23 May 2024
Rory Finnin on deoccupying Crimea in the western mind
The London Ukrainian Review journal has dedicated its second issue entirely to Crimea. Rory Finnin, Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, wrote an article De-occupying Crimea in the Western Mind, where the scholar explores the legacy of the Crimean Tatar autonomy in the aftermath of World War I and its progressive governing body, the Qurultay. Finnin releases the Crimean history from the grip of Kremlin obfuscations and calls for the cognitive deoccupation of the peninsula from the centuries of Russian colonialism, and envisions a future, free Crimea within Ukraine.
“Crimea is the ground zero of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the largest and most dangerous armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War.”
“What is clear is that the work of cognitively de-occupying Crimea in the Western imagination has only just begun. On our mental maps, Crimea remains a political and cultural space captive to Kremlin mythologies and vague platitudes about its ‘sacred’ place in Russian history and memory.”
“For the Crimean Tatars, however, Crimea is not an object. It is not territory to be taken and possessed. For the peninsula’s largest Indigenous people, a Sunni Muslim, Turkic language-speaking nation, Crimea is part of their collective subjectivity — not ‘Crimea Is Ours’, but ‘Crimea Is Us’. The intimate bond between the Crimean Tatars and their ancestral homeland gives the lie to claims that ‘Crimea is perennial Russian land’, as Putin defensively insists.”
“In 1917 the Qurultay made an indelible mark as the most progressive political body in the history of the Muslim world.”
“In forming the Qurultay, Çelebicihan and his colleagues foregrounded the Crimean Tatars as the titular nation of Crimea but sought to represent the interests of all inhabitants of the peninsula, no matter their ethnic, religious, or linguistic background. They committed to the rights to ‘freedom of identity, speech, press, conscience, assembly, housing’ and much more. Promoting the rights of women was a special concern.”
“Marking the legacy of the men and women behind the Qurultay helps us release the Black Sea peninsula from the grip of Kremlin myths and obfuscations. It is one step toward de-occupying Crimea in our minds. It is also a view to a long history of Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar solidarity, which has been never more evident than today.”