Crimean Tatars in Imperial Russia: Expulsion from the Motherland

Abstract

Russian authorities from the times of Catherine II till Nicholai II had implemented the tough, considered and long-term strategy of the expatriation of the Crimean native population from their historical Motherland. For almost century and a half at this area took the place three mass campaigns of the proscription of the Muslim inhabitants of the peninsula to the territory of the Ottoman Empire. The population size of the Crimean Tatars had decreased from the 4 billion before the Russian conquest of the Crimean Khanate to 200 thousand in the prerevolutionary times. The ethnic composition of the peninsula population had radically changed after this events.