The Crimean Regional Party Committee submitted the following document to the Central Committee of the UkSSR Communist Party:
To: Vladimir Vasilevich Shcherbitsky,
Central Committee, Communist Party of Ukraine.28 January 1976; Ya/24/3
In answer to your communication number 3051/012 of 29 December 1975 concerning the telegram from citizen Kh. K. Cholbash.
The question of residence permits in the Crimea for citizens of Tatar nationality has been considered by us. It has been established that, after the passing of the Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet on 5 September 1967, over 4,500 persons of Tatar nationality travelled to this Region and obtained residence permits here.
At the same time, many citizens of Tatar nationality are evading existing laws by acquiring houses at speculative prices in various towns and districts of the Crimea, and are deliberately breaking the residence regulations.
The administrative authorities and those of the party and local soviets are making it clear that there must be strict enforcement of the residence regulations on the territory of the Crimean Region.
Attached; The telegram from citizen Cholbash, 1 page.
(signed) N. Kirichenko, Secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party.
Telegram 3. Clarified. Declassified. Sent to the archives, 30 January 1976. Registration No. 3051/012, Ukrainian CP Central Committee
31-XU-75: personally handed by I. Lutak to Kirichenko.
(Cholbash is a tank officer, a retired lieutenant-colonel, living in Tashkent [correction CCE 41.15]. The exact text of his telegram to Shcherbitsky is not known to the Chronicle).
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Enver Ametov (CCE 34.11), living in the settlement of Novo-Alexeyevka, was taken to KGB headquarters in the town of Genichesk on 15 April 1976 (he had not obeyed a summons to go there).
Here he had a conversation with his old acquaintances P. P. Popov, an official of the Kherson Regional KGB, and Major Demidov, head of the Genichesk district KGB, and also with a certain lieutenant-colonel, the main speaker, who did not give his name.
They accused Ametov of subversive activity and treason, because he had given an interview about the position of Crimean Tatars to a foreign journalist: “Your name is being used by imperialist propaganda.”
Then an ‘official warning” was read out, which Ametov refused to sign. The lieutenant-colonel warned Ametov that he already had “one leg in the forest, felling timber”.
Ametov had bought a house in the Crimea, in the village of Melekhovo, and had been preparing to settle there. On 10 May the former owner of the house was summoned to the village soviet and asked to sign an order requiring that the house be pulled down. The owner said that she would not sign the document, as she had already sold the house. On 11 May the house was demolished (see below: ‘Emergency Report”).
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To Comrade A. D. Sakharov, Chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the USSR:
A Declaration
I, R. Yunusova, live in the village of Gorlinka, Belgorod district.
On 13 May 1976 a gang broke into my house, under the leadership of Sidorov, party secretary of the Gorny collective farm. Without showing any authorization, they pushed me aside and began to throw my belongings into the street. The time was 9.30 in the morning.
My daughter was lying in bed, and when she saw what was going on, she began to scream in a strange voice; the child was so frightened that her nose began to bleed. I left everything and, taking my child with me, ran for help. Making use of the opportunity, the party secretary then brought up a bulldozer and they demolished the house, throwing our things on to the street, where by now our family was standing with a sick, paralysed child.
All four of my husband’s brothers died heroes’ deaths in the war, defending their great homeland [USSR], and in the first instance their small home country [Crimea], their houses, those near and dear to them. There is a monument in Gelendzhik to one of them, Asan Berber, a squadron commander. Enver Berber was a company commander and died outside Bryansk. Edem Berber took part in the defence of Sevastopol. Reading their letters, they never saw or heard of the kind of horrors that we have experienced in our own native land, the Crimea.
I ask you once more, publicize my letter and help us in whatever way you can.
With respect, R. Yunusova, 18 May 1976.
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An “Emergency information report from Crimean Tatars to the foreign press, radio and television, April-May 1976” has been sent from the Crimea.
… In the Sovetsky district immigrants are being obstructed and insulted in all sorts of ways at the behest of Pasyuta, chairman of the District Soviet Executive Committee, and police chief Poberezhnyuk, and by the managers of collective farms and industrial works, who are under the former’s orders.
Five families in the village of Vostochnoye were deprived of their garden allotments; their electricity and water were cut off; shops were even forbidden to sell them petrol; for a long time, their children could not attend school, and if they were accepted as pupils, they were not entered on the class register. A similar state of affairs exists in the village of Makovka and other villages where Crimean Tatars are settling. For over two and a half years the family of Khalich Abdulkadyr (with seven children) have been subjected to insults in the village of Pushkino, where there have been numerous attempts to expel them.
The District Soviet Executive Committee and the police chief state to petitioners that matters concerning the Crimean Tatars are under the direction of the KGB.
The situation in the Belogorsk district is even worse.
On 4 May three men in civilian clothes broke into the house of Remzi Zenabaddinov, pushed him into a police-car and took him off to an unknown destination. The same thing happened in the village of Bogatoye, where the single woman Adzhire, 52 years old, was taken away to an unknown destination. Their fate is not yet known.
On 11 May, in the village of Melekhovo, the local authorities, after discovering that a house had been sold to a Crimean Tatar, demolished the house bought by Enver Ametov with a bulldozer, before he could move into it.
The same village soviet demolished the house of citizen Anokhin, because he wanted to sell it to a Crimean Tatar.
On 12 May a group of thugs, accompanied by five cars and led by G. Nikolayev, the chairman of the village soviet, the district policeman and Komsomol organizer Shkurin, attempted to expel the family of Shaver Chakalova (with four children) from the area. After breaking down the door with crowbars, they tied their hands, gagged her with a cloth and shut her in the pantry, so that she could not shout or cry for help. Hearing the noise, neighbours gathered, but the thugs continued their activities, moving objects around and searching through the rooms.
Sarie Tokhlu (mother of 12 children [CCE 31.5]), who ran up when she heard the noise, was knocked off her feet. A 70-year-old woman was knocked off her feet; a 4-year-old child’s ear was injured. A man in civilian clothes began to threaten people with a pistol, shouting that if they did not shut up, he would shoot them all one by one. Seeing that the (secret) operation had not succeeded, the collective-farm chairman was forced to put an end to it. Apart from the moral and physical violence they suffered, the Chakalova family suffered material damage worth over 800 roubles.
On 13 May 18 vigilantes, led by Telny, chairman of the village soviet.
Plekhanov, chairman of the collective farm, and party organizer Sidorov, attempted to expel from their home the family of a 72-year-old man, but were forced to retreat by the pressure of fellow-villagers.
On the same day, in the village of Gorlinka, which is subordinate to the Bogatoye village soviet, the same people succeeded in expelling the family of Memet Seitveli. They threw their belongings out on the street and boarded up the house, leaving the family outside under the open sky (a family of five); during the night, the small daughter began to freeze; thanks to neighbours, she was saved, but in the morning the child had to be taken to hospital.
Then the same people tried to destroy the house of Usein Umush (a family of nine) in the village of Krasnaya Sloboda, but, thanks to the multi-national Russian and Ukrainian population, this crime was averted; many of the people concerned were not accepted at their places of work on the following day.
Crimean Tatars registered as residents, who were present at these events, also lost their jobs.
All this is in accordance with the words of Krutova, chairman of the Town Soviet Executive Committee; we quote her expressions: ‘The authorities of the party, police and KGB are considering the question of a new deportation of the Crimean Tatars who have returned to the Crimea’; ‘Do not forget 1944’.
All these activities were organized by the zealous chauvinist N, L. Kravets, chairman of the District Soviet Executive Committee.
He thinks that he himself is both law and justice!
The Soviet government does not want to allow discussion of our case; obviously the UN is unable to help our people, as numerous appeals have remained unanswered. So we are appealing to people of good will to raise their voices in defence of the just demands of our nation. Let all the nations of the world know of the conditions in which the native population of the Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, are living.
This is a matter of saving a nation, of defending the principles of national self-determination and equality proclaimed in the United Nations Charter.
Copies of this document, with 295 signatures, have been sent to: The Procurator for supervision of the Committee of State Security; The Executive Committee of the Crimean Regional Soviet and the Executive Committee of the Belogorsk District Soviet.
Photocopies of this document have been sent to many departments.
Simferopol, Belogorsk. 16 May 1976.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 