ABSTRACT
This chapter chronicles the catastrophic consequences of Russian scorched earth policies and Allied economic warfare for Crimean Civilians. Russian forces scuttled merchant ships to block Allied access to the bays and burned food so that it would not fall into the hands of Allied invaders. Simultaneously Allies kidnapped Crimean children to pressure their parents to reveal community stores of grain, and set villages ablaze to pressure the Russian imperial government to concede defeat. By the end of the war, the Crimean Peninsula and the surrounding territory on the northern Black Sea littoral had been so severely damaged that Russian officials concluded the toll of violence exceeded the burning of Moscow and the entirety of devastation caused during the Napoleonic invasion of 1812. Nearly two-thirds of Crimea's indigenous population, the Crimean Tatars emigrated to the Ottoman Empire as result, and the Crimean Peninsula remained a wasteland for decades to come.
