THE ROLE OF THE TSARIST GOVERNMENT
IN THE CRIMEAN TATAR EMIGRATION*
Amet Ozenbashli
Ozenbashli was a doctor, a publicist, and a public figure.
He was born in the family of writer-educator S.A. Ozenbashli. He graduated with honors from Simferopol gymnasium, and in 1915 entered the department of medicine of Novorossyisk University in Odessa. In early 1917 he as was elected chairman of the Joint Committee of the Novorossyisk Students.
After the victory of February Revolution he returned to Crimea and was elected member of the Temporary Crimean Muslim Executive Committee. As a member of the Crimean delegation he took part in the all-Russian Muslim Congress in Moscow and the all-Russian Congress of Peoples in Kyiv.
A. Ozenbashli was one of the organizers of the first Kurultay of the Crimean Tatar people. During the Civil War he was the editor of newspaper “Millet” (Nation) and the head of the Department of National Education of the Directoria Government. He was one of the key leaders of the Milli Firka party (National Party).
In 1924-1927 he was a deputy of the National Commissar of Finances of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Social Republic.
In 1928 he was arrested and incarcerated in Butyrskaia prison. The charges against him were for the involvement in the “counter-revolutionary nationalist party Milli Firka.” He was sentenced to death by 17 December 1928 OGPU Resolution. Latter the verdict was reconsidered and changed to 10 years of hard labor in “reformatory labor camps.” He was prohibited to live in Crimea after release.
In 1947 he was arrested again and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment. In 1992 the mortal remains of A. Ozenbashli were reburied in Bakhchisarai on territory of the madrasah Zindzhirli.
I wouldn’t be mistaken to say that almost all pre-revolutionary authors, irrespective of their sociopolitical views, have for some reason avoided the question of the Tsarist government’s role in the emigration of the Crimean Tatars, the event which has been correctly termed by S.A. Usov1 as “a real tragedy for that people.”
Even leaving aside articles and essays that have purposefully avoided the discussion of the real reasons behind this tragedy and have instead hid behind the imagined fanaticism of the Crimean Tatars and their gravitation to the religiously kin Turkey, such authors as Kondaraki, Bezhe, the lieutenant-general Levitskii and others who have vividly described separate episodes of the drawn out process of the “liberation of Crimea from harmful population” (this is how the Crimean Tatar people were described to the emperor Alexander II) have also seemingly tried to turn the attention of the reader away from this quite delicate issue, so that not to attract suspicions and enmity of the contemporary plutocracy.
That is to say, all pre-revolutionary authors who touched upon the history of the Crimean Tatar emigration have just tip toed around the main question. The question is how has the tsarist government orchestrated this mass population movement. As a result of this migration in 100 years (1783 to 1917) the number of Crimean Tatars residing in the foothills of the Crimean mountains declined from four million to just 150,000. Four million Crimean Tatars were known to have lived in the Crimean Khanate seven years before its incorporation in the former Russian empire, according to Baron Tott2, the ambassador of France at the court of Krim-Girey in 1776. Describing Krim-Girey’s campaign preparation, Tott states: “to assemble the army of 200,000 horsemen, Krim-Girey demanded one horseman from four families. Thus, assuming that each family consisted of four persons3, as was commonly assumed, the population of the Crimean Khanate constituted 3,2 million persons.”
An objective approach to this period sheds light on the underlying reasons of the 1783-1902 emigration and reveals the true aims of the merciless Russian imperialistic policies that victimized the Crimean Tatar people.
The aim of this essay is to trace the role of the tsarist government in the emigration of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea.
In a famous letter to Count Kakhovskii, Prince Potemkin, the uncrowned ruler of Russia under the reign of Catherine II, prescribed an amicable treatment of the natives in the newly annexed region “who didn't know either the language or the customs of Russia..” However, the first wave of the Crimean Tatar emigration (1784 -1800s) was already quite large (roughly 350,000 to 500,000 persons), and took place with the tacit approval of the same favored ruler, as is evident from a copy of Potemkin’s secret note cited below:
“Run them out of Belbek, Kacha, Suvash, Sudak, Uskut, Staryi Krym and out of the mountains. Do not let any of those from the plains leave. Let the murzas decide for themselves. Expel in 24 hours everyone from the registry of those departing.” Baron Igelstrom4.
Such cleansing of the “newly annexed region” from the alien element - the Tatars - was in accordance with the hopes of the government and of Potemkin himself, who were preoccupied with the then-famous “Greek project.” The aim of the project was to restore along the entire coast of the Black Sea the former Byzantine Empire, headed by the monarch of the Russian imperial house. The cleansings were also advantageous for Russia at the time of Catherine II and Potemkin - the time of economic heyday led the country to annex new regions. One could perhaps, upon objective analysis, somehow justify such actions by the Russian conquerors since the defeated enemy (the Crimean Tatar people) constituted an entity capable of resistance at a moment’s notice - they have lots their independence but not numerousness, and were close to Turkey which was hostile to Russia. If under these circumstances the policy of diluting and reducing the population of the Crimean Tatar Khanate could seem somewhat justified from the point of view of the rulers of Russia of the time, the subsequent expulsion policies that produced additional waves of Tatar emigration are totally incomprehensible. As Kosogovskii, former director of the Executive Directorate of the Police, has later testified, by the time when the tsarist government, with barely noticeable Jesuitism and employing refined methods of its imperial-colonial state apparatus, zealously continued the policy of supplanting the indigenous people from their homeland, Crimea was already deprived of more than two thirds of the Crimean Tatar population.
The indicated systematic uprooting reached its apogee during the Sevastopol campaign. We will not dwell on the well- known facts such as the issuance of 26,956 passports by the government to 192,360 Crimean Tatar emigrants of both genders in 1860-1862; devastation of 87 Crimean Tatar villages, according to Verner; and the killing by the Cossacks firing squads of innocent Crimean Tatar villagers, supposedly for attempting to join the enemy (see Kondoraki, Levitskii and others). We will only say that it would be too naive to attribute such mass flight to the Tatars’ sympathies or antipathies. Prince Vasilchikov was detached from Saint Peterburg to Crimea to study this issue on site and was instructed to corrected such misbehaviors once and for all. He pointed out a number of administrative and economic reasons that have prompted Crimean Tatars to take such drastic steps. In his opinion, religious and moral reasons to which the Crimean Tatar emigration was commonly attributed, have been the least important.
It would seem that the government could have easily removed these underlying reasons in order to assuage the hotheaded and to stop the annihilation of an entire people. However, this did not happen. On the contrary, the government looked at everything that was happening as a “positive” course of events, suitable to the implementation of it’s colonial ambitions, as is exemplified in the secret document cited below: “Copy. Confidential. Your Excellency, Dear sir, Baron Alexander Grigoryevich. In reply to Your Excellency’s letter dated 29 September, I have the honor to inform You that at the meeting of the Committee on the Settlement of the Crimea, which was held in my house on 20 August, which I chaired, the Councilor in charge of State Affairs, Gerngross, explained the aims of his mission, stating in passing that for “his Highness the Emperor, his is indisposed to support the Tatars, and His Excellency views the deportation favorably in light of the fact that they are not able to farm the land, while improved farming in Crimea is very desirable. Your obedient servant Grigorii Zhukovskii. 2.10.1860.” (From the Archive of Novorosiysk Governor General, 1860, #138).
At this time we will not focus on the question to what extent the conclusion that the Crimean Tatars are incapable of farming was grounded in reality. The argument, by the way, brings to mind the Krylov fable “The Wolf and the Lamb.” Instead, we would bring to the attention of the reader another quotation from the document of the aforementioned Director of the Executive Directorate of the Police, Kasagovskii, which he submitted on September 8, 1875, on the matter of emigration of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea: “Each of these emigrations not only occurred with the full knowledge of the government, but was also encouraged by the government. The course of events shows that each time the government demanded to halt emigration, it has significantly slowed down, if not halted at once. This is what happened in 1784, following General Igelstrom’s orders, albeit misguided, in 1804 following the decree of General Rozenberg, and in 1861 following the mission of prince Vasilchikov. It is hard to imagine that this occurred simply as a result of the Tatars’ obedience. Such behavior could be more accurately attributed to human instincts. In the period of the first two emigrations from Crimea (1784-1786 and 1804-1805) there were still so many Crimean Tatars remaining that their ouster, even to the religiously kin countries such as Turkey, could not have been attractive to families in particular. The people could have taken decisive actions only when encouraged by an enthusiastic leader. However, it is well-known that there was no such leader, and emigrations, despite their significant magnitude, haven’t yet taken on a national scale. The Tatars were leaving different regions of the peninsula, but only to the extent that the government permitted it.”
Probably the real circumstances surrounding the issued discussed were so egregious, and the facts which condemned the government's manipulation of the Tatars were so glaring, that even the director of police, when unexpectedly forced to face reality of inhumane treatment of the entire peoples, had to cry out with a humanitarian voice, if only for one instance.
* Zabveniyu ne podlezhit. Iz istorii krymskotatarsoi gosudarstvennosti Kryma (Not to be forgotten. From the history of the Crimean Tatar statehood in Crimea). Kazan: Tatar publishing house, 1992, p. 69-72.
1 Usov S.A.. Istoriko-ekonomicheskie ocherki Kryma (Historic-economic reports on Crimea), 1925
2 Tatarchevskyi A. Puteshestvie I deiatelnost barona Totta v kachestve konsula v Krymu v 1767 godu. (Travels and activities of baron Tott as a Consul in Crimea in 1767).
3 Taking into account widespread polygamy among Tatars in that period, the size of each family, and therefore the Crimean population, is likely to be larger.
4 The orthography of the original 1787 document from Tavricheskyi province archive No. 25 is maintained.
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