PROBLEMS OF ETHNOCULTURAL SPACE OF THE AR OF CRIMEA IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ANNEXATION OF THE PENINSULA
Authors: Hazizova Olena 
Published: January 2019

The Crimean Tatar problem holds a leading position in the system of ethnocultural relations with the AR of Crimea. It is caused by a number of factors inherited from the past, as well as by the imperfection of the legislative basis of Ukraine, its ethnonational policy. Political and legal foundation, built during the years of independence, made it possible to combine the interests of all components of the Ukrainian political nation; however, it didn’t provide equal conditions for the ethnonational development and active participation in state-building processes of Crimean Tatars and national minorities. According to the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001, the ethnic composition of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is as follows: Ukrainians constitute 24.3%, Russians – 58.3%, Crimean Tatars – 12.0%, other nationalities – 5.4% (Belarusians – 1.4%, Tatars – 0,5%, etc.). Separate statistics regarding the city of Sevastopol indicated the prevalence of Russians (71.6%); almost the statistically average percentage of Ukrainians in Crimea (22.4%); and a small Crimean Tatar community (0.5%). During the years of independence, the national and cultural need of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars to study in their mother tongues was extremely poor. So, out of 583 schools that functioned in Crimea in 2014, only 7 were Ukrainian, and from 23.4% of ethnically Ukrainian schoolchildren only 0.7% were taught in the state language. In the 2013–14 academic year, 5551 Crimean Tatar children were educated in their native language; the national-cultural needs of the Crimean Tatars were not completelythis situation was the lack of qualified pedagogical staff, lack of textbooks, etc. After the annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian language, which the occupation government had recognized as one of the state languages, almost completely disappeared from the educational space of Crimea, with only 1 of 7 schools retaining Ukrainian-language instruction. Today, 15 general education establishments of the Republic of Crimea continue to provide their instruction in the Crimean Tatar language (201 classes, 3651 students). Long before the onset of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, challenges in the humanitarian field, in particular the tragedy of the Ukrainian language in the cultural and educational continuum of the peninsula, were in the sight of the Ukrainian humanities: lead scientists observed negative ethnocultural tendencies caused by the inaction of state authorities that reinforced the threat of disintegration and loss of state sovereignty. During the years of Ukrainian independence, Crimea hasn’t formed strong pro-Ukrainian electorate capable of defending state sovereignty. Taking into account the constant support of Russia by the Russian community of the peninsula, lobbying for the idea of the “Russian World” and “the originally Russian Crimea”, as well as the lame state support of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar communities, which would be able to withstand the separatist threats, the ideological war in Crimea had been lost even before 2014, which became one of the reasons for the annexation of the peninsula.