Armenians in Crimea

Historians and other scholars have dated the Armenian presence in the Crimea to the eighth century and have distinguished three distinctive stages of their settlement in the region.

[4] As life grew more unbearable in Armenia proper following the destructive Seljuk raids of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, many Armenians were forced to migrate to Byzantium and elsewhere and with some of them eventually settling in the Crimea.

The Armenians' ties to commercial interests also greatly benefited the Genoese when they secured their economic domination there in the late thirteenth century.

[10] Despite this, there remained in the sixteenth century Armenian communities Kaffa, Karasubazar, Balaklava, Gezlev, Perekop and Surkhat.

From 1778-1779, more than 22,000 Armenians resettled in Azov province and on the coast of the Dnieper and Samara, leading to gradual economic decline, in what was known as the Emigration of Christians from Crimea.

[12] On May 29, 1944, Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, Lavrentiy Beria, introduced a specious report to Joseph Stalin: "Armenians live in various parts of the peninsula.

An Armenian committee, established by Germans, actively cooperates with Nazi Germany and is carrying out anti-Soviet [acts]."

On June 2, 1944, he signed Directorate 5984, entitled "The Deportation of German satellites - Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians from Crimea."

Operational management of the society is carried out by the executive committee, which functions in the periods between meetings of the National Council.

The society runs the Luys Cultural and Ethnographic Center and publishes a monthly newspaper, Dove Masis.

The one-hour Armenian-language program "Barev" airs twice a month on Crimean television, and radio broadcasts are made five times a week.

[citation needed] Armenians in the Crimea are currently concentrated in the cities of Simferopol, Evpatoria, Feodosia, Kerch, Yalta, Sevastopol, Sudak.

Other major settlements included Sudak, where until the last quarter of the fifteenth century and near the monastery Surb-Khach there was a small Armenian town called Kazarat.

Wealthy Armenians and the church tried to "raise" the nation to the level of modern civilization, and to carry out charitable activities.