Russian language in Crimea

The Republic of Crimea is an administrative and territorial unit of the Russian Federation, established in 2014 (along with the city of Sevastopol ). Russian population prevails there (65% according to the 2014 census). According to a survey conducted in 2004 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), before secession from Ukraine, Crimea was the most Russian-speaking region of this country. The Russian language is used to communicate the absolute majority - 97% of the total population of the peninsula ^[6] . Crimean Ukrainians , Crimean Tatars and other peoples of Crimea , constituting about 35% of the population of the peninsula, also use Russian in Crimea, as their native or second language.

• The first native speakers of the Old Russian language settled in the area of ​​the modern city of Kerch in the 11th — 12th centuries (the Tmutarakan principality ).
• After the collapse of Kievan Rus in the XIII century. speakers of the Russian language appeared in the Crimea mostly only as slaves-sakaliba.
• In the period between the Ottoman conquest of the Crimea (1475) and the end of the XVIII century, the Crimea is almost exclusively a Turkic-speaking region (the role of the Greek language is rapidly decreasing, with other languages ​​not entirely investigated processes, which eventually turned Crimea into a Tatar-speaking land)
• The spread of modern Russian-speaking begins after the annexation of the Crimea to Russia in 1783 .
• Russian became the main administrative language , and since the end of the 1860s also the main native and spoken language of the population of the peninsula. .

The transfer of the Crimean region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR formally led to the establishment of Russian-Ukrainian bilingualism in the republic since the Ukrainian SSR had two official languages .

• During the parade of sovereignties, the Crimean region of Ukraine was able to raise its status to the level of an autonomous republic, thus justifying the right to develop regional languages — the Russian and the revived Crimean Tatar under the conditions of a fairly tough Ukrainization of the 1990s.
• Ukrainization of the Crimea was actively carried out in 1991-2009, although it was the least successful of all the admin. units of Ukraine. It caused a powerful protest wave from the local population, whose sentiments were supported by the local Crimean administration. ^[7]
• In the 2000s, a number of city ​​councils of the Crimea made independent decisions on granting the Russian language various official status on the ground. The struggle of the population began with the Ukrainization of road signs and workflow.