Country: Russia
Group: Tatar
Date Finalized: 02/19/2022
Team: Jihui Kuang (lead), Natasha Chandra, Katherine Edwards
Content warning : Genocide, Violence，Unlawful imprisonment
Approximate Time Period: 1944 – present
The Tatar community that resides in Russia is the largest minority in the Russian Federation (Minority Rights Group International, 2020). The majority of the Tatar live in the Republic of Tatarstan and speak the Tatar language (Minority Rights Group International, 2020). In the 17th century, Russia gained enormous power throughout Eastern Europe, and as that power expanded, Russia began to invade Crimea. Soon, the Soviet government expelled all Tatars from Crimea (Kireçci & Tezcan, 2016). In 1944, the Soviet government’s mass deportation of Crimean Tatars culminated in a crackdown that left nearly half of the Tatar population dead and the survivors in prolonged exile elsewhere (Kireçci & Tezcan, 2016). The Soviet government used a highly organized method to quickly expel the Tatars from Crimea. The operation involved 23,000 police and 9,000 soldiers. The Tatars were given only 20 minutes to pack their luggage, which could not weigh more than 500 kilograms (Pohl, 2000). On November 14, 1989, the Soviet government issued the “On Recognizing the Illegal and Criminal Repressive Acts against Peoples Subjected to Forcible Resettlement and Ensuring their Rights.” These include the Tatars people (Pohl, 2000). However, the brutality of the Russian authorities against Tatar continues to this day. In 2014, Kremlin forces illegally seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, which caused Moscow to begin rapidly moving 100,000 Russians to the territory (Atlantic Council, 2020). Moscow instituted discriminatory laws that targeted Muslim Tatars and displaced 50,000 Tatars in Ukraine (Atlantic Council, 2020).
Data Quality： Data quality for the Tatar community being forced away by Russia is rated a 3/3 due to the strong amount of evidence gathered from both nonprofit organizations and peer-reviewed research.
Sources
- Atlantic Council. (2020). How Crimea’s Tatars are fighting occupation and displacement. Retrieved February 6, 2022 from https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/event/how-crimeas-tatars-are-fighting-occupation-and-displacement/.
- Kireçci, M. A., & Tezcan, S. (2016). The Predicament of the Crimean Tatars, past and present. Bilig, 77, 1–26.
- Minority Rights Group. (2020). Tatars. Retrieved 6, February 2022, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/tatars-3/.
- Pohl, J. O. (n.d.). The Deportation and Fate of the Crimean Tatars. 20.