Crimean Tatars From Mass Deportation to Hardships in Occupied Crimea

The article begins with a description of the deportation of Crimean Tatars. It provides a brief review of the German Occupation of Crimea, examines the negative images of Crimean Tatars published in Soviet newspapers between 1941-1943 and the explicit rationale given by the Soviet authorities for the deportation of Crimean Tatars, and reviews the mitigation of hostilities against Tatars in the years following the war. The article continues with accounts of the attempts to repatriate Crimean Tatars after 1989 and the discriminative policies against the returning people. The conclusion of the article describes current hardships experienced by Tatars in occupied Crimea. The last seventy years have presented Crimean Tatars with profound challenges and enormous hardship. They suffered greatly at the hands of the Soviet government during their deportation of 1944 and their return in the late 1980s, and they are being discriminated against by the Russian Government following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. After the Soviets recaptured Ukraine from the Wehrmacht in 1944, Crimean Tatars were deported to Central Asia based on accusations of willingly supporting the enemy, killing innocent Ukrainian civilians, and conspiring to establish a Crimean Tatar republic under German rule. The presentation of this group as traitors and enemies of the Soviet people was used as a foundation for discriminative policies during their return to Crimea. Now they are facing oppressive measures implemented by the Russian government in Crimea, which are being justified based on accusations of extremism and radicalism. In order to understand the structures and dynamics of the current identity-based conflict in Crimea that has led to the brutal oppression of Crimean Tatars after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, it is necessary to understand the political and social legacies of Stalinist repression, and the impact of that repression on the development of the systems of identity for Crimean Tatars and Russians over the last fifty years. The case study presented in this paper covers a vastly understudied area in the literature of Ukrainian studies, Russian studies, and genocide studies, which has theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of conflict and identity in post-Soviet Russia, and the on-going conflict in Ukraine. The analysis in this article represents a clear case of categorical violence. Johan Galtung developed the concepts of direct, cultural, and structural violence. 1 While direct violence describes open cases of aggression, structural violence is understood as injustice and exploitation built into a social system of inequalities, and cultural violence is based on the prevailing attitudes and beliefs in the society. This article shows that Crimean Tatars were victims of all three forms of violence described by Galtung. They were deported by the Stalinist regime, were harassed upon their return to Crimea in 1990s and brutally beaten and killed during the current occupation regime in Crimea. The political structures of Soviet Union and current Putin's Russia supported these aggressive policies, while a culture of paternalism and submission to power justified violent actions. This article states that the prevailing form of violence against Crimean Tatars was categorical violence. This violence is based on the social category (ethnic, religious, regional, national, gender, age, etc) that is ascribed to a particular group. It can be related to existing identities of this group, or it can be created by the authority or group in power. Because of belonging to a specific social category, a particular group can be denied some rights or access to resources and power (economic and political discrimination), to basic needs, including food (famine), territory (deportation), or right to exist (genocide). Members of a particular social group can experience exceptional hardship only because of their membership in this group that is perceived as treacherous, rebellious, or just secondary.