The Krymchaks: An Ethnic and Religious Group

Author(s): Kazimierz Banek

Source: Anthropos, Bd. 109, H. 1. (2014), pp. 235-243

Published by: Anthropos Institut

Stable URL:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/43861699

Crimea is an exceptionally interesting research area for religious studies scholars. This rather small region (25,900 km2) has been home to - one after the other or at the same time - Tauri, Cimmerians, Maeotae, Scythians, Greeks, Sarmatians, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Jews, Krymchaks, Khazars, Karaites, Bulgārs, Kipchaks, Pechenegs, Slavs, Ar- menians, Tatars, Italians, and Turks. Each of these nations was frequently characterised by their own more or less strongly defined religious specificity. After the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 1783, the Tatars and Turks began to leave the peninsula, while Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Greeks, Albani- ans, Germans,3 Poles, Bulgarians, Czechs, and Es- tonians began to settle, or were re-settled there. For thousands of years, then, Crimea has seen a mix of various peoples, cultures, and religions.  

The position of the Crimean peninsula at the crossing of important trade routes meant that for a long time two separate worlds, the Greco-Roman and the "Barbarian," came into contact with one an- other, and two different types of culture were in- terlaced: the Asian and the European, Eastern and Western (Glushak and Naumova 1997: 59). Even now, Crimea, being an autonomous republic, is the most multiethnic region of Ukraine (Grigor'yants 1999: 42). The interests of various nationalities, religions, political parties, and economic circles continue to meet and clash with each other (Mamchen- ko 1998: 41). At the beginning of the 20th century, in Crimean towns Orthodox and Armenian-Gregorian churches, mosques, Catholic and Protes- tant churches, synagogues, Karaite kenesas, and Krymchak k'aala still operated side-by-side. In the town of Feodosiya alone, for instance, in the year 1910 there were ten Orthodox churches, four mosques, three Armenian-Gregorian churches, two synagogues, and one Catholic church (Gand Artiuh 1997: 3). According to the census of 2001, 2,033,000 people lived in Crimea, of whom 58% (1,180,000) were Russians, 24.4% (492,000) Ukrainians, and 12.1% (243,400) Tatars.