Despite periodic enmity with the Crimean Khanate, the majority of Zaporizhian Cossacks were fluent in the Crimean Tatar language.
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This was stated at a press conference in Kyiv by the director of the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies. Grushevsky Georgy Papakin. According to him, the Zaporozhye Cossacks also kept documents published in the Crimean Tatar language.
“Although the Zaporozhye Cossacks were sometimes enemies [of the Crimean Tatars], sometimes neighbors, in the same archive of the Zaporozhye Sich a lot of Crimean Tatar documents were deposited. Let's just say that the majority of Zaporozhye Cossacks spoke the Crimean Tatar language absolutely fluently. It was their language of communication with their neighbors,” Papakin said.
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