МЕДЖЛІС КРИМСЬКОТАТАРСЬКОГО НАРОДУ: ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНІ ЗАСАДИ ТА ПОЛІТИЧНІ ПРАКТИКИ

Abstract

This is the first in a series of two articles that analyze the Mejlis, organization established in 1991 at the peak of the Crimea Tatar repatriation movement as ‘the supreme representative body of the Crimea Tatar people’ according to its self-definition. The article focuses mainly on the analysis of the organizational set-up, the internal regulations and the political practices of the Mejlis. While in the local parlance the term Mejlis most often refers to the committee of roughly 30 members that operates as the Crimea Tatar supreme authority, this article views this entity in its wider organizational context as part of a ‘unified system of elected bodies of the national self-government of the Crimea Tatar’ that permeate the entire ethnic community, thus constituting the largest ever grass-root based instrument of self-organization and political participation in the history of independent Ukraine. The article represents an attempt to look through and beyond Mejlis’s ideology of ethnic nationalism into its actual social and political functions, its inner resources and superimposed limitations, to try and explain how it could operate and be viable and relatively effective in the difficult political environment of modern Ukraine. In his analysis of the Mejlis as an organization the author draws largely on the ideas of Mancur Oslon’s seminar “The Logic of Collective Actions”.