#qirimlar

I often hear comments about Crimea and the other territories occupied by Russia being the “price of peace” in Ukraine. I, like many Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, know that rewarding aggression and brutal occupation does not bring peace.

Crimea is not Russian to be “given back” to Russia. It never was. It never will be.

It is the homeland that has been repeatedly, brutally taken from us; it is the homeland we will not stop fighting for.

My grandmother, Shevkiye, was just 11 years old when on May 18, 1944, Soviet soldiers barged into her home at five o’clock in the morning. World War II was still raging and the Soviet regime had just accused the Crimean Tatars of collaborating with the enemy, the German Nazis – a baseless allegation that led to the unimaginable horror of genocide by deportation.

My great-grandfather was at the front, fighting those same Nazis whom he was accused of collaborating with. So the Soviet soldiers found at home just his wife and four children – the youngest one only a few months old. The soldiers gave them 15 minutes to gather their belongings and did not stop hitting my great-grandmother with their guns as she struggled to pack.

They marched them out of the house and – along with other families from their home village of Ayserez – hoarded loaded them onto a train meant for transporting cattle. The wagons were packed with people and there were no toilets on them; people struggled to breathe. No food or water was provided on the long journey, during which my grandmother’s family remained unaware of their destination.

Exhausted and starved, they focused solely on survival as hunger and disease killed many along the way. One of the most traumatising memories of the journey for my grandmother was witnessing a pregnant woman give birth on the train and then pass away shortly after. A Soviet soldier threw her body out of the wagon while the train kept moving.

After 20 days on the train, they finally arrived at Golodnaya Steppe station in the Mirzachul region of Uzbekistan, where they were unceremoniously unloaded onto a scorching hot platform. With no money or support, they struggled to survive in this unknown land.

They settled in a dilapidated barrack with no roof, windows, or doors. Their food consisted of grass, nettle, potato peels, and rotten potatoes; their drinking water came from irrigation ditches and often caused dysentery. There was no medical assistance available; the Soviet authorities clearly wanted as many Crimean Tatars to die as possible.

Today, a few words about the “Crimean Tatar question.” Stalin’s order and the resolution of the USSR State Defense Committee of May 11, 1944, led to tragic effects. Within three days in May 1944, an entire nation that had lived in Crimea for centuries was forcibly deported to Central Asia. According to various sources, between a quarter and half of the people were killed during long-term transportation in packed freight cars, as well as later in barbaric forced living conditions. 

At the same time, any public mention of Crimean Tatars was banned in the USSR. The mention of the ethnicity was suddenly absent in subsequent Soviet censuses. Authorities changed about 90 percent of geographic names on the peninsula that had Crimean Tatar names. 

The descendants of the survivors of the genocide returned home in 1989. By that time, their family houses were mostly inhabited by Russians who had transmigrated in 1944, immediately after the deportation of the local population. And in 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the persecution of Crimean Tatars began again. Dozens of Crimean Tatar activists are currently being held in Russian prisons. From time to time, human rights advocates record the mysterious deaths of Crimean Tatars, and there is a lot of evidence of repression of the Crimean Tatar language. 

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What you'll learn:

Why it is necessary to study the history of Crimea and Crimean Tatars

Ancient history of the peninsula

The Crimean Khanate

The colonial policy of the Russian Empire towards Crimea

The fate of Crimea and Crimean Tatars in Soviet times

Crimea as an autonomous republic in Ukraine

Temporary occupation of Crimea by Russia

So why did Stalin want to exterminate the Crimean Tatar people? The official reasoning was “the mass collaboration of the Crimean Tatar people with the Nazis.” Leave aside that the idea of mass, non-individualized punishment of a whole nation for collaboration does not satisfy any conception of justice. As a factual matter, the allegation is simply untrue. Somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 Crimean Tatars served in the Red Army, fighting against the Axis Powers, during the war. Twenty-one of them were recommended by the Soviet military administration to be honored as a “Hero of the Soviet Union,” one of the Soviet Union’s highest military ranks. 

What was the real reason for the genocide? Historians’ opinions on the subject are not unanimous. As a connoisseur of a perverse notion of the “ideal” Soviet citizen, Stalin was annoyed with the presence in the European part of the Soviet Union of these Muslim people. Crimean Tatars differ religiously, culturally, and linguistically, and perhaps Stalin feared that such difference might cause instability within the region.