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Crimea - History

Crimea - History: Encyclopedia II - Crimea - History

Crimea - Early History. The earliest inhabitants of whom we have any authentic traces were the Cimmerians, who were expelled by the Scythians during the 7th century BC. A remnant that took refuge in the mountains became known subsequently as the Tauri. In that same century, Greek colonists began to settle on the coasts, e.g. Dorians from Heraclea at Chersonesus, and Ionians from Miletus at Theodosia and Pa ...

Crimea: Encyclopedia II - Crimea - History

Crimea - History

Crimea - Early History

The earliest inhabitants of whom we have any authentic traces were the Cimmerians, who were expelled by the Scythians during the 7th century BC. A remnant that took refuge in the mountains became known subsequently as the Tauri. In that same century, Greek colonists began to settle on the coasts, e.g. Dorians from Heraclea at Chersonesus, and Ionians from Miletus at Theodosia and Panticapaeum (also called Bosporus).

Two centuries later (438 BC) the archon, or ruler, of the last-named assumed the title King of Bosporus, a state that maintained close relations with Athens, supplying that city with wheat and other commodities. The last of these kings, Paerisades V, being hard pressed by the Scythians, put himself under the protection of Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, in 114 BC. After the death of this latter sovereign, his son Pharnaces II, as a reward for assistance rendered to the Romans in their war against his father, was in 63 BC invested by Pompey with the kingdom of Bosporus. In 15 BC it was once more restored to the king of Pontus, but henceforward ranked as a tributary state of Rome.

During the succeeding centuries the Crimea was overrun or occupied successively by the Goths (AD. 250), the Huns (376), the Bulgars (6th century), the Khazars (8th century), Kievan Rus (10th-11th centuries), the Byzantine Greeks (1016), the Kipchaks (1050), and the Mongols (1237).

In the mid 10th century eastern Crimea was conqured by Sviatoslav I of Kiev and became part of Kievan Russian Tmutarakan. In 988 Vladimir I of Kiev also captured the Byzantine town of Chersones and later converted to Christianity there.

In the 13th century the Genoese seized the settlements which their rivals the Venetians had made on the Crimean coasts and established themselves at Eupatoria, Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa.

Crimea - Crimean Khanate

Main article Crimean Khanate

Meanwhile the Turkic peoples, now known as Crimean Tatars, had been living around the peninsula since the Huns. A small enclave of the Karaites dwelled among the Crimean Tatars, principally in Chufut Kale. After the destruction of the Golden Horde by Timur, they founded an independent Crimean Khanate in 1441 under Haci Giray, a descendant of Genghis Khan. He and his successors reigned first at Solkhat (Eski-Qırım), and from the beginning of the 15th century, at Bakhchisaray.

The trading towns in the Genoese hold were conquered by the Ottoman Turkish general Gedik Ahmet Pasha in 1475. After 1475, the Crimean Khans ruled as tributary princes of the Ottoman Empire until 1774 when they fell under Russian influence. Later in 1783, the whole of the Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire.

Crimea - Russian Empire

The Crimean War, which took place between 1854 and 1856, devastated the economic and social structure of Crimea. Crimean Tatars had to leave their homeland en masse, forced by the conditions created by the war, persecution and land confiscation. Those who survived the trip, famine and disease resettled in Dobrogea, Anatolia, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. For the first time in history, Crimean Tatars became a minority in their own land, with the majority living in the diaspora. Finally, the Russian government decided to stop the process, as the agriculture began to suffer due to deserted fertile lands. During the Russian Civil War Crimea was a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army, and in Crimea the Russian Whites led by General Wrangel made their last stand against the Red army in 1920.

Crimea - Soviet Union & Nazi rule

In 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of Russian SFSR.

Crimea was the scene of some of the most bloody battles in World War II. The Germans suffered heavy casualties as they tried to advance through the isthmus linking Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland at Perekop in the summer of 1941. Once the German army broke through, they occupied most of Crimea, with the exception of the city of Sevastopol (given the title of Hero City later) which held out from October 1941 until July 4, 1942, when the Germans finally captured the city. From 1 September 1942 the peninsula was administrated as the Generalbezirk Krim (general district of the Crimea) und Teilbezirk 'and sub-district' Taurien by the Nazi Generalkommissar Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld (b. 1898 - d. 1977), under the authority of the three consecutive Reichskommissare for the whole Ukraine.

In 1944 Sevastopol was liberated by Soviet troops. On 18 May 1944 the entire population of the Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported by Stalin's Soviet government as a form of collective punishment on grounds that they cooperated with the Nazi occupation forces. On 21 May 1944, the ethnic cleansing of the Crimea was complete. An estimated 46% of deportees died from hunger and disease. In 1967, the Crimean Tatars were rehabilitated, but they were banned from legally returning to their homeland until the last days of the Soviet Union.

The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished in 1945 and transformed into Crimean Oblast (province) of the Russian SFSR. In 1954, it was transferred by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the Ukrainian SSR as a gesture to mark the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav between Ukrainian Cossacks and Russia.

Crimea - Autonomy in independent Ukraine

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine, a situation largely unexpected by a large part of its mainly Russian population and a cause of tension between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised.

With the Ukraine-Russia 1997 treaties on friendship and division of the fleet, the tension slowly eased.

The city of Sevastopol is located within the republic, but has a special municipality status in Ukraine.