State-Building in the Middle of a Geopolitical Struggle: The Cases of Ukraine, Moldova, and Pridnestrovia by Rolando Dromundo

Author:Rolando Dromundo [Dromundo, Rolando]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, World, Russian & Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9783838271729
Google: 2PxawAEACAAJ
Publisher: Ibidem Verlag
Published: 2018-01-15T14:04:27+00:00

2.7 Crimea

Crimea symbolizes the complexity and the fragility present in the Ukrainian polity after the fall of the Soviet Union. The territory received huge historical and strategic importance during the Tsarist period. Later on, it was the only region in Ukraine after the Soviet fall, where ethnic Russians were a majority. Russians made up 67% of the population and 81% spoke Russian as mother tongue.345 Hence, the success or failure to build a Ukrainian state would go well naturally with the fact of including the inhabitants of Crimea as part of the country and to make them feel part of it. Therefore, before analysing the political events of March 2014, it is worth mentioning some historical events in the peninsula. In that sense, the research done by Gwendolyn Sasse346 describes some of the key actions occurred during the twentieth century and its effects in the area. Sasse considers that ‘Crimea is a place apart from Ukraine.’347 An affirmation that seems true but also it is true that many regions in Ukraine had a very specific ethnic, social and religious context, that makes so complex the social tissue found in the different regions of the Ukraine that appeared after the Soviet fall. At the end, the differences present between Crimea, Galicia, Volhynia, the Donbass or Central Ukraine are all notable. Some particularities are necessary to comment in the Crimean case.

The peninsula of Crimea was part of the Crimean Khanate, a vassal territory of the Ottoman Empire. Ironically, then, as the Polish historian Kolodziejczyk comments: ‘When the Crimean Khanate was annexed by Russia in 1783, few Western intellectuals would disagree with Catherine II, who praised this move as the triumph of civilization.’348 This was part of the long standoff between the Russian and the Ottoman Empire and therefore the control of Crimea had a strategic place in that rivalry.

Once under Russian control, there was a massive Christianizing programme, which refashioned the region’s identity as an Orthodox holy place for Russians and other Orthodox believers349 even though a considerable number of Tatars remained residing in the peninsula under Czarist Russia. Years after, data showed that Tatars made up 34.1% of the population in Crimea in 1897, 25.9% in 1921, 19.4% in 1939, .3% in 1979, 1.6% in 1989 and 12.1% in 2001. Meanwhile, Russian population increased from 45.3% in 1897 to 51.5% in 1921, 68.4% in 1979 and then 58.5% in 2001. Meanwhile, Ukrainians were 13.7% in 1939, 25.6% in 1970 and 24.4% in 2001. Between 1897 and 1921, no distinction was made between Russian and Ukrainians.350

Under the Soviet Union, mass deportations carried out under Stalin had a deep impact in Crimea. Soviet documentation recorded 225,009 deported people from Crimea, among them 183,155 Crimean Tatars, 15,040 Greeks, 12,422 Bulgarians, 9621 Armenians, 1,119 Germans and 3,652 others. Most Crimean Tatars (151,604) were reported to have been relocated to Uzbekistan and 31,551 to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.351 During the war, a number between 8,000 and 20,000 Tartars fought with the Germans, and around 20,000 fought in the Soviet Army.

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