Crimean people

As of 2014^[update], the total population of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol was at 2,248,400 people (Republic of Crimea: 1,889,485, Sevastopol: 395,000). This is down from the 2001 Ukrainian Census figure, which was 2,376,000 (Autonomous Republic of Crimea: 2,033,700, Sevastopol: 342,451).

The Crimean interior has been ethnically diverse throughout its recorded history, changing hands numerous times, while the south coast was held continuously for most of the last two millennia by various Roman (and Eastern Roman) states. The interior was dominated by a succession of Scytho-Sarmatian, Gothic, Hunnic, Turkic, Mongol and Slavic conquests. Its south coast was Greek speaking under the Romans (47 BC -330 AD) and their successor states, the Byzantine Empire (330 AD - 1204 AD), the Empire of Trebizond (1204 AD - 1461 AD), and the independent Principality of Theodoro (1461 AD - 1475 AD). In 1475 the region was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. During the late Middle Ages a few coastal cities were ruled by Italian city states.

The Crimean Tatars emerged as a Turkic-speaking ethnic group native to Crimea in the early modern period, during the lifetime of the Crimean Khanate, and by the annexation of the Crimean Khanate by the Russian Empire in 1783, they formed the clear majority of Crimean population. The colonization "New Russia" (the Novorossiysk Governorate, of which the later Taurida Governorate formed a part) at the end of the 18th century was led by Prince Grigori Potemkin who was granted the powers of an absolute ruler over the area by Catherine the Great. The lands were generously given to the Russian dvoryanstvo (nobility), and the enserfed peasantry mostly from Ukraine and fewer from Russia were transferred to cultivate what was a sparsely populated steppe. Catherine the Great also invited European settlers to these newly conquered lands: Germans, Poles, Italians, and others. Crimea is geographically and demographically divided into three regions, the steppe interior, the mountains, and the coast. The Tatars were the predominant portion of the population in the mountainous area and about half of the steppe population, while Russians were concentrated most heavily in the Feodosiya district. Germans and Bulgarians settled in the Crimea at the beginning of the 19th century, receiving a large allotment and fertile land. Wealthy colonists later bought substantial portions of land, mainly in Perekopsky and Yevpatoria districts.

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