Deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the context of Dardanelles

Crimea (/kraɪˈmiːə/ kry-MEE-ə) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukraine. To the east, the Crimean Bridge, constructed in 2018, spans the Strait of Kerch, linking the peninsula with Krasnodar Krai in Russia. The Arabat Spit, located to the northeast, is a narrow strip of land that separates the Syvash lagoons from the Sea of Azov. Across the Black Sea to the west lies Romania and to the south is Turkey. The population is 2.4 million, and the largest city is Sevastopol. The region, internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian occupation since 2014.

Called the Tauric Peninsula until the early modern period, Crimea has historically been at the boundary between the classical world and the steppe. Greeks colonised its southern fringe and were absorbed by the Roman and Byzantine Empires and successor states while remaining culturally Greek. Some cities became trading colonies of Genoa, until conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Throughout this time the interior was occupied by a changing cast of steppe nomads, coming under the control of the Golden Horde in the 13th century from which the Crimean Khanate emerged as a successor state. In the 15th century, the Khanate became a dependency of the Ottoman Empire. Lands controlled by Russia and Poland-Lithuania were often the target of slave raids during this period. In 1783, after the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), the Russian Empire annexed Crimea. Crimea's strategic position led to the 1854 Crimean War and many short lived regimes following the 1917 Russian Revolution. When the Bolsheviks secured Crimea, it became an autonomous soviet republic within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. It was occupied by Germany during World War II. When the Soviets retook it in 1944, Crimean Tatars were ethnically cleansed and deported under the orders of Joseph Stalin, in what has been described as a cultural genocide. Crimea was downgraded to an oblast in 1945. In 1954, the USSR transferred the oblast to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Treaty in 1654.

Crimean Tatar (qırımtatar tili, къырымтатар тили, قریم تاتار تلی), also called Crimean (qırım tili, къырым тили, قریم تلی), is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea and the Crimean Tatar diasporas of Uzbekistan, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria, as well as small communities in the United States and Canada. It should not be confused with Tatar, spoken in Tatarstan and adjacent regions in Russia; Crimean Tatar has been extensively influenced by nearby Oghuz languages and is mutually intelligible with them to varying degrees.

A long-term ban on the study of the Crimean Tatar language following the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet government has led to the fact that at the moment UNESCO ranks the Crimean Tatar language among the languages under serious threat of extinction (severely endangered). However, according to the Institute of Oriental Studies, due to negative situations, the real degree of the threat has elevated to critically endangered in recent years, which are highly likely to face extinction in the coming generations.

The de-Tatarization of Crimea (Crimean Tatar: Qırımnıñ tatarsızlaştırıluvı; Russian: Детатаризация Крыма, romanized: Detatarizatsiya Kryma; Ukrainian: Детатаризація Криму, romanized: Detataryzatsiya Krymu) was initiated by the Russian Empire and perpetuated by the Soviet Union. Following the Russian Empire's annexation of the Crimean Khanate in 1783, a variety of legal and practical measures were implemented to subjugate the indigenous Crimean Tatars, who are a Turkic ethnic group. This process of "de-Tatarization" manifested in many ways throughout Crimea, intensifying significantly during the Soviet Union's Stalinist era: the Crimean Tatar language was suppressed and supplanted by the Russian language, especially by renaming Crimean toponyms; the government settled Russians and other Slavs in the region and promoted Tatarophobia amongst them, such as by describing Crimean Tatars as traitorous "Mongols" with no authentic connection to the peninsula; and, ultimately, as many as nearly half a million Crimean Tatars were deported in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. During 1783–1917, nearly 4 million Muslims were forced to emigrate from Crimea, primarily to the Ottoman Empire. Prior to 1783, Crimean Tatars made up 95% of the Crimean population.

Massive renaming of Crimean toponyms by the Soviet government took place during the conversion of the Crimean ASSR into the Crimean Oblast, in four waves (in 1944, 1945, 1948, and 1949). Renaming occurred after the deportation in 1944 of Crimean Tatars and other non-Slavic peoples living in Crimea. The old names were mostly of Crimean Tatar origin, while the new ones were Russian. As a result of the renaming, over 1300 settlements in Crimea received new names (over 90% of the peninsula's settlements). A large part of the villages disappeared in the following decades. After 1990, three settlements returned to their historical names (Koktebel, Partenit, and Sarybash). The renaming is one aspect of de-Tatarization of Crimea.

In 1944, raions (districts) and raion centers of Crimea were renamed; in 1945, village councils and their centers; and in 1948 and 1949, the majority of settlements. This list includes only settlements (i.e., it does not list the renamed districts and village councils). Settlements are divided by districts of the Crimean ASSR with their names before the renaming in the 1940s.

Amet-khan Sultan (Crimean Tatar: Amet-Han Sultan, Амет-Хан Султан, احمدخان سلطان; Ukrainian/Russian: Амет-Хан Султан; 20 October 1920 – 1 February 1971) was a highly decorated Crimean Tatar flying ace in the Soviet Air Force with 30 personal and 19 shared kills who was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Despite having been able to avoid deportation to Uzbekistan when the entire Crimean Tatar nation was repressed in 1944 due to his father's Lak background, he refused to change his passport nationality listing to Lak or identify as one throughout his entire life despite pressure from government organs. After the end of the war, he worked as a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky and mastered piloting 96 different aircraft types before he was killed in a crash while testing a new engine on a modified Tupolev Tu-16 bomber. He remains memorialized throughout Ukraine and Russia, with streets, schools, and airports named after him as well as a museum dedicated to his memory.

Soviet leaders and authorities officially condemned nationalism and proclaimed internationalism and anti-nationalism, including the right of nations and peoples to self-determination. Soviet internationalism during the era of the USSR and within its borders meant diversity or multiculturalism. This is because the USSR used the term "nation" to refer to ethnic or national communities and or ethnic groups. The Soviet Union claimed to be supportive of self-determination and rights of many minorities and colonized peoples. However, it significantly marginalized people of certain ethnic groups designated as "enemies of the people", pushed their assimilation, and promoted chauvinistic Russian nationalistic and settler-colonialist activities in their lands. Whereas Vladimir Lenin had supported and implemented policies of korenizatsiia (integration of non-Russian nationalities into the governments of their specific Soviet republics), Joseph Stalin reversed much of the previous policies, signing off on orders to deport and exile multiple ethnic-linguistic groups brandished as "traitors to the Fatherland", including the Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Kalmyks, Koreans and Meskhetian Turks, with those who survived the collective deportation to Siberia or Central Asia legally designated "special settlers", meaning that they were officially second-class citizens with few rights and were confined within small perimeters.

After the death of Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev criticized the deportations based on ethnicity in a secret section of his report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, describing them as "rude violations of the basic Leninist principles of the nationality policy of the Soviet state". Soon thereafter, in the mid- to late 1950s, some deported peoples were fully rehabilitated, having been allowed the full right of return, and their national republics were restored — except for the Koreans, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks, who were not granted the right of return and were instead forced to stay in Central Asia. The government subsequently took a variety of measures to prevent such deported peoples from returning to their native villages, ranging from denying residence permits to people of certain ethnic groups in specific areas, referring to people by incorrect ethnonyms to minimize ties to their homeland (ex, "Tatars that formerly resided in Crimea" instead of "Crimean Tatars"), arresting protesters for requesting the right of return and spreading racist propaganda demonizing ethnic minorities.