The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Crimean Tatar Genocide. 80th anniversary of the deportation

This year marks 80 years since the Soviet regime deported the entire Crimean Tatar people from the Crimean peninsula. The deportation was recognized as an act of genocide by Ukraine in 2015, by Latvia and Lithuania in 2019, and by Canada in 2022. On May 8, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine appealed to the governments and parliaments of foreign states, international organizations, and parliamentary assemblies to recognize the 1944 deportation as an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people. 

Excursion into history 

The Crimean Tatar people are an indigenous people of Ukraine who have no other home, despite Crimea. Before its annexation by the Russian Empire in 1783, 92% of the territory of the peninsula was inhabited by Crimean Tatars. At the end of the XVIII century, at the beginning of the XIX century, the actual expulsion of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea took place. The main reasons for the various waves of immigration were land expropriation, religious persecution, and the policy of Russification. 

In 1917 the establishment of the Crimean People’s Republic was proclaimed and the democratic, liberal and national constitution was adopted. The four women were elected as delegates to the assembly, and Shefika Hasprynska was elected as the chairman of the presidium. Thus, for the first time in the Muslim world, and earlier than in most Western countries, women’s right to vote was introduced in Crimea. The Crimean People’s Republic did not last long, however, as the Bolsheviks occupied Crimea in January. On February 23, 1918, Noman Çelebicihan was killed and his body was thrown into the sea. 

On October 18, 1921, the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic  

On October 18, 1921, the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous region within the The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was established by a resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars.

In 1921-1923 there was a famine in Crimea, which was caused by the stockpiling policy of the Soviet authorities. At that time about 100 thousand people died, including 76 thousand Crimean Tatars. In addition to the famine, during the collectivization in Crimea, 25-30 thousand people were dekulakized and deported only in 1930-1931.

On April 17, 1938, a significant number of the representatives of the Crimean Tatar intellectual elite were shot. After the execution the Soviet authorities initiated the trial against the Milli-Firka, a Crimean Tatar political party. The Crimean Tatar clergy was also repressed. 

The culmination of the Russian colonization policy

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars began at dawn on May 18, and in some settlements earlier, on May 17. The personnel involved were characterized by their brutality: the operation was carried out by force. In most cases, the Crimean Tatars were not told what was happening and where they were going; they were given no more than 15 minutes to pack their belongings. Thus, the Crimean Tatars left their homes unprepared for a long and exhausting journey, not to mention settling in a foreign land. Women, the elderly, and children were loaded into cattle trains of 120-150 people each. According to eyewitnesses, they were not fed en route, there was no basic medical care, and the dead were thrown out on the road. The transportation lasted 2-3 weeks in cramped wagons without food, water, or medical care, during which 7,000-7,900 Crimean Tatars died of starvation and disease. 

The total number of Crimean Tatars deprived of their homeland amounted to 207,111 people, including 9,2553 children. The last group of deported Crimean Tatars arrived at the place of exile on June 8, 1944. About 151,000 deportees ended up in Uzbekistan, where they were considered traitors and enemies by the locals. Crimean Tatar “special migrants” were sent to the construction of the Farhad hydroelectric power plant in Bekabad, the Koitash mine in Samarkand region and Tashkent-Stalinvuhillya, collective and state farms in Tashkent, Andijan, Samarkand regions, Shakhrizyab and Kitab districts of Kashkadaria region. Most of them were housed in barracks that were unfit for human habitation, and in the Koytash mine, they ended up in the open air. 

In an unusual climate, without basic living conditions, people were placed on the edge of life and death. According to official data, in the first months of exile alone, from May to November 1944, 10105 special migrants from Crimea died in Uzbekistan from disease and exhaustion, which is about 7% of the number of arrivals. Over the next 12 years, 49,200 people died due to excess mortality caused by deportation and conditions in special settlements. According to the census of the National Movement of the Crimean Tatar People, 46.2% of the people died in the first years of deportation. 

Elimination of cultural and historical memory

The genocide was followed by the erasure of the memory of the Crimean Tatars from the history of the Crimean peninsula: Crimean history was revised, Russian imperial narratives about the “eternally Russian” Crimea were introduced, and myths about the “traitorous people” were deliberately and massively spread. Immigrants from the RSFSR and Ukrainian SSR were brought to Crimea and deliberately settled in the homes of Crimean Tatars. The repressive Soviet regime completely changed and distorted the Crimean place names, in particular, the names of Crimean Tatar settlements and streets were replaced by Russian ones.

The Soviet policy of obliterating the memory of the Crimean Tatars was embodied in:

• liquidation after the expulsion: 

• 112 personal libraries
• 640 primary school libraries
• 221 secondary school libraries
• 360 reading rooms
• 30 district and 60 city libraries
• 861 Crimean Tatar schools
• 24 museums
• editorial offices of Crimean Tatar newspapers and magazines, radio, theaters, museums, universities and special educational institutions
• book collection in the Crimean Tatar language, hundreds of unique manuscripts
• 63 orchestras
• 1600 coffee shops
• 237 amateur art groups

• 2,400 cemeteries were destroyed, tombstones, shrines, mosques, and madrassas were razed to the ground, and transferred to shops, clubs, and warehouses

• The building of the oldest religious educational institution, the Zyndzhyrly Madrasa, was converted into a psychiatric hospital. 

• 80,000 houses, 34,000 household plots, 1,740 head of cattle, and 4,200,000 pieces of crockery, furniture, clothing, and household items were confiscated. To this day, none of the Crimean Tatar families has received any of the property confiscated in 1944.

• Crimean Tatar toponyms and hydronyms were changed in Crimea in 1944-1945

• 11 district centers and 327 villages with Crimean Tatar names were renamed 

Struggle against harassment after returning

Khrushchov’s report to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU mentioned for the first time the injustice committed against the deported peoples. And the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 28, 1956 “On the abolition of restrictions on special settlements for Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Turks – citizens of the USSR, Kurds, Hemshils and members of their families expelled during the Great Patriotic War”, which appeared shortly after, abolished the regime of special settlements of the above-mentioned peoples and released them from administrative supervision. 

The lifting of restrictions in the case of the Crimean Tatars did not provide for the return of property confiscated during the expulsion, nor for the return to their homeland. In late 1956, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution “On the restoration of the national autonomy of the Kalmyk, Karachai, Balkar, Chechen, and Ingush peoples,” and in 1957 their repatriation began. The Crimean Tatars, Germans and Meskhetian Turks were not given this opportunity. 

The second half of the 1950s saw the first rise of the Crimean Tatar national movement, for which the Soviet totalitarian regime arrested and imprisoned activists. The first political trial of activists took place in 1961.

In 1967, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decree “On Citizens of Tatar Nationality Who Formerly Resided in Crimea,” the main idea of which was that Crimean Tatars “have taken root in their current places of residence and it is inappropriate to return them to Crimea.” The decree revoked the decision on charges against “citizens of Tatar nationality who resided in Crimea,” but claimed that they “have taken root in the territory of the Uzbek and other Soviet republics.”

The “passport regime” clause was intended to create administrative obstacles for the indigenous people on their way to Crimea. Without a residence permit, Crimean Tatars could not buy a house or get a job. By the end of September 1967, about 2,000 Crimean Tatars had arrived in Crimea, but virtually none of them were registered. By the beginning of 1968, the number of letters from Crimean Tatars to the highest state authorities demanding the removal of obstacles to registration had increased dramatically. In the following years, the authorities implemented the policy of “Crimea without Crimean Tatars”. 

Crimean Tatars were not allowed to register in Crimea, the peninsula’s population was forbidden to sell houses to Crimean Tatars, and the houses they bought were bulldozed. Those who resisted this were taken to court. In protest against this policy, Musa Mamut set himself on fire on June 23, 1978.

In July 1987, the Crimean Tatars came to Moscow’s Red Square to demand the return of the people to their homeland, and in 1989 the implementation of this demand began. In the face of artificial obstacles created by local authorities and lack of opportunities to purchase housing, Crimean Tatars began to build 300 villages of compact housing on their own. 

Crimea as part of independent Ukraine

On June 26, 1991, the Second Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar people was held. The Mejlis, the representative body of the Crimean Tatars, was elected. In the first years after the return, the Crimean Tatar theater was revived, the Kyrym folklore ensemble, the Crimean Tatar Library named after Ismail Hasprynskyi, the Crimean Tatar Museum of Cultural and Historical Heritage, the first radio and television programs in the Crimean Tatar language were created, and the construction of schools and mosques began.

Russia continues to kill Crimean Tatars who disagree with the occupation of the Crimean peninsula. The destruction of cultural and historical monuments, detentions, harassment, house searches, rewriting of history, threats, pressure, and illegal mobilization into the Russian army — this is the reality that Russia has created on the territory of the Crimean peninsula since 2014. Only the de-occupation of Crimea and the restoration of Ukraine’s control over the peninsula will help restore justice, rights, and freedoms to people, including the Crimean Tatar people.