The history of Crimea for a resident of Australia (01.07.2023)
A street video dialogue (chat-roulette) by the channel’s author with a Ukrainian émigré in Australia who asks to be told the history of Crimea. In reply comes a coherent chronological monologue from the Greek colonies of the 8th c. BC and Chersonesus, through Byzantium, the Giray Crimean Khanate (1441–1783), İslâm Giray’s alliance with Khmelnytskyi (1648) and the Russian annexation of 1783 — to the Crimean People’s Republic of 1917, the figure of Noman Çelebicihan and his killing by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the occupation of 2014. The material refutes the myth of Crimea as “originally Russian”: until 1783 the peninsula did not belong to Russia, and its historical continuity is Greek-Byzantine-Crimean Tatar, not Muscovite. A source for the article on the colonial nature of Russian rule.
Key moments
- 01:51 Greek settlers found colonies in Crimea in the 8th c. BC (Sevastopol, Kerch)
- 02:49 Southern Crimea — part of Byzantium; Chersonesus remains a city subordinate to Byzantium
- 03:26 After the disintegration of the Ulus of Jochi in the mid-15th c. the Crimean Khanate forms
- 03:54 The Crimean Khanate existed until 1783; in dependence on the Ottoman Empire
- 04:20 Caffa (Feodosia) — the largest slave market, directly subordinate to the Ottomans
- 05:19 Until Peter I's time Moscow paid the Crimean Khanate "pominki" so it would not raid
- 05:33 Khan İslâm III Giray — the first ally of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi (1648)
- 06:00 1783: the last khan was summoned to St Petersburg, the khanate became the Taurida Governorate
- 06:40 1917: the Qurultay, the Crimean People's Republic, Noman Çelebicihan heading the directorate
- 07:27 23 February 1918: the Bolsheviks dissolved the Qurultay, shot Çelebicihan, threw his body into the sea
- 11:49 February 2014: Russia's operation to occupy and annex Crimea, a violation of treaties