The Italians of Crimea (; ; ) are an ethnic minority residing in Crimea, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Crimea during the Italian diaspora, the largest nucleus of which is found in the city of Kerch. Ancient Romans, who are the ancestors of Italians, settled in some areas of Ukraine and Crimea since the times of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. For a period Crimea was a client state of the Roman Empire. Subsequently, Italians have populated some areas of Ukraine and Crimea at the time of the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice during the Middle Ages. The conquest of Crimea by the Ottoman Empire marked the end of the Italian trading colonies. Starting from the end of the 18th century, Italian emigration to Crimea resumed with vigor.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Italian emigration to the Crimea came from various Italian regions (Liguria, Campania, Apulia), with immigrants settling mainly in the coastal cities of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, as well as in Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sevastopol, Mariupol, Berdiansk and Taganrog. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, emissaries of Tsar Alexander I of Russia were sent to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to recruit settlers. In 1914, when World War I broke out, the Italian community was numerous enough to have a primary school and a library. With the October Revolution of 1917, with which the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union, a bitter period began for minorities in Russia. Italians of Crimea therefore faced much repression. The Kingdom of Italy suspended diplomatic relations with Russia and recalled the Italians residing in the country; so did the Italians of Kerch.
Between 1920 and 1930, many anti-fascist Italians seeking asylum in the Soviet Union were sent from Moscow to Kerch to organise the local Italian community. In 1924, according to the plans of Soviet collective farming, the Italians were forced to create a kolkhoz, named Sacco e Vanzetti for the two Italian anarchists of the same name. More than half of Kerch's Italians opposed the move to hand over their land to the collective farm, and those who could, fled and tried to return to Italy. Between 1936 and 1938, during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, many Italians were accused of espionage and were arrested, tortured, deported or executed. With the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Wehrmacht in June 1941, the population of Italian origin residing there were declared an enemy of the people and, on the basis of a census carried out by the German Wehrmacht, were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia in three waves of deportations for alleged collaboration with the enemy "for their own security".
The few survivors were allowed to return to Kerch in the 1950s and 1960s during Nikita Khrushchev's administration. There they discovered that they had lost everything and could no longer return to their previous homes. Many could no longer prove that they were of Italian origin because their documents had been confiscated at the time of deportation. On 12 September 2015, a delegation of the 'Cerkio' association (an organization that represents ethnic Italians in Crimea) led by its president, Giulia Giacchetti Boico, and Silvio Berlusconi, met Vladimir Putin in Yalta. Following this meeting, the Russian president issued a decree recognizing the plight of Crimean Italians during the Stalinist regime. The descendants of the surviving Italians of Crimea currently account for about 300 people, mainly residing in Kerch.
History Antiquity
Ancient Romans, who are the ancestors of Italians, settled in some areas of Ukraine and Crimea since the times of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. For a period, Crimea was a client state of the Roman Empire.
Middle Ages Subsequently, Italians have populated some areas of Ukraine and Crimea at the time of the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice during the Middle Ages.
The Venetian trading colonies After the medieval crusades, Genoese and Venetian merchants discovered Crimea as a favorable location for their trade missions to Asia. They founded the towns of Balaklava, Yalta, Alushta, Sudak, Feodosia and Kerch as branches on the southern coast, which still exist today.
The Franciscan William of Rubruck landed in Sudak in 1253 to begin his journey to the far east of Asia,Wilhelm Heyd: Die italienischen Handelscolonien am schwarzen Meer (1. Artikel) in: Journal for all political science, Bd. 18, p. 655. and in 1260 the brothers Maffeo Polo and Niccolò Polo, father of the famous medieval traveler Marco Polo, visited Sudak for the first time.Sophus Ruge: Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, Salzwasser-Verlag GmbH, Paderborn, p. 53.
In 1340 Toloktomur, then emir of Solgat, in Crimea, offered the city of Kerch with its port and surrounding area to the Venetians, so that they would be as complete masters of it as the Genoese Kafa (Italian: Caffa).Wilhelm Heyd, Die italienischen Handelscolonien am schwarzen Meer, article 2 in: Journal for all political science Bd. 19, p. 163
The Genoese trading colonies
After the Genoese received permission to found a settlement from the Khan of the Golden Horde in the mid-13th century, they founded a colony in 1266 in the settlement of Kafa (Italian: Caffa), near modern-day Feodosia.
In 1289, the Genoese consul of Kerch, Paolino Doria, summoned merchants and citizens of the city to help Italians in difficulty at the Genoese headquarters in Tripoli.Wilhelm Heyd, Die italienischen Handelscolonien am schwarzen Meer, (article 1) in: Journal for the entire political science, Bd. 18, 1862, p. 662 The city had been conquered, depopulated and destroyed by the Mamluk sultan Qalawun. In 1316, the consul of Kafa received the order to grant the Armenians, Greeks and other non-Genoese Christians a certain area outside the city walls in exchange for economic exchanges with their homelands.Wilhelm Heyd: Die italienischen Handelscolonien am schwarzen Meer, (1. Artikel) in: Journal for the entire political science, Bd. 18, 1862, p. 677
Over time, the Genoese possessions in Crimea expanded from Kafa westward to Balaklava, and expanded east of Kafa with the acquisition of Kerch.Wilhelm Heyd, Die italienischen Handelscolonien am schwarzen Meer, (article 2) in: Journal for the entire political science Bd. 19, 1863, p. 184 Kerch was a populous and rich city founded in 1332 by Pope John XXII. It was elevated to a metropolis and appointed the Dominican Francesco da Camerino as its spiritual pastor. The first mention of a Genoese consulate in Kerch dates back to 1456.
The conquest of Crimea by the Ottoman Empire marked the end of the Italian trading colonies. After the taking of Kerch, the Italians residing there were transferred to Constantinople with all their remaining belongings on 12 July 1475. Some of them managed to overpower their ship's Ottoman crew during the crossing and escaped with the ship to Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. However, since they had a dispute over the distribution of the loot that was in the ship, the Lord of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi seized the loot and drove out the Italians. The others reached Constantinople, a now-deserted area of the city, and paid the poll tax to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire.Wilhelm Heyd, Die italienischen Handelscolonien am schwarzen Meer, (article 2) in: Journal for the entire political science Bd. 19, 1863, p. 208. Their descendants are known by the label of Italian Levantine.
18th and 19th centuries Starting from the end of the 18th century, Italian emigration to Crimea resumed with vigor, so much so that the written proof is present in the registry office of Kafa, where numerous Italian surnames such as Amoretti, Bianchi-Scoccimarro, Criscola, Durante, Gallera, Lagorio, Scassi and Spinelli are reported. The immigrants came mainly from Genoa,Elena Dundovich, Francesca Gori, Emanuela Guercetti, Gulag. Storia e memoria, Feltrinelli, Milan, p. 188. and the Italian route, mainly the Genoese one, was the most popular migratory route.Stefano Mensurati, Giulia Giacchetti Boico, Il genocidio dimenticato. Gli italiani di Crimea, Libreria Editrice Goriziana, p. 4. In 1783, 25,000 Italians immigrated to Crimea, which had been recently annexed by the Russian Empire.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Italian emigration to Crimea came from various Italian regions (Liguria, Campania, Apulia), with immigrants settling mainly in the coastal cities of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, as well as in Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sevastopol, Mariupol, Berdiansk and Taganrog. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, emissaries of Tsar Alexander I of Russia were sent to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to recruit settlers. This policy was especially successful in the province of Terra di Bari. In general, the colonists were attracted by the promise of good earnings, abundance of fish in the seas surrounding Crimea, fertile land to cultivate. The farmers and fishermen were soon followed by teachers, notaries, doctors, engineers, architects, merchants and artists. Among the immigrants, many were owners of boats with which they transported goods to the ports of the Sea of Azov (Taganrog, Berdyansk, Mariupol) and the Black Sea (Feodosia, Simferopol, Odessa, Kherson, Mykolaiv). Others worked as laborers on Russian ships.
Unlike the peasants, who retained almost all their original nationalities (Kingdom of Sardinia, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), those who worked on Russian ships first adopted Tsarist Russian citizenship and then Soviet citizenship, since article 48 of the Merchant Navy Code banned foreigners from working on Russian ships.
In 1830 and in 1870, two distinct migrations arrived in Kerch from the cities of Trani, Bisceglie and Molfetta. These migrants were peasants and sailors, attracted by the job opportunities in the local Crimean seaports and by the possibility to cultivate the nearly unexploited and fertile Crimean lands. Italian general and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi worked as a sailor at least twice in the region of Odesa, between 1825 and 1833. A later wave of Italians came at the beginning of 20th century, invited by Imperial Russian authorities to develop agricultural activities, mainly grape cultivation. Some sources affirm that at the end of the 18th century, 10 percent of the population of Odesa was Italian.Storia degli italiani in Ucraina e Crimea
Italians quickly settled into local society and the community expanded rapidly. Kerch had 13,106 inhabitants in 1855Extra sheet for the Rigaschen Zeitung No. 123 from 1 June 1855, p. 6 and around 30,000 in 1870. In 1884, more than 1,000 people lived in the Italian colony, most of whom came from the Adriatic coast and were engaged in coastal shipping or earned their living as sailors and landowners of real estate. In Kerch, the Italians of Crimea built a Roman Catholic church, still known locally as the Church of the Italians. From Kerch, the Italians moved to Feodosiya (the former Genoese colony of Caffa), Simferopol, Mariupol and to other Imperial Russian seaports of the Black Sea, such as Batumi and Novorossiysk.