Crimean Tatars (Hoover Institution Press Publication) by Alan W. Fisher

Author:Alan W. Fisher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Published: 2014-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

12. The Crimean ASSR (1921–1941)

Just prior to the establishment of Soviet power in the Crimea for the third and last time, the Bolsheviks made strenuous attempts to create an institutional base that would be attractive to nationalities yet still serve to unify the state. This was difficult for several reasons. The chief benefits that many national groups would gain from the fall of the tsarist regime were not social or economic but national. Nothing the leaders of the national groups had seen during the years of the civil war had led them to believe that the Bolsheviks were interested in decentralizing the government.

Yet the Bolsheviks found Stalin to be an imaginative and shrewd politician who was able to present a series of plans aimed at persuading the national groups that becoming part of the Soviet state was their most effective way of achieving autonomy. Although it is easy now to see that Stalin never considered that to be of great importance, at the time it was difficult to perceive his long-range goals—or those of the government to which he belonged. During the Russian Civil War, when the leaders of the White Guards were doing their best to suppress any vestiges of national autonomy in their regions, the Bolsheviks issued a series of statements and decrees dealing with regional, national, cultural, and political autonomy. Pointing to Stalin’s first major statements on the national question before World War I, the Bolsheviks could justifiably say that they had always been interested in the legitimate national aspirations of the peoples of the Russian state. They added that their criticisms of the colonial and national policies of the tsarist government were sincere and that they had a good deal to offer on the national questions. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks proclaimed that the “peoples of Russia are equal and sovereign.” They stated that these peoples “have the right to manage their own affairs up to separation and the establishment of an independent state.” That same month, in their proclamation to “the Muslims of Russia and the Orient,” the Bolshevik leadership promised rectification of all tsarist repressive measures concerning the Muslims’ cultural, religious, and national life.1

In December 1917, the government restored to the Muslim world the “sacred Koran of Osman,” which had been removed from Samarkand to the national library in St. Petersburg. Finally, in January 1918, the Bolsheviks created the Commissariat for Muslim Affairs to take care of Muslim nationality questions. The commissar, Mullah Nur Vakhitov, a Tatar and former member of the administration of the province of Kazan, had as his assistants Galamjan Ibrahimov, a Tatar and delegate from Ufa to the Constituent Assembly, and Sharif Manatov, a Bashkir and delegate to the same assembly from Orenburg.2

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