Catalogue Number
NMLH.1994.168.164/1
Object Name
Poster
Title
'Crimea, Women and Peace'
Place
Crimea, Ukraine, Soviet Union, USSR, Russia, London, Royal Empire Society Hall, UK
People
Stefan Litauer, John Mack, Ada Elizabeth Chesterton, British Soviet Committee, Josef Stalin
Events
Second World War, Sürgünlik/ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars
Date
1945-1955
Description
This poster has an off-white background and the edge has beige/green marks from tape on the back of the poster which has stained through. The poster reads 'Crimea - Women and Peace' and lists speakers, the venue, and that the poster was made by the British Soviet Committee.
This event, campaigning for peace in Crimea, took place in London between 1945-1955. Women in peace movements became more prominent following the Second World War. The speakers at this event were Dr. Stefan Litauer, a Polish journalist, press counsellor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Polish Radio London correspondent, and Director of the Polish Telegraphic Agency. He was also associated with Soviet Intelligence services. John D. Mack was a former Labour MP, and member of the Liverpool branch of Poale Zion - a Marxist-Zionist Jewish workers movement founded in Poland. The meeting was chaired by Ada Elizabeth Chesterton, a British Socialist journalist, and philanthropist who had lived in Poland creating the 'Cecil houses' (named after her husband Cecil Chesterton) for destitute and homeless women.
Crimea had been an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union, but during the Second World War it was downgraded to an an 'Oblast' - a province. Following the end of a Nazi German occupation, Josef Stalin ordered that the entirety of one of it's Indigenous populations, the Crimean Tatars, be deported to Central Asia. This act of ethnic cleansing constituted a genocide, and was claimed to be a form of collective punishment, blaming Tatars for collaborating with Nazi Germany during their occupation of Crimea. Academics believe it was actually an attempt to annex parts of Turkey, and to remove religious and ethnic minorities from the Soviet Union's border regions. Crimea was transferred to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by the Soviet Union, and became an autonomous state again following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, before being reabsorbed into Ukraine in 1995. In 2014 it was occupied and annexed by Russia, which regards Crimea as part of their territory. Most countries recognise
Crimea as Ukrainian territory.
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