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Who are the Crimean Tatars? Three years in my native harbor

(in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania)

Religion Racial type

South European - Yalyboys; Caucasian, Central European - Tats; Caucasoid (20% Mongoloid) - steppe.

Included in

Turkic-speaking peoples

Related peoples Origin

Gotalans and Turkic tribes, all those who ever inhabited Crimea

Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi madhhab.

Settlement

Ethnogenesis

The Crimean Tatars formed as a people in Crimea in the 15th-18th centuries on the basis of various ethnic groups that lived on the peninsula earlier.

Historical background

The main ethnic groups that inhabited Crimea in ancient times and the Middle Ages are Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars, Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Italians, Circassians (Circassians), Asia Minor Turks. Over the centuries, the peoples who came to Crimea again assimilated those who lived here before their arrival or themselves assimilated into their environment.

An important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people belonged to the Western Kipchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name Polovtsy. Since the 12th century, the Kipchaks began to populate the Volga, Azov and Black Sea steppes (which from then until the 18th century were called Desht-i Kipchak - “Kypchak steppe”). From the second half of the 11th century they began to actively penetrate into Crimea. A significant part of the Polovtsians took refuge in the mountains of Crimea, fleeing after the defeat of the united Polovtsian-Russian troops from the Mongols and the subsequent defeat of the Polovtsian proto-state formations in the northern Black Sea region.

The key event that left an imprint on the further history of Crimea was the conquest of the southern coast of the peninsula and the adjacent part of the Crimean Mountains by the Ottoman Empire in 1475, which previously belonged to the Genoese Republic and the Principality of Theodoro, the subsequent transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a vassal state in relation to the Ottomans and the entry of the peninsula into Pax Ottomana is the "cultural space" of the Ottoman Empire.

The spread of Islam on the peninsula had a significant impact on the ethnic history of Crimea. According to local legends, Islam was brought to Crimea in the 7th century by the companions of the Prophet Muhammad Malik Ashter and Gazy Mansur. However, Islam began to actively spread in Crimea only after the adoption of Islam as the state religion in the 14th century by the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek. Historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars is the Hanafi school, which is the most “liberal” of all four canonical schools of thought in Sunni Islam.

Formation of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group

By the end of the 15th century, the main prerequisites were created that led to the formation of an independent Crimean Tatar ethnic group: the political dominance of the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire was established in Crimea, the Turkic languages (Polovtsian-Kypchak in the territory of the Khanate and Ottoman in the Ottoman possessions) became dominant, and Islam acquired the status of state religions throughout the peninsula. As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population, called “Tatars,” and the Islamic religion, processes of assimilation and consolidation of a motley ethnic conglomerate began, which led to the emergence of the Crimean Tatar people. Over the course of several centuries, the Crimean Tatar language developed on the basis of the Polovtsian language with noticeable Oghuz influence.

An important component of this process was the linguistic and religious assimilation of a very mixed ethnic Christian population (Greeks, Alans, Goths, Circassians, Polovtsian-speaking Christians, including descendants of those assimilated by these peoples into more early eras Scythians, Sarmatians, etc.), who by the end of the 15th century constituted the majority in the mountainous and southern coastal regions of Crimea. The assimilation of the local population began during the Horde period, but it especially intensified in the 17th century. The Byzantine historian of the 14th century Pachymer wrote about the assimilation processes in the Horde part of Crimea: Over time, having mixed with them [the Tatars], the peoples who lived inside those countries, I mean: Alans, Zikkhs, and Goths, and various peoples with them, learned their customs, along with the customs they adopted language and clothing and became their allies. In this list, it is important to mention the Goths and Alans who lived in the mountainous part of Crimea, who began to adopt Turkic customs and culture, which corresponds to the data of archaeological and paleoethnographic research. On the Ottoman-controlled South Bank, assimilation proceeded noticeably more slowly. Thus, the results of the 1542 census show that the vast majority of the rural population of the Ottoman possessions in Crimea were Christians. Archaeological studies of Crimean Tatar cemeteries on the South Bank also show that Muslim tombstones began to appear en masse in the 17th century. As a result, by 1778, when the Crimean Greeks (all local Orthodox Christians were then called Greeks) were evicted from Crimea to the Azov region by order of the Russian government, there were just over 18 thousand of them (which was about 2% of the then population of Crimea), and more than half of these The Greeks were Urums, whose native language is Crimean Tatar, while the Greek-speaking Rumeans were a minority, and by that time there were no speakers of Alan, Gothic and other languages left at all. At the same time, cases of Crimean Christians converting to Islam were recorded in order to avoid eviction.

Story

Crimean Khanate

Weapons of the Crimean Tatars of the 16th-17th centuries

The process of formation of the people was finally completed during the period of the Crimean Khanate.

The state of the Crimean Tatars - the Crimean Khanate existed from 1783 to 1783. For most of its history, it was dependent on the Ottoman Empire and was its ally. The ruling dynasty in Crimea was the Gerayev (Gireev) clan, whose founder was the first khan Hadji I Giray. The era of the Crimean Khanate is the heyday of Crimean Tatar culture, art and literature. The classic of Crimean Tatar poetry of that era is Ashik Umer. Among other poets, Mahmud Kyrymly is especially famous - the end of the 12th century (pre-Horde period) and Khan of Gaza II Geray Bora. The main surviving architectural monument of that time is the Khan's palace in Bakhchisarai.

At the same time, the policy of the Russian imperial administration was characterized by a certain flexibility. The Russian government made the ruling circles of Crimea its support: all Crimean Tatar clergy and local feudal aristocracy were equated to the Russian aristocracy with all rights retained.

Harassment by the Russian administration and expropriation of land from Crimean Tatar peasants caused mass emigration of Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire. The two main waves of emigration occurred in the 1790s and 1850s. According to researchers late XIX century F. Lashkov and K. Herman, the population of the peninsular part of the Crimean Khanate by the 1770s was approximately 500 thousand people, 92% of whom were Crimean Tatars. The first Russian census of 1793 recorded 127.8 thousand people in Crimea, including 87.8% Crimean Tatars. Thus, in the first 10 years of Russian rule, up to 3/4 of the population left Crimea (from Turkish data it is known about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars who settled in Turkey at the end of the 18th century, mainly in Rumelia). After the end of the Crimean War, about 200 thousand Crimean Tatars emigrated from Crimea in the 1850-60s. It is their descendants who now make up the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. This led to the decline of agriculture and the almost complete desolation of the steppe part of Crimea. At the same time, most of the Crimean Tatar elite left Crimea.

Along with this, the colonization of the Crimea, mainly the territories of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), took place intensively, due to the attraction Russian government migrants from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia. All this led to the fact that by the end of the 19th century there were less than 200 thousand Crimean Tatars (about a third of the total Crimean population) and in 1917 about a quarter (215 thousand) of the 750 thousand population of the peninsula.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Crimean Tatars, overcoming disunity, began to move from rebellions to a new stage of national struggle. There was an understanding that it was necessary to look for ways to fight against emigration, which is beneficial to the Russian Empire and leads to the extinction of the Crimean Tatars. It was necessary to mobilize the entire people for collective protection from the oppression of tsarist laws, from Russian landowners, from the Murzaks serving the Russian Tsar. According to the Turkish historian Zühal Yüksel, this revival began with the activities of Abduraman Kırım Khavaje and Abdurefi Bodaninsky. Abduraman Kyrym Khavaje worked as a teacher of the Crimean Tatar language in Simferopol and published a Russian-Tatar phrasebook in Kazan in 1850. Abdurefi Bodaninsky, in 1873, overcoming the resistance of the authorities, published the “Russian-Tatar Primer” in Odessa, with an unusually large circulation of two thousand copies. To work with the population, he attracted the most talented of his young students, defining for them the methodology and curriculum. With the support of progressive mullahs, it was possible to expand the program of traditional national educational institutions. “Abdurefi Esadulla was the first educator among the Crimean Tatars,” writes D. Ursu. The personalities of Abduraman Kyrym Khavaje and Abdurefi Bodaninsky mark the beginning of the stages of the difficult revival of a people who have been languishing under political, economic and cultural repression for many decades.

The further development of the Crimean Tatar revival, which is associated with the name of Ismail Gasprinsky, was a natural consequence of the mobilization of national forces undertaken by many, nameless today, representatives of the secular and spiritual intelligentsia of the Crimean Tatars. Ismail Gasprinsky was an outstanding educator of the Turkic and other Muslim peoples. One of his main achievements is the creation and dissemination of a system of secular (non-religious) school education among the Crimean Tatars, which also radically changed the essence and structure of primary education in many Muslim countries, giving it a more secular character. He became the actual creator of the new literary Crimean Tatar language. Gasprinsky began publishing the first Crimean Tatar newspaper "Terdzhiman" ("Translator") in 1883, which soon became known far beyond the borders of Crimea, including in Turkey and Central Asia. His educational and publishing activities ultimately led to the emergence of a new Crimean Tatar intelligentsia. Gasprinsky is also considered one of the founders of the ideology of Pan-Turkism.

Revolution of 1917

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ismail Gasprinsky realized that his educational task had been completed and it was necessary to enter a new stage of the national struggle. This stage coincided with the revolutionary events in Russia of 1905-1907. Gasprinsky wrote: “The first long period of mine and my “Translator” is over, and the second, short, but probably more stormy period begins, when the old teacher and popularizer must become a politician.”

The period from 1905 to 1917 was a continuous growing process of struggle, moving from humanitarian to political. During the revolution of 1905 in Crimea, problems were raised regarding the allocation of land to the Crimean Tatars, the conquest of political rights, and the creation of modern educational institutions. The most active Crimean Tatar revolutionaries grouped around Ali Bodaninsky, this group was under the close attention of the gendarmerie department. After the death of Ismail Gasprinsky in 1914, Ali Bodaninsky remained as the oldest national leader. The authority of Ali Bodaninsky in the national liberation movement of the Crimean Tatars at the beginning of the 20th century was indisputable. In February 1917, Crimean Tatar revolutionaries monitored the political situation with great preparedness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, already on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of dissolution State Duma, on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created. Ten days late, the Simferopol group of Social Democrats organized the first Simferopol Council. The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee proposed to the Simferopol Council working together, however, the Council's executive committee rejected this proposal. The Muslim Revolutionary Committee organized popular elections throughout Crimea, and already on March 25, 1917, the All-Crimean Muslim Congress took place, which managed to gather 1,500 delegates and 500 guests. The congress elected a Provisional Crimean-Muslim Executive Committee (Musispolkom) of 50 members, of which Noman Celebidzhikhan was elected chairman, and Ali Bodaninsky was elected manager of affairs. The Musispolkom received recognition from the Provisional Government as the only authorized and legal administrative body representing all Crimean Tatars. Political activities, culture, religious affairs, and the economy were under the control of the Musiysk Executive Committee. The executive committee had its own committees in all county towns, and local committees were also created in the villages. The newspapers “Millet” (editor A. S. Aivazov) and the more radical “Voice of the Tatars” (editors A. Bodaninsky and X. Chapchakchi) became the central printed organs of the Musiysk Executive Committee.

After the all-Crimean election campaign carried out by the Musis Executive Committee, on November 26, 1917 (December 9, new style), the Kurultai - General Assembly, the main advisory, decision-making and representative body, was opened in Bakhchisarai in the Khan's Palace. Kurultai opened Celebidzhikhan. He, in particular, said: “Our nation does not convene the Kurultai to consolidate its dominance. Our goal is to work hand in hand, head to head with all the peoples of Crimea. Our nation is fair." Asan Sabri Aivazov was elected Chairman of the Kurultai. The Presidium of the Kurultai included Ablakim Ilmi, Jafer Ablaev, Ali Bodaninsky, Seytumer Tarakchi. The Kurultai approved the Constitution, which stated: “...The Kurultai believes that the adopted Constitution can ensure the national and political rights of the small peoples of Crimea only under a people’s republican form of government, therefore the Kurultai accepts and proclaims the principles of the People’s Republic as the basis for the national existence of the Tatars.” Article 17 of the Constitution abolished titles and class ranks, and the 18th legitimized the equality of men and women. The Kurultai declared itself the national parliament of the 1st convocation. The Parliament chose from its midst the Crimean National Directory, of which Noman Celebidzhikhan was elected chairman. Celebidcikhan composed his office. The director of justice was Noman Celebidcihan himself. Jafer Seydamet became the director of military and foreign affairs. The director of education is Ibraim Ozenbashly. The director of awqafs and finance is Seit-Jelil Khattat. The director of religious affairs is Amet Shukri. On December 5 (old style), the Crimean National Directory declared itself the Crimean National Government and issued an appeal in which, addressing all nationalities of Crimea, it called on them to work together. Thus, in 1917, the Crimean Tatar Parliament (Kurultai) - the legislative body, and the Crimean Tatar Government (Directory) - the executive body, began to exist in Crimea.

Civil War and Crimean ASSR

The share of Crimean Tatars in the population of Crimean regions based on materials from the 1939 All-Union Population Census

Crimea under German occupation

For their participation in the Great Patriotic War, five Crimean Tatars (Teyfuk Abdul, Uzeir Abduramanov, Abduraim Reshidov, Fetislyam Abilov, Seitnafe Seitveliev) were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and Ametkhan Sultan was awarded this title twice. Two (Seit-Nebi Abduramanov and Nasibulla Velilyaev) are complete gentlemen Order of Glory. The names of two Crimean Tatar generals are known: Ismail Bulatov and Ablyakim Gafarov.

Deportation

The accusation of cooperation of the Crimean Tatars, as well as other peoples, with the occupiers became the reason for the eviction of these peoples from Crimea in accordance with the Decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR No. GOKO-5859 of May 11, 1944. On the morning of May 18, 1944, an operation began to deport peoples accused of collaborating with the German occupiers to Uzbekistan and adjacent areas of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Small groups were sent to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Urals, and the Kostroma region.

In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families). Every third adult Crimean Tatar was required to sign that he had read the resolution, and that escaping from the place of special settlement was punishable by 20 years of hard labor, as for criminal offense.

Officially, the grounds for deportation were also declared to be the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was said to be about 20 thousand people), the good reception of German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, apparatus of prisons and camps. At the same time, the deportation did not affect the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the homeland (in total, about 5,000 collaborators of all nationalities were identified in Crimea in April-May 1944). Crimean Tatars who fought in Red Army units were also subject to deportation after demobilization and returning home to Crimea from the front. Crimean Tatars who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and who managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944 were also deported. In 1949, there were 8,995 Crimean Tatar war participants in the places of deportation, including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants.

A significant number of displaced people, exhausted after three years of living under occupation, died in places of deportation from hunger and disease in 1944-45. Estimates of the number of deaths during this period vary greatly: from 15-25% according to estimates of various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to the estimates of activists of the Crimean Tatar movement, who collected information about the dead in the 1960s.

Fight for return

Unlike other peoples deported in 1944, who were allowed to return to their homeland in 1956, during the “thaw”, the Crimean Tatars were deprived of this right until 1989 (“perestroika”), despite appeals from representatives of the people to the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and directly to the leaders of the USSR and despite the fact that on January 9, 1974, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the recognition as invalid of certain legislative acts of the USSR, providing for restrictions in the choice of place of residence for certain categories of citizens,” was issued.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine reports that Lately, and especially in 1965, visits to the Crimean region by Tatars, resettled in the past from Crimea, became more frequent... Some Suleymanov, Khalimov, Bekirov Seit Memet and Bekirov Seit Umer, residents of the city of Gulistan of the Uzbek SSR, who came to Crimea in September 1965, when meeting with their friends reported that “a large delegation has now gone to Moscow to seek permission for the Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea. We will all return or no one."<…>

From a letter to the CPSU Central Committee about visits to Crimea by Crimean Tatars. November 12, 1965

The activities of public activists who insisted on the return of the Crimean Tatars to their historical homeland were persecuted by the administrative bodies of the Soviet state.

Return to Crimea

The main problems of the Crimean Tatars after their return were mass unemployment, problems with the allocation of land and the development of infrastructure of the Crimean Tatar villages that had arisen over the past 15 years.

Religion

The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Historically, the Islamization of the Crimean Tatars occurred in parallel with the formation of the ethnic group itself and was very long-lasting. The first step on this path was the capture of Sudak and the surrounding area by the Seljuks in the 13th century and the beginning of the spread of Sufi brotherhoods in the region, and the last was the massive adoption of Islam by a significant number of Crimean Christians who wanted to avoid eviction from Crimea in 1778. The bulk of the population of Crimea converted to Islam during the era of the Crimean Khanate and the Golden Horde period preceding it. Now in Crimea there are about three hundred Muslim communities, most of which are united in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea (adheres to the Hanafi madhhab). It is the Hanafi direction, which is the most “liberal” of all four canonical interpretations in Sunni Islam, that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.

Literature of the Crimean Tatars

Main article: Literature of the Crimean Tatars

Prominent Crimean Tatar writers of the 20th century:

Bekir Choban-zade
Eshref Shemy-zadeh
Cengiz Dagci
Emil Amit
Abdul Demerdzhi

Crimean Tatar musicians

Crimean Tatar public figures

Subethnic groups

The Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: steppe people or Nogaev(not to be confused with the Nogai people) ( çöllüler, noğaylar), Highlanders or tats(not to be confused with Caucasian tatami) ( tatlar) And South Coast residents or Yalyboy (yalıboylular).

South Coast residents - yalyboylu

Before the deportation, the residents of the South Coast lived on the Southern Coast of Crimea (Crimean Kotat. Yalı boyu) - a narrow strip 2-6 km wide, stretching along the sea coast from Balakalava in the west to Feodosia in the east. In the ethnogenesis of this group, the main role was played by the Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians, and the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast also have the blood of Italians (Genoese). Residents of many villages on the South Coast, until deportation, retained elements of Christian rituals that they inherited from their Greek ancestors. Most of the Yalyboys adopted Islam as a religion quite late, compared to the other two subethnic groups, namely in 1778. Since the South Bank was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, the South Bank people never lived in the Crimean Khanate and could move throughout the entire territory of the empire, as evidenced by a large number of marriages of South Coast residents with the Ottomans and other citizens of the empire. Racially, the majority of South Coast residents belong to the South European (Mediterranean) race (outwardly similar to Turks, Greeks, Italians, etc.). However, there are individual representatives of this group with pronounced features of the Northern European race (light skin, blonde hair, Blue eyes). For example, residents of the villages of Kuchuk-Lambat (Kiparisnoye) and Arpat (Zelenogorye) belonged to this type. The South Coast Tatars are also noticeably different in physical type from the Turkic ones: they were noted to be taller, lack of cheekbones, “in general, regular facial features; This type is built very slenderly, which is why it can be called handsome. Women are distinguished by soft and regular facial features, dark, with long eyelashes, big eyes, finely defined eyebrows" [ where?] . The described type, however, even within the small space of the Southern Coast is subject to significant fluctuations, depending on the predominance of certain nationalities living here. So, for example, in Simeiz, Limeny, Alupka one could often meet long-headed people with an oblong face, a long hooked nose and light brown, sometimes red hair. The customs of the South Coast Tatars, the freedom of their women, the veneration of certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love of sedentary activities, compared with their external appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called “Tatars” are close to the Indo-European tribe. The population of the middle Yalyboya is distinguished by an analytical mindset, the eastern one - by a love of art - this is determined by the strong influence in the middle part of the Goths, and in the eastern part of the Greeks and Italians. The dialect of the South Coast residents belongs to the Oguz group of Turkic languages, very close to Turkish. The vocabulary of this dialect contains a noticeable layer of Greek and a number of Italian borrowings. The old Crimean Tatar literary language, created by Ismail Gasprinsky, was based on this dialect.

Steppe people - Nogai

Highlanders - Tats

Current situation

The ethnonym “Tatars” and the Crimean Tatar people

The fact that the word "Tatars" is present in the common name of the Crimean Tatars often causes misunderstandings and questions about whether the Crimean Tatars are a sub-ethnic group of Tatars, and the Crimean Tatar language is a dialect of Tatar. The name “Crimean Tatars” has remained in the Russian language since the times when almost all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachais (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakass (Abakan Tatars), etc. d. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with the historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppe), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited eastern Europe before the Mongol invasion, when the ethnonym “Tatars” came to the west . Crimean Tatar and Tatar languages are related, since both belong to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, but are not closest relatives within this group. Due to quite different phonetics, Crimean Tatars almost cannot understand Tatar speech by ear. The closest languages to Crimean Tatar are Turkish and Azerbaijani from Oguz, and Kumyk and Karachay from Kipchak. At the end of the 19th century, Ismail Gasprinsky made an attempt to create, on the basis of the Crimean Tatar southern coastal dialect, a single literary language for all Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire (including the Volga Tatars), but this endeavor did not have serious success.

The Crimean Tatars themselves today use two self-names: qırımtatarlar(literally “Crimean Tatars”) and qırımlar(literally “Crimeans”). In everyday colloquial speech (but not in an official context), the word can also be used as a self-designation tatarlar(“Tatars”).

Spelling the adjective “Crimean Tatar”

Kitchen

Main article: Crimean Tatar cuisine

Traditional drinks are coffee, ayran, yazma, buza.

National confectionery products sheker kyyyk, kurabye, baklava.

National dishes Crimean Tatars are chebureks (fried pies with meat), yantyk (baked pies with meat), saryk burma (layer pie with meat), sarma (grape and cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice), dolma (stuffed with meat and rice bell peppers), kobete - originally a Greek dish, as evidenced by the name (baked pie with meat, onions and potatoes), burma (layer pie with pumpkin and nuts), tatarash (literally Tatar food - dumplings) yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings) , shashlik (the word itself is of Crimean Tatar origin), pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike the Uzbek one without carrots), pakla shorbasy ( meat soup with green bean pods, seasoned with sour milk), shurpa, khainatma.

Notes

All-Ukrainian Population Census 2001. Russian version. Results. Nationality and native language. Archived from the original on August 22, 2011.
Ethnoatlas of Uzbekistan
On the migration potential of Crimean Tatars from Uzbekistan and others by 2000.
According to the 1989 census, there were 188,772 Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan.() It must be taken into account that, on the one hand, after the collapse of the USSR, most of the Crimean Tatars of Uzbekistan returned to their homeland in Crimea, and on the other hand, that a significant part of the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan recorded in censuses as “Tatars”. There are estimates of the number of Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan in the 2000s up to 150 thousand people(). The number of Tatars proper in Uzbekistan was 467,829 people. in 1989 () and about 324,100 people. in 2000; and the Tatars, together with the Crimean Tatars, in 1989 in Uzbekistan there were 656,601 people. and in 2000 - 334,126 people. It is not known exactly what proportion of this number the Crimean Tatars actually make up. Officially, in 2000 there were 10,046 Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan ()
Joshuaproject. Tatar, Crimean
Crimean Tatar population in Turkey
Romanian Census 2002 National composition
All-Russian Population Census 2002. Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved December 24, 2009.
Bulgarian Population Census 2001
Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Statistics. Census 2009. (National composition of the population .rar)
About 500 thousand in countries former USSR, Romania and Bulgaria, and from 100 thousand to several hundred thousand in Turkey. Statistics on the ethnic composition of the population in Turkey are not published, so the exact data is unknown.
Turkic peoples of Crimea. Karaites. Crimean Tatars. Krymchaks. / Rep. ed. S. Ya. Kozlov, L. V. Chizhova. - M.: Science, 2003.
Ozenbashli Enver Memet-oglu. Crimeans. Collection of works on the history, ethnography and language of the Crimean Tatars. - Akmescit: Share, 1997.
Essays on the history and culture of the Crimean Tatars. / Under. ed. E. Chubarova. - Simferopol, Crimea, 2005.
Türkiyedeki Qırımtatar milliy areketiniñ seyri, Bahçesaray dergisi, Mayıs 2009
A.I. Aibabin Ethnic history of early Byzantine Crimea. Simferopol. Gift. 1999
Mukhamedyarov Sh. F. Introduction to the ethnic history of Crimea. // Turkic peoples of Crimea: Karaites. Crimean Tatars. Krymchaks. - M.: Science. 2003.

So, Crimean Tatars.

Different sources present the history and modernity of this people with their own characteristics and their own vision of this issue.

Here are three links:
1). Russian site rusmirzp.com/2012/09/05/categ… 2). Ukrainian website turlocman.ru/ukraine/1837 3). Tatar website mtss.ru/?page=kryims

I will write your material using the most politically correct Wikipedia ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymski... and my own impressions.

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a people historically formed in Crimea.
They speak the Crimean Tatar language, which belongs to the Turkic group of the Altai family of languages.

The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims and belong to the Hanafi madhhab.

Traditional drinks are coffee, ayran, yazma, buza.

National confectionery products sheker kyyyk, kurabye, baklava.

The national dishes of the Crimean Tatars are chebureks (fried pies with meat), yantyk (baked pies with meat), saryk burma (layer pie with meat), sarma (grape and cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice), dolma (peppers stuffed with meat and rice) , kobete is originally a Greek dish, as evidenced by the name (baked pie with meat, onions and potatoes), burma (layer pie with pumpkin and nuts), tatar ash (dumplings), yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings), shish kebab, pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike the Uzbek one without carrots), bak'la shorbasy (meat soup with green bean pods, seasoned with sour milk), shurpa, kainatma.

I tried sarma, dolma and shurpa. Delicious.

Settlement.

They live mainly in Crimea (about 260 thousand), adjacent areas of continental Russia (2.4 thousand, mainly in the Krasnodar Territory) and in adjacent areas of Ukraine (2.9 thousand), as well as in Turkey, Romania (24 thousand), Uzbekistan (90 thousand, estimates from 10 thousand to 150 thousand), Bulgaria (3 thousand). According to local Crimean Tatar organizations, the diaspora in Turkey numbers hundreds of thousands of people, but there are no exact data on its numbers, since Turkey does not publish data on national composition population of the country. The total number of residents whose ancestors immigrated to the country from Crimea at different times is estimated in Turkey at 5-6 million people, but most of these people have assimilated and consider themselves not Crimean Tatars, but Turks of Crimean origin.

Ethnogenesis.

There is a misconception that the Crimean Tatars are predominantly descendants of the 13th century Mongol conquerors. This is wrong.
Crimean Tatars formed as a people in Crimea in the XIII-XVII centuries. The historical core of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group is the Turkic tribes that settled in Crimea, a special place in the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars among the Kipchak tribes, who mixed with the local descendants of the Huns, Khazars, Pechenegs, as well as representatives of the pre-Turkic population of Crimea - together with them they formed the ethnic basis of the Crimean Tatars, Karaites , Krymchakov.

The main ethnic groups that inhabited Crimea in ancient times and the Middle Ages were the Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars, Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians, Italians, Circassians (Circassians), and Asia Minor Turks. Over the centuries, the peoples who came to Crimea again assimilated those who lived here before their arrival or themselves assimilated into their environment.

An important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people belongs to the Western Kipchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name Polovtsy. From the 11th-12th centuries, the Kipchaks began to populate the Volga, Azov and Black Sea steppes (which from then until the 18th century were called Dasht-i Kipchak - “Kypchak steppe”). From the second half of the 11th century they began to actively penetrate into Crimea. A significant part of the Polovtsians took refuge in the mountains of Crimea, fleeing after the defeat of the united Polovtsian-Russian troops from the Mongols and the subsequent defeat of the Polovtsian proto-state formations in the northern Black Sea region.

By the middle of the 13th century, Crimea was conquered by the Mongols under the leadership of Khan Batu and included in the state they founded - the Golden Horde. During the Horde period, representatives of the Shirin, Argyn, Baryn and others clans appeared in Crimea, who then formed the backbone of the Crimean Tatar steppe aristocracy. The spread of the ethnonym “Tatars” in Crimea dates back to the same time - this common name was used to call the Turkic-speaking population of the state created by the Mongols. Internal turmoil and political instability in the Horde led to the fact that in the middle of the 15th century, Crimea fell away from the Horde rulers, and the independent Crimean Khanate was formed.

Historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars is the Hanafi school, which is the most “liberal” of all four canonical schools of thought in Sunni Islam.
The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Historically, the Islamization of the Crimean Tatars occurred in parallel with the formation of the ethnic group itself and was very long-lasting. The first step on this path was the capture of Sudak and the surrounding area by the Seljuks in the 13th century and the beginning of the spread of Sufi brotherhoods in the region, and the last was the massive adoption of Islam by a significant number of Crimean Christians who wanted to avoid eviction from Crimea in 1778. The bulk of the population of Crimea converted to Islam during the era of the Crimean Khanate and the Golden Horde period preceding it. Now in Crimea there are about three hundred Muslim communities, most of which are united in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea (adheres to the Hanafi madhhab). It is the Hanafi direction that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.

Takhtali Jam Mosque in Yevpatoria.

As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population, called “Tatars,” and the Islamic religion, processes of assimilation and consolidation of a motley ethnic conglomerate began, which led to the emergence of the Crimean Tatar people. Over the course of several centuries, the Crimean Tatar language developed on the basis of the Polovtsian language with a noticeable Oghuz influence.

An important component of this process was the linguistic and religious assimilation of the Christian population, which was very mixed in its ethnic composition (Greeks, Alans, Goths, Circassians, Polovtsian-speaking Christians, including the descendants of the Scythians, Sarmatians, etc., assimilated by these peoples in earlier eras), which made up At the end of the 15th century, the majority were in the mountainous and southern coastal regions of Crimea.

The assimilation of the local population began during the Horde period, but it especially intensified in the 17th century.
The Goths and Alans who lived in the mountainous part of Crimea began to adopt Turkic customs and culture, which corresponds to the data of archaeological and paleoethnographic research. On the Ottoman-controlled South Bank, assimilation proceeded noticeably more slowly. Thus, the results of the 1542 census show that the overwhelming majority of the rural population of the Ottoman possessions in Crimea were Christians. Archaeological studies of Crimean Tatar cemeteries on the South Bank also show that Muslim tombstones began to appear en masse in the 17th century.

As a result, by 1778, when the Crimean Greeks (all local Orthodox Christians were then called Greeks) were evicted from Crimea to the Azov region by order of the Russian government, there were just over 18 thousand of them (which was about 2% of the then population of Crimea), and more than half of these The Greeks were Urums, whose native language is Crimean Tatar, while the Greek-speaking Rumeans were a minority, and by that time there were no speakers of Alan, Gothic and other languages left at all.

At the same time, cases of Crimean Christians converting to Islam were recorded in order to avoid eviction.

Subethnic groups.

The Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: the steppe people or Nogais (not to be confused with the Nogai people) (çöllüler, noğaylar), the highlanders or Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian Tats) (tatlar) and the South Coast or Yalyboy (yalıboylular).

South Coast residents - yalyboylu.

Before the deportation, the South Coast residents lived on the Southern Coast of Crimea (Crimean Kotat. Yalı boyu) - a narrow strip 2-6 km wide, stretching along the sea coast from Balakalava in the west to Feodosia in the east. In the ethnogenesis of this group, the main role was played by the Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians, and the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast also have the blood of Italians (Genoese). Residents of many villages on the South Coast, until deportation, retained elements of Christian rituals that they inherited from their Greek ancestors. Most of the Yalyboys adopted Islam as a religion quite late, compared to the other two subethnic groups, namely in 1778. Since the South Bank was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, the South Bank people never lived in the Crimean Khanate and could move throughout the entire territory of the empire, as evidenced by a large number of marriages of South Coast residents with the Ottomans and other citizens of the empire. Racially, the majority of South Coast residents belong to the South European (Mediterranean) race (outwardly similar to Turks, Greeks, Italians, etc.). However, there are individual representatives of this group with pronounced features of the Northern European race (fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes). For example, residents of the villages of Kuchuk-Lambat (Kiparisnoye) and Arpat (Zelenogorye) belonged to this type. The South Coast Tatars are also noticeably different in physical type from the Turkic ones: they were noted to be taller, lack of cheekbones, “in general, regular facial features; This type is built very slenderly, which is why it can be called handsome. Women are distinguished by soft and regular facial features, dark, with long eyelashes, large eyes, finely defined eyebrows” (writes Starovsky). The described type, however, even within the small space of the Southern Coast is subject to significant fluctuations, depending on the predominance of certain nationalities living here. So, for example, in Simeiz, Limeny, Alupka one could often meet long-headed people with an oblong face, a long hooked nose and light brown, sometimes red hair. The customs of the South Coast Tatars, the freedom of their women, the veneration of certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love of sedentary activities, compared with their external appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called “Tatars” are close to the Indo-European tribe. The dialect of the South Coast residents belongs to the Oguz group of Turkic languages, very close to Turkish. The vocabulary of this dialect contains a noticeable layer of Greek and a number of Italian borrowings. The old Crimean Tatar literary language, created by Ismail Gasprinsky, was based on this dialect.

The steppe people are Nogai.

The Nogai lived in the steppe (Crimean çöl) north of the conditional line Nikolaevka-Gvardeyskoye-Feodosia. The main participants in the ethnogenesis of this group were the Western Kipchaks (Cumans), Eastern Kipchaks and Nogais (this is where the name Nogai came from). Racially, the Nogai are Caucasians with Mongoloid elements (~10%). The Nogai dialect belongs to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, combining the features of the Polovtsian-Kypchak (Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk) and Nogai-Kypchak (Nogai, Tatar, Bashkir and Kazakh) languages.
One of the starting points of the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars should be considered the emergence of the Crimean yurt, and then the Crimean Khanate. The nomadic nobility of Crimea took advantage of the weakening of the Golden Horde to create their own state. The long struggle between feudal factions ended in 1443 with the victory of Hadji Giray, who founded the virtually independent Crimean Khanate, whose territory included Crimea, the Black Sea steppes and the Taman Peninsula.
The main force of the Crimean army was the cavalry - fast, maneuverable, with centuries of experience. In the steppe, every man was a warrior, an excellent horseman and archer. This is confirmed by Boplan: “The Tatars know the steppe as well as pilots know sea harbors.”
During the emigration of the Crimean Tatars in the 18th-19th centuries. a significant part of the steppe Crimea was practically deprived of its indigenous population.
The famous scientist, writer and researcher of the Crimea of the 19th century, E.V. Markov, wrote that only the Tatars “endured this dry heat of the steppe, mastering the secrets of extracting and conducting water, raising livestock and gardens in places where a German or a Bulgarian could not get along before. Hundreds of thousands of honest and patient hands have been taken away from the economy. The camel herds have almost disappeared; where previously there were thirty flocks of sheep, there is only one walking there, where there were fountains, there are now empty swimming pools, where there was a crowded industrial village - there is now a wasteland... Drive, for example, Evpatoria district and you will think that you are traveling along the shores of the Dead Sea.”

Highlanders are Tats.

The Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian people of the same name) lived before the deportation in the mountains (Crimean Tat. dağlar) and the foothills or middle zone (Crimean Tat. orta yolaq), that is, north of the South Coast people and south of the steppe people. The ethnogenesis of the Tats is a very complex and not fully understood process. Almost all the peoples and tribes that ever lived in Crimea took part in the formation of this subethnic group. These are the Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, Avars, Goths, Greeks, Circassians, Bulgars, Khazars, Pechenegs and Western Kipchaks (known in European sources as Cumans or Komans, and in Russians as Polovtsians). The role of the Goths, Greeks and Kipchaks is considered particularly important in this process. The Tats inherited their language from the Kipchaks, and their material and everyday culture from the Greeks and Goths. The Goths mainly took part in the ethnogenesis of the population of the western part of the mountainous Crimea (Bakhchisarai region). The type of houses that the Crimean Tatars built in the mountain villages of this region before the deportation is considered Gothic by some researchers. It should be noted that the given data on the ethnogenesis of the Tats are to some extent a generalization, since the population of almost every village in the mountainous Crimea before the deportation had its own characteristics, in which the influence of one or another people was discernible. Racially, the Tats belong to the Central European race, that is, they are externally similar to representatives of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe (some of them are North Caucasian peoples, and some of them are Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, etc.). The Tat dialect has both Kypchak and Oguz features and is to some extent intermediate between the dialects of the South Coast and the steppe people. The modern Crimean Tatar literary language is based on this dialect.

Until 1944, the listed subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars practically did not mix with each other, but deportation destroyed traditional settlement areas, and over the past 60 years the process of merging these groups into a single community has gained momentum. The boundaries between them are noticeably blurred today, since there is a significant number of families where spouses belong to different subethnic groups. Due to the fact that after returning to Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, for a number of reasons, and primarily due to the opposition of local authorities, cannot settle in the places of their former traditional residence, the process of mixing continues. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, among the Crimean Tatars living in Crimea, about 30% were South Coast residents, about 20% were Nogais and about 50% were Tats.

The fact that the word “Tatars” is present in the generally accepted name of the Crimean Tatars often causes misunderstandings and questions about whether the Crimean Tatars are a subethnic group of Tatars, and the Crimean Tatar language is a dialect of Tatar. The name “Crimean Tatars” has remained in the Russian language since the times when almost all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachais (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakass (Abakan Tatars), etc. d. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with the historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppe), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited eastern Europe before the Mongol invasion, when the ethnonym “Tatars” came to the west .

The Crimean Tatars themselves today use two self-names: qırımtatarlar (literally “Crimean Tatars”) and qırımlar (literally “Crimeans”). In everyday colloquial speech (but not in an official context), the word tatarlar (“Tatars”) can also be used as a self-designation.

The Crimean Tatar and Tatar languages are related, since both belong to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, but are not closest relatives within this group. Due to quite different phonetics (primarily vocalism: the so-called “Volga region vowel interruption”), Crimean Tatars understand by ear only individual words and phrases in Tatar speech and vice versa. Among the Kipchak languages, the closest to the Crimean Tatar are the Kumyk and Karachay languages, and from the Oguz languages, Turkish and Azerbaijani.

At the end of the 19th century, Ismail Gasprinsky made an attempt to create, on the basis of the Crimean Tatar southern coastal dialect, a single literary language for all Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire (including the Volga Tatars), but this endeavor did not have serious success.

Crimean Khanate.

The process of formation of the people was finally completed during the period of the Crimean Khanate.
The state of the Crimean Tatars - the Crimean Khanate existed from 1441 to 1783. For most of its history, it was dependent on the Ottoman Empire and was its ally.

The ruling dynasty in Crimea was the Gerayev (Gireyev) clan, whose founder was the first khan Hadji I Giray. The era of the Crimean Khanate is the heyday of Crimean Tatar culture, art and literature.
The classic of Crimean Tatar poetry of that era - Ashik Died.
The main surviving architectural monument of that time is the Khan's palace in Bakhchisarai.

From the beginning of the 16th century, the Crimean Khanate waged constant wars with the Moscow state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until the 18th century, mainly offensive), which was accompanied by the capture of a large number of captives from among the civilian Russian, Ukrainian and Polish populations. Those captured as slaves were sold at Crimean slave markets, among which the largest was the market in the city of Kef (modern Feodosia), to Turkey, Arabia, and the Middle East. The mountain and coastal Tatars of the southern coast of Crimea were reluctant to participate in raids, preferring to pay off the khans with payments. In 1571, a 40,000-strong Crimean army under the command of Khan Devlet I Geray, having passed the Moscow fortifications, reached Moscow and, in retaliation for the capture of Kazan, set fire to its suburbs, after which the entire city, with the exception of the Kremlin, burned to the ground. However, the very next year, the 40,000-strong horde that was marching again, hoping, together with the Turks, Nogais, and Circassians (more than 120-130 thousand in total), to finally put an end to the independence of the Moscow Kingdom, suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Molodi, which forced the Khanate to moderate its political claims. Nevertheless, formally subordinate to the Crimean Khan, but actually semi-independent Nogai hordes roaming the Northern Black Sea region, regularly carried out extremely devastating raids on Moscow, Ukrainian, Polish lands, reaching Lithuania and Slovakia. The purpose of these raids was to seize booty and numerous slaves, mainly for the purpose of selling slaves to the markets of the Ottoman Empire, brutally exploiting them in the Khanate itself, and receiving a ransom. For this, as a rule, the Muravsky Way was used, which ran from Perekop to Tula. These raids bled all the southern, peripheral and central regions of the country, which were practically deserted for a long time. The constant threat from the south and east contributed to the formation of the Cossacks, who performed guard and patrol functions in all the border territories of the Moscow State and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the Wild Field.

As part of the Russian Empire.

In 1736, Russian troops led by Field Marshal Christopher (Christoph) Minich burned Bakhchisarai and devastated the foothills of Crimea. In 1783, as a result of Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire, Crimea was first occupied and then annexed by Russia.

The oppression of the Russian administration and the expropriation of land from Crimean Tatar peasants caused mass emigration of Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire. The two main waves of emigration occurred in the 1790s and 1850s. According to researchers of the late 19th century F. Lashkov and K. German, the population of the peninsular part of the Crimean Khanate by the 1770s was approximately 500 thousand people, 92% of whom were Crimean Tatars. The first Russian census of 1793 recorded 127.8 thousand people in Crimea, including 87.8% Crimean Tatars. Thus, most of the Tatars emigrated from Crimea, according to various sources amounting to up to half of the population (from Turkish data it is known about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars who settled in Turkey at the end of the 18th century, mainly in Rumelia). After the end of the Crimean War, about 200 thousand Crimean Tatars emigrated from Crimea in the 1850-60s. It is their descendants who now make up the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. This led to the decline of agriculture and the almost complete desolation of the steppe part of Crimea.

Along with this, the development of Crimea was intensive, mainly the territory of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), due to the Russian government attracting settlers from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia. The ethnic composition of the peninsula's population has changed - the proportion of Orthodox Christians has increased.
In the middle of the 19th century, the Crimean Tatars, overcoming disunity, began to move from rebellions to a new stage of national struggle.

It was necessary to mobilize the entire people for collective defense against the oppression of tsarist laws and Russian landowners.

Ismail Gasprinsky was an outstanding educator of the Turkic and other Muslim peoples. One of his main achievements is the creation and dissemination of a system of secular (non-religious) school education among the Crimean Tatars, which also radically changed the essence and structure of primary education in many Muslim countries, giving it a more secular character. He became the actual creator of the new literary Crimean Tatar language. Gasprinsky began publishing the first Crimean Tatar newspaper “Terdzhiman” (“Translator”) in 1883, which soon became known far beyond the borders of Crimea, including in Turkey and Central Asia. His educational and publishing activities ultimately led to the emergence of a new Crimean Tatar intelligentsia. Gasprinsky is also considered one of the founders of the ideology of pan-Turkism.

Revolution of 1917.

In February 1917, Crimean Tatar revolutionaries monitored the political situation with great preparedness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of the dissolution of the State Duma, on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created.
The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee proposed joint work to the Simferopol Council, but the executive committee of the Council rejected this proposal.
After the all-Crimean election campaign carried out by the Musis Executive Committee, on November 26, 1917 (December 9, new style), the Kurultai - General Assembly, the main advisory, decision-making and representative body, was opened in Bakhchisarai in the Khan's Palace.
Thus, in 1917, the Crimean Tatar Parliament (Kurultai) - the legislative body, and the Crimean Tatar Government (Directory) - the executive body, began to exist in Crimea.

Civil war and the Crimean ASSR.

The Civil War in Russia became a difficult test for the Crimean Tatars. In 1917, after the February Revolution, the first Kurultai (congress) of the Crimean Tatar people was convened, proclaiming a course towards the creation of an independent multinational Crimea. The slogan of the chairman of the first Kurultai, one of the most revered leaders of the Crimean Tatars, Noman Celebidzhikhan, is known - “Crimea is for the Crimeans” (meaning the entire population of the peninsula, regardless of nationality. “Our task,” he said, “is the creation of a state like Switzerland. Peoples of Crimea represent a wonderful bouquet, and equal rights and conditions are necessary for every nation, for we must go hand in hand." However, Celebidzhikhan was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the interests of the Crimean Tatars were practically not taken into account during the Civil War by both whites and red.
In 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the RSFSR. State languages it contained Russian and Crimean Tatar. The administrative division of the autonomous republic was based on the national principle: in 1930, national village councils were created: Russian 106, Tatar 145, German 27, Jewish 14, Bulgarian 8, Greek 6, Ukrainian 3, Armenian and Estonian - 2 each. In addition , national districts were organized. In 1930, there were 7 such districts: 5 Tatar (Sudak, Alushta, Bakhchisarai, Yalta and Balaklava), 1 German (Biyuk-Onlar, later Telmansky) and 1 Jewish (Freidorf).
In all schools, children of national minorities were taught in their native language. But after the short rise in national life after the creation of the republic (the opening of national schools, the theater, the publication of newspapers) followed Stalin's repressions 1937.

Most of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia were repressed, including the statesman Veli Ibraimov and the scientist Bekir Chobanzade. According to the 1939 census, there were 218,179 Crimean Tatars in Crimea, that is, 19.4% of the total population of the peninsula. However, the Tatar minority was not at all infringed upon in its rights in relation to the “Russian-speaking” population. Rather, on the contrary, the top leadership consisted mainly of Crimean Tatars.

Crimea under German occupation.

From mid-November 1941 to May 12, 1944, Crimea was occupied by German troops.
In December 1941, Muslim Tatar committees were created in Crimea by the German occupation administration. The central “Crimean Muslim Committee” began work in Simferopol. Their organization and activities took place under the direct supervision of the SS. Subsequently, the leadership of the committees passed to the SD headquarters. In September 1942, the German occupation administration prohibited the use of the word “Crimean” in the name, and the committee began to be called the “Simferopol Muslim Committee”, and from 1943 - the “Simferopol Tatar Committee”. The committee consisted of 6 departments: for the fight against Soviet partisans; on recruiting volunteer units; to provide assistance to the families of volunteers; on culture and propaganda; by religion; administrative and economic department and office. Local committees duplicated the central one in their structure. Their activities were discontinued at the end of 1943.

The initial program of the committee provided for the creation of a state of Crimean Tatars in Crimea under German protectorate, the creation of its own parliament and army, and the resumption of the activities of the Milli Firqa party banned in 1920 by the Bolsheviks (Crimean Milliy Fırqa - national party). However, already in the winter of 1941-42, the German command made it clear that they did not intend to allow the creation of any state entity in Crimea. In December 1941, representatives of the Crimean Tatar community of Turkey, Mustafa Edige Kırımal and Müstecip Ülküsal, visited Berlin in the hope of convincing Hitler of the need to create a Crimean Tatar state, but they were refused. Long-term plans of the Nazis included the annexation of Crimea directly to the Reich as the imperial land of Gotenland and the settlement of the territory by German colonists.

Since October 1941, the creation of volunteer formations from representatives of the Crimean Tatars began - self-defense companies, main task which was the fight against partisans. Until January 1942, this process proceeded spontaneously, but after the recruitment of volunteers from among the Crimean Tatars was officially sanctioned by Hitler, the solution to this problem passed to the leadership of Einsatzgruppe D. During January 1942, more than 8,600 volunteers were recruited, from among whom 1,632 people were selected to serve in self-defense companies (14 companies were formed). In March 1942, 4 thousand people already served in self-defense companies, and another 5 thousand people were in the reserve. Subsequently, based on the created companies, auxiliary police battalions were deployed, the number of which reached eight by November 1942 (from the 147th to the 154th).

Crimean Tatar formations were used to protect military and civilian facilities, took an active part in the fight against partisans, and in 1944 they actively resisted the Red Army units that liberated Crimea. The remnants of the Crimean Tatar units, along with German and Romanian troops, were evacuated from Crimea by sea. In the summer of 1944, from the remnants of the Crimean Tatar units in Hungary, the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS was formed, which was soon reorganized into the 1st Tatar Mountain Jaeger Brigade of the SS, which was disbanded on December 31, 1944 and reorganized into the combat group "Crimea", which joined Eastern Turkic SS unit. Crimean Tatar volunteers who were not included in the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS were transferred to France and included in the reserve battalion of the Volga Tatar Legion or (mostly untrained youth) were enlisted in the auxiliary air defense service.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars were drafted into the Red Army. Many of them later deserted in 1941.
However, there are other examples.
More than 35 thousand Crimean Tatars served in the ranks of the Red Army from 1941 to 1945. The majority (about 80%) of the civilian population provided active support to the Crimean partisan detachments. Due to the poor organization of partisan warfare and the constant shortage of food, medicine and weapons, the command decided to evacuate most of the partisans from Crimea in the fall of 1942. According to the party archive of the Crimean regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on June 1, 1943, there were 262 people in the partisan detachments of Crimea. Of these, 145 are Russians, 67 Ukrainians, 6 Tatars. On January 15, 1944, there were 3,733 partisans in Crimea, of which 1,944 were Russians, 348 Ukrainians, 598 Tatars. Finally, according to a certificate of the party, national and age composition of the Crimean partisans as of April 1944, among the partisans there were: Russians - 2075, Tatars - 391, Ukrainians - 356, Belarusians - 71, others - 754.

Deportation.

In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families). Every third adult Crimean Tatar was required to sign that he had read the decree, and that escaping from the place of special settlement was punishable by 20 years of hard labor, as a criminal offense.

Officially, the grounds for deportation were also declared to be the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was said to be about 20 thousand people), the good reception of German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, apparatus of prisons and camps. At the same time, the deportation did not affect the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the homeland (in total, about 5,000 collaborators of all nationalities were identified in Crimea in April-May 1944). Crimean Tatars who fought in Red Army units were also subject to deportation after demobilization and returning home to Crimea from the front. Crimean Tatars who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and who managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944 were also deported. In 1949, there were 8,995 Crimean Tatars who participated in the war in the places of deportation, including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants.

A significant number of displaced people, exhausted after three years of living under occupation, died in places of deportation from hunger and disease in 1944-45.

Estimates of the number of deaths during this period vary greatly: from 15-25% according to estimates of various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to the estimates of activists of the Crimean Tatar movement, who collected information about the dead in the 1960s.

The fight to return.

Since the 1960s, in the places where deported Crimean Tatars lived in Uzbekistan, a national movement for the restoration of the rights of the people and the return to Crimea arose and began to gain strength.
The activities of public activists who insisted on the return of the Crimean Tatars to their historical homeland were persecuted by the administrative bodies of the Soviet state.

Return to Crimea.

The mass return began in 1989, and today about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars live in Crimea (243,433 people according to the 2001 All-Ukrainian census), of which more than 25 thousand live in Simferopol, over 33 thousand in the Simferopol region, or over 22% of the region's population.
The main problems of the Crimean Tatars after their return were mass unemployment, problems with the allocation of land and the development of infrastructure of the Crimean Tatar villages that had arisen over the past 15 years.
In 1991, the second Kurultai was convened and a system of national self-government of the Crimean Tatars was created. Every five years, elections of the Kurultai (similar to a national parliament) take place, in which all Crimean Tatars participate. The Kurultai forms an executive body - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (similar to the national government). This organization was not registered with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. From 1991 to October 2013, the Chairman of the Mejlis was Mustafa Dzhemilev. Refat Chubarov was elected the new head of the Mejlis at the first session of the 6th Kurultai (national congress) of the Crimean Tatar people, held on October 26-27 in Simferopol

In August 2006, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Tatar statements by Orthodox priests in Crimea.

At the beginning, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people had a negative attitude towards holding a referendum on the annexation of Crimea to Russia in early March 2014.
However, just before the referendum, the situation was turned around with the help of Kadyrov and the State Councilor of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures for the rehabilitation of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, German and Crimean Tatar peoples living on the territory of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The President instructed the government, when developing a target program for the development of Crimea and Sevastopol until 2020, to provide for measures for the national, cultural and spiritual revival of these peoples, the development of the territories of their residence (with financing), and to assist the Crimean and Sevastopol authorities in holding commemorative events for the 70th anniversary of the deportation peoples in May of this year, as well as to assist in the creation of national-cultural autonomies.

Judging by the results of the referendum, almost half of all Crimean Tatars took part in the vote - despite very severe pressure on them from radicals from among themselves. At the same time, the mood of the Tatars and their attitude towards the return of Crimea to Russia is rather wary rather than hostile. So everything depends on the authorities and on how Russian Muslims accept the new brothers.

Currently, the social life of the Crimean Tatars is experiencing a split.
On the one hand, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, who was not allowed to enter Crimea by prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya.

On the other hand, the Crimean Tatar party “Milli Firka”.
Chairman of the Kenesh (Council) of the Crimean Tatar party “Milli Firka” Vasvi Abduraimov believes that:
"Crimean Tatars are flesh and blood heirs and part of the Great Turkic El - Eurasia.
We definitely have nothing to do in Europe. Most of the Turkic Ale today is also Russia. More than 20 million Turkic Muslims live in Russia. Therefore, Russia is as close to us as it is to the Slavs. All Crimean Tatars speak Russian well, received education in Russian, grew up in Russian culture, live among Russians."gumilev-center.ru/krymskie-ta…
These are the so-called “seizures” of land by the Crimean Tatars.
They simply built several of these buildings side by side on lands that at that time belonged to the Ukrainian State.
As illegally repressed people, the Tatars believe that they have the right to seize the land they like for free.

Of course, squatters do not take place in the remote steppe, but along the Simferopol highway and along the South Coast.
There are few permanent houses built on the site of these squatters.
They just staked out a place for themselves with the help of such sheds.
Subsequently (after legalization) it will be possible to build a cafe here, a house for children, or sell it at a profit.
And a decree of the State Council is already being prepared that squatters will be legalized. vesti.ua/krym/63334-v-krymu-h…

Like this.
Including through the legalization of squatters, Putin decided to ensure the loyalty of the Crimean Tatars in relation to the presence of the Russian Federation in Crimea.

However, the Ukrainian authorities also did not actively fight this phenomenon.
Because it considered the Mejlis as a counterweight to the influence of the Russian-speaking population of Crimea on politics on the peninsula.

The State Council of Crimea adopted in the first reading the draft law “On some guarantees of the rights of peoples extrajudicially deported under nationality in 1941-1944 from the Autonomous Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic,” which, among other things, provides for the amount and procedure for paying various one-time compensation to repatriates. kianews.com.ua/news/v-krymu-d… The adopted bill is the implementation of the decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On measures for the rehabilitation of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German peoples and state support their revival and development."
It is aimed at social protection deportees, as well as their children born after deportation in 1941–1944 in places of imprisonment or exile and who returned to permanent residence in Crimea, and those who were outside Crimea at the time of deportation (military service, evacuation, forced labor) , but was sent to special settlements. ? 🐒 this is the evolution of city excursions. The VIP guide is a city dweller, he will show you the most unusual places and tell you urban legends, I tried it, it’s fire 🚀! Prices from 600 rub. - they will definitely please you 🤑

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In Crimea, which was subordinate to the Ottoman Empire, the composition of the population was quite varied. The bulk of the population were Crimean Tatars. Khan's subjects belonged to different peoples and practiced different religions. They were divided into national-religious communities - millets, as was customary in the empire.

Only Muslims, who made up the largest community on the peninsula, enjoyed full rights. Only the faithful carried out military service, and for this they enjoyed tax and other benefits.

In addition to the Muslim, there were three more millets: Orthodox, or Greek, Jewish and Armenian. Members of different communities lived, as a rule, in their own villages and city districts. Their temples and houses of worship were located here.

Communities were governed by the most respected people, who combined spiritual and judicial power. They defended the interests of their people, enjoyed the right to raise funds for community needs and other privileges.

Number of Crimean Tatars

The history of the Crimean Tatars is quite interesting. In the regions of Crimea subordinate directly to the Sultan, the Turkish population grew. It increased especially quickly in the Cafe, which was called Kucuk-Istanbul, “little Istanbul”. However, the bulk of the Muslim community in Crimea were Tatars. Now they lived not only in the steppes and foothills, but also in mountain valleys on the southern coast.

Borrowed the skills of maintaining a settled economy and forms public life those who have lived here for centuries. And the local population, in turn, adopted from the Tatars not only the Turkic language, but sometimes also the Muslim faith. Captives from Moscow and Ukrainian lands also accepted Islam: this way they could avoid slavery, “become foolish,” as the Russians said, or “become a poturnak,” as the Ukrainians put it.

Thousands of captives joined Tatar families as wives and servants. Their children were raised in a Tatar environment as devout Muslims. This was common among ordinary Tatars and among the nobility, right up to the Khan’s palace.

Thus, on the basis of Islam and the Turkic language, a new people was formed from various national groups - the Crimean Tatars. It was heterogeneous and divided according to its habitat into several groups that differed appearance, features of language, clothing and activities, and other features.

Settlement and occupation of the Crimean Tatars

The Crimean Tatars of the southern coast of Crimea were under significant Turkish influence (along the southern coast lay the lands of the sanjak Turkish Sultan). This was reflected in their customs and language. They were tall, with European features. Their flat-roofed dwellings, located on mountain slopes near the seashore, were built from rough stone.

The South Coast Crimean Tatars were famous as gardeners. They were engaged in fishing and animal husbandry. Her real passion was growing grapes. The number of its varieties reached, according to the estimates of foreign travelers, several dozen, and many were unknown outside the Crimea.

Another group of the Tatar population emerged in the Crimean Mountains. Along with the Turks and Greeks, the Goths made a significant contribution to its formation, thanks to which people with red and light brown hair were often found among the Mountain Tatars.

The local language was formed on the basis of Kipchak with an admixture of Turkish and Greek elements. The main occupations of the highlanders were animal husbandry, tobacco growing, gardening, and vegetable gardening. They grew, as on the South Coast, garlic, onions, and over time, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and herbs. The Tatars knew how to prepare fruits and vegetables for future use: they made jam, dried them, and salted them.

The mountain Crimean Tatars, like those from the south coast, also built with flat roofs. Houses with two floors were quite common. In this case, the first floor was made of stone, and the second floor, with a gable roof, was made of wood.

The second floor was larger than the first, which saved land. The protruding part of the tower (second floor) was supported by curved wooden supports, whose lower ends rested against the wall of the first floor.

Finally, the third group formed in the steppe Crimea, mainly from the Kipchaks, Nogais, and Tatar-Mongols. The language of this group was Kipchak, which also included individual Mongolian words. WITH The warm Crimean Tatars remained committed to the nomadic way of life for the longest time.

In order to bring them to a settled state, Khan Sahib-Girey (1532–1551) ordered the wheels to be cut and the carts of those who wanted to leave Crimea to become nomads to be broken. The Steppe Tatars built housing from unbaked brick and shell stone. The roofs of the houses were made of two or single slopes. As many hundreds of years ago, sheep and horse breeding remained one of the main occupations. Over time, they began to sow wheat, barley, oats, and millet. High yields made it possible to provide the population of Crimea with grain.

One of the most popular themes of the fighters against totalitarianism during the period of perestroika, who enthusiastically worked to expose the bloody Stalinist regime and the imperial ambitions of the USSR, was the fate of the Crimean Tatars. Without sparing color and emotion, they described the cruel and inhumane methods of operation of the punitive machine of the Stalinist regime, which doomed innocent people to unreasonable suffering and hardship as a result of deportation in May 1944. Today, after more than two decades, when the initial euphoria of perestroika revelations was replaced by the desire to calmly and balancedly understand this or that problem, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars can be looked at as a historical problem, discarding the ideological and political husks. Separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

Who are the Crimean Tatars?

The Crimean peninsula, with its favorable climate and fertile lands, has attracted people from all corners of the world in all centuries. West, east, north - everyone strove for the warm southern shores, where they did not have to kill so much to get food. At different times, Scythians, Sarmatians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Pechenegs, and Polovtsians lived on the peninsula. From time immemorial, the ancient Russians occupied the eastern part of the peninsula, being part of the Tmutarakan principality, which existed in the 10th-12th centuries. And this almost heavenly corner of Tauris was called. In 1223, the Mongol Tatars appeared for the first time on the land of ancient Taurida, capturing and plundering the city of Sudak. In 1239, they made the peninsula a Tatar ulus and gave it the name Crimea. The Crimean Tatars are one of the fragments of the Golden Horde.

Crimean Khanate

But the Golden Horde disintegrated in 1443, and the Crimean Khanate was formed on the territory of the peninsula. It was independent for a very short time. Already in 1475, Khan Mengli-Girey recognized himself as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. All important strategic points of the Khanate are headed by the Turks, and they are the actual masters of the Crimean Khanate. All local rulers are servants of the Turkish Sultan - he appoints and removes them, pays them a salary. Crimean Tatars Absolutely unaccustomed to the work of farmers, whom the Tatars consider slaves, they prefer to make their living by robberies against their closest neighbors. Eventually it becomes a local economy, a profitable business. There is no need to build new cities, schools, theaters. It’s easier to swoop down on your neighbors with a robber horde, destroy, burn, kill those who are not needed, and take those who are needed captive and sell them into slavery. The representative of the Polish king, Martin Bronevsky, who spent several months in Crimea in 1578, left the following description of the Crimean Tatars: “This people is predatory and hungry, they do not value their oaths to their allies, but have only their own benefits in mind, they live by robberies and constant treasonous war.” . This behavior quite suited the Ottoman Porte in its aggressive policy towards the entire Christian world of Eastern Europe.

The Crimean Khanate with its warlike subjects was the vanguard, ready to go anywhere for profitable booty. If the Ottoman rulers reproached the descendants of Genghis Khan for being too proactive in terms of plunder, they replied that they could not feed more than one hundred thousand Tatars, who had neither agriculture nor trade, without raids. It is in them that they see service to the padishah. In the second half of the 16th century alone, the Crimean Tatars carried out 48 raids on the Moscow state. In the first half of the 17th century, they captured more than 200 thousand Russians. The Ukrainian lands that were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffered no less, and sometimes more. From 1605 to 1644 there were at least 75 raids by bloodthirsty neighbors. In just three years, from 1654 to 1657, Ukraine lost more than 50 thousand people due to the raids of the Crimean Tatars. Every year, 20 thousand slaves were taken out of Crimea and at least 60 thousand captives were used as slaves in the Khanate itself.

The Russian state did not want to tolerate a nest of robbers on its borders and many times not only gave an impressive rebuff, but also made numerous attempts to eliminate the Crimean Tatar threat. It was difficult, because the powerful Ottoman Empire stood behind the Crimean Khanate.

Crimean Tatars within the Russian Empire

The times came when the Russian state prevailed not only over the nest of robbers and slave traders, but also over powerful Turkey. This happened during the Russian-Turkish war, which Turkey started with Russia in 1768. In January 1769, a 70,000-strong Tatar army tried to make its last raid on Russia in history, but ran into Russian regiments and was not only stopped, but also driven back. The Russian army, pursuing the Tatars, occupies the fortified line of Perekop, and successfully advances along the peninsula. Khan Selim-Girey III abandoned everything and fled to Istanbul, and the remaining Tatar nobles hastily submitted. The new Khan Sahib-Girey signed an agreement with Prince Dolgorukov in Karasubazar in 1772. under this treaty it was declared an independent khanate under the patronage of Russia. The Ottoman Empire confirmed this treaty with the Treaty of Kyuchuk-Kainardzhi in 1774, but secretly inspired anti-Russian uprisings in Crimea. Therefore, in 1783, after the abdication of the last Crimean Khan Shagin-Girey, Crimea, on the basis of the Manifesto of Empress Catherine II, was annexed to Russia.

Judging by historical documents, the population of the annexed territory of Crimea was never infringed on its rights, and sometimes received them even more than the indigenous Russian population of the Russian state. The local Crimean nobility received all the rights of the Russian nobility. Representatives of the Muslim clergy were guaranteed immunity. Military conscription did not apply to the Crimean Tatars. However, most of the Crimean Tatars moved to Turkey, and those who remained in Crimea dealt more than one blow to the “Russian infidels” in the back, who destroyed the usual way of life of robbers and slave traders.

Deportation of Crimean Tatars

The first time this happened was during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. As soon as enemy troops began landing on the territory of Crimea, a significant part of the Tatar population supported the enemies of Russia. At the same time, they rushed to oppress, rob and kill the Christian population, showing extraordinary cruelty. The Crimean Tatars avoided fair retribution for their treacherous behavior thanks to their excessive liberality. Therefore, they did exactly the same thing already in the 20th century during the revolutionary events of 1917. Having obtained permission from the Provisional Government to create Crimean Tatar military units Having received weapons, they were in no hurry to be on the front line. And they preferred to greet the German troops with rampant robberies against the entire Christian population.

A little more than 20 years pass, and already during this time, the Crimean Tatars greeted German troops with joy and delight, went not only by conscription, but also voluntarily served in German punitive battalions, organized self-defense units against partisans, participated in executions, surpassing the Germans in cruelty. German sources reported that there were about 20 thousand Crimean Tatars in the service of Adolf Efendi. Now the mullah must read three prayers: 1st prayer: for achieving a quick victory and a common goal, as well as for the health and long life of the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. 2nd prayer: for the German people and their valiant army. 3rd prayer: for the soldiers of the German Wehrmacht who fell in battle.

But retribution for betrayal resulted in the deportation of the Tatar population, which was carried out in May 1944. The entire Tatar population of Crimea was resettled as special settlers to Uzbekistan. Special settlers were allowed to take personal, household items and food up to 500 kg per family. Each train was accompanied by a doctor and two nurses with a supply of medicines; hot meals and boiling water were provided along the way. The list of products included meat, fish, flour, cereals, and fats. So there could be no talk of any starvation, to which the special settlers were supposedly doomed. When Stalin was in power, all orders were carried out very scrupulously.

Return

The massive return of Crimean Tatars occurred in 1989, in the wake of the perestroika movements. Currently, about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars live in Crimea. Since 1991, the Kurultai, the national parliament of the Crimean Tatars, has been in operation. Executive body is the Majlis - the national government.

Food for thought

For the whole world history Russia was almost never an attacker, but the countries that started the war against it first accused it of aggression...

Introduction

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are the indigenous people of Crimea, historically formed in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language, which belongs to the Turkic group of the Altaic family of languages. The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims and belong to the Hanafi madhhab.

They live mainly in Crimea (about 260 thousand) and adjacent areas of continental Ukraine, as well as in Turkey, Romania (24 thousand), Uzbekistan, Russia, and Bulgaria. According to local Crimean Tatar organizations, the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey numbers hundreds of thousands of people, but there are no exact data on its numbers, since Turkey does not publish data on the national composition of the country’s population. The total number of residents whose ancestors immigrated to the country from Crimea at different times is estimated in Turkey at 4–6 million people, but most of these people have assimilated and consider themselves not Crimean Tatars, but Turks of Crimean origin. The number of people living in the United States is not indicated, although it is well known that in 2010 more than 15 thousand Crimean Tatars lived in New York alone.

The Crimean Tatars formed as a people in Crimea and are descendants of various peoples who migrated to the territory of the peninsula. The main ethnic groups that inhabited Crimea at different times and took part in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people are the Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars (Proto-Bulgarians), Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Italians, Circassians, and Asia Minor Turks. The most important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group belonged to the Western Kipchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name Polovtsy.

As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population and the Islamic religion on the territory of the peninsula, which received the name “Tatars,” the processes of assimilation and consolidation of the motley ethnic conglomerate into a single Crimean nation began. Over the course of several centuries, the modern national image of the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Tatar language developed on the basis of the Polovtsian language.

1. Encyclopedic reference

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is part of Ukraine, an independent state formed after the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991 (from 1922 to 1991 - the second most important union republic of the Soviet Union).

The area of Crimea is 27 thousand square meters. km, population in 1994 – 2.7 million people. The capital is Simferopol. In the south of Crimea is the port city of Sevastopol, which was the support base of the USSR Black Sea Fleet (in 1996 the fleet was divided between Ukraine - the Ukrainian Navy, and Russia - the Black Sea Fleet; both fleets are based in Sevastopol, Balaklava and other bases on the southwestern coast of Crimea). The basis of the economy is resort tourism and agriculture. Crimea consists of three cultural and climatic regions: Steppe Crimea, Mountain Crimea and the Southern coast (actually the southeastern coast) of Crimea.

2. History. Crimean Tatars

One of the states that arose from the ruins of the Golden Horde in the 14th–15th centuries was the Crimean Khanate with its capital in Bakhchisarai. The population of the Khanate consisted of Tatars, divided into 3 groups (steppe, foothill and southern), Armenians, Greeks (who spoke the Tatar language), Crimean Jews, or Krymchaks (who spoke the Tatar language), Slavs, Karaites (Turkic people professing a special not recognizing the Talmud, the movement of Judaism and speaking a special language close to the Crimean Tatar), Germans, etc.

Traditions of the Crimean Tatars attribute the spread of Islam in Crimea to the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) - Malik Ashter and Ghazi Mansur (7th century). The oldest dated mosque - 1262 - was built in the city of Solkhat (Old Crimea) by a native of Bukhara. From the 16th century Crimea became one of the centers of Muslim civilization in the Golden Horde; from here the Islamization of the North Caucasus was carried out. The Zindzhirli madrasah, founded on the outskirts of Bakhchisarai in 1500, was very famous. The south of Crimea was traditionally oriented towards Turkey, while the north retained the steppe Horde properties. Among the Sufi tariqas common in Crimea were Mevlewiyya, Halvetiyya (both came from Turkey; the latter from the city of Sivas), Naqshbandiya, Yasawiyya (the first traditionally dominated the entire Golden Horde; the latter came in the 17th century; both were widespread among the steppes ).

The conquest of the Khanate by Russian troops in the 18th century marked the beginning of the colonization of Crimea and the migration of large groups of the Tatar population from Crimea to Turkey. The Crimean Khanate ceased to exist in 1783, becoming part of the Russian Empire under the name Tauride Governorate (Tavrichesky Chersonesos). At that moment, there were about 1,530 mosques, dozens of madrassas and tekes on the peninsula.

At the end of the 18th century, Crimean Tatars made up the majority of the population of Crimea - 350–400 thousand people, but as a result of two migrations to Turkey in the 1790s (at least 100 thousand people) and 1850–60s. (up to 150 thousand) were a minority. The next waves of Tatar emigration to Turkey occurred in 1874–75; then - at the beginning of the 1890s (up to 18 thousand) and in 1902–03. In fact, by the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the Crimean Tatars found themselves outside their historical homeland.

After 1783, until the formation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Crimean Tatars were part of the Tauride province (divided into counties: Simferopol, Evpatorsky, Feodosia /Crimea proper/, Perekopsky /partially in Crimea/, Dnieper and Melitopol /territory of internal Ukraine/ - in the last three Tatars also lived in the districts - actually Nogais). In Crimea itself, at the beginning of the 20th century, Tatars lived compactly in the area: from Balaklava to Sudak and from Karasubazar (Belogorsk) to Yalta; on the Kerch and Tarkhankut Peninsulas; in the Evpatoria region; on the shore of Sivash Bay. The largest groups of Tatar townspeople were in Bakhchisarai (10 thousand people), Simferopol (7.9 thousand), Evpatoria (6.2 thousand), Karasubazar (6.2 thousand), Feodosia (2.6 thousand) and Kerch (2 thousand). Cultural centers The Tatars were Bakhchisarai and Karasubazar. By 1917, the number of mosques in Crimea had decreased to 729.

The Crimean Tatars consisted of three subethnic groups: steppe Tatars (Nogai Tatars), foothill Tatars (Tat, or Tatlar), south coast Tatars (Yali Boylyu); The group of Nogais (Nogai, Nogaylar) who mixed with the steppe Tatars stands out; sometimes the Central Crimean Tatars (Orta-Yulak) are distinguished. The difference between these groups was in ethnogenesis, and in dialect, and in traditional culture. In the places of deportation of the Crimean Tatars - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc. - this division has practically disappeared, and today the nation is quite consolidated.

In 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed as part of Soviet Russia. According to the 1939 census, the Crimean Tatars numbered 218.8 thousand people, or 19.4% of the population of the ASSR. In 1944, all Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea to Central Asia and Kazakhstan - 188.6, or 194.3, or 238.5 thousand people (according to various sources). Russians and Ukrainians moved to Crimea from various regions of the USSR, and all material and spiritual traces of the Tatar-Muslim civilization of Crimea were destroyed, even the fountains at the mosques. All materials about the culture of Crimean Muslims were removed from all reference books and encyclopedias.

Persecution of religion in Crimea, as throughout the USSR, began immediately after the revolution. Until 1931, 106 mosques were closed in the Crimean ASSR (Sevastopol, for example, was given to the Black Sea Fleet) and 2 Muslim prayer houses, of which 51 were immediately demolished. After 1931, a second anti-religious wave took place, as a result of which the most magnificent mosques of Bakhchisarai, Evpatoria, and Feodosia, Yalta, Simferopol, which were slowly destroyed or destroyed immediately. The German occupation of Crimea 1941–44 temporarily allowed the restoration of relative religious freedom. After the deportation of the Tatars in 1944, all the mosques that had survived by that time were handed over to the new authorities of Crimea, then most of them were destroyed. By the 1980s Not a single mosque has been preserved in satisfactory condition on the territory of Crimea.

The libraries of the Khan's palace and the oldest Zindzhirli madrasah in Bakhchisarai contained thousands of titles of handwritten books. All this was destroyed with the loss of Crimea's independence and began to revive at the end of the 19th century. In 1883–1914, Ismail Bey Gasprinsky, one of the outstanding Muslim leaders throughout the Russian Empire, published the first Crimean Tatar newspaper “Terdzhiman” in Bakhchisarai. In 1921–28, many books and other literature were published in this language (writing: Arabic before 1927, Latin in 1928–39 and from 1992, Cyrillic in 1939–92). After the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, all books in the Crimean Tatar language from libraries and private collections were destroyed. In 1990, the first Crimean Tatar library was opened in the center of Simferopol (in 1995 it acquired republican status). Now the library building is in need of reconstruction.

In 1954, according to the order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Crimean region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR (at the same time, the status of Sevastopol, which was a city of republican (RSFSR) subordination, remained “hanging in the air”). The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was restored after a referendum on its status in 1991 (from 1992 - the Republic of Crimea, later - the Autonomous Republic of Kazakhstan).

Since the 1960s, when it became clear that the leadership of the USSR would not return the Crimean Tatars to their homeland (unlike the deported and returned Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, etc.), new ones emerged in the ranks of the Crimean Tatar national movement , young leaders, among them Mustafa Cemil, who later became the head of the Organization of the Crimean Tatar National Movement (OKND). OKND was formed by 1989 on the basis of the “Central Initiative Group”, created in 1987 in Uzbekistan. Until the mid-1990s, when the return of the Tatars became an irreversible phenomenon, the authorities of the USSR, then independent Ukraine and Crimea, created all sorts of obstacles to the return of these people, right up to the bloody massacre in the summer-autumn of 1992 in the suburbs of Alushta, trying to turn the confrontation between the Tatars and the authorities Ministry of Internal Affairs in an interethnic war. Only the high level of organization of the Tatars and a clear system of government contributed then and now to the goals facing the nation - to survive and regain Crimea. By the mid-1990s. which existed in the late 1980s has lost its meaning. demarcation of the Tatar national movement (NDKT - conservative, loyal to the Soviet regime, led by Yu. Osmanov until his death in 1993, and radical OKND). The highest body of self-government of the Crimean Tatars is the Kurultai (“The First Kurultai” is read as held in 1917; the 2nd – in 1991; the 3rd Kurultai took place in 1996), which forms the Mejlis. The leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Cemil, was re-elected as Chairman of the Mejlis for the last time.

If in the spring of 1987 there were only 17.4 thousand Crimean Tatars in Crimea, and in July 1991 - 135 thousand, then in July 1993 there were already 270 thousand (according to other sources, only by 1996 the number of Tatars reached 250 thousand people; calculations by specialists indicate a number of 220 thousand Tatars by the beginning of 1997). Of these, 127 thousand remain citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Russia, since the government complicates the process of obtaining Ukrainian citizenship (according to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, 237 thousand Tatars were registered by 1996). “Commonwealth of NG” (ј6, 1998, p. 4) named a figure of 260 thousand - total Tatars living in Crimea, of which 94 thousand are citizens of Ukraine. Tatars return to the places of their birth and residence of their ancestors, although they are offered to settle exclusively in the steppe part of Crimea.

The strategic goal of the Mejlis is the transformation of Crimea into a national Crimean Tatar state. Currently, the relative number of Tatars is close to 10% of the total population of Crimea; in certain districts - Simferopol, Belogorsky, Bakhchisarai and Dzhankoy - their share reached 15–18%. The repatriation of the Tatars has somewhat rejuvenated the age structure of the Crimean population, especially noticeably in rural areas (the proportion of children under 15 years old, according to some data, is 32% among the Tatars). But this effect is limited in scope - due to the exhaustion of immigration potential (among the Tatars remaining in Central Asia, elderly people predominate), due to the highest infant mortality rate among the Tatars (fertility rate 8-14%%, and mortality rate - 13-18%). %), due to difficult social and living conditions, unemployment and degradation of the healthcare system.

About 250 thousand Crimean Tatars, according to the Mejlis, still live in the places where they were deported (experts are very critical of this information, casting great doubt on it; we can talk about no more than 180 thousand Tatars, of which 130 thousand . – in the republics of Central Asia, the rest – in Russia and Ukraine). In present-day Crimea, Tatars live compactly in more than 300 villages, towns and microdistricts, of which 90% are self-built buildings without electricity, etc. About 120 thousand Tatars do not have permanent housing. About 40 thousand Tatars are unemployed, and more than 30 thousand work outside their specialty. From 40 to 45% of adult Tatars cannot participate in elections, because do not have Ukrainian citizenship (all data needs to be carefully double-checked, since many of them do not coincide with each other).

According to the 1989 census, there were 271.7 thousand Crimean Tatars in the former USSR. Many Crimean Tatars then hid their true nationality; According to research calculations, we are talking about a figure of 350 thousand Crimean Tatars. According to the Mejlis, about 5 million “Crimean Turks” live in Turkey today - descendants of the Tatars evicted from Crimea in the 17th and 18th centuries. (R. Landa estimates the number of “Crimean Turks” at 2 million people, Damir Iskhakov – at 1 million, the researchers most critical of this problem (Starchenko) believe that the maximum number of “Crimean Turks” who have not completely assimilated does not exceed 50 thousand people.) In addition, the historical parts of the Crimean Tatar nation are the Budjak, or Dobruja Tatars, living in Romania (21 thousand, or 23–35 thousand - D. Iskhakov), Bulgaria (5, or 6 thousand) and in Turkey in the Bursa region. In addition to the Tatars of Crimea and Dobruja themselves, the third part of the nation formed in the former Crimean Khanate after the collapse of the Golden Horde were the Tatars of Kuban (modern. Krasnodar region Russia) – completely migrated to Turkey, either destroyed by Russian troops, or became part of the Nogais and Cossacks of the Kuban in the 17th–18th centuries.

According to the law of 1993, the Crimean Tatars received 14 seats (out of 98) in the Crimean parliament - the Supreme Council. However, the Mejlis sought a quota of 1/3 of all deputy mandates + 1 mandate - in order to block the adoption of laws that affected the interests of the Tatars. Until now, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars has not been recognized as a legitimate body by either the Crimean authorities or the Ukrainian authorities. The new Constitution of Crimea, adopted in November 1995, does not provide for a parliamentary quota for indigenous and deported peoples. The new Constitution of Ukraine, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in 1996, in the section “Autonomous Republic of Crimea”, also does not provide for the concepts of “indigenous” or “deported” peoples. The elections to the Crimean parliament that took place in the spring of 1998 did not give the Tatars a single seat (the only Crimean Tatar in the new Supreme Council was elected on the list of the Communist Party); 2 Crimean Tatars were elected to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine - according to the Rukh lists.

3. Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea

The first DUM in Crimea was formed under Tsar Alexander I in 1788 (Tauride DUM, with its center in Simferopol). In the 1920s The DUM was liquidated (in 1924 the Crimean Central Muslim People's Administration of Religious Affairs was created, headed by the Mufti, which soon disappeared). In 1941–44, during the occupation of Crimea by the Germans, they allowed the Tatars to regain their mosques (250 mosques were opened) and madrassas; “Muslim committees” were created, but the muftiate was not allowed to be restored. In 1991, the Kadiat (Spiritual Administration) of the Muslims of Crimea was formed, which had the status of a mukhtasibat within the DUMES. The first mufti of Crimea was Seid-Jalil Ibragimov (under him, in 1995, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate included 95 parishes; the most literate of his generation among the Crimean Tatars, he graduated from the Bukhara madrasah and the Islamic Institute in Tashkent); in 1995, Nuri Mustafayev became mufti, having more neutral relations than his predecessor with the chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Ukraine A. Tamim (the leader of the Habashists, not recognized by the Tatars of Ukraine, who has very good relations with the government of Ukraine and support from Caucasians, Lebanese and Palestinian Arabs, etc. . Shafi'is), and better relations with the Turks (but much less literate in the field of Islam).

Assistance to the Crimean Tatars in restoring their national culture and religion is provided by the government and private organizations of Turkey, and charitable organizations from Arab and Muslim countries. They finance the construction of mosques in new villages built by the Tatars. But the restoration of ancient mosques in the cities of Crimea, as well as assistance in the socio-economic development of the Crimean Tatars, requires more active participation of Islamic states.

Currently, 186 Muslim communities are registered in Crimea, there are 75 mosques (June 1998), most of which are adapted buildings. In December 1997, the Muslim community of Bakhchisarai, with the support of the Mejlis, occupied a mosque on the territory of the Khan's palace-museum.

4. Karaites

Karaites (Karai, Karaylar - from the Hebrew “readers”) are a Turkic people who speak a special Turkic language (Karaite language of the Kipchak subgroup, writing is Jewish), professing a special current of Judaism - Karaiteism, or Karaism, founded in the 8th century by the Mesopotamian Jew Ben- David. Karaites recognize the Old Testament (Torah and other books), but, unlike other Jews, they do not recognize the Talmud. Although there are more than 20 thousand Karaites all over the world - in Egypt (Cairo), Ethiopia, Turkey (Istanbul), Iran, and now mainly in Israel - the Crimean Karaites (and their descendants in Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia) are considered a special ethnic group, related to the Middle Eastern Karaites only by a single religion, but having a different origin and a different native language. According to the most common version of their origin, they are descendants of the Khazars (Crimea was part of the Khazar Kaganate), who professed Judaism. After the defeat of Khazaria in the 10th century, the bulk of the Khazars assimilated with other peoples (as Douglas Reed argues in his book “The Question of Zion” based on the works of some historians, such a large mass of people could not assimilate without leaving a trace; the descendants of the Khazars who adopted the languages of their neighbors, but those who did not change their religion, says D. Reed, are the Ashkenazi Jews of the countries of Eastern Europe: the Lithuanian-Polish state, the Russian Empire, Romania, etc.), while a smaller part, which apparently had differences from other Khazars, remained in Crimea and turned into Karaites. They lived in Crimea in the fortified cities of Chufut-Kale and Mangup-Kale, and occupied a very honorable position at the Khan’s court. At the end of the 14th century, part of the Karaites, together with a small horde of Crimean Tatars, went to Lithuania, to Grand Duke Vytautas, who settled them around the city of Trakai and guaranteed them freedom of religion and language (the descendants of those Tatars are modern Lithuanian Tatars, and the descendants of the Karaites are about 300 people – still live in Trakai, and they are the only ones who have preserved the Karaite language). Another group of Karaites then settled in Galicia and Volyn (the cities of Lutsk, Galich, Krasny Ostrov, etc. - modern western Ukraine).

The Trakai and Galich-Lutsk groups developed independently from the Crimean Karaites. When Crimea was annexed by Russia in 1783, the Turks wanted to evacuate the Karaites to Albania. However, Russian rulers, starting with Catherine II, treated them favorably (in contrast to their attitude towards Jews). The Karaites were the owners of tobacco and fruit plantations, salt mines (the Jews were small artisans and traders). In 1837, the Tauride Spiritual Administration of the Karaites was formed (by analogy with the Spiritual Administrations of Muslims); the residence of the gaham - the head of the Karaite clergy - was Evpatoria. During the revolution and civil war in Russia in 1918–20. The Karaites participated in it mainly on the side of the whites. After the revolution, all religious buildings of the Karaites (kenas) in Crimea were closed, including the central kenasa in Yevpatoria, in which a museum of atheism was established (until the 1940s, the only Karaite kenasa operated in Trakai, Lithuania). The national library, “karai bitikligi,” was destroyed. After the death of the last Gahan in the late 80s. no one was chosen in his place, and thus the religious institutions almost collapsed.

In 1897, the total number of Karaites in Russia was 12.9 thousand. There were 9 thousand Karaites within the borders of the USSR in 1926, and 5 thousand abroad (mainly Lithuania and Poland). In 1932 in the USSR - 10 thousand (mainly in Crimea), in Poland and Lithuania - about 2 thousand. Before the war, there were about 5 thousand Karaites in Crimea. During the war, the Germans did not persecute the Karaites (unlike the Jews), for which there was a special order from the German Ministry of Internal Affairs (1939) that the “racial psychology” of the Karaites was not Jewish (although the Karaites in Krasnodar and Novorossiysk were persecuted). Nevertheless, after the war, the process of migration of Karaites abroad, and above all to Israel, is gradually gaining momentum, and, most importantly, strong assimilation by Russians. In 1979, there were 3.3 thousand Karaites throughout the USSR, of which 1.15 thousand were in Crimea. In 1989 in the USSR - 2.6 thousand, of which in Ukraine - 1.4 thousand (including in Crimea - 0.9 thousand, as well as in Galicia, Volyn, Odessa), in Lithuania - 0 .3 thousand, in Russia – 0.7 thousand. In the 1990s. The national movement intensified, kenas were opened in Vilnius, Kharkov, and it is planned to open kenas in Evpatoria. However, a clear trend towards a decline in national self-awareness leaves little chance for this nation. With the exception of the Karaites of Lithuania, only the older generation knows the language.

Today there are no more than 0.8 thousand Karaites in Crimea, which is 0.03% of the population of Crimea. Using the status of the “indigenous people of Crimea” (along with the Crimean Tatars and Krymchaks), they had 1 seat (out of 98) in the parliament of the republic, according to the amendments to the Law “On Elections of the Supreme Council of Crimea”, adopted on 10/14/93 (new Constitution of Crimea 1995 and the new Constitution of Ukraine in 1996 deprives them of such a quota).

5. Krymchaks

Krymchaks (Crimean Jews) have lived in Crimea since the Middle Ages. They were distinguished from other groups of Jews (Ashkenazi and others) who appeared in Crimea much later - in the 18th and 19th centuries - by their spoken language (a special dialect of the Crimean Tatar language) and traditional way of life. In the 14th–16th centuries. their main center was the city of Kaffa (modern Feodosia), at the end of the 18th century. – Karasu-Bazar (modern Belogorsk), since the 1920s – Simferopol. In the 19th century, the Krymchaks were a small, poor community engaged in crafts, agriculture, gardening and viticulture, and trade. At the beginning of the 20th century. Crimeans also lived in Alushta, Yalta, Yevpatoria, Kerch, as well as outside Crimea - in Novorossiysk, Sukhumi, etc.

Representatives of the Krymchaks took part in the Zionist movement. In 1941–42 most of the Krymchaks died during German occupation Crimea. In the 1970s–90s. high level migration to Israel practically led to the disappearance of this people from Crimea and the countries of the former USSR. The number of Krymchaks in Crimea before the war was 7.5 thousand, in 1979 – 1.05 thousand, in 1989 – 679 people, in 1991 – 604 people. (or less than 0.02% of the modern population of Crimea). Currently, considered one of the “indigenous peoples of Crimea” (along with the Crimean Tatars and Karaites), they had 1 seat (out of 98) in the parliament of the republic, according to the amendments to the Law “On Elections of the Supreme Council of Crimea”, adopted on October 14, 1993 ( the new Constitution of Crimea of 1995 and the new Constitution of Ukraine of 1996 deprive them of such a quota).

6. Crimean Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks and Germans

In 1941, by order of the Soviet government, Germans were deported from Crimea to the eastern regions of the USSR - about 51 thousand people; in May 1944, after the liberation of Crimea from the Nazis, the Crimean Tatars and the remnants of the Crimean Germans (0.4 thousand) were deported; a month later, in June, the same fate befell the Greeks (14.7, or 15 thousand), Bulgarians (12.4 thousand) and Armenians (9.6, or 11 thousand), as well as foreign nationals living in Crimea: 3.5 thousand Greeks, 1.2 thousand Germans, Italians, Romanians, Turks, Iranians, etc.

Armenians have been known in Crimea since the 11th century. In the 11th–14th centuries. they migrated to the peninsula from Hamshen and Ani (Asia Minor), settling mainly in the cities of Kaffa (Feodosia), Solkhat (Old Crimea), Karasubazar (Belogorsk), Orabazar (Armensk). In the 14th–18th centuries. Armenians occupied the second largest number in Crimea after the Tatars. Subsequently, the colony was replenished with immigrants from Armenia, Turkey, and Russia. Since the 12th century, they built 13 monasteries and 51 churches in Crimea. In 1939, 13 thousand Armenians lived in Crimea (or 1.1% of the total population of the republic). After the deportation of 1944, Crimea began to be populated again by Armenians in the 1960s. – immigrants from Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Central Asia. In 1989, there were 2.8 thousand Armenians in Crimea (of which 1.3 thousand were city residents). Only a small part of them are descendants of those deported from Crimea after the war.

Bulgarians appeared in Crimea at the end of the 18th–19th centuries. in connection with Russian-Turkish wars. In 1939, 17.9 thousand Bulgarians (or 1.4%) lived in Crimea. Due to Bulgaria's performance during the 1941–45 war. On the side of Nazi Germany, all Bulgarians were deported from Crimea. Today, their repatriation is the least organized (compared to other nations).

The Greeks have lived in Crimea since ancient times, having numerous colonies here. The descendants of the ancient Greeks - immigrants from the Trebizond Empire - "Romeyus" with their native Crimean Tatar language and Modern Greek (Mariupol dialect) - who lived in the Bakhchisarai region, were mostly brought out in 1779 from Crimea to the northern coast of the Sea of Azov to the region of Mariupol (modern. Donetsk region of Ukraine). Settlers of modern times (17–19 centuries) - “Hellenes” with the Modern Greek (in the form of Dimotic) language and Pontians with the Pontic dialect of the Modern Greek language - settled in Kerch, Balaklava, Feodosia, Sevastopol, Simferopol, etc. In 1939, Greeks made up 1.8% of the republic's population (20.7 thousand). The deportation of 1944 left a very difficult psychological mark on the national consciousness of the Greeks; until now, many of them, when returning to the peninsula, prefer not to advertise their nationality (even after 1989, Greeks were practically not registered in Crimea); I have a strong desire to go to Greece. Among those returning to Crimea, a significant part are descendants of Pontian Greeks deported in 1944–49. from various regions of the North Caucasus; Likewise, Crimean Greeks settled in the North Caucasus.

The Germans began to populate Crimea since the time of Catherine II. This was the only one of the old-time groups of Crimea that mixed little with the Crimean Tatars and adopted almost nothing from the Tatars (neither in language nor in culture). On the contrary, already in the 20th century. German city dwellers in Simferopol, Yalta and others did not differ in their everyday life from Russians. In 1939, there were 51.3 thousand Germans in Crimea, or 4.6% of the republic's population. The bulk of them were evicted in 1941, a small part - in 1944.

Today, both the descendants of the Crimean Germans and the Germans of the Volga region and other areas are returning to Crimea (all the Germans of the European part of Russia and Ukraine were deported at the beginning of the war). When returning, they probably experience the least difficulties compared to other peoples. Neither the local population, nor the Crimean authorities, nor the Ukrainian authorities have anything against their return, and even, on the contrary, in every possible way invite the Germans to settle in Crimea (are they hoping for a financial flow from Germany?).

As of November 1, 1997, about 12 thousand Bulgarians, Armenians, Greeks and Germans returned to Crimea (“NG”, December 1997). All these groups, as descendants of “deported peoples,” each had 1 seat in the parliament of the republic out of 98, according to the amendments to the law “On elections to the Supreme Council of Crimea,” adopted on October 14, 1993 (the new Constitution of Crimea 1995 and the new Constitution of Ukraine 1996. do not provide for such quotas).

Ashkenazi Jews in the 1930s. had a Jewish National (Larindorf) district in Crimea; in addition, Jews lived in the Evpatoria, Simferopol, Dzhankoy and Freidorf (western Steppe Crimea) regions. The number of Jews in Crimea in 1926 - 40 thousand, 1937 - 55 thousand (5.5%), 1939 - 65.5 thousand, or 5.8% (including Crimeans), in 1989 - 17 thousand (0 .7%).

The most plausible version of the numerous sharp turns in the fate of Crimea is set out in “NG” on March 20, 1998 in an article by candidate of historical sciences, associate professor S.A. Usov “How Russia lost Crimea.” This article directly talks about the role of Jews in the sad fate of the Crimean Tatars, Germans and other problems. After the revolution of 1917 (the role of Jews in the revolution is known) and the civil war, about 2.5 million Jews remained on the territory of the USSR, i.e. half of their number in the collapsed Russian Empire. Most of them lived in Ukraine and Belarus.

In 1923, after the mass death of more than 100 thousand people in Crimea from the famine of 1921–22, the majority of whom were Crimean Tatars, the USSR and the USA almost simultaneously began to discuss the idea of creating Jewish national autonomy by relocating Jews from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia to lands in the Black Sea region. In the USA, this idea was promoted by the charitable Jewish organization “Joint”, and in the USSR by the elite circles of the capital’s intelligentsia, close to Maria Ulyanova and Nikolai Bukharin. In the fall of 1923, a report was submitted to the Politburo through Kamenev with a proposal to create state autonomy for Jews by 1927 within the regions of Odessa - Kherson - Northern Crimea - the Black Sea coast to Abkhazia, including Sochi.

Supporters of this secret project were Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov, Tsyurupa, Sosnovsky, Chicherin and others. Gradually, those discussing the project reduced the territory of the supposed Jewish autonomy (and in January 1924 already the Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, federated with Russia) to the size of the Northern Crimea. The “Crimean project” received wide support among Jewish financiers of the West, future US presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, leaders of the World Zionist Organization, and was included in the agenda of the Jewish Congress of America in Philadelphia. The US Congress, although it did not have diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, decided to finance the “Crimean Project” through the “Joint” organization. After this, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, based on Kalinin’s report, adopted a resolution on the possibility of organizing Jewish autonomy in Crimea. The resettlement of Jews to the Steppe Crimea began; the increased secrecy of the project was “exploded” by the chairman of the Ukrainian All-Russian Central Executive Committee Petrovsky, who gave an interview to Izvestia, after which the situation in Crimea sharply worsened. Unrest began among the Crimean Tatars and Germans; The Tatar intelligentsia, as a counterweight to Jewish autonomy, wanted to create a German one in the north of Crimea. At the beginning of 1928, Veli Ibraimov, the chairman of the Crimean Central Executive Committee, who actually led the sabotage of Moscow’s instructions to allocate land to Jews in the steppe part of Crimea, was arrested and three days later executed. After this, under the personal control of Menzhinsky, the GPU fabricated a closed trial “63”, according to which the flower of the Tatar national intelligentsia was sent to Solovki for resistance to the Jewish colonization of Crimea and shot there. The unrest of the Crimean Germans was harshly suppressed. In order to free up lands for the resettlement of Jews to Crimea, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR urgently approved a special law recognizing the North Crimean funds as lands of all-Union significance for the resettlement needs of the USSR; At the same time, about 20 thousand Crimean Tatars were deported to the Urals. Mass seizure of land for new settlers began. In total, 375 thousand hectares were confiscated - they planned to resettle 100 thousand Jews here and proclaim a republic.

On February 19, 1929, in an atmosphere of heightened secrecy, an agreement was concluded between the Joint and the USSR government on American financing of the Crimean Project, according to which the Joint allocated 900 thousand dollars a year for 10 years at 5% per annum. Repayment of the debt was to begin in 1945 and end in 1954. The USSR government undertook to issue bonds for the entire amount of the loan and transfer them to the Joint, and this organization distributed shares among wealthy American Jews - among them were Rockefeller,

Marshall, Roosevelt, Hoover, etc. In total, by 1936, the Joint transferred more than 20 million dollars to the Soviet side. By that time, Stalin had already pursued a policy of destroying his competitors - Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, etc. Soon Stalin decided to form two Jewish districts in Crimea (instead of an autonomous republic), and an autonomous region was created in Far East in Birobidzhan; Later, everyone who took part in the project of the Jewish Republic in Crimea was destroyed. Nevertheless, it was not for nothing that the Germans were deported from Crimea in 1941 - they were retaliated against for their anti-Jewish speeches. When Crimea was occupied by Nazi troops, resentment towards Moscow in the light of the “Crimean Project” was the main reason for the alliance of the Crimean Tatars with German fascists. With the outbreak of war with Hitler, Stalin was forced to reconsider his policy towards the Jews; The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) was created. In the USA, representatives of the JAC were reminded of the USSR’s obligations regarding the “Crimean Project” loan; a little later, the fulfillment of these obligations was the main condition for the extension of the Marshall Plan to the USSR. In 1944, Stalin was sent a petition from the leaders of the JAC to create a Jewish republic in Crimea, and now it was not only about the northern regions of Crimea, but about the entire peninsula. In May 1944, the Crimean Tatars, and a month later the Armenians, Bulgarians and Greeks were deported from Crimea.

The leaders of the JAC have already begun to distribute among themselves the highest positions in the future republic. However, a little later, the USSR supported the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Stalin again began to have fits of suspicion towards Jews, and a trial was launched against the leaders of the JAC; After Stalin's sudden death in 1953, this campaign ceased. Khrushchev’s decision to transfer Crimea to Ukraine was caused by the fact that the obligations to allocate land for the resettlement of Jews to Crimea under an agreement with the Joint were accepted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. Thus, the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was aimed at closing the issue of the obligation to the Zionist organizations of the United States to allocate land and create Jewish statehood in Crimea.

This story is indirectly mentioned by experts from the company “Applied Social Research” and the Center for Management Design S., Gradirovsky and A. Tupitsyn in the article “Diasporas in a Changing World” (“Commonwealth of NG”, $7, July 1998), saying: “at least two are known attempts to transform Crimea into the Jewish Autonomous Region in the 20s and late 40s. XX century."

Bibliography

1. Iskhakov D. Tatars. Naberezhnye Chelny, 1993.

2. Starchenkov G. Crimea. The vicissitudes of fate. // Asia and Africa today. $10–97.

3. Landa R. Islam in the history of Russia. M., 1995.

4. Polkanov Yu. Karai - Crimean Karaites-Turks. // “NG-Science”, 01/12/1998, p. 4.

5. Mikhailov S. Past and present of the Karaites. // Asia and Africa today. $10–97.

6. Ivanova Yu. Problems of interethnic relations in the Northern Azov region and Crimea: history and current state. RAS, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. M., 1995.

7. Usov S.A. How Russia lost Crimea. "NG", 03.20.98, p. 8.

8. Bakhrevsky E. et al. Bridgehead of fundamentalism? “Commonwealth of NG”, $6, 1998, p. 4.

10. Crimean Tatars: problems of repatriation. RAS, Institute of Oriental Studies, M., 1997.

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