Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity by Rory Finnin (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity by Rory Finnin Katya Jordan Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity. By Rory Finnin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2022. xiv+ 352 pp. $80. ISBN 978–1–4875–0781–7. In recent years, the question 'Chei Krym?' ('To whom does Crimea belong?') has become a litmus test for differentiating Russian political liberals from conservatives. [End Page 641] It has inspired two neologisms which have since become viral slogans: 'Krymnash' ('Crimea is Ours') expresses satisfaction with Russia's brash annexation of Crimea, and 'Ikhtamnet' ('They aren't there') captures Russia's refusal to admit to a military presence outside its own borders, as in Crimea and Donbass. These linguistic phenomena reflect both Russia's contemporary imperial ambitions and its long-standing interest in neighboring territories, not least the Crimean peninsula. Rory Finnin's new book demonstrates the lengths to which some Russian rulers are willing to go in order to realize that interest. Yet Finnin's monograph also shows the power of resistance and solidarity exercised by the Crimean Tatars in defiance of Russia's colonizing presence. Blood of Others offers a compelling reading of Crimean dissident literature in the context of Stalin's genocidal policies. It spans nearly two and a half centuries of Russian imperialism—from Empress Catherine II's annexation of Crimea in 1783 to the precarious situation on the peninsula today. Finnin's monograph appeared in March 2022, just one month after Russian troops officially crossed the border of sovereign Ukraine, and eight years after Russia had annexed Crimea for the second time. As he shows, both events, although celebrated in state media as a reunification or even a 'return home', remain both politically and culturally controversial in Russia. Finnin aims to understand 'the textual conditions' for those 'inconsistent, infrequent, even rare' moments 'when the work of the imagination makes us more attuned and responsive to the welfare of strangers' (pp. 8–9). Deriving his methodology from comparative literary analysis, he conceptualizes past events as 'vibrational phenomena organizing and reorganizing human relationships across cultural surfaces' (p. 9). He avoids representing any form of cultural nationalism in isolation, instead striking a delicate balance between critical analysis of historical events and intimate narration of private lives. In order to show just how deeply impersonal political decisions can affect individuals and shape the fates of generations, Finnin opens his narrative with the story of Liliia Karas, an ethnically Jewish woman displaced to Siberia from Kharkhiv during Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1963 she returns to Kharkiv, where she meets the poet Boris Chichibabin, whose readings sent 'shivers up her spine' (p. 3). Their private lives are among many to be shaped by the actions of Hitler, Stalin, and Khrushchev. Finnin returns to Chichibabin's story later in his book, weaving it into the tragic fate of the Crimean Tatars. This ability to simultaneously keep in focus events on two different scales—individual and national, private and public—makes for an engaging reading experience, despite the difficult subject matter. Finnin analyses the work of numerous authors and artists native to or associated with Crimea, from Pushkin (whose 1837 poem 'The Fountain of Bakchisarai' was set in the region) to the Ottoman intellectual Namik Kemal, the Crimean Tatar novelist Cengiz Dagci, the Ukrainian writer Lesia Ukrainka, and many others. Intentionally breaking with the traditional, dichotomous view of literature as 'canonical versus non-canonical, official versus unofficial, high versus low, centre versus periphery', Finnin challenges the tendency to delimit analytical itineraries 'at the borders of the nation-state, our tether to national predicates' (p. 9). Still, his focus remains the fate of Crimean [End Page 642] Tatars, excluding the cultural legacies of other ethnic groups to inhabit Crimea over the course of its history, such as the Greeks, Karaites, Armenians, and Roma. The Introduction provides an overview and explains Finnin's theoretical approach, and the main body of the monograph is divided into three parts. Part i, 'Possession', describes Catherine II's early attempt at colonization and Pushkin's contribution to Russia's mythologization of Crimea. Finnin balances...