Genocide's Aftermath: Neostalinism in Contemporary Crimea

Abstract

The Crimean Tatars' genocide is one of the clearest, and yet least studied of twentieth-century genocides. This article explores that genocide's aftermath, beginning with the Crimean Tatars' attempts to reinscribe their presence in their historic homeland following the 1944 deportation. The ongoing contestations over the past are examined here as a historical habitus informing attitudes and behavior in the present. Drawing on unparalleled interview data with the Russian-speaking population in Crimea, I explore the durability and ontological resonance of constructions of Tatars as traitors both past and present. Ethnographic insight into the local understandings that feed exclusion, discrimination, and hatred enhance our understanding of genocide as a social process. Given the lack of either guilt or shame regarding the 1944 deportation, I suggest that Crimea currently lacks the cognitive and affective foundation to create a more inclusive future. The systematic erasure of the Crimean Tatars was holistic in nature. Crimean Tatar place names were changed to Soviet ones; mosques were turned into movie theatres (or worse); homes, livestock and gardens were given away; and mention of Crimean Tatars was deleted or abbreviated in reference works. Crimean Tatars were not allowed to reside in, or speak of, their homeland. It wasn't even possible to preserve a Crimean Tatar identity in personal documents. In Central Asia, before efforts to assimilate the survivors were underway, Crimean Tatars lived in a Special Settlement regime in which tens of thousands died of malnutrition, dehydration, and disease. They were also demonized. To give but one example, Crimean Tatars describe how children's heads were checked for horns by their Central Asian school teachers. This article unfolds in several steps. Considering that one component or aftermath of genocide is the attempt to erase the group from official history, I explore sites of memory, especially public commemoration. Although the ability of Crimean Tatars to commemorate their past as part of independent Ukraine at first suggests resilience, their efforts to reinscribe their presence on the peninsula and regain their rights have been met with opposition and resistance. Public commemorations interest me because they are one way in which competing interpretations of history become audible or legible and are then contested. Two insurrections of subjugated knowledge as part of independent Ukraine, billboards and a film, demonstrate these contestations. That the Crimean population, for the most part, does not recognize the treatment of the Crimean Tatars as genocide at all calls for deeper analysis. In the next part of the paper, I explore the thoughts and emotions behind the antipathy that continues to be directed at this indigenous people. Ethnographic insight into the local understandings that feed exclusion, discrimination, and hatred will enhance our understanding of genocide as a social process. My approach extends the work of other scholars of genocide by suggesting there is a historical habitus, or ingrained