“What do we know about Crimea?” is a 6-episode podcast exploring the history of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars to better understand the peninsula's past, its ties to Ukraine, and how that past influences us today.

Episode 6. Exiled from Crimea, erased from history: the Soviet policy and deportation of the Crimean Tatars

Why did Stalin decide to deport the Crimean Tatars? How was the myth of "mass collaboration" engineered? Why were other deported nations allowed to return in the 1950s, while Crimean Tatars were denied? And how did a non-violent national movement ultimately win the right to return home?

On May 18, 1944, the Soviet regime launched the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars. In just a few days, nearly the entire indigenous population was forcibly removed from the peninsula. But the tragedy didn't stop with the last deportation trains.

In the aftermath, the Soviet authorities systematically altered Crimea: renaming towns and villages, erasing cultural heritage, resettling the region with new populations, and branding Crimean Tatars as "traitors." Even after Stalin's repressions were officially denounced, Crimean Tatars were barred from returning to their homeland for decades.

Historian Oleh Bazhan unpacks the deportation, the Soviet strategy to erase Crimean Tatar presence, and the decades-long struggle to return home.