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National Dissent in the Soviet Union: The Crimean Tatar Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

David Kowalewski
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Extract

If those interested in Soviet affairs were to confine their reading to the official Soviet press, they would perhaps conclude that all is quiet behind the Soviet front. However since a large body of underground literature has reached the West in recent years, observers have learned of numerous protest activities against the Soviet regime by various groups in the USSR. We know, for example, that liberal intellectuals are criticizing the Soviet leadership for its rigid control over the literary and scientific life of the country. Various religious groups are protesting against the closure of churches, imprisonment of believers, and restrictions on baptisms, proselyting, and religious instruction of the young. Similarly, certain members of national minorities are demanding more linguistic, educational, and cultural autonomy for their nations. Some of these minority nationalities, such as the Jews, Volga Germans, and Meskhi, have formed repatriation movements in order to obtain permission to settle in those areas which they regard as their homelands.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1974 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities, 1974 

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References

Notes

1 The study is based on Soviet sources, Western commentaries, and samizdat (“self-published,” underground) material which has been written by the Crimean Tatars and other dissidents and which has reached the West through various channels. In order to present the characteristics of the Crimean Tatar Movement as accurately as possible, I have also performed a statistical analysis on biographical data concerning 119 Crimean Tatar dissidents arrested between 1961 and 1970 (Register of Those Convicted or Detained in the Struggle for Human Rights in the USSR: March 1953 to February 1971 [Munich: Radio Liberty Research, 1971]).Google Scholar

2 Gaspirali became well-known as a prominent leader of the Pan-Turkic modernist movement in Russia. Especially active were the “Young Tatar,” “Vatan,” and Jadid movements.Google Scholar

3 Kirimal, Edige, The Tragedy of Crimea, reprinted from Eastern Quarterly, IV, No. 1 (1951), p. 8; see also League for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR, ed., Captive Nations in the USSR (Munich: League for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR, 1963), p. 47.Google Scholar

4 League for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR, ed., Captive Nations in the USSR, p. 47.Google Scholar

5 “Transcript of the Tashkent Trial of Ten Crimean Tatars” (hereafter referred to as “Tashkent Trial”), July 1 to August 5, 1969, Radio Liberty Research Department Manuscripts (hereafter referred to as RL MSS), 402.Google Scholar

6 Ukaz No. 27 of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet on April 28, 1956. The decree is unavailable, which is probably due to its not being published.Google Scholar

7 “Mournful Informatsiya,” No. 69 (May 15-June 1, 1968), RL MSS, 396; Sakhat, Mustafa, Letter to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, June 26, 1969, RL MSS, 495.Google Scholar

8 “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” early 1969, RL MSS, 379.Google Scholar

9 Pravda, February 12, 1957.Google Scholar

10 Dzhemilev, Mustafa, Letter to Grigorenko, November, 1968, RL MSS, 281.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., and “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379.Google Scholar

12 Dzhemilev, Mustafa, Letter to Grigorenko, RL MSS, 281.Google Scholar

13 “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379; Chronicle of Current Events (hereafter referred to as Chronicle), No. 2 (June, 1968), RL MSS, 61.Google Scholar

14 “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379.Google Scholar

15 Ibid.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.; “Appeal of the Crimean Tatar People,” addressed to the World Conference of Communist and Worker Parties meeting in Moscow, May, 1969, RL MSS, 137.Google Scholar

18 “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379.Google Scholar

19 “Mournful Informatsiya,” No. 69 (May 15-June 1, 1968), RL MSS, 396; Chronicle No. 2 (June, 1968), RL MSS, 61; “Appeal of the Crimean Tatar People to All Persons of Goodwill, to Democrats and to Communists,” September, 1968, RL MSS, 397 (hereafter referred to as “To All Persons); Chronicle No. 27 (October, 1972) (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1973).Google Scholar

20 “To All Persons,” RL MSS, 397.Google Scholar

21 Ibid.Google Scholar

22 “Speech to Crimean Tatar Representatives in Moscow,” March 17, 1968, RL MSS, 76.Google Scholar

23 “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379; Mournful Informatsiya“ No. 69 (May 15-June 1, 1968), RL MSS, 396; and Chronicle No. 2 (June, 1968), RL MSS, 61.Google Scholar

24 “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379; Informatsiya (November, 1968), RL MSS, 307; “Appeal of the Crimean Tatar People,” RL MSS, 137.Google Scholar

25 Letter to Brezhnev and others, June, 1968, RL MSS, 190.Google Scholar

26 Informatsiya (November, 1968), RL MSS, 307.Google Scholar

27 Letter to Brezhnev, RL MSS, 190.Google Scholar

28 Informatsiya (November, 1968), RL MSS, 307.Google Scholar

29 Informatsiya No. 82 (January 1, 1969), RL MSS, 86. It calls for the year of 1969 to be one of “united action.”Google Scholar

30 P. G. Grigorenko, “In Memory of Alexei Yevgrafovich Kosterin,” November, 1968, RL MSS, 109; Listener (London), May 15, 1969; Novoe Russko Slovo, November 16, 1968; International Herald Tribune, November 16–17, 1968; Reuter, November 14, 1968.Google Scholar

31 Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, trans. by the New York Times, with an Introduction, Afterword, and Notes by Harrison E. Salisbury (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1968), pp. 53 and 66; the second document, addressed to national police chief Shchelokov, is as yet unavailable in the West, but see Sakharov's “Afterword to ‘A Recollected Note‘” written in June, 1972, RL MSS, 1136-a. See also Programma Demokraticheskogo Dvizhenie Sovetskogo Soyuza (Program of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union) (Amsterdam: Herzen Foundation, 1970), p. 52; Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, First Letter to the UN Human Rights Commission, May, 1969, RL MSS, 126; Sakharov, V. F. Turchin, and R. A. Medvedev, Letter to Brezhnev and others, March 19, 1970, RL MSS, 360. The Political Diary as well, a scholarly journal of a group of top-level liberal intellectuals, carried a digest of S. P. Pisarev's samizdat article arguing for a solution to the Crimean Tatar problem (No. 67 [April, 1970]), RL MSS, 1011. Finally, the prestigeous “Committee for Human Rights” called on authorities to restore the rights of the Crimean Tatars and other groups exiled by Stalin, April 21, 1972, RL MSS, 1130.Google Scholar

32 In Gorky statements on the Crimean Tatar issue unfavorable to the regime came out in a political interrogation of three accused of attempting to form an “anti-Soviet” organization; see Chronicle No. 13 (April, 1970), RL MSS, 375. The same Chronicle reports a letter of two Kievan intellectuals to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR to re-establish a Crimean Tatar ASSR in honor of the jubilee of Lenin who founded it in 1921; they state that there is unfortunately not one government agency devoted to the Crimean Tatars' return. See also the report of the arrest of twenty-seven year old Yu. Melnik, a Leningrader from whose flat documents about the Crimean Tatars were confiscated, in Chronicle No. 26 (July, 1972) (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1972).Google Scholar

33 See for example Dzhemilev, Mustafa, Letter to Grigorenko, RL MSS, 281; and Informatsiya (November, 1968), RL MSS, 307. In one case an arrested Crimean Tatar blue-collar worker, Yazydzhiev, Ismail, was released after workers in his factory struck in protest; Le Monde (Paris), May 10, 1969.Google Scholar

34 RL MSS, 520.Google Scholar

35 Letter about the 1944 deportation, March 10, 1969, RL MSS, 152.Google Scholar

36 Original italics; “Mournful Informatsiya” No. 69 (May 15-June 1, 1968), RL MSS, 396.Google Scholar

37 “Appeal of the Crimean Tatar People,” RL MSS, 137.Google Scholar

38 For example, Part IV of a “program” presented in the “Appeal of the Crimean Tatar People” (RL MSS, 137) demanded the release of Yakhimovich, Ivan, Litvinov, Pavel, Daniel, Larissa, as well as other political prisoners.Google Scholar

39 “Mournful Informatsiya” No. 69 (May 15-June 1, 1968), RL MSS, 396.Google Scholar

40 See for example Sakhat, Mustafa, Letter to the UN Human Rights Commission, RL MSS, 495; and “Appeal of the Crimean Tatar People,” May, 1969, RL MSS, 137.Google Scholar

41 Shub, Anatole, The New Russian Tragedy (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1969), p. 22; Grigorenko, Letter about the 1944 deportation, RL MSS, 152.Google Scholar

42 Reuter, August 6, 1968.Google Scholar

43 Kirimal, Edige, “The Crimean Tatars,” Studies on the Soviet Union, X (N. S.), No. 1 (1970), pp. 95–96.Google Scholar

44 “Appeal of the Crimean Tatars in Connection with the Events in the City of Tashkent on August 4–5, 1969,” a document written shortly after the trial, cited from “Tashkent Trial,” RL MSS, 402. This manuscript, however, gives the number of demonstrators at 20,000; the figure in the text is from Chronicle No. 9 (August, 1969), RL MSS, 260.Google Scholar

45 Washington Post, April 28, 1970.Google Scholar

46 Khronika Zashchity Prav v SSSR (Chronicle of the Defense of Rights in the USSR), No. 3 (June-August, 1973) (New York: Khronika Press, 1973), p. 44.Google Scholar

47 RL MSS, 630; Chronicle No. 25 (May, 1972) (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1972).Google Scholar

48 RL MSS, 1450 and 1451.Google Scholar

49 Grigorenko, Letter about the 1944 deportation, RL MSS, 152.Google Scholar

50 Chronicle No. 27 (October, 1972 (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1973).Google Scholar

51 See, for example, Osmanov's statement about his arrest in May of 1967, autumn, 1968, RL MSS, 85; and “An All-People Protest of the Crimean Tatars,” RL MSS, 379.Google Scholar

52 P. G. Grigorenko, “In Memory of Alexei Yevgrafovich Kosterin,” RL MSS, 109.Google Scholar

53 Lenin Bayraghy, April 16, 1970.Google Scholar

54 Sovet Tojikiston, September 16, 1970, cited in Nissman, David, The Resurgence of Islam in Soviet Central Asia as Reflected in Soviet Media in the Summer of 1970 (Munich: Radio Liberty Dispatch, February 17, 1971).Google Scholar