Incident at a school in Crimea: Who is inflating the “friendship of peoples”?
The other day, an unfortunate incident occurred at a secondary school in the village of Dachnoe (Taraktash), Sudak district of the Republic of Crimea. The 4th grade class teacher and literature teacher Elena Alekseevna Rudenko gave her students the task of preparing a story about their grandparents, participants in the Great Patriotic War.
According to the mother of one of the students, Samira Aliyeva, her daughter spoke in class about her great-grandfather, who fought at the front. The girl’s story said that her great-grandfather was seriously wounded at the front, was in the hospital, was discharged, and in May 1944 returned to Crimea, discovering that all his relatives had been deported to Central Asia. The great-grandfather went to the place of exile of his relatives and died a year later, and the great-grandmother, his widow, raised five children alone.
The girl also talked about her great-grandmother’s post-war life, how she got on her feet and raised her children.
This is what the girl’s mother, Safinaz Aliyeva, writes on her Facebook feed:
“During her story, the teacher stopped her and said: “Now let Samira finish, and I’ll tell you why the Crimean Tatars were expelled.” As soon as my daughter finished her story, the teacher, addressing the entire class, where there are 9 Crimean Tatar children studying and 7 students of Slavic nationality, addressed the children with the following comment.
“I’ll tell you now why the Crimean Tatars were expelled. They were expelled because they were traitors, and their betrayal was that they helped the Germans, the occupiers, seize Crimea,” the teacher told the whole class.
Accordingly, my daughter literally immediately felt the condemning glances of her classmates - not Crimean Tatars. I learned the same thing from one of the parents in our class, who called my husband. Their daughter came crying. Our children suffered psychological and moral trauma. All the parents in our class are outraged. We demand that the teacher be held accountable for such actions, and the Crimean Ministry of Education give the teacher’s actions an appropriate assessment.”
The thorny “leader of the nation” Refat Chubarov immediately began to clean up the created delicate situation and shake it up to the level of a universal scandal, and a video message from the local “elders” was immediately recorded...
The girl’s family gives an interview, which was immediately picked up in Ukraine
What can you say about the incident?
I believe the class teacher may have gone too far when she told the children that all Crimean Tatars were sent into exile in Central Asia "for treason," since this statement is untrue. With one caveat: if the teacher's speech is reported verbatim.
Teacher Elena Rudenko
Not all Crimean Tatars left in May 1944 as special settlers for Central Asia. Families of Crimean Tatars who fought in partisan detachments, as well as members of the underground regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, were not subject to deportation from Crimea. Crimean Tatar front-line soldiers were asked to choose a place of residence in cities and towns in the European part of the country. Many, however, chose to share the fate of their exiled relatives.
However, soon after the war, these honored people were allowed to return home, such as the family of the legendary pilot Amet Khan Sultan.
By the way, according to Wikipedia, the Chubarov family returned to Crimea in 1968, when most Crimean Tatars were prohibited from entering the peninsula, and Refatka himself studied for a year at the famous Simferopol vocational school No. 1. After finishing his studies, the future “voshd” worked as a bricklayer for some reason in Tiraspol, and not somewhere in a remote mountain village.
The unfortunate mistake made by the teacher caused an excessively harsh reaction from the parents of some of Samira Aliyeva’s classmates. To the greater benefit of all parties, the conflict could have been settled without a scandal by, for example, arranging an excursion into the history of Crimea during the Nazi occupation with stories about real partisan heroes and underground fighters, including the Crimean Tatars.
It is noteworthy that Safinaz Aliyeva, who posted a text on Facebook demanding that the authorities deal with the teacher, carefully avoids the name Great Patriotic War, using the term “World War II,” which leads to certain thoughts.
The topic of military collaboration and its fight against the underground and partisan movement of Crimea, as well as reconnaissance groups of the Red Army, is well described in historical literature thanks to numerous archival documents.
Briefly, but quite fully, you can read about it in the article “The Leadership of the Partisan Movement in Crimea in 1941-1942 and the “Tatar Question” by historian and general director of the Crimean Republican Museum of Local History Andrei Malgin, published in issue No. 14 for 2006 of the journal “Historical Heritage of Crimea”.
In his article, Malgin cites excerpts from German documents containing crushing facts, against which “researchers” biased by the “Majlis” at one time helplessly slapped their lips.
Malgin’s objectivity lies in the fact that in his article he gives the names of Crimean partisans from among the local Tatars, as well as the names of Tatar villages burned by police for collaborating with the partisans. It will be no less interesting to find out the names of Russian collaborators who had a hand in organizing Tatar police companies and battalions.
The fact that this topic is practically not touched upon in Russian Crimea, but is, as it were, “on a side route” once again suggests that even 76 years after the end of the war, it is extremely painful for the more or less formed social harmony on the peninsula after 22 years of acute interethnic tension under "Independence".
For obvious reasons, it will continue to be parasitized by Mejlis sufferers who fled to Kyiv and provocateurs from the Dzhemilev-Chubarov clan, for whom playing on national feelings while howling about genocide has long become a way to make money.
However, after the “Crimean Spring”, people who retained good ties with the Chubarov clan penetrated into regional and larger Russian politics, and from time to time resorted to its services to maintain their current status.
Elections to the State Duma are approaching and, as PolitNavigator has repeatedly reported, changes are coming to the electoral lists from United Russia. Therefore, there is a temptation to play on slippery topics in the estate near Sudak in order to show one’s indispensability and achieve the prospect of being present in the new parliament as a guarantor of the peace of one’s fellow tribesmen.
The March fuss surrounding the construction of an ice skating rink in Yevpatoria on six hectares of an old Muslim cemetery, which does not have the status of a protected area, also fits into this pattern.
Remembering how the hustlers close to the “Majlis” shamelessly forged a coin, turning kebabs and trampling underfoot the ancient khan’s bones buried under the walls of Chufut-Kale, the intensity of passions seemed clearly heated artificially. The public skating rink for Yevpatoria residents, apparently, has also become just an excuse to gain pre-election weight.
As for the school history with which we began this article, children are not responsible for the sins of their fathers. Russia extended a helping hand, fully rehabilitating the Crimean Tatars and recognizing their exile as illegal . The awarding of the title Hero of Russia to Alima Abdenanova, a spy executed by the Nazis, in 2014 was not only a correction of a 70-year-old injustice but also a sign that it is necessary to remember the bright side and turn the dark pages of the past for the sake of a peaceful future for Russian Crimea. Forgive me for reciting truisms.
English version :: Read in English Incident at a Crimean school: Who is fanning the flames of "friendship between peoples"?