Why We Need to Talk About Crimea

Crimea has been at the epicenter of the Russian war against Ukraine. By dissecting the tumultuous history of Crimea, Cambridge-scholar Rory Finnin argues why returning Crimea to Ukrainian controle is the only path to a sustainable peace.

The Russian war against Ukraine began in 2014 with the appearance of mysterious ‘little green men’ – masked, unmarked soldiers – who suddenly took over Crimea. Now, the Americans seem willing to simply give up Crimea in negotiations with Russia. But history shows us that a Russian Crimea has no future. The idea of a ‘Russian Crimea’ is a colonial phantasm enforced by decades of suppression and ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars.

Renowned British scholar Rory Finnin, expert on Ukrainian history, shows how a peace deal that makes Crimea Russian territory would lay the foundation for a future of further military escalation from the Kremlin. To understand why that is, we need to understand the history, culture and geography of the contested peninsula. Together with journalist Alim Aliev and art curator Oksana Dovgopolova, Rory Finnin will tell the tumultuous story of Crimea.

Rory Finnin is Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. He launched the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme in 2008. His new book, Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (2022), has won eight international book awards. Anne Applebaum: “Rory Finnin has written the definitive account of cultural responses to a still-hidden atrocity: the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.”