russian colonialism 101: it is not just putin, it is the russians.

russian rulers come and go, russian colonialism stays the same.

Russian Colonialism 101 is the first newsletter to shed light on Russian colonialism. The opening essay is public; the curated reading lists are behind a paywall. This newsletter is part of the Volya Hub network, which expands global awareness about Russian colonialism.

Just a fraction of the faces of the Qırımlı intellectual elite that was executed by Russian colonial authorities in 1938. This is what these people looked like after weeks of torture in Russian prison cells. These pictures are taken from declassified Ukrainian archives of the Societ period. However, most of the surviving documentary evidence of the repressions against Crimean Tatars during the Russian colonial rule, as well as Ukrainians, remains locked up and hidden in Russian archives.

Every April, Ukraine remembers the so-called Executed Crimean Renaissance. In the late 1930s, Russian colonial authorities massacred most of the intellectual elite of the Crimean indigenous nation, echoing the similar slaughter of Ukrainian writers and artists. Russians executed up to 100 of Qırımlı (self-name of the Crimean indigenous nation of Crimean Tatars) writers, thinkers, artists, and community leaders on the 17th of April, 1938 alone. That is another reason why the rest of the world can often quote Russian writers like Tolstoy but not no-less-talented Qırımlı writers like Cafer Ğafar or poets like Bekir Çoban-zade.

Cafer Ğafar, a Qırımlı writer, poet, and journalist. Murdered by Russian colonial authorities in 1938, aged 40.

Why mass-murdering intellectual elites this way? Whether Moscow plans to assimilate you outright or just pacify you, erasing your historical memory and reprogramming indigenous identities is an essential step in the Russian colonization checklist. Getting rid of any independent indigenous thought becomes a necessity. That’s why history saw Russia committing the same crime of mass-murdering intellectual elites wherever it went to colonize, from Estonia and Ukraine to Qırım and Qazaqstan.

But what happened to Qırım during the first half of the 20th century can tell you almost everything you need to know about how Russian colonialism works in practice. (Please start with this legendary video-explainer about Russian gaslighting of insisting that Qırım is Russian.) So many people abroad reference the word ‘Crimea’ daily. At the same time, so few of them know that the embattled peninsula is one of the most ruthless settler colonialism examples in modern history. I can say with certainty that I am alive today thanks to the kindness that the Qırımlı showed to my family generations ago — so it is my duty to amplify these stories that Russia is working hard to erase.

To illustrate it better, let me share a personal family story I rarely share anywhere else.

My grand-granddad was most likely from a mixed Asian-Kartvelian family. But his first language was Crimean Tatar. I will never know why and how — Russians kidnapped and murdered him in the 1930s, and my family just never spoke about him since then. This tragedy happened right at the offset of the Holodomor genocide in Ukraine, so his wife (my grand-grandmother) took three kids and ran away to her husband’s relatives in a Qırımlı village — to survive. They sheltered her from the Russian-made famine. I am alive today thanks to that kindness.

There’s still almost no research about it, but many Ukrainian families from my Southern-Eastern Ukrainian region found refuge in Qırımlı communities during the Holodomor genocide. But there’s definitely at least one reason why Crimean indigenous people felt so much empathy toward fleeing Ukrainians.

Qırımlı women in Bağçasaray during the 1920s. It was common for them to wear a velvet hat embroidered with gold, silver, or sometimes decorated with small coins. The picture was taken by Usein Bodaninsky, a prominent Qırımlı ethnograph and artist. He was murdered by Russian colonial authorities in 1938. Taken from here.

Amid the 1917 revolutions in Russia, Qırım left the Russian colonial empire and formed the first democratic Muslim state — the Crimean People’s Republic. From the start, it manifested itself as a beacon of progressive equality and inclusivity, way ahead of many European democracies at the time. But then the Russian empire regrouped, now with the communism label, and invaded Qırım to ’protect it.’

Local Qırımlı, Ukrainian, and ethnic Russian communities mobilized in United Crimean Headquarters to defend themselves from the Kremlin invasion, but they were outnumbered. Russian invaders punished Crimeans with mass terror, rape, looting, and ethnic pogroms. In 1919, the survived Qırımlı leadership pleaded for anti-colonial solidarity with the newly independent Ukraine. Kyiv pushed Moscow out of part of Qırım at first, but Moscow re-invaded it after re-colonizing Ukraine in 1921.

So by the time my family sought refuge in Qırım, Qırımlı had already survived several ethnic cleansing campaigns by Russians, including a 1920s man-made famine to punish Qırım for trying to leave the Russian colonial empire. When Russians first came to Qırım in 1783, indigenous Qırımlı made up over 95% of the population. Systemic violence, pillage, and aggressive settler colonialism by Russians in just 150 years decreased that ratio to just 25% in 1926.

Once the Holodomor genocide was over, my grand-granddad’s family returned up north to our ancestral village in the Zaporizhzhia region. Little did they know that they wouldn’t see their Qırımlı saviors again.

A saddler's shop in Bağçasaray, 1920s. Horse breeding played a huge role in Qırımlı society. During the Crimean Khanate, from 1441 to 1783, the city of Qarasuvbazar (known today as Bilohirsk) was referred to as the capital of saddlers. The picture was taken by Usein Bodaninsky, a prominent Qırımlı ethnograph and artist. He was murdered by Russian colonial authorities in 1938. Taken from here.

In 1944, Russia deported the entire Qırımlı nation to Central Asia. Every 2nd died in this genocide, known amid Crimean Tatar as ‘Sürgünlik’ (“Exile.”) Those who survived, were robbed of everything. For many years, deported Qırımlı were banned from using their own language, getting a university education, or traveling outside the deportation camps. The return to the homeland became possible only in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, Moscow offered the cleared lands to Russian and some Ukrainian settler-colonists. However, both weren’t treated the same. Russians came as a ‘title nation’ to tilt the ethnic composition of the peninsula to their favor. In contrast, Ukrainian migration was tightly managed by Moscow, so it was just enough to replace the labor shortage in local farming after cleansing the countryside from the Qırımlı. By 1979, Qırımlı made up just 0.1% of Qırım’s population. When some of my family members moved down the south to Qırım in the 1970s in search of good jobs and better living conditions once again, there was not a single trace reminding that this land used to belong to Qırımlı. All names of streets, villages, and towns were Russified. Russians occupied Crimean Tatar homes. Crimean Tatar valuables and cultural artifacts were stolen and shipped to Russian museums or looted. Everyone would speak just Russian.

Because Russia never got punished for any of this, when it stole Qırım once again in 2014, it restarted ethnic cleansing there. Moscow forced hundreds of thousands to leave and replaced them with hundreds of thousands of Russian settler-colonists. Simply existing as Qırımlı became de-facto a criminal offense under Russian colonial rule. Thousands disappeared in colonial raids, and tens of thousands became political prisoners in the Russian Gulag.

‘Choban’ (Shepherd). An illustrative drawing by a prominent Qırımlı painter, Seitkhalil Osmanov, who survived the Sürgünlik and fought for the right to return to the homeland all his life. He prevailed only in 1988 and, after his repatriation, helped the restoration and revival of Crimean Tatar Music and Drama Theater. He died in 1994. The Choban culture of shepherds is shared by Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians living in southern Ukrainian steppes and has always been a powerful source for folk tales emphasizing freedom and resilience.

As we mark another date in the long history of Russian colonial violence, we are also going through another Russian-made genocide in Ukraine. Once again, Russian colonialism made the existence of Qırımlı and Ukrainians punishable by death.

It wasn’t Putin who crushed the Crimean People’s Republic in 1917 and punished Qırımlı with man-made famines and deportations. It wasn’t Putin who took over their homes throughout centuries, cleansing Qırım of any indigenous memory.

It is never just Putin. It is always the Russians.

I shared this one of so many untold family stories about how Qırımlı and Ukrainians resisted the Russian empire together. This is what makes us both devoted to the idea of a free and independent Ukraine for all, along with the desire to ensure that justice is finally served and Russia pays for centuries of these colonial crimes. (If you’d like to learn more about the Ukrainian-Qırımlı anti-colonial solidarity, please read this one-of-the-kind and award-winning book by Rory Finnin.)

Ukraine won’t be free until Qırım is free.

“The Alley” (1930) by Qırımlı painter Abdurefi Abiev, who worked in the Colourist style. Murdered by Russian colonial authorities in 1938. Few of his works survived.

here is what's in store for you this week:

• What the Russian invasion of independent Ukraine in 1918 teaches us about the Russian invasion of independent Ukraine today.

• What do the phenomena of the Russian victimhood complex tell us about Russian colonialism?

• How exactly was Navalny’s funeral a manifestation of the Russian imperial culture of being obsessed with death?

• How language is an integral weapon to Russian colonial violence.

• Knowing more about the German colonial occupation of the newly independent Ukraine in 1918 and how it eventually helped Russia recolonize the country is part of education about Russian colonialism.

curious for more? let's go.