I’m now reading part of the Ukrainian segment of social networks and, frankly speaking, I’m blown away.
Grief for the “Defense of Sevastopol” panorama, which was hit by a Ukrainian drone. A lament about “our history”, about the “blood of our people” shed during the Crimean War, in particular during the defense of Sevastopol.
Yes stop. Is it true?
Have you ever wondered what kind of war it was? Who unleashed it and for what purpose? What goals did St. Petersburg pursue? And how did all this turn out for the Crimean Tatar people, on whose land the most brutal battles of that war took place?
I admit that many of those who are crying behind the panorama today do not even know: the Russian Empire laid the responsibility for its own defeat in the Crimean War on the Crimean Tatars. And she took cruel revenge on them. Already in 1856–1860, as a result of a deliberate repressive policy, hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars were expelled from Crimea. According to Russian data of that time – about 200 thousand, according to researchers from the countries of the then anti-Russian coalition – from 300 to 500 thousand indigenous inhabitants of Crimea were thrown out of the peninsula and forced to settle on the lands of the Ottoman Empire.
But isn't this our real story? Or is it “other”? Well, let's remember something else: the panorama was created at the beginning of the twentieth century on an initiative approved by Nicholas II, through the committee to perpetuate the defense of Sevastopol. For what purpose? To perpetuate the “heroism” of the empire. But in this “heroic” narrative there was no place for the tragedy of the Crimean Tatar people. For hundreds of thousands of people who paid for this war with the loss of their homeland.
So what are we sad about today? About the monument to imperial memory? History is not spectacular panoramas created to hide crimes committed. Even if they managed to drag thousands and thousands of people enslaved by the empire into these crimes.
So don’t cry at the “Defense of Sevastopol” panorama. The Ukrainian drone, with its hit, helps us squeeze out of ourselves the slave psychology hammered into our consciousness first by Russian and then by Soviet imperial propaganda. Don't resist your own inner cleansing.
Source: Refat Chubarov / Facebook
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