Crimean Tatar Infrastructures of Decolonial Care
With Anna Engelhardt
European Review
May, 2022
This
article employs the framework of critical infrastructure studies to
outline the settler–colonial oppression and decolonial resistance in the
Crimean Peninsula. It shows how Soviet and Russian colonialism
intertwined ongoing landscape destruction with forced displacements and
colonial othering. In addition, it outlines the laborious process of
decolonial nourishment to define infrastructure beyond settler terms,
questioning what counts as such. The text counters Russian colonial
understanding of infrastructure that could not comprehend indigenous
Crimean Tatar irrigation systems, constructed through intimate relations
with soil and water rather than large-scale geoengineering. The Crimean
Tatar water infrastructures are considered, in line with other forms of
resistance, as ones of decolonial care. They create the possibility of a
future which goes against that imposed by the Russian state.
Settler Colonialism, Infrastructures