Edige Kirimal

The Crimean Turks, also known in the West as Crimean Tatars, were until 1944 the autochthonous inhabitants of the Crimea. [1] Their fate furnishes one of the best illustrations of Soviet genocide. As is well known, the Bolsheviks occupied the Crimea and incorporated it into the RSFSR in November 1920. Numerous existing documents and research studies testify to the fact that until World War II, during the 20-year rule of the Bolsheviks in the Crimea (November 1920 to November 1941), the Soviet government followed a policy of gradual but systematic physical extermination of the Crimean Turks and that the mass genocide of 1944 was only the concluding stage in this program of extermination.

After the occupation of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks in November 1920, power in the Crimea was handed over to the notorious Hungarian Communist, Bela Kun, who carried out a policy of mass terrorism. In the process between 60,000 and 70,000 inhabitants of the Crimea were shot. [2] This reign of terror was the introductory phase of physical extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Bolsheviks. The name of Bela Kun became a household word among the people, [3] who replied to terrorism with armed resistance to the Soviet regime. [4]

This resistance, and on the other hand the desire to win for themselves the sympathy of the Moslem East, [5] moved the Soviet government to make temporary concessions to the Crimean Turks by halting the campaign of terrorism and proclaiming on October 18, 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the RSFSR. [6]

In 1921 a terrible famine broke out in the Crimea, which lasted from November 1921 until January 1922. Two students of the problem, Tatmanli and Dzafer Sejdamet Kirimer, have proven by documentary evidence that this famine was artificially caused by the Bolsheviks by repeated confiscation of foodstuffs from the local peasants and by the compulsory export of a large part of the local harvest from the Crimea during 1921. Tatmanli states that this poor harvest would only have been sufficient to feed the inhabitants of the Crimea alone. [7] These authors have also proven that not only was the Soviet government to blame for this famine, but it deliberately rejected an offer by the Italian Red Cross to help the starving Crimea. Not only did the Soviet government do nothing to relieve the famine, but it shipped out of the Crimea grain sent by Turkey for the Crimean population. [8] Kirimer cites the following striking example: Whereas in Sevastopol, which was considered the stronghold of the Bolsheviks in the Crimea, 11% of the inhabitants died of starvation, in Bakhchiar, which is a 2-hour drive from Sevastopol, more than one half (55%) of the Turkish population of the town died of famine. [9] An eyewitness, G. Aleksandrov, writes that during the terrible famine year 1921 there was not a single Turkish family in which someone did not starve to death. [10]

As a result of the famine the population of the Crimea decreased by 21%, 50,000 having left the Crimea and 100,000 having died of starvation. Of the latter 60,000 were Crimean Turks. [11] The artificially induced famine in the Crimea in 1921-22 was the second stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Bolsheviks.

The next five years (1923-27) were a short period of comparatively normal existence for the Crimean Turks. During the era the so-called Tatarization of the Crimea took place. The majority of the members of the Crimean autonomous government were Crimean Turks. National schools, scientific institutes, museums, libraries, and theaters were opened. A young generation of national intelligentsia grew up. A national press and literature were developed. The local economy was encouraged. There was relative freedom for religion. The language of the Crimean Turks was recognized, on a par with Russian, as a state language of the Crimea. [12]

The national autonomy accorded the Crimean Turks was virtually liquidated in 1928. Tatarization was replaced by Sovietization, which found expression mainly in ruthless suppression of what was called local bourgeois nationalism. While these changes were taking place (1928), the Soviet government persecuted, deported, or shot more than 3,500 Crimean Turks who had defended the autonomous rights of the Crimea. [13] A significant proportion of the middle-aged generation of the Crimean Turkish intellectuals fell victim to this third stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Soviet government.

The compulsory collectivization carried out in 1929-30 formed the background for the fourth stage of extermination. Between 35,000 and 40,000 Crimean Turks, the immense majority of whom perished in exile, were declared kulaks or semi-kulaks and deported to concentration camps in the Urals or Sibiria. [14] Aleksandrov states that the Crimean Turk peasants "were liquidated by whole villages. Thousands of families were driven behind barbed wire into deportation camps. Persons who had grown up in a gentle southern climate, who had never at any time left their native hills and shores, were deported into the taiga and tundra and began to die off in the first stages of the journey. These were not mere mass measures, they were the physical extermination of a whole people, merciless and senseless." [15]

The German author Spuler states that this Soviet policy of extermination evoked resistance on the part of the Crimean Turks, [16] which found an outlet in the Alakat uprising on the south coast of the Crimea in December 1930. This uprising was savagely suppressed by the Soviets and resulted in the arrest of several thousand Crimean Turks, many of whom were shot or deported to concentration camps in the Soviet Union. [17]

An eyewitness, Omar Mustafa Oglu, testifies that on January 18, 1930, the Bolsheviks sent large land and sea forces into the area of the uprising and that 350 heads of families were arrested on that day in the village of Uskut alone. This eyewitness furnishes a list of the 42 inhabitants of the village who were shot by the Bolsheviks in Simferopol on March 24, 1930. The number of those arrested throughout the Crimea amounted to several thousands. [18]

As a result of compulsory collectivization and the export of Crimean grain and cattle, the population of the Crimea underwent a second famine in the years 1931-33; this was the next and fifth stage in the mass extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Soviet regime. Aleksandrov states:

During the dreadful famine years 1931-33, when bodies were piled in the streets of villages and towns, foreign ships were incessantly loading choice golden wheat in Crimean ports, and unfermented wine was being poured through pipes into the holds of tankers. The terrible famine mowed down all who had stayed behind. Foodstuffs were deliberately not imported into this area, deprived of its own produce. [19]

The policy of the Soviet regime evoked a public protest in 1931 on the part of a local Turkish Communist, Mehmet Kubay, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, who accused the Soviet government of "plundering the Crimean Republic, exporting all its natural riches, and not providing food for the starving population in exchange." [20] Kubay paid for his boldness by being deported and the Soviet government, in response to his protest, intensified the Sovietization of the Crimea.

The Sovietization of the Crimea in 1931-36 was the sixth stage in the systematic genocide committed by the Soviet government against the Crimean Turks. During this period the majority of the Moslem priesthood were either deported or physically exterminated, and the religious schools and mosques in the Crimea were forcibly closed. [21] A considerable proportion of the intellectuals among the Crimean Turks, who were accused of bourgeois nationalism, counter-revolution, Trotskyism, etc., were subjected to systematic persecution, deportation, and execution by shooting. [22] Almost the entire pre-revolutionary national literature was forbidden and a wide-spread Russification of the language and alphabet of the Crimean Turks was carried out by forbidding the use of many "bourgeois" Arabic, Persian, and Turkish words and introducing Russian words and grammatic rules in their place.

This process was completed by the compulsory introduction among the Crimean Turks of the Russian alphabet, which is completely unsuited to the needs of the Turkish language. [23]

Persecution and elimination of the national, social, and family customs of the Crimean Turks began in the villages. [24] Summing up these facts, the Crimean author, Kirimer, rightly described the Sovietization of the Crimea as a policy of "exterminating the national essence, the national culture, and the language of the Crimean Turks." [25]

The Ezhov period was the culmination of Sovietization and was the seventh stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks. All social classes among the Crimean Turks now became victims of terrorism, in the literal sense of the word. Not only the nationalists and remaining bourgeois (the older and middle-aged generations of intellectuals, clergy, former landowners, traders, and prosperous peasants), but also many National Communists and members of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, headed by Ilyas Tarkhan, and Samedin, chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the Crimea, and a considerable proportion of the new Soviet intelligentsia which had grown up under the Soviet regime and which had previously participated in the Sovietization of the Crimea (Soviet professors, doctors, teachers, journalists, writers, poets, artists, painters, etc.), were arrested or shot. Terrorism was also applied to the Crimean peasantry. Eyewitnesses testified that a majority of those arrested never returned home. [26]

Sadreddin Tamali, an inhabitant of Karasubazar, testified that in December 1937, 60 persons were arrested in one night alone in Karasubazar. All the Moslem clergy who were still alive in this part of the Crimea, including the 70-year-old Sheikh Mekhmed Kedzhaamed Vedzhi, the well-known Crimean theologian and teacher, the 75-year-old Sheik Sheikhzade Abdul Medzhit, the 80-year-old Kafadar Hadji Muzaffer, the 90-year-old Said Hadil Chelibi Oglu Effendi, and others were imprisoned in Karasubazar. [27] Jemil Hadji Oglu, an inhabitant of Yalta, states that "in 1937, in the Turkish villages of Aivasil and Derekoi, 171 persons were arrested and the majority never returned." [28] "In the village of Kylchor, in Ichkin Raion," writes Muhtar Ismail, "which has a total of 45 Turkish and 45 Russian houses, 17 Turks were arrested of whom two returned in 1941, while the remainer died in prison." [29]

One Crimean author considers that "in the first period of Soviet domination of the Crimea the number of Crimean Turkish victims, according to the most sober calculation, exceeded 100,000." [30] Another author estimates that as a result of the famine in 1921-22 and the collectivization of the Crimea in 1929-30 alone the Crimean Turks lost 140,000 persons. [31] Both are dealing only with the first decade of Bolshevik domination in the Crimea. To sum up the result of all seven stages in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks it may be said that during twenty years of Bolshevik occupation of the Crimea (1921-41), between 160,000 and 170,000 Crimean Turks were either murdered or deported, the equivalent of approximately one half of the Crimean Turkish population in 1917. These losses constitute the sole reason for the fact that the Turkish population of the peninsula, which during the 1920's and 1930's had a high birth rate, has not only failed to increase numerically, but has continously dwindled under the Soviet regime. Thus, even before the beginning of World War II and during a period when there was absolutely no reason to accuse the Crimean Turks of betraying the Soviet regime, the Soviet government had in the two decades 1921-41 exterminated almost one half of the Turkish population of the Crimean Autonomous Republic.

The Crimean Turks still alive in 1941, on the eve of the Soviet-German war, were half exterminated, deprived of elementary human rights, deprived of their national culture, language, and alphabet, systematically Russified, deprived of freedom of worship, deprived of the better part of the national intelligentsia, of their land, of private property, cruelly exploited on collective farms and state farms, laboring under a double social and national yoke. [32]

World War II and the advance of the German Army on the Crimea provided the Soviet government with grounds for the commission, during the last days of the Bolshevik occupation of the Crimea (October and November, 1941), of yet another mass crime, the eighth stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks. An inhabitant of Simferopol, Ilyas Mirasbay, testifies that during the evacuation of the Crimea the NKVD was occupied day and night in arresting and executing members of the civil population. [33] Another witness declares: "On the eve of the evacuation of Simferopol, on October 31, 1941, the NKVD shot all the prisoners in the cells under the NKVD building and the city prison." [34] Says another: "After the departure of the Bolsheviks, the bodies of women and infants were discovered among the multitude of corpses in the cellars of the Simferopol NKVD building." [35]

During the retreat from Karasubazar, the NKVD authorities shot on the spot every inhabitant encountered in the streets of the city. [36] The same was true at Yalta, where on November 4 the local NKVD shot all prisoners in the city prisons. [37] The retreating NKVD officials also executed the local inhabitants along the highways in the Crimea, [38] for example on the road between Alushta and Yalta.

The reign of terror during the retreat provided evidence that in the event of the return of the Bolsheviks to the Crimea, the Crimean population would again be subjected to persecution, and this in fact was the case. The occupation by the Bolsheviks of the Crimea on April 10, 1944, opened the concluding stage of genocide committed by the Soviet government against the Crimean Turks. This act of genocide was not merely the liquidation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the mass deportation of Crimean Turks. Documents! and testimony on the subject prove that the mass deportation was preceded by a process of physical extermination of Crimean Turks during the period between the first incursion of the Soviet Army into the Crimea in April 1944 and the deportation in June.

The first two weeks were the period of the most ruthless terrorism. An eyewitness has described the events of this period as follows:

After the arrival of the Soviet armies in the Crimea, the whole Turkish population, by a special order from the commanding officer, was completely subjected to the will of the NKVD for two weeks. The savage soldiers raped women, children and girls. They plundered, murdered and hanged defenseless persons. For two weeks the heartrending groans of the ravished, tortured and slain could be heard throughout the Crimea. [39]

Other eyewitnesses testify that during this reign of terror mass executions of Crimean Turks were carried out in the streets of Crimean towns and villages. Evidence from two persons was sufficient basis for conviction of collaboration with the Germans and a sentence of death. The trees in the streets of Simferopol were used as gallows. The eyewitnesses state that many of those arrested and murdered came from the Turkish villages on the south coast of the Crimea. [40]

Lack of data makes it impossible to determine how many Crimean Turks were murdered before the deportation, but the number undoubtedly ran into the thousands.

The deportation itself took place two months after the occupation of the Crimea by the Soviet Army. [41] A lieutenant colonel of the MVD named Burlutsky, who took part in the action and later escaped to the West, testifies that the deportation of the Crimean Turks was carried out with the use of the same methods as in the Chechen-Ingush Republic in the North Caucasus, i.e., by the sudden and simultaneous arrest of the whole Turkish population of the Crimea by NKVD forces especially sent for the purpose. Those arrested were loaded into closed freight cars and deported. [42]

The fate of the deported Crimean Turks and their later location were carefully concealed by the Soviet government. Burlutsky testifies that the deportees were loaded into empty cattle cars, which were filled to overflowing, closed, sealed, and guarded by an escort. No destination was announced. Burlutsky believed that a large number of those deported perished en route. [43] This belief is confirmed by a number of reports which have been received via devious routes from the Soviet Union. It has been established that the overwhelming majority of the Crimean Turks were taken to concentration camps in Sverdlovsk Raion in the Urals, where many of them died of hunger, cold, and unendurable slave labor. It is also known that a minority, including workers who had returned from Germany, were deported to Turkestan. [44]

According to information in the possession of a Committee for the Investigation of Genocide in the USSR the following numbers died following arrest, during deportation, or on arrival at their place of deportation: [45]

Chechens and Ingush	200,000
Karachai and Balkars	150,000
Crimean Turks	80,000
Jews and Greeks	70,000

A decree of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, entitled "On the Abolition of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR and on the Transformation of the Crimean ASSR into the Crimean Oblast," stated that "the Chechens and the Crimean Turks have been deported to other parts of the USSR." This decree was not issued until June 25, 1946, [46] two years after the deportation, and a year after the Crimean ASSR became the Crimean Oblast on June 30, 1945. [47]

The gross violation of the well-known declarations dated November 15 and December 7, 1917, which were signed by Lenin and Stalin and in which the Soviet government guaranteed to "all the peoples of Russia" and to "the Moslems of Russia and the East" full rights to "a free and independent existence," is clear. [48]

The reasons for the genocide of the Crimean Turks are unmistakable. Following the war, Soviet scholars and propagandists, on instructions from the Soviet government, attempted to justify the murder of the Crimean Turks as "just punishment" for "the betrayal of the Soviet State" during the war. At a "session on Crimean history" held in September, 1948, in Simferopol, the Soviet historian P.N. Nadinsky attempted "scientifically" to explain "this complex historical problem of the Soviet Crimea" as the result of the "persistence of survivals of capitalism in the minds of the Crimean Tatars." [49]

But analysis of the events of the years 1921-41 in the Crimea reveals clearly enough the totally unsubstantiated nature and injustice of this "scientific" reasoning. It is interesting to note that in recent years Soviet scholars and propagandists and science have moved away from direct attempts to justify the murder of the Crimean Turks and now prefer to hush up the liquidation of the Crimean Republic and the name of the Crimean Turks, which disappeared from the Soviet press and from the papers of scholarly publications, even including the second edition of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia.

An eyewitness, Ismail Akim, states that after the arrival of the German Army in the Crimea, Soviet secret documents found in a safe abandoned by the Bolsheviks show that the Soviet government intended to effect the deportation of all Crimean Turks to Kazakhstan in the autumn of 1941 as in the case of the German population of the Crimea during the first months of the war against Germany. [50] The hasty retreat of the Bolsheviks from the Crimea prevented them from carrying out this intention. However, the fact that there was such an intention proves that the plan for the compulsory deportation of the whole of the Turkic population of the Crimea was in existence long before there could be any question of a "betrayal" of the Soviets.

The true reason for the genocide committed against the Crimean Turks was the desire of the Soviet government to remove from the Crimea a native Turkish ethnical element which from its point of view was unreliable, and to transform the Crimea into a reliable fortress and strategic base for Soviet aggression. There are numerous free world studies on this point. [51]

Further proof is found in the fact that the Soviet government deported from the Crimea all the Crimean Turks, including those who had fought throughout the war in the ranks of the Soviet Army. Many of these persons had been awarded orders and the title "Hero of the Soviet Union," but this did not save their families from deportation. Thus, several thousand Crimean Turks who were evacuated by the Bolsheviks to the Caucasus in the autumn of 1941, and who were therefore far removed from events in the Crimea in 1942-44, suffered the same fate. Finally, the local Turkic Communists and their families, who under the leadership of the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimea, Menlibari Abedilzhelil Khaurullakh, had fought actively against the German Army side by side with Soviet partisans and had called upon the Crimean Turks to take up arms against the Germans, were also subjected to mass deportation. This group included 50 Communist writers and journalists who had distributed anti-German proclamations and newspapers in the Turkish language throughout the Crimea. [52] The fact that the Soviet government also deported from the Crimea all the Greeks and other members of national minorities who were living on the peninsula confirms the truth of the reason given above for the genocide committed against the Crimean Turks. [53]

The liquidation of the so-called national regions which had existed in the Crimea before the war, such as the Jewish (Freidorf), German (Buyuk-Onlar), and the Ukrainian (Ishun) Regions, [54] points in the same direction. The ethnographic map entitled "Nationalities of the USSR" in the Geographical Atlas of the USSR published in 1950 [55] shows that by that year, after the Autonomous Crimean Republic had become the Crimean Oblast, only the Russian population remained. Settlers from the central oblasts of the Soviet Union (i. e., Moscow, Yaroslavl, Kursk, Penza, and Rostov Oblasts), [56] who settled in 1944-45 on land left unoccupied by the deportation of its legitimate owners, constitute a significant proportion of the new postwar population of the Crimea.

Although in regard to other peoples which suffered from complete national genocide at the hands of the Soviet regime a gesture of rehabilitation was made, no such step was taken with regard to the Crimean Turks. The session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR which provided for the return of the Balkars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, and Karachai made no mention of the Crimean deportees. [57]