Professor Gwendolyn Sasse writes on the Crimean Tatars and the politics of the Eurovision Song Contest

Gwendolyn Sasse has written an article for Carnegie Europe (17 May) about the curious implications of a Eurovision Song Contest in which the winning song, by the Ukrainian singer Jamala, explicitly references the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people from Crimea to Central Asia - a deportation masterminded by Joseph Stalin in 1944.

"However," Gwen writes, "the contest’s second powerful message was that the public across Eurovision lands also cast a big vote for the Russian entry. In many countries this was not an either-or choice but rather a double endorsement at the higher end of the Eurovision points scale, which runs from one to twelve. Thus, the wider European public has adopted less of a “new Cold War” rhetoric than the political elites—and this can only be a good thing. Even the Russian voting public awarded the Ukrainian singer ten points; and Russian singer Sergey Lazarev received twelve points from the Ukrainian Eurovision electorate."

The full article can be read here: http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=63598