page_title: History of Crimea
section_title: Interbellum
hierarchical_section_title: History of Crimea / Soviet Union (1921–1991) / Interbellum
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of en:Europe political divisions in 1919 (after the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles and before the treaties of Trianon, Riga, Kars and the establishment of en:Soviet Union and the republics of Ireland and Turkey) published by London Geographical Institute. This uploaded map is a photoshopped version of the original image located at hipkiss.org. According to the site, there are no copyrights to this map.
context_page_description: The recorded history of the Crimean Peninsula, historically known as Tauris, Taurica, and the Tauric Chersonese, begins around the 5th century BC when several Greek colonies were established along its coast. The southern coast remained Greek in culture for almost two thousand years as part of the Roman Empire, and its successor states, the Byzantine Empire, the Empire of Trebizond, and the independent Principality of Theodoro. In the 13th century, some port cities were controlled by the Venetians and by the Genovese. The Crimean interior was much less stable, enduring a long series of conquests and invasions; by the early medieval period it had been settled by Scythians, Tauri, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Kipchaks and Khazars. In the medieval period, it was acquired partly by Kievan Rus', but fell to the Mongol invasions as part of the Golden Horde. They were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, which conquered the coastal areas as well, in the 15th to 18th centuries.
  In 1783, the Ottoman Empire was defeated by Catherine the Great. Crimea was traded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire as part of the Treaty provision.
context_section_description: On 18 October 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the Russian SFSR which, in turn, became part of the new Soviet Union. However, this did not protect the Crimean Tatars, who constituted about 25% of the Crimean population, from Joseph Stalin's repressions of the 1930s. The Greeks were another cultural group that suffered. Their lands were lost during the process of collectivisation, in which farmers were not compensated with wages. Schools which taught Greek were closed and Greek literature was destroyed, because the Soviets considered the Greeks as "counter-revolutionary" with their links to capitalist state Greece, and their independent culture.
  From 1923 until 1944 there was an effort to create Jewish settlements in Crimea. At one time, Vyacheslav Molotov suggested the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland.
  Crimea experienced two severe famines in the 20th century, the Famine of 1921–1922 and the Holodomor of 1932–1933. A large Slavic population influx occurred in the 1930s as a result of the Soviet policy of regional development. These demographic changes permanently altered the ethnic balance in the region.
caption: London Geographical Institute's 1919 map of Europe showing Crimea
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