Since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire in 1783, Russian authorities have consistently sought to establish and consolidate control over the peninsula through systematic displacement or assimilation of the Indigenous Crimean Tatar people. This policy aimed not only to alter the region’s ethnic composition but also to fully subordinate the political and cultural identity of the native population to imperial and later Soviet narratives.
Throughout the 1920s, the Soviet authorities carried out targeted repressive measures against Crimean Tatar political and cultural figures under the pretext of combating so-called “bourgeois nationalism.” Particular targets were individuals who supported the ideas of cultural and political self-determination for the Crimean Tatar people. Among the first victims was Veli Ibrahimov, head of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, who was sentenced to death in 1928. Ibrahimov advocated for the restoration of national self-governance, the protection of Crimean Tatar peasants from land discrimination, the development of Crimean Tatar-language education, and the return of previously displaced compatriots. His execution marked the beginning of a policy to eliminate the autonomous political subjectivity of the Crimean Tatar people.
During the same period, other leading figures were also persecuted. For instance, Mamut Suleimanov, an activist and scholar who was one of the early organizers of national schooling, was arrested on fabricated charges of espionage. Similarly, Mustafa Kurtmerz, who was working to establish a network of libraries and public reading rooms, was also subjected to repression. Any initiative that reflected modernizing efforts or autonomy was interpreted as a threat to the Soviet ideological monolith.
In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union was swept by a wave of mass repressions known as the Great Terror. Under NKVD Order No. 00447 dated 30 July 1937, a campaign was launched to “purge” Crimea of “anti-Soviet elements.” On 5 March 1938, one of the so-called “Stalinist execution lists” concerning the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was signed. It included 60 individuals, 41 of whom were representatives of the Crimean Tatar cultural and scholarly community. Judicial proceedings were conducted by a traveling session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Simferopol. Verdicts were delivered within 15 to 20 minutes, often without evidence or legal defense.
The traveling session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR took place in Simferopol. All defendants were charged with standard fabricated accusations such as “Pan-Turkism,” “espionage on behalf of Germany or Great Britain,” and “membership in the banned national party Milliy Firqa.” These trials were purely formal, each lasting no more than 20 minutes. As a result, 36 members of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia were executed, while the others received long-term sentences in labor camps. Only one of the convicted — Yakub Kermenchikli, a delegate of the national Qurultay assembly — survived, enduring 15 years in the GULAG system.
Usein Bodaninsky — an art historian, ethnographer, and founder of the Bakhchysarai Palace Museum — was one of the most prominent figures of the Crimean Tatar national revival. He was described as “the most significant academic figure among the Crimean Tatars.” Nevertheless, in 1937, he was accused of nationalism, arrested in Tbilisi, and executed on 17 April 1938.
On the same day, Osman Akchokrakly — a scholar with encyclopedic knowledge, philologist, folklorist, and epigraphist — was also executed. The charges against him included “praising Gasprinskyi,” Pan-Turkism, and espionage. Before his arrest, he had taught at the Crimean Pedagogical Institute and later at a school in Baku. Although Akchokrakly vehemently denied all charges, his protests were ignored by the Soviet repressive system.
Abdulla Latif-zade — poet, philologist, and language reformer involved in the introduction of the Latin alphabet — was arrested in March 1937. After being dismissed from his teaching position for alleged nationalism, he was charged with anti-Soviet activities and executed on 17 April 1938 along with over thirty other cultural figures.
Another victim of the tragedy was Asan Sabri Aivazov — a writer, editor, chairman of the Qurultay, and teacher of Turkish and Arabic. Arrested in 1937, he confessed under torture to “working for the NKVD” and was subsequently executed. His case painfully exemplifies the cruelty and absurdity of Stalin’s system.
That same day also saw the execution of theater critic Mamut Nedim and writer-politician Ilyas Tarkhan — former head of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimean ASSR and chairman of the Union of Crimean Writers. All charges against them were based solely on their political and cultural engagement, not on any actual crimes.
Just six years after the mass executions and imprisonments of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, an even greater crime took place — the 1944 deportation, during which an entire people were forcibly removed from their historical homeland and subjected to ethnic cleansing. The repressions against the Crimean Tatar people were not isolated acts of political violence by Russia — they were part of a deliberate state policy aimed at the destruction of this distinct national community, a policy that Moscow continues to pursue in occupied Crimea today.