A TICKET TO THE CRIMEA

I remember well how the Crimean Tatars rallied in what was then the capital of the Union at the start of Gorbachev’s perestroika. There were not as many politically courageous then as now, perhaps because the risks were higher. Using a popular Central Television clichО, “Moscow residents and guests to the capital” were surprised to watch people marching with posters reading they wanted to live in a resort area. Andrei Gromyko and other geriatric Party and government dignitaries ordered how the demonstrators were to be handled and signed decrees paraphrasing or even directly quoting Stalin. At the time we could smile sardonically watching yet another Soviet farce unfold on our TV screens, in the course of which people were once again denied their right to live in the land of their forefathers in order to spare the Crimean Regional Party Committee another unpleasantness.

Events rather than years have come to pass since then. The Soviet Union will soon be treated as yet another archaic entry in the encyclopedia of world history. Andrei Gromyko will not be remembered as often as, say, Talleyrand, and the Crimean Tatars are only now allowed to solve their citizenship problem on the spot (a most simple and logical solution, it would seem), rather than having to travel to Tashkent to be stripped of Uzbek citizenship and then heading for Kyiv to become citizens of Ukraine. I can just picture an immigrant from Zhytomyr (Ukraine) being told in Israel, his historic native land, that he had to return to Kyiv to forfeit his Ukrainian citizenship, then take a ride to Berdychiv (also in Ukraine) to get the required papers to fly to Jerusalem and wait there for permission to become an Israeli subject. Or a Volga German, after settling in Germany, being instructed to fly to Almaty and then back to Berlin to get his new national passport.

Ukraine must act in relation to the Crimean Tatars precisely the way Israel does toward Jews or the FRG toward Germans. Because of having the Crimea, Ukraine is now the historic native land of this people (and others) scattered over the Central Asian steppes. The Crimean Tatars have precisely the same right to Ukrainian citizenship as tens of thousands of all those others who turned up and settled in the Crimea after the Tatars were deported by Stalin.

All romanticism aside, one can perhaps marvel at the short-sighted policy of the current Ukrainian leadership. The Crimean Tatars, with their innate historical understanding of national values and the importance of having a national state, could be and remain the strongest potential allies of Ukraine against a Soviet restoration, formerly holding fast to their hammer-and-sickle banners and now willing to rally under the Russian tricolor, lest they have to use any other language except Russian (God forbid!). After all, Crimean autonomy is historically linked to Crimean Tatar statehood laid to waste by that same “older brother” who had once put an end to the Ukrainian dream of freedom. This is history and there is no way to deny historical facts. An understanding could be reached here, but I would personally never guarantee that the feelings would be sincere. Worst of all, due to the wheeling and dealing of current Ukrainian top bureaucrats, such insincerity is not only a Crimean Tatar problem but a Ukrainian national one. For, unlike the generally understandable aim of Ukrainian nationality policy concerning the Crimean Tatars, the latter’s course is easily predictable; a large ethnic group denied the right to self-identification will not give up with terms and conditions imposed from on high. In fact, Ukraine’s history of the past several years must have taught the Crimean Tatars their best lesson.