Loyalty and patriotism: the role of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine’s nation-building project

ABSTRACT

During the Revolution of Dignity and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Crimean Tatars overwhelmingly expressed their loyalty and identification with the Ukrainian state. This article examines the factors that account for Crimean Tatars’ siding with Ukraine and interrogates the meaning of Ukrainian identity for their culturally, linguistically, and religiously distinct community. To do that, the author engages in a twofold approach of 1) macro-level, long-term historical examination of the relationship between Ukrainian state actors and Crimean Tatars, and 2) micro-level, sociological analysis of the contemporary relationship within Crimean Tatar society. Tracing the genealogy of encounters between Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian dissidents in the Soviet period, the author argues that their shared anti-Soviet outlook allowed the two nations to view each other as allies in independent Ukraine. Furthermore, the liberal, anti-colonial discourse shared widely among Crimean Tatars found its reflection in their newly embraced civic Ukrainian identity. Yet it is also important to take into account the internal struggle among Crimean Tatars during the annexation, which reflects the tensions, risks, and rewards that come with the choice of identification.

RÉSUMÉ

Lors de la Révolution de la dignité et l’annexion de la Crimée en 2014, les Tatars de Crimée ont massivement exprimé leur loyauté et leur identification à l’État ukrainien. Cet article examine les facteurs qui expliquent le ralliement des Tatars de Crimée à l’Ukraine et s’interroge sur la signification de l’identité ukrainienne pour cette communauté culturellement, linguistiquement et religieusement distincte. Pour ce faire, l’auteure adopte une double approche : 1) une étude historique à long terme, au niveau macro, de la relation entre les acteurs étatiques ukrainiens et les Tatars de Crimée, et 2) une analyse sociologique, au niveau micro, de la société tatare de Crimée. En retraçant la généalogie des rencontres entre les dissidents tatars de Crimée et ukrainiens pendant la période soviétique, elle soutient que leur commune vision antisoviétique a permis aux deux nations de se considérer comme des alliés dans l’Ukraine indépendante. En outre, le discours libéral et anticolonial largement partagé par les Tatars de Crimée s’est reflété dans leur nouvelle identité civique ukrainienne. Cependant, il est également important de tenir compte des luttes internes parmi les Tatars de Crimée pendant l’annexion, qui reflètent les tensions, les risques et les récompenses qui accompagnent le choix de s’identifier à l’Ukraine.

KEYWORDS:

• Crimean Tatars
• Ukraine
• national identity
• Crimea annexation
• nation-building

Acknowledgments

I thank my respondents in Crimea and mainland Ukraine who shared their knowledge and wisdom despite personal risks. I am also grateful to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers for considering this article and providing generous feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Bariieva, “Blyz′ko 500 kryms′kykh tatar.”

2. Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups.

3. Ogarkova, “Krymskotatarskaia kul′tura.”

4. Wilson, “Crimean Tatar Question.”

5. See, for example, Arel, “How Ukraine Has Become”; Kulyk, “Language and Identity”; Kubicek, “Regional Polarisation in Ukraine”; Onuch and Hale, “Capturing Ethnicity”; Pop-Eleches and Robertson, “Identity and Politics”; and Shulman, “Contours of Civic.”

6. Kulyk, “Is Ukraine a Multiethnic?”

7. Giuliano, “Who Supported Separatism?”

8. Sasse and Lackner, “War and Identity.”

9. See note 6 above.

10. Williams, “Ethnogenesis of Crimean Tatars”; Williams, “Crimean Tatar Exile”; Iunusova, Krymskiie tatary; Uehling, Beyond Memory; Steward, “Autonomy as a Mechanism”; Dawson, “Ethnicity, Ideology and Geopolitics”; Fisher, Crimean Tatars; Sasse, Crimea Question; Shevel, “Crimean Tatars in Ukraine”; Zidkova and Melichar, “Crimean Tatars.”

11. For example, Hromenko, Nash Krym; Zarubin, Proekt “Ukraїna”; and Hrabovs′kyi and Losiev, Krym.

12. Examples include Charron, “Crimean Tatars’ Postcolonial Condition”; Sviezhentsev, “‘Phantom Limb’”; Sviezhentsev and Kisly, “De-occupation or (De)colonization?”; Shestakova and Engelhardt, “Crimean Tatar Infrastructures”; and Pohl, “Deportation of Crimean Tatars.”

13. Finnin, Blood of Others. See also Finnin, “‘Bridge between Us’”; and Kurshutov, “Cultural and Literary Relations.”

14. Good examples include Ivanets′, “Ukraїns′ko-kryms′kotatars′ke partnerstvo”; and Haivorons′kyi, “Na hrani dvokh svitiv.”

15. See, for example, Wilson, “Crimean Tatar Question”; Kostyns′kyi, “Quest for Political Mythology”; and Kazarin, “Three Myths for Crimea.”

16. See also Wilson, “Crimean Tatar Question.”

17. Rory Finnin in his book Blood of Others offers a similar argument about the Crimean Tatar–Ukrainian solidarity of that period from a literary perspective.

18. Chornovil, Lykho z rozumu, 146.

19. Memorial, “Khronika tekushchikh sobytiy.”

20. Alekseeva, Istoriia inakomysliia v SSSR, 34.

21. Shevel, “Crimean Tatars in Ukraine,” 9.

22. It is important to emphasize that while Dzhemilev and the OKND enjoyed support from their compatriots, their ideological outlook was not uncontested. An alternative organization, the National Movement of the Crimean Tatars, under the leadership of Iurii Osmanov from the Fergana Valley, was not so optimistic about relationships with Ukrainian dissidents. For Osmanov and his followers, both Ukrainians and Russians were representatives of foreign Slavs and were essentially one and the same occupiers of Crimea. Yet theirs remained a minority opinion, as they refused to participate in the democratic elections to the Qurultay in 1991. See Guboglo and Chervonnaia, Krymskotatarskoe natsional′noe dvizhenie, 167.

23. Bazhan and Danyliuk, Kryms′ki tatary 1944–1994 rr., 309.

24. Interview, Kyiv, 8 January 2020.

25. Shevel, “Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian State.”

26. Their consistent ability to mobilize their people to vote was noticed in Kyіv and rewarded in the form of parliamentary seats that both the Mejlis chair, Dzhemilev, and his deputy, Chubarov, occupied from 1998 to 2019. Dzhemilev served as an MP for the National Movement of Ukraine (Narodnyi Rukh Ukraїny), Our Ukraine (Nasha Ukraїna), Fatherland (Bat′kivshchyna), and European Solidarity (Ievropeis′ka solidarnist′) parties. Chubarov, who is currently the chair of the Mejlis in exile in Kyiv, was an MP from 1998 to 2007 and from 2015 to 2019 for the National Movement of Ukraine, Our Ukraine, and European Solidarity parties.

27. The Crimean Tatars saw the referendum as an attempt to re-narrate the colonial situation in Crimea, whereby it was not the Crimean Tatars who were the victims and thus entitled to self-determination in the form of territorial autonomy, but the Russian settlers, who constituted the majority of Crimea’s population and wanted to protect themselves from the “Other” – the Crimean Tatar minority.

28. The Ministry of Justice attempted in 1996 to establish a working group to design a “Concept of National Policy with Regard to Indigenous People” and a bill on the status of Crimean Tatars as indigenous people, but the documents never reached parliamentary hearings. There were other bills, by MPs Roman Bezsmertniy (1999) and Refat Chubarov (2005), which defined Crimean Tatars as indigenous people, but they also never reached the parliament floor.

29. Knott, Kin Majorities, 35.

30. Ibid.

31. Skrypnyk and Pechonchyk, Peninsula of Fear, 11, 111, 121.

32. Interview, Kyiv, 11 January 2020.

33. Charron, “Whose Is Crimea?”

34. There are no reliable statistics about how many people left, but some estimate between 20,000 and 40,000.

35. Seitablaiev, “Nashi kul′turni kody zbihaiut′sia.” Vyshyvanka is the national Ukrainian embroidered shirt.

36. “Kiev: Deputaty soglosovali pereimenovanie.”

37. Yurchuk, “Historians as Activists.”

38. Ibid., 701.

39. Haivorons′kyi, “Na hrani dvokh svitiv,” 32.

40. Ivanets′, “Ukraїns′ko-kryms′kotatars′ke partnerstvo,” 75.

41. Yurchuk, “Historians as Activists,” 701.

42. Kurshutov, “Cultural and Literary Relations,” 10.

43. Hrabovs′kyi and Losiev, Krym.

44. Hromenko, Nash Krym.

45. This data is from the latest national census, conducted in 2001. It is very likely that the demographics have changed since then, yet there is no data. Upravlinnia kul′tury ta molodi melitopol′skoiї mis′koiї zaporiz′koiї oblasti, “Melitopol′ – zahal′nyi ohliad.”

46. Volovnik, Krylov, and Krylova, “Iz t′my vekov.”

47. Oslavs′ka, “Melitopol′: Mul′tykul′turnyi putivnyk.”

48. Ibid. Melitopol is currently occupied by Russia and in spring 2022 the museum was looted. Ibrahimova with her colleagues tried to hide and thus save the rich museum collections, yet most of them have been taken to Russia.

49. Interview, Kyiv, 3 September 2019.

50. Interview, Simferopol, 19 January 2020.

51. Ukraïner, “Crimean Tatars.”

52. Author’s field notes from the Independence Day concert, Kyiv, 24 August 2019.

53. Sviezhentsev and Kisly, “De-occupation or (De)colonization?”; Shynkarenko, “De-occupation of Crimea.”

54. Andriivs′ka and Khalimon, Liudy “siroii zony,” 16.

55. Knott, Kin Majorities, 36. For a more detailed account of Crimea’s annexation, see Wilson, “Ukraine Crisis.”

56. Iankovskii, “Troianskii kon′ dlia anneksii.” The Russian Unity Party was a splinter party that emerged in 2010 as a result of a conflict in the Party of Regions (Partiia rehioniv). In the 2010 Crimean parliamentary elections, it received only 4% of the votes. The party was a Russian project that aimed to destabilize Ukraine’s European integration. Aksenov was a shadowy personality with a criminal background (in the 1990s, he was a member of Salem, a famous organized crime group in Crimea), but he was said to be a convenient figure for Moscow to represent the party, as it was easy to blackmail him.

57. Andriivs′ka and Khalimon, Liudy “siroii zony,” 43–44.

58. Ibid., 35.

59. Lenton, “Why Didn’t Ukraine Fight?” 147.

60. Ibid.

61. Turchynov, “Menee treti ukraïnskikh voennykh.”

62. “Vo vremia anneksii Kryma.”

63. Gosudarsvennyi Sovet Respubliki Krym, “Postanovlenie VR ARK.”

64. “Russia Loses Control.”

65. On 21 March 2014, the parliament of the Russian Federation ratified the law “On the accession of the Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the creation of the new constituent entities of the Republic of Crimea and the City of Federal Importance Sevastopol within the Russian Federation.”

66. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Situation of Human Rights.” The “referendum” was condemned by the international community as unlawful and rigged. On 27 March, the General Assembly of the UN adopted Resolution 68/262 on the “Territorial Integrity of Ukraine,” stating that the “referendum” had “no validity” and “cannot form the basis for any alteration of the status of Crimea.”

67. Qurultay session, 29 March 2014, video recording.

68. Akadyrov, “Kryms′ki tatary zblyzhuiutsia.”

69. See note 67 above.

70. Ibid.

71. See note 68 above.

72. Interview, Kyiv, 27 September 2019.

73. Roshchenko, “Dzhemilev raskryl detali razgovora.”

74. Putin, “Ukaz o merakh po reabilitatsii.”

75. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Situation of Human Rights.”

76. “‘Proryv’ Dzhemileva.”

77. Chaush, “Il′mi Umerov.”

78. See Sviezhentsev and Kisly, “De-occupation or (De)colonization?”

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta through the Helen Darcovich Memorial Doctoral Fellowship from 2020 to 2021; by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto through the Petro Jacyk Scholarship in 2022; and by the Institute for Human Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Mariia Shynkarenko

Mariia Shynkarenko is a research associate at the Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen) in Vienna. She received her PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research in 2023. Her dissertation explores the instrumentalization of collective identities as tactics of resistance in the Crimean Tatars’ movement for self-determination.