Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

The forcible deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea was ordered by Joseph Stalin as a form of collective punishment under accusations of collaborating with the Nazi occupation regime in Taurida Subdistrict during 1942–1943. The state-organized removal is known as the Sürgünlik in Crimean Tatar. A total of more than 230,000 people were deported, mostly to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. This included the entire ethnic Crimean Tatar population, at the time about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula, as well as smaller numbers of ethnic Greeks and Bulgarians. A large number of deportees (more than 100,000 according to a 1960s survey by Crimean Tatar activists) died from starvation or disease as a direct result of deportation. It is considered to be a case of ethnic cleansing. For a long time Crimean Tatars and Soviet dissidents called for recognition of the genocide of Crimean Tatars.

During Destalinization the deportation was denounced by the Soviet government; nevertheless, the Crimean Tatars were denied the right of return up until late perestroika times. In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the deportation as a crime against humanity of the highest degree. On 21 April 2014, President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree that rehabilitated Crimean Tatars and other ethnicities who suffered from Stalinist repressions in Crimea. On November 12, 2015 parliament of Ukraine adopted a resolution recognizing the event as a genocide and declared 18 May as a Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Crimean Tatar genocide.

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