Deportations — the essence of the Russian regime: a text by Serhii Hromenko (18.05.2022)
A Russian-language reading of a text by historian Serhii Hromenko (at the request of subscribers who do not speak Ukrainian). A concise enumeration of deportations across the entire history of Russian statehood — from the resettlement of the Novgorodians in the 1470s and the expulsion of Christians from Crimea in 1778, through the annexation of Crimea in 1783, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars on 18 May 1944, and all the way to the forced removal of Ukrainians during the full-scale invasion. The author’s thesis: deportation and the forced resettlement of the unruly are not an episode but a method on which the empire rests. Used in the article on the colonial nature of Russia, for the section on deportation as an instrument of power.
Key moments
- 00:13 18 May — the Day of Remembrance for the start of the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people (18.05.1944)
- 00:59 Reading of Serhii Hromenko's text: the history of Russian statehood is a history of deportations
- 01:10 Russia's beginning — in Moscow's conquest of Novgorod in the 1470s; Novgorodians were resettled across Moscow, the rest "finished off" by Ivan the Terrible
- 01:38 1778, even before the conquest of Crimea — Catherine II, through Suvorov, expelled Christians from the peninsula to the mainland (to the territory of the future Mariupol)
- 01:53 1783 — the first annexation of Crimea (Potemkin)
- 03:32 18 May 1944 — the start of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars (about 200,000 people)
- 04:19 Conclusion: "deportations are the essence of the Russian regime"