On March 18, 2014, Russian President Valdimir Putin announced the annexation of Crimea, two days after voters in this semi-autonomous territory approved a referendum on separating from Ukraine. Crimea is an eastern Ukrainian peninsula located on the Black Sea. It’s connected to the rest of the Ukraine by a small strip of land. “Ukraine screams ‘robbery’ while Russians and Russian Crimeans feel Crimea is ‘coming back home’,” (Hodgman, 3/28/2014). Cremia was absorbed into the Russian empire along with most of ethnic Ukrainian territory by Catherine the Great in the 18th century. In 1921, the peninsula became part of the Soviet Union. Crimea only became part of the Ukraine when Soviet leader Njkita Khruschchev gave the peninsula to his native country in 1954. However, in 1991, the Soviet Union broke up and Crimea ended up in an independent Ukraine. Sixty percent of Crimea’s population of two million identify themselves as Russians. Today, Crimea’s population is divided on the issue of being annexed to Russia. Geographically, Crimea is an extension of Ukraine; however, demographically and politically, it had become Russian. Ethnic Russians in Crimea support the annexation while the Crimean Tatars, originally a Mongol-led ethnic group who also claims Crimea as home, and Ukrainians express pro-Ukrainian sentiments.
To understand the division of sentiments in Crimea, one needs to understand the intertwined history and culture of Russia, Crimea, and the Ukraine. Culture is a very complex idea without any concrete foundations, and is commonly understood to be the religious, linguistic and ideological processes shared amongst a collection of people. While it may seem easy to depict different cultures in everyday life, that is simply not th...
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...ty on the Black Sea peninsula. “Some Crimean Tatars denounced the proposal for autonomy as a betrayal of Ukraine. Others insisted it prevented another mass exodus and said safeguarding their right to live on the land they consider home was a priority” (Higgins, 4/02/2014). While the minority make up less than fifteen percent of Crimea’s population, it has been overwhelmingly opposed to Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. Russia claims Crimea is an inalienable part of Russia; however, Russia’s legacy of control remains for many Tatars a bitter one of trampled cultural beliefs and language, deportation, and general lack of recognition for the Crimean Tatars’ territorial rights. Russia’s unjustifiable annexation of Crimea is paved by its cultural identity, racism, and sense of place. The Crimean Tatars should not be forgotten or overlooked during the current crisis.
Historically, Russia has always been a country of perplexing dualities. The reality of Dual Russia, the separation of the official culture from that of the common people, persisted after the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. The Czarist Russia was at once modernized and backward: St. Petersburg and Moscow stood as the highly developed industrial centers of the country and two of the capitals of Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the population were subsistent farms who lived on mir; French was the official language and the elites were highly literate, yet 82% of the populati...
Russia hoped by the end of the war they would gain back the territory lost in the Crimean wars. The war was unsuccessful for the Russian empire. Instead of new territories, a peace treaty was created between the two empires, named the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca; which essentially made Crimea an independent state. However, Crimea was invaded by Russia in 1783, despite the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which was substantially designed to bring peace to the Russian and the Ottoman Empire. Catherine's annex of Crimea gave the Russian control over the new land, which was important because it was a fertile location to grow crops on.
The information war between the West and Russia had intensified once again and reached levels higher than the levels of Russo-Georgia war (2008). Russian media naturally is defending its annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol as a democratic referendum and justifying the military intervention as the protection of rights of the Russian population of Crimea. The referendum was very controversial since it had an unusually high voter turnout and the Pro-Russian vote has created speculations that the referendum has been falsified by the Russian government. The Western media condemns Russia for the anne...
In 2012, the total population of Luhansk comprised approximately 426,000 people. The majority of city´s industrial companies have established connections with the Donbas coal and steel complex (Gentile, 2015). Generally, almost everyone in Ukraine is able to fluently speak and understand Russian, however, a vast number of people are not able to speak Ukrainian. They have an even problem to understand the language (Himka, 2015). In addition, the eastern part of Ukraine is largely urbanized and for this reason, the region more easily assimilated to use of Russian language (Himka, 2015). From the past, it is known that in the 1990s, approximately one-third of the population of Donetsk proclaimed not to support the addition of the Donbas to Ukraine (Shulman, 1998 as quoted in Gentile, 2015). Especially the Russian minority, people from the east, the retired and the poorest tend to be more pro-Russian oriented. They are even willing to follow stronger bonds with Russia (Kubicek, 2000 as quoted in Gentile, 2015). In one of his speeches, Putin mentioned the gone areas of “Novorossiya” including areas of Donbas and Luhansk, that were ceded to the Ukrainian SSR by the Soviet administration in the 1920s (Allison, 2014). This political situation resulted
1. What was the impact of the mongol conquest of Russia? Of the Islamic heartlands?
I recollect as a child how I cherished the way my mom took care of me and made all my executive decisions. I recall getting excited about my weekly allowances and about her picking out my clothes for school. However, when I became a teenager I wanted my independence. I know longer wanted her to buy my clothing and I wanted to financially support myself by getting a job. I was so tired of her telling me what to do and how to do it that I revolted. At first it was difficult trying to establish independence in my mother's house, but after a while it seemed as if I had won the battle. Unbeknownst to me that battle would be short-lived and ultimately my mom won the war. Basically, I had constructed my own crazy revolution against my mother. You see a revolution is “a fundamental change in political organization; especially: the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed .Activity or movement designed to affect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation (Webster Dictionary).”One revolution that is said to have inspired communism was the Russian Revolutions of 1917.
The Russian revolution of February 1917 was a momentous event in the course of Russian history. The causes of the revolution were very critical and even today historians debate on what was the primary cause of the revolution. The revolution began in Petrograd as “a workers’ revolt” in response to bread shortages. It removed Russia from the war and brought about the transformation of the Russian Empire into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, replacing Russia’s monarchy with the world’s first Communist state. The revolution opened the door for Russia to fully enter the industrial age. Before 1917, Russia was a mostly agrarian nation. The Russian working class had been for many years fed up with the ways they had to live and work and it was only a matter of time before they had to take a stand. Peasants worked many hours for low wages and no land, which caused many families to lose their lives. Some would argue that World War I led to the intense downfall of Russia, while others believe that the main cause was the peasant unrest because of harsh living conditions. Although World War I cost Russia many resources and much land, the primary cause of the Russian Revolution was the peasant unrest due to living conditions because even before the war began in Russia there were outbreaks from peasants due to the lack of food and land that were only going to get worse with time.
"When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics"-these are the words of Joseph Stalin, a man who understood that "killing was a tool; properly used it could eliminate enemies, terrorize survivors into submission, and overwhelm outsiders beyond their ability to intervene" (Altman 41). The Soviet government claims that the famine of 1932-1933 was due to "conditions beyond human control," that it was an unfortunate but unintended consequence of the collectivization effort (Altman 47). The reality is that this disaster was not the result of inflation, crop failure, natural disasters, nor war. The shocking truth, which has been buried under sixty-five years of Soviet propaganda and Western corruption, is that the famine was engineered by Stalin and used as a weapon to annihilate between seven and ten million Ukrainians.
After the Bolshevik overthrow of Tsarist Russia and the October Revolution in 1917, the Crimean region and the Crimean Tatars were eventually granted their own Socialist republic, the Crimean ASSR. The creation of the Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic allowed for the Crimean Tatars to have a sense of power, as they had their own republic. Yet, as under Tsarist rule, the Crimean Tatars soon found that this power was all for naught. The Soviet government, as with all of the Socialist Soviet Republics of the USSR, took control of everything, acting by its own hand and not by the will of the workers. Thus, the power each republic had was truly a figurative power. The Crimean Tatars thought that they had finally achieved a power to live
As mentioned in Armenian Genocide and the Christian Existence, after more than 75 years, the Armenian people have still not healed and are faced daily with the effects of the past. The Christian religion in this group of people has been exterminated since 1915 to some. And not even just the feeling of religion, but something exterminated during this time was the culture. (Guroian, 1991) With the notion of being “Turkified” many lost a sense of who they were and what their ethnicity and culture was during this time of hopeful survival and forced
The same argument on the abundance of the ideological undertones and selective approach regarding the time period and sources can also be applied to George Hewitt’s work Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts. The author mentions the neighboring region to Abkhazia, Megrelia, and argues that “every attempt should be made to encourage” Megrelians to “regain their self-awareness” as a distinct ethnic group since the Georgian identity has been forced on them in 1930s. In fact, a clear majority of Megrelians have never considered themselves as anyone other than Georgians and no evidence has been discovered so far that claimed the opposite. Also, for a scholar examining the Abkhaz-Georgian
Up until 1954, Ukraine was a crucial and highly profitable member of the USSR. Strategically placed between Russia and the rest of Europe, Ukraine contains many valuable natural gas pipelines. Crimea is autonomously governed peninsula owned by Ukraine, about two and a half time the sizes of the Island of Hawaii. There are roughly twice as many ethnic Russians as there are Ukrainians and the majority feel closer ties to Russia [1]. Anti-government protests turned violent and in late February, the Ukrainian government fired on protestors, killing dozens and wounding hundreds [2]. On March 6th, the leaders of Crimea stated that they intended to join Russia and are planning a vote on March 16th [3].
Crimea’s history with Russia begins in 1783, when it became an annexed state (Taylor). However, to most of those within the western sphere of schooling most commonly learn about Crimea from the Crimean war. It occurred from 1853 to 1856 and involved Russia, Sardinia, France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire. After three years of arduous fighting Russia eventually lost the war, but it did manage the keep the treasured peninsula. After the fall of the Russian Empire, in 1921 Crimea became “ The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic” and unquestionably part of the Soviet Union. In the following decades, Crimea much like the rest of Europe endured the strain of the Second World War, but surprisingly in 1945 it was gifted from Russia to the Ukraine. According to Taylor, there are a couple of possi...
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe, that borders Russia north and northeast. Lately Ukraine has been making international headlines; the country is in complete and total turmoil or for lack of better words a crisis. What started as a request from the Ukrainian citizens for a change in government, limit the powers of the president, restore the country constitution back to its original form from 2004-2010, and get closer ties to the EU. Peaceful protesting turned in to a nightmare, when the then president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych failed to make good on his word. Instead, he made a deal with Russian president and late sought refuge in Russia. A few weeks later, he was ousted from this prompted the Ukraine revolution and the annexation of Crimea also known as the Crimean crisis. A revolution in Ukraine took place in February 2014 for a period of 5 days in Kiev the capital of Ukraine, after a series of violent events in the capital culminated with the ousting of the then-President of Ukraine. Immediately following the ousting of Yanukovych, immediate changes took place in Ukraine’s sociopolitical system. Starting with the a new interim government being installed and the constitution was restored to its original state, and plans to hold impromptu presidential elections in the months to follow. Before the revolution, Ukraine had been sunken by years of corruption, mismanagement, lack of growth economically , their currency value had dropped , and they had the inability to secure funding from public markets. Because of this, president Yanukovych wanted to establish closer relationship with the European Union (EU) and Russia in order to attract the money necessary to maintain Ukraine's standard of living without a...