Crimean Tatars: history and modernity. Deportation and rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars
Mav kok-bayrak - a sky-blue canvas and a gold-colored coat of arms - tarak-tamga - a trident in the upper left corner are today recognizable symbols of the Crimean Tatars. They combine perfectly on the national flag of the indigenous people of Crimea. However, the tamga was not always located on the banner. You will not see it on a blue canvas before 1917. But this fact is sometimes forgotten in literature, cinema and even historical science, allowing for an anachronism that has nothing to do with reality. And yet, both the blue cloth and the golden tarak-tamga have a long history. But each symbol has its own.
Kok-bayrak and tarak-tamga were state symbols Crimean Khanate. However, they were never combined. The blue canvas served as a personal personal banner. But only representatives of one dynasty had the right to use the tarak-tamga, and these were the Girays - the permanent rulers of the Crimean Khanate.
What is the blue banner and coat of arms of the Tarak-Tamga of the Crimean Tatars? Did these two symbols always belong to the Crimeans, were they borrowed or inherited? These are both simple and complex answers. The difficulty lies in the fact that there is no consensus and no official theory. For example, why did the Crimean Tatars use a blue banner? What significance did it have for them?
Today the flag is a symbol of state independence, which reflects the national characteristics of the country and the most important milestones in its history. But once upon a time the flag arose as a sign of distinction of the clan. Over time, banners became an attribute of power and dignity of rulers, generals and individual warriors. Flags, banners, banners and even horsetails are a kind of ciphers that history leaves as signs telling about the life of peoples and important events, the key to which, unfortunately, in many cases is lost forever. From the moment of their inception to the present day, they play a huge role in the life of society, especially during war periods. And, of course, the powerful power of the Crimean Tatars was no exception.
The Crimean Khanate appeared on the map of Eastern Europe as a state entity in the 15th century. It became the heir to the Great Horde. It was headed by a direct descendant of Genghis Khan himself, Hadji Giray. Along with the khan's title, he received the sanjak-sheriff, or the banner of the great khakan, which symbolically denoted the national, state and administrative status of the khanate, had an honorary origin and emphasized the high status of the khan.
The ancestral sanjak-sheriff of the khans has not survived. Only his descriptions remain. It was an ancient cloth, already partially worn out by time, carefully preserved and reverently revered by the khans and their subjects. The sanjak once developed above the headquarters of Genghis Khan himself. The Girai took the sanjak sherif on military campaigns, but they raised the banner only before the start of the battle. And after the imams accompanying the troops completed the prayer, the banner of the great Khakan was again handed over to the clergy for safekeeping.
In addition to the sanjak sheriff of Genghis Khan, the head of state and his two heirs to the throne, Kalgi and Nur-ed-Din, had their own banners. Representatives of the Khan's aristocracy, beys and murzas, marched under the ancestral sanjaks. In addition, each military unit had its own banners, differing in color, size and shape.
Judging by the surviving miniatures, the banners, or sanjaks, were of different shapes and textures. The banner consisted of a high pole, a pommel - alem and a colored cloth panel, usually triangular, less often rectangular, which was attached vertically. Alemas were figured, simple or peak-shaped. It was made of brass, gilded copper or tin. Sometimes a bunchuk made from horse tails was attached to the alem - a sign of courage and military valor.
The emblems of the banners contained certain information symbolism. For example, they indicated tribal emblems - nishans or tamgas. We'll talk about the latter a little later. In the meantime, let's pay attention to the color of the banners used by the Crimeans of the Khan period, for example, in military campaigns.
Along with the sheriff sanjak of Genghis Khan, a black and red cloth covered with prayers was used. During the campaign, these banners were carried in front of the Crimean Khan and kept in his personal tent.
Polish diplomat Martin Braniewski, who visited the Khanate in 1578, noted that the symbol of the guards detachment of the Crimean Khan was a white horsetail, next to which they carried a red-green sanjak. The diplomat wrote that: “With the khan’s detachment there is always a banner consisting of a white horse’s tail attached to a long stick, and a green and red silk banner.”
In addition to the regular army of the khan, the regiments, which were formed for the duration of the campaign and were subordinate directly to the head of state, had three large banners: red and yellow, white, white with green edging (or green “tongues”) and black horsetail, as well as red with a gold spherical pommel covered with Arabic inscriptions.
Other regiments, led by the clan aristocracy, had banners and horsetails that differed in color, shape, quality of linen and number of tight tails. As for the Nogais from the khan’s provinces of the Northern Black Sea region, they, as a rule, fought under yellow (“sary tug”) and white (“ak tug”) banners.
Ottoman traveler Evliya Celebi noted that such a hierarchy of colors was not fundamental. Celebi wrote during the fighting in the middle of the 17th century: askers, that is, warriors, used red and green banners.
“An Ottoman miniature from the work of Lokman bin Husayn al-Ashuri (1579 list) depicts the crossing of the Crimean Tatar and Ottoman troops across the Danube in 1566. Two large banners, topped with figured golden tops, flutter over the heads of the Crimeans. The first sanjak has a yellow triangular cloth with a wide red stripe along the edge. The second sanjak is a green flag of a triangular shape, cut into two long “tongues”, due to which the cloth has characteristic shape"swallow tail".
The miniatures “Shahname-i Nadiri” (20s of the 17th century) show the banners of the Crimean Tatar army of Khan Janibek Giray. The main banners of the Khan's troops are long wooden poles with a figured gold top and a red triangular panel. The banners of the military leaders are equipped with short black horsetails, white and orange triangular flags.
And only in one miniature for the work “Shahname” by Subhi-Chelebi Taliki-zadeh we see the army of the Crimean Khan Bora Ghazi Giray II, where his military leaders hold banners along with a triangular red flag blue color.
The events depicted in this miniature are a meeting of the heads of two powers: the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire. The year is 1595. The Crimean Khan Gazi Giray agreed to provide military assistance to his distant relative Sultan Mehmed III in the Hungarian campaigns. The historian Ibrahim Pechevi described this meeting as follows: “the ruler of the Crimea, Desht-i-Kipchak and the Nogai Tatars, the holder of the sword of Chingizov, the owner of knowledge and the adept of enlightenment, Khan Gazi Giray, having crossed the Ozya River and approaching the bank of Turla from the side of Poland, the expected, but unexpectedly, he suddenly appeared near the Sunluk fortress to help the padishah in his victorious campaign. The next day, it was the 19th of Dhu-l-Qaade (August 6), the chief vizier and commander-in-chief (padishah) came out to meet the khan with an army that the earth and sky could hardly contain. On horseback, they inquired about each other's health and well-being. Then, dismounting and walking next to their horses, they headed towards the golden-woven tent of the commander-in-chief. We discussed several main issues with him and had lunch together. Pechevi quite colorfully described the events that Subhi Celebi would depict in miniature after. Both the historian and the artist were not only contemporaries of those events, but also participants in the Hungarian campaigns, so we can say with confidence that they depicted exactly what they saw. And the blue banner in the ranks of the Crimean army is no exception. “In other words, if we did not see a blue banner or bajrak on miniatures depicting Crimean Tatar warriors by other authors, this does not mean that it was not used.
Along with banners, horsetails, or, as they were also called, tugs, were very common in the Crimean Khanate. They were a wooden shaft topped with a figured or spherical pommel, on which a brush made from one or several horse tails was suspended. Only the Crimean Khan could bestow horsetail on his subjects. The military rank of a commander was determined by the number of horsetails. In addition to the horsetail, military ranks had honorary insignia - fog-tug and black-tug - special kind banners, the shafts of which were crowned with figured tips - alems, denoting the rank of a military man.
As we see, in written sources and in miniatures depicting military campaigns of sanjaks and flags, the blue color is a rarity. Let us emphasize once again in military campaigns, since this does not mean that the blue color was not used on the flags. Perhaps this explains the fact that for the Crimean Tatars, as Turks, blue was considered a sacred color and was not intended for military campaigns.
Mav kok - the sky blue color among the Turkic peoples is a symbol of purity and freedom, honesty, fidelity and impeccability. It is associated with the sky, rivers and lakes. Blue color is one of the symbols of the ancient Turkic belief – Tengrism. Belief in one god Tengri. Today, on the national flag of the Crimean Tatars, the color symbolizes clear skies, peace and prosperity, and the monochromatic background symbolizes the unity of the people. And, apparently, it is no coincidence that these heavenly motifs were reflected when choosing the main color of the national flag of the Crimean Tatars.
To be continued…
Gulnara ABDULAEVA
So, Crimean Tatars.
Different sources present the history and modernity of this people with their own characteristics and their own vision of this issue.
Here are three links:
1). Russian site rusmirzp.com/2012/09/05/categ… 2). Ukrainian website turlocman.ru/ukraine/1837 3). Tatar website mtss.ru/?page=kryims
I will write your material using the most politically correct Wikipedia ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymski... and my own impressions.
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans 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.
Traditional drinks are coffee, ayran, yazma, buza.
National confectionery products sheker kyyyk, kurabye, baklava.
The national dishes of the Crimean Tatars are chebureks (fried pies with meat), yantyk (baked pies with meat), saryk burma (layer pie with meat), sarma (grape and cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice), dolma (peppers stuffed with meat and rice) , kobete is originally a Greek dish, as evidenced by the name (baked pie with meat, onions and potatoes), burma (layer pie with pumpkin and nuts), tatar ash (dumplings), yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings), shish kebab, pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike the Uzbek one without carrots), bak'la shorbasy (meat soup with green bean pods, seasoned with sour milk), shurpa, kainatma.
I tried sarma, dolma and shurpa. Very tasty.
Settlement.
They live mainly in Crimea (about 260 thousand), adjacent areas of continental Russia (2.4 thousand, mainly in the Krasnodar Territory) and in adjacent areas of Ukraine (2.9 thousand), as well as in Turkey, Romania (24 thousand), Uzbekistan (90 thousand, estimates from 10 thousand to 150 thousand), 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 are in different times immigrated to the country from Crimea, estimated in Turkey at 5-6 million people, however, most of these people have assimilated and consider themselves not Crimean Tatars, but Turks of Crimean origin.
Ethnogenesis.
There is a misconception that the Crimean Tatars are predominantly descendants of the 13th century Mongol conquerors. This is wrong.
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.
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, Cumans, 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.
An important role in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people belongs to the Western Kipchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name Polovtsy. From the 11th-12th centuries, the Kipchaks began to populate the Volga, Azov and Black Sea steppes (which from then until the 18th century were called Desht-i Kipchak - “Kypchak steppe”). From the second half of the 11th century they began to actively penetrate into Crimea. A significant part of the Polovtsians took refuge in the mountains of Crimea, fleeing after the defeat of the united Polovtsian-Russian troops from the Mongols and the subsequent defeat of the Polovtsian proto-state formations in the northern Black Sea region.
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. During the Horde period, representatives of the Shirin, Argyn, Baryn and others clans appeared in Crimea, who then formed the backbone of the Crimean Tatar steppe aristocracy. The spread of the ethnonym “Tatars” in Crimea dates back to this time - this common name was used to call the Turkic-speaking population of the state created by the Mongols. Internal turmoil and political instability in the Horde led to the fact that in the middle of the 15th century, Crimea fell away from the Horde rulers, and the independent Crimean Khanate was formed.
The key event that left its mark on further history 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 Republic of Genoa and the Principality of Theodoro, the subsequent transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a vassal state of the Ottomans and the entry of the peninsula into the Pax Ottomana - the “cultural space” of the Ottoman Empire. empires.
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. However, Islam began to actively spread in Crimea only after the adoption of Islam as the state religion in the 14th century by the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek.
The vast majority of Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims. Historically, the Islamization of the Crimean Tatars occurred in parallel with the formation of the ethnic group itself and was very long-lasting. The first step on this path was the capture of Sudak and the surrounding area by the Seljuks in the 13th century and the beginning of the spread of Sufi brotherhoods in the region, and the last was the massive adoption of Islam by a significant number of Crimean Christians who wanted to avoid eviction from Crimea in 1778. The bulk of the population of Crimea converted to Islam during the era of the Crimean Khanate and the Golden Horde period preceding it. Now in Crimea there are about three hundred Muslim communities, most of which are united in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea (adheres to the Hanafi madhhab). It is the Hanafi direction that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.
Takhtali Jam Mosque in Yevpatoriya.
By the end of the 15th century, the main prerequisites were created that led to the formation of an independent Crimean Tatar ethnic group: the political dominance of the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire was established in Crimea, the Turkic languages (Polovtsian-Kypchak in the territory of the Khanate and Ottoman in the Ottoman possessions) became dominant, and Islam acquired the status of state religions throughout the peninsula.
As a result of the predominance of the Polovtsian-speaking population, called “Tatars,” and the Islamic religion, processes of assimilation and consolidation of a motley ethnic conglomerate began, which led to the emergence of the Crimean Tatar people. Over the course of several centuries, the Crimean Tatar language developed on the basis of the Polovtsian language with a noticeable Oghuz influence.
An important component of this process was the linguistic and religious assimilation of the Christian population, which was very mixed in its ethnic composition (Greeks, Alans, Goths, Circassians, Polovtsian-speaking Christians, including the descendants of the Scythians, Sarmatians, etc., assimilated by these peoples in earlier eras), which made up At the end of the 15th century, the majority were in the mountainous and southern coastal regions of Crimea.
The assimilation of the local population began during the Horde period, but it especially intensified in the 17th century.
The Goths and Alans who lived in the mountainous part of Crimea began to adopt Turkic customs and culture, which corresponds to the data of archaeological and paleoethnographic research. On the Ottoman-controlled South Bank, assimilation proceeded noticeably more slowly. Thus, the results of the 1542 census show that the overwhelming majority of the rural population of the Ottoman possessions in Crimea were Christians. Archaeological studies of Crimean Tatar cemeteries on the South Bank also show that Muslim tombstones began to appear en masse in the 17th century.
As a result, by 1778, when the Crimean Greeks (all local Orthodox Christians were then called Greeks) were evicted from Crimea to the Azov region by order of the Russian government, there were just over 18 thousand of them (which was about 2% of the then population of Crimea), and more than half of these The Greeks were Urums, whose native language is Crimean Tatar, while the Greek-speaking Rumeans were a minority, and by that time there were no speakers of Alan, Gothic and other languages left at all.
Subethnic groups.
The Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: the steppe people or Nogais (not to be confused with the Nogai people) (çöllüler, noğaylar), the highlanders or Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian Tats) (tatlar) and the South Coast or Yalyboy (yalıboylular).
South Coast residents - yalyboylu.
Before the deportation, the South Coast residents lived on the Southern Coast of Crimea (Crimean Kotat. Yalı boyu) - a narrow strip 2-6 km wide, stretching along the sea coast from Balakalava in the west to Feodosia in the east. In the ethnogenesis of this group, the main role was played by the Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians, and the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast also have the blood of Italians (Genoese). The residents of many villages on the South Coast, until the deportation, retained elements of Christian rituals that they inherited from their Greek ancestors. Most of the Yalyboys adopted Islam as a religion quite late, compared to the other two subethnic groups, namely in 1778. Since the South Bank was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, the South Bank people never lived in the Crimean Khanate and could move throughout the entire territory of the empire, as evidenced by a large number of marriages of South Coast residents with the Ottomans and other citizens of the empire. Racially, the majority of South Coast residents belong to the South European (Mediterranean) race (outwardly similar to Turks, Greeks, Italians, etc.). However, there are individual representatives of this group with pronounced features of the Northern European race (fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes). For example, residents of the villages of Kuchuk-Lambat (Kiparisnoye) and Arpat (Zelenogorye) belonged to this type. South Coast Tatars and physical type noticeably different from the Turkic: they noted higher growth, lack of cheekbones, “in general, regular facial features; This type is built very slenderly, which is why it can be called handsome. Women are distinguished by soft and regular facial features, dark, with long eyelashes, large eyes, finely defined eyebrows” (writes Starovsky). The described type, however, even within the small space of the Southern Coast is subject to significant fluctuations, depending on the predominance of certain nationalities living here. So, for example, in Simeiz, Limeny, Alupka one could often meet long-headed people with an oblong face, a long hooked nose and light brown, sometimes red hair. The customs of the South Coast Tatars, the freedom of their women, the veneration of some Christian holidays and monuments, their love for sedentary activities, compared with their external appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called “Tatars” are close to the Indo-European tribe. The dialect of the South Coast residents belongs to the Oguz group of Turkic languages, very close to Turkish. The vocabulary of this dialect contains a noticeable layer of Greek and a number of Italian borrowings. The old Crimean Tatar literary language, created by Ismail Gasprinsky, was based on this dialect.
The steppe people are Nogai.
The Nogai lived in the steppe (Crimean çöl) north of the conditional line Nikolaevka-Gvardeiskoye-Feodosiya. The main participants in the ethnogenesis of this group were the Western Kipchaks (Cumans), Eastern Kipchaks and Nogais (this is where the name Nogai came from). Racially, the Nogai are Caucasians with Mongoloid elements (~10%). The Nogai dialect belongs to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, combining the features of the Polovtsian-Kypchak (Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk) and Nogai-Kypchak (Nogai, Tatar, Bashkir and Kazakh) languages.
One of the starting points of the ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatars should be considered the emergence of the Crimean yurt, and then the Crimean Khanate. The nomadic nobility of Crimea took advantage of the weakening of the Golden Horde to create their own state. The long struggle between feudal factions ended in 1443 with the victory of Hadji Giray, who founded the virtually independent Crimean Khanate, whose territory included Crimea, the Black Sea steppes and the Taman Peninsula.
The main force of the Crimean army was the cavalry - fast, maneuverable, with centuries of experience. In the steppe, every man was a warrior, an excellent horseman and archer. This is confirmed by Boplan: “The Tatars know the steppe as well as pilots know sea harbors.”
During the emigration of the Crimean Tatars in the 18th-19th centuries. a significant part of the steppe Crimea was practically deprived of its indigenous population.
The famous scientist, writer and researcher of the Crimea of the 19th century, E.V. Markov, wrote that only the Tatars “endured this dry heat of the steppe, mastering the secrets of extracting and conducting water, raising livestock and gardens in places where a German or a Bulgarian could not get along before. Hundreds of thousands of honest and patient hands have been taken away from the economy. The camel herds have almost disappeared; where previously there were thirty flocks of sheep, there is only one walking there, where there were fountains, there are now empty swimming pools, where there was a crowded industrial village - there is now a wasteland... Drive, for example, Evpatoria district and you will think that you are traveling along the shores of the Dead Sea.”
Highlanders are Tats.
The Tats (not to be confused with the Caucasian people of the same name) lived before the deportation in the mountains (Crimean Tat. dağlar) and the foothills or middle zone (Crimean Tat. orta yolaq), that is, north of the South Coast people and south of the steppe people. The ethnogenesis of the Tats is a very complex and not fully understood process. Almost all the peoples and tribes that ever lived in Crimea took part in the formation of this subethnic group. These are the Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, Avars, Goths, Greeks, Circassians, Bulgars, Khazars, Pechenegs and Western Kipchaks (known in European sources as Cumans or Komans, and in Russians as Polovtsians). The role of the Goths, Greeks and Kipchaks is considered particularly important in this process. The Tats inherited their language from the Kipchaks, and their material and everyday culture from the Greeks and Goths. The Goths mainly took part in the ethnogenesis of the population of the western part of the mountainous Crimea (Bakhchisarai region). The type of houses that the Crimean Tatars built in the mountain villages of this region before the deportation is considered Gothic by some researchers. It should be noted that the given data on the ethnogenesis of the Tats are to some extent a generalization, since the population of almost every village in the mountainous Crimea before the deportation had its own characteristics, in which the influence of one or another people was discernible. Racially, the Tats belong to the Central European race, that is, they are externally similar to representatives of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe (some of them are North Caucasian peoples, and some of them are Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, etc.). The Tat dialect has both Kypchak and Oguz features and is to some extent intermediate between the dialects of the South Coast and the steppe people. The modern Crimean Tatar literary language is based on this dialect.
Until 1944, the listed subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars practically did not mix with each other, but deportation destroyed traditional settlement areas, and over the past 60 years the process of merging these groups into a single community has gained momentum. The boundaries between them are noticeably blurred today, since there is a significant number of families where spouses belong to different subethnic groups. Due to the fact that after returning to Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, for a number of reasons, and primarily due to the opposition of local authorities, cannot settle in the places of their former traditional residence, the process of mixing continues. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, among the Crimean Tatars living in Crimea, about 30% were South Coast residents, about 20% were Nogais and about 50% were Tats.
The fact that the word “Tatars” is present in the common name of the Crimean Tatars often causes misunderstandings and questions about whether the Crimean Tatars are a subethnic group of Tatars, and the Crimean Tatar language is a dialect of Tatar. The name “Crimean Tatars” has remained in the Russian language since the times when almost all Turkic-speaking peoples Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachais (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakassians (Abakan Tatars), etc. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (for with the exception of the steppe ones), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited eastern Europe before Mongol invasion, when the ethnonym “Tatars” came to the west.
The Crimean Tatars themselves today use two self-names: qırımtatarlar (literally “Crimean Tatars”) and qırımlar (literally “Crimeans”). In everyday life colloquial speech(but not in an official context) the word tatarlar (“Tatars”) can also be used as a self-name.
The Crimean Tatar and Tatar languages are related, since both belong to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, but are not closest relatives within this group. Due to quite different phonetics (primarily vocalism: the so-called “Volga region vowel interruption”), Crimean Tatars understand by ear only individual words and phrases in Tatar speech and vice versa. Among the Kipchak languages, the closest to the Crimean Tatar are the Kumyk and Karachay languages, and from the Oguz languages, Turkish and Azerbaijani.
At the end of the 19th century, Ismail Gasprinsky made an attempt to create, on the basis of the Crimean Tatar southern coastal dialect, a single literary language for all Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire (including the Volga Tatars), but this endeavor did not have serious success.
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 (Gireev) 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.
The classic of Crimean Tatar poetry of that era - Ashik Died.
The main surviving architectural monument of that time is the Khan's palace in Bakhchisarai.
From the beginning of the 16th century, the Crimean Khanate waged constant wars with the Moscow state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (mainly offensive until the 18th century), which was accompanied by the capture large quantity captives from among the peaceful Russian, Ukrainian and Polish populations. Those captured as slaves were sold at Crimean slave markets, among which the largest was the market in the city of Kef (modern Feodosia), to Turkey, Arabia, and the Middle East. The mountain and coastal Tatars of the southern coast of Crimea were reluctant to participate in raids, preferring to pay off the khans with payments. In 1571, a 40,000-strong Crimean army under the command of Khan Devlet I Giray, having passed the Moscow fortifications, reached Moscow and, in retaliation for the capture of Kazan, set fire to its suburbs, after which the entire city, with the exception of the Kremlin, burned to the ground. However, the very next year, the 40,000-strong horde that was marching again, hoping, together with the Turks, Nogais, and Circassians (more than 120-130 thousand in total), to finally put an end to the independence of the Muscovite Kingdom, suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Molodi, which forced the Khanate to moderate its political claims. Nevertheless, formally subordinate to the Crimean Khan, but in fact semi-independent Nogai hordes roaming the Northern Black Sea region, regularly carried out extremely devastating raids on Moscow, Ukrainian, Polish lands, reaching Lithuania and Slovakia. The purpose of these raids was to seize booty and numerous slaves, mainly for the purpose of selling slaves to the markets of the Ottoman Empire, brutally exploiting them in the Khanate itself, and receiving a ransom. For this, as a rule, the Muravsky Way was used, which ran from Perekop to Tula. These raids bled all the southern, peripheral and central regions of the country, which were practically deserted for a long time. The constant threat from the south and east contributed to the formation of the Cossacks, who performed guard and patrol functions in all the border territories of the Moscow State and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the Wild Field.
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. According to researchers of the late 19th century F. Lashkov and K. German, the population of the peninsular part of the Crimean Khanate by the 1770s was approximately 500 thousand people, 92% of whom were Crimean Tatars. The first Russian census of 1793 recorded 127.8 thousand people in Crimea, including 87.8% Crimean Tatars. Thus, most of the Tatars emigrated from Crimea, according to various sources amounting to up to half of the population (from Turkish data it is known about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars who settled in late XVIII V. in Turkey, mainly in Rumelia). After the end of the Crimean War, about 200 thousand Crimean Tatars emigrated from Crimea in the 1850-60s. It is their descendants who now make up the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. This led to the decline of agriculture and the almost complete desolation of the steppe part of Crimea.
Along with this, the development of Crimea was intensive, mainly the territory of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), due to the attraction Russian government migrants from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia. The ethnic composition of the peninsula's population has changed - the proportion of Orthodox Christians has increased.
In the middle of the 19th century, the Crimean Tatars, overcoming disunity, began to move from rebellions to a new stage of national struggle.
It was necessary to mobilize the entire people for collective defense against the oppression of tsarist laws and Russian landowners.
Ismail Gasprinsky was an outstanding educator of the Turkic and other Muslim peoples. One of his main achievements is the creation and dissemination of a system of secular (non-religious) school education among the Crimean Tatars, which also radically changed the essence and structure of primary education in many Muslim countries, giving it a more secular character. He became the actual creator of the new literary Crimean Tatar language. Gasprinsky began publishing the first Crimean Tatar newspaper “Terdzhiman” (“Translator”) in 1883, which soon became known far beyond the borders of Crimea, including in Turkey and Central Asia. His educational and publishing activities ultimately led to the emergence of a new Crimean Tatar intelligentsia. Gasprinsky is also considered one of the founders of the ideology of pan-Turkism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ismail Gasprinsky realized that his educational task had been completed and it was necessary to reach new stage national struggle. This stage coincided with the revolutionary events in Russia of 1905-1907. Gasprinsky wrote: “The first long period of mine and my “Translator” is over, and the second, short, but probably more stormy period begins, when the old teacher and popularizer must become a politician.”
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. The most active Crimean Tatar revolutionaries grouped around Ali Bodaninsky, this group was under close attention gendarmerie department. After the death of Ismail Gasprinsky in 1914, Ali Bodaninsky remained as the oldest national leader. The authority of Ali Bodaninsky in the national liberation movement of the Crimean Tatars at the beginning of the 20th century was indisputable.
Revolution of 1917.
In February 1917, Crimean Tatar revolutionaries monitored the political situation with great preparedness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, already on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of dissolution State Duma, on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created.
The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee proposed joint work to the Simferopol Council, but the executive committee of the Council rejected this proposal.
After the all-Crimean election campaign carried out by the Musis Executive Committee, on November 26, 1917 (December 9, new style), the Kurultai - General Assembly, the main advisory, decision-making and representative body, was opened in Bakhchisarai in the Khan's Palace.
Thus, in 1917, the Crimean Tatar Parliament (Kurultai) - the legislative body, and the Crimean Tatar Government (Directory) - the executive body, began to exist in Crimea.
Civil war and the Crimean ASSR.
The Civil War in Russia became a difficult test for the Crimean Tatars. In 1917, after the February Revolution, the first Kurultai (congress) of the Crimean Tatar people was convened, proclaiming a course towards the creation of an independent multinational Crimea. The slogan of the chairman of the first Kurultai, one of the most revered leaders of the Crimean Tatars, Noman Celebidzhikhan, is known - “Crimea is for the Crimeans” (meaning the entire population of the peninsula, regardless of nationality. “Our task,” he said, “is the creation of a state like Switzerland. Peoples of Crimea represent a wonderful bouquet, and equal rights and conditions are necessary for every nation, because we can go hand in hand.” However, Celebidzhikhan was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the interests of the Crimean Tatars throughout. Civil War were practically not taken into account by both whites and reds.
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 national principle: in 1930, national village councils were created: Russian 106, Tatar 145, German 27, Jewish 14, Bulgarian 8, Greek 6, Ukrainian 3, Armenian and Estonian - 2 each. In addition, national districts were organized. In 1930, there were 7 such districts: 5 Tatar (Sudak, Alushta, Bakhchisarai, Yalta and Balaklava), 1 German (Biyuk-Onlar, later Telmansky) and 1 Jewish (Freidorf).
In all schools, children of national minorities were taught in their own language. native language. But after the short rise in national life after the creation of the republic (the opening of national schools, the theater, the publication of newspapers), Stalin’s repressions of 1937 followed.
Crimea under German occupation.
From mid-November 1941 to May 12, 1944, Crimea was occupied by German troops.
In December 1941, Muslim Tatar committees were created in Crimea by the German occupation administration. The central “Crimean Muslim Committee” began work in Simferopol. Their organization and activities took place under the direct supervision of the SS. Subsequently, the leadership of the committees passed to the SD headquarters. In September 1942, the German occupation administration prohibited the use of the word “Crimean” in the name, and the committee began to be called the “Simferopol Muslim Committee”, and from 1943 - the “Simferopol Tatar Committee”. The committee consisted of 6 departments: for the fight against Soviet partisans; on recruiting volunteer units; to provide assistance to the families of volunteers; on culture and propaganda; by religion; administrative and economic department and office. Local committees duplicated the central one in their structure. Their activities were discontinued at the end of 1943.
The initial program of the committee provided for the creation of a state of Crimean Tatars in Crimea under German protectorate, the creation of its own parliament and army, and the resumption of the activities of the Milli Firqa party banned in 1920 by the Bolsheviks (Crimean Milliy Fırqa - national party). However, already in the winter of 1941-42, the German command made it clear that they did not intend to allow the creation of any state entity in Crimea. In December 1941, representatives of the Crimean Tatar community of Turkey, Mustafa Edige Kırımal and Müstecip Ülküsal, visited Berlin in the hope of convincing Hitler of the need to create a Crimean Tatar state, but they were refused. Long-term plans of the Nazis included the annexation of Crimea directly to the Reich as the imperial land of Gotenland and the settlement of the territory by German colonists.
Since October 1941, the creation of volunteer formations from representatives of the Crimean Tatars began - self-defense companies, main task which was the fight against partisans. Until January 1942, this process proceeded spontaneously, but after the recruitment of volunteers from among the Crimean Tatars was officially sanctioned by Hitler, the solution to this problem passed to the leadership of Einsatzgruppe D. During January 1942, more than 8,600 volunteers were recruited, from among whom 1,632 people were selected to serve in self-defense companies (14 companies were formed). In March 1942, 4 thousand people already served in self-defense companies, and another 5 thousand people were in the reserve. Subsequently, based on the created companies, auxiliary police battalions were deployed, the number of which reached eight by November 1942 (from the 147th to the 154th).
Crimean Tatar formations were used to protect military and civilian facilities, took an active part in the fight against partisans, and in 1944 they actively resisted the Red Army units that liberated Crimea. The remnants of the Crimean Tatar units, along with German and Romanian troops, were evacuated from Crimea by sea. In the summer of 1944, from the remnants of the Crimean Tatar units in Hungary, the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS was formed, which was soon reorganized into the 1st Tatar Mountain Jaeger Brigade of the SS, which was disbanded on December 31, 1944 and reorganized into the combat group "Crimea", which joined Eastern Turkic SS unit. Crimean Tatar volunteers who were not included in the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Regiment of the SS were transferred to France and included in the reserve battalion of the Volga Tatar Legion or (mostly untrained youth) were enlisted in the auxiliary air defense service.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars were drafted into the Red Army. Many of them later deserted in 1941.
However, there are other examples.
More than 35 thousand Crimean Tatars served in the ranks of the Red Army from 1941 to 1945. The majority (about 80%) of the civilian population provided active support to the Crimean partisan detachments. Due to the poor organization of partisan warfare and the constant shortage of food, medicine and weapons, the command decided to evacuate most of the partisans from Crimea in the fall of 1942. According to the party archive of the Crimean regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on June 1, 1943, there were 262 people in the partisan detachments of Crimea. Of these, 145 are Russians, 67 Ukrainians, 6 Tatars. On January 15, 1944, there were 3,733 partisans in Crimea, of which 1,944 were Russians, 348 Ukrainians, 598 Tatars. Finally, according to a certificate on the party, national and age composition of the Crimean partisans as of April 1944, among the partisans there were: Russians - 2075, Tatars - 391, Ukrainians - 356, Belarusians - 71, others - 754.
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.
Officially, the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was called about 20 thousand people) was also declared as the basis for the deportation. good welcome German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, prison and camp apparatus. At the same time, the deportation did not affect the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the homeland (in total, about 5,000 collaborators of all nationalities were identified in Crimea in April-May 1944). Crimean Tatars who fought in Red Army units were also subject to deportation after demobilization and returning home to Crimea from the front. Crimean Tatars who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and who managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944 were also deported. In 1949, there were 8,995 Crimean Tatars who participated in the war in the places of deportation, including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants.
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.
The fight to return.
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”), despite appeals from representatives of the people to the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and directly to the leaders of the USSR and despite the fact that on January 9, 1974, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the recognition as invalid of certain legislative acts of the USSR, providing for restrictions in the choice of place of residence for certain categories of citizens,” was issued.
Since the 1960s, in the places where deported Crimean Tatars lived in Uzbekistan, a national movement for the restoration of the rights of the people and the return to Crimea arose and began to gain strength.
The activities of public activists who insisted on the return of the Crimean Tatars to their historical homeland were persecuted by the administrative bodies of the Soviet state.
Return to Crimea.
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), of which more than 25 thousand live in Simferopol, over 33 thousand in the Simferopol region, or over 22% of the region's population.
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.
In 1991, the second Kurultai was convened and a system of national self-government of the Crimean Tatars was created. Every five years, elections of the Kurultai (similar to a national parliament) take place, in which all Crimean Tatars participate. The Kurultai forms an executive body - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (similar to the national government). This organization was not registered with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. From 1991 to October 2013, the Chairman of the Mejlis was Mustafa Dzhemilev. Refat Chubarov was elected the new head of the Mejlis at the first session of the 6th Kurultai (national congress) of the Crimean Tatar people, held on October 26-27 in Simferopol
In August 2006, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Tatar statements by Orthodox priests in Crimea.
At the beginning, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people had a negative attitude towards holding a referendum on the annexation of Crimea to Russia in early March 2014.
However, just before the referendum, the situation was turned around with the help of Kadyrov and the State Councilor of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures for the rehabilitation of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, German and Crimean Tatar peoples living on the territory of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The President instructed the government, when developing a target program for the development of Crimea and Sevastopol until 2020, to provide measures for the national, cultural and spiritual revival of these peoples, development of the territories of their residence (with financing), to assist the Crimean and Sevastopol authorities in holding commemorative events for the 70th anniversary of the deportation peoples in May of this year, as well as to assist in the creation of national and cultural autonomies.
Judging by the results of the referendum, almost half of all Crimean Tatars took part in the vote - despite very severe pressure on them from radicals from among themselves. At the same time, the mood of the Tatars and their attitude towards the return of Crimea to Russia is rather wary rather than hostile. So everything depends on the authorities and on how Russian Muslims accept the new brothers.
Currently social life Crimean Tatars are experiencing a split.
On the one hand, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, who was not allowed to enter Crimea by prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya.
On the other hand, the Crimean Tatar party “Milli Firka”.
Chairman of the Kenesh (Council) of the Crimean Tatar party “Milli Firka” Vasvi Abduraimov believes that:
"Crimean Tatars are flesh and blood heirs and part of the Great Turkic El - Eurasia.
We definitely have nothing to do in Europe. Most of the Turkic Ale today is also Russia. More than 20 million Turkic Muslims live in Russia. Therefore, Russia is as close to us as it is to the Slavs. All Crimean Tatars speak Russian well, received education in Russian, grew up in Russian culture, live among Russians."gumilev-center.ru/krymskie-ta…
These are the so-called “seizures” of land by the Crimean Tatars.
They simply built several of these buildings side by side on lands that at that time belonged to the Ukrainian State.
As illegally repressed people, the Tatars believe that they have the right to seize the land they like for free.
Of course, squatters do not take place in the remote steppe, but along the Simferopol highway and along the South Coast.
There are few permanent houses built on the site of these squatters.
They just staked out a place for themselves with the help of such sheds.
Subsequently (after legalization) it will be possible to build a cafe here, a house for children, or sell it at a profit.
And a State Council decree is already being prepared that squatters will be legalized. vesti.ua/krym/63334-v-krymu-h…
Like this.
Including through the legalization of squatters, Putin decided to ensure the loyalty of the Crimean Tatars in relation to the presence of the Russian Federation in Crimea.
However, the Ukrainian authorities also did not actively fight this phenomenon.
Because it considered the Mejlis as a counterweight to the influence of the Russian-speaking population of Crimea on politics on the peninsula.
The State Council of Crimea adopted in the first reading the draft law “On some guarantees of the rights of peoples deported extrajudicially on ethnic grounds in 1941-1944 from the Autonomous Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic,” which, among other things, provides for the amount and procedure for paying various one-time compensation to repatriates . kianews.com.ua/news/v-krymu-d… The adopted bill is the implementation of the decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On measures for the rehabilitation of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German peoples and state support for their revival and development.”
It is aimed at the social protection of deportees, as well as their children born after deportation in 1941–1944 in places of imprisonment or exile and who returned to permanent residence in Crimea, and those who were outside Crimea at the time of deportation (military service, evacuation, forced labor), but was sent to special settlements. ? 🐒 this is the evolution of city excursions. The VIP guide is a city dweller, he will show you the most unusual places and tell you urban legends, I tried it, it’s fire 🚀! Prices from 600 rub. - they will definitely please you 🤑
👁 The best search engine on the Runet - Yandex ❤ has started selling air tickets! 🤷
The question of where the Tatars came from in Crimea has, until recently, caused a lot of controversy. Some believed that the Crimean Tatars were the heirs of the Golden Horde nomads, others called them the original inhabitants of Taurida.
Invasion
In the margins of a Greek handwritten book of religious content (synaxarion) found in Sudak, the following note was made: “On this day (January 27) the Tatars came for the first time, in 6731” (6731 from the Creation of the World corresponds to 1223 AD). Details of the Tatar raid can be read from the Arab writer 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.”
The Flemish Franciscan monk William de Rubruk, who visited southern Taurica in 1253, left us with terrible details of this invasion: “And when the Tatars came, the Comans (Polovtsians), who all fled to the seashore, entered this land in such a huge number that they devoured each other mutually, 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.”
The devastating invasion of the Golden Horde nomads, without a doubt, radically updated the ethnic composition of the population of the peninsula. However, it is premature to assert that the Turks became the main ancestors of the modern Crimean Tatar ethnic group. Since ancient times, Tavrika has been inhabited by dozens of tribes and peoples who, thanks to the isolation of the peninsula, actively mixed and wove a motley multinational pattern. It’s not for nothing that Crimea is called the “concentrated Mediterranean”.
Crimean aborigines
The Crimean peninsula has never been empty. During wars, invasions, epidemics or great exoduses, its population did not disappear completely. Until the Tatar invasion, the lands of Crimea were inhabited by Greeks, Romans, Armenians, Goths, Sarmatians, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians, and Genoese. One wave of immigrants replaced another, to varying degrees, inheriting a multiethnic code, which ultimately found expression in the genotype of modern “Crimeans”.
From the 6th century BC. e. to 1st century AD e. The Tauri were the rightful masters of the southeastern coast of the Crimean Peninsula. Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria noted: “The Tauri live by robbery and war.” Even earlier, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus described the custom of the Tauri, in which they “sacrificed to the Virgin shipwrecked sailors and all Hellenes who were captured on the open sea.” How can one not remember that after many centuries, robbery and war will become constant companions of the “Crimeans” (as the Crimean Tatars were called in the Russian Empire), and pagan sacrifices, according to the spirit of the times, will turn into slave trade.
In the 19th century, Crimean explorer Peter Keppen expressed the idea that “in the veins of all inhabitants of territories rich in dolmen finds” the blood of the Taurians flows. His hypothesis was that “the Taurians, being heavily overpopulated by Tatars in the Middle Ages, remained to live in their old places, but under a different name and gradually switched to the Tatar language, borrowing the Muslim faith.” At the same time, Koeppen drew attention to the fact that the Tatars of the South Coast are of the Greek type, while the mountain Tatars are close to the Indo-European type.
At the beginning of our era, the Tauri were assimilated by the Iranian-speaking Scythian tribes, who subjugated almost the entire peninsula. Although the latter soon disappeared from the historical scene, they could well have left their genetic trace in the later Crimean ethnos. An unnamed author of the 16th century, who knew the population of Crimea of his time well, reports: “Although we consider the Tatars to be barbarians and poor people, they are proud of the abstinence of their lives and the antiquity of their Scythian origin.”
Modern scientists admit the idea that the Tauri and Scythians were not completely destroyed by the Huns who invaded the Crimean Peninsula, but concentrated in the mountains and had a noticeable influence on later settlers.
Of the subsequent inhabitants of Crimea, a special place is given to the Goths, who in the 3rd century, having swept through the north-western Crimea with a crushing wave, remained there for many centuries. The Russian scientist Stanislav Sestrenevich-Bogush noted that at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, the Goths living near Mangup still retained their genotype, and their Tatar language was similar to South German. The scientist added that “they are all Muslims and Tatarized.”
Linguists note a number of Gothic words included in the Crimean Tatar language. They also confidently declare the Gothic contribution, albeit relatively small, to the Crimean Tatar gene pool. “Gothia faded away, but its inhabitants disappeared without a trace into the mass of the emerging Tatar nation,” noted Russian ethnographer Alexei Kharuzin.
Aliens from Asia
In 1233, the Golden Horde established their governorship in Sudak, liberated from the Seljuks. This year became the generally recognized starting point of the ethnic history of the Crimean Tatars. In the second half of the 13th century, the Tatars became the masters of the Genoese trading post Solkhata-Solkata (now Old Crimea) and in short term subjugated almost the entire peninsula. However, this did not prevent the Horde from intermarrying with the local, primarily Italian-Greek population, and even adopting their language and culture.
The question to what extent modern Crimean Tatars can be considered the heirs of the Horde conquerors, and to what extent to have autochthonous or other origins, is still relevant. Thus, the St. Petersburg historian Valery Vozgrin, as well as some representatives of the “Majlis” (parliament of the Crimean Tatars) are trying to establish the opinion that the Tatars are predominantly autochthonous in Crimea, but most scientists do not agree with this.
Even in the Middle Ages, travelers and diplomats considered the Tatars “aliens from the depths of Asia.” In particular, the Russian steward Andrei Lyzlov in his “Scythian History” (1692) wrote that the Tatars, who “are all countries near the Don, and the Meotian (Azov) Sea, and Taurica Kherson (Crimea) around the Pontus Euxine (Black Sea) "obladasha and satosha" were newcomers.
During the rise of the national liberation movement in 1917, the Tatar press called for relying on “the state wisdom of the Mongol-Tatars, which runs like a red thread through their entire history,” and also with honor to hold “the emblem of the Tatars - the blue banner of Genghis” (“kok- Bayrak" is the national flag of the Tatars living in Crimea).
Speaking in 1993 in Simferopol at the “kurultai”, the eminent descendant of the Girey khans, Dzhezar-Girey, who arrived from London, stated that “we are the sons of the Golden Horde,” emphasizing in every possible way the continuity of the Tatars “from the Great Father, Mr. Genghis Khan, through his grandson Batu and eldest son of Juche."
However, such statements do not quite fit into the ethnic picture of Crimea that was observed before the peninsula was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1782. At that time, among the “Crimeans” two subethnic groups were quite clearly distinguished: narrow-eyed Tatars - a pronounced Mongoloid type of inhabitants of steppe villages and mountain Tatars - characterized by a Caucasian body structure and facial features: tall, often fair-haired and blue-eyed people who spoke a language other than the steppe, language.
What ethnography says
Before the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, ethnographers drew attention to the fact that these people, albeit to varying degrees, bear the mark of many genotypes that have ever lived on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. Scientists have identified three main ethnographic groups.
“Steppe people” (“Nogai”, “Nogai”) are the descendants of nomadic tribes that were part of the Golden Horde. Back in the 17th century, the Nogais roamed the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region from Moldova to the North Caucasus, but later, mostly forcibly, they were resettled by the Crimean khans to the steppe regions of the peninsula. The Western Kipchaks (Cumans) played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Nogais. The race of the Nogai is Caucasian with an admixture of Mongoloidity.
“South Coast Tatars” (“yalyboylu”), mostly from Asia Minor, were formed on the basis of several migration waves from Central Anatolia. The ethnogenesis of this group was largely provided by the Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians; Italian (Genoese) blood was traced in the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast. Although most of the Yalyboylu are Muslims, some of them retained elements of Christian rituals for a long time.
“Highlanders” (“Tats”) - lived in the mountains and foothills of the central Crimea (between the steppe people and the southern coast people). The ethnogenesis of the Tats is complex and not fully understood. According to scientists, the majority of the nationalities inhabiting Crimea took part in the formation of this subethnic group.
All three Crimean Tatar subethnic groups differed in their culture, economy, dialects, anthropology, but, nevertheless, they always felt themselves to be part of a single people.
A word for geneticists
More recently, scientists decided to clarify a difficult question: Where to look for the genetic roots of the Crimean Tatar people? The study of the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was carried out under the auspices of the largest international project"Genographic".
One of the tasks of geneticists was to discover evidence of the existence of an “extraterritorial” population group that could determine the common origin of the Crimean, Volga and Siberian Tatars. The research tool was the Y chromosome, which is convenient in that it is transmitted only along one line - from father to son, and does not “mix” with genetic variants that came from other ancestors.
The genetic portraits of the three groups turned out to be dissimilar to each other; in other words, the search for common ancestors for all Tatars was unsuccessful. Thus, the Volga Tatars are dominated by haplogroups common in Eastern Europe and the Urals, while the Siberian Tatars are characterized by “Pan-Eurasian” haplogroups.
DNA analysis of the Crimean Tatars shows a high proportion of southern – “Mediterranean” haplogroups and only a small admixture (about 10%) of “Nast Asian” lines. This means that the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was primarily replenished by immigrants from Asia Minor and the Balkans, and to a much lesser extent by nomads from the steppe strip of Eurasia.
At the same time, an uneven distribution of the main markers in the gene pools of different subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars was revealed: the maximum contribution of the “eastern” component was noted in the northernmost steppe group, while in the other two (mountain and southern coastal) the “southern” genetic component dominates. It is curious that scientists have not found any similarity in the gene pool of the peoples of Crimea with their geographical neighbors - Russians and Ukrainians.
The origin of both large and small communities of the population - peoples, nationalities and various ethnographic groups - is a complex historical process, including migrations, wars, epidemics, and deportations. Some populations became heterogeneous, which inevitably caused problems in understanding the history, culture, and evolution of both the communities themselves and the entire world.
To solve these problems, a number of classifications were compiled based on languages, specific objects of material culture, main phenotypic differences, etc. However, despite the existing good historical ethnogenetic and anthropogenetic reconstructions and classifications, it cannot be argued that they fully reflect the real historical fact. In this case, special biological (genetic) research, which has been rapidly developing recently, could help us.
One of these areas is the study of the morphological features of the structure of human hair, which are used not only in forensic medical examination, but also to identify various ethnic groups. Based on a large number of studies on hair of different nationalities, unique results have been obtained. It turned out that the edges of keratinocytes form specific “patterns”. They have, as it turned out, identical characteristic features for individual genetically closely related groups that make up a particular people. The change in edge pattern occurs very slowly, perhaps over several millennia.
The purpose of this work is to analyze the research results and compare the “patterns” of hair keratinocytes using a new scientific raster-electronic method (SEM) of various ethnic and ethnographic groups of Crimea, but first of all, to clarify the ethno-anthropological composition of the group of “Crimean Tatars” (breakdown produced according to the ethnic self-identification of the subjects).
The problem of the origin of the Crimean Tatars is complex and poorly understood. Although much has been devoted to the ethnic history of the Crimean Tatar people scientific works and monographs by historians, ethnologists, philologists. There are the following versions of the ethnogenesis of this people. A.L. Jacobson in his work " Medieval Crimea” directly indicates that “the ancestors of the Crimean Tatars are Mongols.” Philologists have a different version, who, based on the peculiarities of the Crimean Tatar language, classify these people as Kipchak tribes (Polovtsians). The same views, in particular, are shared by Turkologist G.T. Grunina, who believes that the bulk of the Turkic-speaking population of Crimea, both before the Mongol invasion (if such a thing took place at all in the history of the peninsula) and after it, were Kipchaks (Cumans) and “only after the Mongol invasion” other Turkic tribes “came to the peninsula” .
The following peoples could take part in the formation of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group: Taurians, Scythians, Greeks, Byzantines, Sarmatians, Alans, Goths, Huns, Khazars, Proto-Bulgarians, Pechenegs, Polovtsy (Kypchaks), Horde, etc.
According to one version, “two powerful ethnic layers” emerged in Crimea: the Tats, who inhabited the mountainous and coastal regions of the peninsula, and the Turkic, whose representatives inhabited the steppe and foothill parts.
Another classification, based on practical observations, the study of dialect differences in language, characteristics of the anthropological type, material and spiritual culture, made it possible to divide the Crimean Tatars into four groups (the fourth is conditional, characteristic for 1940). The first group includes the Crimean Tatars of the southern coast of Crimea (self-name “Yaly-Bolyu” - “coastal”). Scientists include the second group as the population living between the First and Second ridges of the Crimean Mountains. They were called "tats". Conditionally introduced by scientists, the group of Crimean Tatars of the northern foothills lived in the lower reaches of the Chernaya, Belbek, Kachi, Alma and Bulganak rivers and had the self-name “Tatars”, less often “Turk”. And finally, the third group is the steppe Tatars of Crimea, or “Nogai”, “Nugai” (self-name “Mangyt”).
The South Coast Tatars were also called “tatami”. The ethnonym “janaviz” is also found. The Tat population of the eastern part of the mountainous Crimea retained the self-name “Tau-Boily”.
During the study, external biometric data was recorded, including: eye color, color, shape, length, thickness of hair, as well as the nature of its peripheral end, the nature and characteristics of the lines of the cuticle pattern, the number of the latter at a certain length. Hair was cut with scissors at the surface of the skin of different parts of the head (temporal, frontal, parietal, occipital region). Hair samples were at least 50 mm.
The shape of the hair was described using conventional notations; their length was measured according to generally accepted methods. Hair color was determined according to the color scale of G.G. Avtandilov (1964) for pathologists and forensic doctors. Brief color scale by G.G. Avtandilova includes 107 chromatic and achromatic colors and shades. There is a color nomenclature that provides scientifically based names for color shades. The color naming system has a uniform terminology. When examining hair, a MMU-modified light binocular microscope (magnitude 5000) was used.
The obtained data were subjected to variation-statistical analysis. The name of the type of keratinocyte pattern was given according to that published in the monograph by Academician Yu.V. Pavlova (1996) classification. If a certain type of pattern in a subject was found in the overwhelming number of samples, then it was recognized as dominant for this person. And the characteristic found in the largest number of respondents in a group is recognized as dominant in the group.
Some of the names of the types of keratinocyte patterns originally appeared as a result of research by Academician Yu.V. Pavlova. Some are the result of research by expert Alexey Novikov. General group names are used here, such as: Uralic (for Finno-Ugric peoples), Slavic, Iranian, Turkish-Asia Minor (for the ancient population of Asia Minor), Turkish-Turkic, Turkic-Kypchak (i.e. Tatar), Turkic Oguz (i.e. Turkmen), Northern Mongolian (i.e. Buryat), Western Mongolian (i.e. Kalmyk), Indian (i.e. Dravidian or Tamil), etc.
In our studies, the hair cuticle cells - keratinocytes - in the Crimean group of “Crimean Tatars” are large and have an arc. Mechanical damage free edges of hair cuticle cells - cracks, breaks, splitting - indicates increased fragility of hair, which is apparently associated with its genetic, chemical and morphological characteristics.
First of all, studies were conducted on adults of both sexes in the amount of 56 people identifying themselves as “Crimean Tatars”. The sample is random and due to the nature of the work of independent experts. The respondents evenly represented the Balaklava, Yalta, Alushta, Sudak-Feodosia, Sevastopol, Bakhchisarai, Simferopol, Kirov, Lenin-Kerch, Dzhankoy regions of Crimea, rural and urban areas. Pilot study.
In each case, when taking hair samples, the person's genealogy was taken into account, the region from which the respondent originated, and information about all ethnic inclusions, if known, was indicated. Such data is necessary for comparison, because In this study, an important place was given to the issues of cross-breeding of the people under study, their ethnic drift. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the extreme conservatism of the Crimean Tatar population before the Second World War, before the deportation in 1944, during which miscegenation was extremely low, communities were often endogamous.
In the studied Crimean group of “Crimean Tatars”, 33 types of keratinocyte patterns were found, of which the most common were: Chinese in 31 subjects (55.36%), Italian – in 27 (48.21%), Kurdish – in 25 (44.64%), Greek, Central Ural, Japanese and Turkish-Asia Minor – in 20 (35.71%), Latvian – in 14 (25.00%), Armenoid – in 13 (23.21%), Korean and Indian – in 12 (21.43%), North Mongolian – in 11 ( 19.64%), Germanic – 10 (17.86%), Turkic-Kypchak (Tatar) – 9 (16.07%), Iranian, Uzbek, Gypsy – 8 (14.29%), Iraqi – 7 (12.50%), Slavic – in 6 subjects (10.71%) of the total. This fact indicates that the “Crimean Tatars” are not a monoethnic group, but represent a complex multiethnic composite.
As can be seen from the data presented, among the “Crimean Tatars” the “Chinese” type of keratinocyte pattern turned out to be dominant (55.36%), which dominated in every two out of five carriers of this type (41.94%) and in every fifth in the group as a whole (23.21%).
The Japanese type was found in 20 people. (35.71%), Korean – for 12 people. (21.43%). Signs of all three types were found in 40 respondents, which amounted to 71.43%. This includes 32 people with the Ural (35.71%) and North Mongolian types (19.64%). Taking into account the fact that the same person can be a carrier of different anthropological types, we took them into account only once. As a result, there were 48 representatives of the “Golden Horde complex”, which amounted to 85.71% of the entire group. However, the Far Eastern anthropological type (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian) dominates only in every third respondent of the entire group (33.93%).
Most likely, representatives of the Chinese peoples came to Eastern Europe along with the troops of Batu Khan in the 13th century. In addition to them, under the leadership of the Mongols, the Tungus-Manchu, Japanese, Korean, Altai and other Siberian and distant eastern peoples and nationalities. Initially, apparently, they could be localized in the Volga-Ural basin, where the core of the “Golden Horde” formed. Consequently, assimilated Ural peoples must also be taken into account as part of this population. In general, this community can easily be called “Golden Horde”. It stands out for its relative integrity, characteristic specificity, compatibility and is represented by a complex of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian (northern, eastern and central groups) and Ural anthropological types.
The second dominant type is the “Italian” anthropological type of keratinocyte pattern (48.21%), which predominated in one out of three carriers of this type (37.04%) and in every sixth in the group as a whole (17.86%). Taking into account the closeness of the French type (4 people = 7.14%), there are only 31 people, which would be 55.36%. However, in two cases the speaker of Italian and French coincided, therefore, we have 29 people of the Western Mediterranean type, which is 51.79%. That is, half. The appearance of the Italian type in Crimea may be associated with the late Middle Ages, when in the 12th-15th centuries, when intensive Venetian, Genoese and minor Lombardy and Montferrat colonization of the southern coast took place. A certain number of Italians could have appeared with the Romans who came to Crimea in the 1st century. BC – VI century AD A small number of French colonists, apparently, arrived here in the 14th-15th centuries. together with the Genoese.
If the Italians and French are traditionally classified as the western part of the Mediterranean community, then the Balkan-Armenoid group is traditionally classified as its eastern part. First of all, this concerns the Greeks. Among the respondents, the study identified the Greek anthropological type in 20 people, which amounted to 35.71% of the group. The Turkish-Asia Minor anthropological type of representatives of the ancient population of Asia Minor and the Black Sea region was also found in 20 people, which is 35.71% of the group. And the Armenoid anthropological type was found in 13 people, which is 23.21% of the group. But taking into account that in some carriers the signs of different types may coincide, we ended up with 38 people, which amounted to 67.86% of the group. This reflects the realities of both the ancient population of Crimea and those who later arrived. The Turkish-Asia Minor anthropological type can correspond to both representatives of the ancient agricultural population of Crimea and representatives of Turkish expansion in the late Middle Ages and modern times. Greek - from the first appearance of the Greeks in Crimea in the 7th-6th-5th centuries. BC until the first third of the 20th century. AD The Armenoid one may be associated with the appearance of the troops of the Pontic Emperor Mithridates VI Eupator here at the end of the 2nd century. BC, then - the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire (not only the Byzantine dynasty, but also a significant part of the soldiers were Armenians). The large influx of Armenian population dates back to the late Middle Ages and modern times under the Genoese and Turks.
Of great interest in the study was the presence of the German anthropological type among the Crimean Tatars, residents of the Bakhchisarai-Balaklava region. This region was sometimes even unofficially called Gothia, believing that the descendants of the ancient Gothic-Germans remained there. According to the study, it was possible to establish that the German type among the Crimean Tatars is distributed extremely dispersed throughout the entire peninsula and is extremely rare: Sudak-Feodosia region - 3, Yalta - 1, Balaklava - 1, Bakhchisarai - 2, Dzhankoy - 1, Simferopol - 1 representative.
The discovery of Slavic types among the Crimean Tatars also aroused interest. The Slavic type belongs to 10.71% of the group; separately “Russian” (possibly Alan?) type – 3.57%. Total – 14.29% of the group. However, Slavic types are localized in limited regions: the Kerch Peninsula, Yalta-Alushta and Simferopol regions. In addition to the Germanic and Slavic groups, the Indo-Europeans include the Iranian peoples. The Iranian anthropological type was found among 17.39% and is represented in the following regions: Alushta, Simferopol, Bakhchisarai, Balaklava, Kerch. It is most often combined with the following types: Italian, Greek, Turkish-Asia Minor, Japanese, Turkic-Kypchak (Tatar), Chinese, Ural, Iraqi. Considering the departure of Iranian nomads, localization in transit regions and the presence of the Golden Horde complex, we can assume a later origin of the Iranians. In this case, it is doubtful to connect them with the ancient peoples of the Northern Black Sea region: Scythians, Cimmerians, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, Alans.
It is noteworthy that among the respondents the representation of the Caucasian population is extremely low: isolated cases of Georgian and Ossetian types were found and no more. At the same time, the Indian anthropological type was found in 12 respondents, which amounted to 21.43%, and the Gypsy type - in 8, which amounted to 14.29%. Taking into account the belonging of these types to the South Asian group, a total of 17 carriers were identified, which amounted to 30.36%.
It should be noted a very high level of Western Asian and Middle Eastern types of keratinocyte pattern in the study group as a whole: Kurdish - in 25 people. (44.64%), Iraqi – 7 (12.50%), Lebanese – 4 (7.14%), Kuwaiti – 2 (03.57%), together – 33 people. (58.93%).
It is significant that of the Turkic types, “Turkic-Kypchak” is represented in 9 people. (16.07%) and “Turkic-Oguz” (Turkmen-Turkish – 1 person, Azerbaijani – 2 people and Uzbek – 8 people) for 10 people. (17.86%). The North Mongolian anthropological type was found in 19.64% of the group.
Of these anthropological types, first of all, we were interested in the Turkic-Kypchak, which is often identified with the “Tatar”. It turned out that it is extremely rare among the Crimean Tatars (up to 16%) and is localized in certain regions: Bakhchisarai, Yalta, Alushta and Kerch. Perhaps these are the remnants of the pre-Mongol Far East-Central Asian population of Crimea. It is tempting to assume that we found representatives of the Polovtsian (Kypchak) ethnic group.
What was surprising was the discovery of the Latvian anthropological type, which was unexpectedly numerous (25.00% of the entire group) and showed a certain localization in the so-called. “Gothic” region (71% between Bakhchisarai and Balaklava). It is also represented in the nearby Yalta region, as well as in the Sudak and Kerch-Lenin regions. It is often combined with the following types: Kurdish, Chinese, Mordovian; much less often - with Italian and Greek. This reflects a preference for belligerence rather than sedentism.
In general, the entire group of Crimean Tatars easily splits into northern and southern parts. The southern group includes representatives of the southern coast of Crimea from Balaklava to Feodosia. The anthropological types of this group are arranged in the following descending order: Italian, Chinese, Kurdish, Turco-Asia Minor, Ural, Greek, Japanese, Armenoid, Latvian, Korean, North Mongolian, Indian, Iraqi, Germanic, Turko-Kypchak, Iranian, Uzbek, gypsy, Lebanese.
Here the share of Italian increases sharply to 53.33% (among 30 people with South Coast roots). And up to 60.00% only among those living on the southern coast, without taking into account the descendants of mixed marriages with the northern group. Together with French, the share rises to 66.67%. And, accordingly, the share of the Chinese type also drops sharply to 43.33% with mixed marriages and to 40.00% for those from the south coast. Japanese: from one third to one quarter. Of the Golden Horde complex here, the percentage of the Ural type is unexpectedly large: more than 50%. The Korean type also grew from one-fifth of the whole group to one-fourth in the southern part without intermarriage. The Mongolian type (up to one third) was also strongly manifested among the southern coastal part of the group. The entire Golden Horde complex was found in 90% of the entire group.
The level of representation of Turkic types is traditionally low; it fluctuates between one seventh and one eighth of the group. While Caucasian types are insignificant and, perhaps, random, the share of East Mediterranean types is expected to increase compared to the entire group: the Greek anthropological type is present in more than every second representative (53.33%), Turkish-Asia Minor and Armenoid - in every third . A total of 76.67% of the entire group.
The Near Asian-Middle Eastern types are represented by Kurdish (33.33%), Iraqi (20.00%) and Lebanese (13.33%). There are 17 people in total, which is 56.67% of the entire group. Quite low representation of South Asian patterns, about one in seven respondents. Minor representation of Iranian, Slavic, Turkic and Latvian patterns.
In general, the southern group demonstrates such average composition: nine-tenths Golden Horde types, three-quarters Eastern Mediterranean, two-thirds Western Mediterranean, half Near East-Middle Eastern types.
Anthropological types of the northern part of the group are arranged in the following descending order: Chinese, Kurdish, Turco-Asia Minor, Japanese, Italian, Ural, Greek, Indian, Latvian, Armenoid, Germanic, Korean, North Mongolian, Turko-Kypchak, Iranian, Gypsy, Uzbek .
Here the share of Chinese is traditionally large - 57.14% (dominant among the 25.71% of the northern group) and without mixed marriages - up to 73.68%. The share of the North Mongolian (dominant among 11.43%) and Korean (dominant among 5.71%) types falls compared to the average figure in the group, and the Japanese increases from one third to two fifths in the group (42.86%). The entire Golden Horde complex makes up 91.43% of the group. The representation of Eastern Mediterranean types is very high: the Turkish-Asia Minor anthropological type is present in two out of five (42.86%), Greek - in every third representative (31.43%), and Armenoid - in every fifth (22.86%). A total of 71.43% of the entire group.
The Near Asian-Middle Eastern types are represented by Kurdish (48.57%), which is dominant among 11.43% of the group, Iraqi (8.56%), Lebanese (5.71%) and Kuwaiti (2.86%) types. A total of 57.14% of the entire group. Together with mixed marriages, Western Mediterranean types made up 42.86% of the group (dominant among 17.14%), and South Asian and Latvian types each represented 31.43% (both dominant among 5.71%). Minor representation of Iranian, Slavic and Turkic patterns.
The northern group demonstrates the following composition: nine-tenths are the Golden Horde complex, almost three-quarters are East Mediterranean types, almost three-fifths are Western Asian-Middle Eastern, two-fifths are Western Mediterranean, one-third are South Asian and Latvian types.
The entire group of studied Crimean Tatars demonstrates the following composition: almost nine-tenths are Golden Horde types, two-thirds are Eastern Mediterranean, three-fifths are Western Asian-Middle Eastern, half are Western Mediterranean, one-third are South Asian and a quarter are Latvian types.
Based on the data obtained on the distribution of keratinocyte types in the scalp of representatives of the studied Crimean group of Crimean Tatars, it can be stated that this community is multiethnic. A significant proportion of its composition is occupied by Golden Horde anthropological types [Chinese (55.36%), Japanese (35.71%), Korean (21.43%), Central Ural (35.71%), North Mongolian (19.64%)], Eastern Mediterranean [Greek (35.71%), Turkish-Asia Minor (35.71%) and Armenoid (23.21%)], Near Asian-Middle Eastern or Afroasiatic [Kurdish (44.64%), Iraqi (12.50%), Kuwaiti, Lebanese], Western Mediterranean [Italian (48.21 %) and French], South Asian [Indian (21.43%) and Gypsy (14.29%)], Northern European [Latvian (25.00%), Germanic (17.86%) and Slavic (10.71%)], Turkic [Turkic-Oghuz ( 19.64%) and Turkic-Kypchak (16.07%)] and Iranian (14.29%). However, the basic anthropological type of this group can be considered the “Golden-Horde composite” for the northern part and the “Italian-Balkan-Caucasian composite” for the southern part. At the same time, the most likely candidates for the archaic part of the Crimeans may be population groups with Turkish-Asia Minor, Greek and Armenoid anthropological types, which corresponds to the ancient farmers of the peninsula.
There is too little Iranian to build an assumption about the participation of the Scythian-Sarmatian-Alan peoples in the ethnogenesis, and too little German to build an assumption about the participation of the Gothic peoples in the ethnogenesis. Perhaps the ethnically Crimean Goths were not of Germanic origin or were completely exterminated or moved outside the peninsula. Perhaps the Baltic (Latvian) peoples will take their place.
Turkic types were separated from the Golden Horde complex due to the fact that “Oguz” influences may be of very late origin, associated with the deportation of a large number of Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan. The Turkic-Kypchak or “Tatar” type, in turn, appeared in Crimea very early and cannot always be tied specifically to the Mongol conquests. In addition, the latter type is not scattered among all regions, but, unlike Chinese, Japanese or Korean, is strictly localized and is not characteristic of the entire Crimean Tatar ethnic group, which does not give researchers the right to call this community “Tatar”.
Perhaps historically there should have been more Slavic types, but a significant number of supposed speakers among the northern part of the Crimean Tatars were resettled outside of Crimea or left it after its conquest and wars in the 18th-19th centuries. Unfortunately, natives of the Krasnoperekopsk, Chernomorsky, Razdolnensky, Belogorsk, Nizhnegorsky and Leninsky districts of Crimea were absent or only slightly represented among the respondents. But this did not exclude the possibility of detecting some trends and processes.
Thus, based on the pilot study and the results of the analysis of anthropological macro-microscopic data on the structure of the cuticle of scalp hair, taking into account that the group itself is small, we can only make a very cautious preliminary assumption that the Crimean group of Crimean Tatars represents part of the characteristic Crimea is a community that is a complex ethnic composite that has been formed throughout the last millennium. In its formation, there probably was a partial miscegenation with the Golden Horde population of Eastern Europe. Among the processes that continue, one can note the erasure of narrow group barriers, increased regional migration, powerful urbanization, widespread loss of traditions, the replacement of local traditions with stylized Soviet or Arab-Turkish ones, and against this background, as a consequence, acculturation and strong intra-group and extra-group group miscegenation. The data obtained do not yet allow us to identify the Crimean Tatars with the Tatars, Turks, Slavs (including Ukrainians), Scythians, Sarmatians, Khazars, Germans (including Goths), Mongols and Celts. But they provide an opportunity to create historical reconstructions. For example, the participation of a large number of forcibly mobilized Chinese population from China destroyed by the Mongols in the campaign of Batu Khan.
The Crimean group of Crimean Tatars under study constitutes a significant part of Crimean society according to the latest population census. In linguistic, cultural and religious spheres of life, as well as in ethnic and genetic-anthropological relations, they represent a unique and specific Crimean community.
Our research can be used by anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, political scientists engaged in research of Crimean society, will help to gain a deeper insight into the essence of the problems of the history of Crimea, and reduce the severity of interethnic relations in Crimea. But most importantly, there is a need to conduct a large-scale study of the main groups of the Crimean population, which could solve many issues of modern history.
On April 8, 1783, the Manifesto of Catherine II on the annexation of Crimea to Russia was published.
Crimean Khanate, which broke away in 1427 from the Golden Horde, which was disintegrating under our blows, throughout its existence was the most bitter enemy of Rus'.
From the end of the 15th century Crimean Tatars, whom they are now trying to present as victims of the Russian genocide, made constant raids on the Russian Kingdom.
flag of the Crimean Khanate
Every year, bypassing the steppe posts, they penetrated Russian soil, went 100-200 kilometers deep into the border region, turned back and, turning around in an avalanche, engaged in robbery and the capture of slaves. The tactics of the Tatars consisted in the fact that they were divided into several detachments and, trying to attract the Russians to one or two places on the border, they themselves attacked some other place left unprotected. The Tatars put stuffed animals on horses in the form of people to make them seem larger. While 20-30 thousand Tatar horsemen diverted the attention of the main Russian forces, other detachments devastated the Russian borders and returned without much damage.
Crimean Tatar warrior
The capture of captives and the trade in slaves were the main article of the economy of the Crimean Khanate. Captives were sold to Turkey, the Middle East and even European countries. Over two centuries, more than three million people were sold in Crimean slave markets. Every day three or four ships carrying Russian slaves arrived in Constantinople.
The fight against the Crimean Tatars was the main item of Russian military spending, but this fight went on with varying degrees of success. Often Russian troops managed to defeat the Tatars and recapture prisoners. Thus, in 1507, the troops of Prince Kholmsky defeated the Tatars on the Oka River, recapturing the captured booty. In 1517, a 20,000-strong Tatar detachment reached Tula, where it was completely defeated by the Russian army, and in 1527, Russian troops defeated the Crimeans on the Oster River.
However, catching a mobile Crimean army in the steppe in the absence of aerial reconnaissance and satellite tracking in those years was quite difficult, and most often the Tatars went to Crimea with impunity.
As a rule, the Tatars were unable to take a large city, but in 1571 the troops of Khan Davlet-Girey, taking advantage of the fact that the Russian army had gone to the Livonian War, destroyed and plundered Moscow itself, taking away 60 thousand prisoners - almost the entire then population of the capital .
Devlet-Girey
On next year the khan wanted to repeat the campaign and even intended to annex Muscovy to his possessions, but was completely defeated in Battle of Molodi , losing almost the entire male population of the Khanate.
For more details, see the website: For advanced - Battles - Battle of Molody
Russian warriors
However, Rus', weakened by a war on two fronts, was unable to undertake a campaign in the Crimea to finish off the beast in its lair, and two decades later a new generation grew up, and already in 1591 the Tatars repeated the campaign against Moscow, and in 1592 they plundered the Tula, Kashira and Ryazan lands.
The situation of the prisoners in Crimea was extremely difficult. Slaves were sold at auction, chained for tens per neck. In addition to the poorest provision of food, water, clothing and housing, they were subjected to exhausting labor and torture. Men often ended up on Turkish galleys, where they served as oarsmen chained to benches until they were completely exhausted. Female slaves were supplied to rich houses for carnal pleasures and harems, and the less beautiful of them were made domestic servants.
But boys were most valued - among such peoples there is always a high percentage of sodomites, but since sodomy is prohibited by Mohammedan law, they found a way to deceive Allah - it is impossible, they say, to have a man in the ass who has a beard and mustache growing, and if they are not growing yet, then it is possible.
It was already clear to Ivan the Terrible that in order to eliminate the Tatar threat it was necessary to seize Tatar territory and secure it for Russia. He did this with Kazan and Astrakhan, but did not have time to deal with Crimea - seeing how Rus' was strengthening, the West imposed the Livonian War on us.
The Time of Troubles also did not allow the Crimea to be dealt with, and Tatar raids continued throughout the 17th century. An attempt to conquer Crimea during the reign of Princess Sophia was made by Prince Vasily Golitsyn. He managed to defeat the Budzhak horde of the Danube Tatars, allied to the Crimeans, but he never managed to take Perekop and enter Crimea.
Vasily Vasilievich Golitsyn
The first Russians to enter Crimea were the troops of Field Marshal Minich. April 20, 1736 fifty thousandth Russian army with Minikh at its head, it set out from the town of Tsaritsynki, a former gathering place, and on May 20 entered Crimea through Perekop, driving back the Crimean Khan with his army. Having stormed the Perekop fortifications, the Russian army went deep into the Crimea and ten days later entered Gezlev (Evpatoria), capturing there almost a month's supply of food for the entire army.
.jpg)
fortifications of Ferkh-Kerman (Perekop)
By the end of June, the troops approached Bakhchisarai, withstood two strong Tatar attacks in front of the Crimean capital, took the city, which had two thousand houses, and completely burned it along with the Khan's palace. However, after staying in Crimea for a month, Russian troops retreated to Perekop and at the end of autumn returned to Ukraine, having lost two thousand people directly from the fighting and half of the army from disease and local conditions.
Burchard Christoph Munnich
In retaliation for Minich's campaign in February 1737, the Crimean Tatars raided Ukraine across the Dnieper at Perevolochna, killing General Leslie and taking many prisoners, but the Crimeans, who had again lost many people, were no longer capable of more.
Crimean raids resumed two decades later, when the next generation grew up again. The fact is that Russians, unlike eastern peoples, never kill women and children in the camp of a defeated enemy. The Russians themselves call this Russian trait nobility, and the eastern peoples call it nothing more than stupidity. For some reason, we believe that those whom we spared will be grateful to us for this. In fact, grown-up sons will always take revenge for their murdered fathers.
In the 70s of the 18th century, the Russians were again forced to go to Crimea. The first battle took place at the Perekop fortress on June 14, 1771. Squad Russian troops General Prozorovsky crossed the Sivash and bypassed the Perekop fortress on the left, finding himself in the rear of the Tatar-Turkish troops. Khan went to meet him, but was driven back by rifle fire. At the same time, the assault columns of Prince Dolgorukov went to the Perekop fortifications. On June 17, Dolgorukov launched an attack on Bakhchisarai, Major General Brown’s detachment moved to Gezlev, and General Shcherbatov’s detachment went to Caffe.
Gezlev fortress (Evpatoria)
Having defeated the army of the Crimean Tatars for the second time on June 29 in the battle of Feodosia, Russian troops occupied Arabat, Kerch, Yenikale, Balaklava and the Taman Peninsula. On November 1, 1772, in Karasubazar, the Crimean Khan signed With Prince Dolgorukov signed a treaty, according to which Crimea was declared an independent khanate under the auspices of Russia.
Vasily Mikhailovich Dolgorukov-Krymsky
Karasubazar
The Black Sea ports of Kerch, Kinburn and Yenikale passed to Russia. But this time, too, having freed more than ten thousand Russian captives, Dolgorukov’s army went to the Dnieper, although now the Russians at least left garrisons in the Crimean cities.
The final conquest of Crimea became possible only as a result of the conclusion of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace between Russia and Turkey in 1774, and the main merit in the final solution of the Crimean issue belongs to Grigory Potemkin.
Potemkin gave great value annexation of Crimea to Russia. At the end of 1782, assessing all the advantages of the annexation of Crimea, His Serene Highness expressed his opinion in a letter to Catherine II: “Crimea is tearing apart our borders with its position... Now assume that Crimea is yours, and that this wart on the nose is no longer there - suddenly the position of the borders is excellent : along the Bug, the Turks border directly on us, therefore they must deal with us directly themselves, and not under the name of others... You are obliged to raise the glory of Russia...”
Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavrichesky and Catherine II
Having considered all Potemkin’s arguments for the need for an urgent solution to such an important external and internal political task, on April 8, 1783, Catherine II issued a manifesto on the annexation of Crimea, where the Crimean residents were promised “holy and unshakably for themselves and the successors of our throne to support them on an equal basis with our natural subjects, to protect and defend their persons, property, temples and their natural faith...”
Manifesto:
“During the war that passed with the Ottoman Porte, when the strength and victories of our weapons gave us the full right to leave in favor of our Crimea, which was in our hands, we then sacrificed this and other extensive conquests to the renewal of good agreement and friendship with the Ottoman Porte, transforming at that end the Tatar peoples into a free and independent region, in order to remove forever the cases and methods of discord and bitterness that often occurred between Russia and the Porte in the former state of the Tatars /.../.
It is Potemkin who is credited with the glory of the “bloodless” annexation of Crimea, which was also noted by his contemporaries. Glinka S.N. spoke poetically, a little pompously about it historical event in his “Notes”: “his (Potemkin’s) concerns were about ancient kingdom Mithridates, and he brought this kingdom to Russia as a bloodless gift. What the centuries since the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan did not have time to do, what Peter I did not have time to do, this giant of his time alone accomplished. He humbled and pacified the last nest of Mongol rule.”
Recognition by the Porte of the annexation of Crimea to Russia followed only more than eight months later. Until then, the situation in Crimea was extremely tense. The publication of the manifesto was supposed to take place after the oath was taken in the Crimea and Kuban, and Potemkin personally took the oath from the Crimean nobility. This was timed by the prince to coincide with the day of Catherine II’s accession to the throne (June 28). First, the Murzas, beys, and clergy swore allegiance, and then the common population. The celebrations were accompanied by refreshments, games, horse races and a cannon salute. Already on July 16, 1783, Potemkin reported to Catherine II that “the entire Crimean region willingly resorted to the power of Your Imperial Majesty; cities and many villages have already taken an oath of allegiance.”
The Tatar nobility of the Khanate solemnly swore allegiance on the flat top of the Ak Kaya rock near Karasubazar.
Ak-Kaya rock
After the annexation of Crimea to Russia, many Tatars began to leave the peninsula and move to Turkey. However, workers were needed to develop the region. Hence, along with official permission and the issuance of relevant documents (passports) to everyone, the administration’s desire to keep as many residents as possible in the occupied territory. Resettlement from the interior regions of Russia and invitations to foreigners to live began somewhat later. Concerned about maintaining calm in the Crimea, Potemkin wrote on May 4, 1783 in a warrant to General De Balmain: “It is the will of Her Imperial Majesty that all troops stationed in the Crimean peninsula treat the residents in a friendly manner, without causing offense at all, for which the commanders have an example. and regimental commanders"; violators were to be punished “to the fullest extent of the law.”
In the early years of the Soviet Union, Crimea was part of the RSFSR.
During the Great Patriotic War, Crimea was under German occupation, and the Crimean Tatars declared themselves allies of Hitler, actively fought the partisans and the Red Army, for which they were deported to Central Asia.
Crimean collaborators
In 1954, Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR. After Ukraine gained independence, an autonomous republic was formed in Crimea, whose president, Yuri Meshkov, adhered to a pro-Russian orientation. However, Meshkov was soon removed from power, and the autonomy of Crimea was significantly curtailed.
