Crimean Tatars are an Eastern European Turkic people who historically formed on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. Belongs to the Turkic group of the Altaic language family.
The national flag of the Crimean Tatars is a cloth blue color with a yellow emblem in the upper left corner. This flag was first adopted at the national congress of the Crimean Tatars in 1917, shortly after the Federal Revolution in Russia.
Crimean Tatar activists will gather on September 20 or 21, 2015 to completely close the temporarily occupied peninsula. This was stated on September 14 by people's deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction, chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Refat Chubarov during a meeting of the parliamentary Conciliation Council.
The leadership of the Turkish Republic does not recognize and does not recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and will do everything possible to protect the indigenous population of the peninsula - the Crimean Tatars, reports the press service of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people.
In his greeting to the participants of the II World Congress of Crimean Tatars, which takes place in (Turkey) on August 1-2, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also stated that the safety of the Crimean Tatars in their homeland is a top priority for Turkey.
International reaction to the referendum and annexation of Crimea.
The United Nations Security Council stated that it considers the referendum held in Crimea to be legitimate.
Aziz Abdullayev, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea;
Ilmi Umerov, head of the Bakhchisarai district state administration;
Fevzi Yakubov, rector of KIPU;
Lilya Budzhurova, journalist;
Akhtem Chiygoz, Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis;
Enver Abduraimov, businessman;
Nadir Bekirov, lawyer;
Server Saliev, Chairman of the Committee on Nationalities Affairs of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea;
Shevket Kaibullayev, head of the information policy department of the Mejlis;
Eldar Seitbekirov, Chief Editor weekly "Voice of Crimea";
Enver Izmailov, musician;
Seyran Osmanov, Honorary Consul of the Turkish Republic;
Safure Kajametova, head of the association of Crimean Tatar educators “Maarifchi”;
Ayder Emirov, director of the library named after. I. Gasprinsky;
On VK.com, groups of Crimean Tatars have many subscribers:
153 groups found in Odnoklassniki:
Many groups were also found in:
The question of where the Tatars came from in Crimea has, until recently, caused a lot of controversy. Some believed that the Crimean Tatars were the heirs of the Golden Horde nomads, others called them the original inhabitants of Taurida.
Invasion
In the margins of a Greek handwritten book of religious content (synaxarion) found in Sudak, the following note was made: “On this day (January 27) the Tatars came for the first time, in 6731” (6731 from the Creation of the World corresponds to 1223 AD). Details of the Tatar raid can be read from the Arab writer Ibn al-Athir: “Having come to Sudak, the Tatars took possession of it, and the inhabitants scattered, some of them with their families and their property climbed the mountains, and some went to the sea.”
The Flemish Franciscan monk William de Rubruck, who visited southern Taurica in 1253, left us with terrible details of this invasion: “And when the Tatars came, the Comans (Cumans), who all fled to the seashore, entered this land in such huge numbers that they they devoured each other mutually, the living dead, as a certain merchant who saw this told me; the living devoured and tore with their teeth the raw meat of the dead, like dogs - corpses.”
The devastating invasion of the Golden Horde nomads, without a doubt, radically updated the ethnic composition of the population of the peninsula. However, it is premature to assert that the Turks became the main ancestors of the modern Crimean Tatar ethnic group. Since ancient times, Tavrika has been inhabited by dozens of tribes and peoples, who, thanks to the isolation of the peninsula, actively mixed and wove a motley multinational pattern. It’s not for nothing that Crimea is called the “concentrated Mediterranean”.
Crimean aborigines
The Crimean peninsula has never been empty. During wars, invasions, epidemics or great exoduses, its population did not disappear completely. Until the Tatar invasion, the lands of Crimea were inhabited by Greeks, Romans, Armenians, Goths, Sarmatians, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians, and Genoese. One wave of immigrants replaced another, to varying degrees, inheriting a multiethnic code, which ultimately found expression in the genotype of modern “Crimeans”.
From the 6th century BC. e. to 1st century AD e. The Tauri were the rightful masters of the southeastern coast of the Crimean Peninsula. Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria noted: “The Tauri live by robbery and war.” Even earlier, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus described the custom of the Tauri, in which they “sacrificed to the Virgin shipwrecked sailors and all Hellenes who were captured on the open sea.” How can one not remember that after many centuries, robbery and war will become constant companions of the “Crimeans” (as the Crimean Tatars were called in the Russian Empire), and pagan sacrifices, according to the spirit of the times, will turn into slave trade.
In the 19th century, Crimean explorer Peter Keppen expressed the idea that “in the veins of all inhabitants of territories rich in dolmen finds” the blood of the Taurians flows. His hypothesis was that “the Taurians, being heavily overpopulated by Tatars in the Middle Ages, remained to live in their old places, but under a different name and gradually switched to the Tatar language, borrowing the Muslim faith.” At the same time, Koeppen drew attention to the fact that the Tatars of the South Coast are of the Greek type, while the mountain Tatars are close to the Indo-European type.
At the beginning of our era, the Tauri were assimilated by the Iranian-speaking Scythian tribes, who subjugated almost the entire peninsula. Although the latter soon disappeared from the historical scene, they could well have left their genetic trace in the later Crimean ethnos. An unnamed author of the 16th century, who knew the population of Crimea of his time well, reports: “Although we consider the Tatars to be barbarians and poor people, they are proud of the abstinence of their lives and the antiquity of their Scythian origin.”
Modern scientists admit the idea that the Tauri and Scythians were not completely destroyed by the Huns who invaded the Crimean Peninsula, but concentrated in the mountains and had a noticeable influence on later settlers.
Of the subsequent inhabitants of Crimea, a special place is given to the Goths, who in the 3rd century, having swept through the north-western Crimea with a crushing wave, remained there for many centuries. The Russian scientist Stanislav Sestrenevich-Bogush noted that at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, the Goths living near Mangup still retained their genotype, and their Tatar language was similar to South German. The scientist added that “they are all Muslims and Tatarized.”
Linguists note a number of Gothic words included in the Crimean Tatar language. They also confidently declare the Gothic contribution, albeit relatively small, to the Crimean Tatar gene pool. “Gothia faded away, but its inhabitants disappeared without a trace into the mass of the emerging Tatar nation,” noted Russian ethnographer Alexei Kharuzin.
Aliens from Asia
In 1233, the Golden Horde established their governorship in Sudak, liberated from the Seljuks. This year became the generally recognized starting point of the ethnic history of the Crimean Tatars. In the second half of the 13th century, the Tatars became the masters of the Genoese trading post Solkhata-Solkata (now Old Crimea) and in a short time subjugated almost the entire peninsula. However, this did not prevent the Horde from intermarrying with the local, primarily Italian-Greek population, and even adopting their language and culture.
The question to what extent modern Crimean Tatars can be considered the heirs of the Horde conquerors, and to what extent to have autochthonous or other origins, is still relevant. Thus, the St. Petersburg historian Valery Vozgrin, as well as some representatives of the “Majlis” (parliament of the Crimean Tatars) are trying to establish the opinion that the Tatars are predominantly autochthonous in Crimea, but most scientists do not agree with this.
Even in the Middle Ages, travelers and diplomats considered the Tatars “aliens from the depths of Asia.” In particular, the Russian steward Andrei Lyzlov in his “Scythian History” (1692) wrote that the Tatars, who “are all countries near the Don, and the Meotian (Azov) Sea, and Taurica of Kherson (Crimea) around the Pontus Euxine (Black Sea) "obladasha and satosha" were newcomers.
During the rise of the national liberation movement in 1917, the Tatar press called for relying on the “state wisdom of the Mongol-Tatars, which runs like a red thread through their entire history,” and also with honor to hold “the emblem of the Tatars - the blue banner of Genghis” (“kok- Bayrak" is the national flag of the Tatars living in Crimea).
Speaking in 1993 in Simferopol at the “kurultai”, the eminent descendant of the Girey khans, Dzhezar-Girey, who arrived from London, stated that “we are the sons of the Golden Horde,” emphasizing in every possible way the continuity of the Tatars “from the Great Father, Mr. Genghis Khan, through his grandson Batu and eldest son of Juche."
However, such statements do not quite fit into the ethnic picture of Crimea that was observed before the peninsula was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1782. At that time, among the “Crimeans” two subethnic groups were quite clearly distinguished: narrow-eyed Tatars - a pronounced Mongoloid type of inhabitants of steppe villages and mountain Tatars - characterized by a Caucasoid body structure and facial features: tall, often fair-haired and blue-eyed people who spoke a language other than the steppe, language.
What ethnography says
Before the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, ethnographers drew attention to the fact that these people, albeit to varying degrees, bear the mark of many genotypes that have ever lived on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. Scientists have identified three main ethnographic groups.
“Steppe people” (“Nogai”, “Nogai”) are the descendants of nomadic tribes that were part of the Golden Horde. Back in the 17th century, the Nogais roamed the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region from Moldova to the North Caucasus, but later, mostly forcibly, they were resettled by the Crimean khans to the steppe regions of the peninsula. The Western Kipchaks (Cumans) played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Nogais. The race of the Nogai is Caucasian with an admixture of Mongoloidity.
“South Coast Tatars” (“yalyboylu”), mostly from Asia Minor, were formed on the basis of several migration waves from Central Anatolia. The ethnogenesis of this group was largely provided by the Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians; Italian (Genoese) blood was traced in the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast. Although most of the Yalyboylu are Muslims, some of them for a long time retained elements of Christian rituals.
“Highlanders” (“Tats”) - lived in the mountains and foothills of the central Crimea (between the steppe people and the southern coast dwellers). The ethnogenesis of the Tats is complex and not fully understood. According to scientists, the majority of the nationalities inhabiting Crimea took part in the formation of this subethnic group.
All three Crimean Tatar subethnic groups differed in their culture, economy, dialects, anthropology, but, nevertheless, they always felt themselves to be part of a single people.
A word for geneticists
More recently, scientists decided to clarify a difficult question: Where to look for the genetic roots of the Crimean Tatar people? The study of the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was carried out under the auspices of the largest international project"Genographic".
One of the tasks of geneticists was to discover evidence of the existence of an “extraterritorial” population group that could determine the common origin of the Crimean, Volga and Siberian Tatars. The research tool was the Y chromosome, which is convenient in that it is transmitted only along one line - from father to son, and does not “mix” with genetic variants that came from other ancestors.
The genetic portraits of the three groups turned out to be dissimilar to each other; in other words, the search for common ancestors for all Tatars was unsuccessful. Thus, the Volga Tatars are dominated by haplogroups common in Eastern Europe and the Urals, while the Siberian Tatars are characterized by “Pan-Eurasian” haplogroups.
DNA analysis of the Crimean Tatars shows a high proportion of southern – “Mediterranean” haplogroups and only a small admixture (about 10%) of “Nast Asian” lines. This means that the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was primarily replenished by immigrants from Asia Minor and the Balkans, and to a much lesser extent by nomads from the steppe strip of Eurasia.
At the same time, an uneven distribution of the main markers in the gene pools of different subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars was revealed: the maximum contribution of the “eastern” component was noted in the northernmost steppe group, while in the other two (mountain and southern coastal) the “southern” genetic component dominates. It is curious that scientists have not found any similarity in the gene pool of the peoples of Crimea with their geographical neighbors - Russians and Ukrainians.
The Polovtsy - the ancestors of the modern Tatars - are a nomadic people who came to Rus' from the Baikal steppes from Central and Central Asia. They first began to appear at the Russian borders in 1055 and until 1239 they did not have any “own” land, since they lived off robberies and robberies, engaging in cattle breeding and horse stealing, like the gypsies. And when their cattle ate up all the grass in the steppes of Romania, Hungary and Lithuania, they moved to the steppes of Tavria. Fortunately, the grass there was noble: they could cover a horse and rider, not like in Lithuania or Poland, for example. They came and, due to their inability to plow and build, began to engage in raids on trade caravans, and to destroy and plunder peasant kurens and farms, and engage in the slave trade: driving girls, Slavic beauties, to Persia to replenish the harems of the Turkish and Iranian shahs. And when the Mongols went to Rus', they joined them. And together with them they joyfully plundered and burned the Russian land. Until they began to receive resistance from the Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks.
For the first time, the ethnonym “Tatars” appeared among the Turkic tribes that wandered in the 6th-9th centuries to the southeast of Lake Baikal.
Even the word Crimea did not exist in those days. There was Tavria.
The Tatars called this land Crimea already in 1239, when they came with the Mongol army of Khan Batu and formed the Crimean ulus of the Golden Horde. And in 200 s extra years During the occupation of the lands of Tavria by the Mongol-Tatars, and then by the Turks, this name was fixed and became used by the majority of invaders living there.
And already from the second half of the 13th century. the name Tavria completely disappears from the name of the peninsula.
And all the stories of the Crimean Tatars about “The centuries-old history of the already established national economy, culture, language and statehood with the capital “original Tatar” cities of Solkhat and Bakhchisarai” are nothing more than complete nonsense invented by them themselves!
Because the “ancient” “Tatar” city of Solkhat appeared in Crimea in the 40s-80s of the 13th century, i.e. in the interval from 1240 to 1280. i.e. with the invasion of Rus' by the Golden Horde. And it was built not in the bare steppe, but on the ruins of Christian and Jewish villages destroyed by the Mongols and Tatars. The village became the administrative center of the Crimean ulus of the Golden Horde. Later, a large group of Asia Minor Turks, who came with Izzaiddin Keykavus, settled in Solkhat. It was then that they, and not even the Tatars, built the first mosque in that city. In 1443, the Tatars proclaimed Hadji Giray as their Crimean Khan, but they miscalculated, because he, having concluded an alliance with the Turks in 1454, subjugated the Tatar Crimean Khanate to the Ottoman Empire.
Well, the “ancient Tatar” city of Bakhchisarai is even cooler. It was founded in 1532 and not even by the Tatars, but already in the era of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire on the territory of three settlements:
1. The ancient small town of Chufut-Kale - founded by Jews and Alans (Ossetians), which supposedly arose in V-VI centuries as a fortified settlement on the border of Byzantine possessions. By the way: from the Crimean Tatar Chufut-Kale is translated as “Jewish fortress”.
It was renamed by the Tatars to Kyrk-Er, translated: “forty fortifications,” during the time of the same Ottoman Empire.
2. Salachik. It was founded at the end of the 6th century AD. e. by Byzantine Christians as a military fortification on the border of its possessions and existed almost until the end of the 13th century. Until in 1239 the local people - the Kipchaks and Alans - were defeated and expelled from the city by the Mongol army of Jochi, the son of Genghis Khan. At the same time, the entire Tavria peninsula came under the control of the new administration. Along with numerous Mongols, masses of Turks conquered by the Mongols, as well as Tatars close to them in language and culture, also arrived on the peninsula. It was during this period of time that the formation of a new “indigenous” local Crimean Turkic-speaking ethnic group – the Crimean Tatars – began on the peninsula. Salachik was turned by the Tatars into the capital of the Crimean ulus of the Golden Horde, until it was transferred directly to Bakhchisarai in the 15th century.
3. Eski-Yurt was not founded by the Tatars, but by Central Asian Arab pilgrims who venerated the ashes of Aziz Malik-Ashter and spread Islam.
And the problem was not at all that the Tatars and Turks settled that Crimea. It was that this was not enough for them. Yes, and Russia would not care at all what kind of peoples settled in Crimea. If only... they would plow their Crimea there and sow. So no. They just didn’t fit in Crimea. In the second half of the 16th century alone, the Tatars carried out 48 devastating raids on the southern regions of Russia, and in the first half of the 17th century, more than 200 thousand Russian captives were driven into slavery for work. And Catherine II put an end to this Tatar banditry in 1771, defeating the 100,000-strong Turkish-Tatar army.
By the way, her parting words before the campaign to the Crimea to General Peter Panin dated April 2, 1770, in which the Russian Empress spoke out regarding the fate of the Tatar peoples, have been preserved: “We have absolutely no intention of having this peninsula and the Tatar hordes, which belong to it in Our citizenship, but it is desirable only , so that they break away from Turkish citizenship and remain forever independent. It is entrusted to you, continuing the deportation and negotiations begun with the Tatars, to persuade them not to Our citizenship, but only to independence and resigning from Turkish power, solemnly promising them our guarantee, protection and defense.”
Here's how. I decided to separate the Tatars from the Turks. That is, make them independent!
Khan Selim Giray III was defeated by the Russians and fled to Istanbul.
And on August 1, 1772, Catherine II recognized with a state charter “the Khan of Crimea as an independent ruler, and the Tatar region in equal dignity with other similar free regions and under their own government.” In November of the same year, in Karasubazar, Sahib Giray with “plenipotentiaries from the Tatar people”, Prince Dolgorukov and Lieutenant General E. Shcherbinin signed a peace and union treaty, ratified on January 29, 1773 by Catherine II, according to which Crimea was declared an independent khanate under the patronage of Russia, to which the Black Sea ports of Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn passed.
According to the Decree of Catherine II of February 22 (March 4), 1784, the Tatars were granted all the rights and benefits of the Russian nobility. The inviolability of religion was guaranteed, mullahs and other representatives of the Muslim clergy were exempt from paying taxes. Crimean Tatars were even exempted from military service...
Well, how did the Crimean Tatars repay Russia for this great mercy? But their same “great” betrayal. An opportunity arose in 1853, when they quietly and without a fight surrendered Crimea and swore allegiance to the descendant of the Girey family of Seit-Ibrahim Pasha, Wilhelm of Tokar, who, having appropriated Crimea, announced that from now on the peninsula became free and independent, but why - already under the auspices of France. But only the peaceful Christians who previously lived in Evpatoria together with the Tatars did not become free, because the Tatars were mercilessly killed in the most brutal way, and their churches were barbarically destroyed.
And again, the same imperialist Russia, the “prison of nations,” as the Bolsheviks later called it, smashed into Once again Ottoman Empire and having driven the Turks out of Crimea, he treats the Tatars tenderly and kindly - leaving everyone who agreed to live according to the laws of Russia in their homes and on their lands. But this time he doesn’t promise them any independence. And he decides that if the Tatars cannot (or themselves do not want) to be independent, then let them at least not be among the enemies of Russia. And annexes Crimea. Did this make the Tatars worse? Judge for yourself.
Both under the Russian tsars and under the Bolsheviks, the Tatars always had a good life. At least not worse than the Russians. From the very moment of the formation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the RSFSR in 1921 and until the war with Nazi Germany in 1941, no one in the USSR infringed on any rights of the Crimean Tatars. And even official and EQUIVALENT STATE LANGUAGES in Crimean ASSR during the totalitarian USSR there were Russian and Tatar!
And Stalin, not at all because he didn’t like the Tatars, decided to deport them in 1944. And exclusively - after their next betrayal of Russia and massive collaboration with the fascists was revealed and proven.
We read from the memorandum of the deputy. People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR B.Z. Kobulova and deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR I.A. Serov addressed to L.P. Beria, dated April 22, 1944 in Crimea: “... All those drafted into the Red Army amounted to 90 thousand people, including 20 thousand Crimean Tatars... 20 thousand Crimean Tatars deserted in 1941 from 51- th army during the retreat from Crimea...” The desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the Red Army was almost universal. And this is confirmed by data for individual settlements.
And here are the facts from the certificate of the German High Command ground forces dated March 20, 1942: “The Tatars are in a good mood. German superiors are treated with obedience and are proud if they are recognized in the service or outside. Their greatest pride is to have the right to wear German uniforms. Many times they expressed the desire to have a Russian-German dictionary. You can notice the joy they experience if they are able to answer a German in German... In addition to serving in volunteer detachments and punitive forces of the enemy, self-defense units were created in Tatar villages located in the mountainous forest part of Crimea, in which Tatars were members, residents of these villages. They received weapons and took an active part in punitive expeditions against the partisans.”
And, if you think about it, Stalin’s treatment of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 was not so cruel: he exiled them, but not even to the Gulag, but only to a settlement beyond the Urals, to the Kazakh steppes. This is where practically their ancestors came to Rus' from. But he could have shot everyone according to martial law. Moreover, unlike the Tatars, with Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc. he wasn't so blatant.
Just think: the Indians in America were conquered by the Americans and they even drove them like cattle into reservations, and even they were in the war with the Nazis of 1941-1945. entire rifle battalions fought in the ranks of the American and Canadian armies, and none of them deserted. Michael Delisle from the Mohawk Indian tribe in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec took part in the landing of American troops in Normandy, received a Bronze Star from the US government, and in Canada many years later - the Order of the Legion of Honor. As The Canadian Press wrote, he was the first to enter concentration camp Dachau. Well, why, tell me, even the oppressed Indians, unlike the Crimean Tatars, did not fight on the side of the Nazis and betray their Motherland?
Not at all an example of equals among equals, the Tatars who were offended by Russians and Stalin.
However, today you cannot envy the Crimean Tatars.
Ukraine did not accept succession from Russia regarding the territory of Crimea and the peoples living on it. And that is why on the Crimean Peninsula, which belongs to Ukraine, which is independent from Russia and the Crimean Tatars, the Tatar language is not the second state language. In addition, since Ukraine did not deport the Tatars in 1944, it therefore does not consider itself obligated to return the fathers and grandfathers of the deported Tatars to the lands.
And in general: only the one who once deported them can recognize someone as an unjust victim and return them back to Crimea on LEGAL grounds, with the payment of compensation and the return of confiscated lands and real estate, i.e., correctly - Russia. And this means only one thing - that first of all, the Crimean Tatars themselves should be interested in Crimea becoming Russian again. After all, otherwise no one else will be able to recognize them as refugees or illegally repressed, even if they want to. After all, Ukraine does not have any documents indicating who exactly, and from what place and where.
What are the Tatars doing in Crimea today? They are engaged in self-seizure of lands, fight with local Cossacks, Christians and lie that Stalin and the USSR once unleashed a real genocide against them. But the question is: what and with whom are they fighting? For the independence of Crimea? From whom? From Ukrainians? From Russian Cossacks? Greeks? Armenians? Jews?....
No. They never understood who was their friend and who was their enemy, because they didn’t want to know or see anything beyond their own selfish interests.
Therefore, instead of creating a Crimean autonomy in alliance with the Russians, or for Russia to recognize them, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they are fighting with the Orthodox Russians there.
And Türkiye will not help the Tatars, despite their best wishes. Russia has never ceded Crimea to the Turks, and now it won’t give it up - they won’t wait. As well as the Americans, if they suddenly covet him under the pretext, for example, of helping the disadvantaged Tatars. Russia is not Iraq or Libya... So, not everything is so simple in the life of the Crimean Tatars today. And, by the way, they themselves are to blame for everything. And in general: for all those wars against Russia in alliances with the Cumans, the Golden Horde, then the Ottoman Empire, and for the betrayal of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War - they, according to historical justice, should have been completely deprived of the right of residence for all centuries on the Crimean lands.
And who should be returned to Crimea is its truly indigenous population, exterminated by the Mongol, Tatar and Turkish invaders, namely the Greeks, Bulgarians, Ossetians and Alans. And at the same time, return the historical name to the peninsula. And call it by its former name - Tavria.
P.S.
Two years ago, when this article was written, no one could even imagine the events that are unfolding in Ukraine today in February 2014. Militants of the radical group Right Sector not only led the protest movement against the current government in the country and the Berkut law enforcement forces, but also took up arms. The blood of government officials, civilians and militants has been shed. Not everyone in Ukraine supports such radicalism. And in Crimea, almost the entire multinational population of the peninsula rose up against the actions of the Right Sector. Deputies of the Crimean Autonomy firmly stated that in the event of a violent and unconstitutional overthrow of the current government, they will turn to Russia with a request to return the Crimean Autonomy to Russia. And at this turning point for Ukraine, despite the fact that the Crimean Mejlis recently adopted a resolution to support the armed attempt of an anti-constitutional coup by the radicals and stated that it would make every effort to prevent Crimea from becoming Russian. All the same, the Crimean Tatars have a real chance, leaving behind their old grievances against the Russians, to unite with them in the fight for a Crimea free of racism. After all, even during the times of the totalitarian USSR, Russian and Tatar were official and EQUAL STATE LANGUAGES in the Crimean ASSR. Unlike today’s “democratic” and “free” Ukraine, in which, having come to power illegally, the new pro-fascist Verkhovna Rada abolished the Law on Regional Languages with its very first Decree. Only in alliance with the Russians will the Crimean Tatars today be able to resist the Banderaites, the UPA, the “Right Sector” and the Ukrainian neo-fascists who came to power, in order to be able to defend with them both the right to live in the land of their ancestors and the right to speak their native language in Crimea.
How difficult it is to be contemporary with great events. It's surprising, but Crimea has become Russian again!
Without firing a single shot. This is what the people of the peninsula decided by holding a referendum.
Let other nations not be offended by me if I say, not without pride for Russia and the Russians, that they rightfully deserve it.
I think that March 18, 2014 will go down in the history of both Crimea and Russia as the day that N.S.’s political mistake was corrected. Khrushchev, which he committed on February 19, 1954, by his personal decision transferring the Crimean region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. The Russians simply refused to build a unitary nationalist Ukrainian state in Crimea and the entire peninsula, along with the Tatars and Ukrainians living there, returned home to Russia. Historical justice has triumphed. Now in Crimea there will be 3 state languages: Russian, Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian. This, however, is what happened to us with Crimea.
From the outside, the Crimean Tatar people seem monolithic, but when communicating with Tatars, you can often hear: “Zarema’s father-in-law is “thirty”, and her mother-in-law is a Kerch Nogayka” or “my dad is a Tatar from Bakhchisarai, and my mother is a Uskut.” These are the names of the sub ethnic groups- such “peoples within people”.
It is believed that the Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: steppe people (Nogai), highlanders (Tats) and south-coast people (Yalyboylu). Deportation weakened, but did not erase the differences: sympathy for “one’s own” is manifested at the everyday level, and in business, and in politics.
“The Slavs call this phenomenon nepotism. It is, to one degree or another, characteristic of all nations,” says political scientist Alime Apselyamova.
Some are politicians, others are scientists
In the leadership of the Crimean Tatar Majlis, the leading role is played by people from the South Coast. Head of the Majlis Mustafa Dzhemilev and his right hand Refat Chubarov is considered the native village of Ai-Serez (Mezhdurechye, near Sudak). Mufti of Crimea Emirali Ablaev is from the same place. However, Dzhemilev denies that he selected his associates based on their place of birth.
“I learned that Refat had roots from Ai-Serez only after he became my first deputy,” says the Crimean Tatar leader. Although his opponents claim that Dzhemilev and Chubarov are distant relatives.
The Stepnyakov-Nogays are distinguished by their passion for education and science. For example, the rector of the Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University Fevzi Yakubov was born in the Black Sea region. Many heads of KIPU are also Nogai - most of the deans and vice-rectors. Yakubov claims that the compatriot factor does not matter to him, but at the same time he admits that relations between subethnic types affect the atmosphere in the team.
“It happens that a person is incompetent, and then goes around and says that the tats or otuz did not let him work,” says the rector.
Nogai - people from the steppe
The Nogai type of Crimean Tatars was formed in the steppe regions of the peninsula. The Nogai mixed the blood of the Polovtsians, Kypchaks and partly the Nogais - a people who now live in the North Caucasus. In the appearance of most steppe people there are elements of Mongoloidity: they are distinguished by their short stature and narrow eyes. According to linguistic and folklore characteristics, the steppe Crimean Tatars are divided into three groups: people from the northwestern Crimea (the current Saki, Black Sea and Razdolnensky regions), residents central steppe and eastern Nogai - mainly people from the Leninsky region. The latter consider themselves “real” steppe inhabitants, in contrast, for example, to the Evpatoria Nogai, among whom there are many fair-skinned people with brown or dark brown hair.
Features: among the Crimean Tatars there is a widespread belief that Nogai men are distinguished by their prudence and calm disposition. Women, on the contrary, are more temperamental and often control their husbands.
Tats - children of the mountains
Before deportation, the Tats lived in the mountainous and foothill regions of Crimea. Crimean Tatars call this territory “orta yolak” - middle zone. They contain the genes of almost all the tribes and peoples that have inhabited Crimea since ancient times: Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Goths, Greeks, Circassians, Khazars and others. Outwardly, Tats are similar to residents of Eastern Europe, including Ukrainians. Historians are still arguing about the origin of the word “tats” - according to one version, this is how Christians who converted to the Muslim faith were called during the time of the Crimean Khanate.
Features: Bakhchisarai Tats are considered intelligent, Balaklava Tats are stubborn and hot-tempered.
Yalyboylyu - southern guys
This is what the natives of the Southern Coast of Crimea are called, but in fact, the real Yalyboylu lived in the area from Foros to Alushta. The inhabitants of the Sudak region - the Uskuts - have their own characteristics.
The South Coast Tatars are descendants of the Greeks, Goths, Turks, Circassians and Genoese. Outwardly, the Yalyboylu are similar to the Greeks and Italians, but there are blue-eyed and light-skinned blonds.
Features: It is believed that South Coast people are distinguished by entrepreneurship and business acumen.
Many peoples have ethnographic types. For example, among Ukrainians there are Boikos, Polishchuks, Litvins, Lemkos
Families do not prevent mixed marriages. True, if family quarrels occur, husband and wife may reproach each other for “Yalyboy show-off” or “Nogai bitchiness”
“Differences are not at all an indicator of the disunity of the people. On the contrary, the presence of clearly defined ethnic groups indicates that the Crimean Tatars are a developing ethnic group,” says culturologist Vetana Veysova
The way they say
The dialects of the Nogais and Yalyboys differ in much the same way as Russian and Ukrainian language. The literary Crimean Tatar language is based on the Tat language - it combines the characteristics of the “northern” and “southern” dialects.
So, Crimean Tatars.
Different sources present the history and modernity of this people with their own characteristics and their own vision of this issue.
Here are three links:
1). Russian site rusmirzp.com/2012/09/05/categ… 2). Ukrainian website turlocman.ru/ukraine/1837 3). Tatar website mtss.ru/?page=kryims
I will write your material using the most politically correct Wikipedia ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymski... and my own impressions.
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a people historically formed in Crimea.
They speak the Crimean Tatar language, which belongs to the Turkic group of the Altai family of languages.
The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims and belong to the Hanafi madhhab.
Traditional drinks are coffee, ayran, yazma, buza.
National confectionery products sheker kyyyk, kurabye, baklava.
The national dishes of the Crimean Tatars are chebureks ( fried pies with meat), yantik ( baked pies with meat), saryk burma (layer pie with meat), sarma (grape and cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice), dolma (peppers stuffed with meat and rice), kobete - originally a Greek dish, as evidenced by the name ( baked pie with meat, onions and potatoes), burma (layer cake with pumpkin and nuts), tatar ash (dumplings), yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings), shish kebab, pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike the Uzbek one without carrots) , bak'la shorbasy (meat soup with green beans, seasoned sour milk), shurpa, kainatma.
I tried sarma, dolma and shurpa. Delicious.
Settlement.
They live mainly in Crimea (about 260 thousand), adjacent areas of continental Russia (2.4 thousand, mainly in the Krasnodar Territory) and in adjacent areas of Ukraine (2.9 thousand), as well as in Turkey, Romania (24 thousand), Uzbekistan (90 thousand, estimates from 10 thousand to 150 thousand), Bulgaria (3 thousand). According to local Crimean Tatar organizations, the diaspora in Turkey numbers hundreds of thousands of people, but there are no exact data on its numbers, since Turkey does not publish data on national composition population of the country. Total number residents whose ancestors are in different time immigrated to the country from Crimea, estimated in Turkey at 5-6 million people, however, most of these people have assimilated and consider themselves not Crimean Tatars, but Turks of Crimean origin.
Ethnogenesis.
There is a misconception that the Crimean Tatars are predominantly descendants of the 13th century Mongol conquerors. This is wrong.
Crimean Tatars formed as a people in Crimea in the XIII-XVII centuries. The historical core of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group is the Turkic tribes that settled in Crimea, a special place in the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars among the Kipchak tribes, who mixed with the local descendants of the Huns, Khazars, Pechenegs, as well as representatives of the pre-Turkic population of Crimea - together with them they formed the ethnic basis of the Crimean Tatars, Karaites , Krymchakov.
The main ethnic groups that inhabited Crimea in ancient times and the Middle Ages were the Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars, Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians, Italians, Circassians (Circassians), and Asia Minor Turks. Over the centuries, the peoples who came to Crimea again assimilated those who lived here before their arrival or themselves assimilated into their environment.
An important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people belongs to the Western Kipchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name Polovtsy. From the 11th-12th centuries, the Kipchaks began to populate the Volga, Azov and Black Sea steppes (which from then until the 18th century were called Desht-i Kipchak - “Kypchak steppe”). From the second half of the 11th century they began to actively penetrate into Crimea. A significant part of the Polovtsians took refuge in the mountains of Crimea, fleeing after the defeat of the united Polovtsian-Russian troops from the Mongols and the subsequent defeat of the Polovtsian proto-state formations in the northern Black Sea region.
By the middle of the 13th century, Crimea was conquered by the Mongols under the leadership of Khan Batu and included in the state they founded - the Golden Horde. During the Horde period, representatives of the Shirin, Argyn, Baryn and others clans appeared in Crimea, who then formed the backbone of the Crimean Tatar steppe aristocracy. The spread of the ethnonym “Tatars” in Crimea dates back to the same time - this common name was used to call the Turkic-speaking population of the state created by the Mongols. Internal turmoil and political instability in the Horde led to the fact that in the middle of the 15th century, Crimea fell away from the Horde rulers, and the independent Crimean Khanate was formed.
The key event that left its mark on further history Crimea, was the conquest of the southern coast of the peninsula and the adjacent part of the Crimean Mountains by the Ottoman Empire in 1475, which previously belonged to the Republic of Genoa and the Principality of Theodoro, the subsequent transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a vassal state of the Ottomans and the entry of the peninsula into the Pax Ottomana - the “cultural space” of the Ottoman Empire. empires.
The spread of Islam on the peninsula had a significant impact on the ethnic history of Crimea. According to local legends, Islam was brought to Crimea in the 7th century by the companions of the Prophet Muhammad Malik Ashter and Gazy Mansur. However, Islam began to actively spread in Crimea only after the adoption of Islam as the state religion in the 14th century by the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek.
The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Historically, the Islamization of the Crimean Tatars occurred in parallel with the formation of the ethnic group itself and was very long-lasting. The first step on this path was the capture of Sudak and the surrounding area by the Seljuks in the 13th century and the beginning of the spread of Sufi brotherhoods in the region, and the last was the massive adoption of Islam by a significant number of Crimean Christians who wanted to avoid eviction from Crimea in 1778. The bulk of the population of Crimea converted to Islam during the era of the Crimean Khanate and the Golden Horde period preceding it. Now in Crimea there are about three hundred Muslim communities, most of which are united in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea (adheres to the Hanafi madhhab). It is the Hanafi direction that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.
Takhtali Jam Mosque in Yevpatoriya.
By the end of the 15th century, the main prerequisites were created that led to the formation of an independent Crimean Tatar ethnic group: the political dominance of the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire was established in Crimea, the Turkic languages (Polovtsian-Kypchak in the territory of the Khanate and Ottoman in the Ottoman possessions) became dominant, and Islam acquired the status of state religions throughout the peninsula.
As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population, called “Tatars,” and the Islamic religion, processes of assimilation and consolidation of a motley ethnic conglomerate began, which led to the emergence of the Crimean Tatar people. Over the course of several centuries, the Crimean Tatar language developed on the basis of the Polovtsian language with a noticeable Oghuz influence.
An important component of this process was the linguistic and religious assimilation of the Christian population, which was very mixed in its ethnic composition (Greeks, Alans, Goths, Circassians, Polovtsian-speaking Christians, including the descendants of the Scythians, Sarmatians, etc., assimilated by these peoples in earlier eras), which made up At the end of the 15th century, the majority were in the mountainous and southern coastal regions of Crimea.
The assimilation of the local population began during the Horde period, but it especially intensified in the 17th century.
The Goths and Alans who lived in the mountainous part of Crimea began to adopt Turkic customs and culture, which corresponds to the data of archaeological and paleoethnographic research. On the Ottoman-controlled South Bank, assimilation proceeded noticeably more slowly. Thus, the results of the 1542 census show that the overwhelming majority of the rural population of the Ottoman possessions in Crimea were Christians. Archaeological studies of Crimean Tatar cemeteries on the South Bank also show that Muslim tombstones began to appear en masse in the 17th century.
As a result, by 1778, when the Crimean Greeks (all local Orthodox Christians were then called Greeks) were evicted from Crimea to the Azov region by order of the Russian government, there were just over 18 thousand of them (which was about 2% of the then population of Crimea), and more than half of these The Greeks were Urums, whose native language is Crimean Tatar, while the Greek-speaking Rumeans were a minority, and by that time there were no speakers of Alan, Gothic and other languages left at all.
Subethnic groups.
The Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: the steppe people or Nogais (not to be confused with the Nogai people) (çöllüler, noğaylar), the highlanders or Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian Tats) (tatlar) and the South Coast or Yalyboy (yalıboylular).
South Coast residents - yalyboylu.
Before the deportation, the South Coast residents lived on the Southern Coast of Crimea (Crimean Kotat. Yalı boyu) - a narrow strip 2-6 km wide, stretching along the sea coast from Balakalava in the west to Feodosia in the east. In the ethnogenesis of this group, the main role was played by the Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians, and the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast also have the blood of Italians (Genoese). Residents of many villages on the South Coast, until deportation, retained elements of Christian rituals that they inherited from their Greek ancestors. Most of the Yalyboys adopted Islam as a religion quite late, compared to the other two subethnic groups, namely in 1778. Since the South Bank was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, the South Bank people never lived in the Crimean Khanate and could move throughout the entire territory of the empire, as evidenced by a large number of marriages of South Coast residents with the Ottomans and other citizens of the empire. Racially, the majority of South Coast residents belong to the South European (Mediterranean) race (outwardly similar to Turks, Greeks, Italians, etc.). However, there are individual representatives of this group with pronounced features of the Northern European race (fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes). For example, residents of the villages of Kuchuk-Lambat (Kiparisnoye) and Arpat (Zelenogorye) belonged to this type. The South Coast Tatars are also noticeably different in physical type from the Turkic ones: they were noted to be taller, lack of cheekbones, “in general, regular facial features; This type is built very slenderly, which is why it can be called handsome. Women are distinguished by soft and regular facial features, dark, with long eyelashes, large eyes, finely defined eyebrows” (writes Starovsky). The described type, however, even within the small space of the Southern Coast is subject to significant fluctuations, depending on the predominance of certain nationalities living here. So, for example, in Simeiz, Limeny, Alupka one could often meet long-headed people with an oblong face, a long hooked nose and light brown, sometimes red hair. The customs of the South Coast Tatars, the freedom of their women, the veneration of certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love of sedentary activities, compared with their external appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called “Tatars” are close to the Indo-European tribe. The dialect of the South Coast residents belongs to the Oguz group of Turkic languages, very close to Turkish. The vocabulary of this dialect contains a noticeable layer of Greek and a number of Italian borrowings. The old Crimean Tatar literary language, created by Ismail Gasprinsky, was based on this dialect.
The steppe people are Nogai.
The Nogai lived in the steppe (Crimean çöl) north of the conditional line Nikolaevka-Gvardeyskoye-Feodosia. The main participants in the ethnogenesis of this group were the Western Kipchaks (Cumans), Eastern Kipchaks and Nogais (this is where the name Nogai came from). Racially, the Nogai are Caucasians with Mongoloid elements (~10%). The Nogai dialect belongs to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, combining the features of the Polovtsian-Kypchak (Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk) and Nogai-Kypchak (Nogai, Tatar, Bashkir and Kazakh) languages.
One of the starting points of the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars should be considered the emergence of the Crimean yurt, and then the Crimean Khanate. The nomadic nobility of Crimea took advantage of the weakening of the Golden Horde to create their own state. The long struggle between feudal factions ended in 1443 with the victory of Hadji Giray, who founded the virtually independent Crimean Khanate, whose territory included Crimea, the Black Sea steppes and the Taman Peninsula.
The main force of the Crimean army was the cavalry - fast, maneuverable, possessing centuries of experience. In the steppe, every man was a warrior, an excellent horseman and archer. This is confirmed by Boplan: “The Tatars know the steppe as well as pilots know sea harbors.”
During the emigration of the Crimean Tatars in the 18th-19th centuries. a significant part of the steppe Crimea was practically deprived of its indigenous population.
The famous scientist, writer and researcher of the Crimea of the 19th century, E.V. Markov, wrote that only the Tatars “endured this dry heat of the steppe, mastering the secrets of extracting and conducting water, raising livestock and gardens in places where a German or a Bulgarian could not get along before. Hundreds of thousands of honest and patient hands have been taken away from the economy. The camel herds have almost disappeared; where previously there were thirty flocks of sheep, there is only one walking there, where there were fountains, there are now empty swimming pools, where there was a crowded industrial village - there is now a wasteland... Drive, for example, Evpatoria district and you will think that you are traveling along the shores of the Dead Sea.”
Highlanders are Tats.
The Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian people of the same name) lived before deportation in the mountains (Crimean dağlar) and foothills or middle lane(Crimean territory. orta yolaq), that is, north of the South Coast people and south of the steppe people. The ethnogenesis of the Tats is a very complex and not fully understood process. Almost all the peoples and tribes that ever lived in Crimea took part in the formation of this subethnic group. These are the Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, Avars, Goths, Greeks, Circassians, Bulgars, Khazars, Pechenegs and Western Kipchaks (known in European sources as Cumans or Komans, and in Russians as Polovtsians). The role of the Goths, Greeks and Kipchaks is considered particularly important in this process. The Tats inherited their language from the Kipchaks, and their material and everyday culture from the Greeks and Goths. The Goths mainly took part in the ethnogenesis of the population of the western part of the mountainous Crimea (Bakhchisarai region). The type of houses that the Crimean Tatars built in the mountain villages of this region before the deportation is considered Gothic by some researchers. It should be noted that the given data on the ethnogenesis of the Tats are to some extent a generalization, since the population of almost every village in the mountainous Crimea before the deportation had its own characteristics, in which the influence of one or another people was discernible. Racially, the Tats belong to the Central European race, that is, they are externally similar to representatives of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe (some of them are North Caucasian peoples, and some of them are Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, etc.). The Tat dialect has both Kypchak and Oguz features and is to some extent intermediate between the dialects of the South Coast and the steppe people. The modern Crimean Tatar literary language is based on this dialect.
Until 1944, the listed subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars practically did not mix with each other, but deportation destroyed traditional settlement areas, and over the past 60 years the process of merging these groups into a single community has gained momentum. The boundaries between them are noticeably blurred today, since there is a significant number of families where spouses belong to different subethnic groups. Due to the fact that after returning to Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, for a number of reasons, and primarily due to the opposition of local authorities, cannot settle in the places of their former traditional residence, the process of mixing continues. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War Among the Crimean Tatars living in Crimea, about 30% were South Coast residents, about 20% were Nogais and about 50% were Tats.
The fact that the word “Tatars” is present in the generally accepted name of the Crimean Tatars often causes misunderstandings and questions about whether the Crimean Tatars are a subethnic group of Tatars, and the Crimean Tatar language is a dialect of Tatar. The name “Crimean Tatars” has remained in the Russian language since the times when almost all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachais (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakass (Abakan Tatars), etc. d. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppe), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited eastern Europe before Mongol invasion, when the ethnonym “Tatars” came to the west.
The Crimean Tatars themselves today use two self-names: qırımtatarlar (literally “Crimean Tatars”) and qırımlar (literally “Crimeans”). In everyday colloquial speech (but not in an official context), the word tatarlar (“Tatars”) can also be used as a self-designation.
Crimean Tatar and Tatar languages are related, since both belong to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, but are not closest relatives within this group. Due to quite different phonetics (primarily vocalism: the so-called “Volga region vowel interruption”), Crimean Tatars understand by ear only individual words and phrases in Tatar speech and vice versa. Among the Kipchak languages, the closest to the Crimean Tatar are the Kumyk and Karachay languages, and from the Oguz languages, Turkish and Azerbaijani.
At the end of the 19th century, Ismail Gasprinsky made an attempt to create a single dialect based on the Crimean Tatar southern coast dialect. literary language for all Turkic peoples Russian Empire (including the Volga Tatars), but this endeavor did not have serious success.
Crimean Khanate.
The process of formation of the people was finally completed during the period of the Crimean Khanate.
The state of the Crimean Tatars - the Crimean Khanate existed from 1441 to 1783. For most of its history, it was dependent on the Ottoman Empire and was its ally.
The ruling dynasty in Crimea was the Gerayev (Gireyev) clan, whose founder was the first khan Hadji I Giray. The era of the Crimean Khanate is the heyday of Crimean Tatar culture, art and literature.
The classic of Crimean Tatar poetry of that era - Ashik Died.
The main surviving architectural monument of that time is the Khan's palace in Bakhchisarai.
From the beginning of the 16th century, the Crimean Khanate waged constant wars with the Moscow state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until the 18th century, mainly offensive), which was accompanied by the capture of a large number of captives from among the civilian Russian, Ukrainian and Polish populations. Those captured as slaves were sold at Crimean slave markets, among which the largest was the market in the city of Kef (modern Feodosia), to Turkey, Arabia, and the Middle East. The mountain and coastal Tatars of the southern coast of Crimea were reluctant to participate in raids, preferring to pay off the khans with payments. In 1571, a 40,000-strong Crimean army under the command of Khan Devlet I Giray, having passed the Moscow fortifications, reached Moscow and, in retaliation for the capture of Kazan, set fire to its suburbs, after which the entire city, with the exception of the Kremlin, burned to the ground. However, the very next year, the 40,000-strong horde that was marching again, hoping, together with the Turks, Nogais, and Circassians (more than 120-130 thousand in total), to finally put an end to the independence of the Muscovite Kingdom, suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Molodi, which forced the Khanate to moderate its political claims. Nevertheless, formally subordinate to the Crimean Khan, but actually semi-independent Nogai hordes roaming the Northern Black Sea region, regularly carried out extremely devastating raids on Moscow, Ukrainian, Polish lands, reaching Lithuania and Slovakia. The purpose of these raids was to seize booty and numerous slaves, mainly for the purpose of selling slaves to the markets of the Ottoman Empire, brutally exploiting them in the Khanate itself, and receiving a ransom. For this, as a rule, the Muravsky Way was used, which ran from Perekop to Tula. These raids bled all the southern, peripheral and central regions of the country, which were practically deserted for a long time. The constant threat from the south and east contributed to the formation of the Cossacks, who performed guard and patrol functions in all the border territories of the Moscow State and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the Wild Field.
As part of the Russian Empire.
In 1736 Russian troops led by Field Marshal Christopher (Christoph) Minikh, they burned Bakhchisarai and devastated the foothills of Crimea. In 1783, as a result of Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire, Crimea was first occupied and then annexed by Russia.
At the same time, the policy of the Russian imperial administration was characterized by a certain flexibility. The Russian government made the ruling circles of Crimea its support: all Crimean Tatar clergy and local feudal aristocracy were equated to the Russian aristocracy with all rights retained.
The oppression of the Russian administration and the expropriation of land from Crimean Tatar peasants caused mass emigration of Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire. The two main waves of emigration occurred in the 1790s and 1850s. According to researchers late XIX century F. Lashkov and K. Herman, the population of the peninsular part of the Crimean Khanate by the 1770s was approximately 500 thousand people, 92% of whom were Crimean Tatars. The first Russian census of 1793 recorded 127.8 thousand people in Crimea, including 87.8% Crimean Tatars. Thus, most of the Tatars emigrated from Crimea, according to various sources amounting to up to half of the population (from Turkish data it is known about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars who settled in Turkey at the end of the 18th century, mainly in Rumelia). After graduation Crimean War, in the 1850-60s, about 200 thousand Crimean Tatars emigrated from Crimea. It is their descendants who now make up the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. This led to the decline of agriculture and the almost complete desolation of the steppe part of Crimea.
Along with this, the development of Crimea was intensive, mainly the territory of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), due to the Russian government attracting settlers from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia. The ethnic composition of the peninsula's population has changed - the proportion of Orthodox Christians has increased.
In the middle of the 19th century, the Crimean Tatars, overcoming disunity, began to move from rebellions to a new stage of national struggle.
It was necessary to mobilize the entire people for collective defense from the oppression of tsarist laws and Russian landowners.
Ismail Gasprinsky was an outstanding educator of the Turkic and other Muslim peoples. One of his main achievements is the creation and dissemination of a system of secular (non-religious) school education among the Crimean Tatars, which also radically changed the essence and structure primary education In many Muslim countries, giving it a more secular character. He became the actual creator of the new literary Crimean Tatar language. Gasprinsky began publishing the first Crimean Tatar newspaper “Terdzhiman” (“Translator”) in 1883, which soon became known far beyond the borders of Crimea, including in Turkey and Central Asia. His educational and publishing activities ultimately led to the emergence of a new Crimean Tatar intelligentsia. Gasprinsky is also considered one of the founders of the ideology of pan-Turkism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ismail Gasprinsky realized that his educational task had been completed and it was necessary to enter a new stage of the national struggle. This stage coincided with the revolutionary events in Russia of 1905-1907. Gasprinsky wrote: “The first long period of mine and my “Translator” is over, and the second, short, but probably more stormy period begins, when the old teacher and popularizer must become a politician.”
The period from 1905 to 1917 was a continuous growing process of struggle, moving from humanitarian to political. During the 1905 revolution in Crimea, problems were raised regarding the allocation of land to the Crimean Tatars, the conquest of political rights, and the creation of modern educational institutions. The most active Crimean Tatar revolutionaries grouped around Ali Bodaninsky, this group was under the close attention of the gendarmerie administration. After the death of Ismail Gasprinsky in 1914, Ali Bodaninsky remained as the oldest national leader. The authority of Ali Bodaninsky in the national liberation movement of the Crimean Tatars at the beginning of the 20th century was indisputable.
Revolution of 1917.
In February 1917, Crimean Tatar revolutionaries monitored the political situation with great preparedness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, already on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of dissolution State Duma, on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created.
The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee proposed joint work to the Simferopol Council, but the executive committee of the Council rejected this proposal.
After the All-Crimean election campaign On November 26, 1917 (December 9, new style), the Kurultai - General Assembly, the main advisory, decision-making and representative body, was opened in Bakhchisarai in the Khan's Palace.
Thus, in 1917, the Crimean Tatar Parliament (Kurultai) - the legislative body, and the Crimean Tatar Government (Directory) - the executive body, began to exist in Crimea.
Civil war and the Crimean ASSR.
The Civil War in Russia became a difficult test for the Crimean Tatars. In 1917 after February Revolution The first Kurultai (congress) of the Crimean Tatar people was convened, proclaiming a course towards the creation of an independent multinational Crimea. The slogan of the chairman of the first Kurultai, one of the most revered leaders of the Crimean Tatars, Noman Celebidzhikhan, is known - “Crimea is for the Crimeans” (meaning the entire population of the peninsula, regardless of nationality. “Our task,” he said, “is the creation of a state like Switzerland. Peoples of Crimea represent a wonderful bouquet, and are necessary for every nation equal rights and conditions, for we must go hand in hand.” However, Celebidzhikhan was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the interests of the Crimean Tatars throughout Civil War were practically not taken into account by both whites and reds.
In 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the RSFSR. State languages it contained Russian and Crimean Tatar. The basis of administrative division autonomous republic the national principle was established: in 1930, national village councils were created: Russian 106, Tatar 145, German 27, Jewish 14, Bulgarian 8, Greek 6, Ukrainian 3, Armenian and Estonian - 2 each. In addition, national districts were organized. In 1930, there were 7 such districts: 5 Tatar (Sudak, Alushta, Bakhchisarai, Yalta and Balaklava), 1 German (Biyuk-Onlar, later Telmansky) and 1 Jewish (Freidorf).
In all schools, children of national minorities were taught in their native language. But after the short rise in national life after the creation of the republic (the opening of national schools, the theater, the publication of newspapers), Stalin’s repressions of 1937 followed.
Crimea under German occupation.
From mid-November 1941 to May 12, 1944, Crimea was occupied by German troops.
In December 1941, Muslim Tatar committees were created in Crimea by the German occupation administration. The central “Crimean Muslim Committee” began work in Simferopol. Their organization and activities took place under the direct supervision of the SS. Subsequently, the leadership of the committees passed to the SD headquarters. In September 1942, the German occupation administration prohibited the use of the word “Crimean” in the name, and the committee began to be called the “Simferopol Muslim Committee”, and from 1943 - the “Simferopol Tatar Committee”. The committee consisted of 6 departments: for the fight against Soviet partisans; on recruiting volunteer units; to provide assistance to the families of volunteers; on culture and propaganda; by religion; administrative and economic department and office. Local committees duplicated the central one in their structure. Their activities were discontinued at the end of 1943.
The initial program of the committee provided for the creation of a state of Crimean Tatars in Crimea under German protectorate, the creation of its own parliament and army, and the resumption of the activities of the Milli Firqa party banned in 1920 by the Bolsheviks (Crimean Milliy Fırqa - national party). However, already in the winter of 1941-42, the German command made it clear that it did not intend to allow the creation of any public education in Crimea. In December 1941, representatives of the Crimean Tatar community of Turkey, Mustafa Edige Kırımal and Müstecip Ülküsal, visited Berlin in the hope of convincing Hitler of the need to create a Crimean Tatar state, but they were refused. Long-term plans of the Nazis included the annexation of Crimea directly to the Reich as the imperial land of Gotenland and the settlement of the territory by German colonists.
Since October 1941, the creation of volunteer formations from representatives of the Crimean Tatars began - self-defense companies, whose main task was to fight the partisans. Until January 1942, this process proceeded spontaneously, but after the recruitment of volunteers from among the Crimean Tatars was officially sanctioned by Hitler, the solution to this problem passed to the leadership of Einsatzgruppe D. During January 1942, more than 8,600 volunteers were recruited, from among whom 1,632 people were selected to serve in self-defense companies (14 companies were formed). In March 1942, 4 thousand people already served in self-defense companies, and another 5 thousand people were in the reserve. Subsequently, based on the created companies, auxiliary police battalions were deployed, the number of which reached eight by November 1942 (from the 147th to the 154th).
Crimean Tatar formations were used to protect military and civilian facilities, took an active part in the fight against partisans, and in 1944 they actively resisted the Red Army units that liberated Crimea. The remnants of the Crimean Tatar units, along with German and Romanian troops, were evacuated from Crimea by sea. In the summer of 1944, from the remnants of the Crimean Tatar units in Hungary, the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS was formed, which was soon reorganized into the 1st Tatar Mountain Jaeger Brigade of the SS, which was disbanded on December 31, 1944 and reorganized into the combat group "Crimea", which joined Eastern Turkic SS unit. Crimean Tatar volunteers who were not included in the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS were transferred to France and included in the reserve battalion of the Volga Tatar Legion or (mostly untrained youth) were enlisted in the auxiliary air defense service.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars were drafted into the Red Army. Many of them later deserted in 1941.
However, there are other examples.
More than 35 thousand Crimean Tatars served in the ranks of the Red Army from 1941 to 1945. The majority (about 80%) of the civilian population provided active support to the Crimean partisan detachments. Due to the poor organization of partisan warfare and the constant shortage of food, medicine and weapons, the command decided to evacuate most of the partisans from Crimea in the fall of 1942. According to the party archive of the Crimean regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on June 1, 1943 in partisan detachments Crimea there were 262 people. Of these, 145 are Russians, 67 Ukrainians, 6 Tatars. On January 15, 1944, there were 3,733 partisans in Crimea, of which 1,944 were Russians, 348 Ukrainians, 598 Tatars. Finally, according to a certificate of the party, national and age composition of the Crimean partisans as of April 1944, among the partisans there were: Russians - 2075, Tatars - 391, Ukrainians - 356, Belarusians - 71, others - 754.
Deportation.
The accusation of cooperation of the Crimean Tatars, as well as other peoples, with the occupiers became the reason for the eviction of these peoples from Crimea in accordance with the Decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR No. GOKO-5859 of May 11, 1944. On the morning of May 18, 1944, an operation began to deport peoples accused of collaborating with German occupiers, to Uzbekistan and adjacent areas of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Small groups were sent to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Urals, and the Kostroma region.
In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families). Every third adult Crimean Tatar was required to sign that he had read the decree, and that escaping from the place of special settlement was punishable by 20 years of hard labor, as a criminal offense.
Officially, the grounds for deportation were also declared to be the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was said to be about 20 thousand people), the good reception of German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, apparatus of prisons and camps. At the same time, the deportation did not affect the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the homeland (in total, about 5,000 collaborators of all nationalities were identified in Crimea in April-May 1944). Crimean Tatars who fought in Red Army units were also subject to deportation after demobilization and returning home to Crimea from the front. Crimean Tatars who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and who managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944 were also deported. In 1949, there were 8,995 Crimean Tatars who participated in the war in the places of deportation, including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants.
A significant number of displaced people, exhausted after three years of living under occupation, died in places of deportation from hunger and disease in 1944-45.
The fight to return.
Unlike other peoples deported in 1944, who were allowed to return to their homeland in 1956, during the “thaw”, the Crimean Tatars were deprived of this right until 1989 (“perestroika”), despite appeals from representatives of the people to the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and directly to the leaders of the USSR and despite the fact that on January 9, 1974, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the recognition as invalid of certain legislative acts of the USSR, providing for restrictions in the choice of place of residence for certain categories of citizens,” was issued.
Since the 1960s, in the places where deported Crimean Tatars lived in Uzbekistan, a national movement for the restoration of the rights of the people and the return to Crimea arose and began to gain strength.
The activities of public activists who insisted on the return of the Crimean Tatars to their historical homeland were persecuted by the administrative bodies of the Soviet state.
Return to Crimea.
The mass return began in 1989, and today about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars live in Crimea (243,433 people according to the 2001 all-Ukrainian census), of which more than 25 thousand live in Simferopol, over 33 thousand in the Simferopol region, or over 22% of the region's population.
The main problems of the Crimean Tatars after their return were mass unemployment, problems with the allocation of land and the development of infrastructure of the Crimean Tatar villages that had arisen over the past 15 years.
In 1991, the second Kurultai was convened and a system of national self-government of the Crimean Tatars was created. Every five years, elections of the Kurultai (similar to a national parliament) take place, in which all Crimean Tatars participate. The Kurultai forms an executive body - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (similar to the national government). This organization was not registered with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. From 1991 to October 2013, the Chairman of the Mejlis was Mustafa Dzhemilev. Refat Chubarov was elected the new head of the Mejlis at the first session of the 6th Kurultai (national congress) of the Crimean Tatar people, held on October 26-27 in Simferopol
In August 2006, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Tatar statements by Orthodox priests in Crimea.
At the beginning, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people had a negative attitude towards holding a referendum on the annexation of Crimea to Russia in early March 2014.
However, just before the referendum, the situation was turned around with the help of Kadyrov and the State Councilor of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures for the rehabilitation of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, German and Crimean Tatar peoples living on the territory of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The President instructed the government, when developing a target program for the development of Crimea and Sevastopol until 2020, to provide for measures for the national, cultural and spiritual revival of these peoples, the development of the territories of their residence (with financing), and to assist the Crimean and Sevastopol authorities in holding commemorative events for the 70th anniversary of the deportation peoples in May of this year, as well as to assist in the creation of national-cultural autonomies.
Judging by the results of the referendum, almost half of all Crimean Tatars took part in the vote - despite very severe pressure on them from radicals from among themselves. At the same time, the mood of the Tatars and their attitude towards the return of Crimea to Russia is rather wary rather than hostile. So everything depends on the authorities and on how Russian Muslims accept the new brothers.
Currently, the social life of the Crimean Tatars is experiencing a split.
On the one hand, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, who was not allowed to enter Crimea by prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya.
On the other hand, the Crimean Tatar party “Milli Firka”.
Chairman of the Kenesh (Council) of the Crimean Tatar party “Milli Firka” Vasvi Abduraimov believes that:
"Crimean Tatars are flesh and blood heirs and part of the Great Turkic El - Eurasia.
We definitely have nothing to do in Europe. Most of the Turkic Ale today is also Russia. More than 20 million Turkic Muslims live in Russia. Therefore, Russia is as close to us as it is to the Slavs. All Crimean Tatars speak Russian well, received education in Russian, grew up in Russian culture, live among Russians."gumilev-center.ru/krymskie-ta…
These are the so-called “seizures” of land by the Crimean Tatars.
They simply built several of these buildings side by side on lands that at that time belonged to the Ukrainian State.
As illegally repressed people, the Tatars believe that they have the right to seize the land they like for free.
Of course, squatters do not take place in the remote steppe, but along the Simferopol highway and along the South Coast.
There are few permanent houses built on the site of these squatters.
They just staked out a place for themselves with the help of such sheds.
Subsequently (after legalization) it will be possible to build a cafe here, a house for children, or sell it at a profit.
And a decree of the State Council is already being prepared that squatters will be legalized. vesti.ua/krym/63334-v-krymu-h…
Like this.
Including through the legalization of squatters, Putin decided to ensure the loyalty of the Crimean Tatars in relation to the presence of the Russian Federation in Crimea.
However, the Ukrainian authorities also did not actively fight this phenomenon.
Because it considered the Mejlis as a counterweight to the influence of the Russian-speaking population of Crimea on politics on the peninsula.
The State Council of Crimea adopted in the first reading the draft law “On certain guarantees of the rights of peoples deported extrajudicially on ethnic grounds in 1941-1944 from the Autonomous Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic,” which, among other things, provides for the amount and procedure for paying various one-time compensation to repatriates . kianews.com.ua/news/v-krymu-d... The adopted bill is the implementation of the decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On measures for the rehabilitation of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German peoples and state support for their revival and development.”
It is aimed at the social protection of deportees, as well as their children born after deportation in 1941–1944 in places of imprisonment or exile and who returned to permanent residence in Crimea, and those who were outside Crimea at the time of deportation (military service, evacuation, forced labor), but was sent to special settlements. ? 🐒 this is the evolution of city excursions. The VIP guide is a city dweller, he will show you the most unusual places and tell you urban legends, I tried it, it’s fire 🚀! Prices from 600 rub. - they will definitely please you 🤑
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