"Erkes kibi 10 yıl türmede oturup çıhsa şin biznen olacah edi" (if he/she had stayed in prison for 10 years like everyone else, he/she would have already been with us).

I heard this phrase from my mother a few weeks ago. It turns out that this is what Lütfie buyukanam (grandmother) said about her father, who left Crimea before the deportation and then emigrated to the USA.

It is a widespread opinion - to be like everyone else. Together. Even having to undergo incredible torture and wandering.

Thousands of Crimean Tatars initially trusted the Soviet government and returned to Crimea after the Bolsheviks seized the peninsula in the early 1920s. Kulaks were repressed in 1928, intellectuals were shot in 1938.

Already after the deportation of the entire nation in 1944, thousands of Crimeans returned from Romania or Germany to the Soviet Union, freed from the concentration camps of the Second World War. They immediately were deported, too, and then spent time in camps until Stalin's death.

Now this model of behavior is being planted by collaborators in Crimea in relation to the Crimean Tatars who did not agree to the occupation.

In every broadcast of Crimean Tatar versions of Scabeeva alike shows (the ones of Evelina Seitova, for example, spokesmen of the Muftiyat and TV channel Millet) one can hear about fugitives-traitors who have left the people and therefore cannot speak on their behalf.

For the tenth year in a row, this treacherous group of propagandists has been instilling this suicidal idea of "being together with the people" into the brains of people living in the conditions of a concentration camp.

It is difficult to destroy this thesis without examples that disprove the false statement.

The collaborators have powerful arguments from the past: those who left their homeland dissolved in the diaspora. Instead, even after being repressed, you can stay with your people.

This idea works under one condition: if the occupier wins. The first (1783) and second (1920) occupations of Crimea lasted for decades, and the fugitives really no longer had the opportunity to return to Crimea without risking losing their lives or freedom.

However, the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Soviet Union in 1991 gave dozens of nations a chance to get rid of Russian violence.

It should always be remembered that the revival of the Baltic countries took place thanks to the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians who left their homeland during the Soviet occupation of the 1940s. They were the lobbyists for international aid and the integration of countries into Euro-Atlantic structures. Their representatives led the countries in the 1990s, which was important for the transformation of the post-Soviet Baltic States.

Instead, many politicians who grew up in the USSR turned out to be agents of the KGB, or simply incapable of reforming free countries.

An even brighter example is North Korea. You don't need to be an experienced sociologist to understand that the citizens of the DPRK, who have been cut off from the world for 4 generations, are slaves of the communist dynasty of the three Kims. Even if a miracle happens and the regime falls, it will be impossible to change the social practices and behavior of these people for 20-30 years without external management.

Of course, "Qırımda yaşa" is an important instruction to preserve the people on their land and not repeat the tragedy of 1944.

However, the less passionate Crimeans live under the pressure of the Russian dictatorship, the sooner they will help return Crimea to the free world’s life after its de-occupation.

Propagandists of the thesis "to be with the people" are not sincere supporters of the idea of "Qırımda yaşa" (Live in Crimea).

Rather, they are the descendants of those who, during the deportation, were ready to stay in Central Asia and signed letters to the Central Committee of the CPSU about the happy life of the deported people in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The problem of the Crimean Tatars is that in the 1990s we did not undergo internal cleansing and lustrations. However, now it will not be possible to turn a blind eye to the actions of those who "remained with the people" and are helping the occupiers dissolve the nation in the Russian mire.