Crimean Tatars Return Home: Identity and Cultural Revival

Abstract

Crimean Tatars were deported by Stalin from Crimea to Central Asia in 1944. This paper focuses on the Crimean Tatars’ cultural revival, beginning in 1989 following their mass return to their homeland. We analyse the interaction of the Crimean Tatars with other ethnic groups both in Central Asia during the deportation years and in Crimea following their return to the homeland. In addition, the impact of interaction with other ethnic groups on the Crimean Tatars’ ethnic identity and culture is examined. A constructionist approach is adopted, with special attention given to the role of interaction with different cultures and state policies in shaping ethnic and cultural identities. Emphasising the necessity of distinguishing ethnic and national identities from cultural identity, the authors argue that hybridity, as one of the new concepts aiming to challenge static and essentialist approaches to ethnicity and culture, is useful in explaining cultural content rather than the notion of the ethnic boundary. The paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Crimea in 2001 and 2002, during which 100 in-depth interviews were conducted with Crimean Tatars, Ukrains and Russians.

Keywords:

• Crimean Tatars
• Ethnic Identity
• National Identity
• Cultural Identity
• Cultural Revival
• Hybridity

Notes

1. This term refers to ethnic Ukrainians and not to all citizens of Ukraine.

2. Regarding the number of Crimean Tatar deportees, different figures are given in different sources. Approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars were deported according to the most reliable sources. One figure is 191,088. Out of this figure, 151,604 people were sent to Uzbekistan: 8,577 to Udmurt and Mari Autonomous Regions, and the rest to Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan (quoted in Williams 1998: 295). It was also reported that half of the deportees died either during or soon after the deportation. For more details see Marie (1995: 93–105).

3. The link between ethnic and national identities is much closer in the Soviet context compared with the modernist literature on ethnicity and nationalism in the West. In the Soviet Union nation and nationalism were defined in ethnic terms. The terms nation and nationality referred to ethnic belongingness and not to a relationship with a state, meaning citizenship. In other words, ethnic community, or ethnos as used in Russian ethnography, can be said to refer to nation, nationality and tribe (Bromley 1974: 55–7). This conceptual clarification is useful for avoiding different understandings of the same concepts due to different cultural and ideological backgrounds (Shanin 1986). It is also essential for understanding the close and complex link between ethnic identity and national identity in the case of Soviet and post-Soviet communities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ismail Aydingün

Ismail Aydingün is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Başkent University, Bağlica Kampusu Eskişehir Yolu 20. km 06530, Ankara, Turkey

Ayşegül Aydingün

Ayşegül Aydingün is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Middle East Technical University, Inönü Bulvari 06531, Ankara, Turkey