Crimean Tatar Infrastructures of Decolonial Care

Abstract

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.