By Murad Rakhimov | 2024-12-02

TASHKENT -- Occupation authorities in Crimea are deliberately reducing the ability to teach pupils in their native languages, educators and members of the Crimean Tatar community say.

Educators are very unhappy with the situation, said Zeynep, a teacher of Crimean Tatar language and literature, whose last name has been omitted for her safety.

"The children's parents, too, are unhappy with this," she told Kontur. "After all, the Russian constitution guarantees the right to education in one's native language."

"New textbooks are not being printed, and classes are being eliminated. What does this mean? It looks like a policy aimed at assimilating Crimean Tatars so that they forget their language and worldview."

Before the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, things were different: the Crimean Tatar language was preserved and enjoyed popular demand, she said.

Last bell

Kyiv resident Eskender Bariyev, board chairman of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center and a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, explained the situation with grade school education in Crimean Tatars' native language.

"At the time of the occupation, in 2014, Crimea had 15 schools where Crimean Tatar was the language of instruction. ... Plus, the occupiers completed and started operating a school whose construction began back in the 'Ukrainian days.' That is, a 16th school appeared," Bariyev told Kontur.

Unfortunately, countervailing processes then began.

First, officials attempted to close two Crimean Tatar schools -- in Annovka, Krasnogvardeysky (Belogorsky) District; and in Staryi Krym. But thanks to the activism of teachers and parents, these schools remained open.

In time, other problems arose with the preservation of Crimean Tatar classes.

In accordance with Ukrainian law, if the parents of 5-8 children petition to have classes with instruction in Crimean Tatar, then these classes must be made available. Russian law says the same thing about any language requested by the parents of 5–8 children.

However, the authorities began to engineer problems that allowed them to decline the requests. For example, prepared parental forms already stated that the children's native language was Russian.

In addition, the occupation authorities tried to convince parents that there were no teachers, no classrooms or no textbooks available.

Members of the public began to contact city and district departments of public education and, in the case of aggressive responses, law enforcement.

"But there was no response or positive change," Bariyev said.

Occupation authorities have been squeezing out the native language from schools ever since, with yet another ethnicity-based class being "dissolved in Grushevka village, Sudak district," in 2024, he said.

'Forced to study Russian'

As early as 2018, only four years after Russia seized Crimea, the number of secondary school classes on the peninsula where Crimean Tatar was the language of instruction had decreased from 384 to 133, according to UNESCO.

It is now 119, according to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.

Whereas previously in Crimea all 16 schools using Crimean Tatar were called "schools with instruction in Crimean Tatar," that number dwindled over time.

Four schools retained their status as institutions teaching in Crimean Tatar, another four became "schools with instruction in the Crimean Tatar and Russian languages," and the rest became simply "public schools."

Accordingly, the Tatars' native language is no longer a priority at the recategorized schools, and instruction is in Russian.

In another trend, the ostensible "schools with instruction in Crimean Tatar" have increased the hours spent studying Russian -- at the expense of Crimean Tatar lessons.

"We see that a substitution is taking place, where Crimean Tatars ... are ultimately being deprived of the right to study their native language," said Bariyev. "What's more, they are being forced to study Russian."

Dead infrastructure

As for higher education in occupied Crimea, the authorities do not allocate work hours for teachers of Crimean Tatar. Accordingly, these teachers have very low wages, and in turn, they have no prospects or desire to work.

"As a result, young people don't want to enroll in the department of Crimean Tatar language and literature or to teach these subjects in the future," said Bariyev. "The teachers who ought to come to schools in the future won't exist."

Even so, children and parents have not lost interest in learning Crimean Tatar, according to Bariyev.

The occupation authorities either refuse to open the classes, or they put these lessons last as an extra eighth or ninth period.

"A negative and not very reassuring situation is emerging in relation to the development of the Crimean Tatar language," Bariyev said. "Given this approach, it is ... impossible to speak of expanding instruction in the language native to thousands of Crimeans."

Although the Russian constitution guarantees the right to preserve native languages and to create conditions for their study and development, in reality the state does nothing to support them.

"To support the languages of ethnic groups, an entire infrastructure is needed: the creation and publication of textbooks, teachers are needed, and that means these teachers need to be trained at universities and institutes," an anthropology professor in St. Petersburg who requested anonymity told Kontur.

"Moreover, they should teach not only the Crimeans' native language but also other subjects in Crimean Tatar -- physics, chemistry, algebra and so on."

No one in Crimea plans to maintain such infrastructure, he said.

Russian only

Another problem is deliberate suppression of the Crimean Tatar language in government and business.

KrimSOS, an online publication, has repeatedly reported on attempts to ban speaking Crimean Tatar in government institutions. All languages except Russian are being forced out of occupied Crimea.

Disguised in democratic rhetoric about "equality" and "interethnic friendship," contemporary Russian policy actually reflects the Kremlin's desire to control words and thoughts.

The absence of infrastructure that supports the Crimean Tatar language means that parents are forced to send their children to Russian schools. And the languages of ethnic minorities are being pushed into the private, domestic sphere.

The Kremlin has launched a policy of assimilation of all ethnic minorities: their languages are not formally banned, but they may not fully develop them even in their own regions, Kontur's anonymous source said.

"This is the state policy of Russia. And it has been going on for about the last 20 years," he said. "Russia is passing laws that are gradually displacing ethnic groups' languages and imposing Russian."