History of Crimea: from ancient times to the present day

The Crimean Peninsula has a rich history that dates back to ancient times. This land was of interest to many peoples, therefore, many wars were waged for it.

Archaeological evidence of the settlement of ancient Crimea by people dates from the Middle Paleolithic. The remains of Neanderthals found in the Kiyik-Koba Cave date back to about 80,000 BC. e. Later evidence of the presence of Neanderthals here was also found in Starosel and Buran Kaya. Archaeologists have found one 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, artifacts associated with 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 resettled.

The East European plain at this time was mainly occupied by the periglacial forest-steppe. Proponents of the Black Sea Flood hypothesis believe that Crimea became a peninsula relatively recently, after lowering the Black Sea level in the VI millennium BC. e. The beginning of the Neolithic period in the Crimea was not connected with agriculture, but with the beginning of pottery production, changes in the technology of silicon gun production and the domestication of pigs. The earliest evidence of domiciled wheat planting on the Crimean peninsula dates back to the Chalcolithic Ardych-Burun fortification dating from the middle of the 4th millennium BC. e.

Taurians began to mix with the Scythians, starting from the end of the III century BC.e., as mentioned in the writings of ancient Greek writers. The origin of the Taurians is unclear. Perhaps they are the ancestors of the Cimmerians, supplanted by the Scythians. Alternative theories attribute them to the Abkhaz and Adyghe peoples, who at that time lived much further to the west than today. The Greeks, who founded the colonies in Crimea in the archaic period, considered the Tauri as a wild, warlike people. Even after 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 e. they became allies of the Scythian king Skilur.

The Scythian tribes occupied the Crimean peninsula north of the Crimean mountains. Their center was the city of Scythian Naples on the outskirts of modern Simferopol. The city ruled a small kingdom, covering the land between the lower reaches of the Dnieper and 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 III century BC. e. goths.

The ancient Greeks were the first to call the region Tauride. Since Taurus only inhabited the mountainous regions of southern Crimea, at first the name Taurica was used only for this part, but later it spread to the entire peninsula. Greek city-states began to create colonies along the Black Sea coast of Crimea in the VII-IV century BC. e. Theodosius and Panticapaeum were founded by the Milesians. In the V century BC e. Dorians from Heraclea of ​​Pontic founded the seaport of Khersones (in modern Sevastopol).

The archon, the ruler of Panticapaeum, took 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 BCopal under the auspices of the Pontic king Mithridates VI. After the death of the sovereign, his son, Farnak II, was attracted by Pompey to the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus in 63 BC. e. as a reward for helping the Romans in their war against their father. In 15 BC e. he was again returned to the Pontic king, but has since been reckoned with Rome.

For three centuries, Taurica hosted the Roman legions and colonists in Charax. The colony was founded under Vespasian in order to protect Chersonesos and other shopping centers of the Bosporus from the Scythians. The camp was abandoned by the Romans in the middle of the III century. Over the following centuries, Crimea was conquered or occupied consecutively by the Goths (250 AD), the Huns (376 AD), the Bulgars (IV-VIII centuries), the Khazars (VIII century).

In 1223, the Golden Horde led by Genghis Khan to the Crimea, sweeping away everything in its path. Appearing in modern Mongolia, the Tatars were nomadic tribes that united under the banner of Genghis Khan and attracted the Turkic people to increase their armywhile walking through Central Asia and into Eastern Europe. Known for his ruthlessness, the great khan could always establish the necessary discipline and order in the army. He introduced laws prohibiting, among other things, blood feud, theft, false testimony, witchcraft, disobedience to royal orders, and swimming in running water. The latter was a reflection of the belief system of the Tatars. They worshiped Munke Coco Tengra, the “Eternal Blue Sky,” the omnipotent spirit that rules 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 enjoyed the existing autonomy. The first Crimean capital was in Kirim (now 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 the merchants and other travelers who were under his protection could travel east and west safely for themselves. Tatars entered into trade agreements with the Genoese and Venetians, and Sudak and Kaffa (Theodosius) prospered, despite the taxes levied on them. Marco Polo landed in Sudak on the way to the court of Khan Khubilai in 1275.

Like all great empires, the Tatar was influenced by the cultures it encountered during its expansion. In 1262, Sultan Baybars, 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 Crimea, capturing Khan Mengli Girey prisoner in Kaffa. They released him on condition that he would rule Crimea as a representative. Over the next 300 years, the Tatars remained the dominant force in the Crimea and a splinter for the developing Russian empire. Tatar khans began to build the Grand Palace, which stands in Bakhchisarai, in the 15th century.

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

Kiev dominion in the internal territories of Crimea was lost at the beginning of the XIII century under the pressure of the 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-Mongolian 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 of the southern part of the peninsula until the conquest of the Ottoman Empire in 1475. In the 13th century, the Genoese Republic seized the settlements built by their rivals by the Venetians along the Crimean coast, and settled in Cembalo (now Balaklava), Soldai (Sudak), Cherko (Kerch) and Kaffa (Theodosius), 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 founded the independent Crimean Khanate in 1441 under the control of the descendant of Genghis Khan Gadzhi-Girey. He and his successors reigned first in Kirk-Hyere, and from the 15th century in Bakhchisarai. Crimean Tatars controlled the steppes, which stretched from the Kuban to the Dniester, but they could not take control of the trading cities of the Genoese. After they turned to the Ottomans for help, the invasion led by Gedik Ahmed-Pasha in 1475 led to Kafa and other trading cities being under their control.

After the capture of the Genoese cities, the Ottoman sultan held captive Menli and Giray, and later released them in exchange for the adoption of Ottoman suzerainty over the Crimean khans. They were supposed to allow them to rule as princes, tributaries 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 for sale were captured. Only from 1450 to 1586, 86 Tatar raids were registered, and from 1600 to 1647 - 70. In the 1570s, about 20,000 slaves were sold in Kaffa per year. Slaves and freedmen made up about 75% of the Crimean population.

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

In the years 1553-1554, the Cossack hetman Dmitry Vishnevetsky assembled a group of Cossacks and built a fort designed to counter the Tatar raids on Ukraine. With this action, he founded the Zaporizhzhya Sich, with the help of which he was to begin a series of attacks on the Crimean peninsula and the Ottoman Turks. In 1774, the Crimean khans came under Russian influence under the Kyuchyuk Kaynarki treaty. In 1778, the Russian government deported many Orthodox Greeks from Crimea to the vicinity of Mariupol. In 1783, the Russian Empire appropriated the entire Crimea.

After 1799, the territory was divided into counties. At that time, there were 1,400 settlements and 7 cities:

• Simferopol;
• Sevastopol
• Yalta;
• Evpatoria;
• Alushta;
• Theodosius;
• 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 Crimea, it was timed to coincide with the new Tauride province with its center in Simferopol. Catherine II played an important role in the return of the peninsula of the Russian Empire. The province consisted of 25,133 km2 of Crimea and 38,405 km2 of adjacent territories of the mainland. In 1826, Adam Mickiewicz published his fundamental work, Crimean Sonnets, after traveling along the Black Sea coast.

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

After military operations in the Danube principalities and on the Black Sea, allied forces landed in Crimea in September 1854 and besieged the city of Sevastopol - the base of the tsar's Black Sea Fleet. After lengthy battles, the city fell on September 9, 1855. The war destroyed most of the economic and social infrastructure of Crimea. Crimean Tatars had to flee from their homeland en masse due to the conditions created by the war, the persecution and expropriation of land. Those who survived the journey, famine and disease, moved to Dobrudja, 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, whites led by General Wrangel last opposed Nestor Makhno and the Red Army. When resistance was crushed, many of the anti-communist militants and civilians escaped by ship to Istanbul.

Since 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 on the peninsula among the population were 25%, from the repressions of Joseph Stalin of 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 with 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 strong famines: 1921-1922 and 1932-1933. A large influx of 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 lasted from October 1941 to July 4, 1942, as a result, the Germans finally captured the city. From September 1, 1942, the peninsula was under the control of 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 bastion of local resistance (partisans) until the day when 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 known for its beautiful architecture, was completely destroyed, and it had to be rebuilt stone by stone. Due to the great 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.

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 the pressure of 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 members of the Crimean-Ukrainian Congress not to let them into the building of the Republican Council. A couple of days after that, Russia created an information center in Sevastopol. In April 1993, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine appealed to the Verkhovna Rada to suspend the 1992 Yalta Agreement on the division of the Black Sea Fleet, followed by a request by 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 shaken by a series of terrorist acts, including setting fire to the Mejlis’s apartment, shooting a Ukrainian official, several hooligan attacks on Meshkov, a bomb blast in the house of the local parliament, an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate from the Communists and others.

On January 2, 1994, the Mejlis initially announced a boycott of the presidential election, which was subsequently canceled. The other Crimean Tatar organizations later took over the boycott. On January 11, the Mejlis declared its representative Nikolai Bakhrov the speaker of the Crimean parliament, a presidential candidate. On January 12, several other candidates accused him of cruel methods of agitation. At the same time, Vladimir Zhirinovsky called on the people of Crimea to vote for Russian Sergei Shuvaynikov.

In 2006, protests broke out 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 Ogryzko 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, stated that the Crimean population was opposed to the idea of ​​joining Russia.

On August 24, 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations of ethnic Russian residents took place in Crimea. Chaos in the Verkhovna Rada during the debate about extending the lease of the Russian naval base erupted on April 27, 2010. The crisis unfolded in late February 2014 after the Euromaidan revolution. On February 21, President Viktor Yanukovych agreed on a tripartite memorandum that would extend his mandate 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 fired the next day by the legislature, elected in 2012.

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

On February 27, unknown persons seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Strangers occupied the building of the Crimean parliament, which voted for the dissolution of the Crimean government and the replacement of Prime Minister Anatoly Mogilev, Sergei Aksenov. On March 16, the Crimean government announced that almost 96% of voters in Crimea supported joining Russia. The vote did not receive international recognition and, except for Russia, not a single country sent official observers there.

On March 18, 2014, the self-proclaimed independent Republic of Crimea signed a reunification agreement with the Russian Federation. Actions were 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.

About how Crimea joined Russia in 2014, see the next video.