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Autonomous Republic of Crimea

Автономна Республіка Крим
Автономная Республика Крым
Qırım Muhtar Cumhuriyeti

Image:Flag of Crimea.svg Image:Crimea Emblem.gif Flag Coat of arms
Image:LocationCrimea.PNG
Image:Map of Ukraine political simple Oblast Krim.png
Motto: "Процветание в единстве" - 'Prosperity in unity'
Anthem: "Нивы и горы твои волшебны, Родина" - 'Your fields and mounts are wonderful, Motherland'
Capital	Simferopol
Largest cities	Simferopol, Eupatoria, Kerch, Theodosia, Yalta
Official language	Ukrainian. Russian de facto official. Crimean Tatar is also used.
Government	autonomous republic within Ukraine
Head of State	the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko
Prime Minister	Viktor Plakida
Speaker of the Parliament	Anatoly Gritsenko
Area	26,200 km²
Population	1,994,300 (2005)
Currency	Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH)
Calling code	+380-65
Time zone	UTC+2

Crimea [kraɪˈmiə] or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukrainian: Крим, Автономна Республіка Крим - Avtonomna Respublika Krym, Russian: Крым, Автономная Республика Крым - Avtonomnaya Respublika Krym, Crimean Tatar: Qırım, Qırım Muhtar Cumhuriyeti) is an autonomous republic of Ukraine on the northern coast of the Black Sea occupying a peninsula of the same name.

The total area of the republic is 26,200 km². Its population has 1,994,300 inhabitants (2005). The capital of Crimea is the city of Simferopol.

It is the home of Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority who now make up 13% of the population.

Contents 1 Etymology of the name 2 History 2.1 Early history 2.2 Crimean Khanate 2.3 Russian Empire 2.4 Soviet Union 2.5 Autonomy in independent Ukraine 3 Government and politics 4 Administrative divisions 5 Geography 6 Economy 7 Demographics 8 See also 9 Trivia 10 Footnotes and references 11 External links

[edit] Etymology of the name

The name Crimea takes its origin in the name of a city of Qırım (today's Stary Krym) which served as a capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde. Qırım is Crimean Tatar for "my hill" (qır - hill, -ım - my). However, there are other versions of the etymology of Qırım. Russian Krym is a Russified form of Qırım. The ancient Greeks called Crimea Taurida (later Taurica). The Greek historian Herodotus (known as "the Father of History", 5th c. BC) mentions that Hercules ploughed that land using a huge ox ("taurus"), hence the name of the land.

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

Main article: Tauris

The earliest inhabitants of whom we have any authentic traces were the Cimmerians, who were expelled by the Scythians during the 7th century BC. The remaining Cimmerians that took refuge in the mountains later became known as the Tauri. According to other historians, the Tauri known for their savage rituals and piracy were the earliest, indigenous inhabitants of the peninsula. In 5th c. BC, Greek colonists began to settle along the Black Sea coast, among those were the Dorians from Heraclea who founded a sea port of Chersonesos outside Sevastopol, and the Ionians from Miletus who landed at Theodosia and Panticapaeum (also called Bosporus).

Two centuries later, (438 BC) the Archon, or ruler, of the latter settlers assumed the title of the King of Bosporus, a state that maintained close relations with Athens, supplying the city with wheat, honey and other commodities. The last of that line of kings, Paerisades V, being hard-pressed by the Scythians, put himself under the protection of Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, in 114 BC. After the death of this sovereign, his son Pharnaces II in 63 BC was invested by Pompey with the kingdom of Bosporus as a reward for the assistance rendered to the Romans in their war against his father. In 15 BC, it was once again restored to the king of Pontus, but since ranked as a tributary state of Rome.

During the later centuries, Crimea was invaded or occupied successively by the Goths (AD. 250), the Huns (376), the Bulgars (6th century), the Khazars (8th century), the state of Kievan Rus (10th-11th centuries), the Byzantine Greeks (1016), the Kipchaks (the Kumans) (1050), and the Mongols (1237).

In the mid-10th century, the eastern Crimea was conquered by Prince Sviatoslav I of Kiev and became part of the Kievan Russian principality of Tmutarakan. In 988, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev also captured the Byzantine town of Chersones (presently part of Sevastopol) where he later converted to Christianity. An impressive Russian Orthodox cathedral marks the location of this historic event.

In the 13th century, the Genoese seized the settlements which their rivals the Venetians had built along the Crimean coast and established themselves at Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa.

[edit] Crimean Khanate

Main article: Crimean Khanate

A number of Turkic peoples, now collectively known as Crimean Tatars, had been inhabiting the peninsula since the early Middle Ages. The ethnicity of the Crimean Tatars is quite complex as it absorbed both nomadic Turkic and European components (in the first place, the Goths and the Genoese) which is still reflected in their appearance and language differences. A small enclave of the Karaims, possibly of Khazar (i.e. Turkic) descent but members of a Jewish sect founded in the 8th c., existed among the Muslim Crimean Tatars, primarily in the mountainous Çufut Qale area. After the destruction of the Golden Horde by Timur, in 1441 the Crimean Tatars founded an independent Crimean Khanate under Haci I Giray, a descendant of Genghis Khan. He and his successors reigned first at Qırq Yer, and from the beginning of the 15th century, at Bakhchisaray.

The commercial towns held by the Genoese were conquered by the Ottoman general Gedik Ahmet Pasha in 1475. After 1475, the Crimean Khans ruled as tributary princes of the Ottoman Empire until 1774 when they fell under the Russian influence. In 1783, entire Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire.

[edit] Russian Empire

Image:Yalta swallowcastle.jpg

The Crimean War (1854 - 1856) devastated much of the economic and social infrastructure of Crimea. Crimean Tatars had to flee from their homeland en masse, forced by the conditions created by the war, persecution and land expropriations. Those who survived the trip, famine and disease resettled in Dobruja, Anatolia, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. For the first time in their history, Crimean Tatars became a minority in their own land, with the majority spread out as a diaspora. Finally, the Russian government decided to stop the process, as the agriculture began to suffer due to the unattended fertile farmland.

During the Russian Civil War, Crimea was a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. It was in Crimea that the White Russians led by General Wrangel made their last stand against the invading Red Army in 1920. After the resistance was crushed, many of the anti-Communist fighters and civilians had to board the ships and escape to Constantinople. Hundreds of thousands of Russians who chose to remain were executed by the Communists.

[edit] Soviet Union

In 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the Russian SFSR.

Crimea was a scene of some of the bloodiest battles in World War II. The leaders of the Third Reich were anxious to conquer and colonize the fertile and beautiful peninsula as part of their policy of resettling the Germans in Eastern Europe at the expense of the Slavs. The Germans suffered heavy casualties in the summer of 1941 as they tried to advance through the narrow isthmus of Perekop linking Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland. Once the German army broke through (Operation Trappenjagd), they occupied most of Crimea, with the exception of the city of Sevastopol (it was awarded the honorary title of Hero City after the war). Sevastopol held out from October 1941 until 4 July 1942 when the Germans finally captured the city. From 1 September, 1942, the peninsula was administrated as the Generalbezirk Krim (general district of Crimea) und Teilbezirk 'and sub-district' Taurien by the Nazi Generalkommissar Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld (b. 1898 - d. 1977), under the authority of the three consecutive Reichskommissare for the entire Ukraine. In spite of heavy-handed tactics by the Nazis and the assistance of the Romanian and Italian troops, the Crimean mountains remained an unconquered stronghold of the native resistance (the partisans) until the day when the peninsula was freed from the occupying force.

In 1944, Sevastopol came under the control of troops from the Soviet Union. The City of Russian Glory once known for its beautiful architecture was entirely destroyed and had to be rebuilt stone by stone. Due to its enormous historical and symbolic meaning for the Russians, it became a priority for Stalin and the Soviet government to have it restored to its former glory within the shortest time possible, and so it happened.

On 18 May, 1944, the entire population of the Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported to Central Asia by Stalin's Soviet government as a form of collective punishment on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces. On 21 May, 1944, the ethnic cleansing of Crimea was complete. An estimated 46 % of the deportees died from hunger and disease. In 1967, the Crimean Tatars were rehabilitated, but they were banned from legally returning to their homeland until the last days of the Soviet Union.

Image:Sudak vlasenko.jpg

The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished in 1945 and transformed into the Crimean Oblast (region) of the Russian SFSR. In 1954, it was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. As it stated in the Supreme Soviet Decree the transfer was caused by close (1) geographic, (2) economic, and (3) cultural ties to the Ukrainian SSR.^{[citation needed]} The transfer was also meant by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as a symbolic gesture to mark the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav that unified Russia and the Ukraine.

[edit] Autonomy in independent Ukraine

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine, a situation largely unexpected by its population that was ethnically and culturally Russian for the most part. That led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised.

Crimea proclaimed self-government on May 5, 1992 [1] [2], but later agreed to remain within Ukraine as an autonomous republic.

Following the ratification of Ukrainian-Russian 1997 treaties on friendship and division of the fleet, the international tensions slowly have eased off.

[edit] Government and politics

Crimea is a parliamentary republic that has no president. The legislative body is a 100-seat parliament, the Supreme Rada of Crimea (which should not be confused with the national Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine). The executive power is represented by the Council of Ministers, headed by a Prime Minister who is appointed by the Supreme Rada.

[edit] Administrative divisions

Crimea is subdivided into 25 regions: 14 raions and 11 city municipalities (officially "territories governed by city councils"). Each region consists of city, town and village communities.

Raions	City municipalities
1 Bakhchisaray raion	15 Alushta municipality
2 Bilohirsk raion	16 Armyansk municipality
3 Dzhankoy raion	17 Dzhankoy municipality
4 Kirovske raion	18 Eupatoria municipality
5 Krasnohvardiyske raion	19 Kerch municipality
6 Krasnoperekopsk raion	20 Krasnoperekopsk municipality
7 Lenine raion	21 Saky municipality
8 Nizhnyohirskyi raion	22 Simferopol municipality
9 Pervomayske raion	23 Sudak municipality
10 Rozdolne raion	24 Theodosia municipality
11 Saky raion	25 Yalta municipality
12 Simferopol raion	26 Sevastopol municipality <ref>Sevastopol is excluded from the republic of Crimea and has a special legal status.</ref>
13 Sovetskyi raion
14 Chornomorske raion

Major cities and towns in Crimea
Alupka | Alushta | Armyansk | Balaklava | Bakhchisaray | Bilohirsk | Chornomorske | Gaspra | Gurzuf | Dzhankoy | Eupatoria | Foros | Inkerman | Kacha | Kerch | Koktebel | Koreiz | Kirovske | Krasnohvardiyske | Krasnoperekopsk | Lenine | Livadiya | Massandra | Nizhnyohirskyi | Nikita | Novyi Svet | Partenit | Pervomayske | Perekop | Rozdolne | Saky | Scholkine | Sevastopol | Simeiz | Simferopol | Sovetskyi | Stary Krym | Sudak | Theodosia | Yalta

[edit] Geography

Image:Crimeamap.png

Crimea borders the Kherson Oblast from the North; the rest of the border is the Black Sea in the South and West and the Sea of Azov in the East. Its area is 26,100 km². The capital is Simferopol.

Crimea is connected to the mainland by the 5–7 kilometre (3–4 mile) wide Isthmus of Perekop. At the eastern tip is the Kerch Peninsula, which is directly opposite the Taman Peninsula on the Russian mainland. Between the Kerch and Taman peninsula lies the 3–13 km (2–9 mi) wide Strait of Kerch, which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov.

The Crimean coastline is broken by several bays and harbours. These harbours lie on the west side of the Isthmus of Perekop by the Bay of Karkinit; on the southwest by the open Bay of Kalamita, with the ports of Eupatoria and Sevastopol; by the Bay of Arabat on the north side of the Isthmus of Yenikale or Kerch; and by the Bay of Caffa or Theodosia, with the port of that name on the south side.

The southeast coast is flanked at a distance of 8–12 km (5–8 mi) from the sea by a parallel range of mountains, the Yayla Mountains, or Alpine Meadow mountains (also known as Yayla Dağ and the Crimean Range). These mountains are backed by secondary parallel ranges. 75% of the remaining area of Crimea consists of semiarid prairie lands, a southward continuation of the Pontic steppes, which slope gently to the northwest from the foot of the Yayla Mountains. The main range of these mountains shoots up with extraordinary abruptness from the deep floor of the Black Sea to an altitude of 600 to 750 metres (2000 to 2500 feet), beginning at the southwest point of the peninsula, called Cape Fiolente. It was this cape that was supposedly crowned with the temple of Artemis, where Iphigeneia is said to have officiated as priestess.

Numerous kurgans, or burial mounds, of the ancient Scythians are scattered across the Crimean steppes.

The terrain that lies beyond the sheltering Yayla Mountains range is of an altogether different character. Here the narrow strip of coast and the slopes of the mountains are smothered with greenery. This "Russian Riviera" stretches along the southeast coast from Cape Sarych, in the extreme south, to Theodosia and is studded with summer sea-bathing resorts such as Alupka, Yalta, Gurzuf, Alushta, Sudak, and Theodosia. During the years of Soviet rule, the resorts and dachas of this coast served as the prime perquisites of the politically loyal. In this region are also vineyards and fruit orchards; fishing, mining, and the production of essential oils are also important. Numerous Crimean Tatar villages, mosques, monasteries, and palaces of the Russian imperial family and nobles are found here, as well as picturesque ancient Greek and medieval castles.

Crimea contains the longest (96 km) trolleybus route in the world, from Simferopol to Yalta.

The city of Sevastopol is located within the republic, but has a special municipality status in Ukraine.

[edit] Economy

The main branches of the Crimean economy are tourism and agriculture. Industrial plants are situated for the most part in the northern regions of the republic.

[edit] Demographics

By 2005, the total population of Crimea is 1,994,300.

According to 2001 Ukrainian Census, the population of Crimea comprised the following self-reported ethnic groups:

• Russians - 58.32%
• Ukrainians - 24.32%
• Crimean Tatars - 12.1%
• Belarusians - 1.44%
• Tatars - 0.54%
• Armenians - 0.43%
• Jews - 0.22%

Other minorities are Black Sea Germans, Roma people, Poles, Azerbaijanis, Koreans and Greeks.

Even though the Ukrainian language is the single official state language countrywide, and is therefore the sole language of government elsewhere in Ukraine, this does not apply in Crimea, where government business is still carried out in Russian. Limited attempts to expand the usage of Ukrainian in education and government affairs have so far been less successful in Crimea than in other largely Russophone areas of the nation. Another language widely spoken is Crimean Tatar. According to the census mentioned above 77% of Crimean inhabitants named Russian as their mother tongue, 11.4% - Crimean Tatar and 10.1% - Ukrainian.

[edit] See also

• Crimean Tatars
• Krymchaks
• Karaims
• Crimean Goths
• Crimean campaigns
• Crimean War
• Black Sea Fleet
• Artek
• Koktebel Jazz Festival

[edit] Trivia

• Crimea is also the name of a fictional country in the video game series Fire Emblem
• P. D. Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) wrote a piece of "music" titled "Crimea River" (Cry me a river) about an alleged river in Crimea.

[edit] Footnotes and references

[edit] External links

Image:Crimea Emblem.gif	Subdivisions of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine		Image:Flag of Ukraine.svg
	Raions: Bakhchisaray raion | Bilohirsk raion | Chornomorske raion | Dzhankoy raion | Kirovske raion | Krasnohvardiyske raion | Krasnoperekopsk raion | Lenine raion | Nizhnyohirskyi raion | Pervomayske raion | Rozdolne raion | Saky raion | Simferopol raion | Sovetskyi raion
	City Municipalities: Alushta municipality | Armyansk municipality | Dzhankoy municipality | Eupatoria municipality | Kerch municipality | Krasnoperekopsk municipality | Saky municipality | Simferopol municipality | Sudak municipality | Theodosia municipality | Yalta municipality
	Cities and towns: Alupka | Alushta | Armyansk | Balaklava | Bakhchisaray | Bilohirsk | Chornomorske | Gaspra | Gurzuf | Dzhankoy | Eupatoria | Foros | Inkerman | Kacha | Kerch | Koktebel | Koreiz | Kirovske | Krasnohvardiyske | Krasnoperekopsk | Lenine | Livadiya | Massandra | Nizhnyohirskyi | Nikita | Novyi Svet | Partenit | Pervomayske | Perekop | Rozdolne | Saky | Scholkine | Sevastopol | Simeiz | Simferopol | Sovetskyi | Staryi Krym | Sudak | Theodosia | Yalta

Image:Coat of arms of Ukraine.svg	Ukraine		Image:Flag of Ukraine.svg
	Subdivisions of Ukraine: Cherkasy Oblast | Chernihiv Oblast | Chernivtsi Oblast | Autonomous Republic of Crimea | Dnipropetrovsk Oblast | Donetsk Oblast | Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast | Kharkiv Oblast | Kherson Oblast | Khmelnytskyi Oblast | Kiev City | Kiev Oblast | Kirovohrad Oblast | Luhansk Oblast | Lviv Oblast | Mykolaiv Oblast | Odessa Oblast | Poltava Oblast | Rivne Oblast | Sevastopol City | Sumy Oblast | Ternopil Oblast | Vinnytsia Oblast | Volyn Oblast | Zakarpattia Oblast | Zaporizhia Oblast | Zhytomyr Oblast
	Administrative centers of subdivision units: Cherkasy | Chernihiv | Chernivtsi | Dnipropetrovsk | Donetsk | Ivano-Frankivsk | Kharkiv | Kherson | Khmelnytskyi | Kiev | Kirovohrad | Luhansk | Lutsk | Lviv | Mykolaiv | Odessa | Poltava | Rivne | Sevastopol | Simferopol | Sumy | Ternopil | Uzhhorod | Vinnytsia | Zaporizhia | Zhytomyr

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