‘Victims of war for generations’. Journalist Konstantin Skorkin revisits the conflicts tha
Source: Meduza.io
Essay by Konstantin Skorkin. Abridged translation by Eilish Hart.
The following is an abridged translation that appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox. The original article was published by Kit, a Russian-language newsletter from the creators of Meduza.
The annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in the spring of 2014 was the starting point of Russia’s current aggression against Ukraine. At the time, it provoked euphoria in Russian society, and Vladimir Putin’s ratings hit a record high. The Kremlin framed its actions as the “restoration of historical justice” and many Russian citizens saw it that way, too. Supposedly, Crimea had “returned home.”
In the preceding decades, the fact that Crimea had become part of Ukraine was a source of powerful imperialist resentment in Russia. There were many myths about the peninsula’s past — and now new myths are emerging about its future. Billionaire Elon Musk, for example, provoked harsh criticism from Kyiv for suggesting a formal handover of Crimea to Moscow as one of the conditions for a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Days later, an unexpected explosion rocked the bridge connecting Russia to Crimea. In response, Russian forces launched a barrage of fresh missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.
A history of war and occupation
Before the Russian Empire conquered Crimea in 1783, it was ruled by the Crimean Khanate — a centuries-old Crimean Tatar state that was the successor to the Golden Horde and, later, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Russia endeavored to make the peninsula a stronghold for its further expansion towards the Black Sea straits and the Mediterranean Sea. Less than 100 years later, in 1854–1855, it became the theater of a war that pitted the Russian Empire against an alliance of Britain, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire.
The Crimean War went down in history as an inglorious defeat for Russia, but the empire remained intact until 1917. After it collapsed into civil war, multiple political forces vied for control of Crimea, including the Whites and the Reds, as well as a nascent Ukrainian state. Initially, however, the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) made no claims to Crimea, recognizing it as the land of the Crimean Tatar people. Kyiv changed its stance at the end of 1917, when the UNR began fighting the newly formed Soviet Russia. The Crimean Tatar government turned out to be too weak a political force to hold the peninsula, which fell to the Bolsheviks. Thus, at the beginning of 1918, Kyiv decided to try and integrate Crimea into the UNR.
UNR forces captured the peninsula from the Bolsheviks in April 1918, only to be forced to cede their positions to the German Empire, which had sent occupying troops into Ukraine in accordance with the recently-signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Germany set up a puppet government on the peninsula, but was then defeated in World War I. The Bolsheviks recaptured both Crimea and Ukraine, and, in 1921, created the Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic under the jurisdiction of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
During World War II, Nazi Germany occupied Crimea and dealt a crushing blow to its ethno-cultural diversity: of the peninsula’s 70,000 Jews, 40,000 were killed in the Holocaust. At the same time, German forces sought to recruit the USSR’s Muslim populations, including the Crimean Tatars, to their side. Some, especially those opposed to Joseph Stalin’s repressions and religious persecution in the USSR, joined collaborationist units. Ukrainian historian Serhii Hromenko estimates that these units included about 3,500 Crimean Tatars in total. The Soviet authorities, however, claimed there were 20,000.
After Soviet forces recaptured Crimea in 1944, Stalin initiated mass deportations of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia — holding all of them collectively responsible for collaboration with Nazi troops. More than 200,000 Crimean Tatars were deported in total, up to 46 percent of whom died during their first years in exile from hunger and dire living conditions. (In 2015, Ukraine’s parliament recognized the 1944 deportations as an act of genocide.)
The Soviet authorities deported other ethnic minorities from the peninsula, as well, including Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians. This quickly tipped Crimea’s ethnic balance in favor of Russians, who relocated to the peninsula from other parts of the RSFSR. According to the 1939 Soviet Census, Crimea’s pre-war population was 49.5 percent Russian, 19.4 percent Crimean Tatar, 13.6 percent Ukrainian, and 5.8 percent Jewish. By the end of the 1950s, census data showed that the population was 71.4 percent Russian and 22.2 percent Ukrainian, while other ethnic groups totaled one percent or even less.
In 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev “gifted Crimea to Ukraine.” The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (the USSR’s body of state power) issued a decree that transferred the peninsula — which had lost its autonomous status and been demoted to a region — to the Ukrainian SSR’s jurisdiction.
Formally, this “gift” marked the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Agreement — a 17th century military and political alliance between the Zaporizhian Host, a Ukrainian Cossack state led by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, with the Tsardom of Russia. Both Imperial Russian and Soviet historical literature framed this event as a “reunification of brotherly nations.” The transfer of Crimea was supposed to carry the same symbolism of “unbreakable brotherhood.” In reality, however, economic needs underpinned the decision. Nearly a decade after World War II’s end, the peninsula was in decline, and making it part of the Ukrainian SSR was expedient from an economic and infrastructural point of view.
The Crimean port city of Sevastopol was granted special status within the Ukrainian SSR in 1978, following the adoption of the Brezhnev Constitution. By that time, Crimea’s economy was oriented not towards Kyiv, but towards the Soviet Union’s center: Moscow. The peninsula’s health resorts and hotels were also favorite vacation spots for the Soviet elite.
In a January 1991 referendum, 93 percent of Crimea’s voters supported the restoration of the Crimean ASSR (the official turnout was 80 percent). The peninsula regained this “special standing” just in time for the Soviet Union’s collapse. During the December 1991 referendum on Ukraine’s independence, 54 percent of Crimea’s residents voted “yes” — the lowest percentage in the country.
Divvying up Crimea
In post-Soviet Russia, even liberal politicians like St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and his Moscow counterpart Gavriil Popov couldn’t bring themselves to recognize Crimea as part of Ukraine.
This article is from The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Want to keep reading? Sign up below to get the full story in your inbox.
Sign up for The Beet
Underreported stories. Fresh perspectives. From Budapest to Bishkek.
The original article: belongs to Meduza.io .
