Rowman & Littlefield
Review by Brian Tanguay
Because of the passage of time and the velocity at which events unfold, it’s understandable that Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea has fallen off the radar. Russia seized control of Crimea by administrative means backed up by the threat of military force. One of the first things Russian authorities did was change the clocks by two hours to correspond with Moscow time. Markets began selling Russian food products. Russian passports became mandatory. Step by step, the Russian authorities conditioned the population to feel part of the Russian Federation. The steps included the installation of several monuments to Russian history. The past, as anthropologist Greta Lynn Uehling notes in Decolonizing Ukraine, was “actively reinscribed on the present.”
Since the full scale Russian invasion in 2022, the world’s attention has been focused on Ukraine, not Crimea. Uehling opens a window on Crimea, and the Russians, Ukrainians, and Crimean Tatars who reside there. Uehling conducted dozens of interviews during her study, analyzing the temporal and physical dispossession experienced by her subjects. One of the largest Indigenous groups on the peninsula, the Tatars are no stranger to Russian domination. Empress Catherine II annexed the territory in 1783. Between 1853 and 1856, the Russian empire fought against an alliance of Ottoman, French, British, Sardinian and Greek forces. During World War II, Russia declared the Tatars traitors and Nazi collaborators and forcibly displaced thousands, transporting them by cattle car into exile in the Eurasian steppe and Siberian tundra. Many didn’t survive the journey and were dumped along the way; those that survived transport faced hunger, dehydration and disease. Following their deportation, the peninsula was stripped of Crimean Tatar cultural traces: mosques became movie theaters or storage spaces, Indigenous place names were replaced with Soviet appellations. Uehling writes that Tatars who survived in exile were “forbidden to sing, speak, or write about the deportation.” The collective punishment and genocide inflicted on the Crimean Tatars was systematically erased from the record.
Although Ukraine has made strides in acknowledging Crimean Tatars, they were largely out of sight and mind until 2016, when the singer-songwriter Jamala released “1944,” a song that mourns the genocide at the close of World War II. Capturing first place at the annual Eurovision Song Contest (the longest-running song competition in the world), the song thrust Jamala and the Tatars into the spotlight. “1944” shattered a long-standing silence about the suffering of the Tatars. Though Crimea had been part of Ukraine since 1954, few Ukrainians knew about the 1944 deportations. As Uehling was conducting research in Ukraine, “1944” was everywhere, blaring from car stereos, playing in restaurants and at political rallies. The song allowed Tatars to publicly mourn their deceased ancestors, which, Uehling notes, bestows a sense of “grievability” that can become a transformative force. She draws a comparison with the murder of George Floyd in the United States, noting how Floyd’s death galvanized a movement for social justice.
Although the intended audience for Decolonizing Ukraine is other academics, the book is relevant to our moment on a number of fronts. First, it shows how a relatively small and politically marginalized people can reshape their national narrative, improve their visibility, and expand their political influence. Second, it provides a sense of the challenges that lie ahead, not only for the Crimean Tatars, but for Ukraine. “The ambiguity surrounding how, exactly, to occupy and decolonize Crimea opens up,” writes Uehling, “a whole field of possibility that Ukrainian authorities and other leaders should take time and care in filling.” And third, it’s another reminder that war is profoundly destructive and its casualties extend far and wide. The dislocations and turmoil caused by war also generate new visions and possibilities for change. Crimean Tatars are learning to move past victimhood. The going is slow, but as a Crimean Tatar proverb says, “Water flows and finds its way around stones.”
