Communism created a welfare-dependent mentality among many of its subjects, who expected the state to
give them everything. Tatars, though, having been screwed repeatedly by the state, ended up far better
prepared for the end of communism. When they returned to Crimea, there was no land for them, so they
squatted and built houses themselves. While early iterations of those settlements were flimsy and muddy,
today they have been rebuilt into honest-to-goodness suburbs. In the early 1990s, racism kept Tatars from
getting state jobs, so they started small businesses, like Simferopol's now-ubiquitous private bus system.
Crimean Tatars have become politically active, too. In 1991, they formed an informal but influential
representative body, the Mejlis, and a handful of Crimean Tatar representatives serve in the local and
national parliaments.
From the beginning of their return from exile, the Tatars have taken the side of Ukraine in any
Moscow-Kiev rift. Tatars proudly point out the key role they played in keeping Crimea part of Ukraine in
the early years: During the 1991 referendum on independence, every part of Ukraine voted to break with
the Soviet Union. But in Crimea, the pro-independence vote was just barely 52 percent. Crimean Tatars,
who voted overwhelmingly for independence, provided the crucial margin of victory. In the two decades
since then, the Mejlis has given strong and vocal support to Kiev.
Centuries of bad experiences with Russia have convinced the Tatars that they are better off with Ukraine
than with Russia, said Refat Chubarov, the deputy leader of the Mejlis and one of two Crimean Tatars in
the Ukrainian parliament. "Ukrainians don't have any imperial ambition," he said. What's more, Ukrainians
and Tatars share a bond from being on the wrong side of Russian imperial ambition: "Many unfortunate
parts of our history come from Moscow, and it's the same with Ukraine," he said.
In an especially ghoulish coda to the deportation of the Tatars, Soviet tourists—a million a year—streamed
to Bakhchisaray to visit the Khan's Palace in a town that had been repopulated with Slavic residents. Part
of the reason it was such an attraction was Russians' passion for literature: Pushkin wrote a much-loved
poem—"The Bakhchisaray Fountain"—about the palace, and it's likely that the place only survived the
fate of most other Crimean Tatar monuments because of the poem. Tatars say that Stalin even wanted to
change the name of the town to Pushkin but decided he couldn't because everyone knew Bakhchisaray
from the poem's title.
It's unlikely that many of the tourists who visited were aware that the Tatars whose exotic history they
were discovering still existed in real life, albeit 2,000 miles to the east in Uzbekistan. "The tours were
really ideologically oriented—they barely mentioned the Crimean Tatars, and if they did, it was only
negative—that we didn't accomplish anything," said a Tatar museum official who showed me around but
who didn't want me to use his name. Tours of the palace emphasized the fact that Russian slaves built it.
They also emphasized tawdrier aspects of the palace, like the harem. "In the Russian mind, Crimean Tatars
are bandits—they say we steal land, even though it was them who stole our land," he said.
The number of tourists is down these days—the only other visitors when I was there were some teenagers
drinking beer in the palace gardens—but the population of Bakhchisaray has doubled since the Tatars
returned from exile, and they now make up half of the people living here. The city is hemmed in by
limestone cliffs, but returning Tatars built a sprawling settlement above the city. The current mayor is a
Crimean Tatar, and the settlement has paved roads, new shops, and Internet cafes. Near the palace, a
medieval madrassah—one of the oldest in Europe—is being restored with aid from the Turkish
government.
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But as Crimean Tatars get more settled, their support for Kiev is waning. While the leaders of the Mejlis
remain firmly in Kiev's camp, some younger Tatar leaders are beginning to question what, exactly, they've
gotten for supporting Ukraine. I met Nadir Bekirov, a Crimean Tatar activist at a Simferopol restaurant
ironically called "Nostalgia," a Soviet-themed place decorated with busts of Lenin and Stalin.
While Crimean Tatars have loyally supported Ukraine, Ukraine hasn't done much to support the Tatars, he
said. There was a gentleman's agreement between Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in the early days of
independence: that Tatars would support Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for later attention. "They told
us, 'Wait, we are weak, our first task is to establish independence and establish ourselves in the
international arena, and then we will get to your problems and your rights.' "
But the Ukrainian state is established now, and Kiev is still dragging its feet on the issues most important to
Crimean Tatars, like land rights, language rights, and education. Especially worrying, he said, is the growth
in Ukrainian nationalism under the new post-Orange Revolution government. While Ukrainians used to
treat Crimean Tatars as partners—at least rhetorically—the language has recently become less inclusive.
Bekirov quoted a 2007 speech by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko: "Ukraine is one nation, one
people, one language, one religion." "What are we supposed to think after that?" Bekirov asked.
While most comparisons of Ukraine and Georgia focus on Russian interference in both countries, Bekirov
pointed out a crucial mistake that both Georgia and Ukraine have made: mistreating their minorities. One
of the first acts of the independent Georgian state in the early 1990s was to revoke the autonomous status
that Abkhazia and South Ossetia had enjoyed; Georgian nationalism helped drive Abkhazia and South
Ossetia into the arms of Russia. Ukraine is doing the same with the Crimean Tatars, he said.
Western countries, including the United States, share in the blame for Ukraine's neglect of the Tatars,
Bekirov said. While Western officials working on EU or NATO membership do pay attention to the way
Ukraine treats its minorities, they tend to get their information from Mejlis officials, who are too cozy with
Kiev and don't represent the will of most Crimean Tatars, he said. "[Mejlis officials] always say 'Yes, we
have problems, but the government is good and they will solve our problems.' But they haven't."
"Step by step, a big majority of Crimean Tatars are turning against the Mejlis and against Ukraine,"
Bekirov said. "But when I say we are turning against Ukraine, I don't mean we're going to rebel or support
any military activities. We're just going to become outsiders, observers. This is dangerous for Ukraine to
lose their allies, but we're not going to be the tools of the Ukrainian state anymore."
It's not clear how this will play out if the conflict between Ukraine and Russia heats up over Crimea, but
with Russians forming a majority in the region and many Ukrainians holding pro-Russia sympathies, Kiev
needs all the allies it can get here. The museum official told me he's not sure which side he's on anymore.
"I don't know what's better for us—Russia discriminates against us and wants to assimilate us. But on the
other hand, Kiev talks about our rights but doesn't take any action," he said. "So I don't know what's
worse—Russian chauvinism, which is very old, and Ukrainian chauvinism, which is new."
From: Joshua Kucera
Subject: Can a Russian Naval Base Remain in a Ukrainian City?
Posted Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009, at 6:45 AM ET
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine—"See the ships of the Black Sea fleet," the tout shouted through the megaphone.
"Submarines!" So I paid $10 for the boat tour around the port of Sevastopol, the most storied city in
Russian naval history, which is still host to a Russian navy base 18 years after becoming part of an
independent Ukraine. Setting off, we puttered past several Russian military ships, curiosities like "Hitler's
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8 of 12 3/1/2009 11:15 AM
yacht" (apparently recently purchased by an Italian entrepreneur to be turned into a museum) and, yes, a
submarine. We came to the Moskva, a guided-missile cruiser that is the flagship of the Black Sea fleet and
saw action off the coast of Georgia in the summer of 2008. "This is the most beautiful ship in the Black
Sea fleet," the tour guide said. "It was renovated by funds from the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov." If
anyone else seemed to think it remarkable that the renovation of a battleship would be funded by a mayor,
especially the mayor of a foreign city 800 miles away, they didn't mention it.
But the connection between Russian politics and the Black Sea fleet is understood by everyone here. The
fleet's presence in Sevastopol has become the single most contentious issue in the Russian-Ukrainian
dispute over Crimea. Russian nationalist politicians have made Sevastopol's status a cause célèbre, and
Mayor Luzhkov has made frequent visits to Sevastopol, giving speeches that argue it is a "Russian city"
and claim that a loophole in the 1954 agreement transferring Crimea from Russia to Ukraine excepted
Sevastopol. He has funded housing for Russian sailors, Russian Orthodox churches, and the establishment
of a branch of Moscow State University in Sevastopol.