Where did Crimea and Tatars come from? Crimean Tatars are not an indigenous people.

In Crimea, which was subordinate to the Ottoman Empire, the composition of the population was quite varied. The bulk of the population were Crimean Tatars. The khan's subjects belonged to different nations and professed different religions. They were divided into national-religious communities - millets, as was customary in the empire.

Only Muslims, who made up the largest community on the peninsula, enjoyed full rights. Only the faithful carried out military service, and for this they enjoyed tax and other benefits.

In addition to the Muslim, there were three more millets: Orthodox, or Greek, Jewish and Armenian. Members of different communities lived, as a rule, in their own villages and city districts. Their temples and houses of worship were located here.

Communities were governed by the most respected people, who combined spiritual and judicial power. They defended the interests of their people, enjoyed the right to raise funds for community needs and other privileges.

Number of Crimean Tatars

The history of the Crimean Tatars is quite interesting. In the regions of Crimea subordinate directly to the Sultan, the Turkish population grew. It increased especially quickly in the Cafe, which was called Kucuk-Istanbul, “little Istanbul.” However, the bulk of the Muslim community in Crimea were Tatars. Now they lived not only in the steppes and foothills, but also in mountain valleys on the southern coast.

They borrowed the skills of maintaining a settled economy and forms of social life from those who lived here for centuries. And the local population, in turn, adopted from the Tatars not only the Turkic language, but sometimes also the Muslim faith. Captives from Moscow and Ukrainian lands also accepted Islam: this way they could avoid slavery, “become foolish,” as the Russians said, or “become a poturnak,” as the Ukrainians put it.

Thousands of captives joined Tatar families as wives and servants. Their children were raised in a Tatar environment as devout Muslims. This was common among ordinary Tatars and among the nobility, right up to the Khan’s palace.

Thus, on the basis of Islam and the Turkic language, a new people was formed from various national groups - the Crimean Tatars. It was heterogeneous and divided into several groups according to its habitat, differing in appearance, language characteristics, clothing and activities, and other features.

Settlement and occupation of the Crimean Tatars

The Crimean Tatars of the southern coast of Crimea were under significant Turkish influence (along the southern coast lay the lands of the sanjak of the Turkish sultan). This was reflected in their customs and language. They were tall, with European features. Their flat-roofed dwellings, located on mountain slopes near the seashore, were built from rough stone.

The South Coast Crimean Tatars were famous as gardeners. They were engaged in fishing and animal husbandry. Her real passion was growing grapes. The number of its varieties reached, according to the estimates of foreign travelers, several dozen, and many were unknown outside the Crimea.

Another group of the Tatar population emerged in the Crimean Mountains. Along with the Turks and Greeks, the Goths made a significant contribution to its formation, thanks to which people with red and light brown hair were often found among the Mountain Tatars.

The local language was formed on the basis of Kipchak with an admixture of Turkish and Greek elements. The main occupations of the highlanders were animal husbandry, tobacco growing, gardening, and vegetable gardening. They grew, as on the South Coast, garlic, onions, and over time, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and herbs. The Tatars knew how to prepare fruits and vegetables for future use: they made jam, dried them, and salted them.

The mountain Crimean Tatars, like those from the south coast, also built with flat roofs. Houses with two floors were quite common. In this case, the first floor was made of stone, and the second floor, with a gable roof, was made of wood.

The second floor was larger than the first, which saved land. The protruding part of the tower (second floor) was supported by curved wooden supports, whose lower ends rested against the wall of the first floor.

Finally, the third group formed in the steppe Crimea, mainly from the Kipchaks, Nogais, and Tatar-Mongols. The language of this group was Kipchak, which also included individual Mongolian words. WITH The warm Crimean Tatars remained committed to the nomadic way of life for the longest time.

In order to bring them to a settled state, Khan Sahib-Girey (1532–1551) ordered the wheels to be cut and the carts of those who wanted to leave Crimea to become nomads to be broken. The Steppe Tatars built housing from unbaked brick and shell stone. The roofs of the houses were made of two or single slopes. As many hundreds of years ago, sheep and horse breeding remained one of the main occupations. Over time, they began to sow wheat, barley, oats, and millet. High yields made it possible to provide the population of Crimea with grain.

Crimean Tatars are a people that originated on the Crimean peninsula and southern Ukraine. Experts say that these people came to the peninsula in 1223 and settled in 1236. The interpretation of the history and culture of this ethnic group is vague and multifaceted, which arouses additional interest.

Description of the nationality

Crimeans, Krymchaks, Murzaks are the names of this people. They live in the Republic of Crimea, Ukraine, Turkey, Romania, etc. Despite the assumption of a difference between the Kazan and Crimean Tatars, experts claim the unity of the origins of these two directions. Differences arose due to the specifics of assimilation.

The Islamization of the ethnic group occurred at the end of the 13th century. It has symbols of statehood: a flag, a coat of arms, an anthem. The blue flag depicts a tamga - a symbol of the steppe nomads.

As of 2010, about 260 thousand were registered in Crimea, and in Turkey there are 4-6 million representatives of this nationality who consider themselves Turks of Crimean origin. 67% live in non-urban areas of the peninsula: Simferopol, Bakhchisaray and Dzhankoy.

They speak three languages ​​fluently: Russian and Ukrainian. Most speak Turkish and Azerbaijani. Native language is Crimean Tatar.

History of the Crimean Khanate

Crimea is a peninsula inhabited by the Greeks already by the 5th-4th centuries BC. e. Chersonesus and Feodosia are large Greek settlements of this period.

According to historians, the Slavs settled on the peninsula after repeated, not always successful, invasions of the peninsula in the 6th century AD. e., merging with the local population - the Scythians, Huns and Goths.

The Tatars began to raid Taurida (Crimea) from the 13th century. This led to the creation of a Tatar administration in the city of Solkhat, later renamed Kyrym. This is how the peninsula began to be called.

The first khan was recognized as Khadzhi Girey, a descendant of the khan of the Golden Horde Tash-Timur, the grandson of Genghis Khan. The Girays, calling themselves Genghisids, laid claim to the Khanate after the division of the Golden Horde. In 1449 he was recognized as the Crimean Khan. The capital became the city of the Palace in the Gardens - Bakhchisarai.

The collapse of the Golden Horde led to the migration of tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Prince Vitovt used them in military operations and to impose discipline among the Lithuanian feudal lords. In return, the Tatars received land and built mosques. Gradually they assimilated with the local residents, switching to Russian or Polish. Muslim Tatars were not persecuted by the church, since they did not interfere with the spread of Catholicism.

Turkish-Tatar Union

In 1454, the Crimean Khan concluded an agreement with Turkey to fight the Genoese. As a result of the Turkish-Tatar alliance in 1456, the colonies agreed to pay tribute to the Turks and Crimean Tatars. In 1475, Turkish troops, with the assistance of the Tatars, occupied the Genoese city of Cafu (Kefe in Turkish), and then the Taman Peninsula, ending the presence of the Genoese.

In 1484, Turkish-Tatar troops captured the Black Sea coast. The Budrzycka Horde state was founded on this square.

The opinions of historians regarding the Turkish-Tatar alliance are divided: some are sure that the Crimean Khanate turned into a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, others consider them equal allies, since the interests of both states coincided.

In reality, the Khanate depended on Turkey:

• Sultan - leader of the Crimean Muslims;
• Khan's family lived in Turkey;
• Türkiye bought slaves and loot;
• Türkiye supported the attacks of the Crimean Tatars;
• Türkiye helped with weapons and troops.

The Khanate's long military operations with the Moscow state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth stopped Russian troops in 1572 at the Battle of Molodi. After the battle, the Nogai hordes, formally subordinate to the Crimean Khanate, continued their raids, but their numbers were greatly reduced. The formed Cossacks took over guard functions.

Life of the Crimean Tatars

The peculiarity of the people was the non-recognition of a sedentary way of life until the 17th century. Agriculture developed poorly and was mainly nomadic: the land was cultivated in the spring, the harvest was harvested in the fall, after returning. The result was a small harvest. It was impossible to feed people through such farming.

The source of life for the Crimean Tatars remained raids and robberies. The khan's army was not regular and consisted of volunteers. 1/3 of the men of the khanate took part in major campaigns. In especially large ones - all men. Only tens of thousands of slaves and women with children remained in the Khanate.

Life on a hike

The Tatars did not use carts on campaigns. The carts at home were harnessed not to horses, but to oxen and camels. These animals are not suitable for hiking. Horses themselves found food in the steppes even in winter, breaking the snow with their hoofs. Each warrior took 3-5 horses with him on a campaign to increase speed when replacing tired animals. In addition, horses are additional food for a warrior.

The main weapon of the Tatars is bows. They hit the target from a hundred paces. During the campaign they had sabers, bows, whips and wooden poles, which served as supports for tents. On the belt they kept a knife, a crosshair, an awl, 12 meters of leather rope for prisoners and a tool for orienting in the steppe. For ten people there was one pot and a drum. Everyone had a pipe for warning and a bucket for water. During the hike we ate oatmeal - a mixture of flour from barley and millet. From this the drink pexinet was made, to which salt was added. In addition, everyone had fried meat and crackers. The source of nutrition is weak and injured horses. From horse meat they prepared boiled blood with flour, thin layers of meat from under the saddle of a horse after a two-hour race, boiled pieces of meat, etc.

Taking care of horses is the most important thing for a Crimean Tatar. The horses were poorly fed, believing that they were restoring their strength on their own after long marches. Lightweight saddles were used for horses, parts of which were used by the rider: the lower part of the saddle was a carpet, the base was for the head, a cloak stretched over poles was a tent.

Tatar horses - bakemans - were not shod. They are small and clumsy, but at the same time resilient and fast. Rich people used beautiful cow horns for their purposes.

Crimeans on campaigns

The Tatars have a special tactics for conducting a campaign: on their territory, the speed of transition is low, with the concealment of traces of movement. Beyond it, the speed dropped to a minimum. During raids, the Crimean Tatars hid in ravines and hollows from enemies, did not light fires at night, did not allow horses to neigh, caught tongues to obtain intelligence information, and before going to bed, lassoed themselves to horses to quickly escape from the enemy.

As part of the Russian Empire

In 1783, the “Black Century” began for the people: annexation to Russia. In the decree of 1784 “On the structure of the Tauride region,” governance on the peninsula is implemented according to the Russian model.

The noble nobles of Crimea and the supreme clergy became equal in rights to the Russian aristocracy. Massive land seizures led to emigration in the 1790s and 1860s, during the Crimean War, to the Ottoman Empire. Three quarters of the Crimean Tatars left the peninsula in the first decade of the Russian Empire. The descendants of these migrants created Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian diasporas. These processes led to devastation and desolation of agriculture on the peninsula.

Life within the USSR

After the February Revolution, an attempt was made to create autonomy in Crimea. For this purpose, a Crimean Tatar kurultai of 2,000 delegates was convened. At the event, the Temporary Crimean Muslim Executive Committee (VKMIK) was elected. The Bolsheviks did not take into account the decisions of the committee, and in 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed.

Crimea during the Great Patriotic War

During the occupation, since 1941, Muslim committees were created, which were renamed Crimean and Simferopol. Since 1943, the organization was renamed the Simferopol Tatar Committee. Regardless of the name, its functions included:

• opposition to partisans - resistance to the liberation of Crimea;
• the formation of voluntary detachments - the creation of Einsatzgruppe D, which numbered about 9,000 people;
• creation of auxiliary police - by 1943 there were 10 battalions;
• propaganda of Nazi ideology, etc.

The committee acted in the interests of forming a separate state of the Crimean Tatars under the auspices of Germany. However, this was not part of the Nazi plans, which envisaged the annexation of the peninsula to the Reich.

But there was also an opposite attitude towards the Nazis: by 1942, a sixth of the partisan formations were Crimean Tatars, who made up the Sudak partisan detachment. Since 1943, clandestine work has been carried out on the peninsula. About 25 thousand representatives of the nationality fought in the Red Army.

Collaboration with the Nazis led to mass evictions to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, the Urals and other territories in 1944. During the two days of the operation, 47 thousand families were deported.

You were allowed to take clothes, personal belongings, dishes and food with you in an amount of no more than 500 kg per family. In the summer months, the settlers were provided with food in exchange for the property they left behind. Only 1.5 thousand representatives of the nationality remained on the peninsula.

Returning to Crimea became possible only in 1989.

Holidays and traditions of the Crimean Tatars

Customs and rituals include Muslim, Christian and pagan traditions. The holidays are based on the agricultural calendar.

The animal calendar, introduced by the Mongols, depicts the influence of a specific animal in each year of a twelve-year cycle. Spring is the beginning of the year, so Navruz (New Year) is celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox. This is due to the beginning of field work. On the holiday it is necessary to boil eggs as symbols of new life, bake pies, and burn old things at the stake. For young people, jumping over a fire and going home in masks while the girls told fortunes were organized. To this day, it is traditional to visit the graves of relatives on this holiday.

May 6 - Khyderlez - the day of two saints Khydyr and Ilyas. Christians celebrate St. George's Day. On this day, work began in the field, cattle were driven out to pastures, and the barn was sprinkled with fresh milk to protect against evil forces.

The autumn equinox coincided with the holiday of Derviz - the harvest. Shepherds returned from mountain pastures and weddings were held in the settlements. At the beginning of the celebration, according to tradition, prayer and ritual sacrifice were carried out. Then the residents of the settlement went to the fair and dances.

The holiday of the beginning of winter - Yil Gejesi - fell on the winter solstice. On this day, it is customary to bake pies with chicken and rice, make halva, and go from house to house as mummers to buy sweets.

Crimean Tatars also recognize Muslim holidays: Uraza Bayram, Kurban Bayram, Ashir-Kunyu, etc.

Crimean Tatar wedding

A Crimean Tatar wedding (photo below) lasts two days: first for the groom, then for the bride. The bride's parents are not present at the festivities on the first day, and vice versa. Invite from 150 to 500 people from each side. According to tradition, the beginning of the wedding is marked by the bride price. This is a quiet stage. The bride's father ties a red scarf around her waist. This symbolizes the strength of the bride who becomes a woman and devotes herself to order in the family. On the second day, the groom's father will remove this scarf.

After the ransom, the bride and groom perform the wedding ceremony in the mosque. Parents do not participate in the ceremony. After the mullah reads the prayer and issues a marriage certificate, the bride and groom are considered husband and wife. The bride makes a wish during prayer. The groom is obliged to fulfill it within the time frame established by the mullah. The desire can be anything: from decorating to building a house.

After the mosque, the newlyweds go to the registry office to officially register the marriage. The ceremony is no different from the Christian one, except for the absence of a kiss in front of other people.

Before the banquet, the parents of the bride and groom are obliged to buy the Koran for any money without bargaining from the smallest child at the wedding. Congratulations are accepted not by the newlyweds, but by the bride's parents. There are no competitions at the wedding, only performances by artists.

The wedding ends with two dances:

• national dance of the bride and groom - haitarma;
• Horan - guests, holding hands, dance in a circle, and the newlyweds in the center dance a slow dance.

Crimean Tatars are a nation with multicultural traditions that go deep into history. Despite assimilation, they retain their own identity and national flavor.

Crimean Tatars(Crimean qırımtatarlar, kyrymtatarlar, singular qırımtatar, kyrymtatar) or Crimeans (Crimean qırımlar, kyrymlar, singular qırım, kyrym) are a people historically formed in 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.

Dossier

Self-name:(Crimean Tatar) qırımtatarlar, qırımlar

Number and range: Total 500,000 people

Ukraine: 248,193 (2001 census)

• Republic of Crimea: 243,433 (2001)
• Kherson region: 2,072 (2001)
• Sevastopol: 1,858 (2001)

Uzbekistan: from 10,046 (2000 census) and 90,000 (2000 estimate) to 150,000 people.

Türkiye: from 100,000 to 150,000

Romania: 24,137 (2002 census)

• Constanta County: 23,230 (2002 census)

Russia: 2,449 (2010 census)

• Krasnodar region: 1,407 (2010)
• Moscow: 129 (2010)

Bulgaria: 1,803 (2001 census)

Kazakhstan: 1,532 (2009 census)

Language: Crimean Tatar

Religion: Islam

Included: in Turkic-speaking peoples

Related peoples: Krymchaks, Karaites, Kumyks, Azerbaijanis, Turkmen, Gagauz, Karachais, Balkars, Tatars, Uzbeks, Turks

Settlement of the Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars live mainly in Crimea (about 260 thousand) and adjacent areas of continental Ukraine, as well as in Turkey, Romania (24 thousand), Uzbekistan (90 thousand, estimates from 10 thousand to 150 thousand), Russia ( 4 thousand, mainly in the Krasnodar region), 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 numbers, 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 have assimilated and consider themselves not Crimean Tatars, but Turks of Crimean origin.

Ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars formed as a people in Crimea in the XIII-XVII centuries. The historical core of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group is the Turkic tribes that settled in 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 they formed the ethnic basis of the Crimean Tatars, Karaites , Krymchakov.

Historical background

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

By the middle of the 13th century, Crimea was conquered by the Mongols under the leadership of Khan Batu and included in the state they founded - the Golden Horde.

The key event that left an imprint on the further history of Crimea was the conquest of the southern coast of the peninsula and the adjacent part of the Crimean Mountains by the Ottoman Empire in 1475, which previously belonged to the Genoese Republic and the Principality of Theodoro, 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 is the "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 the companions of the Prophet Muhammad Malik Ashter and Gazy Mansur.

History of the Crimean Tatars

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 Crimea was the Gerayev (Gireyev) clan, whose founder was the first khan Hadji I Giray. The era of the Crimean Khanate is the heyday of Crimean Tatar culture, art and literature.

From the beginning of the 16th century, the Crimean Khanate waged constant wars with the Moscow state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until the 18th century, mainly offensive), which was accompanied by the capture of a large number of captives from among the civilian Russian, Ukrainian and Polish populations.

As part of the Russian Empire

In 1736, Russian troops led by Field Marshal Christopher (Christoph) Minich burned Bakhchisarai and devastated the foothills of Crimea. 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 support: all Crimean Tatar clergy and local feudal aristocracy were equated to the Russian aristocracy with all rights retained.

The oppression of the Russian administration and the expropriation of land from Crimean Tatar peasants caused mass emigration of Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire. The two main waves of emigration occurred in the 1790s and 1850s.

Revolution of 1917

Crimean Tatar women on a postcard from 1905

The period from 1905 to 1917 was a continuous growing process of struggle, moving from humanitarian to political. During the revolution of 1905 in 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.

In February 1917, Crimean Tatar revolutionaries monitored the political situation with great preparedness. 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, on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created.

In 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the RSFSR. The official languages ​​were Russian and Crimean Tatar. The administrative division of the autonomous republic was based on the national principle.

Crimea under German occupation

Deportation

The accusation of cooperation of the Crimean Tatars, as well as other peoples, with the occupiers became the reason for the eviction of these peoples from 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 adjacent areas of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Small groups were sent to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Urals, and the Kostroma region.

In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families). Every third adult Crimean Tatar was required to sign that he had read the decree, and that escaping from the place of special settlement was punishable by 20 years of hard labor, as a criminal offense.

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

Return to Crimea

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”).

The mass return began in 1989, and today about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars live in Crimea (243,433 people according to the 2001 All-Ukrainian Census).

The main problems of the Crimean Tatars after their return were mass unemployment, problems with the allocation of land and the development of infrastructure of the Crimean Tatar villages that had arisen over the past 15 years.

Article from www.nr2.ru

Is it permissible to use the term “indigenous people” in relation to the TATARS in the CRIMEA in the context of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization “Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries” (adopted by the ILO General Conference on June 26, 1989)

Historical sources have brought to us the exact date of the Tatars’ arrival in Taurica. On January 27, 1223 (even before the battle on the Kalka River), a note was made in the margins of a Greek handwritten book of religious content - the synaxarion - in Sudak: “On this day the Tatars came for the first time, in 6731” (6731 from the Creation of the World = 1223 from R .X.). The details of this raid are given by the Arab author Ibn al-Asir: “Having come to Sudak, the Tatars took possession of it, and the inhabitants scattered, some of them with their families and their property climbed the mountains, and some went to the sea.”

Having plundered the cities, the Tatars “left (the land of the Kipchak) [i.e., the Koman-Polovtsy, who had occupied the steppes of the peninsula since the mid-11th century] and returned to their land.” During a campaign in South-Eastern Europe in 1236, they began to settle in the steppe Taurica. In 1239, Sudak was taken a second time, then new raids followed. The Polovtsians were exterminated without exception. The desolation of the Crimean steppes (from the 2nd half of the 13th century this name was used in relation to the city now called Old Crimea, much later, no earlier than a century later, it became the designation of the entire peninsula) and the Northern Black Sea coast was reported by Guillaume de Rubruk, who passed through to these regions in 1253: “And when the Tatars came, the Komans [i.e., Polovtsians], who all fled to the seashore, entered this land [i.e., the coast of Crimea] in such huge numbers that they devoured each other each other, the living dead, as a certain merchant who saw this told me, the living devoured and tore with their teeth the raw meat of the dead, like dogs - corpses.” Having left Sudak, Rubruk moved along the deserted steppe, observing only the numerous graves of the Polovtsians, and only on the third day of the journey he met the Tatars.

Having first established themselves in the steppe spaces of Crimea, the Tatars eventually occupied a significant part of its territory, with the exception of the eastern and southern coasts, the mountainous part (the Principality of Theodoro). The Crimean ulus (province) of the Golden Horde is formed.

In the first half of the 15th century, as a result of centrifugal processes occurring in the metropolis, the Crimean Khanate was created (not without the active participation of Polish-Lithuanian diplomacy), led by the Girey dynasty, who considered themselves descendants of Genghis Khan. In 1475, the Turkish army invaded the peninsula, seizing the possessions of the Genoese Italians and the Orthodox principality of Theodoro with its capital on Mount Mangup. Since 1478, the Crimean Khanate became a vassal of the Turkish Empire; the lands captured by the Turks entered the domain of the Turkish Sultan and were never subordinated to the khans.

Medieval European travelers and diplomats quite rightly considered the Tatars living in Crimea to be newcomers from the depths of Asia. The Turk Evliya Celebi, who visited Crimea in the 17th century, and other Turkish historians and travelers, as well as Russian chroniclers, agree with this. Andrei Lyzlov in his “Scythian History” (1692) writes that, having left Tataria, the Tatars conquered many lands, and after the battle on Kalka “... they destroyed both the towns and the Polovtsian villages to the ground. And all the countries near the Don , and the Meotian Sea [i.e., the Azov Sea], and the Taurica of Kherson [Crimea], which to this day, from the digging of the intermarium, we call Perekop, and the area around the Pontus Euxine [i.e., the Black Sea] is Tatar-dominated and gray." And until recently, the Tatars themselves living in Crimea did not deny their Asian origin.

During the rise of the national movement in 1917, the Tatar press emphasized the need to take into account and use the “state wisdom of the Mongol-Tatars, which runs like a red thread through their entire history”, with honor to hold the “emblem of the Tatars - the blue banner of Genghis” (the so-called “kok- bairak", from that time to the present day the national flag of the Tatars living in Crimea), to convene a national congress - kurultai, because for the Mongol-Tatars "a state without a Kurultai and a Kurultai without a state was unthinkable [...] Chinggis himself before ascending to the great the khan's throne convened the Kurultai and asked his consent" (newspaper "Voice of the Tatars", October 11, 1917).

During the occupation of Crimea during the Great Patriotic War, in the Tatar language newspaper "Azat Krym" ("Liberated Crimea") published with the consent of the fascist administration on March 20, 1942, the Tatar troops of Sabodai the Bogatyr, who conquered Crimea, were recalled, and in the issue dated April 21, 1942 years it was said: “our [Tatar] ancestors came from the East, and we were waiting for liberation from there, but today we are witnesses that liberation is coming to us from the West.”

Only in recent years, using the pseudoscientific reasoning of the St. Petersburg Scandinavian historian V. Vozgrin, the leaders of the illegal, unregistered organization “Majlis” are trying to establish the opinion that the Tatars are autochthonous in Crimea.

However, even today, speaking on July 28, 1993 at the “kurultai” in Simferopol, the eminent descendant of the Girey khans, Dzhezar-Girey, who arrived from London, stated: “Our former statehood was based on three fundamental unchanging pillars that define us.
The first and most important was our hereditary succession to the Genghisids. Communist propaganda tried to separate the Tatars from the Great Father, Lord Genghis Khan, through his grandson Batu and eldest son Juche. The same propaganda tried to hide the fact that we are the sons of the Golden Horde. Thus, the Crimean Tatars, as communist propaganda tells us, never defeated the Golden Horde in our history, because we were and really are the Golden Horde. I am proud to announce that a prominent academician from the University of London, who has spent his entire life researching the origins of the Crimean Tatars, has briefly published the results of his research, which once again revives for us our rightful rich heritage.

The second great pillar of our statehood was the Ottoman Empire, which we can now proudly relate to our Turkic succession. We are all part of this large Turkic nation, with which we are connected by strong and deep ties in the field of Language, history and culture.

The third pillar was Islam. This is our faith. [...]

The examples of our past greatness and our contributions to human civilization are innumerable. The Crimean Tatar people were once (and not so long ago) a superpower in the region."

Among the Tatars living in Crimea, the following main ethnographic groups can be distinguished:

Mongoloid "Nogai" are descendants of nomadic tribes that were part of the Golden Horde. With the formation of the Crimean Khanate, some of the Nogais became the subjects of the Crimean khans. The Nogai hordes roamed the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region from Moldova (Budzhak) to the North Caucasus. In the mid- to late 17th century, the Crimean khans resettled (often forcibly) the Nogais to the steppe Crimea.

The so-called “South Coast Tatars” are basically from Asia Minor and speak a medieval Turkish-Anatolian dialect. They were formed on the basis of several migration waves from the regions of Central Anatolia: Sivas, Kayseri, Tokat from the end of the 16th to the 18th centuries.

Only in 1778, after the resettlement of the majority of the Christian population (Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Moldovans) from the territory of the Khanate, the Muslim population became predominant in Eastern and Southwestern Crimea.

The self-name of this ethnic group in the Middle Ages was “Tatars”. From the first half of the 16th century. in the writings of Europeans the term “Crimean (Perekop, Tauride) Tatars” was recorded (S. Herberstein, M. Bronevsky). It is also used by Evliya Celebi. The word “Crimeans” is typical for Russian chronicles. As we see, foreigners, calling this people this way, emphasized the geographical principle.

In addition to the Tatars, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Turks, and Circassians lived in the Crimean Khanate, which occupied, in addition to the territory of Taurica, significant steppe spaces of the Northern Black Sea region. All non-Muslims in the Khanate were required to pay a special tax.

Initially, the Tatars were nomads and pastoralists. During the 16th - 18th centuries, nomadic cattle breeding was gradually replaced by agriculture. But for the steppe people, cattle breeding remained the main occupation for a long time, and farming techniques remained primitive in the 18th century. The low level of economic development stimulated military raids on neighbors, the seizure of booty and prisoners, most of whom were sold to Turkey. The slave trade was the main source of income for the Crimean Khanate from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Raids were often carried out at the direction of the Turkish Sultan.

From 1450 to 1586, 84 raids were carried out on Ukrainian lands alone, and from 1600 to 1647 - over 70. From the beginning of the 15th to the middle of the 17th century, about 2 million captives from the territory included in modern Ukraine were taken into slavery.

The prisoners left in Crimea were used on the farm. According to the Polish diplomat M. Bronevsky, who visited Crimea in 1578, noble Tatars “have their own fields cultivated by captured Hungarians, Russians, Wallachians or Moldovans, of whom they have a lot and whom they treat like cattle. [...] The Christian Greeks [local residents] living in some villages work and cultivate the fields as slaves." Bronevsky’s remark about the development of crafts and trade in the Khanate is interesting: “In the cities, not many are engaged in trade; even less often in handicrafts or crafts; and almost all merchants or artisans located there are either Christian slaves, or Turks, Armenians, Circassians, Pyatigorsk people (who also Christians), Philistines, or gypsies, the most insignificant and poor people."

The attitude towards the prisoners amazed not only enlightened Europeans, but also the Muslim Evliya Celebi, who had seen a lot of things, and who had great sympathy for the Tatars living in Crimea. This is how he described the slave market in Karasubazar (Belogorsk):

“This ill-fated bazaar is amazing. The following words are used for it: “Whoever sells a person, cuts down a tree or destroys a dam, is cursed by God in this and the next world [...] This applies to sellers of yasir [i.e. captives], for these people are beyond measure merciless. Whoever has not seen this bazaar has not seen anything in the world. The mother is torn there from her son and daughter, the son from his father and brother, and they are sold amid lamentations, cries for help, sobs and crying." Elsewhere he says: "The Tatar people are a merciless people."

For Europeans, the Tatars living in Crimea are evil, treacherous, savage barbarians. Only, perhaps, the German Thunmann, who, by the way, had never been to Crimea, wrote in 1777: “At present, they are no longer such a rude, dirty, robber people as they were once described in such disgusting colors.”

In the Crimean Khanate, forms of government were in effect that were characteristic of feudal formations that arose from the ruins of the empire of Genghis Khan. However, there were features determined by vassal dependence on the Turkish sultans. Crimean khans were appointed and removed at the will of the sultans. Their fate was also influenced by the opinion of the largest feudal lords - the beys. (The most influential beys - heads of clans who owned semi-independent beyliks (lands) were Shirins, Mansurs, Baryns, Sijiuts, Argins, Yashlaus. Often, without the knowledge of the khans, they themselves organized raids on their neighbors).

In 1774, according to the Kuchuk-Kaypardzhi Treaty between Russia and Turkey, the Crimean Khanate was declared independent. Russian troops were stationed on its territory. On April 19, 1783, with the Manifesto of Catherine the Great, the Crimean Khanate was liquidated, and Crimea was annexed to Russia. On January 9, 1792, the Treaty of Yassy between Russia and Turkey recognized the annexation of Crimea to Russia.

At present, contrary to historical sources, there are attempts to declare the “kurultai” and “medjlis” to be traditional bodies of self-government of the Tatars living in Crimea, and to give the “kurultai” the status of a “national assembly”.

However, neither the “kurultai” nor the “medjlis” are traditional bodies of self-government of the Tatars living in Crimea, and, moreover, they are not a national assembly.

Fundamental works on the history of the Golden Horde state:

“The specific conditions in which the formation and development of the Golden Horde as a state took place gradually gave birth to new forms of social and state life, pushing aside the traditional nomadic customs of the Mongols. In this regard, the question arises about the existence of Kuriltai in the Golden Horde. Sources very often mention these peculiar congresses of the ruling family (hereinafter it is emphasized by us. - Ed.), which took place under Genghis Khan and for a long time after his death. But with the final division of the Mongol empire into independent states in all respects, information about the Kuriltai is found less and less often and finally completely disappears from the sources. The need for this institution, which was largely of a state military-democratic nature, disappeared with the advent of a hereditary monarchy. In Mongolia, where there were stronger nomadic traditions, the Kuriltai gathered until the accession of Kublai Kublai, who officially founded the Yuan dynasty and approved a new system of succession to the throne - without. preliminary discussion of the candidacy of the heir at the general congress of the ruling family. There is no specific information in the available sources that kuriltai were held in the Golden Horde. True, when describing the abdication of the throne to Tudamengu, it is reported that “wives, brothers, uncles, relatives and associates” agreed with this. Obviously, a special meeting was convened to discuss this extraordinary case, which can be considered a kuriltai. Another source reports on Nogai Tokte’s proposal to gather the Kuriltai to resolve the dispute that arose between them. However, Nogai's proposal was not accepted. In this case, he acts as a bearer of obsolete traditions that do not find support from the khan of the new, younger generation. After this incident, sources on the history of the Golden Horde no longer mention the Kuriltai, since changes that occurred in the administrative and state structure negated the role of the traditional nomadic institution. There was no longer a need to convene well-born representatives of the aristocracy from the scattered nomads, most of whom now occupied the highest government posts. Having a government in the stationary capital consisting of representatives of the reigning family and major feudal lords, the khan no longer needed the kuriltai. He could discuss the most important state issues, gathering, as needed, the highest administrative and military officials of the state. As for such an important prerogative as approving an heir, it has now become the exclusive competence of the khan. However, a much larger role, especially from the second half of the 14th century, was played by palace conspiracies and all-powerful temporary workers in the changes on the throne." (V.L. Egorov "Historical Geography of the Golden Horde in the 13th - 14th centuries.", Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute history of the USSR. Executive editor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor V.I. Bugapov - Moscow, "Science", 1985).

Kurultai (as a congress of representatives of the people) cannot be called a traditional form of self-government for Tatars living in Crimea. Sources do not confirm the existence of such meetings in the Crimean Khanate. In this state of the Tatars, under the khan, there was a Divan - a meeting of the nobility, organized according to the Persian model (the term itself is of Persian origin).

After the February revolution in Russia (1917), at the general meeting of Muslims of Crimea on March 25 / April 7, 1917, the Musispolkom (Temporary Muslim Executive Committee) was formed, which over time took control of all issues of public life of the Tatars living in Crimea (from cultural and religious to military-political). Local municipal executive committees were created locally.

At the end of August 1917, in connection with the receipt from the Central Rada of an invitation to send a representative of the Tatars to the Congress of Peoples convened in Kyiv, the Musispolkom raised the question of convening a Kurultai (as a Sejm, a parliament of the Tatars) - the highest body of self-government. At the same time, the Tatar press of Crimea emphasized that such a body was characteristic of the Mongol-Tatars, who resolved the most important issues on it, and that it was there that Genghis Khan was elected (1206).

78 delegates of the Kurultai were elected with the participation of more than 70 percent of the Tatar population of Crimea. On November 26/December 9, 1917, meetings of this assembly opened in Bakhchisarai, declaring itself a “national parliament.” The Kurultai elected a Directory from among its members (the national government, following the example of Ukraine). It was dissolved by the Bolsheviks on January 17/30, 1918 and resumed its work during the German occupation on May 10, 1918. In October 1918, the Kurultai dissolved itself due to internal disagreements.

In 1919, the “national parliament” of the Tatars living in Crimea was called by the Turkish term “Majlis-Mebusan” and consisted of 45 deputies. It sat for a little over a week, hearing a report from the Chairman of the Directory and a project for reform of the clergy.

On August 26, 1919, the Directory was dissolved by order of Lieutenant General of the White Army N.I. Schilling.

The current “kurultai-mejlis” is an illegal political organization operating as a political party: the decisions of its bodies are binding only for its political supporters and cause sharp criticism from political opponents from among the Tatars. "Kurultai Majlis" was created on the basis of an illegal organization - OKND ("Organization of the Crimean Tatar National Movement").

The activities of these organizations are recognized as illegal by resolutions of the Supreme Council of Crimea. In addition to them, the pro-Mejlis illegal party “Adalet” was created.

OKND and the “Kurultai-Majlis” are opposed by the legal association of Tatars - NDKT (National Movement of the Crimean Tatars). The political struggle of these two Tatar parties largely determines the fate of the national movement.

Recently, there has been a split in the “Kurultai-Majlis”: some of its activists created their own party “Millet” (also illegal).

The procedure for the formation and work of the “kurultai” and “majlis” has the character not of people’s self-government, but of a congress of a political party and the executive body elected by it. Elections are gradual. In our opinion, legalization of the “Kurultai-Majlis” is possible only as a political party or public organization (in accordance with the laws of Ukraine).

In accordance with ILO Convention 169 "On Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries" (adopted by the General Conference of the International Labor Organization on June 26, 1989), Tatars living in Crimea (Crimean Tatars) cannot be considered a group defined in the legal sense as “indigenous” in this territory (Republic of Crimea), because:

1. They are not the first settlers in this territory (Crimean Peninsula). Historical and archaeological sources clearly record their first appearance here in 1223 as conquerors who almost completely destroyed the ethnic group that had inhabited the steppe part of Crimea before them - the Polovtsians (Comans).

Until the first half of the 14th century, they were part of a larger community spread over a large area of ​​Eastern Europe outside the Crimean Peninsula - the Tatar state of the Golden Horde.

2. The Tatars, as an ethnic group, never occupied the entire territory of the Crimean Peninsula and never constituted the majority of the population in all its regions. On the coast from Kafa (Feodosia) to Chembalo (Balaklava), on the former territory of the principality of Feodoro, in the mountainous and foothill parts of Crimea, the population has always been multi-ethnic. According to census data conducted by Turkey at the end of the 16th century. Among the inhabitants of the Kafa vilayet (a province of Turkey in the Crimea), Muslims accounted for only 3 to 5 percent of the population. The Greeks predominated (up to 80%), Armenians and others.
From the end of the 16th to the 18th centuries, there was an intensive process of settlement of these territories by Turkish colonists (mainly from central Anatolia) and the displacement of the Greek and Armenian population. After the annexation of Crimea to Russia, the multi-ethnic character of Crimea intensified to an even greater extent.

3. In the ethnogenesis of the Tatars living in Crimea, the main role was played by communities that formed outside the Northern Black Sea region and Crimea and came here as conquerors or colonists and were not indigenous to this region. These are the Tatars themselves, who arrived in the region from the depths of Asia in the first half of the 13th century, the Nogais - an Asian ethnic group that appeared here in the late Middle Ages and forcibly resettled in the Crimea at the end of the 17th century, Turkish colonists from Anatolia of the 16th - 18th centuries, who were also not in indigenous to this region. With the adoption of Islam into the reign of Uzbek Khan in 1412/13 as the state religion of the Golden Horde, the Tatars were introduced to the Muslim world, which very noticeably determined the development of their spiritual culture and ethnic identity.

4. The Tatars living in Crimea are not subject to the main feature that distinguishes the “indigenous” (in the legal sense) people or group - the preservation of traditional life support systems, primarily special forms of economic activity (land, sea hunting, fishing, gathering, reindeer herding ).

Nomadic cattle breeding, characteristic of the Tatars of the Middle Ages, is not included in this list. Moreover, by the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century it almost disappeared. The process of urbanization of the ethnic group was actively underway. By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the Tatars switched to modern forms of management. According to the 1989 census, 70% of Tatars are urban residents.

Tatars are a national group with a complete social structure. Among them are the intelligentsia, workers in various branches of industry and agriculture. The Tatars are actively involved in trade and entrepreneurship and have completely lost traditional forms of economic management.

5. The Tatars have long passed the stages of the traditional form of social organization - the tribal (classless) structure of society - and live according to the traditions and laws of modern society. Moreover, the Tatars emphasize that in the past they had their own feudal state (the Crimean Khanate as part of the Ottoman Empire), which was the “superpower of the region,” carried out aggressive campaigns against their neighbors and collected tribute from them.

These facts completely refute the need to classify Tatars as “indigenous peoples” with traditional forms of social organization of society (for example, the Sami, the Chukchi, the Papuans of New Guinea, the aborigines of Australia, the Indians of Canada, etc.), whose protection is provided for by ILO Convention 169.

6. Tatars living in Crimea, being part of the Golden Horde, Crimean Khanate, Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, did not have their own traditional bodies of self-government ("kurultai", "medjlis", etc.) that would make decisions on issues that are most important for all Tatars living in Crimea. They were not recorded in historical documents; there was no real tradition of such forms of self-government. The Tatars, unlike the peoples of Northern Europe, America, and Australia, were characterized by the power structures of feudal states, and then by the administrative management of the Russian Empire and the USSR. The authorities with these names were designed by the political leaders of the Tatars in 1918 and existed for less than a year. The model for them was not their own historical tradition, but rather the political experience of the neighboring states that arose on the site of the Ottoman Empire, in particular Turkey, towards which the Tatar political elite was oriented.

It should be especially emphasized that the unfounded definition of “kurultai” and “majlis” by the current political leaders of the Tatars living in Crimea, as a traditional form of self-government of the indigenous people, contradicts their own statement about the originality of the Tatars living in Crimea on the land of Taurida. As all researchers unanimously assert and sources testify, kurultai is a form of self-government characteristic only of the peoples of Central Asia, in particular Mongolia. In the states created on the ruins of Genghis Khan's empire, it was replaced by feudal forms of government (as evidenced by the example of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate). Moreover, it cannot be characteristic and traditional for Taurida, since there are no historical sources confirming the holding of at least one kurultai here, not to mention the tradition. Statements by Tatar leaders about the traditional nature of kurultai for their people once again confirm that the Tatars appeared in Eastern Europe as conquerors, aliens, bringing here and introducing by force the culture and traditions of Central Asia. The Tatars living in Crimea are descendants of the Golden Horde Tatar conquerors and cannot be considered the local pioneers, original inhabitants, or indigenous people.

7. Tatars do not profess ancient forms of religion (shamanism, etc.). Believing Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Many of them are atheists.

8. The Tatars were subjected to forced resettlement by the Soviet authorities in 1944. Today, a large (overwhelming) part of the Tatars have returned to Crimea. The process of their integration into Crimean society is carried out quite intensively. The difficulties accompanying this process are not caused by the characteristics of the Tatars, as a people “leading a traditional way of life,” but by the social and economic problems of modern people changing their place of residence in conditions of the economic crisis. They are not faced with the problem of preserving pastures for reindeer, traditional hunting and gathering places, etc., which would ensure the traditional way of life.

Tatars want to work in accordance with their education and profession: engineers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, university teachers. They want to engage in business, trade, etc., as they did in the Central Asian republics. They do not build dwellings characteristic of “indigenous peoples” leading a traditional way of life, but receive or build 2-3-story cottages on allocated plots. Therefore, providing assistance to them should not involve measures provided for in ILO Convention 169.

9. There are neither historical nor legal grounds for introducing amendments to the current legislation of Ukraine and the Republic of Crimea with the aim of legislatively securing the status of an “indigenous ethnic community of Ukraine” for the Tatars of Crimea, since they are not such.

10. The requirement for guaranteed representation of Tatars living in Crimea in the Supreme Council, local self-government bodies and executive authorities of Crimea on a national basis (national quotas) is also unfounded, since they are not an indigenous national group leading a traditional way of life and, due to this requiring special protection by law.

As practice shows, the ethnic group of 244 thousand 637 people living in Crimea (according to the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs in Crimea of ​​the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine as of February 1, 1997), constituting about 10% of the total population, on the basis of general democratic election norms may well send their representatives to government bodies at all levels. The Tatars created their own powerful political structures and political elite in a short period of time. They have significantly strengthened their position in the economy. They have media on a much larger scale than other political forces in Crimea. They actively influence political processes in Crimea and Ukraine.

Ostensibly for better integration of the Tatars into Crimean society, they were given seats in the Crimean parliament of the first convocation (1994) on the basis of national quotas for “deported peoples”, for one term of election. Practice has shown that this measure is not justified.

The quotas provided were significantly inflated and did not correspond to the share of the Tatar electorate in the electoral corps of Crimea. Seats in parliament were used by their holders for political intrigue, and by some for self-enrichment, but not to protect the interests of the so-called “indigenous citizens”.

As researchers note, contradictory trends have emerged in the position of the leaders of the national Tatar movement living in Crimea on the issue of political rights of Tatars since 1993.

Based on the program “Ways of self-determination of the Crimean Tatar people”, developed by the Moscow Center for Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies, headed by Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation E. Pain, the leadership of the Tatar national movement in 1993 put forward the idea of ​​recognizing the status of “indigenous people” for the Crimean Tatars and extending them to it principles arising from special international documents and, above all, ILO Convention No. 169 (1989) “Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries”.

This has led to a rather interesting situation in which today the national movement is guided by two virtually mutually exclusive approaches to the problem of implementing the political customs of the Tatars.

One of them is based on considering the entire ethnic group as a titular one and contains a demand for the restoration of its “national statehood” (at the same time, a new formulation introduced at the 3rd “kurultai”, according to which the national movement intends to achieve “self-determination on the national-territorial principle”, does not fundamentally change anything, since, just like the demand for “national statehood,” it presupposes the establishment of political priority for the Tatars over other ethnic groups). The second comes from the actual recognition of the status of an ethnic minority for the Tatars, one of the varieties of which are “indigenous peoples”.

The leaders and ideologists of the “Majlis” do not seem to notice that recognition of the Tatars as “indigenous people” in the international legal sense automatically excludes the recognition of their right to “statehood.”

The latter apparently indicates that softening the movement’s positions is a tactical move for more successful implementation of the goals outlined in the “Declaration on the National Sovereignty of the Crimean Tatars.” The fact that the new formulation of the demand for statehood is nothing more than a clarification of the previous position, and not a significant change, is not hidden by the leaders of the movement themselves: “the clarification of the program goals of the movement was very successful,” said the first deputy chairman of the “Majlis” in the summer of 1996. R. Chubarov. “I think that with the adoption of such a clarification, any speculation on the Crimean Tatar topic can no longer appear.” Unfortunately, the field for speculation has not diminished at all, since the documents of the 3rd “kurultai” in no way revise the key points of the “Declaration of National Sovereignty of the Crimean Tatars,” which continues to be the main defining document of the movement.

This circumstance significantly complicates the search for acceptable approaches to taking into account the political customs of the Tatars living in Crimea in the process of modern state building in Ukraine. The existing concepts put forward by the leaders of the national movement, firstly, largely do not take into account political, ethnic and legal realities and, secondly, contradict each other.

Thus, given the above, the use of the term “indigenous people” in relation to Tatars living in Crimea is unacceptable.

On March 19, at a round table in Simferopol (Aqmesjid), Rosstat presented preliminary results of the population census of the Crimean Federal District by ethnic composition, native language and citizenship. The census conducted in October 2014 was the first on the peninsula since 2001, and new information about the national composition of the Crimean population was of significant interest to the Crimean public. Based on new data, we can now take a fresh look at the national palette of Crimea.

Summing up

According to the published results, the permanent population of the Crimean Federal District, which includes the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, amounted to 2284.8 thousand people. Of these, 96.2% indicated their nationality. About 87.2 thousand Crimeans either refused to participate in the census or did not answer the question about their nationality. For comparison, during the 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census, 10.9 thousand residents of the peninsula did not indicate their nationality.

In total, census takers found representatives of 175 nationalities on the peninsula (according to the 2001 All-Ukrainian Census, representatives of 125 nationalities lived in Crimea). The most numerous national group are Russians, of whom there are 1.49 million people in Crimea. (65.31% of the total population of the federal district), including in the Republic of Crimea - 1.19 million people. (62.86%) and the city of Sevastopol - 303.1 thousand people. (77%).

The second place in number was taken by Ukrainians - 344.5 thousand people. (15.08% of the population of Crimea). Of these, 291.6 thousand people (15.42%) live in the Republic of Crimea, and 52.9 thousand (13.45%) live in Sevastopol.

According to the census results, the number of Crimean Tatars is 232,340 people, which is 10.17% of the population of the peninsula. 229,526 Crimean Tatars live in the Republic of Crimea (12.13% of the total population of the republic), and 2,814 live in Sevastopol (0.72%). At the same time, almost 45 thousand people (2% of the population) were registered as Tatars (Tatars usually mean Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberian Tatars).

The threefold increase in the number of Tatars (in 2001, 13.6 thousand Tatars were enumerated in Crimea) confused the census organizers themselves. According to the Kryminform agency, during the round table, the head of the population and health statistics department of Rosstat, Svetlana Nikitina, said the following: “Due to a sharp increase in the number of Tatars and a reduction in the number of Crimean Tatars by 5%, we carried out a random check of the correctness of collecting information in places of compact accommodation. The results of the checks showed that part of the Crimean Tatars called themselves simply Tatars during the census. People believed that they already lived in Crimea, and indicated the abbreviated name - Tatar, Tatar.” As a result, according to Nikitina, a decision was made to take into account the Crimean Tatar and Tatar populations in total, and at the next population census to carry out explanatory work on the importance of accurately indicating nationality.

Thus, the vast majority of Crimean residents belong to three main national groups - Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars. Among other peoples, the most numerous are Belarusians - 21.7 thousand (almost 1% of the population) and Armenians - 11 thousand (0.5%). The number of Bulgarians was 1868, Greeks - 2877, Germans - 1844, Karaites - 535, Crimeans - 228 people.

Who is in the black and who is in the black?

Over the thirteen years that passed between the 2001 and 2014 censuses, the number of representatives of the main nationalities changed in different directions. As can be seen from the table, the population of Crimea during the intercensus period decreased by 116.4 thousand people due to the excess of the mortality rate over the birth rate. At the same time, the number of Russians increased by 41.6 thousand people. The bulk of the increase (33 thousand) occurred in Sevastopol, while in the Republic of Crimea the increase in the number of Russians was purely symbolic - 8.5 thousand.

The increase in the Russian population appears to have been largely due to the decline in Ukrainians. In total, Ukrainians lost 232 thousand people. Moreover, the reduction was significant both in the Republic of Crimea and in Sevastopol. Such significant changes may have been due to the fact that some Ukrainians changed their national identity to Russian.

The Crimean Tatar population, according to data from Rosstat, in turn, decreased by almost 13 thousand people. It is obvious that a significant part of the Crimean Tatars were recorded by Tatar scribes by mistake. Note that in 1989, according to the last Soviet census, 10.7 thousand Tatars lived in Crimea. By 2001, their number had increased to 13.6 thousand. Even then, this fact raised questions, since Tatars live scatteredly on the territory of Crimea, and there were no noticeable migration flows from Tatarstan to the peninsula. In other regions where Tatars are represented by settlers from the Soviet era, their numbers tended to decline in the post-Soviet period. It is quite possible that already during the 2001 census, several thousand Crimean Tatars were registered as Tatars. At least 6.4% of the Tatar population of Crimea then called Crimean Tatar their native language. It is obvious that over the past decade there have been no prerequisites for a sharp increase in the number of Tatars in Crimea. Of course, last year a number of representatives of the Tatar people appeared in Crimea, who came here as officials and employees of law enforcement agencies. However, this could hardly increase the number of representatives of this ethnic group threefold.

The idea of ​​taking into account representatives of the two nations together in the current situation can be understood with understanding. A different approach leads to an unjustified underestimation of the number of Crimean Tatars. In general, this is reminiscent of the pre-war Soviet practice, when the Crimean Tatars and Kazan Tatars were counted together. It is worth noting that the Kazan Tatars living in Crimea at that time were closely connected with the Crimean Tatar people, actively participated in their cultural life, and during Stalin’s deportation they were evicted along with the Crimean Tatars.

The total number of Crimean Tatars and Tatars is 277 thousand people or 12.14% of the total population of Crimea. The share of both peoples in the population of the Republic of Crimea was 14.36%.

Native language

As for their native language, 84% of Crimean residents who answered the question about language during the census named Russian as their native language. Crimean Tatar is considered native by 7.9% of the population, Tatar - by 3.7%. This once again speaks to the quality of the census, since the census takers clearly recorded Tatar as the native language of some of those who were recorded as Crimean Tatars.

Statisticians note that 79.7% of Ukrainians, 24.8% of Tatars and 5.6% of Crimean Tatars named Russian as their native language. Ukrainian is the native language of 3.3% of the peninsula's population. For comparison, in 2001, 79.11% of residents of Crimea considered Russian their native language, Crimean Tatar - 9.63%, Ukrainian - 9.55%, Tatar - 0.37%.

More detailed results of the 2014 census by ethnicity and mother tongue are scheduled to be released in May this year. Then we will return to this topic again.