Crimean Tatars. Ethnography. Vintage photos. Interesting Facts. Crimean Tatars are not an indigenous people

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. Delicious.

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 immigrated to the country from Crimea at different times is estimated in Turkey at 5-6 million people, but 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, Polovtsians, 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 Dasht-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 the same 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 an imprint on the further history of 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 Genoese Republic and the Principality of Theodoro, the subsequent transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a vassal state in relation to the Ottomans and the entry of the peninsula into Pax Ottomana is the "cultural space" of the Ottoman Empire.

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.

Historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars is the Hanafi school, which is the most “liberal” of all four canonical schools of thought in Sunni Islam.
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.

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.

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.

At the same time, cases of Crimean Christians converting to Islam were recorded in order to avoid eviction.

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). Residents of many villages on the South Coast, until 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. The South Coast Tatars are also noticeably different in physical type from the Turkic ones: they were noted to be taller, 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 certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love of 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-Gvardeyskoye-Feodosia. 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 generally accepted 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 of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachais (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakass (Abakan Tatars), etc. d. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with the historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppe), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited eastern Europe before the 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 colloquial speech (but not in an official context), the word tatarlar (“Tatars”) can also be used as a self-designation.

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 (Gireyev) 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 (until the 18th century, mainly offensive), which was accompanied by the capture of a large number of captives from among the civilian 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 actually 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 Turkey at the end of the 18th century, 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 Russian government attracting settlers 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 enter a new stage of the 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.”

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, on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of the dissolution of the 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, for we must go hand in hand." However, Celebidzhikhan was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the interests of the Crimean Tatars were practically not taken into account during the Civil War by both whites and red.
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 the 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 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.

Most of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia were repressed, including the statesman Veli Ibraimov and the scientist Bekir Chobanzade. According to the 1939 census, there were 218,179 Crimean Tatars in Crimea, that is, 19.4% of the total population of the peninsula. However, the Tatar minority was not at all infringed upon in its rights in relation to the “Russian-speaking” population. Rather, on the contrary, the top leadership consisted mainly of Crimean Tatars.

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, whose main task was to fight the 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 of 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 grounds for deportation were also declared to be the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was said to be about 20 thousand people), the good reception of German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, apparatus of prisons and camps. 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.

Estimates of the number of deaths during this period vary greatly: from 15-25% according to estimates of various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to the estimates of activists of the Crimean Tatar movement, who collected information about the dead in the 1960s.

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 for measures for the national, cultural and spiritual revival of these peoples, the development of the territories of their residence (with financing), and 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-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, the social life of the Crimean Tatars is 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 decree of the State Council 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 certain 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! 🤷

(in Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania)

Religion Racial type

South European - Yalyboys; Caucasian, Central European - Tats; Caucasoid (20% Mongoloid) - steppe.

Included in

Turkic-speaking peoples

Related peoples Origin

Gotalans and Turkic tribes, all those who ever inhabited Crimea

Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi madhhab.

Settlement

Ethnogenesis

The Crimean Tatars formed as a people in Crimea in the 15th-18th centuries on the basis of various ethnic groups that lived on the peninsula earlier.

Historical background

The main ethnic groups that inhabited Crimea in ancient times and the Middle Ages are Taurians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Bulgars, Greeks, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Italians, Circassians (Circassians), 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 belonged to the Western Kipchaks, known in Russian historiography under the name Polovtsy. Since the 12th century, 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.

Formation of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group

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 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 comprised 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 Byzantine historian of the 14th century Pachymer wrote about the assimilation processes in the Horde part of Crimea: Over time, having mixed with them [the Tatars], the peoples who lived inside those countries, I mean: Alans, Zikkhs, and Goths, and various peoples with them, learned their customs, along with the customs they adopted language and clothing and became their allies. In this list, it is important to mention the Goths and Alans who lived in the mountainous part of Crimea, who 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 vast 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. At the same time, cases of Crimean Christians converting to Islam were recorded in order to avoid eviction.

Story

Crimean Khanate

Weapons of the Crimean Tatars of the 16th-17th centuries

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 1783 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 is Ashik Umer. Among other poets, Mahmud Kyrymly is especially famous - the end of the 12th century (pre-Horde period) and Khan of Gaza II Geray Bora. The main surviving architectural monument of that time is the Khan's palace in Bakhchisarai.

Harassment by the Russian administration and 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, in the first 10 years of Russian rule, up to 3/4 of the population left Crimea (from Turkish data it is known about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars who settled in Turkey at the end of the 18th century, 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. At the same time, most of the Crimean Tatar elite left Crimea.

Along with this, the colonization of Crimea, mainly the territory of the steppes and large cities (Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, etc.), was intensively carried out due to the Russian government attracting settlers from the territory of Central Russia and Little Russia. All this led to the fact that by the end of the 19th century there were less than 200 thousand Crimean Tatars (about a third of the total Crimean population) and in 1917 about a quarter (215 thousand) of the 750 thousand population of the peninsula.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Crimean Tatars, overcoming disunity, began to move from rebellions to a new stage of national struggle. There was an understanding that it was necessary to look for ways to fight against emigration, which is beneficial to the Russian Empire and leads to the extinction of the Crimean Tatars. It was necessary to mobilize the entire people for collective protection from the oppression of tsarist laws, from Russian landowners, from the Murzaks serving the Russian Tsar. According to the Turkish historian Zühal Yüksel, this revival began with the activities of Abduraman Kırım Khavaje and Abdurefi Bodaninsky. Abduraman Kyrym Khavaje worked as a teacher of the Crimean Tatar language in Simferopol and published a Russian-Tatar phrasebook in Kazan in 1850. Abdurefi Bodaninsky, in 1873, overcoming the resistance of the authorities, published the “Russian-Tatar Primer” in Odessa, with an unusually large circulation of two thousand copies. To work with the population, he attracted the most talented of his young students, defining for them the methodology and curriculum. With the support of progressive mullahs, it was possible to expand the program of traditional national educational institutions. “Abdurefi Esadulla was the first educator among the Crimean Tatars,” writes D. Ursu. The personalities of Abduraman Kyrym Khavaje and Abdurefi Bodaninsky mark the beginning of the stages of the difficult revival of a people who have been languishing under political, economic and cultural repression for many decades.

The further development of the Crimean Tatar revival, which is associated with the name of Ismail Gasprinsky, was a natural consequence of the mobilization of national forces undertaken by many, nameless today, representatives of the secular and spiritual intelligentsia of the Crimean Tatars. 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.

Revolution of 1917

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 the close attention of the 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. In February 1917, Crimean Tatar revolutionaries monitored the political situation with great preparedness. As soon as it became known about serious unrest in Petrograd, on the evening of February 27, that is, on the day of the dissolution of the State Duma, on the initiative of Ali Bodaninsky, the Crimean Muslim Revolutionary Committee was created. Ten days late, the Simferopol group of Social Democrats organized the first Simferopol Council. The leadership of the Muslim Revolutionary Committee proposed joint work to the Simferopol Council, but the executive committee of the Council rejected this proposal. The Muslim Revolutionary Committee organized popular elections throughout Crimea, and already on March 25, 1917, the All-Crimean Muslim Congress took place, which managed to gather 1,500 delegates and 500 guests. The congress elected a Provisional Crimean-Muslim Executive Committee (Musispolkom) of 50 members, of which Noman Celebidzhikhan was elected chairman, and Ali Bodaninsky was elected manager of affairs. The Musispolkom received recognition from the Provisional Government as the only authorized and legal administrative body representing all Crimean Tatars. Political activities, culture, religious affairs, and the economy were under the control of the Musiysk Executive Committee. The executive committee had its own committees in all county towns, and local committees were also created in the villages. The newspapers “Millet” (editor A. S. Aivazov) and the more radical “Voice of the Tatars” (editors A. Bodaninsky and X. Chapchakchi) became the central printed organs of the Musiysk Executive Committee.

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. Kurultai opened Celebidzhikhan. He, in particular, said: “Our nation does not convene the Kurultai to consolidate its dominance. Our goal is to work hand in hand, head to head with all the peoples of Crimea. Our nation is fair." Asan Sabri Aivazov was elected Chairman of the Kurultai. The Presidium of the Kurultai included Ablakim Ilmi, Jafer Ablaev, Ali Bodaninsky, Seytumer Tarakchi. The Kurultai approved the Constitution, which stated: “...The Kurultai believes that the adopted Constitution can ensure the national and political rights of the small peoples of Crimea only under a people’s republican form of government, therefore the Kurultai accepts and proclaims the principles of the People’s Republic as the basis for the national existence of the Tatars.” Article 17 of the Constitution abolished titles and class ranks, and the 18th legitimized the equality of men and women. The Kurultai declared itself the national parliament of the 1st convocation. The Parliament chose from its midst the Crimean National Directory, of which Noman Celebidzhikhan was elected chairman. Celebidcikhan composed his office. The director of justice was Noman Celebidcihan himself. Jafer Seydamet became the director of military and foreign affairs. The director of education is Ibraim Ozenbashly. The director of awqafs and finance is Seit-Jelil Khattat. The director of religious affairs is Amet Shukri. On December 5 (old style), the Crimean National Directory declared itself the Crimean National Government and issued an appeal in which, addressing all nationalities of Crimea, it called on them to work together. 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 Crimean ASSR

The share of Crimean Tatars in the population of Crimean regions based on materials from the 1939 All-Union Population Census

Crimea under German occupation

For their participation in the Great Patriotic War, five Crimean Tatars (Teyfuk Abdul, Uzeir Abduramanov, Abduraim Reshidov, Fetislyam Abilov, Seitnafe Seitveliev) were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and Ametkhan Sultan was awarded this title twice. Two (Seit-Nebi Abduramanov and Nasibulla Velilyaev) are full holders of the Order of Glory. The names of two Crimean Tatar generals are known: Ismail Bulatov and Ablyakim Gafarov.

Deportation

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 resolution, and that escaping from the place of special settlement was punishable by 20 years of hard labor, as a criminal offense.

Officially, the grounds for deportation were also declared to be the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was said to be about 20 thousand people), the good reception of German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, apparatus of prisons and camps. 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 Tatar war participants 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. Estimates of the number of deaths during this period vary greatly: from 15-25% according to estimates of various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to the estimates of activists of the Crimean Tatar movement, who collected information about the dead in the 1960s.

Fight for return

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine reports that recently, and especially in 1965, visits to the Crimean region by Tatars who were resettled in the past from Crimea have become more frequent... Some Suleymanov, Khalimov, Bekirov Seit Memet and Bekirov Seit Umer, residents of the city, came to Crimea in September 1965. Gulistan of the Uzbek SSR, during meetings with their acquaintances, they reported that “a large delegation has now gone to Moscow to seek permission for the Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea. We will all return or no one."<…>

From a letter to the CPSU Central Committee about visits to Crimea by Crimean Tatars. November 12, 1965

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 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.

Religion

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, which is the most “liberal” of all four canonical interpretations in Sunni Islam, that is historically traditional for the Crimean Tatars.

Literature of the Crimean Tatars

Main article: Literature of the Crimean Tatars

Prominent Crimean Tatar writers of the 20th century:

Bekir Choban-zade
Eshref Shemy-zadeh
Cengiz Dagci
Emil Amit
Abdul Demerdzhi

Crimean Tatar musicians

Crimean Tatar public figures

Subethnic groups

The Crimean Tatar people consist of three sub-ethnic groups: steppe people or Nogaev(not to be confused with the Nogai people) ( çöllüler, noğaylar), Highlanders or tats(not to be confused with Caucasian tatami) ( tatlar) And South Coast residents or Yalyboy (yalıboylular).

South Coast residents - yalyboylu

Before the deportation, the residents of the South Coast 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). Residents of many villages on the South Coast, until 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. The South Coast Tatars are also noticeably different in physical type from the Turkic ones: they were noted to be taller, 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" [ where?] . 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 certain Christian holidays and monuments, their love of sedentary activities, compared with their external appearance, cannot but convince that these so-called “Tatars” are close to the Indo-European tribe. The population of the middle Yalyboya is distinguished by an analytical mindset, the eastern one - by a love of art - this is determined by the strong influence in the middle part of the Goths, and in the eastern part of the Greeks and Italians. 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.

Steppe people - Nogai

Highlanders - Tats

Current situation

The ethnonym “Tatars” and the Crimean Tatar people

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 sub-ethnic 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 of the Russian Empire were called Tatars: Karachais (Mountain Tatars), Azerbaijanis (Transcaucasian or Azerbaijani Tatars), Kumyks (Dagestan Tatars), Khakass (Abakan Tatars), etc. d. Crimean Tatars have little in common ethnically with the historical Tatars or Tatar-Mongols (with the exception of the steppe), and are descendants of Turkic-speaking, Caucasian and other tribes that inhabited eastern Europe before the Mongol invasion, when the ethnonym “Tatars” came to the west . 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, Crimean Tatars almost cannot understand Tatar speech by ear. The closest languages to Crimean Tatar are Turkish and Azerbaijani from Oguz, and Kumyk and Karachay from Kipchak. 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.

The Crimean Tatars themselves today use two self-names: qırımtatarlar(literally “Crimean Tatars”) and qırımlar(literally “Crimeans”). In everyday colloquial speech (but not in an official context), the word can also be used as a self-designation tatarlar(“Tatars”).

Spelling the adjective “Crimean Tatar”

Kitchen

Main article: Crimean Tatar cuisine

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 (bell peppers stuffed with meat and rice). ), kobete - originally a Greek dish, as evidenced by the name (baked pie with meat, onions and potatoes), burma (layer pie with pumpkin and nuts), tatarash (literally Tatar food - dumplings) yufak ash (broth with very small dumplings) , shashlik (the word itself is of Crimean Tatar origin), pilaf (rice with meat and dried apricots, unlike the Uzbek one without carrots), pakla shorbasy (meat soup with green bean pods, seasoned with sour milk), shurpa, khainatma.

Notes

All-Ukrainian Population Census 2001. Russian version. Results. Nationality and native language. Archived from the original on August 22, 2011.
Ethnoatlas of Uzbekistan
On the migration potential of Crimean Tatars from Uzbekistan and others by 2000.
According to the 1989 census, there were 188,772 Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan.() It must be taken into account that, on the one hand, after the collapse of the USSR, most of the Crimean Tatars of Uzbekistan returned to their homeland in Crimea, and on the other hand, that a significant part of the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan recorded in censuses as “Tatars”. There are estimates of the number of Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan in the 2000s up to 150 thousand people(). The number of Tatars proper in Uzbekistan was 467,829 people. in 1989 () and about 324,100 people. in 2000; and the Tatars, together with the Crimean Tatars, in 1989 in Uzbekistan there were 656,601 people. and in 2000 - 334,126 people. It is not known exactly what proportion of this number the Crimean Tatars actually make up. Officially, in 2000 there were 10,046 Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan ()
Joshuaproject. Tatar, Crimean
Crimean Tatar population in Turkey
Romanian Census 2002 National composition
All-Russian Population Census 2002. Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved December 24, 2009.
Bulgarian Population Census 2001
Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Statistics. Census 2009. (National composition of the population .rar)
About 500 thousand in the countries of the former USSR, Romania and Bulgaria, and from 100 thousand to several hundred thousand in Turkey. Statistics on the ethnic composition of the population in Turkey are not published, so the exact data is unknown.
Turkic peoples of Crimea. Karaites. Crimean Tatars. Krymchaks. / Rep. ed. S. Ya. Kozlov, L. V. Chizhova. - M.: Science, 2003.
Ozenbashli Enver Memet-oglu. Crimeans. Collection of works on the history, ethnography and language of the Crimean Tatars. - Akmescit: Share, 1997.
Essays on the history and culture of the Crimean Tatars. / Under. ed. E. Chubarova. - Simferopol, Crimea, 2005.
Türkiyedeki Qırımtatar milliy areketiniñ seyri, Bahçesaray dergisi, Mayıs 2009
A.I. Aibabin Ethnic history of early Byzantine Crimea. Simferopol. Gift. 1999
Mukhamedyarov Sh. F. Introduction to the ethnic history of Crimea. // Turkic peoples of Crimea: Karaites. Crimean Tatars. Krymchaks. - M.: Science. 2003.

16:14 24.04.2014

The majority of Crimean Tatars live in their historical homeland - Crimea - 243.4 thousand people (according to the 2001 census). At the same time, 22.4 thousand Tatars lived in Romania in 2002, 10 thousand - in Uzbekistan in 2000 (according to the estimated number of Crimean Tatars themselves, their diaspora in Uzbekistan by the beginning of 1999 should have numbered 85-90 thousand people), 4.1 thousand - in Russia (in 2002) and 1.8 thousand - in Bulgaria in 2001.

Reference

Crimean Tatars, kyrymtatarlar, qırımtatarlar (self-name) - a people speaking the Crimean Tatar language of the Kipchak subgroup of the Turkic group of the Altai language family. The Crimean Tatar language is divided into northern (steppe), middle (mountain) and southern (coastal) dialects. The modern literary language was formed on the basis of the middle dialect.

Tatars are divided into 3 main subethnic groups: steppe Tatars (Nogai - çöllüler, noğaylar), south-coast Tatars (Yalyboy - yalıboylular) and (mountain) foothill Tatars, calling themselves tatami (tatlar). The traditional occupation of the steppe Tatars is nomadic cattle breeding, while the other groups have farming, gardening and viticulture, as well as fishing among coastal residents. Tatars are Sunni Muslims. According to the anthropological type, the Tatars are Caucasians with a certain degree of Mongoloidity among the Nogai.

The majority of Crimean Tatars live in their historical homeland - in Crimea - 243.4 thousand live in Crimea (according to the 2001 census). At the same time, 22.4 thousand Tatars lived in Romania in 2002, 10 thousand - in Uzbekistan in 2000 (according to the estimated number of Crimean Tatars themselves, their diaspora in Uzbekistan by the beginning of 1999 should have numbered 85-90 thousand people), 4.1 thousand - in Russia (in 2002) and 1.8 thousand - in Bulgaria in 2001.

In Turkey, the entire population is considered Turks, so officially since 1970, the number and nationality have not been indicated in the census. According to various estimates, the number of Crimean Tatars (“Crimean Turks”) and their descendants varies from 50-150 thousand to 4-6 million people. Figures in the range from 150 thousand to 1 million look more realistic.

Story

In 1223, the Mongol-Tatar governorship was established in Sudak, which marked the beginning of the settlement of Crimea by the Tatars. Crimea was part of the Golden Horde and then the Great Horde.

XIII-XVII centuries - ethnogenesis of the Crimean Tatar population. 2/3 of the urban population of Crimea were Greeks and Italians from Genoa and Venice. Some Tatars began to settle down from the end of the 13th century. and actively mix with the settled population, even accepting Christianity. In the 2nd half of the 13th-14th centuries, Islam spread, becoming a kind of cement that held the people together. Three subethnic groups of Crimean Tatars were formed: Nogais, Tats and Coastal. The Nogais - direct descendants of the Kipchak-Polovtsians and Nogais - inhabited the Crimean steppes; their dialect belongs to the Nogai-Kipchak languages. The largest group of the Tatar population of Crimea were the Tats. The Tats lived in the mountains and foothills north of the South Coast people and south of the Nogai. In the ethnogenesis of the Tats, a significant role was played by the Kipchaks, from whom they inherited their dialect (the Polovtsian-Kipchak subgroup of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages) and the Goths, elements of whose material culture are found among the Tats, as well as the Greeks. Coastal Tatars lived on the southern coast of Crimea 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, Circassians, and in the East - the Genoese Italians. The Oguz dialect of the South Coast residents is close to Turkish, although the vocabulary contains a whole layer of Greek and Italian borrowings.

1441-1783 - during the existence of the Crimean Khanate, whose policy was balanced between strong neighbors: the Moscow State, Lithuania and Turkey, the economic structure of the nomadic economy involved constant raids for booty, which was a constant phenomenon in the border areas. If the war was waged at the state level, then the raid became an invasion. In 1571, the 40,000-strong army of Khan Devlet-Girey (1551-1577), besieging Moscow, set fire to the settlement and burned the entire city. The main booty of the warriors was live goods, which were sold at slave markets (the largest of which was in Cafe - modern Feodosiya) to Turkey and other countries of the Middle East. According to historian Alan Fisher, from the mid-15th to the end of the 18th centuries, 3 million people from the Christian population of Poland and Russia were captured and sold into slavery by the Crimeans.

1475-1774 - the time of Turkish influence on the culture of the Crimean Tatars during the period of vassal dependence of the Khanate on the Ottoman Empire, which included the south-eastern coast of Crimea. The active intervention of the Turks in the internal life of the Khanate was noticeable only at the end of the 16th century. This period saw the flourishing of Muslim Crimean culture, especially architecture.

1783-1793. In 1783, the Crimean Khanate was annexed to Russia. After this, mass immigration of Tatars to the North Caucasus and Dobruzha began, although the Tatar nobility received rights equal to the Russian nobility. By the 80s of the 18th century, there were about 500 thousand inhabitants in Crimea, of which 92% were Tatars, most of whom lived in the mountain forest zone. Before 1793, over 300 thousand Tatars, mostly mountain Tatars, left Crimea. After the conclusion of the Peace of Iasi with Turkey as a result of the 2nd Russian-Turkish War (1792), part of the population, having lost hope of changing their situation, left Crimea (about 100 thousand people). According to the 1793 census, there were 127.8 thousand people left in Crimea, of which 87% were Tatars. The tsarist government began to widely distribute Crimean lands to Russian nobles for ownership.

1784-1917 - service of the Crimean Tatars in the ranks of the Russian army, mainly in separate cavalry units. On March 1, 1784, the highest decree “On the formation of an army from new subjects living in the Tauride region” followed; 6 “Tauride national divisions of the cavalry army” were formed, which were disbanded in 1792 and 1796. For the war with Napoleon (1804-1814/1815), in 1807 and then in 1808, 4 Crimean Tatar cavalry regiments were created as a militia. In the Patriotic War of 1812, 3 regiments took an active part, reaching Paris in 1814, after which the regiments were disbanded to their homes. In 1827, from the Crimean Tatars who had military distinctions, the Crimean Tatar squadron was formed, which was assigned to the Life Guards Cossack Regiment. The squadron took part in the Russian-Turkish War of 1828-1829 and partially in the Crimean War in 1854-1855. On May 26, 1863, the squadron was reorganized into the Crimean Tatar Life Guards Command as part of His Majesty's Own convoy. The cavalrymen of the squadron distinguished themselves in the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878. On May 16, 1890, the team was disbanded. In addition, on June 12, 1874, the Crimean squadron was formed from the Crimean Tatars, reorganized into a division on July 22, 1875, and into the Crimean Cavalry Regiment on February 21, 1906. On October 10, 1909, the regiment received the honorary name “Crimean Cavalry Regiment of Her Majesty the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.” On November 5, 1909, Nicholas II enrolled himself in the lists of the regiment. Since 1874, universal military service was extended to the Tatars.

1860-1863 - the period of mass migration of Tatars after the Crimean War (1853-1856). The majority leaves for Romania, as well as Bulgaria and Turkey (181.1 thousand people left, by 1870 - 200 thousand). It is the descendants of these immigrants who make up the majority of the Crimean Tatar population in these countries today. Emigration affected 784 villages, of which 330 were completely deserted; Moreover, it was mainly cattle breeders who left, devastated by the war. The main reason for immigration was the accusation of the Tatars in collaboration with the troops of the anti-Russian coalition during the Crimean War.

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, a mass of Tatars moved from Dobruja to Anatolia, a movement facilitated by the introduction of universal conscription in Romania in 1883, as well as new laws on the redistribution of land property in the 1880s.

1891-1920 - the third wave of emigration of Crimean Tatars from Russia, reaching its peak in 1893, when 18 thousand people left. In 1902-1903, up to 600-800 people left every day. This wave of emigration was caused by both economic and ideological, anti-Islamic reasons.

The end of the 19th century - 1920 - a period of strengthening nationalist sentiments among the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia. The activities of the Tatar educator Ismail Gasprinsky (İsmail Gaspıralı, 1851-1914) in opening secular schools and printing. On March 25, 1917, a Crimean Tatar congress-kurultai was held in Simferopol, which was attended by 2 thousand delegates. The Kurultai elected the Provisional Crimean Muslim Executive Committee (VKMIK), recognized by the Provisional Government of Russia, as the only authorized administrative body of the Crimean Tatars. With this kurultai, the implementation of the cultural and national autonomy of the Crimean Tatars began.

On October 26, 1917, a founding kurultai was held in Bakhchisarai, which adopted the first constitution in the history of Crimea, declaring a new independent state - the Crimean People's Republic. The state flag of Crimea was also adopted at the kurultai - a blue cloth with a golden tamga in the upper corner. The Tatar government lasted until January 1918 and was destroyed by revolutionary sailors. In February 1918, the provincial congress of Soviets in Simferopol elected the Central Executive Committee, which on March 10, 1918 declared Crimea the Soviet Socialist Republic of Taurida, which existed for 1 month and fell under the blows of the Germans, who captured Crimea by May 1, 1918. In 1920, the Tatars actively participated in the “green” movement (about 10 thousand people) against the “white” detachments in Crimea. In particular, the 5th Tatar regiment of the Crimean Insurgent Army under the command of Osman Derenayirli fought against Wrangel’s troops.

1921-1945 - the period of existence of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Qrьm Avonomjalь Sotsialist Sovet Respublikasь kr.-tat.) within the RSFSR, the official languages of which were Russian and Crimean Tatar. In 1921-1931, during the fight against religion, all religious buildings were closed and repurposed: 106 mosques, as well as tekkis and madrassas. At the same time, within the framework of the “indigenization” policy, a flourishing of secular national culture is observed: national schools and theaters are opened, newspapers are published in the Crimean Tatar language. In 1930, national village councils and national districts were created, 5 out of 7 of which were Tatar. In the mid-1930s, nation-building was curtailed and a policy of Russification began to be pursued.

1944 - eviction of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea - Sürgün (Kr.-Tat.) - “expulsion”. In April-May 1944, after the liberation of Crimea from the occupying forces, about 6 thousand Crimean Tatar collaborators were arrested, who did not have time to evacuate with the Germans. On May 11, 1944, the State Defense Committee of the USSR issued Resolution No. 5859 “On the Crimean Tatars”, in which it accused all Crimean Tatars of desertion from the Red Army and in collaboration with the occupiers and decided to deport them to the Uzbek USSR. During May 18-20, 1944, 32 thousand NKVD employees evicted 193.8 thousand Crimean Tatars from Crimea (more than 47 thousand families, 80% women and children). 33.7 families (151.3 thousand people) were resettled in Uzbekistan. Tatars worked in agriculture, in the oil fields, in the fishing industry, on construction sites, in coal mines, and in mines. Due to difficult working conditions, mortality in the first 3 years reached 19%. After the eviction, by decrees of 1945 and 1948, the old names of Tatar villages in Crimea were renamed in Russian, and the houses of the Crimean Tatars were inhabited by new settlers from Russia and Ukraine.

1944-1967 - Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan live as special settlers (until April 1956), and then without this status, but without permission to return to their homeland and receive back the requisitioned property.

Since 1956, the beginning of a “petition campaign” of the Crimean Tatars, who began to send numerous applications to the Soviet authorities demanding that they be allowed to return to their homeland and restore autonomy.

1967-1974 - by the decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 5, 1967 “On citizens of Tatar nationality who previously lived in Crimea,” Stalin-era charges against the Tatars were dropped and constitutional rights were restored. The return of the Tatars to Crimea, but due to the passport registration regime, only a few were able to return.

January 9, 1974 - publication of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On invalidating certain legislative acts of the USSR that provide for restrictions in the choice of place of residence for certain categories of citizens.”

1987-1989 - active social movement of the Crimean Tatars for the return to their homeland - the functioning of public organizations - the “National Movement of the Crimean Tatars” and the increasingly influential “Organization of the Crimean Tatar National Movement”. In July 1987, a demonstration of Crimean Tatars was held in Moscow on Red Square, demanding that they be allowed to return to Crimea.

In 1989, the deportation of the Tatars was condemned by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and declared illegal. In May 1990, the concept of a state program for the return of Crimean Tatars to Crimea was adopted. A massive return of Crimean Tatars began: by the end of 1996, about 250 thousand Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea and, according to some sources, about 150 thousand remain in places of deportation, mainly in the vicinity of Tashkent, Samarkand and Shakhrisabz. Due to unemployment and the inability to return their land, the Tatars have many problems. Until 1944, the 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. According to rough estimates, among the Crimean Tatars living in Crimea, about 30% are South Coast residents, about 20% are Nogais and about 50% are Tats.

In 1991, the 2nd Kurultai was convened - the national parliament, which created a system of national self-government of the Crimean Tatars within the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (since 1995) within Ukraine. Every 5 years, Kurultai elections take place, in which the entire adult Tatar population aged 18 years participates. The Kurultai forms an executive body - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people.

year 2014. According to the Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on the admission of the Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the formation of new entities within the Russian Federation dated March 18, 2014, the Crimean Tatar language became the state language of the Republic of Crimea (together with Russian and Ukrainian).

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 process of formation of the people was finally completed during the period of the Crimean Khanate.

Tatars leaving the mosque in Bakhchisarai.

Tatar cemetery in Bakhchisarai.

Both in appearance and in dialect, as well as in some morals and customs, the Crimean population, which we now indiscriminately call Crimean Tatars, was divided into three groups: south-coast, mountain and steppe.

The Crimeans of the southern coast are tall, slender, black-haired and dark-eyed, with a dark, but at the same time completely European complexion; Their facial features are very regular and beautiful, and among the South Coast Tatars, both men and women, there are many famous handsome men and beauties. The noble blood of both the ancient Greeks and medieval Italians is visible in them, and in their language one can also hear a softer pronunciation and an abundance of corrupted Italian and Greek words.

The Crimeans of the steppe strip are not like that at all. They are of short or medium height, short-legged and slightly bow-legged, with long arms, a large broad head, prominent cheekbones, narrow eyes with a slightly oblique cut. They call themselves Nogai and come from the Nogai hordes.

The Mountain Tatars, who live near Bakhchisarai, along the Baydar Valley, near Simferopol, both in appearance and in dialect, represent the middle between the steppe and the south-coast Tatars. They have even more mixture than the south coast ones.

The costumes of the Tatars are very picturesque, but developed under the influence of Turkish culture, recently, when the Crimea began to be flooded with masses of tourists penetrating into the most hidden corners of the peninsula, it began to change significantly. Therefore, many national parts of the local costume are replaced by pan-European parts of the toilet.

The previous, typical costume of a Crimean consists of a white shirt with a straight collar, dark trousers, belted with a wide, colored belt, morocco shoes or shoes: over the shirt a narrow jacket embroidered with laces was worn; on her head she wore a low black sheepskin cap with a small circle trimmed with gold braid in the middle of its top.

Mountain Tatars and Tatars of the southern coast.

Steppe Tatars.

The nature of the social life of the Tatars is also expressed in the appearance of their villages. All Tatar villages are located in hollows; This perhaps reflects the habit of the former Tatar steppe dweller to hide from the eyes of the Cossack. The houses here are not crowded together, as in Russian villages, but scattered in disarray and separated from each other, if not by a garden, then by a vegetable garden, or just a vacant lot. Around the village, for the most part, adjacent to the estates themselves, there are fields and hayfields. These fields, in turn, are surrounded by almost every owner with a fence, and sometimes with a stone fence or a ditch.

Only in the mountains, due to the cramped space, houses in Tatar villages are not far apart from each other, although they are also scattered in disorder. In these villages, low Tatar saklas are usually tightly adjacent to the mountain with one wall, so that, leaving the latter, you can easily climb a house without noticing it at all.

The Tatar dwelling, saklya, is not built the same everywhere: on the southern coast of Crimea, the Tatars make their houses from rough field stones, grease them and plaster them with clay. And on the northern slope of the mountains, and especially in the steppes, Tatar houses are built from large homemade bricks made from a mixture of clay and straw.

Cleanliness and order are always maintained in the Tatar sakla; felt laid on the floor is often knocked out and weathered. In general, where the hands and eyes of a Tatar woman are involved, everything is done regularly and thoroughly. This applies equally to both poor and rich Tatar families.

Tatar house, plow and cart.

The Crimean Tatars eat the following foods: bread, usually sour, too hard and poorly baked; millet and lamb pilaf; katyk, i.e. sour, curdled and then boiled, and sometimes also salted milk, mostly sheep's milk, something like our sour milk or cottage cheese, but completely unsuitable for the taste of Russians, but very beloved by the Crimean Tatars.

Occasionally, on special occasions, the Tatars prepare: shashlik - lamb fried on a spit in small pieces; chirchir-burek or chuburek, i.e. pies fried in lamb fat and stuffed with minced beef; cabbage rolls in grape leaves, doused with katyk instead of sour cream. The most luxurious dish is considered to be cabbage soup, cooked from various vegetables and fruits and from various meats; The more diverse the composition of this amazing dish, the higher it is valued. Every Tatar food is usually overcooked and overcooked, and everything is generously seasoned with wineskin fat (fat from the tail of a Crimean sheep), capsicum, onions and garlic, which the Tatars consume in huge quantities.

Grape harvest in Crimea.

Crimean Tatars

A Crimean Tatar family on the road.

Crimean Tatars and mullahs.

Murza and his escort.

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic-speaking people formed on the Crimean Peninsula during the 13th-15th centuries. About 260 thousand Crimean Tatars live in the Republic of Crimea, which is part of Russia (12 percent of the total population of Crimea). The total number of Crimean Tatars in the countries of the former USSR, Romania and Bulgaria is about 500 thousand people, and at least 500 thousand people of Crimean Tatar origin live in Turkey.

Despite the fact that the name of the Crimean Tatar people contains the word “Tatars”, left over from the times when almost all Turkic-speaking peoples of Russia were called Tatars, the Crimean Tatars are not part of the Tatar people. The Crimean Tatar language differs significantly from the language of the Volga Tatars; The commonality of these languages lies only in the fact that both are part of the Turkic group. The generally accepted classification of the Crimean Tatar language classifies it as a transitional Oguz-Kypchak Turkic language, and the language of the Volga Tatars belongs to the Volga-Kypchak subgroup.

The Top-Anthropos.com portal has chosen the most beautiful Crimean Tatar women in the opinion of the editors. Among them are nine singers and three finalists of the Crimean Beauty competition.

12th place: Lenara Osmanova- Crimean Tatar singer, Honored Artist of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Lenara was born on May 7, 1986 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan); in 1991 the family moved to Simferopol. The singer's repertoire includes songs by Ukrainian authors, songs of her own composition, songs and dances of the peoples of the world. Official website of Lenara Osmanova - http://lenara.com.ua

11th place: Aliye Fatkulina- finalist of the "Crimean Beauty 2011" competition. Aliye's page on the competition website - http://krasavica.crimea.ua/persons.php?person_id=31

10th place: Aliye Yakubova(Khadzhabadinova) - Crimean Tatar singer. Page "In Contact" - http://vk.com/id20156536

9th place: Elnara Kuchuk- Crimean Tatar singer. Page "In Contact" - http://vk.com/id18370007

8th place: Leniy Alyustaeva- Crimean Tatar singer. Page "In Contact" - http://vk.com/id131086365

7th place: Elmaz Kakura- Crimean Tatar singer. Page "In Contact" - http://vk.com/id10712136

6th place: Dilyara Makhmudova- Crimean Tatar singer. Dilyara was born on March 3, 1990 in Samarkand (Uzbekistan). In 1995, the family moved to Crimea. The singer’s official website is http://dilyara.com.ua/, the “VKontakte” page is http://vk.com/dilyaramakhmudova

5th place: Emilia Memetova(born December 22, 1987) - Crimean Tatar opera singer. Page "In Contact" - http://vk.com/id23371550

4th place: Nazife Reizova(born August 3, 1989) - Crimean Tatar singer. Page "In Contact" - http://vk.com/id51969662

3rd place: Ellina Tsatskina(born February 13, 1994, Simferopol) - Miss Audience Choice at the Crimean Beauty 2013 competition. Page on the competition website - http://www.krasavica.crimea.ua/persons.php?person_id=39 VKontakte page - http://vk.com/tsatskina13

2nd place: Elzara Zakiryaeva(born June 21, 1995) - finalist of the Crimean Beauty 2013 competition. Page on the competition website - http://www.krasavica.crimea.ua/persons.php?person_id=50 VKontakte page - http://vk.com/id94716517

1st place: Elzara Batalova- Crimean Tatar singer, Honored Artist of Ukraine, Honored Artist of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.