Paul Goble
Staunton,
July 1 – Ivan Shonus, the head of the national autonomy of the Greeks of
Crimea, says that his group’s call to rename Crimea with the tsarist-era name
the Tauride is gaining traction in Moscow whose officials say that despite some
problems, doing so is “possible,” via a name like “the Autonomous Republic of
Crimea – Tauride.”
Because
the Tauride included not just Crimea but also a large portion of southeastern
Ukraine, this would be an aggressive step, one that would threaten the Crimean
Tatars as the main indigenous people of the peninsula and the territorial integrity
of Ukraine. (See windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/06/two-dangerous-proposals-on-crimea-with.html.)
Shonus’
words and his insistence that his group “intends to continue to push the idea”
because it is convinced that “if such a decision will be taken, it will serve
as an additional stimulus to the affirmation of the Russian status of Ukraine” are
cited by Moscow commentator Artem Leonov on the Soletiye portal (stoletie.ru/vzglyad/stanet_li_krym_tavridoj_441.htm).
Leonov for his part suggests that
the restoration of the name Tauride is appropriate for three reasons: first,
the Greeks were on the peninsula long before the Tatars were; second, the
Russian Imperial government always used this term; and third, Stalin favored
restoring the term at the end of his life but Nikita Khrushchev ignored that
after the dictator’s death.
The Greeks have a history on the peninsula
extending back to classical times, he writes; and when Russia annexed Crimea
the first time, it called the region the Tauride. Thus it remained until the
end of the imperial period even though Greeks during that time were subject to
harsh assimilation pressures and even deported from Crimea to other parts of
the empire.
After the Bolshevik revolution, the
toponym was very much a contested one. In March 1918, a Soviet Republic of the
Tauride was proclaimed but five weeks later, German forces entered the region
and suppressed it. Then in April 1919, a Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic was
announced only to be liquidated by anti-Bolshevik White forces.
Finally, on October 18, 1921, Lenin settled
the matter by signing a decree “On the formation of a Crimean Autonomous
Republic.”
But according to Leonov, Tauride has
a better claim. The name “Crimea” only began to be used after the 13th
century when the Golden Horde expanded into the area. Before that the Tauride
was much more often commonly employed, he says.
The Ottomans insisted on Crimea, and that name continues to be supported
by Muslims and Crimean Tatars.
After Lenin’s proclamation of a
Crimean Autonomous Republic, Leonov continues, many ethnic Greeks left to
return to their historical homeland, and their numbers on the peninsula
declined precipitously. They were
repressed as well during World War II by the Germans, Romanians and “especially”
Italian occupiers.
Then, following a decision in Moscow
on June 2, 1944, “almost 14,000 Crimean Greeks” were resettled in Perm oblast, Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan “without the right to return to Crimea.” Nonetheless, beginning in
the late 1950s some did; and they and their descendants now number approximately
3100.
That might seem too small a number
to take into account, Leonov acknowledges; but he argues that “the inclusion of
the name ‘Tauride’ in the official name of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea
has an historical basis” and not one as distant historically as its opponents
try to suggest.
According to him, at the end of the
1940s and beginning of the 1950s, P.I. Titov, the head of the Crimean oblast
party committee convinced Stalin that this would be a good idea and the Soviet
leader approved it. “But after Stalin, this project was put on hold by his ‘comrades
in arms’ and in 1954, they separated Crimea from Russia.”
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