'A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate

'A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate - Professor Donald Rayfield

Professor Donald Rayfield’s original and comprehensive history of the Crimean Tatars - ‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate - was published by Reaktionbooks in July. We are delighted that Professor Rayfield has agreed to talk to the Society about it.

In his book Professor Rayfield describes the settlement of Crimea in ancient times; the creation of the Crimean Khanate in the mid-15th century, which survived and flourished for some 350 years; and the tragic history of the Crimean Tatars under Russian and Soviet rule, ending with the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.

In his talk Professor Rayfield highlights some of the principal themes addressed in his book.

The phrase in the title of Professor Rayfield’s book, ‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’, was uttered not by Stalin, who ordered the deportation of some 190,000 Crimean Tatars in May 1944 as a collective punishment for alleged collusion with the Nazi invaders, or by Peter the Great, who won and lost battles against the Tatars. It was first used by Ahmed Resmi-efendi, a senior Ottoman diplomat, in the memoirs he wrote after his country’s humiliating defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, which he blamed in part on the Sultan’s Crimean Tatar allies.

While fully acknowledging that the history of the peninsula cannot be seen in isolation from the actions and attitudes of its neighbours, Donald Rayfield presents a very different picture of the Crimean Tatars. He describes the settlement of Crimea in ancient times, the creation of the Crimean Khanate in the mid-15th century under the Giray dynasty of Khans, and the nature of this state, which not only survived for some 350 years but was in fact a flourishing state with a vibrant literary culture, religious tolerance, a sophisticated constitution and a prosperous economy.

He then recounts the tragic history of the Crimean Tatars under Russian and Soviet rule, including the trauma of collectivisation in the 1930s and mass deportation in the 1940s, and ends with the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.

In his talk Professor Rayfield highlights some of the principal themes addressed in his book.

Professor Donald Rayfield OBE is Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He is an author of numerous books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police. He is also a series editor for books about Russian writers and intelligentsia. He has translated Georgian, Russian and Uzbek poets and prose writers. His published works include Anton Chekhov: A Life (1997), The Garnett Book of Russian Verse (2000), Stalin and His Hangmen (2004), A Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary (2006) and Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (2012).

RRP: £7.00

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