Original article in Ukrainian by Ostap Kryvdyk, UP
Translated by Anna Platonenko
Crimea is a small peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea, where the interests of several different countries, organizations and communities overlap, quite often being poles apart.
People have lived here since the dawn of time. State formations were appearing one after another, cities and fortresses were emerging and disappearing. Today this peninsula is the territory of Ukraine.
The conflict in Crimea has been raging relentlessly for two decades. In my opinion, the main reason for the conflict is Crimean land.
This article has no concern with the so-called ‘conflict managers’. It is about the way the old stereotypes are used in triggering conflicts, putting people with different historical fates against each other. The article also deals with the basic symbols of conflicts and covers several versions of finding the way out.
The people of Crimea: who are they?
In the times of the USSR there were the Soviet Uzbeks, Latvians and Ukrainians, but there were no Soviet Crimean Tatars.
On May 20, 1944 more than 200,000 of Crimean Tatars were deported, and just in the same way their place was occupied by hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Stalin declared the entire Tatar population “traitors to their own country”, they were loaded into freight cars in record-breaking time and dispatched to the far-away steppes.
Every second person died en route, and many more died in the special settlements in Kazakhstan. Later, having left their hard-earned possessions in the foreign country, Crimean Tatars returned to their non-Soviet Homeland.
Today Crimean Tatars are outcasts in their own land; they are forced to watch the best pieces of it being stolen. They see their houses, but they cannot go back and live there, because the outrageous prices for real estate in Crimea do not let them buy their property out.
Seizing the land, they go beyond the legal framework, destroying it (other people, who have nothing to do with Crimean Tatars, are also engaged in this) and choosing between the lesser of two evils: otherwise they would just have to turn both their cheeks to be slapped.
The Slavic colonization of the Crimean peninsula started as far back as early 19th century, and after the Crimean War, when thousands of Tatars left the peninsula, people of other different nationalities made up the greater part of the Crimean population.
The census conducted in 1939 indicates that Tatars amounted to 25% of the peninsula population.
Thus, only since 1800’s this territory can be considered as “purely Russian”. It is not known what percentage the descendants of those who came to settle in Crimea two centuries ago make up in today’s Crimean population, for the present conflict was already provoked back then.
In the times of the USSR the south coast of Crimea was a dream destination of every Soviet person, well known for Artek as a communist masterpiece, for the beauty of Yalta and the antiquity of Eupatoria, for the sea and mountains scattered with splendid palaces and marvelous ancient monuments.
Accommodation in Crimea was given as a reward for the most devoted work for the welfare of the Soviet Homeland. And the absence of protests as to the fact that Crimea belonged to the Ukrainian SSR and not to the Russian SFSR in the best way illustrated the falsity of this Ukrainian-Russian socialistic shield.
Many citizens of the ‘Soviet paradise’ are former party officials or the military, the standard Soviet people, who provided support to the regime and were its ‘middle class’. They will not forget the golden Soviet times for many generations to come.
The sea coast was indeed a paradise, but not the entire Crimea. A part of the new inhabitants of Crimea (mainly in the north, in the steppes) were the Ukrainian immigrants, who were forced to cultivate the abandoned Tatar fields and graze somebody else’s cattle.
Not knowing the local natural peculiarities and being unable to cope with water problems, they were frequent victims of droughts and winter winds.
Many of these people came from various regions of the USSR, and that is why its collapse struck everyone who lived here, thus breaking off or complicating family relationships.
These are people who lost their opportunities and guarantees of serene old age, granted by the previous regime.
Are these people Russians? It is most likely that by birth they are not, for the Soviet melting pot fused all the nations together, producing “internationalists”, who in the first place thought themselves to be nationally identical.
That is why the word “Russian” became a synonym for the concept of “a Soviet person”. Today this identity, which established the base for three entire generations, prevails in Crimea.
Some of them can easily be called “imperians”.
This is political identity, detached from national and cultural one.
Its typical characteristics are willful disregard of everyone who is different, neglect of our history and rewriting of it in one’s own way, sticking the “traitor” and “enemy” labels, arrogance and showing off one’s powerful past, using the concept of “high” culture only with a view to indicate their seemingly marginal position as “low”, aggression in case of various Ukrainian, Chechen or Crimea-Tatar “issues”.
The local Ukrainian community is situated in a distant ghetto, being persecuted by aggressive “internationalism” and drawn into an array of foreign culture. The scantiness of local schools and Ukrainian publications (for 24% of Ukrainians taken a census of, 40% of whom consider Ukrainian to be their mother tongue) is the direct evidence of this.
Being stuck between Russian Empire, the USSR and the unknown.
The historical background to modern Crimean Soviet identity is the heroic sacrificial struggle of the Soviet troops during World War II.
That is why there are so many semiofficial Soviet monuments in Crimea dedicated to those killed in the war. Every single one of them was supposed to become a sacred place of soviet faith, a stone in a temple of the holy soviet fatherland.
It is here where the symbolical and historical heritage of the tsarist and communist empire can be clearly seen in the methods and rhetoric.
The names of the Crimean towns and streets do not let the new reality in: neither post-Soviet, nor even pre-war one. The local toponymy, erased together with the “traitors”, was substituted with neutral and plain names as “Solnechnoye” (“Sunny”), “Uyutnoye” (“Cosy”), “Perevalnoye” (derived from a “Mountain pass”) or even “Schastlivaya vstrecha” (“A hearty welcome”).
The thing which I personally consider as very dangerous is Sevastopol’s being an enclave. It’s significance for Russian identity is exceptional: if Kyiv is Russian ‘mother’, then Sevastopol is its ‘father’.
Sevastopol is of utmost importance to this country: it is its “pearl of British crown”, its Serbian Kosovo and Polish Lviv all rolled into one.
It is the marker of the Russian South and a nation-building symbolic element. The tragedy of Russian identity lies in the fact, that so native and even indispensable places turned out to be beyond Russian bounds.
Will Russia be wise and strong enough not to tear its ‘bowels’ out of the neighbour’s body?
For if we are to follow such logic, we can further assume that Livadiya, the residence of the Russian tsars, Mykolayiv, ‘the city of Russian ships’, together with Odessa, ‘a pearl by the Black Sea’ and the southern gates of Russian Empire, "The glory of Yekaterina", Dnipropetrovsk, and finally Kyiv, the Mother of all Russian Cities – should all belong to Russia.
But then again, in such a way Constantinople as well as Berlin and Paris should also be called “the cities of Russian glory”. This way it may all come to washing up boots in the Indian Ocean.
Modern History: to turn butterflies into wasps?
Provocative trial of strength (one among many, yet the most far-reaching) in Bakhchisaray at the Aziz cemetery in August 2006 pursued secret aims too. The tactical aims were in full public view.
Firstly, it was meant to show that Crimean Tatars wanted to make Russians give their property back, and therefore to make the former pose a threat to peace and property of other citizens.
Secondly, it was meant to insult the memory of Crimean Tatars. In other words, to show them “who the master of the house is”.
The secret aims, however, dig somewhat deeper. The internal aim of this conflict was to further steal the Crimean lands for the benefit of third party, having caused a clash between the two communities.
Another possible economic motivation for organizing such a “show” lies in promoting other Black Sea resorts outside Crimea with a view to gain customers over.
A possible foreign policy component consists in setting up the instability zone, perhaps, with a view to realize the self-proclaimed scenario in Prydnistrovya with the “peacekeeping” force to help “resolve the conflict peacefully”. In other words, divide et impera (divide and rule).
One more self-suggesting conclusion which can be drawn from this and all the other conflicts is that Ukraine, being weak as a peacemaker, should project the image of Tatars’ ally, some sort of “property master of Russians”. There is a need to pose a threat of property redistribution and to “stand up for fellow countrymen”.
In such a situation it is mythologically powerful Russia that can become a property and non-restitution guarantee for the benefit of Crimean Tatars. And this is where the Russian myth and the desire of the rest of Crimean citizens to be with Russia comes from.
But there is a risk: the interests of Crimean Tatars may simply turn into small change in the hands of Ukrainian bureaucracy for the loyalty of Crimean Russians.
Who tied the knot?
The USSR did not die. In people’s heads it is still waging a war on the “traitors to the Fatherland”, still fighting with invaders (today with those of NATO), and still longs for the united “Great State”.
Like any other empire, the USSR was actively destroying ethnic communities. The national politics of the Soviet Empire was criminal and its outcome amounts to millions of victims.
The roots of this conflict stretch back into the crimes of the Soviet system. We should find the USSR guilty of genocide against Crimean Tatars. The “nobody-is-guilty” position is similar to the way a frightened ostrich behaves.
The Soviet people of Crimea also participated in the ethnocide of the Crimean Tatar people: they are either the descendants of those who expulsed Tatars, or those who received (or inherited) the property of Tatars for distinguished service to the Soviet regime.
They also bear the moral responsibility for what has happened.
These people should certainly condemn the crimes of the past so that such things never happen again. Otherwise, they may face the possibility of being regarded as accomplices in crime against humanity.
And this issue is absolutely similar to the question “Do you condemn the crimes of Nazism?”.
The answer “I want all of the Crimean Tatars be deported again” should be interpreted in much the same manner as the phrases “Death to the Jews!” or “Foreign race, get out!” and fall under Paragraph 2, Article 110 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (a term of three to five years of imprisonment, with grave consequences up to twelve years) or under Article 161 (from fines to five years of imprisonment).
The descendants of those who had committed a crime are secretly afraid that it is them who will have to face this ‘trial of history’ in the course of the rectification of injustice.
We cannot presume, however, that property restitution is to be made by Stalin’s methods (like violent expulsion of non-Crimean Tatars, say, in the freight cars within 24 hours) – it would be the same crime against humanity.
There are no simple solutions here.
Other forms of compensation are to be found: for instance, to expropriate the coastal lands, which were stolen by the high and mighties of Russia and Ukraine in the last 15 years, and to assign property to Crimean Tatars on the free-of-charge basis, in compliance with the historical right of the latter.
This should be launched as a one-time campaign with the subsequent use of market methods.
The future is possible
Paradoxical as it is, the Soviet people of Crimea, who consider themselves Russians and constitute a majority, cannot reunite with the post Soviet-Russian mother country.
In actual fact, it turns out that Crimea can only be annexed to Russia if all the former territories of the latter are annexed too.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian independence is one of the nails in the coffin of former empires. There are two things which do not favour the separation of Crimea from Ukraine: the international situation and the games of internal political ‘solitaire’ where only Moscow has all the chances to prosper, leaving its neighbours in decline.
That is the reason why genocide against Crimean Tatars should be recognized on government level, as in the case with Holodomor.
The future prospects can tactically be as follows:
1. To find the USSR guilty of committing genocide against Crimean Tatars and of framing the present-day citizens of Crimea who received the seized property. To decommunise Crimea: from myths and public holidays to street and city names. To abolish the so-called ‘empire holidays’, which insult the national dignity of Crimea citizens.
2. To prevent further stealing of Crimean land by third parties and to establish a land bank through joint efforts of all the ethnolingual communities.
3. To start the process of national reconciliation – from mutual respect to historical comprehension.
4. To prevent further integration into Russian media and cultural field; to create our own field as an integral element of Ukrainian humanitarian sphere.
The future prospects can strategically be as follows:
1. To recognize the Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean Tatar communities as equally subjective in the policy making process of Crimea.
2. To integrate into Ukrainian field by establishing Ukrainian civic identity, which would not come into conflict with one’s ethnic background. To get rid of chauvinistic complexes about Ukraine and everything Ukrainian.
3. To eventually recognize Crimean Tatar language as the official language of Autonomous Republic of Crimea, on the same level with Ukrainian and Russian: from signboards to schools (for example, to start teaching this language in the first form and to lecture one third of subjects in Crimean universities in Crimean Tatar language).
4. To build a democratic society, successfully protecting the interests of local communities and integrating these interests regardless of ethnic background of the citizens.
Conclusions
The idea of a Crimean Russian, who would both be a Ukrainian citizen and a true patriot, does not seem to acquire much popularity or importance in Crimea these days.
It is a positive challenge to those who want to live in peace and quiet on this planet and avoid being in constant symbolic conflicts with Ukraine and Ukrainian community.
However, the viruses of the former Empire, being tightly interwoven with people’s destinies, will still badly harm their daily life for a long time to come.
This also allows speculators to manipulate people, pursuing their own divide-and-rule interests.
Only if the old wars are finally brought to an end, through memory and forgiveness, will it then be possible to walk on, leaving the historical and land speculators without ghost of a chance.
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Author
Ostap Kryvdyk, a political scientist and an activist