How many Crimean Tatars live in Crimea. Crimean Tatars - origin story

(in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania)

Religion Racial type

South European - Yalyboytsy; Caucasian, Central European - Tats; Caucasoid (20% Mongoloid) - steppe.

Included in

Turkic-speaking peoples

Related peoples Origin

Gotalans and Turkic tribes, all those who have ever inhabited Crimea

Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi madhhab.

resettlement

Ethnogenesis

The Crimean Tatars were formed as a people in the Crimea in the XV-XVIII centuries on the basis of various ethnic groups that lived on the peninsula earlier.

Historical background

The main ethnic groups that inhabited the Crimea in antiquity and the Middle Ages are Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars, Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Italians, Circassians (Circassians), Asia Minor Turks. Over the centuries, the peoples who again came to Crimea assimilated those who lived here before their arrival, or themselves assimilated among them.

An important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people belongs to the Western Kypchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name of the Polovtsy. Kipchaks from the -12th centuries began to populate the Volga, Azov and Black Sea steppes (which from then until the 18th century were called Desht-i Kypchak - "Kypchak steppe"). From the second half of the 11th century, they began to actively penetrate into the Crimea. A significant part of the Polovtsy took refuge in the mountains of Crimea, fleeing after the defeat of the combined Polovtsian-Russian troops from the Mongols and the subsequent defeat of the Polovtsian proto-state formations in the northern Black Sea region.

The key event that left an imprint on the further history of Crimea was the conquest by the Ottoman Empire of the southern coast of the peninsula and the adjacent part of the Crimean Mountains, which previously belonged to the Republic of Genoa and the Principality of Theodoro, in 1475, the subsequent transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a vassal state in relation to the Ottomans and the entry of the peninsula into Pax Ottomana - "cultural space" of the Ottoman Empire.

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 companions of the Prophet Muhammad Malik Ashter and Gaza Mansur. However, Islam began to spread actively in Crimea only after the adoption of Islam as the state religion by the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek in the 14th century. Historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars is the Hanafi direction, which is the most "liberal" of all four canonical interpretations in Sunni Islam.

Formation of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group

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-Kipchak on the territory of the Khanate and Ottoman in the Ottoman possessions) became dominant, and Islam acquired the status of the state religions throughout the peninsula. As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population and the Islamic religion, which received the name "Tatars", the 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 the listed peoples in earlier eras), which amounted to the end of the XV century, the majority in the mountainous and southern coastal regions of Crimea. The assimilation of the local population began in the Horde period, but it especially intensified in the 17th century. Pachymer, a Byzantine historian of the 14th century, wrote about the assimilation processes in the Horde part of Crimea: Over time, having mixed with them [Tatars], the peoples who lived inside those countries, I mean: Alans, Zikhs, and Goths, and various peoples with them, learn their customs, along with customs, learn language and clothing and become their allies.. In this list, it is important to mention the Goths and Alans living in the mountainous part of the Crimea, who began to adopt Turkic customs and culture, which corresponds to the data of archaeological and paleoethnographic studies. On the Ottoman-controlled South Bank, assimilation was noticeably slower. Thus, the results of the 1542 census show that the vast majority of the rural population of the Ottoman possessions in the Crimea were Christians. Archaeological studies of the 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 were called Greeks at that time) were evicted from the Crimea to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov 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 Greeks were Urums, whose native language is Crimean Tatar, Greek-speaking Rumeians were a minority, and by that time there were no speakers of Alanian, Gothic and other languages ​​​​at all. At the same time, cases of conversion of Crimean Christians to Islam were recorded in order to avoid eviction.

Story

Crimean Khanate

Weapons of the Crimean Tatars of the XVI-XVII centuries

The process of formation of the people was finally completed in the period of the Crimean Khanate.

The state of the Crimean Tatars - the Crimean Khanate existed from 1783 to 1783. For most of its history, it was dependent on the Ottoman Empire and was its ally. The ruling dynasty in the Crimea was the Geraev (Gireev) clan, the founder of which was the first Khan Hadji I Gerai. The era of the Crimean Khanate is the heyday of the Crimean Tatar culture, art and literature. The classic of the Crimean Tatar poetry of that era is Ashik Umer. Among other poets, Mahmud Kyrymly - the end of the 12th century (pre-Horde period) and the Khan of Gaza II Giray Bora are especially famous. The main surviving architectural monument of that time is the Khan's Palace in Bakhchisarai.

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 mainstay: all the Crimean Tatar clergy and the local feudal aristocracy were equated with the Russian aristocracy with all rights reserved.

The oppression of the Russian administration and the expropriation of land from the Crimean Tatar peasants caused a mass emigration of Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire. The two main waves of emigration came in the 1790s and 1850s. According to researchers of the late 19th 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% of Crimean Tatars. Thus, in the first 10 years of Russian power, up to 3/4 of the population left Crimea (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 the end of the Crimean War, in the 1850-60s, about 200 thousand Crimean Tatars emigrated from Crimea. It is their descendants that 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 the Crimea. At the same time, most of the Crimean Tatar elite left Crimea.

Along with this, the colonization of the Crimea took place intensively, mainly on the territory of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), due to the attraction of immigrants from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia by the Russian government. All this led to the fact that by the end of the 19th century there were less than 200 thousand Crimean Tatars (about a third of the entire Crimean population) and in 1917 about a quarter (215 thousand) of the 750 thousandth population of the peninsula.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Crimean Tatars, overcoming disunity, began to move from rebellions to a new stage of national struggle. There was an understanding that it is necessary to look for ways to fight against emigration, which is beneficial to the Russian Empire and leads to the extinction of the Crimean Tatars. It was necessary to mobilize the entire people for collective protection from the oppression of tsarist laws, from Russian landowners, from Murzaks serving the Russian Tsar. According to the Turkish historian Zühal Yuksel, this revival was initiated by the activities of Abduraman Kyrym Khawaja and Abdurefi Bodaninsky. Abduraman Kyrym Khawadzhe worked as a teacher of the Crimean Tatar language in Simferopol and published a Russian-Tatar phrase book in Kazan in 1850. Abdurefi Bodaninsky, in 1873, overcoming the resistance of the authorities, published the "Russian-Tatar primer" in Odessa, and an unusually large circulation of two thousand copies. To work with the population, he attracted the most capable of his young students, determining for them the methodology and program of classes. With the support of progressive mullahs, it was possible to expand the program of traditional national educational institutions. “Abdurefi Esadulla was the first enlightener among the Crimean Tatars,” writes D. Ursu. The personalities of Abduraman Kyrym Khawadzhe and Abdurefi Bodaninsky mark the beginning of the stages of the difficult revival of the people, who have been languishing under political, economic and cultural repressions for many decades.

The further development of the Crimean Tatar revival, which is associated with the name of Ismail Gasprinsky, was a natural consequence of the mobilization of national forces undertaken by many, nameless today, representatives of the secular and spiritual intelligentsia of the Crimean Tatars. Ismail Gasprinsky was an outstanding educator of the Turkic and other Muslim peoples. One of his main merits 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 of 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 started publishing the first Crimean Tatar newspaper "Terdzhiman" ("Translator") from 1883, which soon became known far beyond the 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.

Revolution of 1917

At the beginning of the 20th 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 in 1905-1907. Gasprinsky wrote: “The first long period of mine and my “Translator” is over, and the second, brief, but probably more turbulent period begins, when the old teacher and popularizer should become a politician.”

The period from 1905 to 1917 was a continuous growing process of struggle, moving from humanitarian to political. In the revolution of 1905 in the 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 gendarme department. 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. In February 1917, the Crimean Tatar revolutionaries observed the political situation with great readiness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day the State Duma was dissolved, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky. Ten days late, the Simferopol group of Social Democrats organized the first Simferopol Soviet. The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee offered the Simferopol Council joint work, but the executive committee of the Council rejected this proposal. The Muslim Revolutionary Committee organized nationwide elections throughout the Crimea, and already on March 25, 1917, the All-Crimean Muslim Congress was held, which managed to gather 1,500 delegates and 500 guests. The Congress elected the Provisional Crimean Muslim Executive Committee (Musispolkom) of 50 members, of which Noman Chelebidzhikhan was elected chairman, Ali Bodaninsky was elected manager of affairs. The Musispolkom was recognized by the Provisional Government as the only authorized and legitimate administrative body representing all Crimean Tatars. Under the control of the Musispolkom were political activities, culture, religious affairs, and the economy. The executive committee had its own committees in all county towns, and local committees were also created in the villages. The newspapers Millet (editor A. S. Aivazov) and the more radical Voice of the Tatars (editors A. Bodaninsky and X. Chapchakchi) became the central printed organs of the Musispolkom.

After the all-Crimean election campaign conducted by the Musispolkom on November 26, 1917 (December 9, according to a new style), the Kurultai - the General Assembly, the main deliberative, directive and representative body - was opened in the Khan's Palace in Bakhchisarai. Kurultai opened Chelebidzhikhan. In particular, he said: “Our nation does not convene the Kurultai to consolidate its dominance. Our goal is to work hand in hand, head to head with all the peoples of Crimea. Our nation is just." Asan Sabri Aivazov was elected chairman of the Kurultai. The Presidium of the Kurultai included Ablyakim Ilmi, Jafer Ablaev, Ali Bodaninsky, Seitumer Tarakchi. The Kurultai approved the Constitution, which stated: "... The Kurultai believes that the adopted Constitution can ensure the national and political rights of the small peoples of Crimea only under the people's republican form of government, therefore the Kurultai accepts and proclaims the principles of the People's Republic as the basis of the national existence of the Tatars." Article 17 of the Constitution abolished titles and class ranks, and Article 18 legitimized the equality of men and women. Kurultai declared itself the national parliament of the 1st convocation. The Parliament chose from its midst the Crimean National Directory, whose chairman was Noman Chelebidzhikhan. Celebidzhikhan made up his office. The director of justice was Noman Chelebidzhikhan himself. Jafer Seydamet became the director of military and foreign affairs. The director of education is Ibraim Ozenbashly. The director of waqfs and finances is Seit-Celil Khattat. The director of religious affairs is Amet Shukri. On December 5 (according to the old style), the Crimean National Directory declared itself the Crimean National Government, issued an appeal in which, addressing all the nationalities of Crimea, it called them to work together. Thus, in 1917, the Crimean Tatar Parliament (Kurultai) - the legislative body, and the Crimean Tatar Government (Directorate) - the executive body, began to exist in Crimea.

Civil War and Crimean ASSR

The share of Crimean Tatars in the population of the regions of Crimea according to the materials of the All-Union population census of 1939

A difficult test for the Crimean Tatars was the Civil War in Russia. In 1917, after the 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 leaders most revered by the Crimean Tatars, Noman Chelebidzhikhan, is known - “Crimea is for the Crimeans” (it meant the entire population of the peninsula, regardless of nationality. “Our task,” he said, is the creation of such a state as Switzerland. The peoples of Crimea represent a wonderful bouquet, and equal rights and conditions are necessary for every nation, because we go hand in hand ". However, Chelebidzhikhan was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the interests of the Crimean Tatars during the Civil War were practically not taken into account by both whites and red.

Crimea under German occupation

For participation in the Great Patriotic War, five Crimean Tatars (Teifuk Abdul, Uzeyir Abduramanov, Abduraim Reshidov, Fetislyam Abilov, Seitnafe Seitveliev) were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and Ametkhan Sultan was awarded this title twice. Two (Seit-Nebi Abduramanov and Nasibulla Velilyaev) are full holders of the Order of Glory. The names of two Crimean Tatar generals are known: Ismail Bulatov and Ablyakim Gafarov.

Deportation

The accusation of cooperation of the Crimean Tatars, as well as other peoples, with the invaders became the reason for the eviction of these peoples from the 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 the German occupiers to Uzbekistan and the adjacent regions of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Small groups were sent to the Mari ASSR, the Urals, and the Kostroma Oblast.

In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47,000 families). From every third adult Crimean Tatar they took a subscription stating that he had familiarized himself with the decision, and that 20 years of hard labor were threatened for escaping from the place of special settlement, as for a criminal offense.

The mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was called about 20 thousand people), the good reception of the 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 vast majority of Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in the Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the motherland (in total, about 5,000 collaborators of all nationalities were identified in Crimea in April-May 1944). Crimean Tatars who fought in the Red Army were also deported after being demobilized and returning home from the front to Crimea. Crimean Tatars were also deported, who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944. In 1949, in the places of deportation, there were 8995 Crimean Tatars - participants in the war, including 524 officers and 1392 sergeants.

A significant number of immigrants, exhausted after three years of life in the occupation, died in places of expulsion from starvation and disease in 1944-45. Estimates of the number of deaths during this period vary greatly: from 15-25% according to various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to estimates by activists of the Crimean Tatar movement who collected information about the dead in the 1960s.

Fight for 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 the appeals of the 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 invalidation of certain legislative acts of the USSR, providing for restrictions on the choice of residence for certain categories of citizens” was issued.

Since the 1960s, in the places of residence of the deported Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan, a national movement arose and began to gain strength to restore the rights of the people and return to Crimea.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine informs that lately, and especially in 1965, visits to the Crimean region by Tatars who were resettled in the past from Crimea have become more frequent ... Some Suleymanov, Khalimov, Bekirov Seit Memet and Bekirov Seit Umer, who came to Crimea in September 1965, were residents of the city of Gulistan of the Uzbek SSR, when meeting with their acquaintances, they reported that “now a large delegation has gone to Moscow to seek permission to return the Crimean Tatars to the Crimea. We will return, all or no one.<…>

From a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU about Crimean Tatars visiting Crimea. November 12, 1965

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 all-Ukrainian census of 2001), of which over 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 in the Crimean Tatar settlements that have arisen over the past 15 years.

Religion

The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Historically, the Islamization of the Crimean Tatars took place in parallel with the formation of the ethnic group itself and was very long. The first step on this path was the capture of Sudak and its environs by the Seljuks in the 13th century and the beginning of the spread of Sufi brotherhoods in the region, and the last step was the massive adoption of Islam by a significant number of Crimean Christians who wanted to avoid being evicted from Crimea in 1778. The main part of the Crimean population converted to Islam in the era of the Crimean Khanate and the Golden Horde period that preceded it. Now in Crimea there are about three hundred Muslim communities, most of which are united in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea (adhere to the Hanafi madhhab). It is the Hanafi direction, which is the most "liberal" of all four canonical interpretations in Sunni Islam, that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.

Literature of the Crimean Tatars

Main article: Literature of the Crimean Tatars

Prominent Crimean Tatar writers of the 20th century:

  • Bekir Choban-zade
  • Eshref Shemi-zade
  • Cengiz Dagji
  • Emil Amit
  • Abdul Demerdzhi

Crimean Tatar musicians

Crimean Tatar public figures

Sub-ethnic groups

The Crimean Tatar people consists of three sub-ethnic groups: steppes or nogaev(not to be confused with the Nogai people) ( çöllüler, nogaylar), highlanders or tatov(not to be confused with Caucasian tatami) ( tatlar) and South Coast or Yalyboy (yalIboylular).

South Coast - yalyboylu

Before the deportation, the South Coast residents lived on the Southern Coast of Crimea (Crimean Tatar. Yalı boyu) - a narrow strip 2-6 km wide, stretching along the seashore 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 Bank also have the blood of Italians (Genoese). Until the deportation, the inhabitants of many villages on the South Shore retained elements of Christian rituals inherited from their Greek ancestors. Most of the Yalyboys adopted Islam as a religion quite late, compared to the other two sub-ethnic groups, namely in 1778. Since the South Coast was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, the South Coast never lived in the Crimean Khanate and could move throughout the territory of the empire, this is evidenced by a large number of marriages of the South Coast citizens with the Ottomans and other citizens of the empire. In racial terms, most of the southern coasters belong to the southern 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 (light skin, blond hair, blue eyes). For example, the inhabitants of the villages of Kuchuk-Lambat (Cypress) and Arpat (Zelenogorye) belonged to this type. The South Coast Tatars also differ markedly from the Turkic in physical type: they were noted to be taller, lack cheekbones, “in general, regular facial features; this type is very harmoniously complex, which is why it can be called beautiful. Women are distinguished by soft and regular features, dark, with long eyelashes, large eyes, finely defined eyebrows. where?] . The described type, however, even within the small space of the South Bank, is subject to significant fluctuations, depending on the predominance of one or another nationality 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 blond, sometimes red hair. The customs of the southern coast Tatars, the freedom of their women, the veneration of certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love for sedentary occupations, compared with their appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called "Tatars" are close to the Indo-European tribe. The population of the middle yalyboy is distinguished by an analytical mindset, the eastern one - by a love of art - this is determined by the strong influence in the middle part of the Goths, and in the eastern part of the Greeks and Italians. The South Coast dialect belongs to the Oghuz group of Turkic languages, very close to Turkish. In the vocabulary of this dialect there is a noticeable layer of Greek and a certain number of Italian borrowings. The old Crimean Tatar literary language, created by Ismail Gasprinsky, was based on this particular dialect.

Stepnyaks - Nogai

Highlanders - Tats

Current situation

The ethnonym "Tatars" and the Crimean Tatar people

The fact that the word "Tatars" is present in the common name of the Crimean Tatars often causes misunderstandings and questions about whether the Crimean Tatars are not a sub-ethnic group of Tatars, but the Crimean Tatar language is a dialect of Tatar. The name "Crimean Tatars" has remained in Russian since the times when almost all the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachays (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakasses (Abakan Tatars), etc. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with the historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppes), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited Eastern Europe before the Mongol invasion, when the ethnonym "Tatars" came to the west . The Crimean Tatar and Tatar languages ​​are related, since both belong to the Kypchak group of Turkic languages, but they are not the closest relatives within this group. Due to quite different phonetics, the Crimean Tatars almost do not understand the Tatar speech by ear. The closest to the Crimean Tatar are Turkish, Azerbaijani from the Oghuz, and from the Kypchak Kumyk and Karachai languages. At the end of the 19th century, Ismail Gasprinsky made an attempt to create a single literary language for all the Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire (including the Tatars of the Volga region) on the basis of the Crimean Tatar southern coast dialect, but this undertaking did not have any serious success.

The Crimean Tatars themselves today use two self-names: qIrImtatarlar(literally "Crimean Tatars") and qIrImlar(literally "Crimeans"). In everyday colloquial speech (but not in an official context), the word can also be used as a self-name Tatarlar("Tatars").

Spelling of the adjective "Crimean Tatar"

Kitchen

Main article: Crimean Tatar cuisine

Traditional drinks are coffee, ayran, yazma, buza.

National confectionery products are sheker kyiyk, kurabye, baklava.

The national dishes of the Crimean Tatars are chebureks (fried meat pies), yantyk (baked meat pies), saryk burma (layered meat pie), sarma (vine leaves stuffed with meat and rice), dolma (bell peppers stuffed with meat and rice). ), kobete - originally a Greek dish, as evidenced by the name (baked pie with meat, onions and potatoes), burma (puff pie with pumpkin and nuts), tatarash (literally Tatar food - dumplings) yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings) , shish kebab (the word itself is of Crimean Tatar origin), pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike Uzbek rice without carrots), pakla shorbasy (meat soup with green bean pods seasoned with sour milk), shurpa, hainatma.

Notes

  1. All-Ukrainian population census 2001. Russian version. Results. Nationality and mother tongue. Archived from the original on August 22, 2011.
  2. Ethnoatlas of Uzbekistan
  3. On the migration potential of the Crimean Tatars from Uzbekistan, etc. by 2000
  4. According to the 1989 census, there were 188,772 Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan. () At the same time, it should be taken into account that, on the one hand, after the collapse of the USSR, most of the Crimean Tatars of Uzbekistan returned to their homeland in Crimea, and on the other, that a significant part of the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan recorded in censuses as "Tatars". There are estimates of the number of Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan in the 2000s up to 150 thousand people (). The number of Tatars proper in Uzbekistan was 467,829 people. in 1989 () and about 324,100 people. in 2000; and the Tatars together with the Crimean Tatars in 1989 in Uzbekistan were 656,601 people. and in 2000 - 334,126 people. What proportion of this number in reality are the Crimean Tatars, it is not known exactly. Officially, in 2000, there were 10,046 Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan ()
  5. Joshuaproject. Tatar, Crimean
  6. Crimean Tatar population in Turkey
  7. 2002 Romanian census Ethnic composition
  8. All-Russian population census 2002. Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved December 24, 2009.
  9. Population census of Bulgaria 2001
  10. Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on statistics. Census 2009. (National composition of the population .rar)
  11. About 500 thousand in the countries of the former USSR, Romania and Bulgaria, and from 100 thousand to several hundred thousand in Turkey. Statistics on the ethnic composition of the population in Turkey is not published, so the exact data is unknown.
  12. Turkic peoples of Crimea. Karaites. Crimean Tatars. Krymchaks. / Rev. ed. S. Ya. Kozlov, L. V. Chizhova. - M .: Nauka, 2003.
  13. Ozenbashly Enver Memet-oglu. Crimeans. Collection of works on the history, ethnography and language of the Crimean Tatars. - Akmescit: Share, 1997.
  14. Essays on the history and culture of the Crimean Tatars. / Under. ed. E. Chubarova. - Simferopol, Krymuchpedgiz, 2005.
  15. Türkiyedeki Qırımtatar milliy areketiniñ seyri, Bahçesaray dergisi, Mayıs 2009
  16. AI Aybabin Ethnic history of the early Byzantine Crimea. Simferopol. Gift. 1999
  17. Mukhamedyarov Sh. F. Introduction to the ethnic history of Crimea. // Turkic peoples of Crimea: Karaites. Crimean Tatars. Krymchaks. - M .: Science. 2003.

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:
one). Russian site rusmirzp.com/2012/09/05/categ… 2). Ukrainian site turlocman.ru/ukraine/1837 3). Tatar site mtss.ru/?page=kryims

I will write some material using the most politically correct Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymsky… and my own impressions.

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a people who historically formed in the 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 are sheker kyiyk, kurabye, baklava.

The national dishes of the Crimean Tatars are chebureks (fried pies with meat), yantyk (baked pies with meat), saryk burma (puff pastry with meat), sarma (vine leaves stuffed with meat and rice), cabbage), 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 (puff pie with pumpkin and nuts), tatar ash (dumplings), yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings), barbecue, pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike Uzbek rice without carrots), bakla shorbasy (meat soup with green bean pods seasoned with sour milk), shurpa, kainatma.

I tried sarma, dolma and shurpa. Delicious.

Resettlement.

They live mainly in the Crimea (about 260 thousand), the adjacent regions of continental Russia (2.4 thousand, mainly in the Krasnodar Territory) and in the adjacent regions 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 size, since Turkey does not publish data on the national composition of the country's population. The total number of residents whose ancestors immigrated to the country from Crimea at different times is estimated in Turkey at 5-6 million people, but most of these people 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 Mongols conquerors of the 13th century. This is not true.
The Crimean Tatars were formed as a people in the Crimea in the XIII-XVII centuries. The historical core of the Crimean Tatar ethnos is the Turkic tribes that settled in the 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 formed the ethnic basis of the Crimean Tatars, Karaites , Krymchaks.

The main ethnic groups that inhabited the Crimea in antiquity and the Middle Ages are Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars, Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Italians, Circassians (Circassians), Asia Minor Turks. Over the centuries, the peoples who again came to Crimea assimilated those who lived here before their arrival, or themselves assimilated among them.

An important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people belongs to the Western Kypchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name of the Polovtsy. Kipchaks from the 11th-12th centuries began to populate the Volga, Azov and Black Sea steppes (which from then until the 18th century were called Desht-i Kypchak - "Kypchak steppe"). From the second half of the 11th century, they began to actively penetrate into the Crimea. A significant part of the Polovtsy took refuge in the mountains of Crimea, fleeing after the defeat of the combined 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 XIII century, the Crimea was conquered by the Mongols under the leadership of Batu Khan and included in the state founded by them - the Golden Horde. During the Horde period, representatives of the Shirin, Argyn, Baryn and other clans appeared in the Crimea, who later formed the backbone of the Crimean Tatar steppe aristocracy. The spread of the ethnonym "Tatars" in the 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 unrest 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 an independent Crimean Khanate was formed.

The key event that left an imprint on the further history of Crimea was the conquest by the Ottoman Empire of the southern coast of the peninsula and the adjacent part of the Crimean Mountains, which previously belonged to the Republic of Genoa and the Principality of Theodoro, in 1475, the subsequent transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a vassal state in relation to the Ottomans and the entry of the peninsula into Pax Ottomana - "cultural space" of the Ottoman Empire.

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 companions of the Prophet Muhammad Malik Ashter and Gaza Mansur. However, Islam began to spread actively in Crimea only after the adoption of Islam as the state religion by the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek in the 14th century.

Historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars is the Hanafi direction, which is the most "liberal" of all four canonical interpretations in Sunni Islam.
The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Historically, the Islamization of the Crimean Tatars took place in parallel with the formation of the ethnic group itself and was very long. The first step on this path was the capture of Sudak and its environs by the Seljuks in the 13th century and the beginning of the spread of Sufi brotherhoods in the region, and the last step was the massive adoption of Islam by a significant number of Crimean Christians who wanted to avoid being evicted from Crimea in 1778. The main part of the Crimean population converted to Islam in the era of the Crimean Khanate and the Golden Horde period that preceded it. Now in Crimea there are about three hundred Muslim communities, most of which are united in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea (adhere to the Hanafi madhhab). It is the Hanafi direction that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.

Mosque Tahtali Jam in Evpatoria.

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-Kipchak on the territory of the Khanate and Ottoman in the Ottoman possessions) became dominant, and Islam acquired the status of the state religions throughout the peninsula.

As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population and the Islamic religion, which received the name "Tatars", the 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 the listed peoples in earlier eras), which amounted to the end of the XV century, the majority in the mountainous and southern coastal regions of Crimea.

The assimilation of the local population began in the Horde period, but it especially intensified in the 17th century.
The Goths and Alans who lived in the mountainous part of the Crimea, who began to adopt Turkic customs and culture, which corresponds to the data of archaeological and paleoethnographic studies. On the Ottoman-controlled South Bank, assimilation was noticeably slower. Thus, the results of the 1542 census show that the overwhelming majority of the rural population of the Ottoman possessions in the Crimea were Christians. Archaeological studies of the 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 were called Greeks then) were evicted from the Crimea to the Azov Sea 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, the Greek-speaking Rumeians were a minority, and by that time there were no speakers of Alanian, Gothic and other languages ​​​​at all.

At the same time, cases of conversion of Crimean Christians to Islam were recorded in order to avoid eviction.

Sub-ethnic groups.

The Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: the steppe or Nogai (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 Yalyboi (yalıboyylular).

South Coast - yalyboylu.

Before the deportation, the South Coast lived on the Southern Coast of Crimea (Krymskotat. Yalı boyu) - a narrow strip 2-6 km wide, stretching along the seashore 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 in the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Bank there is also the blood of Italians (Genoese). Until the deportation, the inhabitants of many villages on the South Shore retained elements of Christian rituals inherited from their Greek ancestors. Most of the Yalyboys adopted Islam as a religion quite late, compared to the other two sub-ethnic groups, namely in 1778. Since the South Coast was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, the South Coast never lived in the Crimean Khanate and could move throughout the territory of the empire, this is evidenced by a large number of marriages of the South Coast citizens with the Ottomans and other citizens of the empire. In racial terms, most of the southern coasters belong to the southern 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 (light skin, blond hair, blue eyes). For example, the inhabitants of the villages of Kuchuk-Lambat (Cypress) and Arpat (Zelenogorye) belonged to this type. The South Coast Tatars also differ markedly from the Turkic in physical type: they were noted to be taller, lack cheekbones, “in general, regular facial features; this type is very harmoniously complex, which is why it can be called beautiful. Women are distinguished by soft and regular features, dark, with long eyelashes, large eyes, finely defined eyebrows ”(writes Starovsky). The described type, however, even within the small space of the South Bank, is subject to significant fluctuations, depending on the predominance of one or another nationality 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 blond, sometimes red hair. The customs of the southern coast Tatars, the freedom of their women, the veneration of certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love for sedentary occupations, compared with their appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called "Tatars" are close to the Indo-European tribe. The South Coast dialect belongs to the Oghuz group of Turkic languages, very close to Turkish. In the vocabulary of this dialect there is a noticeable layer of Greek and a certain number of Italian borrowings. The old Crimean Tatar literary language, created by Ismail Gasprinsky, was based on this particular dialect.

Steppe people - legs.

The Nogai lived in the steppe (Crimean Tat. çöl) north of the conditional line Nikolaevka-Gvardeiskoye-Feodosiya. The main part in the ethnogenesis of this group was taken by the western Kipchaks (Polovtsy), eastern Kipchaks and Nogais (from this the name Nogai came). In racial terms, Nogai and Caucasoids with elements of Mongoloidity (~ 10%). The Nogai dialect belongs to the Kypchak group of Turkic languages, combining the features of the Polovtsian-Kypchak (Karachay-Balkarian, 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 the feudal groups ended in 1443 with the victory of Hadji Giray, who founded the virtually independent Crimean Khanate, whose territory included the Crimea, the Black Sea steppes and the Taman Peninsula.
The main force of the Crimean army was the cavalry - fast, maneuverable, with centuries of experience. In the steppe, every man was a warrior, an excellent rider and archer. Beauplan also confirms this: "Tatars know the steppe as well as pilots know sea harbors."
During the emigration of the Crimean Tatars of the XVIII-XIX centuries. a significant part of the steppe Crimea was practically devoid of the indigenous population.
The well-known 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, knowing the secrets of extracting and conducting water, raising cattle and gardens in places where a German or a Bulgarian would not get along until now. Hundreds of thousands of honest and patient hands have been taken away from the economy. Camel herds have almost disappeared; where thirty flocks of sheep used to walk, there one walks, where there were fountains, there are now empty pools, where there was a populous industrial village - there is now a wasteland ... Pass, for example, Evpatoria district and you will think that you are traveling along the shores of the Dead Sea.

Highlanders - Tats.

Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian people of the same name) lived before the deportation in the mountains (Crimean Tatar dağlar) and foothills or the middle lane (Crimean Tatar orta yolaq), that is, north of the South Coast and south of the steppes. The ethnogenesis of the Tats is a very complex and not fully understood process. Almost all the peoples and tribes that have ever lived in the Crimea took part in the formation of this sub-ethnos. These are Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, Avars, Goths, Greeks, Circassians, Bulgars, Khazars, Pechenegs and Western Kypchaks (known in European sources as Cumans or Komans, and in Russian as Polovtsians). Particularly important in this process is the role of the Goths, Greeks and Kypchaks. From the Kipchaks, the Tats inherited the language, from the Greeks and the Goths - the material and everyday culture. 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 by some researchers to be Gothic. 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 guessed. Racially, the Tats belong to the Central European race, that is, outwardly similar to representatives of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe (some of the North Caucasian peoples, and some of the Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, etc.). The Tats 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 sub-ethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars practically did not mix with each other, but the deportation destroyed the traditional areas of settlement, and over the past 60 years, the process of merging these groups into a single community has gained momentum. The boundaries between them are already noticeably blurred today, since the number of families where the spouses belong to different subethnic groups is significant. Due to the fact that, after returning to the Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, for a number of reasons, and primarily because of 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 the Crimea, about 30% were South Coast, about 20% - Nogai and about 50% - 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 not a sub-ethnic group of Tatars, but the Crimean Tatar language is a dialect of Tatar. The name "Crimean Tatars" has remained in Russian since the times when almost all the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachays (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakasses (Abakan Tatars), etc. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with the historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppes), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited Eastern Europe before the 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-name.

The Crimean Tatar and Tatar languages ​​are related, since both belong to the Kypchak group of Turkic languages, but they are not the closest relatives within this group. Due to the rather different phonetics (primarily vocalism: the so-called “Volga vowel interruption”), Crimean Tatars hear only certain words and phrases in Tatar speech and vice versa. The closest to the Crimean Tatar are the Kumyk and Karachai languages ​​from the Kypchaks, and the Turkish and Azerbaijani languages ​​from the Oguz languages.

At the end of the 19th century, Ismail Gasprinsky made an attempt to create a single literary language for all the Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire (including the Tatars of the Volga region) on the basis of the Crimean Tatar southern coast dialect, but this undertaking did not have any 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 the Crimea was the Geraev (Gireev) clan, the founder of which was the first Khan Hadji I Gerai. The era of the Crimean Khanate is the heyday of the Crimean Tatar culture, art and literature.
The classic of the Crimean Tatar poetry of that era - Ashik Umer.
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 Commonwealth (until the 18th century, mostly offensive), which was accompanied by the capture of a large number of prisoners from among the peaceful Russian, Ukrainian and Polish population. Those captured into slavery were sold at the 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 the raids, preferring to pay off payments from the khans. In 1571, the 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 only the Kremlin, burned to the ground. However, the very next year, the 40,000-strong horde, which, together with the Turks, Nogais, and Circassians (more than 120-130 thousand in total), hoped to finally end 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 in fact semi-independent Nogai hordes, roaming in the Northern Black Sea region, regularly made extremely devastating raids on Moscow, Ukrainian, Polish lands, reaching Lithuania and Slovakia. The purpose of these raids was to capture booty and numerous slaves, mainly for the purpose of selling slaves of the Ottoman Empire to the markets, their cruel exploitation in the khanate itself, and receiving a ransom. For this, as a rule, the Muravsky Way was used, which passed from Perekop to Tula. These raids bled all the southern, outlying 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 sentinel functions in all border areas of the Moscow State and the Commonwealth, with the Wild Field.

As part of the Russian Empire.

In 1736, Russian troops led by Field Marshal Christopher (Christoph) Minich burned Bakhchisaray and devastated the Crimean foothills. 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 mainstay: all the Crimean Tatar clergy and the local feudal aristocracy were equated with the Russian aristocracy with all rights reserved.

The oppression of the Russian administration and the expropriation of land from the Crimean Tatar peasants caused a mass emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire. The two main waves of emigration came in the 1790s and 1850s. According to researchers of the late 19th 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% of Crimean Tatars. Thus, most of the Tatars emigrated from Crimea, according to various sources, up to half of the population (according to 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 the end of the Crimean War, in the 1850-60s, about 200 thousand Crimean Tatars emigrated from Crimea. It is their descendants that 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 the Crimea.

Along with this, the development of the Crimea, mainly the territory of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), was intensively taking place due to the attraction of immigrants from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia by the Russian government. The ethnic composition of the population of the peninsula has changed - the share of Orthodox 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 against 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 merits 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 of 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 20th 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 in 1905-1907. Gasprinsky wrote: “The first long period of mine and my “Translator” is over, and the second, brief, but probably more turbulent period begins, when the old teacher and popularizer should become a politician.”

The period from 1905 to 1917 was a continuous growing process of struggle, moving from humanitarian to political. In the revolution of 1905 in the 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 close attention of the gendarmes. 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, the Crimean Tatar revolutionaries observed the political situation with great readiness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of the dissolution of the State Duma, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky.
The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee offered the Simferopol Council joint work, but the executive committee of the Council rejected this proposal.
After the all-Crimean election campaign conducted by the Musispolkom on November 26, 1917 (December 9, according to a new style), the Kurultai - the General Assembly, the main deliberative, directive and representative body - was opened in the Khan's Palace in Bakhchisarai.
Thus, in 1917, the Crimean Tatar Parliament (Kurultai) - the legislative body, and the Crimean Tatar Government (Directorate) - 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 the 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 leaders most revered by the Crimean Tatars, Noman Chelebidzhikhan, is known - “Crimea is for the Crimeans” (it meant the entire population of the peninsula, regardless of nationality. “Our task,” he said, “is the creation of such a state as Switzerland. The peoples of Crimea represent a wonderful bouquet, and equal rights and conditions are necessary for every nation, for we should go hand in hand.” However, Chelebidzhikhan was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the interests of the Crimean Tatars during the Civil War were practically not taken into account by both whites and red.
In 1921, the Crimean ASSR was created as part of the RSFSR. The state languages ​​in it were Russian and Crimean Tatar. The administrative division of the autonomous republic was based on the national principle: in 1930, national village councils were created: 106 Russian, 145 Tatar, 27 German, 14 Jewish, 8 Bulgarian, 6 Greek, 3 Ukrainian, 2 Armenian and Estonian. , national districts were organized. In 1930 there were 7 such districts: 5 Tatar (Sudak, Alushta, Bakhchisaray, Yalta and Balaklava), 1 German (Biyuk-Onlar, later Telman) and 1 Jewish (Fraydorf).
In all schools, children of national minorities were taught in their native language. But after a short rise in national life after the creation of the republic (the opening of national schools, a theater, the publication of newspapers), the Stalinist repressions of 1937 followed.

Most of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia were repressed, including the statesman Veli Ibraimov and the scientist Bekir Chobanzade. According to the 1939 census, there were 218,179 Crimean Tatars in Crimea, that is, 19.4% of the entire population of the peninsula. Nevertheless, the Tatar minority was in no way infringed on their rights in relation to the "Russian-speaking" population. On the contrary, the top leadership consisted mainly of Crimean Tatars.

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 the Crimea by the German occupation administration. In Simferopol, the central "Crimean Muslim Committee" began its work. Their organization and activities took place under the direct supervision of the SS. Subsequently, the leadership of the committees passed to the headquarters of the SD. In September 1942, the German occupation administration banned 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 recruitment of volunteer formations; to provide assistance to the families of volunteers; on culture and propaganda; by religion; administration department and office. Local committees in their structure duplicated the central one. Their activities were terminated at the end of 1943.

The initial program of the committee provided for the creation of a state of Crimean Tatars in Crimea under the protectorate of Germany, the creation of its own parliament and army, the resumption of the activities of the Milli Firka party, banned in 1920 by the Bolsheviks (Crimean Tatar. 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 kind of state entity in the Crimea. In December 1941, representatives of the Crimean Tatar community of Turkey, Mustafa Edige Kyrymal and Mustegip Ulkusal, visited Berlin in the hope of convincing Hitler of the need to create a Crimean Tatar state, but they were refused. The 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 - self-defense companies, whose main task was to fight partisans, began. Until January 1942, this process went on 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, of which 1,632 people were selected for service in self-defense companies (14 companies were formed). In March 1942, 4 thousand people were already serving in self-defense companies, and another 5 thousand people were in the reserve. Subsequently, on the basis of the created companies, auxiliary police battalions were deployed, the number of which by November 1942 reached eight (from the 147th to the 154th).

Crimean Tatar formations were used in the protection of military and civilian facilities, took an active part in the fight against partisans, in 1944 they actively resisted the formations of the Red Army that liberated the Crimea. The remnants of the Crimean Tatar units, together with the German and Romanian troops, were evacuated from the Crimea by sea. In the summer of 1944, the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS was formed from the remnants of the Crimean Tatar units in Hungary, which was soon reorganized into the 1st Tatar Mountain Jaeger Brigade of the SS, which was disbanded on December 31, 1944 and transformed into the Krym battle group, which merged into Eastern Turkic connection of the SS. Crimean Tatar volunteers who were not part of 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 as well.
More than 35 thousand Crimean Tatars served in the ranks of the Red Army from 1941 to 1945. Most (about 80%) of the civilian population actively supported the Crimean partisan detachments. Due to the poor organization of the partisan struggle and the constant shortage of food, medicines and weapons, the command decided to evacuate most of the partisans from the Crimea in the fall of 1942. According to the party archive of the Crimean Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, as of June 1, 1943, there were 262 people in the partisan detachments of Crimea. Of these, 145 Russians, 67 Ukrainians, 6 Tatars. As of January 15, 1944, there were 3,733 partisans in Crimea, of which 1944 were Russians, 348 Ukrainians, and 598 Tatars. 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 invaders became the reason for the eviction of these peoples from the 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 the German occupiers to Uzbekistan and the adjacent regions of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Small groups were sent to the Mari ASSR, to the Urals, to the Kostroma region.

In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47,000 families). From every third adult Crimean Tatar they took a subscription stating that he had familiarized himself with the decision, and that 20 years of hard labor were threatened for escaping from the place of special settlement, as for a criminal offense.

The mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was called about 20 thousand people), the good reception of the 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 vast majority of Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in the Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the motherland (in total, about 5,000 collaborators of all nationalities were identified in Crimea in April-May 1944). Crimean Tatars who fought in the Red Army were also deported after being demobilized and returning home from the front to Crimea. Crimean Tatars were also deported, who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944. In 1949, in the places of deportation, there were 8995 Crimean Tatars - participants in the war, including 524 officers and 1392 sergeants.

A significant number of immigrants, exhausted after three years of life in the occupation, died in places of expulsion from starvation and disease in 1944-45.

Estimates of the number of deaths during this period vary greatly: from 15-25% according to estimates by various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to estimates by activists of the Crimean Tatar movement who collected information about the dead in the 1960s.

Fight for 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 the appeals of 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 invalidation of certain legislative acts of the USSR, providing for restrictions on the choice of residence for certain categories of citizens” was issued.

Since the 1960s, in the places of residence of the deported Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan, a national movement arose and began to gain strength to restore the rights of the people and return to Crimea.
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 all-Ukrainian census of 2001), of which over 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 in the Crimean Tatar settlements that have 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 (a kind of national parliament) take place, in which all Crimean Tatars participate. Kurultai forms an executive body - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (a kind of 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 reacted negatively to the holding of a referendum on the annexation of Crimea to Russia in early March 2014.
However, just before the referendum, the situation was reversed with the help of Kadyrov and Tatarstan State Councilor Mintimer Shaimiev and Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures to rehabilitate the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, German and Crimean Tatar peoples living in the Crimean ASSR. 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 improvement of their territories of residence (with funding), to assist the Crimean and Sevastopol authorities in holding commemorative events for the 70th anniversary of deportation peoples in May 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 their own ranks. At the same time, the mood of the Tatars and the attitude towards the return of the Crimea to Russia is rather wary, not hostile. So everything depends on the authorities and on how Russian Muslims will accept new brothers.

At present, the social life of the Crimean Tatars is undergoing 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:
"The Crimean Tatars are flesh and blood heirs and part of the Great Turkic El - Eurasia.
We have nothing to do in Europe. Most Turkic Ale today is also Russia. More than 20 million Turkic Muslims live in Russia. Therefore, Russia is also close to us, as well as to the Slavs. All Crimean Tatars speak Russian fluently, were educated in Russian, grew up in Russian culture, live among Russians."gumilev-center.ru/krymskie-ta…
These are the so-called "squatters" of land by the Crimean Tatars.
They simply built several such buildings nearby on the lands that belonged to the Ukrainian State at that time.
As illegally repressed, the Tatars believe that they have the right to seize the land they like for free.

Of course, self-captures do not take place in the remote steppe, but along the Simferopol highway and along the South Coast.
There are few capital 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, a house for children or sell it profitably.
And the fact that squatting will be legalized is already being prepared by a decree of the State Council. vesti.ua/krym/63334-v-krymu-h…

Like this.
Including by legalizing squatting, Putin decided to ensure the loyalty of the Crimean Tatars regarding the presence of the Russian Federation in Crimea.

However, the Ukrainian authorities also did not actively fight this phenomenon.
Since it considered the Mejlis as a counterbalance 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 Extrajudicially Deported on a National Basis 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 compensations 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 social protection of the deportees, as well as their children, who were born after the eviction in 1941-1944 in places of deprivation of liberty or in exile and 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 tours. VIP guide - a city dweller, will show the most unusual places and tell urban legends, I tried it, it's fire 🚀! Prices from 600 rubles. - will definitely please 🤑

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One of the most popular topics of the fighters against totalitarianism during the period of perestroika, who enthusiastically exposed the bloody Stalinist regime and the imperial ambitions of the USSR, was the fate of the Crimean Tatars. Without sparing colors and emotions, the cruel and inhuman methods of work of the punitive machine of the Stalinist regime, which doomed the innocent people to unreasonable suffering and deprivation as a result of deportation in May 1944, were painted. Today, after more than two decades, when the initial euphoria of perestroika revelations has been replaced by a desire to calmly and balancedly sort out this or that problem, one can look at the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as a historical problem, discarding the ideological and political husk. Separate, so to speak, the wheat from the chaff.

Who are the Crimean Tatars?

The Crimean peninsula with a fertile climate and fertile lands has attracted peoples from all over the world in all ages. West, east, north - everyone was striving for the warm southern shores, where they didn’t have to kill themselves like that to get food. At different times, Scythians, Sarmatians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Pechenegs, Polovtsians lived on the peninsula. Ancient Russians from time immemorial occupied the eastern part of the peninsula, being part of the Tmutarakan principality, which existed in the 10th-12th centuries. And this almost heavenly corner of Taurida was called. In 1223, for the first time, the Tatars-Mongols appeared on the land of ancient Taurida, capturing and plundering the city of Sudak. In 1239 they make the peninsula a Tatar ulus and give it a name - Crimea. Crimean Tatars are one of the fragments of the Golden Horde.

Crimean Khanate

But the Golden Horde disintegrates in 1443, and the Crimean Khanate is formed on the territory of the peninsula. It was independent for a very short time. Already in 1475, Khan Mengli-Girey recognized himself as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. All important strategic points of the Khanate are headed by the Turks, they are the actual owners of the Crimean Khanate. All local rulers are servants of the Turkish Sultan - he appoints and removes them, pays them a salary. Crimean Tatars Absolutely not accustomed to the labor of farmers, whom the Tatars consider slaves, they prefer to provide for their lives by robbery raids on their nearest neighbors. Eventually, it becomes a local economy, a profitable business. No need to build new cities, build schools, theaters. It’s easier to swoop in with a bandit horde on your neighbors, destroy, burn, kill those you don’t need, and take those you need into captivity and sell them into slavery. The representative of the Polish king, Martin Bronevsky, who spent several months in the Crimea in 1578, left the following characterization of the Crimean Tatars: “This people is predatory and hungry, it does not value its oaths to the allies, but has in mind only its own benefits, lives on robberies and constant treacherous war” . Such behavior suited the Ottoman Porte in its aggressive policy towards the entire Christian world of Eastern Europe.

The Crimean Khanate with its militant subjects was the vanguard, ready to go anywhere for profitable booty. If the Ottoman rulers reproached the descendants of Genghis Khan for excessive initiative in terms of robberies, they answered that more than a hundred thousand Tatars, who had neither agriculture nor trade, could feed themselves without raids. It is in them that they see the service of the padishah. In the second half of the 16th century alone, the Crimean Tatars made 48 raids on the Muscovite state. In the first half of the 17th century, they captured more than 200 thousand Russians. The Ukrainian lands that were part of the Commonwealth suffered no less, and sometimes more. From 1605 to 1644 there were at least 75 raids by bloodthirsty neighbors. In just three years, from 1654 to 1657, Ukraine lost more than 50 thousand people due to the raids of the Crimean Tatars. Every year, 20,000 slaves were taken out of the Crimea, and at least 60,000 captives were used in the Khanate itself as slaves.

The Russian state did not want to endure a nest of robbers near its borders and many times gave not only an impressive rebuff, but also made numerous attempts to eliminate the Crimean Tatar threat. It was difficult, because behind the back of the Crimean Khanate was the powerful Ottoman Empire.

Crimean Tatars within the Russian Empire

There came a time when the Russian state gained the upper hand not only over the nest of robbers and slave traders, but also over powerful Turkey. This happened during the Russian-Turkish war, which Turkey began with Russia in 1768. In January 1769, the 70,000th Tatar army tried to make its last raid on Russia in history, but ran into Russian regiments and was not only stopped, but also thrown back. The Russian army, pursuing the Tatars, occupies the fortified line of Perekop, and successfully advances along the peninsula. Khan Selim-Girey III left everything and fled to Istanbul, and the remaining Tatar nobles hastily submitted. The new Khan Sahib Giray signed an agreement with Prince Dolgorukov in Karasubazar in 1772. under this treaty, it was declared an independent khanate under the auspices of Russia. The Ottoman Empire confirmed this treaty with the Treaty of Kyuchuk-Kainarji in 1774, but surreptitiously inspired anti-Russian uprisings in the Crimea. Therefore, in 1783, after the abdication of the last Crimean Khan Shahin Giray, Crimea, on the basis of the Manifesto of Empress Catherine II, was annexed to Russia.

Judging by historical documents, the population of the annexed territory of Crimea has never been infringed on their rights, and sometimes received them even more than the indigenous Russian population of the Russian state. The local Crimean nobility received all the rights of the Russian nobility. Representatives of the Muslim clergy were guaranteed immunity. Military service did not apply to the Crimean Tatars. Nevertheless, most of the Crimean Tatars moved to Turkey, and those who remained in the Crimea dealt more than one blow in the back to the “Russian infidels”, who destroyed the usual way of life of robbers and slave traders.

Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

The first time this happened was during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. As soon as the enemy troops began to land on the territory of the Crimea, a significant part of the Tatar population supported the enemies of Russia. At the same time, they rushed to oppress, rob and kill the Christian population, while showing unusual cruelty. The Crimean Tatars avoided fair retribution for their treacherous behavior due to excessive liberalism. Therefore, they acted in exactly the same way already in the 20th century during the revolutionary events of 1917. Having obtained permission from the Provisional Government to create Crimean Tatar military units, having received weapons, they were in no hurry to be at the forefront. And they preferred to meet the German troops with rampant robberies in relation to the entire Christian population.

A little over 20 years have passed, and already in time, the Crimean Tatars meet the German troops with joy and enthusiasm, go not only on conscription, but also voluntarily serve in German punitive battalions, organize self-defense units from partisans, participate in executions, surpassing the Germans in cruelty. German sources reported that there were about 20 thousand Crimean Tatars in the service of Adolf Efendi. Now the mullah must read three prayers: 1st prayer: for achieving an early victory and a common goal, as well as for the health and long years of the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. 2nd prayer: for the German people and their valiant army. 3rd prayer: for the soldiers of the German Wehrmacht who fell in battle.

But retribution for the betrayal resulted in the deportation of the Tatar population, which was carried out in May 1944. The entire Tatar population of Crimea was resettled as special settlers in Uzbekistan. Special settlers were allowed to take personal, household items and food up to 500 kg per family. Each echelon was accompanied by a doctor and two nurses with a supply of medicines; hot meals and boiling water were provided along the way. The list of products included meat, fish, flour, cereals, fats. So, there could be no question of any starvation, to which the special settlers were supposedly doomed. When Stalin was in power, all orders were carried out very scrupulously.

Return

The mass return of the Crimean Tatars took place in 1989, on the wave of perestroika movements. Currently, about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars live in Crimea. Since 1991, the Kurultai, the national parliament of the Crimean Tatars, has been operating. The executive body is the Majlis, the national government.

Reason for reflection

In the entire world history, Russia has almost never been an attacking side, but the countries that started the war against it first accused it of aggression...

Those who are interested in the situation and trends in the development of new Russian regions know that the situation in this territory is traditionally influenced by one of them, namely, the Crimean Tatar population. Let's look into the nuances of the issue. It is proposed to see how many and whether they all influence the political trends of the peninsula.

Strict statistics

It must be said that studies concerning the population have not been conducted on the territory of Ukraine (which previously included the peninsula) for a long time. More or less accurately, the question of how many Tatars live in Crimea can be answered in figures from thirteen years ago. The census was carried out in 2001. According to her, 2,033,700 people lived on the peninsula, 24.32% were Crimean Tatars. Trends in further dynamics can only be predicted based on various birth and death rates in ethnic groups. There are no exact data, but it can be assumed with a high probability that the percentage has now changed in favor of the people in question. It is known that the increase is estimated at a little less than one percent per year.

A bit of history

Some sources claim that earlier this people was the main one on the peninsula. If we set ourselves the goal of finding out how many Tatars lived in the Crimea in different periods, we will get the following data. They began to inhabit the territory in the thirteenth century. For about two centuries, their numbers have increased significantly. Science believes that at that time a third of the population of Crimea belonged to this ethnic group. The change in the level of the ratio was facilitated by the fact that the Tatars themselves hunted not only by agriculture and cattle breeding, but also by the slave trade.

They caught foreigners and sent them to the markets. The question of how many Tatars there are in Crimea worried the surrounding residents. Because they feared the raids of this tribe. By the way, large campaigns were not undertaken often.

Are all Tatars Crimean?

There is still a small nuance concerning the present and influencing the processes. Studying how many Tatars there are in Crimea, you will invariably stumble upon the heterogeneity of the people. So, some of their fellow tribesmen belong to a different, so to speak, branch. On the peninsula, about half a percent of the population classifies themselves as Kazan Tatars. And this is a completely different nationality. Among the Crimean Tatars, there is also a stratification. They are divided into three large groups, determined by the places of settlement of their ancestors: coast, steppes or mountains. This circumstance has little effect on the political cohesion of the people, mainly on domestic relations.

16:14 24.04.2014

The majority of Crimean Tatars live in their historical homeland - in the Crimea - 243.4 thousand people (according to the 2001 census). At the same time, 22.4 thousand Tatars lived in Romania in 2002, 10 thousand - in Uzbekistan in 2000 (according to the estimated number of Crimean Tatars themselves, their diaspora in Uzbekistan by the beginning of 1999 should have numbered 85-90 thousand people), 4.1 thousand - in Russia (in 2002) and 1.8 thousand - in Bulgaria in 2001.

Reference

Crimean Tatars, kyrymtatarlar, qırımtatarlar (self-name) - a people speaking the Crimean Tatar language of the Kypchak subgroup of the Turkic group of the Altai language family. The Crimean Tatar language is divided into northern (steppe), middle (mountain) and southern (coastal) dialects. The modern literary language was formed on the basis of the middle dialect.

Tatars are divided into 3 main sub-ethnic groups: steppe Tatars (nogai - çöllüler, noğaylar), south coast Tatars (yalyboy - yalıboylular) and (mountain) foothill Tatars, who call themselves tatami (tatlar). The traditional occupation of the steppe Tatars is nomadic cattle breeding, the other groups - agriculture, horticulture and viticulture, as well as fishing among coastal residents. Tatars are Sunni Muslims. According to the anthropological type, the Tatars are Caucasoids with a certain degree of Mongoloidity among the Nogays.

Most of the Crimean Tatars live in their historical homeland - in the Crimea - 243.4 thousand live in the Crimea (according to the 2001 census). At the same time, 22.4 thousand Tatars lived in Romania in 2002, 10 thousand - in Uzbekistan in 2000 (according to the estimated number of Crimean Tatars themselves, their diaspora in Uzbekistan by the beginning of 1999 should have numbered 85-90 thousand people), 4.1 thousand - in Russia (in 2002) and 1.8 thousand - in Bulgaria in 2001.

In Turkey, the entire population is considered Turks, therefore, since 1970, the number and nationality have not been officially indicated in the census. According to various estimates, the number of Crimean Tatars (“Crimean Turks”) and their descendants varies from 50-150 thousand to 4-6 million people. Figures in the range from 150 thousand to 1 million look more realistic.

Story

In 1223, the Mongol-Tatar governorship was established in Sudak, which served as the beginning of the settlement of the Crimea by the Tatars. Crimea was part of the Golden, and then the Great Horde.

XIII-XVII centuries - the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatar population. 2/3 of the urban population of Crimea were Greeks and Italians from Genoa and Venice. Part of the Tatars began to move to settled life from the end of the 13th century. and actively mix with the settled population, even adopting Christianity. In the 2nd half of the 13th-14th centuries, Islam spread, which became a kind of cement that held the people together. 3 sub-ethnic groups of Crimean Tatars were formed: Nogai, Tats and coastal. Nogai - direct descendants of the Kipchaks-Polovtsians and Nogais - inhabited the steppes of Crimea; their dialect belongs to the Nogai-Kipchak languages. The Tats were the largest group of the Tatar population of the Crimea. The Tats lived in the mountains and foothills north of the South Coast and south of the Nogai. In the ethnogenesis of the Tats, a significant role was played by the Kipchaks, from whom they inherited their dialect (the Polovtsian-Kipchak subgroup of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages) and the Goths, whose elements of material culture are found among the Tats, as well as the Greeks. Coastal Tatars lived on the southern coast of Crimea 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, Circassians, and in the East - Italian Genoese. The Oguz dialect of the South Coast people is close to Turkish, although there is a whole layer of Greek and Italian borrowings in the vocabulary.

1441-1783 - during the existence of the Crimean Khanate, whose policy was balanced between strong neighbors: the Moscow state, Lithuania and Turkey, the economic structure of the nomadic economy involves constant raids for prey, which was a constant phenomenon in the border areas. If the war was waged at the state level, then the raid became an invasion. In 1571, the 40,000-strong army of Khan Devlet Giray (1551-1577), besieging Moscow, set fire to the settlement and burned the entire city. The main booty of the warriors was live goods, which were sold at the slave markets (the largest of which was in the Cafe - modern Feodosia) to Turkey and other countries of the Middle East. According to historian Alan Fisher, from the middle of the 15th to the end of the 18th centuries, 3 million people from the Christian population of Poland and Russia were captured and sold into slavery by the Crimeans.

1475-1774 - the time of Turkish influence on the culture of the Crimean Tatars during the period of vassal dependence of the Khanate on the Ottoman Empire, which included the southeastern coast of Crimea. The active intervention of the Turks in the internal life of the khanate was noticeable only at the end of the 16th century. During this period, the flourishing of Muslim Crimean culture, especially architecture, falls.

1783-1793 years. In 1783 the Crimean Khanate was annexed to Russia. After that, mass immigration of Tatars to the North Caucasus and Dobruzha began, although the Tatar nobility received equal rights with the Russian nobility. By the 80s of the 18th century, there were about 500 thousand inhabitants in Crimea, of which 92% were Tatars, most of whom lived in the mountain forest zone. Until 1793 more than 300,000 Tatars, mostly mountainous, left the Crimea. After the conclusion of the Iasi peace treaty with Turkey as a result of the 2nd Russian-Turkish war (1792), part of the population, having lost hope of changing their situation, left the Crimea (about 100 thousand people). According to the 1793 census, 127.8 thousand people remained in the Crimea, of which 87% were Tatars. The tsarist government began to widely distribute the Crimean lands to the Russian nobles for possession.

1784-1917 - the service of the Crimean Tatars in the ranks of the Russian army, mainly in separate cavalry units. On March 1, 1784, the highest decree “On the composition of the army from new subjects living in the Tauride region” followed, 6 “Taurian national cavalry divisions” were formed, which were disbanded in 1792 and 1796. For the war with Napoleon (1804-1814 / 1815) in 1807 and then in 1808, 4 Crimean Tatar cavalry regiments were created as a militia. In the Patriotic War of 1812, 3 regiments took an active part, reaching Paris in 1814, after which the regiments were disbanded to their homes. In 1827, the Crimean Tatar squadron was formed from the Crimean Tatars, who had military distinctions, which was assigned to the Life Guards Cossack Regiment. The squadron took part in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 and partly in the Crimean war in 1854-1855. On May 26, 1863, the squadron was reorganized into the Command of the Life Guards of the Crimean Tatars as part of His Majesty's Own convoy. The cavalrymen of the squadron distinguished themselves in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. On May 16, 1890, the team was disbanded. In addition, on June 12, 1874, the Crimean squadron was formed from the Crimean Tatars, which was reorganized on July 22, 1875 into a division, and on February 21, 1906 - into the Crimean cavalry regiment. On October 10, 1909, the regiment received the honorary title "Crimean Mounted Her Majesty Empress Alexandra Feodorovna Regiment." On November 5, 1909, Nicholas II enrolled himself in the lists of the regiment. Since 1874, general military service has been extended to the Tatars.

1860-1863 - the period of mass migration of Tatars after the Crimean War (1853-1856). Most leave for Romania, as well as for Bulgaria and Turkey (181.1 thousand people left, by 1870 - 200 thousand). It is the descendants of these immigrants that today make up the majority of the Crimean Tatar population in these countries. Emigration affected 784 villages, of which 330 were completely deserted; moreover, mostly pastoralists, devastated by the war, left. The main reason for immigration was the accusation of the Tatars in cooperation with the troops of the anti-Russian coalition during the Crimean War.

After the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, a mass of Tatars moved from Dobruja to Anatolia, the same movement was facilitated by the introduction of compulsory military service in Romania in 1883, as well as new laws on the redistribution of land property in the 1880s.

1891-1920 - the third wave of emigration of the Crimean Tatars from Russia, which peaked in 1893, when 18 thousand people left. In 1902-1903, up to 600-800 people left daily. This wave of emigration was caused by both economic and ideological, anti-Islamic reasons.

The end of the 19th century - 1920s - a period of strengthening of national and nationalist sentiments among the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia. The activity of the Tatar educator Ismail Gasprinsky (İsmail Gaspıralı, 1851-1914) to open secular schools and press. On March 25, 1917, the Crimean Tatar congress-kurultai was held in Simferopol, which was attended by 2,000 delegates. Kurultai elected the Provisional Crimean Muslim Executive Committee (VKMIK), recognized by the Provisional Government of Russia, as the only authorized administrative body of the Crimean Tatars. From this kurultai, the implementation of the cultural and national autonomy of the Crimean Tatars began.

On October 26, 1917, a constituent kurultai was held in Bakhchisarai, which adopted the first constitution in the history of Crimea, declaring a new independent state - the Crimean People's Republic. The state flag of Crimea was also adopted at the kurultai - a blue cloth with a golden tamga in the upper corner. The Tatar government lasted until January 1918 and was destroyed by revolutionary sailors. In February 1918, the Provincial Congress of Soviets in Simferopol elected the Central Executive Committee, which on March 10, 1918 declared Crimea the Soviet Socialist Republic of Tauris, which existed for 1 month and fell under the blows of the Germans, who captured Crimea by May 1, 1918. In 1920, the Tatars actively participated in the "green" movement (about 10 thousand people) against the "white" detachments in the Crimea. In particular, the 5th Tatar regiment of the Crimean Insurgent Army under the command of Osman Derenayyrly fought against the Wrangel troops.

1921-1945 - the period of existence of the Crimean ASSR (Qrm Avonomjal Sotsialist Sovet Respublikas kr.-tat.) as part of the RSFSR, the official languages ​​of which were Russian and Crimean Tatar. In 1921-1931, in the course of the struggle against religion, all places of worship were closed and redesigned: 106 mosques, as well as tekie, madrasahs. At the same time, within the framework of the “indigenization” policy, a flourishing of secular national culture is observed: national schools, theaters are opened, newspapers are published in the Crimean Tatar language. In 1930, national village councils and national districts were created, 5 out of 7 of which were Tatar. In the mid-1930s, national construction was curtailed, and a policy of Russification began to be pursued.

1944 - the eviction of the Crimean Tatars from the Crimea - Sürgün (Kr.-Tat.) - "exile". In April-May 1944, after the liberation of the Crimea from the occupation troops, about 6 thousand Crimean Tatar collaborators were arrested, who did not have time to evacuate with the Germans. On May 11, 1944, the USSR State Defense Committee issued Decree No. 5859 “On the Crimean Tatars”, in which it accused all Crimean Tatars of desertion from the Red Army and in cooperation with the invaders and decided to send them to the Uzbek USSR. During May 18-20, 1944, 193.8 thousand Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families, 80% - women and children) were evicted from the Crimea by the forces of 32 thousand employees of the NKVD. 33.7 families (151.3 thousand people) were settled in Uzbekistan. Tatars worked in agriculture, in the oil fields, in the fishing industry, at construction sites, in coal mines, and in mines. Due to the difficult working conditions, the mortality rate in the first 3 years reached 19%. After the eviction, by decrees of 1945 and 1948, in the Crimea, the old names of Tatar villages were renamed in the Russian way, and the houses of the Crimean Tatars were settled by new settlers from Russia and Ukraine.

1944-1967 - Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan live as special settlers (until April 1956), and then without this status, but without permission to return to their homeland and receive requisitioned property back.

Since 1956 - the beginning of the "petition campaign" of the Crimean Tatars, who began to send numerous statements to the Soviet authorities demanding that they be allowed to return to their homeland and restore autonomy.

1967-1974 - by the Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 5, 1967 "On citizens of Tatar nationality who previously lived in the Crimea", the accusations of Stalin's times were dropped from the Tatars and constitutional rights were restored. The return of the Tatars to the Crimea, but due to the passport regime of registration, only a few were able to return.

January 9, 1974 - the publication of 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 on the choice of residence for certain categories of citizens."

1987-1989 - an active public movement of the Crimean Tatars for returning to their homeland - the functioning of public organizations - the "National Movement of the Crimean Tatars" and the increasingly influential "Organization of the Crimean Tatar National Movement". In July 1987, Crimean Tatars demonstrate on Red Square in Moscow demanding to be allowed to return to Crimea.

In 1989, the deportation of the Tatars was condemned by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and declared illegal. In May 1990, the concept of a state program for the return of Crimean Tatars to Crimea was adopted. A massive return of Crimean Tatars began: by the end of 1996, about 250,000 Crimean Tatars had returned to Crimea, and, according to some reports, about 150,000 remained in places of expulsion, mainly in the vicinity of Tashkent, Samarkand and Shakhrisabz. Due to unemployment and the inability to return their land, the Tatars have many problems. Until 1944, the sub-ethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars practically did not mix with each other, but the deportation destroyed the traditional areas of settlement, and over the past 60 years, the process of merging these groups into a single community has gained momentum. According to rough estimates, among the Crimean Tatars living in Crimea, about 30% are Yuzhnoberezhtsy, about 20% are Nogai and about 50% are Tats.

In 1991, the 2nd Kurultai was convened - the national parliament, which created a system of national self-government of the Crimean Tatars within the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (since 1995) as part of Ukraine. Every 5 years, Kurultai elections take place, in which the entire adult Tatar population at the age of 18 participates. Kurultai forms an executive body - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people.

year 2014. According to the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on the admission of the Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the formation of new entities within the Russian Federation dated March 18, 2014, the Crimean Tatar language became the state language of the Republic of Crimea (together with Russian and Ukrainian).