the Russian Federation and the military courts. Beneath the courts of the subjects of the Russian Federation are a large number of district courts. Still lower in the hierarchy are Justice of the Peace Courts, which deal with relatively unimportant cases. The court structure and the relations between the courts are governed by the 1996 Constitutional Law on the Judicial System of the Russian Federation. Procedural rules are provided by the 2001 Criminal Procedure Code and the 2002 Civil Procedure Code.
The Supreme Court has separate divisions for civil cases, criminal cases, and military cases. It has a President and a Presidium consisting of several high officers of the court. It also has a plenary session in which all the judges meet together. The Judicial Department of the Supreme Court handles the administration of all the courts of general jurisdiction. Most cases are heard by the Supreme Court on appeal from or petition for review of lower court decisions. Because the court sits in separate divisions and has a large number of judges, it is able to review a very large number of lower court cases. However, a few very important cases
CRIMEA
are heard by the Court in first instance. There is a mechanism for an appeal of these decisions to a higher level of the Supreme Court itself. The plenary session of the Court also has the power to issue interpretations of the law for the guidance of the lower courts. The interpretations and many other Court decisions are published at its web site. As the result of easy availability of these interpretations and decisions, lawyers are increasingly studying and citing Supreme Court rulings.
The Supreme Court has in some cases refused to apply statute laws on the basis that they contradicted the Constitution. Gradually, however, its policy changed. When in doubt on the constitutionality of a law, the Supreme Court has typically referred the question to the Constitutional Court. However, the Supreme Court frequently hears cases concerning the conformity of administrative regulations to the Constitution and laws, and frequently invalidates such regulations. The Supreme Court of the twenty-first century is very different from the Supreme Court of the Soviet period, even though the court structure is little changed. In the Soviet period the Court was subservient to the Party authorities. The court did not control judicial administration, which was managed by the Ministry of Justice. It did cite the Constitution, but never refused to apply a law on the basis of the Constitution alone. See also: COURT, HIGH ARBITRATION; LEGAL SYSTEMS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burnham, William, and Danilenko, Gennady M. (2000). Law and Legal System of the Russian Federation, 2nd ed. Huntington, NY: Juris. Krug, Peter. (1997). “Departure from the Centralized Model: the Russian Supreme Court and Constitutional Control of Legislation.” Virginia Journal of International Law 37:725-786. Maggs, Peter B. (1997) “The Russian Courts and the Russian Constitution.” Indiana International and Comparative Law Review 8:99- 117.
Russian hegemony was established over the Crimea region in 1783 when the Tsarist empire destroyed the Crimean Tatar state. By the second half of the nineteenth century the Crimean population had declined to 200,000, of which half were Tatars. This proportion continued to decline as Slav migration to the region continued in the next century through industrialization, the building of the Black Sea Fleet, and tourism. By the 1897 and 1926 censuses the Tatar share of the population had declined to 34 and 26 percent respectively.
During the civil war of 1917-1922, Crimea was claimed by the independent Ukrainian state, which obtained it under the terms of the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty. But Crimea was also the scene of conflict between the Whites and Bolsheviks. In October 1921 Crimea was included within the Russian Federation (RSFSR) as an autonomous republic with two cities (Sevastopol and Evpatoria) under all-union jurisdiction.
Crimea’s ethnic composition changed in May 1944 when nearly 200,000 Tatars and 60,000 other minorities were deported to Central Asia. It is estimated that up to 40 percent of the Tatars died during the deportation. A year later Crimean autonomy was formally abolished, and the peninsula was downgraded to the status of oblast (region) of the Russian Federation. All vestiges of Tatar influence were eradicated.
Crimea’s status was again changed in 1954 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukrainian SSR. It remained an oblast until 1991, when a popularly supported referendum restored its status to an autonomous republic within Ukraine. Tatars began to return to Crimea in the Gorbachev era, but they still only accounted for 15 percent of the population, with the remainder of the population divided between Russians (two- thirds) and russified Ukrainians.
The status of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and the division of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet stationed on the peninsula, were the object of acrimonious dispute between Ukraine and Russia in the post-Soviet era. The Russian parliament repeatedly voted to demand that Ukraine return both Crimea and Sevastopol. Furthermore, the parliament argued that legally they were Russian territory and that Russia, as the successor state to the USSR, had the right to inherit Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet.
This dispute was not resolved until May 1997, when Ukraine and Russia signed a treaty that recognized each other’s borders. The treaty was quickly ratified by the Ukrainian parliament (Rada), but both houses of the Russian parliament
CRIMEAN KHANATE
only ratified it after intense lobbying from Ukraine in October 1998 and February 1999.
The resolution of the question of the ownership of Crimea and Sevastopol between 1997 and 1999 also assisted in the division of the Black Sea Fleet. Russia inherited 80 percent of the fleet and obtained basing rights scheduled to expire in 2017. The situation was also stabilized by Crimea’s adoption in October 1998 of a constitution that for the first time recognized Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Within Crimea the Tatars have been able to mobilize large demonstrations, but their small size has prevented them from having any significant influence on the peninsula’s politics. Between 1991 and 1993 the former communist leadership of Crimea, led by Mykola Bagrov, attempted to obtain significant concessions from Kiev in an attempt to maximize Crimea’s autonomy. This autonomist line was replaced by a pro-Russian secessionist movement that was the most influential political force between 1993 and 1994; its leader Yuri Meshkov was elected Crimean president in January 1994. The secessionist movement collapsed between 1994 and 1995 due to internal quarrels, lack of substantial Russian assistance, and Ukrainian economic, political, and military pressure. The institution of a Crimean presidency was abolished in March 1995. From 1998 to 2002 the peninsula was led by Communists, who controlled the local parliament, and pro-Ukrainian presidential centrists in the regional government. In the 2002 elections the Communists lost their majority in the local parliament, and it, like the regional government, came under the control of pro-Ukrainian presidential centrists. See also: BLACK SEA FLEET; CRIMEAN KHANATE; CRIMEAN TATARS; CRIMEAN WAR; SEVASTOPOL; TATARSTAN AND TATARS; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allworth, Edward, ed. (1988). Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kuzio, Taras. (1994). “The Crimea and European Security.” European Security 3(4): 734-774. Kuzio, Taras. (1998). Ukraine: State and Nation Building (Routledge Studies of Societies in Transition, 9). London: Routledge. Lazzerini, Edward. (1996). “Crimean Tatars.” In The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States, ed. Graham Smith. London: Longman.
One of the surviving political elements of the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate comprised all of the Crimean peninsula, except for the southern and western coast, which was a province of the Ottoman Empire after 1475 (Kefe Eyalet), and survived until 1783 when it was annexed by the Russian Empire. The Khanate’s ruling dynasty, the Girays, established its residence and “capital” in the valley of Bah?e Saray, from which it ruled most of the peninsula, and conducted relations with the Ottomans in the south.
Among the early Crimean khans, most important were Mengli Giray I (1467-1476 and 1478-1515), who is considered the “founder” of the Khanate; Sahib Giray I (1532-1551), who competed with Ivan IV for control of Kazan and Astrakhan, and lost; and Devlet Giray I (1551-1577), who led a campaign against Moscow. It was Mengli
