IN CRIMEA
EVICTIONS
CCE 40.11 published a letter from R. Yunusova about the destruction of her family’s home on 13 May.
After this, Resmiye Yunusova, her husband Memet Seitveliyev and their paralysed child lived in a tent in their yard. On 3 June a group of policemen and vigilantes headed by Telny, the chairman of the village soviet and Sidorov, the secretary of the Party organization of the collective farm, pushed the people by force into a bus, threw their belongings, now without owners, into two lorries (many things were broken or plundered), and drove them out to the steppe. The Seitveliyev family were able to return to their yard only two days later.
On 15 June, with the help of others, they restored part of their house. The next day the same Sidorov, with Plekhanov, the chairman of the collective farm, and Ruban, a Komsomol organizer, drove up a bulldozer and knocked the house down again. The Seitveliyev family is continuing to live in a tent.
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On 4 June, in Mazanka village (Simferopol district), Shkvorets (CCE 34.11), the chairman of the village soviet, Garanin, the chairman of the collective farm, and Saprykin, a police officer, headed an operation to evict the family of Dilyaver Muradasilov (four people).
They broke down the doors and dragged the people outside. Garanin ordered the bulldozer drivers to knock down the house, and promised them a reward, but they refused. The house was sealed. The family’s belongings were taken to the station, and Muradasilov was asked to dispatch them beyond the borders of the Crimea, but again the answer was no.
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On 16 May Reshat Refatov and his wife Zekiye Mustafayeva and their two children (aged 2 and 5 years) moved into a house they had bought in Pionerskoye village (Simferopol district) and immediately applied to the village soviet and the police for official registration of their purchase and for residence permits. Denisov, the head of the district police, shouted at them: ‘You were thieves in Uzbekistan and now you come here to buy houses. This isn’t 1942, you know.’
On 18 May the Refatovs were summoned to the administrative commission of the district soviet executive committee, from where they were escorted to the village soviet, handed the money for the house, received from its former owner, and taken to the house, where police cars, lorries and a bus were already standing. Despite their request to allow the children to sleep in the house that night, Denisov ordered that the family be taken to the station immediately. Here they tried to make both Refatov and Muradasilov dispatch their belongings.
On 10 June Refatov bought a partly-built house in Khan-Dzham village (Belogorsk district). On 17 June Refatov and his wife were summoned to the police, and while they were there a bulldozer and cars were driven up to the house and vigilantes were brought in. The operation was led by Piskalov, the deputy head of the district police, and Lieutenant Sinyagovsky, the head of the identity papers office. However, the people who had gathered did not let them pull down the house and evict the Refatovs. Piskalov threatened: “We’ll make it worse for you than in 1944.” [1].
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On 18 June in Belogorsk district several raids were made at once on the houses of Crimean Tatars.
In Vishennoye village, Muntyayev, the chairman of the village soviet, and a police officer, Samoilov, appeared together with vigilantes to evict Servet Mustafayev (a family of five). Mustafayev was able to break away and inform the Crimean Tatars in Belogorsk. A crowd gathered, and the operation fell through. In Chernopole village Russians, Ukrainians and Tatars jointly defended the family of Refat Kurtmezirov.
In Podgornoye village, Yakubovskaya, the deputy chairman of the village soviet, and a police officer, Prikhodko, deported the family of Dervish Asanov, with three young children, out to the steppe by night. The Asanovs did not find their belongings until the morning. They had been thrown down beside the road several kilometres from the place where they themselves were dumped. 1,800 roubles left in a cupboard were missing. The chairman of the collective farm on to whose land the Asanovs had been dumped gave them two cars, and they returned home. D. Asanov’s eldest son is serving in the army in East Germany. He complained to the military authorities, and the political officer of his unit sent a letter to the district. It appears that this intervention had its effect.
On the same night of 18 June the police, with the help of Ponomarenko, the chairman of the village soviet, and Vorotilov, the Party organizer of the collective farm, deported the family of Veis Faizullayev from Divnoye village to the steppe. A few days before the eviction, during the night of 12 June, shots had been fired at the windows of his house. Bullets struck the bed of Veis’s 70-year-old mother-in-law. The police chief, to whom Faizullayev took cartridge cases he had gathered from under the windows, refused to investigate the attack.
27 Tatars, inhabitants of the village, appealed in Faizullayev’s defence to the central and local authorities. Their letter said that Veis Faizullayev took part in the defence of Sevastopol, and was wounded, and that eight of his brothers were killed in action. Those who signed the letter are themselves living without residence permits and work, and are demanding that a commission be set up to investigate their situation.
The facts given above are set out in an ‘Appeal to all people of good will and to the progressive public’ signed at the end of June by 717 Crimean Tatars, and in numerous letters, complaints and declarations.
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Similar actions continued in July.
A document entitled ‘Information No. 237’ reports on events in Voinka village (Krasnoperekopsk district), where about 70 Crimean Tatar families are living, 31 of them without residence permits.
On 19 July a detachment of 12 policemen attempted to evict the family of 70-year-old Muradasil Akmollayev (his wife is 60 years old, and one of his two sons is an invalid), but neighbours obstructed the eviction. Women and children with their belongings sat down in front of the lorries. Some people were observing the operation from a car standing some distance away. When the inhabitants of the village began to photograph them (and also the attempted evictions), the car disappeared.
On 21 July 80 policemen arrived in the village, and with them several ‘short-term offenders’’* (all drunk) from the Krasnoperekopsk police detention cells, as a labour force. [*Literally ‘people sentenced to 15 days’ in jail.]
At every Crimean Tatar house a sentry was posted, and no one was allowed out into the street. In this way they succeeded in evicting the Akmollayevs. What happened to them subsequently is not yet known.
The village has been patrolled by police since 23 July. Four men who took part in the residence conflict of 19 July were gaoled for 15 days. They are: G. Ametov, S. Ametchik, A. Memetov and I. Karayev. They are also threatened with criminal prosecution. A few Tatars from among those with residence permits have been dismissed from work.
The district authorities have spread the rumour that in the Tatars’ houses, especially in the Akmollayevs’ house, they found weapons, and that the Tatars are connected with foreign intelligence services.
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According to the ‘Information’ document, the chairman of the Krasnoperekopsk Town soviet executive committee, I. A. Zadula, has said: ‘The Tatars will have some walking to do this year … we won’t let them trade, we’ll cut off their water and electricity, we’ll knock their houses down, we’ll take their driving licences away.’ To the Crimean Tatars themselves he declared: ’You’ve got the republic of Uzbekistan. Live there or go to Tatarstan.’
In the market the Crimean Tatars’ fruit is confiscated, and for attempting to sell tomatoes in the market without having a residence permit, Amza Khalilova was arrested on 15 July for 7 days.
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NO RESIDENCE PERMIT, NO WORK
Many Crimean Tatars who have bought houses in the villages of the Crimean steppe — many houses are for sale here, there are not enough workers — write about this fact in their statements.
In a letter to Brezhnev, Elmira Zinedinova describes the oppressions endured by her family for three years now. In September 1973 she was sentenced to 2 years’ deportation. In May 1974 the police took her out into the steppe. Her daughter, born on 5 September 1975, was given a birth certificate only eight months later. During elections for people’s judges they were given permission to vote only after sending a telegram to Moscow. The letter says, in part:
‘Residence permits are given to all kinds of drunkards, thieves and murderers, who don’t even have room in their passports for a stamp, and who will bring only trouble, while we want to work, to be useful to the collective farm.
‘They don’t recognize us, they don’t take us into consideration. After all, every kind of garbage has its stated place, but we don’t. I have four growing children, two sons and two daughters. My sons are future defenders of the Motherland, and the authorities won’t ask us then whether or not they can take them into the ranks of the Soviet Army … My husband served for three years, defending the peaceful lives of Soviet citizens, he took the oath and carried a sub-machine gun (a Soviet one), but now he is not a person. Yet he is a specialist, a good one, and the collective farm needs him, but they won’t recognize him because he’s a Crimean Tatar.’
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Dilyara Khalich, the mother of seven children, wrote a letter to Kosygin and Brezhnev in June 1976 about the disastrous situation of her family, who had been living in Pushkino village since April 1974.
The Omerovs, husband and wife, both doctors, who have settled in Voinka village, cannot register their house, and obtain a residence permit and work, although there is a serious shortage of doctors in the district. Omerov has complained to the Procurator-General of the USSR.
In N-Nikolayevka village the biology teacher Taire Ablyamitova, who arrived under a labour recruitment scheme and was therefore given a residence permit, also cannot find work in her specialty, although vacancies are available in the schools.
I. P. Lyubomudrova, a member of the CPSU, sold her house in Mazanka village to a Crimean Tatar and moved to her daughter’s in another village. For refusing to return the new owner his money and move back, the district committee of the Party confiscated her Party card and is threatening to have her dismissed from work (Lyubomudrova works in a children’s nursery).
In the summer the Crimean Tatars made a count of families without residence permits. By July, 254 families (1,154 people) were listed by name. Many villages where one or two families are living were not included in the count. At a rough estimate, there are 100-150 of these families.
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TRIALS
As before, administrative-judicial cases are being brought against Crimean Tatar families who have bought houses, and they end in a conviction under Article 196 (UkSSR Criminal Code: “Violation of residence regulations”). This type of case has been described in detail in CCE 34.11, the case of the Osmanovs and of the Abdureshitovs. However, in 1974-1975 sentences of ‘banishment’ prevailed, whereas now it is imprisonment.
On 13 May the Simferopol district court sentenced Musa Mamut to 2 years’ imprisonment in a camp of ordinary regime, and his wife Zekie Abdullayeva to a suspended sentence of 2 years’ imprisonment. Mamut and Abdullayeva have been living in Donskoye village since April 1975, and have three children. As soon as they moved into the house they had bought, the police took possession of the house’s registration book and refused to deregister the previous owners. The charge at the trial concerned a serious violation of health regulations : seven people (five residents, plus two registered people) were listed in a house with a floor-space of 17 square metres. It was noted in the sentence as a circumstance aggravating guilt, that M. Mamut was not engaged in socially useful work (not having residence permits, Musa and Zekie could sometimes obtain only seasonal work). The Regional Court upheld the sentence.
In her complaints Abdullayeva wrote that her father was wounded liberating the Crimea as a member of the 19th armoured corps, and that her husband has labour awards.
In spring 1976 their 16-year-old daughter Dilyara Mamut was not given a passport. Major Denisov, the head of the District Department of Internal Affairs, replied to Dilyara’s complaint on 28 June: ‘In connection with the fact that your parents are not registered as residents in Simferopol district, documentation of you by means of a passport has been refused.’ At the end of July, after repeated applications by Dilyara, she was given a passport, but without a residence permit.
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At the beginning of June Yakub Usmanov from Shcherbakovo village was sentenced to 18 months’ banishment. After the trial 40 Crimean Tatars, inhabitants of the neighbouring village of Nekrasovo, wrote a letter of protest to the first secretary of the Krasnogvardeisky district Party committee, Kolesnikov.
They wrote that 22-year-old Yakub Usmanov, having done military service, finished a lathe-operators’ and fitters’ course in Simferopol in 1975 and began to work in this line, but after a month he was refused a residence permit and sacked from his job. Having bought a house in Shcherbakovo, he had, after the authorities had refused to register the purchase, fixed up a contract signed by witnesses. On 11 May Yakub was arrested. They offered to release him if he would sign a commitment to leave the Crimea, but he refused. The letter says that ‘no one wanted to get to the heart of the matter, to understand the situation which had forced him to lose both his residence permit and his work’. The authors refer to an article in Izvestiya describing an incident in England: the owner of a house who displayed a sign ‘For Sale to an English family only’ spent 45 days in prison. They go on:
‘We are full of pride for our socialist homeland. But seeing what lawlessness is being committed against Yakub Usmanov, we want to ask you, respected comrade Kolesnikov, surely in the Crimea it is not forbidden to sell houses to Tatars? But then why, at Usmanov’s trial, did the judge put the following question to the former owner of the house: ‘Why did you sell your house to a Tatar?’ Why did the chairman of the Maryanovo village soviet tell Usmanov that Tatars here may not buy houses? Why are these people, who are grossly violating socialist legality, not subjected to any punishment? Why is Usmanov undergoing persecution and humiliation solely because he is a Tatar?’
The district authorities promised to reply to the letter and arranged a meeting in Nekrasovo on 12 July. In their next statement, addressed to the Procurator-General of the USSR, to the Party’s Regional committee and district committee, the inhabitants of the village write: ‘Since it became clear that Yakub Usmanov would receive at the meeting no concrete explanation about the decision on his residence permit and the official registration of his house, we were compelled to leave the hall. We demand a cessation to the persecution of Yakub Usmanov’s family because of his national affiliation.’
On 15 July Seit-Asan, Yakub Usmanov’s father, was tried. He was sentenced to a 25-rouble fine. In the court-room they refused to hand him a copy of the verdict.
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On 9 June a family from Mazanka village was tried, Lenura and Gulnar Bekirov and their 23-year-old daughter Shefika. Procurator Zubarev suggested the court should confine itself to fining them and give them work, but the judge, Roditeleva, gave the women suspended sentences of 2 years’ imprisonment, and sentenced the head of the family to 2 years’ imprisonment, commuted to forced labour on a construction site, an assignment by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On 13 July the Regional Court upheld the sentence.
In the Bekirov family there are four more children, aged from 1 to 9 years, and elderly parents. Before the trial a local policeman threatened the Bekirovs: ‘The elderly ones will go to an old people’s home, the children to a children’s home, and the adults to prison.’
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On 9 July Enver Reshitov (b. 1949), who had lived on the State farm Batalny since September 1975, was arrested and sentenced the same day to 18 months’ imprisonment. His wife and 4-month-old baby were left at home.
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Neighbours have defended Adzhimelek Mustafayeva, an inhabitant of Simferopol sentenced in autumn 1975 (one and a half months after her arrest) to banishment from the Crimea (CCE 37.6, CCE 38.15). Twelve people (Russians and Ukrainians, judging by their surnames) wrote statements to the police in which, speaking very highly of Mustafayeva, they asked that she be given a residence permit. One woman wrote that she had known Adzhimelek’s family since pre-war times.
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OUTSIDE CRIMEA
Krasnodar Region (Krai)
NOVOROSSIISK. In school No. 2 the geography teacher Ivanova (who is about 40 years old) asked about the national composition of Uzbekistan in a lesson in the 8th Class.
The pupils listed several nationalities. The teacher added; The Crimean Tatars live there too. They did many bad things during the war, and in 1944 they were deported there. Now they are travelling to the Northern Caucasus, but the government will take measures to see that they are not admitted there.’ During break the children began to tease one pupil in the class, a Crimean Tatar girl, and reproach her for her nationality. She returned home in tears. The girl’s mother complained to the school’s Party organization. She refused to talk to the teacher, as the Party organization suggested: That is beneath my dignity.’ The day after this conversation the teacher apologized when she came into the class.
In nearby towns and villages and in Novorossiisk itself live several tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars. Recently admission to Novorossiisk for Crimean Tatars has in practice been forbidden. Citizens who wish to sell their houses are called in and warned not to sell them to Crimean Tatars.
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TAMAN. On 18 May, the anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, a funeral banner was hung out on the highest chimney in the town, on the bakery. On that day many Crimean Tatars wore black arm-bands.
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UZBEKISTAN
SAMARKAND (Uzbek SSR). In December 1974 Aishe Seitmuratova wrote an application for reinstatement as a graduate student (CCE 34.11). A year later she received the following reply:
To Uzbek SSR Ministry of Higher & Secondary Special Education
Comrade G. A. Abdurakhmanov(Copy to Aishe Seitmuratova — Samarkand, Superfosfatny settlement, 8 Teatralnaya Street, flat 1)
Aishe Seitmuratova, a graduate student at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, was dismissed from her postgraduate course on 18 June 1971 in connection with her arrest and sentencing to a term of 3 years, which was connected with her unstable moral and political behaviour. No more than three months remained until the end of her course of study.
At the present time Aishe Seitmuratova cannot be reinstated as a graduate student, since according to the new regulation ‘On the procedure for conferring academic degrees and academic titles’, confirmed by the USSR Council of Ministers on 29 December 1975 (No. 1067), point 24 of section III states: ‘Academic titles may be conferred upon persons who have profound professional knowledge and scholarly achievements in a particular branch of knowledge, and a broad scientific and cultural outlook, and who are masters of Marxist-Leninist theory, have shown their worth positively in scientific, productive and social work, observe the norms of communist morality and are guided in their actions by the principles of patriotism and proletarian internationalism.’
Sh. Sh. Shaabdurakhmanov
Academic secretary,
Department of History, Linguistics and Literature,
Uzbek SSR Academy of Sciences
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NOTES
- The Crimean Tatars living in Crimea were all deported in one night on 18 May 1944.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 