Draft:Yevgeny Popov
Yevgeny Ivanovich Popov (12 December 1947–) is a far-right Russian white supremacist from Crimea. He is known for promoting outlandish, chauvinist, and dehumanizing theories about ethnic minorities in his column "Notes of a Russian [pseudo-]intellectual" but as a total man-baby he throws a temper tantrum and demands punishment of anyone that dare call his self-contradicting theories "chauvinist" or his comments about black people "white supremacist." He and his colleagues operate and army of sockpuppets on Russian Wikipedia to intimidate away any editors who publish anything that violates his secret rules. The main target of his vile rants are Crimean Tatars, who he calls "Tatars of Taurida", largely because they are very submissive and rarely take action against such libel and threats, while other supposedly "less savage" Muslim-majority ethnic groups in Russia would riot against such libels. He also disparages Ukrainians, Gypsies, and Black people.
Crackpot ideas[edit]
- In a VK post he claimed that Crimean Tatars, or has he prefers to call them, "Tatars of Taurida" simply do not exist but are three completely separate and unrelated peoples - Yaliboylu, Mountain Tat, and Nogays. Because apparently real ethnic groups don't have subdivisions./s
- Later Popov contradicted himself on the existence of Yaliboylus by demanding deletion of the article about Yaliboylu people on Russian Wikipedia by claiming their existance was a fringe theory. Due to the nature of leadership of Russian Wikipedia, the chauvinist deletion nomination and hoax accusation was only removed years later after a well-meaning editor started an RfC outside Russian Wikipedia about the trash Popov puts on Russian Wikipedia and admins not doing anything about it.
- He claims that Crimean Tatars unworthy of being titular people of Crimea even after it was pointed out by Lentun Bezaziyev, a Crimean Tatar that obeys Russia, that ethnic groups of even smaller percentages of the population of their republics are titular peoples, namely the Karelians. His rationale was that Crimean Tatars have an inherent disposition to treason and complains about every little picket they do. However, he has nothing to say about the Chechens being titular people of Chechnya or how they "earned" their titular status and respect through fear. (Spoiler alert: It wasn't self-immolation or mimicry)
- One of his most outlandish theories is that because he thinks that Crimean Tatars don't eat fish (spoiler alert: even RIA Novosti a media outlet owned by the Russian government admits they eat fish, just not as much as before 1944), and the Crimean Khanate didn't have a navy (spoiler alert: Yaliboylu never served the Crimean Khanate, which was dominated by the Nogay minority) it is proof that Crimean Tatars don't have non-Asian origin (just ignore all DNA tests ever!). Surely living in landlocked Central Asia for decades would never have any impact on a people's national cuisine anyway, it's not like Uzbekistani Koryo-saram cook food very different from Korea.
- Popov flip-flops in between saying that Crimea has not koreny naroda (indigenous people) and that Russians are actually the indigenous people of Crimea. Of course, Russians coming to Simferopol via direct flight from Moscow are about as indigenous to Crimea as Ashkenazim arriving in Tel Aviv off a direct flight from Poland are "indigenous" to Israel-Palestine. Of course, the notion that Crimeans are not a koreny naroda of Crimea is contradicted by his other post claiming that Crimean Tatar don't exist and are actually three distinct groups, which is dominated by the Yaliboylu and Mountain Tats that the article he cited clearly noted had roots in Crimea dating to pre-Horde antiquity.
- In his VK posts he celebrated the lynching of George Floyd and compared black people protesting his murder to monkeys
- He demanded deletion of the article about the Mubarek republic in Russian Wikipedia and insisted that it was a Crimean Tatar conspiracy to humiliate Russia...despite there being dozens of sources otherwise, so much so that even his Russian friends admitted that its existence was very real. And when the article in English Wikipedia about the project was deleted per request of its well-meaning author, he was still unsatisfied.
- He runs an alter-ego account on Wikipedia that is up to this day pretending to be pro-Ukraine and trying to trick people into saying things that could be construed as pro-Ukraine to get them in trouble with Russia. When asked if the account was him, he didn't even deny it.