Beyond Memory: The Crimean Tatars’ Deportation and Return

In the final days of World War II, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population, nearly 200,000 people. Beyond Memory offers the first ethnographic exploration of this event, as well as the 50 year movement for repatriation. Many of the Crimean Tatars have returned in a process that involves squatting on vacant land and self-immolation. Uehling asks how they became willing to die for their national collectivity. She provides a fine-grained analysis of how “memories,” sentiments, and dreams of a homeland never seen came to be shared. Uehling suggests the second-generation has a surprisingly instrumental role to play. The way children correct and intervene in parental narratives, dissidents challenge interrogators, and speakers borrow and trade lines index this social aspect of memory.