The Predicament of the Crimean Tatars, past and present

Abstract

This article demonstrates how, with the rise of Russia as a major power in Caucasia and the Black Sea regions, the people of Crimea lost their independence and homeland. In the fifteenth century, two centuries after its conquest by a grandson of Genghis Khan, the Crimea came to house an independent Khanate. Inner struggles in the Khanate and its rivalry with the Genoese traders along the coast led to its vassaldom to the Ottomans. The rivalry that subsequently developed with Russia caused the contested regions to keep changing hands for the next two centuries. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Russians had gained considerable power throughout East Europe. The Russians’ increasingly harsh policies and systematic dispossession encouraged the mass emigration of Tatars, who eventually found themselves a minority in their fatherland. The dispossession process ended with the deportation of the entire Tatar population from the Crimea in May 1944. Although the Tatars began returning to the Crimea in large numbers after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they met with a hostile reception and continued to be excluded from the ranks of government.