Imagining Crimean Tatar History since 2014: Indigenous Rights, Russian Recolonisation and the New Ukrainian Narrative of Cooperation

Abstract

This article examines competing Crimean Tatar, Russian and Ukrainian views of Crimean Tatar history as they have developed since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, via an examination of popular history and publistika. Crimean Tatar writing insists on the core principle of indigenous rights. In order to marginalise this discourse, Russian historiography adopts a neocolonial settler framing and a mythology of ‘ancient Russian’ Crimea, much of it derived from earlier Tsarist (late nineteenth century) and Soviet (1950s) historiography. Ukraine generally rather neglected the Crimean Tatar issue before 2014, but a new historiography of Crimean Tatar–Cossack cooperation and parallel state-building has emerged.