Cambridge Professor Rory Finnin: Modern Ukraine cannot exist without Crimean Tatars

In 2004, he worked as an election observer in the midst of the Orange Revolution. In the winter of 2014, he marched on Hrushevsky Street alongside Maidan protesters. In the spring of that year, he began to counter and dismantle Russian propaganda by informing the world media on the events taking place in Ukraine at the time.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he has personally delivered vehicles and purchased drones for the Ukrainian army. He does not doubt that Ukraine will return all of its currently occupied territories. He also hopes to take part in post-war reconstruction projects.

His profession is in literary criticism.

He studies Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar literature and its interconnected relationship. To this end, he has learned Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar, as well as Turkish.

An American of Irish descent, he has kept Ukraine and Crimea at the center of his scholarly attention for nearly 25 years.

Meet the scholar who founded the Ukrainian Studies program at Cambridge University, Professor Rory Finnin. Over 500 British students have graduated from this program, many of whom are now volunteers and journalists in Ukraine, as well as translators of Ukrainian literature. Rory Finnin’s new book, "The Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity" (2002) won the Joseph Rothschild Prize of Nationality and Nationalism Studies in 2023 and the American Association of Ukrainian Studies Best Book Award in 2023.

The book, which recounts the cultural history of the Black Sea region and the interpenetration of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar culture, is currently being translated into Ukrainian.

In an interview with UP, we talk about how literature and poetry influence geopolitics, why Ukrainian politicians need to study Crimean Tatar literature, and what will happen after the de-occupation of Crimea.

How did you come to study Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar literature and history?

- My connection with Ukraine and Crimea was very accidental at first. After graduating from university, I joined the American Peace Corps. So I flew to Kyiv in 1995 as one of the first groups of volunteers. I worked as an English teacher in a rural school near Kyiv for more than two years. It was a time that changed my life.

Until 1995, my language experience consisted of studying Latin and Ancient Greek. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I spent three months studying Ukrainian in western Ukraine.

- Did you learn Russian? It should have been  more widespread back then.

- Let's just say that, unlike today, back then I didn't have any negative feelings about the Russian language. Later, in graduate school, I studied it very intensively. But, I don't know why, the Ukrainian language just suited me better.

In Ukraine, I often had the opportunity to work in summer camps and to speak at pedagogical institutes in eastern and southern Ukraine. My language experience there was an eye-opener.

Imagine a young American speaking Ukrainian in Luhansk or Berdiansk. At first, I was answered in Russian, but within 10 minutes people would switch to speaking Ukrainian with me.

This happened to me many times, and usually at the end of the conversation. I remember very vividly, they would tell me that they hadn't spoken Ukrainian in a long time, but they liked it. And these meetings, these conversations, they had a very big impact on me. These moments taught me, for example, that language does not determine identity in Ukraine, that the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are as Ukrainian as anywhere else, they are just different.

In other words, those moments taught me that the Ukrainian language was just living under the surface. It was Russian and Soviet colonialism and imperial chauvinism that drove it there. Many Ukrainians in Donetsk, for example, in 1995 or 1996, simply needed a space where they could be outside the influence of the Russian language policies that many politicians in the region were promoting at the time.

But my travels in Crimea in the 1990s were very different. I remember being looked at very suspiciously and sometimes angrily when I spoke Ukrainian in Yalta or Simferopol.

But in Bakhchisarai in 1996, the Crimean Tatars, the Crimean Qirimli, were friendly to me. They were very open to speaking with me in Surzhyk, and I learned so much from them. I remember that it was for the first time then that I heard personal details of the deportation experience. And for the first time, I was shocked by my ignorance, by my lack of knowledge. That is, my subsequent academic career was a kind of response to the ignorance about this people and the genocide that they experienced.

- There are not many experts on Ukrainian culture. But you have gone even further - you are a rare expert on Crimean Tatar literature.

- Once in Ukraine, my wonderful friends Tetiana and Ivan Kaplun gave me a book of Ukrainian poetry. It was a collection of poems by the poet Mykola Rudenko. And in 1997, I was able to read and understand his poems. But one poem called "Tatar" confused me. It is a very complex text in which the poet recounts a childhood memory of how Ukrainian peasants in Donbass beat a Tatar man.

The poet's wife, Raisa Rudenko, a human rights activist, explained to me that it was about a Crimean Tatar. She told me that Rudenko felt guilty for the suffering of the Crimean Tatars and that he saw the reflection of the Ukrainian experience in the history of the Crimean Tatars. Perhaps it was then that I decided to study this connection between Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.

- And you have been studying this relationship for more than 20 years. What are some of the discoveries that you made in your work?

The relationship between Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars has been marked by centuries of mutual stereotypes and historical antagonism. And even today, in some currents of Ukrainian culture, there are memories and stories about Crimean Tatars raiding Ukrainian villages in search of slaves, for example, in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Read more: US elections, Orbán, Fico: Zelenskyy's efforts to maintain the support of Ukraine's partners

Meanwhile, in some streams of Crimean Tatar cultural memory, there are also memories and stories about the participation of Ukrainians in the deportation of Crimean Tatars. These stories have left a deep and painful mark. However, the modern Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar alliance has managed to overcome such histories. It may not be a perfect success story, but it is a success.

- Over the past 9 years, unfortunately, there has been a kind of collective amnesia in the political and academic discourse in the West regarding the occupation of Crimea. Ukraine was actually forced to give up Crimea. Why?

- This is Crimeannesia, so to speak. You know very well how Nariman Dzhelal, Mustafa Dzhemilev and Volodymyr Zelenskyy all said: this war of Russia against Ukraine began in Crimea, and this war will end in Crimea. And it is time for us in Britain and America, in France and Germany, to recognize this reality.

-Do you think that it is still unclear, at least in Britain and America, why peace can only be achieved following the return of Crimea?

- Here in the UK people may understand something about Russia's colonialism towards Ukraine, but with Crimea it's more complicated. For centuries, Crimea was, let's say, a key site of resettlement colonialism, through which the empire expelled, destroyed, and replaced the indigenous population. Unfortunately, Western scholarship has simply not seen this as colonialism.

In the West, we have often ignored this problem in the study of Russia and the history of Central and Eastern Europe. And I think this is an institutional failure.

- The closer that the Ukrainian army gets to Crimea, the stronger and more powerful the Russian imperial narrative propaganda will get. 

- Yes, there is such a big risk. In humanitarian research, Crimea has been and remains a white spot. For at least half a century, the study of the Crimean Tatar language and culture in Ukraine has been negligible. Despite the fact that, for example, Omelan Pritsak, one of the most important historians of Ukraine, clearly wrote that it is very difficult to understand the history of Ukraine without the history of the Crimean Tatars, without the history of the Qirimli.

Professor Pritsak's former mentor, Agatangel Krymsky, also wrote that "a comprehensive, multifaceted history of Ukraine is impossible without knowledge of the Crimean Tatars."

For centuries, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars were stateless, interrelated peoples within the Russian Empire. In the twentieth century, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars experienced not only physical violence at the hands of the Soviet government, but also what scholar Bohdan Kravtsiv referred to as  moral terror. So this history is very important for us today, but unfortunately it is very unknown. And this helps Russia to spread its own narrative.

- What can serve as a strong countermeasure againstRussian narratives?

- Literature is a very interesting source for a clear vision of the connection between Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars. For example, I study the story of Shamil Alyadin. Alyadin is a very prominent star of Crimean Tatar literature and culture. First of all, he was an official Soviet writer. He served in the Red Army. But when he returned to Crimea in 1944, he found a completely different family in his house. And he had to flee Crimea and save his family from near starvation in Central Asia.

- It seems that we are repeating the same historical cycle.

- Yes, a circle. And we also realize how Russia was and continues to be  a factory of these horrors. Alyadin was a very talented poet and storyteller who was always strongly influenced by the Ukrainian language and culture.

For example, in the thirties he wrote a poem called "Hey, Fighting Ukraine - Oh, Great Ukraine!" And later he also translated Taras Shevchenko's "Testament" into the Crimean Tatar language. And his last novel was a very large but unfinished novel about the friendship between Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Tugay Bey.

That is, his poetry and prose is a very large body of deep, vivid literary works on this subject, on Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian solidarity. Unfortunately, Alyadin is little known in Ukraine and, of course, here in the UK. But this state of affairs must change, especially now.

- In Crimea, it is very common to come across myths about Crimean Tatars that are based on historically inaccurate assumptions. For example, the myth that Crimean Tatars want Crimea to become part of Turkey because of its large Crimean Tatar diaspora. You know the Turkish language, have you ever witnessed such discourse?  Even some respected nationalists repeat this myth in Ukraine.

- No, I have hardly ever heard of myths pertaining to Turkey and Turks wanting control over Crimea, or them considering Crimea their territory. I think that we need to urgently discard these ideas and this paradigm , because history shows a completely different situation. For example, in my book "The Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Crime and the Poetics of Solidarity", we read Lesya Ukrainka alongside Hasan Chergeev, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky alongside Usain Shamil Tokhtargazy.

We see Boris Chichibabin, a well-known Kharkiv poet, talking to Esref Shemieh-Zadeh, Mykola Rudenko with Petro Hryhorenko, and Hryhorenko with Mustafa Dzhemilev, and so on.

For hundreds of years, the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar peoples have been interacting very closely, cooperating, influencing each other, and there has been interpenetration, which has now led to solidarity.

Modern Ukraine simply cannot exist without the Crimean Tatars. Thanks to the help of the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian Cossacks were able to fight Poland. There are very vivid historical facts about the strength of this alliance.

We need to present a new type of cultural history of Crimea, Ukraine, and the Black Sea region that presents Crimean Tatars not as a minority, but as a key player which has always influenced the past, present, and future of Crimea.

- The Ukrainian nation, to which the Crimean Tatars belong, is now fighting for the return of the occupied territories. Won't we have a conflict of interests between Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars after the return of Crimea? How can we prevent this?

- Of course, this is a difficult question, and of course there may be some conflicts in the future. But let's take the Crimean platform as an example. There is a saying that politics is perception, right? The Crimean Platform turned what was considered impossible into something that is considered feasible. Now the international diplomatic community is not just saying that Crimea is Ukraine. They are now discussing the logistics of de-occupation - what needs to happen, how it will be done, who will do it, and so on.

I think that after the victory, Ukrainian society will look for answers to difficult questions, and they will find them. And I hope that our research, our books, academic and scientific works will contribute to a better understanding of how Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars can build Crimea together.

-How do you see Crimea's future?

- I have no doubt that Crimea will be free. History is an important teacher, and Crimea is a continuation of the mainland of Ukraine. And we need to not only study Crimea’s historical connection to Ukraine’s resources, but also its centuries long dependence on Ukraine and connection to its culture.

There is a myth about Khrushchev's "gift"to Ukraine. The truth, however, is that the Soviet authorities realized that Crimea was not an island, but a very important part of mainland Ukraine, and that is why they transferred the Crimean region to Soviet Ukraine.

- You said that what is happening in Ukraine right now is important for the whole world, and it will affect Europe for decades and generations to come. What do you think is the impact of Ukraine’s fight in this war on the future development of Europe?

- I think that the most important thing is a better understanding of Ukraine overall. The union of scientists and politicians in Europe is finally seeing Ukraine as it really is - dynamic, young, diverse, multilingual, etc.

We used to have a very big problem. It was intellectual laziness in relation to Ukraine in science and to Russia. It is easier to study the largest country in the world if you study only Moscow or St. Petersburg.

It is more pleasant to study Pushkin than to study aggressive, xenophobic, chauvinistic, but very popular novels by pseudo-authors like Georgy Savitsky, who dehumanize Ukrainians and ridicule the Ukrainian national project. Because of this intellectual laziness in Western scholarship, I think Russian expansionist ideas of so-called Slavic brotherhood and alleged "reunification" were often not questioned in academic communities, but are now being criticized.

Throughout the twentieth century, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars struggled for the right to be "at home," that is, to have "ontological security," after the murderous policies of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, after the Holodomor and the Surgun (the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944).

The Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar movements have always supported each other in this struggle. This proud heritage is reflected in many literary and scientific works.

But after 1991, we were not able to defeat the historical force in the background - the force responsible for all these traumas of the 20th century: Russian colonialism and imperial chauvinism. Scholars and politicians here in the West ignored this force or assumed it was dead. In Crimea, this meant that we never developed responsible steps to address the crimes of settlement colonialism on the peninsula. This opened the door for the concept of "CrimeaNash".

- How do we close the door to the idea of "Crimea-Nash" forever?

- There is one way: an amendment to the Constitution of Ukraine that recognizes the "national-territorial autonomy" of the Crimean Tatars and, in effect, gives them sovereignty over Crimea. This would be a powerful rebuke to "Krymnashiv" chauvinism. And I believe it would lead to a prosperous Ukrainian Crimea, a Crimea that demonstrates the values and principles of a dynamic, free, democratic European society.

- What Crimean Tatar literature and poetry should Ukrainian politicians read to understand the scope of the problem and build a better vision of Crimea’s future?

- For some people, especially in the West, the words "Crimea is Ukraine" are nothing more than a slogan of the last decade. But for Crimean Tatar activists, especially those associated with the Mejlis, it has never been a slogan.

Saying "Crimea is Ukraine" in occupied Crimea meant inviting threats, imprisonment, exile and death, as we saw, for example, in the tragic case of Reshat Ametov, Russia's first victim in Crimea. If we listen carefully to the voices of the Crimean Tatars, we hear how many of them have been struggling and sacrificing for a long time in the name of Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar solidarity.

Such voices are often heard in Crimean Tatar literature. Take the example of Janmuhammed in the 17th century: his epic poem about the military alliance between Ukrainian Cossacks and Crimean Tatars highlights the common suffering and warns of the dangers of invasion and aggression. Or take the example of the deported Crimean Tatars in twentieth-century Central Asia, who could not speak openly about the 1944 deportation for fear of punishment. So what did they do?

Many of them, like former schoolteacher Yunus Temirkaya, wrote and published poems mourning the fate of Taras Shevchenko. For the Crimean Tatars, Shevchenko became a means of expressing their own grief. Temirkaya wrote: "Meshakhatly kara kunde kirdyn erge" or "In difficult conditions, in the black sands, you survived". In other words, through Shevchenko's experience, the Crimean Tatars reflected their own experience. Shevchenko helped the Crimean Tatars to process their trauma. He helped them to survive.

So when Crimean Tatars return to Crimea in independent Ukraine, what do poets like Samad Shukur write? "Senin serbest / Olman iciun / Men olyumge de azırym!" Translation: Ukraine, "I am ready to die for your freedom."

Author: Anastasiya Ringis

Translation: Dana Torbina