For those residents of Ukraine who are little familiar with the history of Crimea, the tragedy and lawlessness of this event require explanation.
A significant part of the representatives of the peoples was deported to remote areas of Central Asia and Siberia. Also, according to official Soviet data alone, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars were scattered in various regions of the RSFSR: Mari ASSR (now the Republic of Mari El, Russian Federation) - 8.3 thousand people, Molotov Oblast (now Perm Krai) - over 10 thousand, Gorky Oblast (now Nizhny Novgorod Oblast) - 5.5 thousand, Sverdlovsk Oblast - 3.8 thousand, Ivanovo Oblast - 2.7 thousand, Yaroslavl Oblast - over 1 thousand people. - historical background.
This is a continuation of the story, which actually began 235 years ago, when the Crimean Khanate was liquidated, and Catherine II voiced the ideology of the Russian Empire: Crimea without Crimean Tatars. Stalin decided this issue in a cardinal way. As a result, almost half of our people died.
Planning for deportation began even before the Nazis were expelled from Crimea. Thus, on April 22, in a report addressed to Lavrentiy Beria, the Crimean Tatars were accused of mass desertion from the ranks of the Red Army. Despite the fact that representatives of the Crimean Tatar people fought in the ranks of the Red Army and took an active part in the partisan movement.
The Crimean Tatars who fought in units of the Red Army were also deported after demobilization. The accusations against the deported peoples of the USSR were debunked by the KGB of the USSR itself during perestroika.
On May 11, 1944, a top-secret resolution of the State Defense Committee No. 5859ss “On the Crimean Tatars” was adopted. It cited previous claims against the Crimean Tatar population - supposedly mass treason and mass collaborationism, which served as justification for the deportation. In fact, there was no evidence of “mass desertion” of the Crimean Tatars, and the absolute majority of collaborators died in battle or were convicted individually.
Before the operation began on May 18, 1944, the NKVD troops worked out everything in detail. Machine guns were placed in advance near the villages, which were supposed to stop people who tried to escape. People were herded like cattle and thrown into cattle cars. 32 thousand NKVD employees were involved in the operation.
It is impossible to estimate the scale of the losses suffered by the Crimean Tatar people as a result of the development on their native land interrupted for a decade. Numerous repressions and persecutions were endured by the Crimean Tatars during the half-century struggle to restore their rights and return to their homeland. Tens of thousands of dead, lost people, broken destinies, hundreds of thousands of unborn.
“Since 1989, the mass return of the Crimean Tatars to their homeland began, while the Soviet authorities did not help their return in any way, did not provide compensation for the lands they lost. The Russian Federation, as the successor state of the USSR, also did not compensate the deportees for their lost property and did not hold trials against those responsible for or involved in the forced resettlement.
On November 12, 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine recognized the deportation as genocide and declared May 18 the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People. On May 9, 2019, Latvia, on June 6, 2019, Lithuania, and on June 10, 2019, Canada recognized the deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide.
"With such decisions, we not only pay a moral debt to those generations who lived in those times, who were killed. True, we have to some extent commemorated the memory of hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars. The most important thing is that, by making such decisions, we realized that we must prevent the recurrence of such catastrophes. Another point - we are really uniting in the mental understanding of our history and immediately determining our future in the European family of peoples," the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people noted.
We will never forget the victims of deportation. Everyone involved in those tragic events must stand trial. Long live Ukraine, long live Crimea, long live the Crimean Tatar people.
Refat Chubarov, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People.
