CONTENTS // What is Crimea? 1 // Chapter // 1. Crimea: the Land and its Seas 3 // The birth of the land of beauty // 2. Crimea’s earliest civilizations 11 // 3. The Kipchaks, Mongols, Tatars, and Italianate Crimea 25 // 4. The Crimean Khanate 35 // Was Crimean and Ottoman slavery all that bad? // Who are the Crimean Tatars? // 5. Crimea in the Russian Empire 55 // Whose heroic Crimea? // 6. Crimea in War and Revolution 81 // 7. The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic 93 // Jews and Karaites // 8. Crimea during World War II 109 // Crimean mysticism Ethnic cleansing Soviet style // 9. Soviet Crimea and Exiled Crimean Tatars 123 // 10. Crimea in Independent Ukraine 137 // The Crimean Tatars are here to stay // Notes 148 // For Further Reading 151 // Illustration Sources and Credits 153 // LIST OF MAPS // 1. Crimea: Physical Geography 10 // 2. Greeks and Scythians in the Pontic-Aegean Region 18 // 3. Gothic and Byzantine Crimea, ca. 650 24 // 4. The Golden Horde, ca. 1300 32 // 5. Successor states of the Golden Horde, ca. 1520 42 // 6. Crimea, ca. 1550 46 // 7. Territorial evolution of the Crimean Khanate 50 // 8. Crimea in the 19th-century Russian Empire 66 // 9. Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, ca. 1930 102