On the work completed by representatives of the Crimean Tatar people in Moscow from 6 November 1971 to 10 January 1972 (5 pp.)
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Newsletter 108 reports on the activities of the movement in 1971.
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A statement signed by 60,000 people was sent to the 24th Congress (see this issue CCE 31.13 [1]).
The statement had these attachments:
No. 1: Six volumes and two photo-albums of materials from newspapers on the bravery of the Crimean Tatars at the front and on their participation in the resistance movement, with the “Historical Data” document, based on data about the inhabitants of 30 villages [see this issue CCE 31.14].
No. 2: two volumes of materials on persecutions and repression in the places of special settlement.
No. 3: two volumes “On the Persecution of those Crimean Tatars who Returned to their Homeland”.
After the Congress the representatives received an assurance from the head of the Central Committee reception room, Tikhomirov, that “the documents are being studied and a reply will follow in the near future”. However, since they did not receive a reply, in July 1971 the people sent a countrywide inquiry, with 12,000 signatures, demanding an answer to the statement to the 24th Congress.
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In October a letter was sent to the Central Committee in connection with the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Crimean ASSR. This jubilee was observed in Fergana, Margelan, Bekabad and other places, by laying flowers at the foot of monuments to V. I. Lenin.
5,200 people signed a statement protesting against the “striking out of the Crimean Tatar people” from the results of the census of 1970, published in 1971.
A collective protest was successful concerning Saginbayev’s 1969 book 300 Days behind Enemy Lines [see CCE 18.7]: the Book Review (Knizhnoe obozrenie) severely criticized it.
In March 1971 a “Protest Statement” with 3,000 signatures was issued, concerning Ukrainian and Crimean newspaper articles about a press-conference in Simferopol on the evil acts of fascists in the “Krasny” State farm. In these articles the Crimean Tatar people was portrayed as an accomplice in these crimes.
1,500 Crimean Tatars-relatives and fellow townsmen of the twice-decorated Hero of the Soviet Union and Laureate of a State prize, test pilot Sultan Akhmetan, who died in the execution of his duty, sent a petition in November 1971 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet to open a memorial museum in his homeland, in Alupka.
Besides this, in 1971 more than 5,000 individual and collective letters from Crimean Tatars were sent to the highest organs.
In January 1972 representatives of the Crimean Tatar people delivered to the Party Central Committee a statement entitled “Put an End to Political Terror and to National Discrimination against the Crimean Tatar People” with 6,374 signatures (volume 190 of the movement’s documents) and a protest by 350 people about the trial in Tashkent of the Tashkent graduate student Aishe Seitmuratova and the Simferopol teacher Lenur Ibragimov (CCE 23.7 [1]) for their active participation in the movement for return to the homeland in the Crimea.
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The information sheet was sent to 34 institutions. It was signed by:
Dzhabar Akimov (Bekabad), Enver Gulaklimetov (Margelan), Gulkhane Kolayeva (Melitopol), Ismet Muratov (Namangan), Seidamet Memetov (Margelan), Eidie Muradasylova (Tashkent), Varfis Khairova (Tashkent), Zore Memetova (Margelan).
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NOTES
- Incorrect (see note 1, CCE 31.14). An appendix to a separate appeal to the 24th Party Congress by 60,000 people, the text of which is document number 630 in the Samizdat Archive.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 