Ukraine, Russia, and the Question of Crimea

The Crimean question developed as one of the major crises of the post-Soviet period among the two largest Slavic states of the former Soviet Union. It is an issue with several dimensions: the historical background; the case of the Crimean Tatars as an ipso facto aboriginal population deported en masse toward the end of the Second World War; the military-strategic question, with Crimea as the base for the Black Sea Fleet; economic and social developments; and the legality of the 1954 transfer of the peninsula from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to Ukraine in 1954.