Chapter 4: Politics of the Memory of Deportation and Interethnic Relations in Post-2014 Crimea

Abstract This article analyses the Crimean Tatars’ politics of the memory of deportation in post-Soviet Crimea, and focuses on the changes in these politics since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. This article is organized as follows. First, I outline the main memory-related practices associated with deportation, following the mass repatriation of Crimean Tatars in the early 1990s. Second, I describe the changes that have occurred in the politics of the memory of deportation since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Third, I use interviews and social media analysis to show how these changes were perceived by the Crimean Tatars. Finally, based on expert interviews, I discuss how these changes affected interethnic relations in Crimea. I argue that Russia’s policy regarding the Crimean Tatars’ memory of the deportation in annexed Crimea is intended to depoliticize and regulate it according to official narratives about the Soviet past, and has the potential to exacerbate interethnic relations.