Transfer of Crimea in the Soviet Union

To the Ukrainian SSR from the Russian SFSR in 1954

In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet transferred the Crimean Oblast to the Ukrainian SSR from the Russian SFSR. The territory had been recognized within the Soviet Union as having "close ties" to the Ukrainian SSR, and the transfer itself commemorated the Union of Russia and Ukraine Tercentenary. Amidst the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian SSR seceded from the Soviet Union and Ukraine continued to exercise sovereignty over the territory as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. For just over two decades after 1991, Russia did not dispute the Ukrainian administration in Crimea, but retracted this stance on 18 March 2014, when Crimea was annexed by Russia after coming under Russian military occupation. The Soviet era transfer of Crimea has remained a topic of contention between the two countries in light of the Russo Ukrainian War, as the Russian government has stated that the Ukrainians must recognize Russia's sovereignty over the territory as part of any negotiated settlement to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022.

Prior to being incorporated into the Russian Empire, the Crimean Peninsula was independent under the Crimean Khanate. The Muslim Turkic Crimean Tatars were under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, while also bordering Russian Empire. In 1774, following the Russo Turkish War of 1768–74, the Russian and Ottoman empires agreed to refrain from interfering with the Crimean Khanate through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. In 1783, following the increasing decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire annexed the Crimean Khanate. Within Russia, the peninsula was transferred between multiple internal administrations. Through its time in the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR, up to its transfer to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, Crimea had been administered by 14 administrations.

Throughout its time in the Soviet Union, Crimea underwent a population change. As a result of alleged collaboration with the Germans by Crimean Tatars during World War II, all Crimean Tatars were deported by the Soviet regime and the peninsula was resettled with other peoples, mainly Russians and Ukrainians. Modern experts say that the deportation was part of the Soviet plan to gain access to the Dardanelles and acquire territory in Turkey, where the Tatars had Turkic ethnic kin, or to remove minorities from the Soviet Union's border regions. Nearly 8,000 Crimean Tatars died during the deportation, and tens of thousands perished subsequently due to the harsh exile conditions. The Crimean Tatar deportation resulted in the abandonment of 80,000 households and of land. The autonomous republic without its titled nationality was downgraded to an oblast within the Russian SFSR on 30 June 1945.

According to a 2009 article on Russian website Pravda. ru, the Presidium of the Supreme Council gathered for a session on 19 February 1954 when only 13 of 27 members were present. There was no quorum, but the decision was adopted unanimously. Mark Kramer professor of Cold War Studies at Harvard University countered that new sources have emerged showing that the republic parliaments of both the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR had given their consent to the transfer of Crimea and so had complied with Article 18 of the Soviet Constitution which stated that "the territory of a Union Republic may not be altered without its consent. ", with the proceedings of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium meeting indicate that both the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR had given their consent via their republic parliaments, although Kramer also said that the "legal system in the Soviet Union was mostly a fiction". On 27 June 2015, after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation accepted the request of the leader of A Just Russia party, Sergey Mironov, to evaluate the legitimacy of 1954 transfer of Crimea and stated that the transfer violated both the 1937 Constitutions of the RSFSR and the Constitution of the Soviet Union. The text of the document signed by Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sabir Kekhlerov stated: "Neither the Constitution of the RSFSR nor the Constitution of the USSR [and, by extension, of the UkSSR] empowers the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to consider changes in the constitutional legal status of Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, which are members of the union republics. In view of the above, the decision adopted in 1954 by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Soviet on the transfer of the Crimean region of the RSFSR to the UkSSR did not correspond to the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the RSFSR or the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the USSR."

The transfer of the Crimean oblast to Ukraine has been described as a "symbolic gesture", marking the 300th anniversary of the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav, called the "Reunification of Ukraine with Russia" in the Soviet Union. It was also attributed to Communist Party first secretary Nikita Khrushchev, although the person who signed the document was Chairman Kliment Voroshilov, the Soviet Union's de jure head of state. The transfer had taken place on the basis of "the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR" and to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's union with Russia (also known in the Soviet Union as the Pereiaslav Agreement). Mark Kramer, professor of Cold War Studies at Harvard University, also claimed that the transfer was partly to help Khruschev's then precarious political position against the Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov through winning support of the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party Oleksiy Kyrychenko. Kramer believed that the transfer also aimed to greatly increase the number of ethnic Russians in the Ukrainian SSR which itself was going through problems integrating previous Polish territory due to organized Ukrainian nationalist resistance. Nina Khrushcheva, a political scientist and the great granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, said of his motivation, "it was somewhat symbolic, somewhat trying to reshuffle the centralized system and also, full disclosure, Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of Ukraine, so I think to some degree it was also a personal gesture toward his favorite republic. He was ethnically Russian, but he really felt great affinity with Ukraine." Since Sevastopol in Crimea was the site of the Black Sea Fleet, a quintessential element of Soviet and then of Russian foreign policy, the transfer had the intended effect of binding Ukraine inexorably to Russia, "Eternally Together", as a poster commemorating the event proclaimed. Other reasons given were the integration of the economies of Ukraine and Crimea and the idea that Crimea was a natural extension of the Ukrainian steppes. There was also a desire to repopulate parts of Crimea with Slavic peoples, mainly Russians and Ukrainians, after the peninsula was subject to large scale deportations of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia by the Soviet regime in 1944.

The transfer increased the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine by almost a million people. Prominent Russian politicians such as Alexander Rutskoy considered the transfer to be controversial. Controversies surrounding the legality of the transfer remained a sore point in relations between Ukraine and Russia for the first few years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and in particular in the internal politics of Crimea. In January 1992, the Supreme Soviet of Russia questioned the constitutionality of the transfer, accusing Nikita Khrushchev of treason against the Russian people and said that the transfer was illegitimate. Alexander Rutskoy, the former Vice President of Russia, said that this was a “harebrained scheme”, and that those who signed the document must have been suffering from sunstroke or hangovers. There was confusion about the status of Sevastopol and whether it was a part of the transfer as it had a degree of independence from the Crimean Oblast and never formally ratified the transfer, although it was later mentioned as Ukrainian territory in the Soviet Constitution and the Belavezha Accords between Ukraine and Russia. In a 1997 treaty between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, Russia recognized Ukraine's borders, and accepted Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea. The treaty expired on 31 March 2019.

After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the territories of Sevastopol and Crimea were seized by the Russian Federation; the annexation was formalized following a referendum in which 96% of the Crimean population is reported to have voted "Yes." This move was denounced by the Ukrainian government and disregarded by most UN states, which continue to recognize Crimea as part of Ukraine. The Venice Commission (an advisory body of the Council of Europe in the field of constitutional law) issued an opinion in 2014, concluding that the referendum was illegal under the Ukrainian constitution and that "circumstances in Crimea did not allow the holding of a referendum in line with European democratic standards."