The influence of the natural and geographical specifics of Crimea on the formation of some characteristic features of traditional Crimean culture: matrix of interaction between “Local” and “Alien” ethnic groups on the peninsula

Abstract

The usual Crimean studies have formulated a concept of lack of the genesis of traditional Crimean culture due to its approach to an ethnic history of Crimea as a replacement of a number of various and distinguished substituting ethnic groups with neither biogenetic nor cultural and linguistic continuity between them. That point was artificially implanted by the political reasons as a scientific pseudo-justification of the en-masse deportation of some Indigenous Peoples of Crimea and Northern Caucasus realized by the Soviet Power in 1940s. However, the attentive studying of the historical process in Crimea during the thousands of the years, inevitably leads to the conclusions that there were not series of total genocides among ethnic groups populating the territory of the Crimea in different times. Despite of military clashes, invasions, periodical conquests, the very natural and geographical conditions of the peninsula predetermined the inevitable involvement of different ethnic groups in economic, cultural, political, and biogenetic, and eventually even kinship relations. This was main way how a new stage of Crimean culture and inhabitants was being formed during centuries. This was the fundamental tendency of the genesis of the traditional Crimean culture and indigenous peoples of the Crimea, mainly formed by the end of the 18th century. The mechanism of the impact of these factors and the resulting matrix of interaction between the “local” and “newcomer” ethnic groups in the Crimea is analyzed in this article.

Keywords

• crimean culture
• indigenous peoples of the crimea
• crimean studies
• interethnic interaction
• crimean tatars
• crimean karaites
• krymchaks
• urums
• rumeys
• crimean armenians
• armenian-kipchaks
• crimean christians