Donald Rayfield’s A Seditious and Sinister Tribe: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate, is a scholarly historical account of the origins of the Crimean Tatars which is loaded with intricate detail. He guides the reader through a forest of knowledge as he explores the political organization of the Crimean Khanate established by a descendant of Genghis Khan, including its governance, legal and administrative practices. They had a strong judiciary and tax system – we have them to thank for VAT! Fourteenth-century Crimea was one of the centres of Islamic civilization in Eastern Europe. Tolerance not extremism was their way. Rabbinical and Karaim Jews lived side by side; as did Shia, Sunni and Sufi; Armenian and Greek churches stood next to each other.
Rayfield describes the Giray Khanate dynasty’s interactions with the Ottoman Empire, Russia and how it was at loggerheads with Poland-Lithuania — highlighting alliances, conflicts and diplomatic relations. It became a powerful Ottoman vassal state during the 16th century. He illuminates the traditions, customs, social life and remarkable religious tolerance of the Crimean Tatars. There were no eunuchs in their harems and polygamy was not common. They had libraries, and poetry was popular, as was music. They had good governance and women were not viewed as inferior beings. He also shows how after the Ottomans persuaded them to stop using slaves as dues they lost a key source of income. Covering their military strategies and campaigns, he details their raids and warfare tactics, their impact on Eastern Europe, and their decline and fall after being annexed by Russia in 1783 when colonising began in earnest, and land was given to the Cossacks. The reader learns that Muslim Tatars have suffered repeated persecution ever since the Ottomans ceded their peninsula to the Russian Empire.
After the annexation, and due to the oppression by the Russian administration and colonial politics, during the period 1783-1922, nearly 1.8 million Crimean Tatars migrated to the Ottoman Empire. Russia’s policies of Russifying Crimea were in order to integrate it into Russia (Crimean Tatars constituted more than 80 percent of Crimea’s population until that point). Strategic deportations continued into the 20th century. During Stalin’s regime, the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportation, today referred to as an act of genocide, involved the entire community being moved from their homeland to Ukraine, or to special settlements in Central Asia. Arrived in Uzbekistan, a Crimean Tatar who failed to report to the NKVD every fortnight was sent to a prison camp for twenty years.
The Forgotten Genocide
As a result, no Crimean Tatars were left in Crimea, and the Soviet government encouraged Russians to settle there as part of their ‘detatarization’ campaign. Yet thanks to having outstanding leaders, the Crimean Tatars have preserved their heritage, uniting around a collective memory of homeland and the myth of the golden age. Songs and poetry were written about their lost motherland, memorial celebrations were arranged, performances were staged, and public history readings were held. The Crimean War (1853-56) and the enforced mass deportation in 1944 under Stalin were turning points for consolidating and maintaining Tatar identity in the face of being pawns in the power dynamics between their larger neighbours. They manifested a remarkable ability not only to survive, but to thrive, as a vital nationality with a strong identity; a force to be reckoned with inside the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. Crimean Tatars successfully maintained their difference from the Slav and Russian groups living in the peninsula.
Although many Crimean Tatars returned to their homeland after the fall of the Soviet Union, resettling and reclaiming their rights and property proved to be challenging after decades of Soviet repression. They largely opposed the Russian takeover in 2014, engaging in political activism and resistance. A sizeable diaspora remained in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Rumania, Uzbekistan.
Underpinned by a dizzying array of factual knowledge, A Seditious and Sinister Tribe: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate, offers an in-depth exploration of a major Turkic people that has been historically misrepresented and misunderstood. Crimea was once a flourishing state with a vibrant literary culture, religious tolerance, a sophisticated constitution and a prosperous economy. Now that a door has been opened on to an intriguing piece of hidden history for the first time in 100 years, I hope that more books follow about the Crimean Tatars.
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