Crimean Tartars Turkic speaking Tartars who are almost all Muslim in faith, have a history that dates takes back to the 8th and 9th centuries in Crimea: they were exiled by Joseph Stalin by 1944 having been accused of collaboration with German invaders in World War II but they have been returned since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's. Crimea is an autonomous region that is governed by Ukraine. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, land privatization became a huge issue across most of Eastern Europe. The problem the Tartars face is that they do not have any legal documentation to prove that the property belongs to them, because they were exiled. Up to 25 thousand tartars live in makeshift homes with no electricity or anything around. | ||