Academician V.V. Bartold about “the population of Crimea, rejecting the name “Tatars””

Research aim: to reflect the views of Academician V. V. Bartold to the question about the self-name of Crimean Tatars. To show full references to the discussion that unfolded in Crimean Tatar society in the early 1920s on the issue of the name of the people. Of great interest to us is the III volume of the Works of an outstanding scientist (Works on Historical Geography), which examines the history of individual famous ci­ties, including Crimean ones, the time when the name of the city of Crimea appeared, and which later spread to the entire peninsula. Instructive for contemporaries who perceive in a simplified way the historical processes of formation of the peoples, the emergence and spread of ethnonyms, are the broad and the most unexpected examples and conclusions made by the academician. Moreover, scientific interest in this topic does not wane, and scientists continue to deepen their research. After a number of figures advocating the renaming of Crimean Tatars as Crimeans / Kirimlis began to use the works of V. Bartold in their argumentation, often taking words out of context, using incomplete quotations, falsifying the expressed thoughts, it is ne­cessary to reproduce full texts on this issue, and a detailed consideration of the scientist’s examples, judgments and conclusions.