Whose Crimea is it Anyway?

My last post dealt with a brief history of Ukraine along with links where you can get an even greater understanding of that country.

I didn’t mention Crimea at all mainly because of Substack’s word limitation. But Crimea is definitely a major part of this current war so it deserves to be mentioned here.

Crimea is one of those parts of the world that have been flipped around various countries and empires throughout its history. I can definitely identify with that because one of my forebears went through a similar situation.

Like I wrote in my first-ever post in this Substack, my great-great grandfather, Anton Znamenacek, avoided being drafted into the military by immigrating to the United States from Bohemia, which was then a state inside of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now located in the Czech Republic. After he settled in Baltimore he married a woman whose family also immigrated from Bohemia and they had a few children.

Their daughter (whose name has since been lost to time) married an immigrant named Wilhelm Carle. He was an ethnic German who came from the area of Alsace-Lorraine, which was then part of the German Empire. Alsace-Lorraine was an area that both Germany and France wanted mainly because it had valuable iron ore deposits. Over the years there was a pattern where Alsace-Lorraine would become part of France then a war would be fought where Germany would be victorious and Alsace-Lorraine would become part of Germany. Then another war would be fought where France was victorious and Alsace-Lorraine would become part of France. Then the cycle would repeat with another war that resulted in Germany having the area then another war that resulted in France having the area and so on.

The dispute of who should own Alsace-Lorraine was settled for good after World War II when the country borders were being redrawn in Europe and Alsace-Lorraine became part of France. There are no longer any disputes as to who should have that region and I’ve long since made peace with the fact that if I ever want to visit my German great-grandfather’s homeland I will have to go to France. (Actually France happens to be one of those countries that I would love to visit someday so I’m okay with going there to see where my great-grandfather came from.)

So let’s go back to the main topic of this post. Like Ukraine and Russia, Crimea has a very long history going back thousands of years. It would take several separate posts to fully explain Crimean history in great detail. I’m just going to provide a brief overview about Crimean history (courtesy of the Wikipedia) while focusing on events that tie-in with what’s going on now.

Crimea is a peninsula that is attached to Ukraine by the Isthmus of Perekop. It is almost surrounded by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Archaeologists have found evidence that Neanderthals have been in Crimea during prehistoric times.

The area was originally settled by the Greeks along the southern coast during ancient times and it remained culturally Greek for thousands of years. Two other groups also settled in Crimea, which were separated by the Crimean Mountains—the Tauri to the south and the Iranic Scythians in the north. Crimea would later become a client state of the Roman Empire before it was invaded an/or occupied by the Goths, the Huns, the Bulgars, and the Khazars. Members of the aforementioned groups would intermarry with each other, which eventually gave rise to an ethnic group known as the Crimean Tartars. At one point Crimea was part of the Roman Empire.

During medieval times it was partially conquered by the Kyivan Rus’ (which itself was the first time that the future Ukraine became an independent nation). This marked the first time that Crimea (or at least part of Crimea) was a part of Ukraine. This lasted until Crimea was conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century.

In 1443 Crimea became an independent nation under the name Crimean Khanate. That country lasted until 1475 when it became part of the Ottoman Empire. After Catherine the Great defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1774 Crimea became part of the Russian Empire, which increased Russia’s power in the Black Sea area.

Crimea remained part of the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the ensuing chaos that was created by both the revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, Crimea became a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Russians. After the Red Army took over Crimea in 1920 there were a long series of executions of the White Russians who were unable to escape from Crimea. Approximately 50,000 White Russians were executed and it is considered to be one of the largest massacres of the Russian Civil War.

If that weren’t enough, an additional 56,000 and 150,000 civilians were executed as part of the Red Terror that was organized by Béla Kun.

By 1922 Crimea was part of the Soviet Union, where it became known as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. As the name implies, it was originally formed as an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union. When Joseph Stalin became leader of the Soviet Union he began his repression in Crimea. The ethnic Greeks lost their farms to collectivization while Greek literature and schools teaching Greek were destroyed because Stalin considered the Greeks to be counter-revolutionary on the basis that they were connected to a capitalist Greece and their independent culture. The Crimean Tartars faced Stalin’s repressions in the form of purges. Crimea also experienced two severe famines: the Famine of 1921-1922 and the Holodomor.

The 1930s was also the decade where a large Slavic population consisting of mostly Russians and Ukrainians moved into Crimea as a result of the Soviet policy of regional development, which altered the ethnic balance in the region.

Crimea was invaded and occupied by the Nazis during World War II. The Nazis wanted Crimea for its fertile soil and as a place to resettle Germans at the expense of the people who were already there. The Jews who lived in Crimea were also targeted for annihilation.The Nazis formed a company of Tartar volunteers who participated in anti-Jewish manhunts and mass murders.

Shortly after the Russians successfully reclaimed Crimea from the Nazis, a conference was held in the Crimean port town of Yalta between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. It was during the Yalta Conference where Europe were divided between democratic and communist spheres.

It was also during this time when Joseph Stalin decided to punish all Crimean Tartars for the fact that some members of their ethnic group were members of that Nazi-backed Tartar company. This kind of punishment where everyone in a certain group must be punished for the actions of a few from that group is known as collective punishment and, yes, it was unfair to punish people who didn’t collaborate with the Nazis at all just because someone else from their ethnic group did. You could even argue that what Stalin did to the Crimean Tartars was a form of racism.

In any case the entire Crimean Tartar population was rounded up by the Soviets in 1944 and forcibly deported to Central Asia and Siberia. Soon afterwards the Crimean populations of Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek people were also deported to those areas as well. The only ones who escaped that fate were women who married men who came from non-punished ethnic groups (such as Russians). Around 8,000 Crimean Tartars died during the deportation process (where they were herded into cattle train cars with no food or water) while an additional tens of thousands of people subsequently died due to the harsh exile conditions of their new homeland. 

The Soviet government then encouraged ethnic Russians and Ukrainians to settle in Crimea. For added measure, Crimea was downgraded from a semi-autonomous republic to an oblast (which is the equivalent of a state or province).

In the post-World War II years Crimea thrived as a tourist destination, which attracted people from all over the Soviet Union and other Iron Curtain countries. In time Crimea also became a destination for cruises that originated from Greece and Turkey.

In 1954 Nikita Krushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union and it was during that year when the Crimean oblast was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in observation of the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s union with Russia. There were many reasons for this transfer. There was the practical reason that Crimea is physically linked to Ukraine through the Isthmus of Perekop while there was no land linking Crimea to Russia. There were other reasons for that transfer which included helping to shore up Krushchev’s political power, reshuffling the centralized Soviet system, the integration of the Ukrainian and Crimean economies, and a desire to repopulate parts of Crimea with Slavic peoples (mainly Russians and Ukrainians) to replace the people who had been deported to Central Asia.

The transfer increased the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine by almost a million people but it also became controversial regarding how legal that transfer was in the first place.

As for the Crimean Tartars, they wouldn’t be permitted to return to Crimea until the perestroika era in the late 1980s when 260,000 exiled people returned. The Soviet authorities had neither assisted their return nor compensated them for the land that they lost.

After the Soviet Union fell apart Crimea remained part of Ukraine. The Crimean Tartars who returned to Crimea before Ukraine became an independent country were automatically granted Ukrainian citizenship. Those who returned after Ukrainian independence faced several obstacles to gaining Ukrainian citizenship, including a costly bureaucratic process.

In a 1997 treaty between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, Russia recognized Ukraine’s borders and accepted Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. The treaty expired in 2019 but that didn’t really matter since Vladimir Putin ended up violating it five years earlier.

In 2014 the people of Ukraine organized the Maidan Revolution (also known as the Revolution of Dignity) to oust its pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. In the aftermath of that event, Russia annexed Crimea. That annexation has never been formally recognized by either the United Nations or most individual countries. Russia subsequently held a referendum in Crimea where the residents could decide on whether they wanted the area to become part of Russia. While Russia claimed that the voters had overwhelmingly approved of Russia’s takeover of Crimea, there were concerns over the legitimacy of that referendum. In addition, there were reports that Russia has intensified persecution of the Crimean Tartars and their human rights situation has significantly deteriorated. The United Nations reported that of the over 10,000 people who left Crimea after the annexation, most of them were Crimean Tartars.

In 2019 Vice News did a documentary on what Crimea was like during the first few years after its annexation by Russia that’s definitely worth viewing.

In order to make up for the fact that Crimea is physically connected to Ukraine and not Russia, Vladimir Putin authorized the building of a bridge that linked the Kerch Strait area of Crimea to the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in Russia. Known alternatively as the Kerch Bridge, the Kerch Strait Bridge, and the Crimean Bridge, this bridge is the longest bridge in Europe and is also the longest bridge ever constructed by Russia. That bridge has been attacked by Ukraine a few times since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and I’m sure that the Ukrainians will attack it again at some point in the future whenever Ukraine sees the opportunity to do so.

If all that weren’t enough, it looks like history is repeating itself, especially when it comes to the Crimean Tartars. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began last year there have been reports that the Russians are starting to take some of the Crimean Tartars to Russia against their will. Here’s a recent tweet about one such incident.

Ukraine wants Crimea back while Russia wants to keep Crimea for itself. So whose Crimea is it anyway? The basic facts are that while it was at one time an independent country, it has been a part of both Ukraine and Russia throughout its history. Crimea was officially given to Ukraine by the Soviet Union when Nikita Krushchev was the leader. When the Soviet Union fell apart, Crimea was technically part of Ukraine so it was natural to consider Crimea as part of Ukraine. As for the referendum that was held after Russia annexed Crimea, which overwhelmingly favored that annexation, there were reports that the voting may have been rigged so it should be considered as unreliable in determining the real wishes of the Crimean residents. The Crimean Tartars and other ethnic groups that were forcibly deported to other parts of the Soviet Union in the past have a good reason why they don’t want to live under the Russian occupation of Crimea, especially since it looks like the Russians are taking some of the Crimean Tartars to Russia once again. In addition the Russians had to build a bridge in order to connect Crimea with the Russian mainland while Crimea is naturally connected to Ukraine through the Isthmus of Perekop.

Some of you reading this will note that Crimea was an independent country at one point in its history. Should Crimea become an independent country again? Personally I think it’s an issue that only the residents can decide for themselves and it’s a decision that should only be made a few years after the war is over. Right now the bigger priority is to remove Crimea from Russian control.

The bottom line is that Ukraine has the legal right to Crimea and it should be immediately returned to Ukraine. 

If you want to learn more about the history of Crimea, I recommend the following free resources:

For a general overview of colonialism, I highly recommend the long multi-part series that the late political blogger Steve Gilliard did in his own blog back in 2004. Check out the beginning of my previous post for direct links to his series.

For those who want to learn more about Crimea but you have busy schedules, you can check out a brief overview of both Ukraine and Crimea through this free course called Ukraine: History, Culture and Identities that’s jointly offered by Coursera and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. If you want to see my review of this course, check out my previous post.

For those with more relaxed schedules, Yale University offers a free semester-long course titled Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine on YouTube, which also mentions Crimea. Check out my previous post for my review of that class.

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