Stand with Ukraine: Haytarma

In late 2020, Ukraine issued a commemorative coin in honor of WWII flying ace, Amet-khan Sultan, who specialized in shooting down and/or ramming German planes. That hardly sounds like the work of a Nazi-dominated government, as Putin’s propagandists would have us believe. Sultan was also a Crimean Tatar, who happened to visit home during Stalin’s mass Deportation of Crimean Tatars. Given the invasion now apparently underway, the U.S. should join other governments in recognizing the Crimean Deportation as a genocide. After all, it laid the foundation for Putin’s dubious justifications for his campaign of conquest. (There were a lot of Russian speakers in Crimea for a reason, because the Tatars were just starting to return.) Sultan’s shocking homecoming is dramatized in Akhtem Seitablaev’s Haytarma, which is available online.

Seitablaev starts slow, but he takes some time to showcase Tatar culture, especially the titular Haytarma dance. Eventually, Sultan departs on the leave he demanded from his commanding officer, much to alarm of political officer Maj. Krotov. He knows his NKVD masters have something ugly planned for the Tatar Crimea. Ostensibly, they accuse the Tatars of collaboration, but it is really just an excuse for more ethnic cleansing.

Much to his superiors’ surprise, Krotov chases after Sultan, intending to head him off at the pass. Of course, Sultan had too much of a head start, so he and his two companions, a French officer and fellow Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Golovachev will be at the Sultan family home when the nightmare starts.

Essentially, Haytarma just covers the events of round-up and deportation, but that is more than enough for any film to handle. Seitablaev nicely conveys the brutality and confusion of the dead-of-night operation (but it is important to remember most of the deaths occurred during transit or the Tatars exile in Siberia or other Central Asian Republics).