Oleksandr Burlaka & Oleksiy Radynski
Set of postcards and calendar “Jewish-Tatar Autonomous Republic of Crimea – 2014”
The Jewish-Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an administrative unit in southern Ukraine, located on the Crimean peninsula between 44°23′ N and 46°15′ N latitude and 32°29’ E and 36°39’ E longitude.
The territory of Crimea has been controlled by various powers throughout its history. What sets the Jewish-Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic of Crimea apart is its multiethnicity and adherence to the principles of internationalism written into its constitution.
The Crimean Tatars consolidated as a people in Crimea, and they consider themselves the descendants of diverse peoples who arrived in Crimea during different historical periods. This process of forming a united Crimean Tatar people took several centuries. Fundamental unifying elements were common territory, Turkic language and Islam.
Jews began settling in Crimea at the beginning of the Common Era. In the 1920s, the USSR leadership decided to facilitate a mass resettlement of the Jewish population to Crimea with the intention of creating a Jewish Autonomous Republic there. In spite of Stalin’s attempts to forestall this, instead favoring the creatiion a Jewish autonomous oblast (region) in the Far East, his administration did not succeed in restraining the mass migration of the USSR’s Jews to Crimea.
The first half of the 1940s is characterized by the greatest tragedies in the histories of both the Jews and Crimean Tatars. When the Crimean peninsula was occupied by Hitler’s Germany, the Jewish and Crimean Tatar populations faced the threat of destruction. At that time, while waging a common battle against Nazi invaders, the strong friendship between the Jewish and Crimean Tatar peoples was born. After the war, the USSR’s leaders accused the Jewish and Crimean Tatar peoples of international conspiracy and deported the Crimean Tatars to Central Asia and the Jews to Birobidzhan. Nevertheless, the Jewish and Crimean Tatar peoples united their efforts in their struggles for liberation.
The Jewish-Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic of Crimea was established by the common will of the Jewish and Crimean Tatar peoples on December 1, 1991. The international community recognized the right of the Jewish and Crimean Tatar peoples for common self-determination on the territory of the Crimean peninsula, thus forming a precedent in international law for the common self-determination of nations.
The declaration of the Jewish-Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic of Crimea as a result of common national self-determination had great significance for international law and for easing tensions between nations in many regions of the world. Soon after the establishment of the Jewish-Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic of Crimea, following a long negotiation process, the nations of Israel and Palestine signed a memorandum on common self-determination. This was the first step in establishing a united Arab-Jewish state that was eventually named the Middle East Socialist Republic of Israel and Palestine.
A number of independent states founded on the principle of common national self-determination have been established on the territory of the former Russian Federation: for example, the Adygey-Kalmykian Democratic Republic, the People’s Republic of Mordova and Chuvashia, the United Republic of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, the Chechen-Ingush People’s Democratic Republic and the Federation of Yakutia and Chukotka.
