The question “Where are Crimean Tatars going and what are they looking for” is not new, but not only does not lose its relevance, but also takes priority in the context of the nine-year occupation of Crimea and our common dreams about the future of the peninsula. At the heart of any community's identity and self-concept lies historical and cultural memory, built around shared narratives. These narratives are rooted in memories of the past, and the community's aspirations for the future. Collective memory of shared historical experience unites individuals into a community. After the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, although it was late in Ukrainian society, the idea of the Crimean Peninsula as the homeland of the Crimean Tatars began to consolidate. For the Crimean Tatars themselves, the narratives of the homeland are deeply rooted in the criminal deportation of 1944.

Immediately it should be noted that the deportation of Crimean Tatars was not an event, but a process stretched over time, or rather structure. This structure had two dimensions: power and popular. For the authorities, the deportation was another attempt to cleanse Crimea of Crimean Tatars, the final colonization and Detatarizingpeninsula. Deportation was still an unprecedented phenomenon in form, because all the people were forcibly evicted from the Crimea. The deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 was one of the most massive crimes of the Soviet regime and the culmination of the imperial policy of displacing the indigenous people from their land. Undoubtedly, the deportation of Crimean Tatars has a genocidal nature: the forced eviction of the entire people from Crimea led not only to significant human casualties, but also to the destruction of the established order of life, social structure and culture of the people. While the Crimean Tatars were in exile, the authorities carried out a series of measures to erase the traces of the indigenous people in Crimea, as a result of which the image of the peninsula changed. The deportation was not an event, but a process stretched over time, the purpose of which was to destroy the people as a whole community and to deprive it of its meanings suitable for consolidation. In particular, the resettlement of the people in remote parts of Central Asia should have led to the assimilation of the Crimean Tatars. But the meaning of the deportation was not something new, because it was not for the first time that the authorities forced the people out of their native land. Thus, the expulsion of the indigenous people from the homeland was a continuation of the colonial policy of the empire. After 1944, imperial persecution does not stop, because deportation as a structure is reproduced in attempts to assimilate Crimean Tatars abroad, slander, accusations of treason, ban on return, etc. After all, here it is advisable to recall that already after 2014 the concept appeared Hybrid Deportation.

For the people, deportation was also not just an event in May 1944: old people often say “in deportation”, because Crimean Tatars mean this term expulsions. It was a long process that included the awareness of oneself and one's homeland, the struggle for one's rights, the return and, ultimately, the invention of the homeland.

The emergence of an idea of the whole Crimea as a homeland

Until 1944, Crimean Tatars had, among other things, an (ethnic, religious) local (territorial) identity: they imagined themselves as inhabitants of their village or city and identified themselves with their neighbors. “Own territory” was limited to the borders of the place familiar to him from childhood. That is why in the memories of deportees there is a common plot of farewell to their village at the moment when people were taken away on trucks.

Instead, the deportation led to the dominance of the idea of the entire Crimean peninsula as a homeland. It is important that in the memories the plot of farewell is repeated at the moment when the train passed Perekop (“Or kъapydan otemiz”), or Sivash, leaving the Crimea behind. This meant that Crimea was left behind: “Everyone cried bitterly, realizing that they were being taken out of their native land.” So Musfira Muslimova in her memoirs noted that older people said goodbye to their homeland when the train went through Sivash: “Farewell dear, our native Crimea! Are we going, or will we see you again?” They told the children: “Look, children, we are going through Sivash, the gate of Crimea. Never forget your homeland — Crimea!”

Years in exile and the exchange of memories of the homeland with other members of the community who came from different parts of Crimea only amplified this effect. Therefore, in the narratives of the second and especially the third generation of deported Crimean Tatars, the idea of, for example, Uskut, Tav-Bodrak or Kurman as their native land, homeland, fades into the background. Instead, the entire Crimean peninsula is beginning to be perceived as ana vatan, ana yurt. In the end, the formation of the modern Crimean Tatar identity was significantly influenced by the trauma of deportation and the struggle for return.

The consolidation of the people around the idea of return

The genesis of the national movement of the Crimean Tatars was connected with the aspiration and idea of return, which originated in the exile. The source of this idea was the narratives of the homeland. It was these narratives that influenced the emergence of not only the first, but also in the second and third generations of Crimean Tatars the idea and desire to return to their homeland. This idea was also based on the desire to restore justice: deportation was imagined as an injustice, a crime committed against the people. Indeed, the national movement of Crimean Tatars for Return was massive because it was built around the struggle for justice and return to their native land. Such an agenda, undoubtedly, had an anti-colonial character, which was consonant with the world trends of the second half of the 20th century, and has not lost its relevance in our time.

Fighting and returning home consolidated the community in different ways. This is the collection of signatures under petitions, during which acquaintance and understanding/feeling of community took place. This is also cash assistance for those who, after 1967, dared to go to Crimea despite an unspoken ban. The actual persecution and resistance united the people in the same way.

Present

Settlements on the native land after repatriation, in particular in the context of the political and economic crises of the 1990s, and subsequently the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, significantly influenced the change of landmarks and the blurring of points of consolidation. Nevertheless, there is a demand in society to unite the community around shared values and preserve its identity. Moreover, the narrative of the homeland, the idea of the native land as a value, are still relevant for the Crimean Tatars. At the same time, the desire for justice is also on time. It seems that under current circumstances, with all the threats in mind, the people face the task not only of preserving themselves, but of adapting their meanings and aspirations according to the challenges of the times.

Crimean Tatars undoubtedly determine that they are characterized by their love of freedom, dignity and the desire for justice. Perhaps these values should serve as guidelines for the community? Indeed, Crimean Tatars are carriers of a common historical experience, a collective trauma of deportation, in which the vision of Russia as a colonizer is rooted. This, combined with an understanding of the importance of native land and a drive to overcome the consequences of the colonial status of the people, frames the advance of the Crimean Tatars as decolonization.