Putin says “Crimea is historically Russian land”. Reality: Stalin killed and deported the Natives, Russians moved in, Putin owns.
On the 18th of March 2014, Russia and Crimea signed a deсree about affilation into the Russian Federation. This ended the independence of Crimea: it had lasted only one day, making Crimea the shortest lived state, ever. Just like Hitler, Putin loves historical firsts.
Crimea became the 84th region of super giant Russia, the country that wants to swallow Eurasia (at least that’s what Putin says… He wants to lead a “Eurasian Union” [sic]).
Meanwhile unidentified gunmen attacked a Ukraine military base, and several people got killed, including an Ukrainian officer.
The same day, Putin made a discourse to the Duma and other worthies of his regime. Here is an extract:
“The USSR fell apart. Things developed so swiftly that few people realised how truly dramatic those events and their consequences would be. Many people both in Russia and in Ukraine, as well as in other republics hoped that the Commonwealth of Independent States that was created at the time would become the new common form of statehood. They were told that there would be a single currency, a single economic space, joint armed forces; however, all this remained empty promises, while the big country was gone. It was only when Crimea ended up as part of a different country that Russia realised that it was not simply robbed, it was plundered.
At the same time, we have to admit that by launching the sovereignty parade Russia itself aided in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And as this collapse was legalised, everyone forgot about Crimea and Sevastopol – the main base of the Black Sea Fleet. Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.
Now, many years later, I heard residents of Crimea say that back in 1991 they were handed over like a sack of potatoes. This is hard to disagree with. And what about the Russian state? What about Russia? It humbly accepted the situation. This country was going through such hard times then that realistically it was incapable of protecting its interests. However, the people could not reconcile themselves to this outrageous historical injustice. All these years, citizens and many public figures came back to this issue, saying that Crimea is historically Russian land and Sevastopol is a Russian city.”
Let’s stop Vladimir a moment here. Putin claims Crimea is historically Russian land, but this is mostly due to a very recent Russian directed holocaust. In that particular area, as much as seven million may have been killed… And there are still living witnesses of that holocaust.
Let’s review big history to see how much Putin lies. Crimea was the land the Tauri, and then became Greek. By 500 BCE, Greek colonies extended all along the north shore of the Black Sea, Crimea and the Sea of Azov. So, on the face of it, the entire area belonged to the European Union, way back.
By 100 BCE, Crimea was under Roman administration. Later the invading Scythes became a problem. But Crimea was protected by the Legio I Italica and a detachment of the Legio XI Claudia.
Putin wants to evoke history, he claims Russia owned Crimea. What is the successor state of Rome? Francia, not Russia. And that shows up in Francia’s respect of Roman law, something that escape Putin’s dictatorial mysticism.
Finally Crimea was invaded by the Goths (250 CE), the Huns (376 CE), the Bulgars (4th–8th century). The Franks fought those three, and lethally wounded both the Huns and the Goths. Why do I observe this? Because Europe is a small world, and Stalin-Putin, nouveaux riches.
The Khanate of the Khazars (8th century), occupied Crimea, before turning to Judaism, while being defeated by the state of Ukraine known as Kievan Rus’ (10th–11th centuries). In 988, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev captured the Byzantine town of Chersonesos (present Sevastopol) where he converted to Christianism.
Then, in quick succession, the Byzantine Empire (1016), the Kipchaks (the Kumans) (1050), and the Mongols (1237) occupied Crimea.
Mother Russia in all this? It did not even exist.
Does something that did not exist have historical rights?
Tatars existed, though: they are a complex ethnic mix of European and Asian, using a Turkic language.
In 1346, the bodies of Mongols of the Golden Horde who died of the Black Plague were catapulted over the walls of the besieged Kaffa (now Feodosiya). Genoese ships brought the disease back.
In 1783, the armies of some of the lovers of Catherine the Great, a German princess who had killed her husband the Czar, conquered Crimea. These were the times when Russia became, by far, the world’s largest empire, conquering much of Eurasia and even America (down to California).
The Crimean war of 1853-54 was an attempt to block the Russian push south. It started with a conflict with the French in Jerusalem (where the Russians expected the French to obey them). Although the Franco-British won, the Czarists used the occasion to persecute and expropriate the Crimean Tatars some more.
In 1945, perhaps to reward Stalin to have been allied to Hitler, and thus crushed the Poles and the French, president Roosevelt gave Europe to Stalin up to the red line. (That very “red line” that Putin is now accusing the “West” to have crossed!)
On 18 May 1944, the entire population of the Crimean Tatars was deported in the “Sürgün” (Crimean Tatar for exile) to Central Asia by Stalin. Deportees spent 18 days in freight cars for getting to Uzbekistan. The inhuman conditions were obviously made so that people would die. Over bridges, the trains would stop, and bodies thrown in the water. Others were sent much further, to Siberia.
About 50% of the deportees died during transportation. In June 1944 Armenian, Bulgarian and Greek populations were also deported to Central Asia. By the end of summer 1944, the ethnic cleansing of Crimea was complete, and only Putin’s beloved Russians were welcome. In 1967, a law was passed to ban Crimean Tatars from legally returning to their homeland.
Thus we conclude the following. The historical justification of Putin for annexing Crimea is the mix of ethnic cleansing and holocaust that Russia exerted in the area over a period of a century. Approving annexation is therefore approving a holocaust.
The hysterical nationalistic chanting “Russia, Russia, Russia” mentality is intrinsically racist: it means others are not as worthy as human beings (although Tatars are OK as fish food, see above).
That sort of nationalism invites further massive violations of human rights. It’s intrinsically evil. The Kremlin does not own Crimea, and maximal sanctions and military preparations ought to be applied right away, all the more as, obviously, Putin will be stopped only if he is forced to.
Patrice Aymé
Tags: Crimea, Ethnic Cleansing, holocaust, Hyper Nationalism, Putin, racism, Russia, Tatars
March 19, 2014 at 6:09 pm |
You are correct to point out the lies of Putin, Patrice. A nouveau empire like Russian has as little historical right to the Crimea as the even more nouveau empire of the USA has to most of North America.
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March 19, 2014 at 9:59 pm |
Yes, and thanks Hazxan!
There is a difference, though: the American holocausts are ancient (and were partly inadvertent, at least several centuries ago). Stalin throwing out the Tatars is a recent injustice. Moreover, it’s only part of Putin’s invading logic (which he feeds by distributing passports).
Right now American Indians are treated sort of OK (that’s not any worse than most American losers, and some are winners).
Russia has a right to Siberia… Although it’s a conquest too, it’s not as contested a conquest, and lots of it was thanks to potatoes, not guns.
Putin is truly after war, he is deliberately looking for conflict. So that people can’t concentrate on his abysmal rule. But conflict, just so (the sort of tight rope exercise Hitler failed to achieve in summer 1939).
PA
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March 19, 2014 at 10:00 pm |
I am going to add another map, Crimea 1600…
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March 20, 2014 at 12:07 am |
I don’t think the native American holocausts were any more “inadvertant” than the Crimean deportees you describe. Not that ancient either, I would assume “Ancient” to at least be BC, not 1890!
Patrice, there are reports that the Ukraine has been taken over by groups that are “far right”, “fascist” even “neo-nazi”. Do you think there is anything in this? Either way it sounds like quite negative developments all round. A dismal situation when your choice is Putin or Neo-Nazis!
As they say “those who want power, are never fit to take power”
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March 20, 2014 at 6:05 am |
Dear Hazxan: The operations against Apaches and the like in 1890, were just mop-ups. Most of the Indians had been massacred two generations earlier, or by killing all the buffalo. Indians were relatively easy to kill. That means only a few soldiers could do it. The (long famous) young general Custer was heading only a few hundred men.
The massacre of the Tatars was very recent, and, as the Tatars were long civilized, they were hard to kill. So the whole “big country” (to speak like Putin), was behind it. Nowadays Americans have ceased and desisted the Indian killing mentality, Russian bathe in the Tatars-don’t-count, Ukrainians-don’t count, mindset.
The fascist and Neo-Nazi stuff is sheer Putin propaganda. The far right polls at 6% in Ukraine, basically a third or even less, of what it does in France. That far right commandos got active is not surprising (I was bombed by one in the past, so I am not particularly in love).
Some of the people criticizing the deposed president plastered Nazi symbols to insult HIM. (A method I have myself used.) However, that was turned around to say they proclaimed their allegiance to Hitler. So it backfired.
The “power” thing has to be decapitated, in general. “Presidents” have too much power. And there is progress: Putin, contrarily to Catherine II of Russia, does not draw and quarter his enemies on Red Square.
PA
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March 20, 2014 at 11:22 pm |
Thanks for the reply. Yes, very difficult situation in Ukraine, hard to discern the truth. And interesting aspect of communications technology – lies spread as fast as truth. Actually, there is so much noise, I think the truth is harder to discern than ever. Yet we are led to believe that we are being “empowered” through comms tech. Kept in the dark and fed …whatever they like!
Oh, on the state of the American Indians, I had a vague memory of the Lakota Sioux declaring independance a few years ago. It looks they really are not having such a good time, in fact amongst the sickest, poorest and shortest lived on the planet:
http://www.republicoflakotah.com/genocide/
I’m well aware of the danger of “the grass is greener on the other side”, but sometimes wonder if plutocracy and civilisation can ever be separated. Certainly the technocratic state military based civilisation we’ve had in varying forms since oh, Assyrian times. The more complex the organisation of society, the more susceptable to deception, fraud, violence, perhaps.
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March 21, 2014 at 1:24 am |
Plutocracy is to civilization what cancer is to good health. A growth of the worst sort.
The truth is easy to discern in Ukraine. See my latest essays, including the 2000+ words of the one today…
PA
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March 21, 2014 at 12:05 am |
The massacres of Indians were mostly in the 17C and 1763 Pontiac… To compare that to a contemporary genocide Russians approve of is unwise
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March 21, 2014 at 1:20 am |
The way president Jackson dealt with the Cherokee (~1830) is similar to Stalin’s deportation of the Tatars. But then again, indeed, 1830 is not 1944, let alone, 2014.
PA
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March 20, 2014 at 12:10 am |
Love the way Putin accuses Ukrainian democracy, after constitutional change, to be what he is. AKA Neonazi
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March 20, 2014 at 6:10 am |
Well, this is not funny, the situation is hyper dangerous. Putin knows Ukraine is weak right now, and there is plenty of evidence Putin planned this at least ten years ago, and that, Hitler-like, he created the army he needed to do so.
PA
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March 20, 2014 at 11:53 pm |
[…] Morality Without Intelligence Makes As Much Sense As Will Without Mind. Intelligence Is At The Core Of Humanism. « Putin: Kill Tatars, Own Crimea […]
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March 24, 2014 at 2:31 am |
[…] Putin: Kill Tatars, Own Crimea […]
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November 22, 2016 at 2:18 pm |
Reblogged this on Si vis pacem disce bellum.
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November 22, 2016 at 9:48 pm |
Thanks Paolo Porsia!
I will visit your site soon.
Patrice
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