On the Problem of the Population of the Crimea in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries and the First Wave of the Crimean Tatar Emigration

This article addresses disputable questions of statistis of the Crimean population on the eve and in the first decades after the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Empire. These problems are of particular importance in connection with historiographical interpretations of the Crimean Tatar emigrations. The works of A. Ozenbashly, which are the most referred to in Western and Turkish historical scholarship, have been analysed in detail. The errors of his “million-strong” calculations of the population of the Crimea in this period have been uncovered. A similar analysis has been undertaken in case of modern article by N. S. Seitiag’iaev, who proposed a new argument for the over-estimated evaluation of the peninsula’s population. Moreover, we have also paid attention to the factual and logical mistakes and inconsistencies in the works of the first publishers of the Cameralistic Description of the Crimea A. A. Skal’kovskii and F. F. Lashkov, and in the 1793 account published by P. S. Pallas; these sources later became an important reason for misinterpretations of the demographic statistics of the Crimea in the scholarship. The conclusion uncovers the growth of the Tatar population in the Crimea after its incorporation into the Russian Empire. According to O. A. Igelstrom, in 1783 there were approximately 115,000 people, mostly Crimean Tatars, living in the Crimea. By 1795, the Crimean population was 157,600 (including 137,000 Crimean Tatars). In the very early nineteenth century, there were from 70,000 to 95,000 male Crimean Tatars according to different estimations, i. e. the minimal number was 130,000–140,000 both sexes. By 1816, this number increased to 182,700, and in 1850 it reached 267,400. Therefore, the conclusion of the global emigration of the Tatar population from the Crimea during the first decades of the Russian rule is not correct. Even 80,000 migrants could not leave the peninsula unnoticed and unrecorded after 1783. The main emigration flow of the late eighteenth century should be related to the pre-Russian period of the Crimean history, when internal struggle in the Crimean Khanate provoked by the Russian-Ottoman rivalry forced a great part of the local population to leave the peninsula.