THE CRIMEAN CONFLICTING KNOT: COLONIAL DIMENSIONS

Abstract

The article is devoted to outlining and exploring a number of important stories of the history and present situation of the Crimea. The author turns to the study of Russian colonial policy on the peninsula. This policy resulted in the annihilation of the Crimean Tatar people and the deliberate settlement of Crimea by specific categories of population from "mainland" Russia, and subsequently - from Soviet Ukraine. The colonial pressure of the tsarist authorities was changed after 1917 for a short period with the assertion of Crimean Tatar national communism as a modernizing anti-colonial movement. However, from the second half of the 1930s, colonial policy on the peninsula resumed, and in 1944 it became embodied in the forced deportation of indigenous peoples, especially the Crimean Tatars. Up until the second half of the 1980s, the Kremlin tried not to allow the Crimean Tatars to return to their historical homeland at all. Only at the time of perestroika the authorities of the USSR agreed to allow such a return, but simultaneously tried to dispense it in every possible way. At the same time, the Kremlin launched a special operation aimed at removing Crimea from Ukrainian jurisdiction and securing its status as a Russian colony. Also this attempt failed because of the collapse of the USSR, but the goal remained unchanged; Russia's annexation of Crimea was carried out in 2014. The author analyzes the reasons that enable the Russian propaganda to influence a large part of the Crimean population effectively. The article illustrates the ineffective policy of official Kyiv to minimize the effects of Russian colonialism on the Crimean Peninsula in 1991-2014. The article also examines the newest stage of colonization of Crimea by Russia, which began in 2014. The author concludes that in recent years, new conflicting factors on the Crimean peninsula have been added to the traditional ones, and they all require further special studies.