ABSTRACT
During the Second World War Stalin decided that the Crimean Tatars were a security risk, so he uprooted them from their native Crimea and shipped them to Soviet Central Asia. Forty-six per cent of the quarter-million Crimean Tatars perished in the forced exodus. Though in 1967 the Crimean Tatars were cleared of any guilt and 'rehabilitated', the Soviet government has refused to allow them to return to the Crimea. Grigorenko and his friend the writer and journalist A. E. Kosterin (1896-1968) championed the Tatars' right to return to the Crimea. Again, the issue has wider implications for Soviet nationalities policy, the touchy question of pressures for local political and cultural autonomy in the face of strong central direction and the push for Russification from Moscow.
