Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

Thedeportation of the Crimean Tatars(Crimean Tatar:Qırımtatar halqınıñ sürgünligi,Cyrillic: Къырымтатар халкъынынъ сюргюнлиги) or theSürgünlik('exile') was theethnic cleansingand thecultural genocideof at least 191,044Crimean Tatarsthat was carried out bySoviet Unionauthorities from 18 to 20 May 1944, supervised byLavrentiy Beria, chief of Sovietstate securityand thesecret police, andorderedby the Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin. Within those three days, theNKVDused cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, even SovietCommunist Partymembers andRed Armymembers, fromCrimeato theUzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of severalethnicitiesthat were subjected to Stalin's policy ofpopulation transfer in the Soviet Union.
The deportation began at aroundc.3:00 a.m., on the early morning hours of 18 May 1944, and lasted for 2-3 days. Estimates of Crimean Tatars who lived in Crimea prior to their deportation may possibly range from 191,044 to 423,100. At least 191,044Crimean Tatarswere deported to ruralSiberia,Kazakh SSR, andUzbek SSR(parts ofCentral Asia), under the pretext of being punished for their collaboration withAxis powersduring the occupation from 1941 to 44, although only 40,000 Crimean Tatars 
collaborated, and half of them who did collaborate with the Axis Powers themselves served in theRed Army. They were deported solely because they were strongly disliked by the Stalinist regime because of theirTatarorigin, their main worship ofIslam, and their access toTurkey. Due to the huge lack of food, water, proper hygiene, and supplies, about 8000 Crimean Tatars died from illness during the deportation, and a further several thousand died in exile in Central Asia, from the poor conditions and from a lack of food. The Stalinists' goal was to deport all of the Crimean Tatars, as quickly as possible, which was obviously successful. It is uncertain if any Crimean Tatars stayed behind and avoided deportation to Central Asia and hid somewhere and/or lived under a false identity, or if all of them faced deportation. It is generally speculated that not even a single Crimean Tatar stayed behind after the deportation. Estimates of those who stayed behind in Crimea may range from none to 222,056/57 people, depending on the source and the estimates of those who were deported. In Central Asia, Crimean Tatars continued to be mistreated and starved while in exile by the Stalinist regime. Despite the fact that some Crimean Tatars returned back to Crimea as early as 1955/56, when Soviet leaderNikita Khrushchevgave the "special permanent residential consent" to return to Crimea and reside there permanently, most of them were not allowed to return until November 1989, when Soviet policies considered the deportation and exile acrimeand relaxed enough for them to return.
Officially, the Soviet government presented the deportation as a policy ofcollective punishment, based on its claim that some Crimean Tatars collaborated withNazi Germanyin World War II,despite the fact that the 20,000 who collaborated with the Axis powers were half the 40,000 who served in the Soviet Red Army. Several modern scholars believe rather that the government deported them as a part of itsplan to gain accessto theDardanellesand acquire territory inTurkey, where the Turkic ethnic kin of the Tatars lived, or remove minorities from the Soviet Union's border regions. By the end of the deportation, not a single Crimean Tatar lived in Crimea, and 80,000 houses and 360,000 acres of land were left abandoned. Nearly 8,000 Crimean Tatars died during the deportation, and tens of thousands subsequently perished due to the harsh living conditions in which they were forced to live during their exile.After the deportation, the Soviet government launched an intensedetatarizationcampaign in an attempt to erase the remaining traces of Crimean Tatar existence.
In 1956, the new Soviet leaderNikita Khrushchevcondemned Stalin's policies, including the deportation of various ethnic groups, and he allowed most of these ethnic groups to return to their homelands, but he did not lift the directive that forbade the Crimean Tatars from returning. The Crimean Tatars remained inCentral Asiafor the next three decades, until theperestroikaera of the late 1980s, when 260,000 of them returned to Crimea, after 45 years in exile. On 14 November 1989, theSupreme Council of the Soviet Uniondeclared that the deportations had been a crime, and declared that the ban on their return to Crimea was officially null and void.
By 2004, the number of Crimean Tatars who had returned to Crimea had increased their share of the peninsula's population to 12 percent. The Soviet authorities had not assisted them during their return to Crimea nor had it compensated them for the land they lost in the deportation. The deportation and the subsequent assimilation efforts in Asia are crucial events in the history of the Crimean Tatars. Between 2015 and 2024, the deportation was formally recognised as a genocide by Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Canada, Poland, Estonia and the Czech Republic.
TheCrimean Tatarscontrolled theCrimean Khanatefrom 1441 to 1783, whenCrimeawasannexed by the Russian Empireas a target ofRussian expansion. By the 14th century, most of the Turkic-speaking population of Crimea had adoptedIslam, following the conversion ofOzbeg Khanof theGolden Horde. It was the longest surviving state of the Golden Horde.They often engagedin conflicts with Moscow—from 1468 until the 17th century, Crimean Tatars fought several wars with theTsardom of Russia. Thus, after the establishment of the Russian rule, Crimean Tatars began leaving Crimea in several waves of emigration. Between 1784 and 1790, out of a total population of about a million, around 300,000 Crimean Tatars left for theOttoman Empire.
TheCrimean Wartriggered another massexodusof Crimean Tatars. Between 1855 and 1866 at least 500,000 Muslims, and possibly up to 900,000, left theRussian Empireand emigrated to theOttoman Empire. Out of that number, at least one third were from Crimea, while the rest were from theCaucasus. These emigrants comprised 15–23 percent of the total population of Crimea. The Russian Empire used that fact as the ideological foundation to further Russify "New Russia".Eventually, the Crimean Tatars became a minority in Crimea; in 1783, they comprised 98 per cent of the population,but by 1897, this was down to 34.1 per cent.While Crimean Tatars were emigrating, the Russian government encouragedRussificationof the peninsula, populating it withRussians,Ukrainians, and otherSlavicethnic groups; this Russification continued during the Soviet era.
After the 1917October Revolution, Crimea received autonomous status inside theUSSRon 18 October 1921,butcollectivizationin the 1920s led to severe famine from which up to 100,000 Crimeans perished when their crops were transported to "more important" regions of the Soviet Union.By one estimate, three-quarters of the famine victims were Crimean Tatars.Their status deteriorated further afterJoseph Stalinbecame thede factoSoviet leader and implemented repressions that led to the deaths of at least 5.2 million Soviet citizens between 1927 and 1938.
In 1940, theCrimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republichad approximately 1,126,800 inhabitants, of which 218,000 people, or 19.4 percent of the population, were Crimean Tatars.In 1941,Nazi Germanyinvaded Eastern Europe, annexing much of the western USSR. Crimean Tatars initially viewed the Germans as liberators from Stalinism, and they had also been positively treated by the Germans inWorld War I.
Many of the captured Crimean Tatars serving in theRed Armywere sent to POW camps afterRomaniansand Nazis came tooccupythe bulk of Crimea. Though Nazis initially called for murder of all "Asiatic inferiors" and paraded around Crimean Tatar POW's labeled as "Mongol sub-humanity",they revised this policy in the face of determined resistance from the Red Army. Beginning in 1942, Germans recruited Soviet prisoners of war to form support armies.TheDobrujanTatar nationalistFazil UlkusalandLipka TatarEdige Kirimalhelped in freeing Crimean Tatars from Germanprisoner-of-war campsand enlisting them in the independent Crimean support legion for theWehrmacht. This legion eventually included eight battalions, although many members were of other nationalities.From November 1941, German authorities allowed Crimean Tatars to establish Muslim Committees in various towns as a symbolic recognition of some local government authority, though they were not given any political power.
Many Crimean Tatar communists strongly opposed the occupation and assisted theresistance movementto provide valuable strategic and political information.Other Crimean Tatars also fought on the side of the Soviet partisans, like the Tarhanov movement of 250 Crimean Tatars which fought throughout 1942 until its destruction.Six Crimean Tatars were even named theHeroes of the Soviet Union, and thousands more were awarded high honors in the Red Army.
Up to 130,000 people died during the Axis occupation of Crimea.The Nazis implemented a brutal repression, destroying more than 70 villages that were together home to about 25 per cent of the Crimean Tatar population. Thousands of Crimean Tatars were forcibly transferred to work asOstarbeiterin German factories under the supervision of theGestapoin what were described as "vast slave workshops", resulting in loss of all Crimean Tatar support.In April 1944 the Red Army managed to repel theAxis forcesfrom the peninsula in theCrimean Offensive.
A majority of thehiwis(helpers), their families and all those associated with the Muslim Committees were evacuated to Germany andHungaryor Dobruja by the Wehrmacht and Romanian Army where they joined the Eastern Turkic division. Thus, the majority of the collaborators had been evacuated from Crimea by the retreating Wehrmacht.Many Soviet officials had also recognized this and rejected claims that the Crimean Tatars had betrayed the Soviet Unionen masse. The presence of Muslim Committees organized from Berlin by various Turkic foreigners appeared a cause for concern in the eyes of the Soviet government, already wary of Turkey at the time.
Soviet publications blatantly falsified information about Crimean Tatars in the Red Army, going so far as to describe Crimean TatarHero of the Soviet UnionUzeir AbduramanovasAzeri, not Crimean Tatar, on the cover of a 1944 issue ofOgonyokmagazine- even though his family had been deported for being Crimean Tatar just a few months earlier.The bookIn the Mountains of Tavriafalsely claimed that volunteer partisan scoutBekir Osmanovwas a German spy and shot, although the central committee later acknowledged that he never served the Germans and survived the war, ordering later editions to have corrections after still-living Osmanov and his family noticed the obvious falsehood.Amet-khan Sultan, born to a Crimean Tatar mother andLakfather in Crimea, where he was born and raised, was often described as aDagestaniin post-deportation media, even though he always considered himself a Crimean Tatar.
The partisan movement in Crimea, spearheaded by A. V. Mokrousov, ultimately proved to be unsuccessful, primarily due to Mokrousov's inebriation and military ineptitude.In an attempt to rationalize their military shortcomings, the leadership of the partisan movement propagated allegations against the Crimean Tatars, claiming that they had largely defected to the German forces. This narrative served as a pretext forSoviet partisansto conduct raids on Crimean Tatar villages in search of provisions. During these incursions, partisans engaged in indiscriminate violence against civilians and appropriated food supplies, thereby exacerbating the plight of those who survived and leaving them vulnerable to starvation.
In response to these circumstances, the German authorities sanctioned the establishment of Crimean TatarSchumabattalions, tasked with defending their communities against such raids.It is noteworthy that the Crimean Tatars exhibited a form of military collaboration; they either actively resistedthe Red Armyor defended their villages from partisan attacks. This stands in contrast to the actions of the Russians in Crimea, who were implicated in the repression of civilians and participated in theHolocaust.The Russian historian I. A. Makhalova, an expert oncollaborationism during World War II, has commented on these dynamics:
In addition, Crimean Tatar victims of Nazi atrocities are widely ignored and even erased from the historical memory. For example, at the site of the December 1941 Nazi massacre in Simferopol, where bothJews,Krymchaks(Crimean Jews), andRomani Crimean Tatarswere exterminated by the Nazis, the monument to the victims of the massacre mentions only Jews and Krymchaks but completely omits any mention of the Romani Crimean Tatars who were killed in the exact same spot.Years after the Nazi massacre of Crimean Tatars in the village of Burlak-Toma who were accused of being "tatar-gypsies", the government refused to acknowledge that the victims were Crimean Tatars, despite strong protests from witnesses and surviving family members of the victims, who consistently gave sworn testimony that they were indeed Crimean Tatars.
Nikolai Bugayand his disciples, including A. M. Gonov, A. S. Khunagov, and others, have endeavored to provide a justification for the deportation of various ethnic groups within the USSR. In light of the inability to rely on discredited accusations that were repudiated by the KGB during the Perestroika period in the 1980s, these scholars resort to employing omissions, ambiguous insinuations, and conclusions that lack logical coherence with their initial premises. Furthermore, there are instances of document falsification that undermine the credibility of their arguments.
Officially due to thecollaborationwith theAxis powersduringWorld War II, the Soviet governmentcollectively punishedten ethnic minorities,among them the Crimean Tatars.Punishment included deportation to distant regions ofCentral AsiaandSiberia.Soviet accounts of the late 1940s indict the Crimean Tatars collectively as an ethnicity of traitors. Although the Crimean Tatars denied that they had committed universal treason, this idea persisted during the Soviet period and Russian scholarly and popular literature.
According to various estimates, around 20,000 Crimean Tatars volunteered to fight for Nazi Germany,as opposed to 40,000 who fought for the Red Army.On 10 May 1944,Lavrentiy Beriarecommended to Stalin that the Crimean Tatars should be deported away from the border regions due to their "traitorous actions".Stalin subsequently issuedGKO Order No. 5859ss, which envisaged the resettlement of the Crimean Tatars.The deportation lasted only three days,18–20 May 1944, during whichNKVDagents went house to house collecting Crimean Tatars at gunpoint and forcing them to enter sealed-offcattle trains that would transfer them almost 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi)to remote locations in theUzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. The Crimean Tatars were allowed to carry up to 500 kg (1,100 lb) of their property per family.The only ones who could avoid this fate were Crimean Tatar women who were married to men of non-punished ethnic groups.The exiled Crimean Tatars travelled in overcrowded wagons for several weeks and lacked food and water.It is estimated that at least 228,392 people were deported from Crimea, of which at least 191,044 were Crimean Tatarsin 47,000 families.Since 7,889 people perished in the long transit in sealed-off railcars, the NKVD registered the 183,155 living Crimean Tatars who arrived at their destinations in Central Asia.The majority of the deportees were rounded up from the Crimean countryside. Only 18,983 of the exiles were from Crimean cities.
On 4 July 1944, the NKVD officially informed Stalin that the resettlement was complete.However, not long after that report, the NKVD found out that one of its units had forgotten to deport people from theArabat Spit. Instead of preparing an additional transfer in trains, on 20 July the NKVD boarded hundreds of Crimean Tatars onto an old boat, took it to the middle of theAzov Sea, and sank the ship. Those who did not drown were finished off bymachine guns.
Officially, Crimean Tatars were eliminated from Crimea. The deportation encompassed every person considered by the government to be Crimean Tatar, including children, women, and the elderly, and even those who had been members of theCommunist Partyor theRed Army. As such, they were legally designated asspecial settlers, which meant that they were officially second-class citizens, prohibited from leaving the perimeter of their assigned area, attending prestigious universities, and had to regularly appear before the commandant's office.
During this mass eviction, the Soviet authorities confiscated around 80,000 houses, 500,000cattle, 360,000acresof land, and 40,000 tons of agricultural provisions.Besides 191,000 deported Crimean Tatars, the Soviet authorities also evicted 9,620Armenians, 12,420Bulgarians, and 15,040Greeksfrom the peninsula. All were collectively branded as traitors and became second-class citizens for decades in the USSR.1,119 Germans and 3,652 foreign citizens were also expelled.Among the deported, there were also 283 persons of other ethnicities:Italians, Romanians,Karaims,Kurds,Czechs,Hungarians, andCroats.During 1947 and 1948, a further 2,012 veteran returnees were deported from Crimea by the localMVD.
In total, 151,136 Crimean Tatars were deported to the Uzbek SSR; 8,597 to theMari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic; and 4,286 to theKazakh Soviet Socialist Republic; and the remaining 29,846 were sent to various remote regions of theRussian SFSR.When the Crimean Tatars arrived at their destination in the Uzbek SSR, they were met with hostility byUzbeklocals who threw stones at them, even their children, because they heard that the Crimean Tatars were "traitors" and "fascist collaborators."The Uzbeks objected to becoming the "dumping ground for treasonous nations." In the coming years, several assaults against the Crimean Tatars population were registered, some of which were fatal.
The mass Crimean deportations were organized by Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, and his subordinatesBogdan Kobulov,Ivan Serov, B. P. Obruchnikov, M.G. Svinelupov, and A. N. Apolonov. The field operations were conducted by G. P. Dobrynin, the Deputy Head of theGulagsystem; G. A. Bezhanov, the Colonel of State Security; I. I. Piiashev, Major General; S. A. Klepov, Commissar of State Security; I. S. Sheredega, Lt. General; B. I. Tekayev, Lt. Colonel of State Security; and two local leaders, P. M. Fokin, head of the Crimea NKGB, and V. T. Sergjenko, Lt. General.In order to execute this deportation, the NKVD secured 5,000 armed agents and theNKGBallocated a further 20,000 armed men, together with a few thousand regular soldiers.Two of Stalin's directives from May 1944 reveal that many parts of the Soviet government, from financing to transit, were involved in executing the operation.
On 14 July 1944 the GKO authorized the migration of 51,000 people, mostly Russians, to 17,000 emptycollective farmson Crimea. On 30 June 1945, theCrimean ASSRwas abolished.
Soviet propagandasought to hide the population transfer by claiming that the Crimean Tatars had "voluntarily resettle[d] to Central Asia".In essence, though, according to historianPaul Robert Magocsi, Crimea was "ethnically cleansed."After this act, the termCrimean Tatarwas banished from the Russian-Soviet lexicon, and all Crimean Tatartoponyms(names of towns, villages, and mountains) in Crimeawere changedto Russian names on all maps as part of a widedetatarization campaign. Muslim graveyards and religious objects in Crimea were demolished or converted into secular places.During Stalin's rule, nobody was allowed to mention that this ethnicity even existed in the USSR. This went so far that many individuals were even forbidden to declare themselves as Crimean Tatars during theSoviet censuses of 1959,1970, and 1979. They could only declare themselves as Tatars. This ban was lifted during theSoviet census of 1989.
The first deportees started arriving in the Uzbek SSR on 29 May 1944 and most had arrived by 8 June 1944.The consequentmortality rateremains disputed; the NKVD kept incomplete records of the death rate among the resettled ethnicities living in exile. Like the other deported peoples, the Crimean Tatars were placed under the regime ofspecial settlements. Many of those deported performedforced labor:their tasks included working incoal minesand construction battalions, under the supervision of the NKVD. Deserters were executed. Special settlers routinely worked eleven to twelve hours a day, seven days a week.Despite this difficult physical labor, the Crimean Tatars were given only around 200 grams (7.1 oz)to 400 grams (14 oz) of bread per day.Accommodations were insufficient; some were forced to live inmud hutswhere "there were no doors or windows, nothing, just reeds" on the floor to sleep on.
The sole transport to these remote areas andlabour colonieswas equally as strenuous. Theoretically, the NKVD loaded 50 people into each railroad car, together with their property. One witness claimed that 133 people were in her wagon.They had only one hole in the floor of the wagon which was used as a toilet. Some pregnant women were forced to give birth inside these sealed-off railroad cars.The conditions in the overcrowded train wagons were exacerbated by a lack ofhygiene, leading to cases oftyphus. Since the trains only stopped to open the doors at rare occasions during the trip, the sick inevitably contaminated others in the wagons. It was only when they arrived at their destination in the Uzbek SSR that the Crimean Tatars were released from the sealed-off railroad cars. Still, some were redirected to other destinations in Central Asia and had to continue their journey. Some witnesses claimed that they travelled for 24 consecutive days.During this whole time, they were given very little food or water while trapped inside.There was no fresh air since the doors and windows were bolted shut. InKazakh SSR, the transport guards unlocked the door only to toss out the corpses along the railroad. The Crimean Tatars thus called these railcars "crematoriaon wheels."The records show that at least 7,889 Crimean Tatars died during this long journey, amounting to about 4 per cent of their entire ethnicity.
The high mortality rate continued for several years in exile due tomalnutrition,labor exploitation, diseases, lack of medical care, and exposure to the harsh desert climate of Uzbekistan. The exiles were frequently assigned to the heaviest construction sites. The Uzbek medical facilities filled with Crimean Tatars who were susceptible to the local Asian diseases not found on the Crimean peninsula where the water was purer, includingyellow fever,dystrophy,malaria, and intestinal illness.The death toll was the highest during the first five years. In 1949 the Soviet authorities counted the population of the deported ethnic groups who lived in special settlements. According to their records, there were 44,887excess deathsin these five years, 19.6 per cent of that total group.Other sources give a figure of 44,125 deaths during that time,while a third source, using alternative NKVD archives, gives a figure of 32,107 deaths.These reports included all the people resettled from Crimea (including Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks), but the Crimean Tatars formed a majority in this group. It took five years until the number of births among the deported people started to surpass the number of deaths. Soviet archives reveal that between May 1944 and January 1945 a total of 13,592 Crimean Tatars perished in exile, about 7 per cent of their entire population.Almost half of all deaths (6,096) were of children under the age of 16; another 4,525 were adult women and 2,562 were adult men. During 1945, a further 13,183 people died.Thus, by the end of December 1945, at least 27,000 Crimean Tatars had already died in exile.One Crimean Tatar woman living near Tashkent recalled the events from 1944:
Estimates produced by Crimean Tatars indicate mortality figures that were far higher and amounted to 46% of their population living in exile.In 1968, whenLeonid Brezhnevpresided over the USSR, Crimean Tatar activists were persecuted for using that high mortality figure under the guise that it was a "slander to the USSR." In order to show that Crimean Tatars were exaggerating, the KGB published figures showing that "only" 22 per cent of that ethnic group died.The Karachay demographer Dalchat Ediev estimates that 34,300 Crimean Tatars died due to the deportation, representing an 18 per cent mortality rate.Hannibal Travis estimates that overall 40,000–80,000 Crimean Tatars died in exile.Professor Michael Rywkin gives a figure of at least 42,000 Crimean Tatars who died between 1944 and 1951, including 7,900 who died during the transitProfessorBrian Glyn Williamsgives a figure of between 40,000 and 44,000 deaths as a consequence of this deportation.The Crimean State Committee estimated that 45,000 Crimean Tatars died between 1944 and 1948. The official NKVD report estimated that 27 per cent of that ethnicity died.
Various estimates of the mortality rates of the Crimean Tatars:
Stalin's government denied the Crimean Tatars the right to education orpublicationin their native language. Despite the prohibition, and although they had to study in Russian orUzbek, they maintained their cultural identity. In 1956 the new Soviet leader,Nikita Khrushchev,held a speechin which he condemned Stalin's policies, including the mass deportations of various ethnicities. Still, even though many peoples were allowed to return to their homes, three groups were forced to stay in exile: theSoviet Germans, theMeskhetian Turks, and the Crimean Tatars.In 1954, Khrushchev allowed Crimea to be included in theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republicsince Crimea is linked by land to Ukraine and not with the Russian SFSR.On 28 April 1956, the directive "On Removing Restrictions on the Special Settlement of the Crimean Tatars... Relocated during the Great Patriotic War" was issued, ordering a de-registration of the deportees and their release from administrative supervision. However, various other restrictions were still kept and the Crimean Tatars were not allowed to return to Crimea. Moreover, that same year the Ukrainian Council of Ministers banned the exiled Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Germans, Armenians and Bulgarians from relocating even to theKherson,Zaporizhzhia,MykolaivandOdesa Oblastsin the Ukrainian SSR.The Crimean Tatars did not get any compensation for their lost property.
In the 1950s, the Crimean Tatars started actively advocating for the right to return. In 1957, they collected 6,000 signatures in a petition that was sent to theSupreme Soviet of the Soviet Unionthat demanded theirpolitical rehabilitationand return to Crimea.In 1961 25,000 signatures were collected in a petition that was sent to theKremlin.
Mustafa Dzhemilev, who was only six months old when his family was deported from Crimea, grew up in Uzbekistan and became an activist for the right of the Crimean Tatars to return. In 1966 he was arrested for the first time and spent a total of 17 years in prison during the Soviet era. This earned him the nickname of "Crimean TatarMandela."In 1984 he was sentenced for the sixth time for "anti-Soviet activity" but was given moral support by the Soviet dissidentAndrei Sakharov, who had observed Dzhemilev's fourth trial in 1976.When older dissidents were arrested, a new, younger generation emerged that would replace them.
On 21 July 1967, representatives of the Crimean Tatars, led by the dissidentAyshe Seitmuratova, gained permission to meet with high-ranking Soviet officials in Moscow, includingYuri Andropov. During the meeting, the Crimean Tatars demanded a correction of all the injustices of the USSR against their people. In September 1967, the Supreme Soviet issued a decree that acknowledged the charge of treason against the entire nation was "unreasonable" but that did not allow Crimean Tatars the same full rehabilitation encompassing the right of return that other deported peoples were given. The carefully worded decree referred to them not as "Crimean Tatars" but as "citizens of Tatar nationality who having formerly lived in Crimea […] have taken root in the Uzbek SSR", thereby minimizing Crimean Tatar existence and downplaying their desire for the right of return in addition to creating a premise for claims of the issue being "settled".Individuals united and formed groups that went back to Crimea in 1968 on their own, without state permission, but the Soviet authorities deported 6,000 of them once again.The most notable example of such resistance was a Crimean Tatar activist,Musa Mamut, who was deported when he was 12 and who returned to Crimea because he wanted to see his home again. When the police informed him that he would be evicted, he set himself on fire.Nevertheless, 577 families managed to obtain state permission to reside in Crimea.
In 1968 unrest erupted among the Crimean Tatar people in the Uzbek city ofChirchiq.In October 1973, the Jewish poet and professorIlya Gabaycommitted suicide by jumping off a building in Moscow. He was one of the significant Jewish dissidents in the USSR who fought for the rights of the oppressed peoples, especially Crimean Tatars. Gabay had been arrested and sent to alabour campbut still insisted on his cause because he was convinced that the treatment of the Crimean Tatars by the USSR amounted to genocide.In 1973, Dzhemilev was also arrested for his advocacy for Crimean Tatar right to return to Crimea.
Despitede-Stalinization, the situation didn't change untilGorbachev'sperestroikain the late 1980s. A 1987 Tatar protest near theKremlinprompted Gorbachev to form theGromyko Commissionwhich found against Tatar claims, but a second commission recommended "renewal of autonomy" for Crimean Tatars.In 1989 the ban on the return of deported ethnicities was declared officially null and void and theSupreme Soviet of the Soviet Unionfurther declared the deportations criminal,paving the way for the Crimean Tatars to return. Dzhemilev returned to Crimea that year, with at least 166,000 other Tatars doing the same by January 1992.The 1991 Russian lawOn the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoplesrehabilitatedall Soviet repressed ethnicities and abolished all previous Russian laws relating to the deportations, calling for the "restoration and return of the cultural and spiritual values and archives which represent the heritage of the repressed people."
By 2004 the Crimean Tatars formed 12 per cent of the population of Crimea.The return was fraught: withRussian nationalistprotests in Crimea and clashes between locals and Crimean Tatars nearYalta, which needed army intervention. Local Soviet authorities were reluctant to help returnees with jobs or housing,After thedissolution of the USSR, Crimea was part ofUkraine, butKyivgave limited support to Crimean Tatar settlers. Some 150,000 of the returnees were granted citizenship automatically under Ukraine'sCitizenship Lawof 1991, but 100,000 who returned afterUkraine declared independencefaced several obstacles including a costly bureaucratic process.
In March 2014, theannexation of Crimea by the Russian Federationunfolded, which was, in turn, declared illegal by theUnited Nations General Assembly(United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262) and which led to further deterioration of the rights of the Crimean Tatars. Even though theRussian Federationissued Decree No. 268 "On the Measures for the Rehabilitation of Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German Peoples and the State Support of Their Revival and Development" on 21 April 2014,in practice Russia has intensified persecution of Crimean Tatars and their human rights situation has significantly deteriorated.TheOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rightsissued a warning against the Kremlin in 2016 because it "intimidated, harassed and jailed Crimean Tatar representatives, often on dubious charges",while the representative body theMejlis of the Crimean Tatar Peoplewas banned.
The UN reported that of the over 10,000 people left Crimea after the annexation in 2014, most were Crimean Tatars,which caused a further decline of their fragile community. Crimean Tatars stated several reasons for their departure, among them insecurity, fear, and intimidation from the new Russian authorities.In its 2015 report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that varioushuman rights violationswere recorded in Crimea, including the prevention of Crimean Tatars from marking the 71st anniversary of their deportation.
HistorianEdward Allworthhas noted that the extent of marginalization of the Crimean Tatars was a distinct anomaly among national policy in the USSR given the party's firm commitment maintaining the status quo of not recognizing them as a distinct ethnic group in addition to assimilating and "rooting" them in exile, in sharp contrast to the rehabilitation other deported ethnic groups such as the Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, and Kalmyks experienced in the Khrushchev era.
Between 1989 and 1994, around a quarter of a million Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea from exile in Central Asia. This was seen as a symbolic victory of their efforts to return to their native land.They returned after 45 years of exile.
Not one of the several ethnic groups who were deported during Stalin's era received any kind of financial compensation.Some Crimean Tatar groups and activists have called for the international community to put pressure on the Russian Federation, thesuccessor stateof the USSR, to finance rehabilitation of that ethnicity and providefinancial compensationfor forcible resettlement.
Despite the thousands of Crimean Tatars in the Red Army when itattacked Berlin, the Crimean Tatars continued to be seen and treated as a fifth column for decades.Some historians explain this as part of Stalin's plan to take complete control of Crimea. The Sovietsought accessto theDardanellesand control of territory inTurkey, where the Crimean Tatars had ethnic kin. By painting the Crimean Tatars as traitors, this taint could be extended to their kin.ScholarWalter Kolarzalleges that the deportation and the attempt of liquidation of Crimean Tatars as an ethnicity in 1944 was just the final act of the centuries-long process of Russian colonization of Crimea that started in 1783.HistorianGregory Dufaudregards the Soviet accusations against Crimean Tatars as a convenient excuse for their forcible transfer through which Moscow secured an unrivalled access to the geostrategic southernBlack Seaon one hand and eliminated hypothetical rebellious nations at the same time.Professor of Russian and Soviet history Rebecca Manley similarly concluded that the real aim of the Soviet government was to "cleanse" the border regions of "unreliable elements".ProfessorBrian Glyn Williamsstates that the deportations ofMeskhetian Turks, despite never being close to the scene of combat and never being charged with any crime, lends the strongest credence to the fact that the deportations of Crimeans and Caucasians was due to Soviet foreign policy rather than any real "universal mass crimes".
Modern interpretations by scholars and historians sometimes classify this mass deportation of civilians as acrime against humanity,ethnic cleansing,depopulation,an act ofStalinist repression,or an "ethnocide", meaning a deliberate wiping out of an identity and culture of a nation.Crimean Tatars call this eventSürgünlik("exile").The perception of Crimean Tatars as "uncivilized" and deserving the deportation remains throughout the Russian and Ukrainian settlers in Crimea.
Some activists, politicians, scholars, countries, and historians go even further and consider the deportation a crime ofgenocideorcultural genocide.Norman Naimarkwrites "[t]he Chechens and Ingush, the Crimean Tatars, and other 'punished peoples' of the wartime period were, indeed, slated for elimination, if not physically, then as self-identifying nationalities."Professor Lyman H. Legters argued that the Soviet penal system, combined with its resettlement policies, should count as genocidal since the sentences were borne most heavily specifically on certain ethnic groups, and that a relocation of these ethnic groups, whose survival depends on ties to its particular homeland, "had a genocidal effect remediable only by restoration of the group to its homeland."Political scientist Stephen Blank described it both as a deportation and a genocide, a centuries-long Russian "technique of self-colonial rule intended to eliminate" minorities.Soviet dissidentsIlya GabayandPyotr Grigorenkoboth classified the event as a genocide. HistorianTimothy Snyderincluded it in a list of Soviet policies that “meet the standard of genocide."HistoriansAlexandre BennigsenandMarie Bennigsen-Broxupincluded the case of Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks as two examples of successful genocides by Soviet governments. They summed it up by saying that Crimean Tatars, "a nation which for over five centuries had played a major part in the history of Eastern Europe has simply ceased to exist".Polish scholarTomasz Kamusellaobserved that Moscow attempted an "unmaking of Crimean Tatars and their language" by not allowing them even to be registered as Crimean Tatars since the deportation; they could only declare themselves as Tatars. It wasn't until the 1989 census that Crimean Tatars were again recognized as a separate nationality. TheCrimean Tatar languagewas only allowed to be taught again in Soviet schools in the 1980s.
On 12 December 2015, theUkrainian Parliamentissued a resolution recognizing this event as genocide and established 18 May as the "Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Crimean Tatar genocide."Theparliament of Latviarecognized the event as an act of genocide on 9 May 2019.TheParliament of Lithuaniadid the same on 6 June 2019.The Canadian Parliament passed a motion on June 10, 2019, recognizing the Crimean Tatar deportation of 1944 (Sürgünlik) as a genocide perpetrated by Soviet dictator Stalin, designating May 18 to be a day of remembrance.On 26 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, under its chairmanBoris Yeltsin, passed the law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples with Article 2 denouncing all mass deportations as "Stalin's policy of defamation andgenocide."
A minority dispute defining the event as genocide. According to Alexander Statiev, theSoviet deportationsresulted in a "genocidaldeath rate", but Stalin did not havethe intentto exterminatethese peoples. He considers such deportations merely an example ofSoviet assimilationof "unwanted nations."According toAmir Weiner, the Soviet regime sought to eradicate "only" their "territorial identity".Such views were criticized by Jon Chang as "gentrifiedracism" andhistorical revisionism. He noted that the deportations had been in fact based on ethnicity of victims.
In 2008,Lily Hyde, a British journalist living in Ukraine, published a novel titledDreamlandthat revolves around a Crimean Tatar family return to their homeland in the 1990s. The story is told from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl who moves from Uzbekistan to a demolished village with her parents, brother, and grandfather. Her grandfather tells her stories about the heroes and victims among the Crimean Tatars.
The 2013 UkrainianCrimean Tatar-languagefilmHaytarmaportrays the experience of Crimean Tatar flying ace andHero of the Soviet UnionAmet-khan Sultanduring the 1944 deportations.
In 2015, Christina Paschyn released the documentary filmA Struggle for Home: The Crimean Tatarsin a Ukrainian–Qatari co-production. It depicts the history of the Crimean Tatars from 1783 up until 2014, with a special emphasis on the 1944 mass deportation.
Crimean Tatar singerJamalaentered theEurovision Song Contest 2016with her song "1944", which refers to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the eponymous year. Jamala, an ethnic Crimean Tatar born in exile inKyrgyzstan, dedicated the song to her deported great-grandmother. She became the first Crimean Tatar to perform at Eurovision and also the first to perform with a song with lyrics in the Crimean Tatar language. She went on to win the contest, becoming the second Ukrainian artist to win the event.