Reaction of Mariia Shynkarenko, PhD candidate in the Politics Department at The New School for Social Research, NYC, to the article «Six years and $20 billion in Russian investment later, Crimeans are happy with Russian annexation», published on the website of Washington Post World dated March 18, 2020. The article, among other things, states that in 2014, supposedly 39 percent of Crimean Tatars welcomed the “accession” of Crimea to Russia, and in 2019 this figure rose to 58%.Numerous Crimean Tatars, having read the article, found it totally untrue and thus offending and even dangerous as it opens the gate for further false claims and speculations. They have contacted me in person or expressed their indignation via social media, which, apart from my personal professional opinion, prompted me to write this letter.
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As a dedicated reader of The Washington Post myself, who usually refers to the newspaper as a reliable and trusting source, I find it absolutely appalling that an article like this found its way on your pages. It contains false and untruthful information that not only distorts the reality but also can potentially have grave consequences for people it talks about. The methodology used by the authors to make claims and inferences is extremely unreliable and compromised.
What gives me the credibility to speak out is that I myself have academic interest and expertise in the Crimea region and especially in the Crimean Tatar people. I have been actively engaged with the topic for five years during my PhD studies at The New School. Moreover, over the course of the past six months, I have conducted an extensive ethnographic and archival work both in mainland Ukraine with Crimean Tatars (who fled to mainland Ukraine after the annexation in 2014) and in Crimea, having collected, inter alia, over a hundred individual in-depth interviews with both groups. The credibility of my knowledge owes to six months of active participant observation, volunteering in the human rights organizations, and travelling across Ukraine to all regions the Crimean Tatar communities reside. Now, I would like to explain what is wrong with this article.
Addressing the problem of falseness of information, the statement that 39% of Crimean Tatars have supported the Russian annexation in 2014 and 58% in 2019 is utterly untrue. It is no secret that there can be no objective sociological survey or polling in Crimea or any other region that is occupied by the foreign power. Ukrainian scholars know that all too well and do not even try any undertakings in this direction. Not only is the procedures required by methodology is impossible to meet (such as physical protection of respondents from government retaliation) but the results are very unreliable and compromising. In the states where freedom of speech and demonstration is curtailed and punished by law, the likelihood that someone will give a truthful response is minimal. In order to learn what people truly think under the authoritarian rule, it requires many months of hard work of building personal relationships and trust between the researcher and the informant. The fact that most of my respondents in Crimea preferred to speak to me in private (their apartments) rather than public setting (café, restaurants) is already telling of the overwhelming fear that guides their daily lives. Given the above explanation, any sociological survey is inevitably biased, especially the one conducted by the Russian polling organization.
Moreover, one does not need to be a sociologist to see the overwhelming biases in the mentioned research. General knowledge of a broader historical and socio-political context of Crimea is sufficing to understand that the Crimean Tatars have traditionally been a major pro-Ukrainian force in the peninsula since Ukrainian independence in 1991 and there is an abundant amount of evidence demonstrating the Crimean Tatar unanimous resistance to Russian tanks and military in 2014. It is not difficult to understand their motives if one knows the history of Russian colonialism and imperialism in Crimea. Therefore, the number 39% is convincing only to those who know nothing about the region and its people. The thesis that 58% of Crimean Tatars are happier now is even more hypocritical as Crimean Tatars are the one category of the Crimean population who have suffered the most since the occupation. According to human rights organization, Crimean Tatar Resource Center, only in 2019, there were 86 raids of the Crimean Tatar households, 157 detentions, 194 interrogations, 335 arrests, and 578 violations of the right to due process. This is not to mention the overall state of fear and terror regular Crimean Tatars experience in their workplace and daily life. Spending three weeks in Crimea in January 2020, I have witnessed this first handedly.
It is not difficult, therefore, to conclude that since the methodology is compromised and some of the presented inferences are plainly wrong, the entire article is untrustworthy.
Even worse, failing to convey the true spirit of people, the so-called researchers have taken away and distorted hundreds of thousands of voices, who under the occupation have no chance to speak for themselves. Social responsibility that should guide every social scientist is precisely about guaranteeing that though we cannot immediately change the predicament of our subjects, the least we can do is to make sure their true voices are heard.
Lastly, the article based on the so-called ‘research’ may have formidable consequences in terms of international politics and actions of particular states who, relying on this optimistic account, might reverse their sanctions or ease their pressure on Russia to comply with the international law. As one of the leading voices in media, The Washington Post must be aware of this responsibility and refuse to engage in activity that harms people on the ground.
Mariia Shynkarenko,
PhD candidate in the Politics Department at The New School for Social Research, NYC