History of Crimea: from ancient times to the present day

The Crimean peninsula has a rich history that starts from ancient times. This land was of interest to many peoples, so many wars were fought for it.

Archaeological evidence of the settlement of ancient Crimea by humans dates back to the Middle Paleolithic. The remains of Neanderthals found in the Kiyik-Koba cave date back to about 80,000 BC. NS. Later evidence of the presence of Neanderthals here was also found in Starosel and Buran Kaya. Archaeologists have found some of the earliest human remains in Europe in the Buran-Kaya caves in the Crimean mountains (east of Simferopol). The fossils are about 32,000 years old and are associated with the Gravettian culture. During the last ice age, along with the northern coast of the Black Sea, Crimea was a refuge for people, from where, after the end of the cold weather, north-central Europe was re-populated.

The East European Plain at this time was mainly occupied by the periglacial forest-steppe. Supporters of the Black Sea Flood hypothesis believe that Crimea became a peninsula relatively recently, after the Black Sea level dropped in the 6th millennium BC. NS. The beginning of the Neolithic in Crimea is not associated with agriculture, but with the beginning of pottery production, changes in the technology of silicon tool production and the domestication of pigs. The earliest evidence of the planting of domiciled wheat on the Crimean peninsula refers to the Chalcolithic Ardych-Burun settlement dating back to the middle of the 4th millennium BC. NS.

The Taurians began to mix with the Scythians starting from the end of the 3rd century BC.e., which is mentioned in the works of ancient Greek writers. The origin of the Tavrians is unclear. Perhaps they are the ancestors of the Cimmerians, driven out by the Scythians. Alternative theories attribute them to the Abkhaz and Adyghe peoples, who at that time lived much further west than they do today. The Greeks, who founded colonies in the Crimea during the archaic period, considered the Taurus a wild, warlike people. Even after the Greek and Roman settlement, the Taurus did not calm down and continued to engage in piracy in the Black Sea. By the 2nd century BC. NS. they became allies of the Scythian king Skilur.

The Crimean peninsula to the north of the Crimean mountains was occupied by Scythian tribes. Their center was the city of Scythian Naples on the outskirts of modern Simferopol. The city ruled over a small kingdom covering the lands between the lower reaches of the Dnieper and the Northern Crimea. Scythian Naples was a city with a mixed Scythian-Greek population, strong defensive walls and large public buildings built in accordance with Greek architecture. The city was finally destroyed in the middle of the 3rd century AD. NS. goths.

The ancient Greeks were the first to name the region Tauride. Since the Taurus inhabited only the mountainous regions of southern Crimea, at first the name Tavrik was used only for this part, but later it spread to the entire peninsula. Greek city-states began to establish colonies along the Black Sea coast of Crimea in the 7th-4th century BC. NS. Theodosia and Panticapaeum were founded by the Milesians. In the 5th century BC. NS. the Dorians from Pontic Heraclea founded the seaport of Chersonesos (in modern Sevastopol).

The archon, the ruler of Panticapaeum, assumed the title of king of the Cimmerian Bosporus, a state that maintained close relations with Athens, supplying the city with wheat, honey and other goods. The last of this dynasty of kings - Paerisad V, was subjected to pressure from the Scythians and in 114 BC nopal under the patronage of the Pontic king Mithridates VI. After the death of the sovereign, his son, Pharnaces II, was attracted by Pompey to the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus in 63 BC. NS. as a reward for the help given to the Romans in their war against their father. In 15 BC. NS. he was again returned to the Pontic king, but since then it has been numbered among Rome.

For three centuries, Taurica hosted Roman legions and colonists in Charax. The colony was founded under Vespasian with the aim of protecting Chersonesos and other trading centers of the Bosporus from the Scythians. The camp was abandoned by the Romans in the middle of the 3rd century. Over the next centuries, Crimea was conquered or occupied successively by the Goths (250 AD), Huns (376), Bulgars (IV-VIII centuries), Khazars (VIII century).

In 1223, the Golden Horde led by Genghis Khan to the Crimea, sweeping away everything in its path. Originating in modern Mongolia, the Tatars were nomadic tribes who united under the banner of Genghis Khan and attracted the Turkic people to increase their army.while going through Central Asia and to Eastern Europe. The great khan, known for his ruthlessness, was always able to establish the necessary discipline and order in the army. He introduced laws prohibiting, among other things, blood feud, theft, perjury, witchcraft, disobedience to royal orders, and swimming in running water. The latter was a reflection of the Tatars' belief system. They worshiped Mongke Koko Tengre - "Eternal blue sky", an omnipotent spirit that controls the forces of good and evil, and believed that powerful spirits live in fire, running water and wind.

Crimea belonged to the Tatar empire, stretching from China in the east to Kiev and Moscow in the west. Due to the size of its territory, Genghis Khan could not rule the people from Mongolia, and the Crimean khans used the existing autonomy. The first Crimean capital was located in Kirim (now the Old Crimea) and remained there until the 15th century, after which it moved to Bakhchisarai.The breadth of the Tatar empire and the power of the great khan led to the fact that for some time merchants and other travelers under his patronage could travel to the east and west safely for themselves. The Tatars entered into trade agreements with the Genoese and Venetians, and Sudak and Kaffa (Feodosia) flourished despite the taxes they were charged. Marco Polo landed in Sudak on his way to the court of Kublai Khan in 1275.

Like all great empires, the Tatar was influenced by the cultures it encountered during its expansion. In 1262, Sultan Baybars, who was born in Kirim, wrote a letter to one of the Tatar khans, inviting them to convert to Islam. The oldest mosque in Crimea still stands in Old Crimea. It was built in 1314 by the Tatar Khan Uzbek. In 1475, the Ottoman Turks captured the Crimea, taking Khan Mengli Girey prisoner in Kaffa. They released him on the condition that he would rule Crimea as a representative. For the next 300 years, the Tatars remained the dominant force in Crimea and a thorn in the developing Russian Empire. The Tatar khans began to build the Grand Palace, which stands in Bakhchisarai, in the 15th century.

In the middle of the 10th century, the eastern part of Crimea was conquered by the Kiev prince Svyatoslav and became part of the Tmutarakan principality of Kievan Rus. In 988, Prince Vladimir of Kiev also captured the Byzantine city of Chersonesos (now part of Sevastopol), where he later converted to Christianity. This historic event is marked by an impressive Orthodox cathedral at the site of the ceremony.

Kiev dominion in the interior territories of Crimea was lost at the beginning of the 13th century under the pressure of Mongol invasions. In the summer of 1238, Batu Khan devastated Crimea and Mordovia, reaching Kiev by 1240. From 1239 to 1441, the Crimean interior was under the control of the Turkish-Mongol Golden Horde. The name Crimea comes from the name of the provincial capital of the Golden Horde - the city now known as Old Crimea.

The Byzantines and their hereditary states (the Empire of Trebizond and the Principality of Theodoro) continued to maintain control over the southern part of the peninsula until the Ottoman conquest in 1475. In the 13th century, the Genoese Republic captured the settlements built by their rivals, the Venetians along the Crimean coast, and settled in Chembalo (now Balaklava), Soldai (Sudak), Cherko (Kerch) and Kaffa (Feodosia), gaining control over the Crimean economy and Black Sea trade throughout two centuries.

After the defeat of the Mongolian Golden Horde army by Timur (1399), the Crimean Tatars in 1441 founded the independent Crimean Khanate under the control of the descendant of Genghis Khan Haji-Girey. He and his successors reigned first in Kyrk-Yer, and from the 15th century - in Bakhchisarai. The Crimean Tatars controlled the steppes that stretched from the Kuban to the Dniester, but they were unable to take control of the trading cities of the Genoese. After they turned to the Ottomans for help, an invasion led by Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1475 brought Kaffa and other trading cities under their control.

After the capture of the Genoese cities, the Ottoman sultan held Menli and Giray captive, and later released them in exchange for accepting Ottoman suzerainty over the Crimean khans. They should have allowed them to rule as tributary princes of the Ottoman Empire, but the khans still had autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and followed their own rules. Crimean Tatars attacked Ukrainian lands, where slaves were captured for sale. From 1450 to 1586 alone, 86 Tatar raids were recorded, and from 1600 to 1647 - 70. In the 1570s, about 20,000 slaves a year were sold in Kaffa. Slaves and freedmen made up about 75% of the Crimean population.

In 1769, during the last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russian-Turkish war, Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group entered the Crimean Khanate... This people comes from a complex mixture of Turks, Goths and Genoese. Linguistically, they are associated with the Khazars, who invaded Crimea in the middle of the 8th century. In the 13th century, a small enclave of Crimean Karaites was formed, people of Jewish origin, professing Karaism, who later adopted the Turkic language. It existed among the Muslims - the Crimean Tatars, primarily in the highlands of Chufut-Kale.

In 1553-1554, the Cossack hetman Dmitry Vishnevetsky gathered groups of Cossacks and built a fort designed to counter the Tatar raids on Ukraine. By this action, he founded the Zaporozhye Sich, with the help of which he was supposed to start a series of attacks on the Crimean peninsula and the Ottoman Turks. In 1774, the Crimean khans came under Russian influence under the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarka. In 1778, the Russian government deported many Orthodox Greeks from Crimea to the vicinity of Mariupol. In 1783, the Russian Empire took over the entire Crimea.

After 1799, the territory was divided into counties. At that time, there were 1400 settlements and 7 cities:

• Simferopol;
• Sevastopol;
• Yalta;
• Evpatoria;
• Alushta;
• Feodosia;
• Kerch.

In 1802, during the administrative reform of Paul I, the Novorossiysk province, annexed to the Crimean Khanate, was again abolished and divided. After the development of the Crimea, it was confined to the new Tavricheskaya province with the center in Simferopol. Catherine II played an important role in the return of the peninsula to the Russian Empire. The province included 25,133 km2 of the Crimea and 38,405 km2 of the adjacent territories of the mainland. In 1826, Adam Mickiewicz published his seminal work "Crimean Sonnets" after a trip along the Black Sea coast.

By the end of the 19th century, Crimean Tatars continued to live on the territory of the peninsula. Russians and Ukrainians lived with them. Among the local were Germans, Jews, Bulgarians, Belarusians, Turks, Greeks and Armenians. Most of the Russians were concentrated in the Feodosiya region. Germans and Bulgarians settled in Crimea at the beginning of the 19th century, having received large allotments and fertile land, and later rich colonists began to buy land in Perekop and Yevpatoria districts.

After hostilities in the Danube principalities and on the Black Sea, allied troops landed in the Crimea in September 1854 and laid siege to the city of Sevastopol, the base of the Tsarist Black Sea Fleet. After prolonged fighting, the city fell on September 9, 1855. The war destroyed most of the economic and social infrastructure of Crimea. The Crimean Tatars had to flee their homeland en masse due to the conditions created by the war, persecution and expropriation of land. Those who survived travel, hunger, and disease migrated to Dobruja, Anatolia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Finally, the Russian government decided to stop the war as agriculture began to suffer.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the military-political situation in Crimea was as chaotic as in most of the territory of Russia. During the ensuing Civil War, Crimea repeatedly passed from hand to hand and for some time was a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. In 1920, the Whites, led by General Wrangel, opposed Nestor Makhno and the Red Army for the last time. When resistance was crushed, many of the anti-communist militants and civilians fled by ship to Istanbul.

From October 18, 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was part of the Russian SSR, which, in turn, became part of the Soviet Union. However, this did not protect the Crimean Tatars, who at that time were 25% of the population on the peninsula, from the repressions of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. The Greeks were another nation that suffered. Their lands were lost in the process of collectivization, in which the peasants did not receive compensation in wages.

From 1923 to 1944, attempts were made to create Jewish settlements in the Crimea. At one time, Vyacheslav Molotov proposed the idea of ​​creating a Jewish homeland. In the twentieth century, Crimea experienced two severe famines: 1921-1922 and 1932-1933. A large influx of the Slavic population occurred in the 1930s as a result of the Soviet policy of regional development. These demographic innovations have forever changed the ethnic balance in the region.

During World War II, Crimea was the scene of bloody battles. The leaders of the Third Reich sought to conquer and colonize the fertile and beautiful peninsula. Sevastopol held out from October 1941 until July 4, 1942, and as a result, the Germans finally captured the city. From September 1, 1942, the peninsula was ruled by the Nazi Commissioner General Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld. Despite the tough tactics of the Nazis and the help of the Romanian and Italian troops, the Crimean mountains remained an invincible stronghold of local resistance (partisans) until the day the peninsula was liberated from the occupying forces.

In 1944, Sevastopol came under the control of the troops of the Soviet Union. The so-called "city of Russian glory", once famous for its beautiful architecture, was completely destroyed and had to be rebuilt stone by stone. Due to its immense historical and symbolic significance for the Russians, it was important for Stalin and the Soviet government to restore its former glory in the shortest possible time.

On May 18, 1944, the entire population of the Crimean Tatars was forcibly deported by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin to Central Asia as a form of collective punishment. He believed that they allegedly collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces and formed the pro-German Tatar legions. In 1954 Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine. Some historians believe that he donated the peninsula on his own initiative. In fact, the transfer took place under pressure from more influential politicians due to the difficult economic situation.

On March 19, 1993, the Crimean deputy and member of the National Salvation Front, Alexander Kruglov, threatened the members of the Crimean-Ukrainian Congress not to let them into the building of the Republican Council. A couple of days after that, Russia set up an information center in Sevastopol. In April 1993, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense appealed to the Verkhovna Rada to suspend the 1992 Yalta agreement on the division of the Black Sea Fleet, followed by a request from the Ukrainian Republican Party to recognize the fleet as either fully Ukrainian or a foreign state in Ukraine.

On October 14, 1993, the Crimean parliament established the post of President of Crimea and agreed on a quota for the representation of Crimean Tatars in the Council. In winter, the peninsula was rocked by a series of terrorist acts, including the arson of the Mejlis apartment, the shooting of a Ukrainian official, several hooligan attacks on Meshkov, a bomb explosion in the house of the local parliament, an attempt on the life of a communist presidential candidate and others.

On January 2, 1994, the Mejlis initially announced a boycott of the presidential elections, which were subsequently canceled. The boycott itself was later taken over by other Crimean Tatar organizations. On January 11, the Mejlis announced its representative Nikolai Bakhrov as the speaker of the Crimean parliament, a presidential candidate. On January 12, several other candidates accused him of brutal campaigning methods. At the same time, Vladimir Zhirinovsky called on the people of Crimea to vote for the Russian Sergei Shuvainikov.

In 2006, protests erupted on the peninsula after US Marines arrived in the Crimean city of Feodosia to participate in military exercises. In September 2008, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko accused Russia of issuing Russian passports to the Crimean population and called it a "real problem" given Russia's declared policy of military intervention abroad to protect Russian citizens. During a press conference in Moscow on February 16, 2009, the mayor of Sevastopol, Sergei Kunitsyn, said that the population of Crimea is against the idea of ​​joining Russia.

On August 24, 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations by ethnic Russian residents took place in Crimea. Chaos in the Verkhovna Rada during the debate on the extension of the lease of the Russian naval base erupted on April 27, 2010. The crisis unfolded at the end of February 2014 after the Euromaidan revolution. On February 21, President Viktor Yanukovych agreed on a trilateral memorandum that would extend his term until the end of the year. Within 24 hours, the agreement was violated by Maidan activists and the president was forced to flee. He was dismissed the next day by the 2012 legislature.

In the absence of the president, the newly appointed speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Alexander Turchinov, became acting president with limited powers. Russia called what was happening “a coup d'état,” and later began to call the government in Kiev “junta,” since armed extremists were involved in ruling the country, and the legislature, elected in 2012, was not yet in power. Election of a new president without opposition candidates was scheduled for 25 May.

On February 27, unknown persons seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Outsiders occupied the building of the Crimean parliament, which voted to dissolve the Crimean government and replace Prime Minister Anatoly Mogilev with Sergei Aksenov. On March 16, the Crimean government announced that almost 96% of those who voted in Crimea supported joining Russia. The voting did not receive international recognition and, apart from Russia, no country sent official observers there.

On March 18, 2014, the self-proclaimed independent Republic of Crimea signed an agreement on reunification with the Russian Federation. The actions have been recognized internationally by only a few states. Despite the fact that Ukraine refused to accept the annexation, the military left the peninsula on March 19, 2004.

How Crimea joined Russia in 2014, see the next video.