The USSR’s Award policy towards Crimean Tatar servicemen of the Red Army and Red Navy during the Second World War

In this article the readers are offered analysis of the servicemen and partisans awarding from among the Crimean Tatars with State awards of the USSR for participation in the Great Patriotic War. There the dynamics of awards not only for each year of the war is presented, but also the dynamics for each individual award is given. For the first time the awarding of Crimean Tatars with toponymous medals “For defense …”, “For liberation …”, “For the capture …” is shown. It is clearly evident that the number of awards has sharply decreased since 1944 as a result of the indiscriminate accusation of the Crimean Tatar people of mass betrayal. The coefficient was proposed which provides for the ratio of the number awarded representatives of a specific nationality to the total number of awarded, which clearly demonstrated the neutral attitude in awarding Crimean Tatars in 1941–1943 and bias in all subsequent years and decades. Examples of awards of individual servicemen of the Red Army and Navy awarded in different years and periods of military conflict are also given. The quality of awards and their gradation by war years were evaluated. An accurate calculation of the awards received for performing combat missions and participating in the largest Soviet military operations for each individual period is presented.