As I noted in February, this year is the 60th Anniversary of Stalin’s wholesale deportation of the Chechen people. They were seen as enemies of the state. But the Chechens weren’t alone in their misery that year. The Tatars were also enemies of the state, and today marks the 60th anniversary of their deportation.
The Tatars’ story is less well known, but in many ways just as harsh as that of the Chechens. Almost half the Tatars deported died en route and, while the Chechens largely managed to return to Chechnya, many Tatars had to wait for the collapse of the USSR to return home to the Crimea. Even now they are not welcome.
Many now live in settlements with no water, no gas and no proper roads.
Their original homes were confiscated by the Soviet authorities and given to Russians.
While about half of Crimean Tatars have been allocated land, many claim they have not been given the prime plots which they believe they have a right to.
Land in the Crimea is valuable and, not surprisingly, the Russians are unwilling to just give it back. Many of the returnees are resorting to desparate measures…
The Chulakova family have been homeless for 10 years.
Frustrated, they seized a plot of land near their former home and, like tens of thousands of people in the Crimea, they are squatters.
Twelve of them now share a cramped wooden shed they built themselves overlooking a bay near Yalta.
- What next?
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