What the repatriates need

Historical documents prove that due to Stalin’s ethnic policy 42% of the Tatars died in the first years after the 1944 deportation alone. The others were scattered throughout the USSR with Moscow’s iron hand. Only in the early nineties did the deported families of Crimean Tatars begin to return en masse to their homeland. A most complex issue facing large numbers of returnees to the Crimea was their fitting integration into Ukrainian society. Such integration should be viewed by us as primarily the process of meeting the cultural, historical, and spiritual requirements of the Crimean Tatars. To smooth integration, vital social and economic problems of the Tatars are to be addressed. These include education for all children, 100% employment, housing, hospitals, representation in government, and legal support. No doubt, much has been done in this respect, but much more remains to be done.

Belial Memetovych Belialov was born in Alushta on April 17, 1921. There he graduated from a Tatar secondary school and entered the physical department of the Simferopol Pedagogical Institute in 1939. His father was arrested by the Soviet secret police in 1937 and shot for following his religious Moslem rites the same year. His son was expelled from the institute. When the war with Germany broke out, he was called up for military service in August 1941, wounded in action near Perekop (Crimea), taken prisoner by the Germans, and finally wound up in the Potato Town concentration camp near Simferopol. From there he was sent for forced labor to Bautzen (Germany) and later to Italy to dig. When the inmates were freed by American troops Belial Belialov joined the Garibaldi movement and fought the Fascists. Following the end of the war, Mr. Belialov and five other persons managed to get to Trieste. From there they were sent to Bulgaria, happy to be on their way home. But in Bulgaria they were arrested, their belongings and weapons seized, and after interrogation dispatched to the USSR. On his way to Moscow he learned that all Tatars had been deported from the Crimea. In Moscow they fell into the hands of the NKVD. Mr. Belial was escorted to Leninabad to a filtration camp where he was subjected to more checks. Finally, he was exiled and ordered to report monthly to the police.

Only in 1989 could Mr. Belialov return to the Crimea. His father’s home in Alushta was still there, inhabited by new tenants. Before the war, he, his mother Anife, sisters Emine and Sidika, and sisters’ children lived there. His brothers Asan and Useyin did also. When they were drafted into the Red Army before the war, their wives and children lived there until the deportation.

In 1993 Belialov appealed to the Alushta City Council to return or sell his own house to him. By that time his father had been rehabilitated and Belialov had all the documents attesting his ownership of the house. A council commission established that the house No. 30 on Bahlykov St. had been owned by the Belialov family until May 18, 1944 and was not confiscated either during Belial’s father trial or deportation. After the war the house was transferred to the Illich’s Way collective farm which let settlers from Voronezh oblast (Russia) occupy the first floor, with the second floor housing the city council’s communal property department. According to the commission, the original cost of this part of the house was 5012 rubles, with wear and tear at 4718 and residual cost at 294 rubles. The commission refused to return the property, citing lack of appropriate laws. Following Belialov’s numerous appeals, the only thing the city council managed to do was to sell 30% of his own house to Belial for 33,527 karbovanets. The tenants, however, refused to give up part of the house and yard to allow entrance to Belialov to his home. Belial-aga, who is 81 now, continues to protect his rights in court. He hopes that sooner or later his home will again become his property and he will be able to bequeath it to his grandchildren.

This is the second case on the peninsula when deported former owners have claimed their former property, but neither the court nor the authorities would make any decision for much the same reason: lack of appropriate legislation. With thousands, even tens of thousands, Crimean Tatar returnees finding their old houses, only very few managed to keep their title deeds.

The Majlis and Crimean Tatar public realize the complexity of the restitution of illegally seized property, especially dwellings, to its former owners. Abiding by nonviolent means to solve their problems and aware that the state does what it now can to allocate land and funding for resettlement, Crimean Tatars do not demand immediate return of their property, awaiting a fair and just solution of the problem by the state. But Ukrainian lawmakers cannot even do such a seemingly simple thing as passing the legislation needed to solve the repatriates’ problems. In particular, the courts and authorities refuse to consider cases of restitution of illegally seized property, citing the lack of a clear law on the rehabilitation of victims of political reprisals. Under paragraph 4 of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR ruling On Enforcing the Law of Ukraine On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Reprisals, Articles 3,4, and 9 do not apply to peoples subjected to repression and forceful deportation (Crimean Tatars, Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Poles, Armenians, etc.) since the rehabilitation of this category of citizens has been dealt with by USSR Supreme Council’s resolution of March 7, 1991 that annulled the corresponding legislation in the wake of USSR Supreme Council’s Declaration of November 14, 1989. As a result, the repatriates find themselves in a legal vicious circle such that Ukrainian SSR laws are not applicable due to overriding USSR laws which, however, do not regulate the issue of rehabilitation. Meanwhile, no relevant laws have been passed by new Ukraine’s lawmakers.