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The past and present life of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is currently the only autonomous republic in Ukraine, located in Crimea. The Mia Peninsula covers an area of ??26,100 square kilometers and has a population of more than 2 million. The name of Crimea comes from the Tatar word "Crime". The Tatars established the Crimean Khanate here, which has existed for more than 700 years. However, today, the Tatar population only accounts for 12% of Crimea, and nearly 60% of the population are Russians who immigrated in modern times.

The Tatars are the main ethnic group of the Kipchak Khanate (Golden Horde), one of the four great khanates of Mongolia. They were originally a general name for the Mongolian nation in the West. When Genghis Khan's eldest son Shuchi established the Kipchak Khanate, it only had 4,000 households of Mongolian soldiers. After integrating the Turkic-speaking ethnic groups such as the Asov (Alan) people and the Kipchak (Kangju) people who accounted for the majority in the area, Eastern Europe was gradually formed. The Tatar nation of the region.

In the 15th century, the Golden Horde began to disintegrate and split into multiple khanates. Among them, Haji Gelay, a descendant of Jochi, established the Crimean Khanate. The khanate once dominated the southern Russian grasslands on the north coast of the Black Sea and regarded itself as the heir of the Golden Horde. Both Ukraine and Russia were frequently invaded by the Crimean Khanate.

However, the backward nomadic countries were eventually defeated by the gradually civilizing Russian Empire. At almost the same time as the overseas colonial expansion of early colonial empires such as Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which accepted the Orthodox Christian crown as the tsar, was officially called the Russian Empire. It also began its overseas colonial expansion. Unlike Western European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which occupied overseas colonies What is surprising is that Tsarist Russia’s colonial expansion targets mainly its neighboring countries. In 1777, the Crimean Khanate became a vassal of Russia and was officially annexed in 1783. However, the Tatars in Crimea did not willingly accept Russian rule. Instead, they continued to set off resistance movements, which the Russians brutally suppressed. At the same time, the resistance movement continued to organize immigrants to firmly control the newly conquered areas. A large number of Russians continued to move into Crimea, and promoted Russian language and Orthodox Christianity, striving to eliminate the history and culture of the Tatars and "carry out" the Tatars. assimilation". Since then, Crimea has become a province of Russia. Its strategic position is very important, which directly affects Russia's control of the Black Sea region. The famous Crimean War broke out from 1854 to 1856. During World War II, bloody battles broke out on the Crimean Peninsula many times, including the Battle of Kerch and the Battle of Sevastopol.

In 1921, the Crimean Tatar Autonomous Socialist Republic was proclaimed and belonged to the Russian Federation. At this time, although the number of Russians was very large, the main ethnic group in Crimea was still Tatars. However, after 1944, Stalin forced all Crimean Tatars to immigrate to Central Asia on the grounds that many Crimean Tatars cooperated with Germany, and the Tatar Autonomous Socialist Republic was also renamed As a result, a large number of ethnic Russians moved into Crimea, and the demographic structure and ethnic distribution of Crimea underwent fundamental changes. Hundreds of thousands of Tatars were displaced, and it is said that 46% died of starvation or disease in exile before being allowed to return to their homeland decades later. In 1954, in order to strengthen the Soviet Union's control over the centrifugal Ukraine, Khrushchev used the 300th anniversary of the "alliance" between Ukraine and Russia to add Crimea, where the majority of the Russian population was, to Ukraine. Due to the system and structure of the Soviet Union at the time, Due to the special status of the Russian ethnic group in the Soviet Union, this move did not cause disputes at the time. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian Parliament unilaterally passed a resolution calling for the abolition of the 1954 Soviet resolution that added Crimea to Ukraine and the "return" of Crimea to Russia. This was rejected by the Ukrainian government. In the end, Russia, Ukraine, and Croatia The three parties reached a compromise by establishing an internally autonomous Crimean Autonomous Republic and maintaining Russia's garrison at the Sevastopol naval base on the Black Sea.

Later, the Tatars began a return movement. This return process has continued after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but the current population is still only more than 200,000. According to the 2001 Ukrainian census, the total population of Crimea was 2,033,700. The ethnic composition of the entire population is: Russians 58.32%, Ukrainians 24.32%, Crimean Tatars 12.10%, Belarusians 1.44%, Tatars 0.54%, Armenians 0.43%, Jews 0.22%, Italians 0.015 %.

There are strong calls for Crimea to "return" from Ukraine to Russia, but most Tatars firmly oppose it. However, because they are in a minority, their voices cannot play a decisive role