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Remembering the deportation - SÜRGÜN
25 May 2000 - kpnews - Sergey Gnedoy - Elmira Ablyamirova returned to Crimea nearly six decades after she was deported
along with hundreds of thousands of other Crimean Tatars. Story of a Crimean tree of life. By Evgenia Mussuri, Post Staff
Writer
KAMENKA, CRIMEA – In 1944, when Elmira Ablyamirova was 12, she lost her entire family. When she married
five years later, she made a decision never to be alone. Today, the 68-year-old Crimean Tatar woman has five daughters, five
sons and 18 grandchildren.
Before losing their home and being deported, Ablyamirova's family was prominent and wealthy in Yalta, the famous Black Sea
resort town in Crimea where she was born.
“My grandfather was the Mufti [interpreter of Islamic religious law] of the region,” she said. “When Russian
Tsar Nikolas II came to Crimea, my grandfather was the first to greet him on Crimean soil.”
The family's comfortable life came to an end in 1937, when the authorities decided that its wealth and steadfast belief in
Allah were incompatible with the Soviet lifestyle.
Police first came for Ablyamirova's grandfather, then the father, sending both to Siberia. When the German Nazi Army invaded
the Soviet Union in 1941, Ablyamirova's only siblings, two brothers, were conscripted by the Red Army and sent to fight the
invaders. Ablyamirova was left with only her mother.
But this too was not to last long.
In May 1944, Ablyamirova and her mother went to visit distant relatives in another Crimean town, Alushta, for several days.
Again, the military men came. This time they were here to execute a brutak order by then Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to exile
the entire population of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia.
At the time, Ablyamirova did not realize that this was a forced deportation, organized under fabricated accusations that Tatars
had collaborated with Nazis.
“During the war it often happened that the military came and took civilians further away from the front line,”
she said. “We kept thinking that they'd bring us back home.”
Instead, Ablyamirova, her mother, and hundreds of thousands of other Tatars were deported to the Central Asian republic of
Uzbekistan. They were housed in shabby shacks, without water, a stove, or even the simplest conveniences. Soon other nationalities
were added to the settlement, and Ablyamirova remembers each praying to his own God in his own language.
“We all, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Christians and others prayed side by side,” she said.
The living conditions were dismal, and many people died from cold and hunger. The dead were buried in a mass grave on the
fringe of the shack settlement. Twelve-year-old Ablyamirova worked day and night at a textile plant to support herself and
her mother.
“We were starving, and only now I realize what my mother did,” she said. “Most likely she gave all her food
to me and that was the reason for her disease. She died shortly after.”
Ablyamirova, who now believed she was an orphan, continued to work at the factory. Shortly, an Uzbek man adopted her, and
the girl soon became almost like a native Uzbek.
“I looked and spoke like any other Uzbek girl, I wore their clothes, and only my face was different,” Ablyamirova
said.
Years passed. One day, on her way to work, Ablyamirova saw an old man trying to board a tram.
“He was very thin and looked sick, he had a big backpack and could not make it in,” she recalled. “I helped
him in and when I looked back, he nodded to me and said, ‘Thank you, girl.'”
Ablyamirova did not realize she had just met her father.
“I came from work and saw the backpack of the old man I met in the morning,” she said, wiping away her tears.
“And I knew right away that he was my father even before he came out of the room to tell me the truth.”
Ablyamirova's father had been released from prison shortly before, and, after learning of the deportation of his wife and
daughter, had started searching for them. He came to the Uzbek capital Tashkent, where he was told his family would be. There
he ran into a former school colleague, who led him to Ablyamirova's home.
From that day on, the two never lived apart. When Ablyamirova turned 17, her father arranged a marriage for her, and she decided
to raise a large family.
“I wanted many relatives, so that they would never feel lonely, like I did,” said Ablyamirova, whose name in her
native tongue means “the tree of life.”
In the late 1980s, when the Soviet authorities allowed Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland, Ablyamirova's huge family
of 33 people was one of the first to come back.
Although her old house in Yalta, where her family had lived for 50 years, still existed, Ablyamirova had to settle in Kamenka,
a village just outside the Crimean capital Simferopol, which was designated by the local government as one of the settlements
for the returning Tatars.
These days she often travels to Yalta to have a look at her once gorgeous house, she said.
“I have all the documents stating it belongs to my family, but it is very difficult to get compensation,” Ablyamirova
said. “And my husband forbade me to deal with it. He says we have a home already.”
Part of " Open Letter from the Russian friends of the
Crimean Tatars" and a brief statement from one of the survivors of
the mass deportation:
" ... It was a journey of lingering death in cattle trucks, crammed
with people, like mobile gas chambers. The journey lasted three to
four weeks and took them across the scorching summer steppes of
Kazakhstan. They took the Red partisans of the Crimea, the fighters
of the Bolshevik underground, and the Soviet and Party activists.
Also invalids and old men. The remaining men were fighting at the
front, but deportation awaited them at the end of the war. And in the
meantime they crammed their women and children into trucks, where
they constituted the vast majority. Death mowed down the old, the
young and the weak. They died of thirst, suffocation and the stench..
. On the long stages the corpses decomposed in the huddle of the
trucks, and at the short halts, where water and food were handed out,
the people were not allowed to bury their dead and had to leave them
besides the railway trucks" ("The Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans
and Meshketians" by Ann Sheehy, p.10 )
Nuriye Ismailova is a 69-year-old pensioner. In May 1944, she was a young
newlywed whose husband was in the army and fighting at the front. Back
then, as now, she lived in Belogorsk, a town about 30 miles east of
Simferopol. Remembering the deportation brings tears to her eyes:
"At 3.00 am (May 18,1944) two soldiers knocked on the door. I was
the oldest daughter. I had four younger sisters. The soldiers told
us: you've got 15 minutes and then we are going to take you away.
Our father reminded us about the Germans, and how they had gone
around collecting the Jews and then shooting them. He was convinced
that the soldiers were going to do the same to all of us. so he told
us not to bother taking anything with us- that we were all going to
be shot. So we left with only the clothes on our backs. It was only
that night that they put the people of our village into trucks and
took us to the railroad. When we arrived in Uzbekistan it was 110
degrees Fahrenheit- unimaginable heat. I was the only one to survive.
My father, mother and sisters all perished from the ordeal."
("Crimean Tatars: Repatriation and Conflict Prevention" by Open
Society Institute, p.13)
Report from Forced Migration Projects of the Open Society Institute
For those who lived through them, the events of May 18, 1944, have been
seared into memory as if by a branding iron. One such survivor is Shavki
Anafiev, a pensioner who now lives in the Tatar settlement of Kamenka, on
the outskirts of Simferopol. When the deportation occurred he was 16, and
although more than five decades have passed, his recollections remain vivid:
It was early in the morning-still dark-when they came and knocked on the
door. I answered because my mother did not speak Russian. They told us that
some kind of resolution had been adopted and that we must leave. They gave
us a half-hour to gather some possessions and food. . . . Everyone began to
cry as we gathered our things. There were five of us in our family, and
together with our neighbors, they loaded us into a truck and drove us away.
They took us to a muddy field, which they were using as a collection point,
and they made us stand there. All the while a light rain was falling. We
were surrounded by soldiers armed with machine guns, and we were not
permitted to move. . . . We waited and waited in the rain. People were
afraid and they cried. We were aware of what the Germans had done to the
Jews. . . . Eventually trucks arrived and we were taken to a spot were two
long freight trains were waiting. We were thrown into the ninth car of one
of the trains. In our car, there were about 85 people. We spent the whole
night in the car, but the train never moved. Only in the early morning [May
19] did the train begin to move. During the journey [to Central Asia] one
woman gave birth right in the car. A young boy also died, and they just
took the body away and would not allow us to properly bury him.
Unfortunately for the Crimean Tatars, this was not the end of the
Surgun, there were some Crimean Tatars forgotten by the planners of
this mass deportation. The following is the eyewitness account of
what happened to these forgotten Crimean Tatars {from the Crimean
Review Vol.V.No.2, pp. 13-14)
“...The entire population who fought bravely to defend the motherland,
was slandered with the allegation of being traitors, and deported
from their place of birth. I am a witness of this tragedy... I want
to touch upon an incident of mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
One of the leaders of this genocide, Bogdan Kobulov, reports to L.P.
Beria that ‘the Crimea is cleaned of Tatars.’ Beria relates this to
Stalin right at that moment. Thousands of participants of this
“successful” operation were being decorated with medals(on July 19,
1944). During this “victory” banquet Kobulov was told: ‘ we forgot
to deport those Tatars in the villages on the strip of Arabat’. They
were fisherman and salt miners living in those villages on the strip
that separates the Sivash from the Azov Sea. It was obvious that men
of the villages were fighting in the fronts. The majority of these
villagers were women and children. Kobulov orders: ‘ If a single
Tatar remains alive in two hours, your heads will roll’. Beria’s
fascist henchman was told that it was impossible to round up all the
Tatars in two hours in an area that stretches hundred kilometers.
Stalin’s henchmen were finally given twenty four hours to accomplish
their “mission”.
They took an old boat from the port of Genicsek, rounded up all the
Crimean Tatars from the Arabat and loaded them on this old boat.
Then they took them to the deepest section of the Azov Sea and opened
the kingston (the cap of the hole). The boat full of our fellow
Tatars sank to the bottom. The murderers were waiting with their
machine guns,waiting for (survivors)...”
Here are some excerpts from Vladimir Polyakov's "Crimean Tatars."
ON POLYAKOV'S FAMILY
Before the communist revolution broke out in 1917, my grandfather,
Matvey Petrovich Polyakov, worked as a technician at the Simferopol
Telegraph Center. My father was an officer in the Red Army, a fighter pilot.
My father was fluent and spoke Crimean Tatar like a native because Crimean
Tatar was at the time the principal spoken language in the region. Among
his friends there were many Crimean Tatars. And, those friendships lasted
throughout his entire life.
ON THE BOLSHEVIKS IN CRIMEA
The relations with Bolsheviks were not easy due to Bolshevik ignorance of
the national question, which was so painful for Crimean Tatars. Once
Bolsheviks adopted the policy of terror, they were bound to cross some
lines. Crimean Tatars even tried to resist against the deadly punitive
brigades of Bolsheviks that raged over such cities as Sevastopol,
Simferopol, and Evpatorya. There they executed, without any courts, anyone
who was identified as a non-working person. My father told me how he
witnessed people getting shot just because they were wearing reading
glasses or did not have any scars on their hands from hard labor.
ON WORLD WAR II
The Soviets found out the most stunning fact that many people, common
people, were not sorry at all that the communists had left. Some of Crimean
Tatars shared the same feelings with the rest. May be things would end up
differently if the partisans had not run out of food. Due to mishandled
plans for provisions, the partisans began making the so-called "Provision
raids," which in reality, were pure robberies of the local population. In
their memoirs Soviet partisans admit to taking food and live stock from
persons, who were collaborating with the Germans, but during those hasty
attacks they were not so sure who was who, and innocent people might have
been targeted too.
AN EXCERPT FROM A REGIONAL COMMUNIST PARY DOCUMENT
Mistakes that were made in regard to Crimean Tatar population, and measures
needed to eliminate mishandling of situation among Crimean Tatar population.
November 18, 1942.
....
We also can not ignore the cooperation of Crimean Tatar population when a
group of 300 partisans coming out of the enemy’s encampment waited for
three days near the villages. But none reported to the Germans their
whereabouts. In addition, a Crimean Tatar shepherd let his animals go over
the partisan’s footprints in order to cover them up.
Please see the attached list of Crimean Tatar villages destroyed by the Nazi Forces, prepared by Fikret Yurter, the
President of the Crimea Foundation in New York. Mr. Yurter compiled this list through interviews with the Crimean Tatars who
returned to Crimea from exile in Uzbekistan. The destruction caused by the Nazis is also documented by Alexandr M. Nekrich
in a highly informative work on deportation of nationalities, The Punished People. He quotes Dr. Edige Kirimal: "Toward the
end of occupation, in December 1943 and January 1944, the Germans burned down and destroyed 128 mountain villages in the southern
and northern Crimea. In January 1944 the inhabitants of Argin, Baksan, and Kazal - the Crimean Tatar villages burned to the
ground by the Germans - together with the inhabitants of Efendikoi, Kutur, and Neiman - Russian villages similarly burned
- fled into the hills to join the partisans." (pp.23-24)
Crimean Tatar Villages
Destroyed by the Nazis During World War II
A - G H - P S - Z
Acibulat Hocasala Sahmirza
Argin Kamisli Savatka
Armutluk Kandor Selen
Arpat Karalez Sirli Köprü
Asagi Çorgun Karasubasi Soyun-Aci
Asagi Taygan Kalintay Star-Suli
Avci Köy Kaymak Stila
Ayan Kaynavut Suri
Aylanma Kesek-Karatuk Suvuksu
Aytodor Ketaut Suyu-Aci
Badrak Kermençik Tama
Bahçeli Kilsadik Taskora
Bahsan Kislav Tatar-Köy
Bakatas Kizilkoba Tatar-Osman
Bakes Kobazi Tavbadrak
Baydar Kokköz Tavdayir
Besuy Kokluz Tav-Eli
Biyesala Konrat Tav-Kipçak
Bora Koktas Temirci
Burunca Kos Degirmen Teskondu
Büyük-Laka Köprülü Köy Ters-Kondu
Büyük-Onlar Kovus Toban-Eli
Büyük-Özenbas Koyüs Totay-Köy
Büyük-Yanköy Kozi-Eli Ulakli
Cafer-Berdi Küçük Özenbas Ulu-Özen
Cansaray Kuçka Ulusala
Çardakli Kutlak Urkusta
Çavke Kutluk Uppa
Çerkez-Kermen Kumüslük Uppi-Köy
Çirmalik Maltoy Veyrant
Çokrak Mambet-Ulan Veyrat
Çorgun Mangus Yanci-Köy
Çorgun-Yukari Mamut-Sultan Yanibardak
Çormalik Molbay Yani-Köy
Deren Ayir Navdayir Yeni-Sala
Ekitas Ortalan Yeni-Saray
Elbuzlu Payli-Yar Yukari Taygan
Eskisaray Piçki Yüzümlük
Fotsala
Monument
Interestingly enough, the most important monument to the deportation was
actually built in Long Island New York by Crimean Tatar architect, Fikret
Yurter. This large marble edifice is located in the center of Crimean
Tatar Muslim cemetery in the town of Comack and consists of a 9 foot tall
marker in the shape of the tarak tamgha. The tarak tamgha, originally the
dynastic seal of the Crimean Khans of the Giray lineage, was adopted by
early Crimean Tatar nationalists as the symbol of this people's new found
national identity. It is singularly sad that the largest monument to the
event that saw the Crimean Tatars scattered from their homeland by Stalin
lies not in the Crimea itself but a world away on one of the many shores
this diasporic people have found themselves. [MAY 18TH 1944 - THE CRUCIBLE OF MODERN CRIMEAN TATAR NATIONAL IDENTITY BY BRIAN
GLYN WILLIAMS, University of Wisconsin, Madison - from TN 18.05.1999]
Turkistan Newsletter - Turkistan Bulteni - Thu, 18 May 2000 08:14:29 - ISSN:1386-6265 Volume 4:103
MAY 18TH 1944 THE CRUCIBLE OF MODERN CRIMEAN TATAR NATIONAL IDENTITY.
BY BRIAN GLYN WILLIAMS
It has been said that one must know a nation's tragedies and the way its
people commemorate them to know its soul. To understand the Russians one
has to visit its memorials to the more than 20 million members of that
nation who gave their lives fighting in the Great Patriotic War against
Nazi Germany, to understand Serbian aggression of today one has to visit
the sacred monasteries of Kosovo commemorating that people's defeat Kosovo
in 1389 at the hands of the Ottomans, the Armenians cannot be understood
today without understanding the role of the collective memory of the year
1915 assault on their community by the Ottoman government, the Palestinians
are defined by their trans-generational narratives of their expulsion from
Israel in 1948, the Jews of today, regardless of their level of
religiosity, are shaped by the collective memory of the Shoah, The
Holocaust etc. Those who underestimate the importance of these national
tragedies in shaping these nations' identities and relations to their
neighbors do so at their own risk.
The defining event in 20th century Crimean Tatar history is the
brutal
deportation and exile of this entire people from their peninsular homeland
on the Black Sea (Ukraine) to the deserts of Central Asia and Siberia in
the closing days of World War II. On May 18, 1944 the entire Crimean Tatar
people, men, women, children, the elderly, unarmed civilians and those
fighting for the Soviet Rodina (Homeland) in the ranks of the Red Army were
arbitrarily accused of 'mass treason' by Soviet leader Josef Stalin and
deported from their villages located in the Crimea's Yaila mountains and on
the warm southern shore of the Crimea. The official explanation for this
action was announced at a later date in the Soviet paper Izvestiia which
declared:
During the Great Patriotic War when the people of the USSR were heroically
defending the honor and independence of the Fatherland in the struggle
against the German-Fascist invaders, many Chechens and Crimean Tatars, at
the instigation of German agents joined volunteer units organized by the
Germans and together with German troops engaged in armed struggle against
units of the Red Army...meanwhile the main mass of the population of the
Chechen Ingush and Crimean ASSRs took no counteraction against these
betrayers of the Fatherland.(1)
There are some grounds for this accusation. As many as 20,000 Crimean
Tatars did serve in the Wehrmacht in varying capacities as Hiwis (German,
literally 'volunteers') but most of these were prisoners of war captured by
the German army as it surrounded and captured whole Soviet armies in 1941
and 1942. Another 20,000 Crimean Tatars actually fought for the Soviet
homeland in the Soviet army. Others fought in the ranks of the partisans
who launched guerrilla raids on the German occupying forces during the war.
The eyewitness testimonies of Russian officers offer us an invaluable
account of the anti-Nazi guerrilla activities of a Crimean Tatar partisan
brigade:
The Commissar of the Eastern formation was named captain Refat Mustafaev
(prior to the war he was secretary of the Crimean regional party). Here is
one episode of the military actions of his formation. In the end of the
1943 the divisions of the second and third brigades destroyed the fascist
garrison in Stary Krym (Eski Kirim) destroying on that occasion two tanks,
16 vehicles with gasoline and ammunition. The partisans occupied the
building of the commander of the city police and threw grenades into the
restaurant where the Hitlerites banqueted. One of the group seized the
Gestapo jail and freed 46 Soviet patriots.(2)
As the Crimean Tatars joined the partisans their villages suffered heavily
from German reprisals. The following account is typical:
Dozens of Crimean Tatars were shot in Alushta on the banks of the
Demerci, in the foothills of the Kastel in dozens in the villages of Ulu
-Sala, Kizil Tash, Degirmen Koy, Tav-Bodrak, Saly and many others.
In July 1988 the country learned from information in Tass that in=
the
partisan regions in the mountainous part of the Crimea all villages were
burnt and a 'dead zone' was created. Yes it actually happened. More than
70 villages were destroyed. In them dwelt more than 25% of the Tatar
population of the Crimea. In these villages, in remote woodlands, in the
mountains lived only Tatars.(3)
Seen in this light, the official charges leveled against the Crimean Tatars
of 'mass treason' are obviously spurious. The real reason for the
deportation may in fact lie in Stalin's plans to invade Turkey at this
time. In particular, as the Red Army moved into a collapsing Germany,
Stalin contemplated the annexation of the Turkish vilayets (provinces) of
Kars and Ardahan on Turkey's north-eastern border with the USSR (these were
lost to Russia during World War I). The Soviets commenced a broad
propaganda campaign at this time designed to lead to an Armenian uprising
in this region and Turkey in return planned a full mobilization.(4) As
Stalin prepared for this operation he, as a Georgian, must have been keenly
aware of the existence of several Muslim, traditionally pro-Turkish ethnic
groups located on the invasion route through the Caucasus. The "Crimean
Turks" occupied the USSR's main naval base facing Turkey across the Black
Sea and other small, distrusted ethnic groups, such as the Karachai,
Balkars, Chechens, Ingush and the Meshketian Turks, occupied the frontier
with Turkey or the two main highways running to Turkey--the Georgian
military highway and the coastal highway.
All these suspect Muslim groups were deported after they were
accused of
blanket treason against the Rodina during the German invasion except for
the Meshketian Turks who were not accused of mass betrayal. The homeland
of this small conglomerate ethnic group, made up of Turkic Karapapakhs,
Muslim Armenians (Khemshils), Turkicized Kurds and the Meshketian Turks
proper, located far to south on the Turkish border in the Georgian SSR,
had never been close to the scene of combat. The fact that this patently
innocent ethnie was chosen for group deportation lends the strongest
credence to the claim that the deportation of the Crimean and Caucasian
Muslims had more to do with Soviet foreign policy priorities than any real
crimes of 'universal treason' committed by these groups. As Mehmet
Tutuncu surmised "The only thing all of these peoples have in common is
religion and that they inhabit areas that would be sensitive in an
invasion of Turkey. And this seems the only reason for the collective
punishment of all these people."(5)
Regardless of the reasons, the results were terrifying for the
targeted
nationalities. Just as the anti-septic term 'ethnic cleansing' fails to
capture the true horror of rape camps, mass slaughter, brutal expulsion,
and destruction of homes, welfare and culture, the term 'deportation' fails
to capture the true horror of this event which befell the Crimean Tatars
and several other small nations. Tens of thousands of NKVD (the progenitor
of the KGB) troops surrounded the Crimean Tatar hamlets in the Crimean
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Crimean ASSR) and began to expel
their startled inhabitants on the eve of May 18 1944. Thousands deemed
guilty of collaboration with the Germans, who had occupied the Crimea
during the war, were shot on the spot, those who were resisted were beaten
or shot. Traditionally tight-knit Crimean Tatar families and villages were
divided as the well armed troops gathered them and drove them to local rail
heads for deportation in various directions. In many cases the men were
divided from their families and shipped to lumber and gas camps in Siberia
where they were forced to do physical labor. The death rate in the harsh
conditions in these camps meant that many Crimean Tatar men never again saw
their families again.(6)
The deportees remember the weeks spent on the trains in cattle
cars, whose
only modification for human inhabitation was a pipe fitted in the corner
for defecating, with particular horror. For efficiency's sake the
deportees had been crammed on to the locked train cars and the packed,
unhealthy conditions led to outbreaks of disease such as typhus, which
swept away many, especially the young and the old. A survivor of the
deportation recalls:
The doors of the wagons were usually opened in stations where the train
stopped for a few minutes. The panting people gulped fresh air, and they
gave way to the sick who were unable to crawl to the exit to breath it.
But along the length of the wagon one officer in a blue hat hastily
strolled with soldiers and, glancing into the wagon, asked the same
question. "Any bodies? Any bodies?" If this was the case, they pulled
them out of the wagon; they were mainly children and the old. There and
then, three meters from the rail embankment (the bodies) were thrown into
hollows with dirt and refuse.
The trains carrying the bulk of the Crimean Tatar population (civilians and
the wounded) trundled across the hot plains of the northern Caucasus and
Kazakhstan and, after two weeks, most made their way to Tashkent, the
capital of the dry Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan. According to N.F.
Bugai, a specialist on the deportations, a maximum of 191,088 Crimean
Tatars were deported from the Crimean autonomous republic in that May of
1944. Another account also based on conflicting NKVD sources from 1944
claims that only 187, 859 Crimean Tatars were deported from the Crimea.(7)
Of these, N. F. Bugai claims 151, 604 were sent to the Uzbek SSR and
8,597 to the Udmurt and Mari Automous Oblasts (Ural mountain region, part
of the Russian Federated Socialist Republic).(8)B. Browhevan and P.
Tygliiants support this claim and reference a telegram sent from Beria to
Stalin which proudly proclaims that "all the Tatars have arrived in the
places of resettlement and 151,604 people have been resettled in the
oblasts (districts) of the Uzbek SSR and 31,551 in the oblasts of the RSFSR
(Russia)."(9) Although Soviet records do not record the 'resettlement' of
Crimean Tatars in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan several thousand were eventually
transferred or migrated to these regions and especially to the Khojent
(Leninbad) region in Tajikistan as well according to the overwhelming
testimony of those I interviewed in Uzbekistan in the Spring of 1996.
Approximately 7,000 Crimean Tatars died during the actual deportation=
process.
Tashkent served as the main dispersion center for the majority of=
the
Crimean Tatars who were sent to Uzbekistan (other deported groups, such as
the Chechens and Ingush, were sent to Alma Ata, the capital of the Kazakh
SSR(10)) who were then scattered throughout Eastern Uzbekistan, from the
Fergana valley in the north to the deserts of the barren Kashga Darya
Oblast (district) in the south. According to records sent to NKVD head
Lavrenty Beria in June of 1944, the Crimean Tatars were settled in
Uzbekistan in the following oblasts: Tashkent--56,632, Samarkand--31,540,
Andijan--19,630, Fergana--16,039, Namangan--13,804, Kashga Darya--10,171,
Bukhara--3,983.(11) Little or no preparations had been made in in advance
for the arrivees and most were forced to live in barracks outside
factories, in dug outs, or huts. The death rate continued to rise at this
time and as many as a third of the Crimean Tatars may have died during the
resettlement period in special camps in Central Asia.
More than any other event, the removal of this small nation from a
land
it had come to define as its natsional'naia rodina (national homeland)
under the first two decades of Soviet rule and its atavatan (fatherland) on
the eve of the Russian revolution has shaped this people's contemporary
national identity. For several generations the Crimean Tatar people worked
in the factories, mines and industrial centers of a Central Asian landscape
that was in every way different from their peninsular homeland on the Black
Sea.
From 1944 to 1957, the Crimean Tatars worked in Central Asia's=
cotton
gulag or served as a helot class working in the many factories transported
to Central Asia from European Russia to put them beyond the reach of the
invading Germans. In 1957 new Soviet leader Krushchev allowed the Crimean
Tatars and other deported peoples to leave their hated Spetskommandantskii
camps (Special Commandant) camps and he exonerated the deported nations of
their charges of mass treason. While the deported Chechens, Ingush,
Kalmyks, Karachais and Balkars were allowed to return to their
reconstituted homeland-republics, the Crimean Tatars, Meshketian Turks, and
Volga Germans were not allowed to return to their natal territories for
reasons that probably had to do with the value of their former homelands.
For the next thirty years the Crimean Tatars launched the Soviet
Union's
first ethnically-based frontal challenge to Moscow's authority demanding
the right to return to their homeland. During the long exile years the
Crimean Tatars began to commemorate the Deportatsiia on May 18 and,
symbolically, they commemorated Lenin's birth date (Lenin was the founder
of the Crimean ASSR and was considered much more tolerant of displays of
ethno-national identity than his successor Stalin). The exiled Crimean
Tatars used these commemorative events as an opportunity to demand the
right to return to their homeland. Wreaths were laid at the foot of
statues of Lenin, banners were carried demanding the right to return to the
Crimean peninsula (which had been demoted to a regular province in the
Russian Federation and Slavicized during the Crimean Tatars' absence). The
MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), militia and KGB often broke up these
commemorative rallies, with the most spectacular attack on Crimean Tatars
happening in the year 1967 in the city of Chirchik. On that occasion
hundreds of Crimean Tatars were arrested, attacked by club wielding troops,
or sprayed with acidic substances.
In addition, Crimean Tatar parents and grandparents kept the memory
of the
deportation alive in the minds of new generations who grew up on stories of
this tragedy. These trans-generational transfers of grievance are in many
ways similar to the narratives of the Palestinians who, like the Crimean
Tatars, were dispelled from their homeland in the 1940s (more than three
quarters of a million Palestinians were expelled from Israel to Jordan,
Egypt, the Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank in 1948). Whole generations of
Palestinians growing up in camps in the Middle East considered their real
home to be Palestine. Unlike the Palestinians who gave up the real dream
of regaining their lost lands, the Crimean Tatars continued to think of
their people's total repatriation in a real sense. The stories of the
deportation served as one of the primary vehicles for keeping this dream
alive during the exile years.
Lilia Bujorova, perhaps the most famous Crimean Tatar writer and
poetess
to emerge from the exile has had her poems of the Crimean homeland
published throughout the former Soviet Union and provides the following
poem entitled "Speak" (Govori) which captures her experience growing up in
Central Asia with stories of the deportation and her lost homeland.
Speak father speak,
Speak until the dusk!
Speak of the cruel war,
Speak of the terrible day,
In my veins let the tragedy flow,
How salty is the sea water,
Don't spare me, don't spare anything,
Go again out of your native home,
Again lose your relatives on the wagons
Again count who remains among the living!
I want to know about everything,
So that I can tell it to your grandchildren,
Your pain cries to me,
I will bring every moment to life in them!
It will also become a homeland for them
The word 'Homeland' and the word 'Crimea'!
Speak father speak,
Speak father until the dusk!(12)
It was only in 1989 that a decree was published in Izvestiia allowing the
Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland. Since that date roughly
250,000 of the Former Soviet Union's 500,000 Crimean Tatars have returned
to a homeland that most, who grew up in Central Asia, have never seen.
While the jubilant Crimean Tatar repatriates had grown up on stories of the
romanticized Yeshil Ada (Green Island) of the Crimea, these idealized
notions of the homeland were crushed by the bitter realities of life in the
post-Soviet Crimea. The Crimean Tatars' return was resisted by the local
Communist nomenklatura (entrenched Soviet-era bureaucratic elite) which
destroyed Crimean Tatar samozakvat (self seized) settlements, refused to
allow the Crimean Tatars to settle on their cherished southern coast (known
as the Yaliboyu) and culturally, economically and politically marginalized
the destitute returnees. Most Crimean Tatars have been forced to live in
what can best be described as squatter camps outside the cities of the
Crimea. All Crimean cities are surrounded by distinctive Crimean Tatar
settlements made up of simple rough hewn houses, with corrugated tin roofs
usually lacking running water, often with no electricity and only dirt
roads linking them to the highway (these roads prove impassable in the
winter months). The Crimean Tatar returnees, many of whom overcame the
obstacles against them in Central Asia and became white collar
professionals, cannot find jobs, over 80,000 Crimean Tatars cannot obtain
Ukrainian citizenship due to bureaucratic hurdles placed in their way (one
needs citizenship to get a housing permit, job permit, to use hospitals and
to send one's children to school).
Not surprisingly, the Crimean Tatar repatriates have once again
begun to
use commemorations of 'The Deportation' as a forum for not only keeping the
memory of their nation's national tragedy alive in the minds of new
generations, but for stating their current socio-political grievances.
Every May 18th, a day known as the Kara Gun (Black Day) thousands of
Crimean Tatars from the settlements throughout the Crimea converge on two
simple monuments erected in the early 1990s in the Crimean capital,
Simferopol. Those from the southern Crimea gather at a monument erected on
the banks of the Crimea' s main river, the Salgir (which flows through
Simferopol), while those from the north gather at a monument erected
opposite Simferopol's main train station.
I lived with a Crimean Tatar family in 1997 in a samostroi (self=
built
house) in the settlement of Marino just outside Simferopol and the father
of this household, Nuri Shevkiev, gave the following answer as to why he
takes his family to this commemorative event every year:
Every May 18th when I was a child growing up in Uzbekistan far from the
Crimea my parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles used to tell stories
of the our family losses suffered during the deportation. I know everything
about those who were lost at this time, I know the name of all my father's
friends killed in the deportation. Now that we have returned to the
Crimea and have begun to rebuild our lives there is a danger my boy and
girl will not remember our national tragedy. That they will forget those
who died on the trains or in the special settlements in Uzbekistan. By
taking my children to the monument on May 18th I am reminding them of the
deportation and reminding them of who they are.(13)
This source described the commemorative gatherings of May 18th as the most
important annual event in the year for Crimean Tatars. Prayers are said
for the shehitler (victims) of the deportation, commemorative speeches are
given by top Crimean Tatar political and religious leaders, such as Mustafa
Dzhemilev Kirimoglu, Nadir Bekirov and the Mufti of the Crimea, and at noon
the two groups march from the monuments to the central square in Simferopol
carrying banners, singing traditional Crimean Tatar songs and showing their
unity in the face of the militia which guards the march path. In the
Central square thousands of Crimean Tatars listen to prayers and speeches
demanding more rights for their people. The 50th anniversary of the
deportation on May 18 1994 saw a particularly large turnout as tens of
thousands converged on Simferopol celebrating their new found political
assertiveness.
I visited these simple memorials to a people's suffering and found
these
stone edifices to be powerful in their simplicity. Both are about 6 feet
in height with plaques mounted on them which read in Tatar and Russian "On
this spot a monument will be erected to the victims of the genocide against
the Crimean Tatar people." While visiting one of the memorials, a Crimean
Tatar Red Army veteran pointed out to me that vandals had spray painted
swastikas and anti-Tatar graffiti on this modest memorial. Crimean Tatar
cemeteries in the Crimea are also routinely defaced with Nazi graffiti.
Long after the Soviet Union has ended and World War II has been largely
forgotten by most of Europe, the Crimean Tatars of the late 20th century
continue to be saddled with the stigma of izmeniky rodiny (traitors to the
homeland) by their detractors and those who wish to see them
disenfranchised in their own homeland.
Last years celebration of the deportation turned violent as frustrated
Crimean Tatars clashed with militia troops and demanded citizenship and
governmental assistance to assist in the repatriation of the roughly
180,000 Crimean Tatars still languishing in exile in Central Asia (most
families are divided between the Crimea and Central Asia). This year the
commemoration of the deportation began on April 8th and began with a
commemoration of the April 8 1783 Russian annexation of the Crimean Khanate
by the Russian Empire. Commemorative events will continue right through to
May 18th. Last week for example a march which began in the eastern Crimean
city of Kerch wound its way through the Crimea and called for greater
rights for the Crimean Tatars. The 55th anniversary of the deportation
will also have considerable emotional symbolism for the generation who
remember the actual event are dying off. These living memorials to this
tragedy will soon disappear it will be left to those who grew up on the
stories of the deportation to keep this event alive.
The commemorations of the deportation are not limited to the Crimean
Republic. During the 18th and 19th centuries as many as half a million
Crimean Tatars emigrated from their Russian-dominated homeland to the
Ottoman Empire and today Crimean Tatar activists claim there are 5 million
descendants of these emigrations living in the former Ottoman provinces of
Romania, Bulgaria and, most importantly, Turkey. On past occasions prayers
have been said in Istanbul's Fetih Mehemed Cami (Mohammed the Conqueror
Mosque) for those killed in the deportation, Mustafa Dzhemilev Kirimoglu ,
the 'Nelson Mandela' of the Crimean Tatar people, has met with Turkish
president Suleiman Demirel, and commemorative ceremonies have been held in
Ankara, Eski Shehir and smaller towns with Crimean Tatar-Turk populations.
The small Crimean Tatar enclaves found in the Dobruca region of
Bulgaria and Romania (the coastal strip on the Black Sea of these countries
extending from Constanta to Varna) also commemorate the Kara Gun. As these
small diaspora enclaves become increasingly aware of their Crimean Tatar
identities in the post-Communist setting, this commemoration serves as a
catalyst for rediscovering and transmitting a sense of Crimean Tatarness to
new generations experiencing assimilative trends (there are about 40,000
Crimean Tatars in Romania and only 5,000 left in Bulgaria). The small
Crimean Tatar community of the USA, located mainly in the New York area,
which consists of approximately 5,000 post-World War II forced =E9migr=E9s,
also commemorate the deportation. Leaders of the American Crimean Tatar
community, such as Fikret Yurter and Mubeyyin Batu Altan give speeches,
traditional Crimean Tatar cooking (such as that delightful representative
of Crimean Tatar cuisine, chiborek ) are served, prayers are said and an
effort is made to keep the importance of this day alive for a new
generations of American Crimean Tatars who are feeling the lure of
assimilatory Americanism.
Interestingly enough, the most important monument to the
deportation was
actually built in Long Island New York by Crimean Tatar architect, Fikret
Yurter. This large marble edifice is located in the center of Crimean
Tatar Muslim cemetery in the town of Comack and consists of a 9 foot tall
marker in the shape of the tarak tamgha. The tarak tamgha, originally the
dynastic seal of the Crimean Khans of the Giray lineage, was adopted by
early Crimean Tatar nationalists as the symbol of this people's new found
national identity. It is singularly sad that the largest monument to the
event that saw the Crimean Tatars scattered from their homeland by Stalin
lies not in the Crimea itself but a world away on one of the many shores
this diasporic people have found themselves. While visiting this monument
this winter, the author was told that most of those who were born in the
Crimea have begun to die out and that generation with direct memories of
the Green Isle of the Crimea in America must pass on memories of this
homeland to those who have never seen it.
As the victimized Crimean Tatars commemorate their people's national
tragedy on May 18th this year and use it as an opportunity to gain the
world's attention. it is hoped that the world will not only remember this
people's long history of expulsion, ethnocide and oppression during the
Soviet period, but they will also be aware of the fact that the 'Crimean
Tatar problem' has still not been solved. Half the Crimean Tatar nation
are still living in the pitmegin surgun (the unfinished exile), those who
have returned find themselves in truly stark economic conditions in their
'Zion', and both the Ukrainian authorities and local Crimean Republican
authorities continue to display a shocking lack of concern (one might even
call it antagonism) to the Crimean Tatars' plight in the Crimea.
The world has witnessed the spectacle of the return of a long
suffering
exiled people to their traditional homeland but the struggle for the
Crimean Tatars is far from finished. As Mustafa Dzhemilev Kirimoglu, the
political head of the Crimean Tatar community told the author during a 1997
interview in the Mejlis (Parliament) building in Simferopol "Our people
were forced from their homes once before and for 50 years we have been
discriminated against. While we are a pacifist people, even we have a
breaking point. If we continue to be arrested, attacked by the Crimea
mafia, and discriminated against by the local authorities in our own
homeland we are not going to take it lying down anymore. The fight for
true rehabilitation from Stalin's lie still goes on." As a postscript it
should be mentioned that the office where this interview was held was
bombed by unknown assailants in January of this year. While inter-ethnic
violence has not reared its head on any large scale form in the Crimea, one
has but to look at the topple minarets of Bosnia, the war blackened
villages of Kosovo and the bombed ruins of Grozny Djohar to see examples of
the danger to Muslim communities situated on the always uncertain fault
line between the Islamic and Orthodox worlds.
Five thousand Tatars were brought to Moscow to work in coal mines.
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