Beginning on the night of 17-18 May 1944, the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported and scattered across Central Asia. Some 100,000 Crimean Tatars, 40% of the population, died in the course of the deportation and the first year after that.
In the 1950s some minor concessions were made to the demands of the remaining Crimean Tatars. But in 1988 the Crimean Tatars were still campaigning for, and being refused, the right to return to the Crimean peninsula.