"A Nation Exiled: The Crimean Tatars in the Russian Empire, Central Asia, and Turkey."

The Deportation and Fate 

of the Crimean Tatars

By J. Otto Pohl

The mass expulsion of populations based upon ethnicity has marked much of the 20th century. Most recently the ethnic cleansing of Kosova by Yugoslavia captured headlines around the world.For much of the previous decade the plight of the Bosnian Muslims, subjected to similar measures, held the world's attention. These recent events are only the most recent manifestations of an old phenomenon. The Muslim nationalities of Eastern Europe have been victims of numerous ethnic cleansing campaigns since the late 18th century. Among those nationalities expelled en masseduring the 19th century from their homelands were the Bulgarian Muslims, Circassians, and Abkhazians. The Imperial Russian government was involved in all these mass expulsions.[1] In the 20th century, the government of the Soviet Union perfected the crime of ethnic cleansing. During World War II, the Stalin regime used the resources of a highly organized state with a modern rail system to rapidly exile entire nations from their ancestral homelands. The Soviet government targeted the Muslim nationalities of the Caucasus and Crimea for deportation in their entirety. The Soviet political police, NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs) exiled the Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks to Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Siberia, and other remote areas of the USSR in 1943 and 1944. These brutal forced relocations to desolate areas with poor material conditions resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.[2]

The Soviet government allowed the surviving Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, and Balkars to return to their homelands and reestablish their national institutions in the late 1950s. The Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, however, remained exiled far from their roots. Only after 1989, could a significant number of Crimean Tatars return to their ancestral homeland. Today more than 250,000 (more than 50% of the total population in the former USSR) Crimean Tatars reside in the Crimea.[3] Although they still suffer from discrimination and exclusion in their homeland, the Crimean Tatars have made significant progress in repairing the damage inflicted upon their national existence by Stalin. This recovery has been an incredible feat. Stalin's policies killed tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars, deprived the entire nation of its homeland and cultural foundations for over half a century, and sought to completely eliminate them as a culturally distinct people. This paper will examine Stalin's deportation and repression of the Crimean Tatars during the 1940s in the light of materials from the former Soviet archives released in the past decade. In particular it will address the hardships and suffering endured by the Crimean Tatars as a result of their exile to Uzbekistan and the Urals .

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After 14 November 1989 Supreme Soviet decree, "On Recognizing the Illegal and Criminal Repressive Acts against Peoples Subjected to Forcible Resettlement and Ensuring their Rights" became known to the Crimean Tatars, they began to return to the Crimea in large numbers.[111] Thousands upon thousands of Crimean Tatar families left Uzbekistan to live in the land of their ancestors. In a little over four years nearly 250,000 or almost half of all Crimean Tatars in the former Soviet Union managed to returnto the Crimea.[112] The repatriation and reintegration of the Crimean Tatars is still an ongoing process. Their struggle for a full restoration of their national rights and restitution is far from over. They have, however, succeeded far beyond the expectations of almost all outside observers.

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