtelny, 1979, p.809). Soviet authorities were slow to pick up on the allegory, which likened the Soviet Union to a proselytizing and paranoid Polish empire, but they caught on eventually. Reading groups were shut down, copies of poetry were confiscated from bookstores and pulled from library shelves (Plokhy, 2014, p.177).
Crimean Tatar poet Chichibabin, would consistently recite the poem Crimean Strolls (1959), a poem that condemned Stalinist deportation of the Crimean Tatars and other peoples “when it was not possible to hear about such things” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.106). Chichibabin’s works became a source of comfort for the displaced and dispossessed Crimean Tatar people. His work was regularly read at gatherings of National Movement of the Crimean Tatar People in Uzbekistan, which met regularly to elect delegates to travel to Moscow, Kyiv, and Simferopol and campaign on behalf of their cause (p.121). Mustafa Dzhemilev, whose repeated arrests and historic hunger strike would soon become a rallying cry for the Crimean Tatar cause, worked to instill in younger generations a knowledge of their history, language, and culture (p.122). Mustafa would spend the majority of his adult life in prison for “Anti-Soviet agitation.”
Activist Petro Grigorenko wrote directly to Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, and advocated passionately for the Crimea Tatar cause and connected activists with foreign journalists in Moscow. He was introduced with admiration in Crimean Tatar circles as “the stubborn Ukrainian who does not know when to shut up” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.123). KGB memos from the autumn of 1967 reveal a scramble to track the activities of these “inflammatory elements of the Crimean Tatars,” discourage unity between Ukrainian and Crimean Tatars and prevent them from settling back in Crimea (cited p.123).
The ardent defense of the Crimean Tatars came at great personal cost to many Ukrainians. For Grigorenko, it led to his imprisonment, beating, forced feeding, and confinement in a “madhouse” (p.108). Many actual historians and poets who spoke out in support of allowing Crimean Tatars to return to their native soil were also sentenced to psychiatric hospitals (Rudnytsky, 1987, p.486). Crimean Tatar solidarity was also partially the reason why Ukrainian prisoners of conscience represented the largest group in the Gulag proportionate to their share of the Soviet population (Kuzio, 2015, p.342). This in part led to their arrest in the infamous roundup of Ukrainian intellectuals in 1965 (Tarnawsky, 1981, p.24).
Activist Petro Grigorenko wrote directly to Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, and advocated passionately for the Crimea Tatar cause and connected activists with foreign journalists in Moscow. He was introduced with admiration in Crimean Tatar circles as “the stubborn Ukrainian who does not know when to shut up” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.123). KGB memos from the autumn of 1967 reveal a scramble to track the activities of these “inflammatory elements of the Crimean Tatars,” discourage unity between Ukrainian and Crimean Tatars and prevent them from settling back in Crimea (cited p.123).
The ardent defense of the Crimean Tatars came at great personal cost to many Ukrainians. For Grigorenko, it led to his imprisonment, beating, forced feeding, and confinement in a “madhouse” (p.108). Many actual historians and poets who spoke out in support of allowing Crimean Tatars to return to their native soil were also sentenced to psychiatric hospitals (Rudnytsky, 1987, p.486). Crimean Tatar solidarity was also partially the reason why Ukrainian prisoners of conscience represented the largest group in the Gulag proportionate to their share of the Soviet population (Kuzio, 2015, p.342). This in part led to their arrest in the infamous roundup of Ukrainian intellectuals in 1965 (Tarnawsky, 1981, p.24).
Finally, in September 1967, the USSR Supreme Soviet issued a decree which absolved the Crimean Tatars of the charges of mass betrayal and treason. While it effectively rehabilitated the Crimean Tatars as rights-bearing citizens within the Soviet system, it claimed that they were now “rooted” in Central Asia, thereby precluding the legitimacy of their right of return to Crimea (Reddaway, 1998, p.227). Crimea continued to be a forbidden zone for the indigenous.
A turning point for Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars was the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which made human rights a part of détente between the Soviet Union and the West. Many Soviet dissidents took these measures to heart. In 1976, Ukrainians formed the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG) for the promotion and implementation of the accords (Morgan, 2018, p.6). To remove international attention to their causes, such as the plight of Crimean Tatars, the KGB authorities ironically had some of its founding members arrested under charges of “Anti-Soviet” agitation and sentenced to seven years hard labor. By 1981, all members of the UHG (roughly 40) had been imprisoned. Four members died in captivity. Historian Mykhailo Melnyk committed suicide after years of harassment (Zakharov, 2005). The Turkish Press referred to these UHG members as the most visible advocates for the Crimean Tatar movement. The UHG was the preeminent example of Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar solidarity (Fennin, 2023, p.165).
A turning point for Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars was the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which made human rights a part of détente between the Soviet Union and the West. Many Soviet dissidents took these measures to heart. In 1976, Ukrainians formed the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG) for the promotion and implementation of the accords (Morgan, 2018, p.6). To remove international attention to their causes, such as the plight of Crimean Tatars, the KGB authorities ironically had some of its founding members arrested under charges of “Anti-Soviet” agitation and sentenced to seven years hard labor. By 1981, all members of the UHG (roughly 40) had been imprisoned. Four members died in captivity. Historian Mykhailo Melnyk committed suicide after years of harassment (Zakharov, 2005). The Turkish Press referred to these UHG members as the most visible advocates for the Crimean Tatar movement. The UHG was the preeminent example of Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar solidarity (Fennin, 2023, p.165).
 | Perestroika had quickened the Crimean Tatar movement. 1987 saw a mass demonstration of Crimean Tatars in Red Square demanding a full return to their homeland. Meanwhile in Kyiv, Ukrainian national activists were demanding the organized, state-subsidized return of the Crimean Tatars to Crimea. In March 1989 at the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute, they pledged: “Let us help our brothers, the Crimean Tatars…Let us help them revive their autonomy, their culture, their educational system, their sovereignty!” (cited p.192). |
The Kremlin could no longer ignore the movement’s momentum. In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR condemned the 1944 deportation as “barbaric” and finally announced the “unconditional restoration” of the rights of the Crimean Tatars (p.192). Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Crimean Tatars reached 243,433 out of the total of 2,033,700 that account for 12.1% of the Crimean population that is 6.4 times more than the 1989 census (Ukrcensus 2003 cited by Özçelik, 2020, p.30).
Thanks in part to Ukrainian solidarity, the Crimean Tatar movement was the largest and most organized of its kind in Soviet history. In the face of arrests and imprisonment, Crimean Tatar activists defiantly met in large numbers and appealed to Soviet authorities in Moscow with massive petitions calling for their return to Crimea.
Russian Aggression in Contemporary Crimea
The resettlement of Crimean Tatars endured discrimination at the hands of local authorities and an ethnically superior Ukrainian and Russian populace struggling to come to grips with their position in a newly independent state (Dawson, 1997). Crimean political leader Sergei Aksyonov, who moved from the Transnistria region of Moldova to Crimea in 1989, was the leader of the neo-fascist Russkoe Yedynstvo (Russian Unity formerly called Avanguard). After he became an acting head of the Crimean Republic, he prohibited the mass rallies in Crimea when the Crimean Tatars commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Crimean Tatar deportation (Markedonov, 2016). He was one of the Crimean politicians who declared that the Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body, the Qırımtatar Milli Meclisi, did not exist and threatened anyone in Crimea who incited “ethnic hatred'' to be expelled (Özçelik, 2020, p.32).
Although Kyiv would frequently align itself with the Crimean Tatars after 1991, in 1998 however, roughly eighty thousand Crimean Tatars were made ineligible to vote in parliamentary elections in order to appease the dominant Russian majority (Fennin, 2023, p.202). This concession only emboldened the Russian Unity party there which was already an extension of the Kremlin’s influence in Crimea’s internal politics.
Thanks in part to Ukrainian solidarity, the Crimean Tatar movement was the largest and most organized of its kind in Soviet history. In the face of arrests and imprisonment, Crimean Tatar activists defiantly met in large numbers and appealed to Soviet authorities in Moscow with massive petitions calling for their return to Crimea.
Russian Aggression in Contemporary Crimea
The resettlement of Crimean Tatars endured discrimination at the hands of local authorities and an ethnically superior Ukrainian and Russian populace struggling to come to grips with their position in a newly independent state (Dawson, 1997). Crimean political leader Sergei Aksyonov, who moved from the Transnistria region of Moldova to Crimea in 1989, was the leader of the neo-fascist Russkoe Yedynstvo (Russian Unity formerly called Avanguard). After he became an acting head of the Crimean Republic, he prohibited the mass rallies in Crimea when the Crimean Tatars commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Crimean Tatar deportation (Markedonov, 2016). He was one of the Crimean politicians who declared that the Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body, the Qırımtatar Milli Meclisi, did not exist and threatened anyone in Crimea who incited “ethnic hatred'' to be expelled (Özçelik, 2020, p.32).
Although Kyiv would frequently align itself with the Crimean Tatars after 1991, in 1998 however, roughly eighty thousand Crimean Tatars were made ineligible to vote in parliamentary elections in order to appease the dominant Russian majority (Fennin, 2023, p.202). This concession only emboldened the Russian Unity party there which was already an extension of the Kremlin’s influence in Crimea’s internal politics.
 | Ironically, one of the main Russian arguments to occupy Crimea in 2014 was the violation of human rights of ethnic Russians who have lived in Crimea after the collapse of the Soviet Union, not Crimean Tatars. The United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) all had found no evidence of their discrimination. |
However, they reported human rights violations against Ukrainians and particularly the Crimean Tatars in Crimea after 2014. This included unlawful searches at the Tatar-language television station (ATR) and Ukrainian language radio and television stations. Crimean Tatar cemeteries were also frequently desecrated by Russian vandals (Özçelik, 2020, p.32). Occupation saw the Crimean Tatars experience many unresolved crimes and murders, as well as the kidnapping of Crimean Tatar activists. On April 13, 2016, the Qırımtatar Milli Meclisi’s activities were suspended “to prevent anti-Russian acts [that] oppose the Russian Federal laws” (cited p.33). Discrimination was the response to imagined discrimination.
On the day before the rushed March 16 vote, the discovery of the body of Reshat Ametov, a Crimean Tatar man abducted in broad daylight while he was protesting Moscow’s armed intervention, was an ominous harbinger for those disputing the annexation. Since Ametov, there have been over twenty other political disappearances, with six men found dead, all Crimean Tatars. Hundreds more professing views favorable to Kyiv or even international law have been arrested. The sheer number and nature of these attacks on civil liberties and human rights have compelled Krym SOS to compile a multivolume “encyclopedia” of repressions in Crimea since 2014 (Fennin, 2023, p.220).
According to Uehling (2017), “The deportation of the Crimean Tatar people is taking place once again, only this time to prisons.” Human rights watchers and historians have described their plight as a new “hybrid deportation” that seeks to discipline the Crimean Tatar community and enforce conformity with the Russian occupation. The mere “existence” of Crimean Tatars, writes Fennin (2023), appears to challenge the Russian occupation. Secular Crimean Tatars are often labeled as ‘extremists’ while religious ones as ‘terrorists’” (p.221). Since occupation, Crimean Tatars are once again forbidden by decree to gather in public and commemorate the Sürgün across the peninsula. To speak of or mourn their dead is now a violation of Russian law (Fennin, 2023, p.222-223).
Tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars have fled Crimea into mainland Ukraine, becoming the largest group of internally displaced people in the country. Ilmi Umerov, deputy chair of the Mejlis declared in 2016 that “I do not consider Crimea part of the Russian Federation” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.18). He was later subjected to forced treatment in a psychiatric hospital, a familiar Soviet solution to dissent. Not coincidentally, after 2014 the Crimean Tatars once again disappeared from Russian literature and thought when referencing Crimea (p.21). However, just as before, one potent selective affinity emerged from this return to oppression: Ukrainian–Crimean Tatar solidarity.
On the day before the rushed March 16 vote, the discovery of the body of Reshat Ametov, a Crimean Tatar man abducted in broad daylight while he was protesting Moscow’s armed intervention, was an ominous harbinger for those disputing the annexation. Since Ametov, there have been over twenty other political disappearances, with six men found dead, all Crimean Tatars. Hundreds more professing views favorable to Kyiv or even international law have been arrested. The sheer number and nature of these attacks on civil liberties and human rights have compelled Krym SOS to compile a multivolume “encyclopedia” of repressions in Crimea since 2014 (Fennin, 2023, p.220).
According to Uehling (2017), “The deportation of the Crimean Tatar people is taking place once again, only this time to prisons.” Human rights watchers and historians have described their plight as a new “hybrid deportation” that seeks to discipline the Crimean Tatar community and enforce conformity with the Russian occupation. The mere “existence” of Crimean Tatars, writes Fennin (2023), appears to challenge the Russian occupation. Secular Crimean Tatars are often labeled as ‘extremists’ while religious ones as ‘terrorists’” (p.221). Since occupation, Crimean Tatars are once again forbidden by decree to gather in public and commemorate the Sürgün across the peninsula. To speak of or mourn their dead is now a violation of Russian law (Fennin, 2023, p.222-223).
Tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars have fled Crimea into mainland Ukraine, becoming the largest group of internally displaced people in the country. Ilmi Umerov, deputy chair of the Mejlis declared in 2016 that “I do not consider Crimea part of the Russian Federation” (cited by Fennin, 2023, p.18). He was later subjected to forced treatment in a psychiatric hospital, a familiar Soviet solution to dissent. Not coincidentally, after 2014 the Crimean Tatars once again disappeared from Russian literature and thought when referencing Crimea (p.21). However, just as before, one potent selective affinity emerged from this return to oppression: Ukrainian–Crimean Tatar solidarity.
Contemporary Solidarity
The Crimean Tatars were the one and only force to resist Putin’s unilateral, illegal and unlawful invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. On February 26, 2014 almost 12,000 Crimean Tatars confronted the Russian demonstrators and pro-Russian parliamentarians. They shouted “Ukraina!” in what was the most visible mass defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty of Crimea, an event now commemorated as the Day of Crimean Resistance against the Russian Aggression. Confronting them were activists affiliated with what had long been a very marginal Russian nationalist political party called Russian Unity, which had won only three seats in the one-hundred-seat Crimean parliament in 2010 (Wilson, 2014, p.88). On that day, the Crimean Tatars were able to stop the Russian invaders from entering the Parliament. However, the following night, mysterious 50 masked and unmarked Russian soldiers, the so-called “Little Green Men,” entered the Crimean Parliament building (Özçelik, 2020, p.30). Their lack of insignia was an implicit admission to the illegality of the operation. They took Simferopol airport and began to airlift reinforcements into Crimea.
On February 27, 2014 as Russian regular troops and Spetsnaz units seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula by force of arms, Crimean Tatars slid food and supplies through the gates of the bases housing encircled Ukrainian soldiers, grasping their hands through the threshold with exclamations of “Slava UKraini” (Fennin, 2023, p.218). The annexation of Crimea has never been recognized by the Crimean Tatars.
Aider Rustamov, mufti of the Crimean Tatars in mainland Ukraine, is one of the tens of thousands who left Crimea after 2014. Born in exile in Uzbekistan, Rustamov says, “Crimea is Ukraine. We feel free here.” This solidarity of Ukraine and Crimea has only increased since 2014 the Ukrainian–Crimean Tatar solidarity relationship is at the vanguard of this expanding identity project, advancing its boundaries in the realms of culture and social communion (Sereda, 2020, p.417).
The Crimean Tatars were the one and only force to resist Putin’s unilateral, illegal and unlawful invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. On February 26, 2014 almost 12,000 Crimean Tatars confronted the Russian demonstrators and pro-Russian parliamentarians. They shouted “Ukraina!” in what was the most visible mass defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty of Crimea, an event now commemorated as the Day of Crimean Resistance against the Russian Aggression. Confronting them were activists affiliated with what had long been a very marginal Russian nationalist political party called Russian Unity, which had won only three seats in the one-hundred-seat Crimean parliament in 2010 (Wilson, 2014, p.88). On that day, the Crimean Tatars were able to stop the Russian invaders from entering the Parliament. However, the following night, mysterious 50 masked and unmarked Russian soldiers, the so-called “Little Green Men,” entered the Crimean Parliament building (Özçelik, 2020, p.30). Their lack of insignia was an implicit admission to the illegality of the operation. They took Simferopol airport and began to airlift reinforcements into Crimea.
On February 27, 2014 as Russian regular troops and Spetsnaz units seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula by force of arms, Crimean Tatars slid food and supplies through the gates of the bases housing encircled Ukrainian soldiers, grasping their hands through the threshold with exclamations of “Slava UKraini” (Fennin, 2023, p.218). The annexation of Crimea has never been recognized by the Crimean Tatars.
Aider Rustamov, mufti of the Crimean Tatars in mainland Ukraine, is one of the tens of thousands who left Crimea after 2014. Born in exile in Uzbekistan, Rustamov says, “Crimea is Ukraine. We feel free here.” This solidarity of Ukraine and Crimea has only increased since 2014 the Ukrainian–Crimean Tatar solidarity relationship is at the vanguard of this expanding identity project, advancing its boundaries in the realms of culture and social communion (Sereda, 2020, p.417).
 | In September 2023, President Volodomyr Zelenskyy appointed Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, as his head of Ukraine’s defense ministry. Staying true to his commitment to Crimean Tatars, Zelenskyy has echoed the words of Crimean Tatar leader Nariman Celâl, who is now imprisoned in occupied Crimea, in which he wrote to Zelenskyy prophetically, [the war] began with Crimea, and it will end with Crimea" (cited by Zelenskyy, 2022). |
Western Accomplices
Today, many people have an easier time accepting Crimea as part of Russia than Crimea as part of Ukraine. This is not only because Russia has somewhat destroyed Ukrainian History, but because they have very successfully and completely obliterated Crimea’s history. Since Ukraine was able to keep most of their history and culture intact, it may be harder for some to be deceived into believing Ukraine was always Russia; however, the idea that Crimea was always Russia is more believable due the genocide that was achieved. As a result, western actors hesitated in the face of Russian aggression while others have completely appeased it.
As early as the 1970s, British-American historian Robert Conquest wrote that “Ukrainians now demanding their own rights have also expressed solidarity with the [Crimean tatars]–-even though it is to Ukraine that [the Crimean Tatars] have lost their land” (Conquest, 1970, p.206). Conquest’s comment is obtuse in its presentation of Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of Crimea to Soviet Ukraine, which was clearly not Kyiv’s initiative and reflects an overall blindness among western academics to the longer history of Ukrainian–Crimean Tatar solidarity.
As for Russia’s annexation, there was precious little in Crimea in the run-up to 2014 that suggested conditions for anything like secession at all. The 1990s saw some secessionist rhetoric from some politicians and members of the public alike, but most of this was receding in the review mirror. By 2014, Crimea had been “well integrated into Ukrainian political structures,” as in a survey of 1,200 residents of Crimea in May 2013 demonstrated, the large majority of respondents expressed the view that Crimea should be a part of Ukraine. Separatism was framed as “impossible and undesirable, even by the minority who were vociferously and actively pro-Russian” (Knott, 2018, p.283). Perhaps this lack of support for secession is precisely why the Kremlin’s annexation operation required a barrage of lies, denial, and disinformation, not to mention the rushed process at the barrel of a gun (Nakashima, 2017).
After the occupation of Crimea, the Qırımtatar Milli Meclisi insisted that Turkey should participate in the Western sanctions against Russia and demanded the closure of the Straits to Russian warships and Navy. Turkey rejected these requests citing the Montreux Convention and international maritime law. However, for the deployment of the Turkish Navy, Ankara’s rejection was based on the “absence of NATO decision” (Özçelik, 2020, p.32). German Chancellor Angela Merkel had initiated strong sanctions against Russia; however, the Chancellor stressed that the territorial integrity of Ukraine can be achieved without including Crimea (p.34).
Since the dramatic events of 2014, media outlets have largely consigned Crimea to afterthoughts and back pages. Prominent international relations pundits in the West have declared it “surely lost for good,” making little effort to connect geostrategic dots between its annexation and the war in Donbas. Instead echoing the Kremlin line that Crimea is part of Russia’s “strategic interests” rather than a sovereign territory (Mearsheimer, 2015). The story of Stalin’s ethnic cleansing of Crimea along with Russia’s colonial settler project is sidelined and not front and center when any discussions of Crimea occur (Shore, 2018, p.150).
Both our silence and ignorance has contributed to our overall collective guilt for what is occurring. The destructive nature and mass displacement flows from Crimea since 2014 have been so grossly underreported that most human rights violations go completely unnoticed in western press and political dialogue.
Today, many people have an easier time accepting Crimea as part of Russia than Crimea as part of Ukraine. This is not only because Russia has somewhat destroyed Ukrainian History, but because they have very successfully and completely obliterated Crimea’s history. Since Ukraine was able to keep most of their history and culture intact, it may be harder for some to be deceived into believing Ukraine was always Russia; however, the idea that Crimea was always Russia is more believable due the genocide that was achieved. As a result, western actors hesitated in the face of Russian aggression while others have completely appeased it.
As early as the 1970s, British-American historian Robert Conquest wrote that “Ukrainians now demanding their own rights have also expressed solidarity with the [Crimean tatars]–-even though it is to Ukraine that [the Crimean Tatars] have lost their land” (Conquest, 1970, p.206). Conquest’s comment is obtuse in its presentation of Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of Crimea to Soviet Ukraine, which was clearly not Kyiv’s initiative and reflects an overall blindness among western academics to the longer history of Ukrainian–Crimean Tatar solidarity.
As for Russia’s annexation, there was precious little in Crimea in the run-up to 2014 that suggested conditions for anything like secession at all. The 1990s saw some secessionist rhetoric from some politicians and members of the public alike, but most of this was receding in the review mirror. By 2014, Crimea had been “well integrated into Ukrainian political structures,” as in a survey of 1,200 residents of Crimea in May 2013 demonstrated, the large majority of respondents expressed the view that Crimea should be a part of Ukraine. Separatism was framed as “impossible and undesirable, even by the minority who were vociferously and actively pro-Russian” (Knott, 2018, p.283). Perhaps this lack of support for secession is precisely why the Kremlin’s annexation operation required a barrage of lies, denial, and disinformation, not to mention the rushed process at the barrel of a gun (Nakashima, 2017).
After the occupation of Crimea, the Qırımtatar Milli Meclisi insisted that Turkey should participate in the Western sanctions against Russia and demanded the closure of the Straits to Russian warships and Navy. Turkey rejected these requests citing the Montreux Convention and international maritime law. However, for the deployment of the Turkish Navy, Ankara’s rejection was based on the “absence of NATO decision” (Özçelik, 2020, p.32). German Chancellor Angela Merkel had initiated strong sanctions against Russia; however, the Chancellor stressed that the territorial integrity of Ukraine can be achieved without including Crimea (p.34).
Since the dramatic events of 2014, media outlets have largely consigned Crimea to afterthoughts and back pages. Prominent international relations pundits in the West have declared it “surely lost for good,” making little effort to connect geostrategic dots between its annexation and the war in Donbas. Instead echoing the Kremlin line that Crimea is part of Russia’s “strategic interests” rather than a sovereign territory (Mearsheimer, 2015). The story of Stalin’s ethnic cleansing of Crimea along with Russia’s colonial settler project is sidelined and not front and center when any discussions of Crimea occur (Shore, 2018, p.150).
Both our silence and ignorance has contributed to our overall collective guilt for what is occurring. The destructive nature and mass displacement flows from Crimea since 2014 have been so grossly underreported that most human rights violations go completely unnoticed in western press and political dialogue.
Conclusion
The Russian state has attacked Ukraine and annexed Crimea for the third time, after 1783 and 1917. The reality that Crimea is Ukrainian is fundamentally a result of international law. The 1991 borders are what the UN charter states and Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 just as much as he invaded in 2022. It was illegally seized by Russia in 2014 followed by a breakneck annexation process through a sham election.
Russia has no historic claim to Crimea. Only genocide and settler colonialism brought ethnic Russians to the peninsula. Conversely, in 1917 Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar national leaders publicly professed support for each other, and even contemplated political union. In the only legitimate election held on the question of sovereignty, Crimeans voted to leave the USSR as part of an independent Ukraine in 1991.
Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars are united through poetry in solidarity against Russian colonialism. Thanks in part to this solidarity, Crimean Tatars led the largest, most organized, and most sustained dissident movement in the Soviet Union. They were a displaced nation whose very mention could bring controversy.
Two centuries of Russian revisionist history, poetry and literature about Crimea has had the added benefit of convincing generations of Russians that Crimea is uniquely theirs. It has created a mass hallucination: a failure to see what is there. Stating, “Crimea is historically Russia” is not only false, it makes the speaker complicit in Stalin’s genocide and remolding of historical memory.
However, the colonizers are not finished but are still present and even active in Crimea. Since Russia’s illegal annexation in 2014, Crimean Tatars have been continually persecuted, jailed on trumped up charges, and killed.
Today, the Crimean question for Ukraine is a matter of restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and the rights of Crimea’s indigenous people to exercise political and cultural agency without fear of arbitrary arrests, disappearances, or backdoor deporations. The seizure of Crimea has started a war and that war is ongoing.
The Russian state has attacked Ukraine and annexed Crimea for the third time, after 1783 and 1917. The reality that Crimea is Ukrainian is fundamentally a result of international law. The 1991 borders are what the UN charter states and Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 just as much as he invaded in 2022. It was illegally seized by Russia in 2014 followed by a breakneck annexation process through a sham election.
Russia has no historic claim to Crimea. Only genocide and settler colonialism brought ethnic Russians to the peninsula. Conversely, in 1917 Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar national leaders publicly professed support for each other, and even contemplated political union. In the only legitimate election held on the question of sovereignty, Crimeans voted to leave the USSR as part of an independent Ukraine in 1991.
Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars are united through poetry in solidarity against Russian colonialism. Thanks in part to this solidarity, Crimean Tatars led the largest, most organized, and most sustained dissident movement in the Soviet Union. They were a displaced nation whose very mention could bring controversy.
Two centuries of Russian revisionist history, poetry and literature about Crimea has had the added benefit of convincing generations of Russians that Crimea is uniquely theirs. It has created a mass hallucination: a failure to see what is there. Stating, “Crimea is historically Russia” is not only false, it makes the speaker complicit in Stalin’s genocide and remolding of historical memory.
However, the colonizers are not finished but are still present and even active in Crimea. Since Russia’s illegal annexation in 2014, Crimean Tatars have been continually persecuted, jailed on trumped up charges, and killed.
Today, the Crimean question for Ukraine is a matter of restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and the rights of Crimea’s indigenous people to exercise political and cultural agency without fear of arbitrary arrests, disappearances, or backdoor deporations. The seizure of Crimea has started a war and that war is ongoing.
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Özçelik, S. (2020). The Russian Occupation of Crimea in 2014: The Second Sürgün (The Soviet Genocide) of the Crimean Tatars. Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 5(1), 29-44. https://doi.org/10.31454/usb.721939
Pleshakov, C. (2017). The Crimean Nexus: Putin’s War and the Clash of Civilizations. Yale University Press.
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Reeves, S. R. & Wallace, D. (2015). The combatant status of the “Little Green Men” and other participants in the Ukraine Conflict. International Law Studies. 91(361). Stockton Center, US Naval War College. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1321&context=ils
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Memmi, A. (1991). The Colonizer and the Colonized. Beacon Press.
Morgan, M. C. (2018). The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War. Princeton University Press.
Nakashima, E. (2017). Inside a Russian disinformation campaign in Ukraine in 2014. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-a-russian-disinformation-campaign-in-ukraine-in-2014/2017/12/25/f55b0408-e71d-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html
Nekrich, A. M. (1981). Punished Peoples. W. W. Norton & Company.
Özçelik, S. (2020). The Russian Occupation of Crimea in 2014: The Second Sürgün (The Soviet Genocide) of the Crimean Tatars. Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 5(1), 29-44. https://doi.org/10.31454/usb.721939
Pleshakov, C. (2017). The Crimean Nexus: Putin’s War and the Clash of Civilizations. Yale University Press.
Plokhy, S. (2001). The Ghosts of Pereyaslav: Russo-Ukrainian Historical Debates in the Post-Soviet Era. Europe-Asia Studies, 53(3), 489–505. http://www.jstor.org/stable/826545
Plokhy, S. (2014). Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past. University of Toronto Press.
Reddaway, P. (1998). The Crimean Tatar Drive for Repatriation: Some Comparisons with Other Movements of Dissent in the Soviet Union. In E. Allworth (Ed.), The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland (pp. 226-236). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822398691-013
Reeves, S. R. & Wallace, D. (2015). The combatant status of the “Little Green Men” and other participants in the Ukraine Conflict. International Law Studies. 91(361). Stockton Center, US Naval War College. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1321&context=ils
Rudnytsky, I. L. (1987). The Political Thought of Soviet Ukrainian Dissidents. Essays in Modern Ukrainian History. 486. https://www.ditext.com/rudnytsky/history/diss.html
Rykin, M. (1994). Moscow’s Lost Empire. Routledge.
Sereda, V. (2020). ‘Social distancing’and hierarchies of belonging: the case of displaced population from Donbas and Crimea. Europe-Asia Studies, 72(3), 404-431.
Shore, M. (2018). The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution. Yale University Press.
Snyder, T. (2012). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books.
Snyder, T. (2022, November 12). The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 11. Ottoman Retreat, Russian Power, Ukrainian Populism. Yale Courses. [video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hde-2h5eEQI
Subtelny, O. (1979). The Ukrainian-Crimean Treaty of 1711. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 3, 808-817. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41035874
Tarnawsky, O. (1981). Dissident Poets in Ukraine. Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 6(2), 17.
Tolstoy, L. (1855). Sebastopol Sketches. Penguin Classics.
Uehling, G. L. (2004). Beyond Memory: The Crimean Tatars' Deportation and Return.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Uehling, G. L. (2017). A Hybrid Deportation: Internally Displaced from Crimea in Ukraine. E-International Relations. https://www.e-ir.info/2017/04/20/a-hybrid-deportation-internally-displaced-from-crimea-in-ukraine/
Walker, S. (2015). Putin admits Russian military presence in Ukraine for first time. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/17/vladimir-putin-admits-russian-military-presence-ukraine
Williams, B. G. (2015). The Crimean Tatars: From Soviet Genocide to Putin's Conquest. Oxford University Press.
Wilson, A. (2014). Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West. Yale University Press.
Zakharov, Y. (2005). History of Dissent in Ukraine. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. KHRP Virtual Museum. https://museum.khpg.org/en/1127288239
Zelenskyy, V. (2023, August 23). Everything started with Crimea and will end with it - liberation of the peninsula from occupation is necessary - speech by president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Official website of the President of Ukraine. https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/z-krimu-vse-pochalosya-nim-i-zavershitsya-potribno-zvilniti-77237
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