Antiquity Ancient Romans, who are the ancestors of
Italians, settled in some areas of
Ukraine and
Crimea since the times of the
Roman Republic and the
Roman Empire. For a period, Crimea was a
client state of the Roman Empire.
Middle Ages Subsequently, Italians have populated some areas of
Ukraine and Crimea at the time of the
Republic of Genoa and the
Republic of Venice during the
Middle Ages.
The Venetian trading colonies After the medieval
crusades, Genoese and Venetian merchants discovered Crimea as a favorable location for their trade missions to
Asia. They founded the towns of
Balaklava,
Yalta,
Alushta,
Sudak,
Feodosia and
Kerch as branches on the southern coast, which still exist today. The Franciscan
William of Rubruck landed in
Sudak in 1253 to begin his journey to the far east of Asia, and in 1260 the brothers
Maffeo Polo and
Niccolò Polo, father of the famous medieval traveler
Marco Polo, visited Sudak for the first time. In 1340 Toloktomur, then
emir of Solgat, in Crimea, offered the city of Kerch with its port and surrounding area to the Venetians, so that
they would be as complete masters of it as the Genoese Kafa (Italian: Caffa).
The Genoese trading colonies After the Genoese received permission to found a settlement from the
Khan of the
Golden Horde in the mid-13th century, they founded a colony in 1266 in the settlement of Kafa (Italian: Caffa), near modern-day
Feodosia. In 1289, the Genoese consul of Kerch, Paolino Doria, summoned merchants and citizens of the city to help Italians in difficulty at the Genoese headquarters in
Tripoli. The city had been conquered, depopulated and destroyed by the
Mamluk sultan
Qalawun. In 1316, the consul of Kafa received the order to grant the
Armenians,
Greeks and other non-Genoese Christians a certain area outside the city walls in exchange for economic exchanges with their homelands. Over time, the Genoese possessions in Crimea expanded from Kafa westward to
Balaklava, and expanded east of Kafa with the acquisition of Kerch. Kerch was a populous and rich city founded in 1332 by
Pope John XXII. It was elevated to a metropolis and appointed the Dominican Francesco da Camerino as its spiritual pastor. Their descendants are known by the label of
Italian Levantine.
18th and 19th centuries Starting from the end of the 18th century, Italian emigration to Crimea resumed with vigor, so much so that the written proof is present in the registry office of Kafa, where numerous Italian surnames such as Amoretti, Bianchi-Scoccimarro, Criscola, Durante, Gallera, Lagorio, Scassi and Spinelli are reported. The immigrants came mainly from Genoa, and the Italian route, mainly the Genoese one, was the most popular migratory route. In 1783, 25,000 Italians immigrated to Crimea, which had been
recently annexed by the
Russian Empire. At the beginning of the 19th century, Italian emigration to Crimea came from various Italian regions (
Liguria,
Campania,
Apulia), with immigrants settling mainly in the coastal cities of the
Black Sea and the
Sea of Azov, as well as in
Odesa,
Mykolaiv,
Sevastopol,
Mariupol,
Berdiansk and
Taganrog. After the
Congress of Vienna in 1815, emissaries of Tsar
Alexander I of Russia were sent to the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to recruit settlers. This policy was especially successful in the province of
Terra di Bari. In general, the colonists were attracted by the promise of good earnings, abundance of fish in the seas surrounding Crimea, fertile land to cultivate. The farmers and fishermen were soon followed by teachers, notaries, doctors, engineers, architects, merchants and artists. Among the immigrants, many were owners of boats with which they transported goods to the ports of the Sea of Azov (Taganrog, Berdyansk, Mariupol) and the Black Sea (Feodosia, Simferopol, Odessa, Kherson, Mykolaiv). Others worked as laborers on Russian ships. Unlike the peasants, who retained almost all their original nationalities (
Kingdom of Sardinia, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), those who worked on Russian ships first adopted Tsarist Russian citizenship and then Soviet citizenship, since article 48 of the Merchant Navy Code banned foreigners from working on Russian ships. , celebrated as one of the greatest generals of modern times and as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe, who fought in many military campaigns that led to
Italian unification. He worked as a sailor at least twice in the region of Odesa, between 1825 and 1833 In 1830 and in 1870, two distinct migrations arrived in
Kerch from the cities of
Trani,
Bisceglie and
Molfetta. These migrants were peasants and sailors, attracted by the job opportunities in the local Crimean seaports and by the possibility to cultivate the nearly unexploited and fertile Crimean lands. Italian general and patriot
Giuseppe Garibaldi worked as a sailor at least twice in the region of Odesa, between 1825 and 1833. A later wave of Italians came at the beginning of 20th century, invited by Imperial Russian authorities to develop agricultural activities, mainly grape cultivation. Some sources affirm that at the end of the 18th century, 10 percent of
the population of Odesa was Italian. Italians quickly settled into local society and the community expanded rapidly. Kerch had 13,106 inhabitants in 1855 and around 30,000 in 1870. In 1884, more than 1,000 people lived in the Italian colony, most of whom came from the Adriatic coast and were engaged in coastal shipping or earned their living as sailors and landowners of real estate. In Kerch, the Italians of Crimea built a
Roman Catholic church, still known locally as the Church of the Italians. From Kerch, the Italians moved to
Feodosiya (the former
Genoese colony of
Caffa),
Simferopol,
Mariupol and to other
Imperial Russian seaports of the
Black Sea, such as
Batumi and
Novorossiysk. Soon Italians in Kerch were able to improve their standard of living, purchasing new land and boats and opening small businesses. Some moved to Kafa, Simferopol, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Mariupol, Berdyansk and some other Black Sea ports, such as Batumi and Novorossiysk. In 1870 there was another wave of emigration from Apulia to Kerch. They were relatives and acquaintances of the emigrants of 1820 attracted by advantageous offers of land which the tsar sold at a good price, after which the agricultural population of Kerch prevailed. After 1870, emigration stopped and many of those who had created a fortune returned to Italy. According to an 1897 census, 1.8 percent of the population of the Kerch province was Italian, and rose to 2 percent in 1921, corresponding to a population of approximately 2,000 people.
20th century In 1914, when
World War I broke out, the Italian community was numerous enough to have a primary school and a library. The local newspaper at that time,
Kerčenskij Rabočij, used to publish articles in Italian. Pyotr Wrangel, general of the
White Army, helped approximately 150,000 people escape to Constantinople between April and November 1920. Among them were numerous Italian families from Kerch, some of whom had to wait up to two years to obtain permission to enter Italy due to bureaucratic problems.
Collectivization Of the approximately 2,000 people of Italian origin living in Kerch in 1922, 650 were "subjects of the Kingdom of Italy". Those who had first taken Tsarist Russian and then Soviet citizenship were those who, as foreigners, could not work in the military or merchant navy under Article 48 of the Merchant Navy Code. Italians from Kerch were members of the
Italian Communist Party through the Emigration Committee starting in the early 1920s. Between 1920 and 1930, many
anti-fascist Italians seeking asylum in
Soviet Union were sent from Moscow to Kerch to organise the local Italian community. Italian anti-fascists who fled to the USSR in the early 1920s were sent to Kerch to "re-educate" the Italian minority living there. They infiltrated the community, gave standard Italian language lessons, carried out anti-fascist propaganda and reported to the
NKVD. Italian teachers were fired by school authorities for being incompetent in educating children in the USSR and were exchanged for Moscow staff oriented towards party guidelines. On the initiative of the former Italian communist deputy
Anselmo Marabini, in 1924, according to the plans of Soviet
collective farming, the Italians were forced to create a
kolkhoz, named
Sacco e Vanzetti for the two Italian anarchists of the same name. The initiative received the full support of the Soviet authorities, but encountered strong resistance, especially among wealthy Italians in Kerch. Those refusing to comply were forced to leave or were deported. According to 1933 census, the number of Italians in the region of Kerch had already dropped by 1.3 percent. In connection with forced collectivization (1930–1933), 16 collective farms were founded in Crimea by 16 different ethnic minorities. The largest collective farm was the Armenian one, followed by the Italian one with 870 hectares of land and a herd of 80 cows, 200 sheep and pigs and a dozen horses.
Persecution More than half of Kerch's Italians opposed the move to hand over their land to the collective farm, and those who could, fled and tried to return to Italy. Those who remained lost the right to vote as a "socially alien element", as a person hostile to the party and the Soviet state, or as "exploiters", such as entrepreneurs, traders and wealthy farmers (kulaks), and were labeled "Lishenzy" (stigmatized people without rights). The loss of the right to vote meant, in addition to the loss of one's job, exclusion from trade unions and cooperatives, which in turn made it impossible to obtain
bread cards, the loss of
social housing and, in some cases, after the introduction of season tickets in the 1930s, expulsion from large cities. The "Lishenzy" were also subject to individual taxes at increased rates, to the point of being unable to study or join the army. In the 1920s, 51 Italians from Kerch were included in the list of "Lischentsy". Between 1936 and 1938, during
Joseph Stalin's
Great Purge, many Italians were accused of
espionage and were arrested, tortured, deported or executed. In particular, 204 Italians were accused of spying for Italy and counter-revolutionary activity, arrested, tortured and summarily sentenced to years of forced labor in the
gulags of Kazakhstan and Siberia, where most were exposed to cold, hunger and succumbed to fatigue. 105 Italians were sentenced to death by firing squad; 26 in 1937 and 79 in 1938. Many of their bodies lie in the mass graves of
Butowo or
Kommunarka. 29 Italians were shot in Butowo and eight in Kommunarka. Dante Corneli, Italian writer and anti-fascist, who fled to the USSR in 1922 and then spent 24 years in the
Vorkutlag labor camp, spoke of over 2,000 Italian victims of the Kerch agricultural collective farm. In 1939, more Italians fled once their Italian citizenship was at risk of being lost, after the Soviet Union imposed its own citizenship onto those of foreign origin. After this, 1,100 Italians were left in Kerch and smaller amounts in other communities. According to a 1933 census, the population of Italian origin in the Kerch province had decreased to 1.3 percent, which corresponded to a population of approximately 1,320 people, approximately 750 people less than in 1921, compared to the 1933 census. In the 1930s, the number of requests from Italians and people of Italian origin living in southern Russia to the Italian embassy in Odessa increased. They asked for help to return to Italy, their ancestral homeland, or for intervention to obtain a residence permit, which was denied by the Soviet authorities. The requests for repatriation were much higher than the forecasts of the consul general of Odessa, who reported repression, searches, seizures, arrests and deportations of Italians during collectivization. While some managed to return to their homeland, others were expelled by the Soviet authorities as Italian citizens. With the outbreak of
World War II and the
invasion of the Soviet Union by the Wehrmacht in June 1941, the population of Italian origin residing there was declared an
enemy of the people and, on the basis of a census carried out by the German Wehrmacht, was deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia in three waves of deportations for alleged collaboration with the enemy "for their own security". The sources do not agree on the number of deportees. According to estimates, the Italians of Kerch were no less than 2,000. The first and most extensive deportation took place between 28 and 29 January 1942, and those who escaped the first incursion were deported from 8 to 10 February 1942 (72 people). The few remaining families (less than 10) were deported on 24 June 1944, after the
second reconquest by the Red Army. While the first two groups were deported to Kazakhstan, the third and final group was deported to Siberia. Bartolomeo Evangelista, accused by the Soviet authorities of having continued to carry out his duties as chief engineer at the Kerch dry dock during the German occupation of the city, reported: Most of the children and elderly people deported to the Russian Far East died from fatigue, cold, hunger and disease during a week-long journey. The bodies were abandoned in the few stations where the trains stopped. On the territory of the Russian Far East of the complex there were 15 camps, where more than 90,000 people were housed: Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, Finns, etc., some of whom were under construction of the metallurgical combine, as some were used in mining and in the construction of roads and houses. After their arrival, all deportees were registered at the military command office. The passport was removed and stamped
Spezposelenie (Special Settlement). It was forbidden to move freely outside the respective village without permission from the military administration. Furthermore, the deportees had to report to the military command once a month. However, not only Italians were deported, but also Italian anti-fascists who fled Italy in the 1920s and had found refuge in the Soviet Union. The Italian embassy in Moscow was interested in the Italian citizens interned in Camp 99 in Karaganda since 1941. Some of them were released, expelled and deported to Italy. The few survivors were allowed to return to Kerch in the 1950s and 1960s during
Nikita Khrushchev's administration. There they discovered that they had lost everything and could no longer return to their previous homes. Many could no longer prove that they were of Italian origin because their documents had been confiscated at the time of deportation. Some families remained in Chelyabinsk, other places in the
Urals,
Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan,
Kuban,
Komi Republic and
Saratov. In 1993, 365 people of Italian origin still lived in Kazakhstan. Officially, 1,028 Italians died in these deportations; half belonged to the municipality of Kerch. The others were Italian anti-fascists who had emigrated, especially communist activists. ==Italians of Crimea today==