‘Phantom Limb’: Russian Settler Colonialism in the Post-Soviet Crimea (1991-1997)
Journal: Scholarship@Western (Western University)
Year: 2020

Where does the myth that ‘Crimea has always been Russia’ come from? How did the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union ‘make’ Crimea Russian? This dissertation shows how the they applied settler colonial practices to Crimea, displacing the indigenous population and repopulating the peninsula with loyal settlers and how Crimean settler colonial structures survived the fall of the Soviet Union. It argues that this process defines post-Soviet history of the peninsula.\nFor centuries Crimean existed wi