After the Russian Civil War: The Fall of the Alash Orda and the Jadids 1925-1938

For the European Soviets, the creation of the five Central Asian states was a “second revolution,” one that strengthened their presence and power within the region. Gone were the days when they’d have to compromise on the cultural and religious fronts. Instead, they could take advantage of the centralization of government to implement true Communist reforms and initiatives. Its biggest threat was the cadre of nationally-minded intelligentsia. By 1926, a war had been declared against the Alash Orda and the Jadids. It was initiated by the OGPU and spearheaded by indigenous actors, some who had been Jadids themselves or were educated by them, who wanted to prove their Communist credentials. However, the OGPU and European Soviets didn’t trust these new attack dogs, finding an ever increasingly large number of local actors who were guilty of nationalism. And thus, a fake conspiracy was created that grew so large everyone lost control of it until it finally ate itself to a painful and bloody death.

The First Arrests

It all started in January 1925, when the OGPU created the Commission for Working Out Questions on Attracting the Party’s Attention to the Work of the OGPU in the Struggle with Bourgeois-Nationalist Groups and with Counter-Revolutionary Ideology. This commission’s goal was to root out a nationalist and counter-revolutionary conspiracy and reported it to the higher ups as proof that the local actors could not be trusted. As Lev Nikolaevich Bel’skii an OGPU officer in Central Asia, explained:

“it was no secret to anyone” that those who “fought us for five years…have not been beaten either physically, economically, or spiritually and that their influence on the masses is still enormous”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319

This predicament worsened by the “petit bourgeois governments” of the Central Asian states, who, “wanted to insure themselves against Soviet influence and the attraction of the model of Soviet rule in Central Asia” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319). He further explained that the OGPU’s task was

“a harsh struggle with the malicious national intelligentsia by way of revealing [to the masses] their pan-Islamic and their sell-out-anglophile essence”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319

Of course, they made their jobs easier and harder by defining nationalism incredibly broadly. They claimed that nationalism could cover everything from outright condemnation of the Soviet order to expressions of discontent with the pace the Soviet polices were being implemented. They viewed korenizatsiia (which was supposed to integrate local actors into the Soviet system) as a “manifestation of the contemporary tactic of the anti-Soviet struggle of Uzbek nationalists: the infiltration of the Soviet apparat and the party, the preparation of youth, etc.” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319,)

What is really interesting about that last quote is the fear of infiltration or impurity. We even see the ever-popular argument that the indigenous actors were “corrupting the youth” and turning them against Communism. It’s an interesting saying the quiet part out loud moment: the OGPU were afraid of being contaminated by the local actors and that any apparatus that relied on Central Asians could never truly be communist.

In his book, the Veiled Empire, Douglas Northrop argues that by 1926 the Soviets were identifying themselves in opposition to their Central Asian counterparts. I’ve talked a bit about this in Episode 48, but there was this nagging feeling that as Europeans and as vanguards of the Communist revolution they had to be better than their Central Asian counterparts and if Communism wasn’t really working out in Central Asia it’s because the heart of the Communist apparatus had been infected by the local actors. And thus, the OGPU could prove itself as a true Communist bureau by finding this secret conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy Communism from the inside out.

In spring 1926, the OGPU arrested several people who had been members of the Kokand Autonomy, but didn’t join the Soviet apparatuses of power. The OGPU claimed that they were “former leaders of armed struggle against Soviet power” (pg. 320, Making Uzbekistan) but several members of the Samaqand intellectuals recognized these arrests as an “ill-fated colonial policy of Soviet power, its tendency to cleave the national intelligentsia for colonial goals” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 340)

A Society Turns on Itself

The OGPU arrests triggered a new series of attacks against the Jadids. Akmal Ikromov (Fayzulla Xo’jayev’s rival) and his Young Communists publicly attacked the Jadids for failing to align their previous reforms and activists to Communist principles (which would have been impossible because class hadn’t meant anything in pre-1920 Central Asia and there was no tradition of political organization along socialist lines at the time). Ikromov also called the Jadids the mouthpieces of national bourgeoisie who had resisted Soviet for so long by using the ideology of Turanism, Turkism, and Islamism, and had gone as far as calling for help from the Basmachi and English imperialists.

Several articles attacked the Jadids, proclaiming that there were two groups of intellectuals: those who developed before the revolution and were thus “nationalists and representatives of mercantile capital” and those who developed during Soviet rule and were thus servants of the workers and the peasants. The Jadids were denounced for being involved with members the Soviets deemed as reactionary, counter-revolutionary, and dangerous.

A few indigenous Soviets argued that the Jadids could still be of some use. Abdulhay Tojiyev, Secretary of the Tashkent obkom of the party and a Young Communists wrote:

“Of course, [the party] does not want to cast them aside or to have no dealings with them. It would be wrong to do so. Of course, we have to use those old intellectuals who can be used, to work those who can be worked”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 322

Rahimjon Ino’gamov, the Young Communist commissar for education, wrote:

“Our task should be to turn intellectuals who are close to the ideals of the Soviets into true servants of the Soviet order”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 322

This sentiment however, earned Rahimjon the wrath of Ikromov and other Young Communists and he was marked as a nationalist who provided “support to the nationalist intelligentsia” He was demoted to a low-level position in a rural village and was persecuted throughout his life. Soon there was no one to defend the Jadids except for the Jadids themselves.

Fayzulla took the lead in trying to defend his Jadid comrades. He shielded Fitrat from Ikromov’s attacks, claiming that Fitrat’s books should continue to be published because “Fitrat’s books are the property of our culture and do not contradict our policy” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 324). He argued that the Jadids were not a bourgeois movement but a semi proletarian group. It wasn’t a homogeneous entity that could be painted with one brush. Some Jadids turned their backs on communism, but others embraced communism. His arguments didn’t go far and instead opened him up to attacks by Ikromov and the historian P. G. Galuzo who accused him of not using Marxist categories in his analysis and for turning the Young Bukharans into revolutionaries and Communists. Xo’jayev was forced to amend his analysis, but he remained in power – for now. It’s unclear if he ever realized how fragile his hold on power was.

The attacks against the Jadids reached fever pitch during the Second Uzbekistan Conference of Culture Workers in October 1927. Ikromov attacked Vadud Mahmud (the jerk who was like Tajiks don’t exist) for being a nationalist. He riled the crowd up until they shouted:

“Enough! Away with such people! Vadud get lost!” until Vadud left. Botu, a Young Communist wrote, “Red cultural workers of Uzbekistan shamed an opponent of proletarian ideology and kicked him out of their midst”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 326

By 1927, the European Communists had a stranglehold on the local press, and they used their reporters to spread communism and be the front-line soldiers in their battle against the Jadids. These correspondents were often beaten, threatened, and sometimes killed for their work, but the Soviets did their best to protect them (even making it illegal to reveal the identity of these correspondents).

The Central Asian Bureau purged books they deemed harmful and discussed finally close the maktabs and madrassas for good. They placed their own handpick workers into the position of editors in several newspapers and slowly exerted control over what was and wasn’t published. Using their control over the press, the European Soviets steamrolled their own understanding of their own history on the Central Asians.

Any desire to talk about Central Asia’s unique position, needs, and development were overwritten was a “universal” (and Russian centric) version of the October Revolution. The true revolution arrived in Central Asia when the Tashkent Soviet took over Tashkent (never mind the disaster they were) and thus people could be persecuted for not lacking proletarian credentials in a society without proletariats. Any attempt to center the work of the local actors was decreed as nationalist. Instead, one had to only acknowledge the good work of the Russians who brought communism and salvation with them.

On the literary front, there was a new crop of writers who spoke Communist better than their own counterparts. Like the Young Communists, they saw themselves as the true guardians of Communism. Some like G’afur G’ulom, Oybek, and Hamid Olimjon would become the fathers of Soviet Union Literature in Central Asia. Others such as Botu and Ziyo Said were purged but remembered while others such as Qamchinbek, Anqaboy, or Amala-xonim, the first woman prose writer in Uzbek, have been almost forgotten. Some of these new Soviet writers had been taught by Jadids and may have been on friendly terms with them before the Soviet Union made it clear that to prove oneself a communist one had to destroy the nationalists.

Botu in particular, had a very violent break from the Jadids attacking Cho’lpon in publicly, proclaiming:

“You are a slave to yourself, I am my

own force

I visit your thoughts, your dreams in

nonexistence.

Your plan against light, your cause is

hollow

My cause commands fighting your cause.”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 333

He argued that the Jadids were confined to the limits of “madrasa literature” and after the revolution “continued to fill the minds of schoolchildren with the poison of homeland and nation” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 333)

People loved to attack Cho’lpon actually. If it wasn’t Fitrat, it was Cho’lpon (poor Cho’lpon). Olim Sharafiddinov, a member of the new literary class, once wrote: Who is Cho’lpon? Whose poet is he? Cho’lpon is a poet of the nationalist, patriotic, pessimist, intelligentsia. His ideology is the ideology of this group” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 334). He argued that Cho’lpon saw all Russians as colonizers and blamed them for “all wretchedness afflicting Uzbekistan” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 334).

Usmonxon Eshonxo’jayev, a childhood friend of Cho’lpon, piled on adding:

“The defect and harmfulness of Cho’lpon’s poetic lies in its ideology…which from the point of view of our time is reactionary…the Poet is an idealist and an individualist, and therefore sees every political and social event not from the side of the masses but from his own personal point of view”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 335

The Alash Orda weren’t faring any better in Kazakhstan. Uraz Isaev, a European Communist argued that the Alash Orda were a really the beginnings of a bourgeois class in Kazakhstan and attacked them for siding with the White Army, “the most inveterate enemies of the revolution.” (Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences, pg. 139). He further argued that:

“We should not think that former Alash-Ordists represent a stiff and indivisible whole. There are some incorrigible political hunchbacks who will only be reformed by the grave. But there is also a certain segment of young people who were not especially active in Alash-Orda in the past, who under the influence of our positive work have noticeably changed their convictions. Such people must be more closely drawn into Soviet work and be given the opportunity to more actively cooperate with us.”

Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences, pg. 139-140

While the goal was to try and rehabilitate those who had fallen from the Communist ideals, it was far more important to root out those who were using Communism to advance their own goals. He wrote:

“Such elements entered our Party either because they have the wrong address, or because they want to use the Party in their own interest. […] Such elements should be decisively removed from the Party ranks.”

Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences, pg. 139-140

Two of these elements were Alikhan Bukeikhanov and Akhmet Baitursynov. Alikhan was banished to Moscow in 1923, but he was able to travel back and forth from 1923-1924, participating in scientific conferences, expeditions, and research. Despite his best efforts, he never managed to earn a permanent position within Kazakhstan. He was arrested several times between 1923 and the time of his death, July 1937.

Akhmet Baitursynov would serve in several academic positions mostly in Kazakhstan and Siberia, before being arrested for the first time on June 2nd, 1929. He was held in Butyrskiy prison until E. Peshkova, Maxim Gorky’s wife, intervened and petitioned for his release. He would be arrested again in 1937 and executed along with several other Jadids and Alash Orda members.

Tactics to Survive the Onslaught

For the poor Jadids there weren’t many options to escape these attacks. Some retreated in scholarly work, others tried to recreate themselves in order to continue doing public work, and others made public statements of repentance and loyalty. Fitrat wrote a play in support of the land reform being carried out and Cho’lpon wrote a letter to the Second Congress of Culture Workers admitting he had had nationalist feelings in the past and promised to rectify his mistakes. Qodiriy retreated to fiction writing that was published despite being acknowledged as not Soviet enough while others tried to write Soviet only novels.

Poor Elbek was arrested by the OGPU in 1927 and was asked to write testimony about non-Soviet actors Jadids and Nationalists in Uzbekistan. Munavvar qori, who the Soviets hated, spoke at a conference of cultural workers in 1927, admitting his mistakes, and argued that many people who held power in the party were taught by the Jadids. He said:

“Over the course of thirty years, we could not carry out land reform and unveiling. The Bolshevik party has accomplished these in ten years…We are ready to support the revolution…One or two Jadids have sinned, but it is not good to tar all of them with the same brush”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 338

His plea was met with mockery, and he never made a public appearance again.

Others adopted a strategy of learned helplessness. In her book, Despite Cultures, Kassymbekova argues that when the Soviets complained about Central Asian “backwardness” or inability to implement and support Soviet goals, they were identifying a coping mechanism many people utilized to survive the upheaval that followed the Russian Revolution. If the Soviets could complain that Central Asians simply didn’t understand Communism or were purposely trying to impede progress, the Central Asian could claim that the Soviets had failed to teach them properly.

One time an Iranian Communist who was sent to Tajikistan to help with the Soviet program, apologized for his missteps, claiming, “I think that I have many defects, a lot of mistakes, a lot of misunderstanding, which need to be reeducated.” A Tajik Communist reportedly replied, “Too many defects will not do. A little bit is ok” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 2).

Living Within a Soviet Society

Kassymbekova makes a fascinating argument in her book, Despite Cultures, that the only way the Soviets could unite all their republics was to create the language of bureaucracy. This, however, was a stupefying, alienating language that many people simply couldn’t understand and thus it became a tool to obfuscate and condemn.

Kassymbekova argues that early communism depended on individual party members who were dedicated to communist principles. These individuals needed to embody these principles a hundred percent with the utmost purity. They had to have a complete understanding of communism and the politburo’s goals, and be able to identify the true roots of inequality. They were not bound by law or language because those were the tools of capitalism and thus it was ok to tell a lie if it furthered the Communist project. It was ok to work with class traitors for a while because it helped communism. It was action that proved truth. If a lie saved communism, then it was a pure act. If a lie hurt communism then it was punished.

The reliance on individual cadres allowed Soviets to claim they were anti-colonial and anti-capitalist which relied on institutions. This strategy was cheaper than building institutions from the ground up, it enabled mass-scale campaigns since communism depended on all individuals coming together for the greater good and if an individual resisted he was identified as a threat and treated accordingly. It allowed deputized individuals to spread throughout the wide terrain and bring communism to the most remote of villages. However, it also made communism dependent on the local leaders on the ground. A leader could get away with a lot as long as they kept up with agricultural and industrial demands. This also meant that communism wasn’t implemented consistently and left a wide range of experiences within the communist system.

The soviet leaders were idealized and had tremendous power but were constantly hounded and spied on to ensure they remained pure. This taught local leaders to speak “Bolshevik” to upper party leaders while pursuing whatever policies they wanted on the ground. For many people in Central Asia this meant learning the language while utilizing the Bolshevik’s assumption of backwardness to their favor.

This meant that words were no longer used as means of communication, violence was. If they didn’t like something, they violently punished the perpetrators. But that also meant guessing which crime someone was killed for, so no one was ever sure what Moscow really wanted and what it really detested.

Disgruntlement with the Soviet Order

Of course, attacking nationalism right after a nation had been created was counter-productive and the Soviets couldn’t ignore the persistence of colonial inequalities and ethnic division in the region. The lack of a local proletariat and the increase of fascination with having a nation led the OGPU to become obsessed with the rise of “pan-Uzbekism” and “chauvinism.”

Europeans continued to stream into Central Asia looking for work, many of the economic sectors were dominated by Europeans, and the Soviets with power and trust of the OGPU were the Europeans. This led to quiet disgruntlement with the failing of the new order. Some of the complaints the OGPU recorded were as follows:

“The Russians are conducting a chauvinist policy. In Tashkent, all factories are packed with Russians if an Uzbek ends up there, he is fired right away.”

“Ferghana’s peasantry is in a very difficult situation: colonists command everything. The situation is so catastrophic that one may expecting an uprising. The line of the CC in regard to the intelligentsia is incorrect, [and the struggle] with kolonizatorstvo is conducted indecisively”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 339-340

Worse of all were the whispers that because of the forced production of cotton, Uzbekistan had become nothing more than a red colony, like India or Egypt under British rule. A teacher in Tashkent told his students that Uzbekistan was “in fact, a colony that exports cotton as a raw material” (pg. 340, Making Uzbekistan). One student asked, “What is the difference between the English colony of India and the administration of Kazakhstan by Goloshchekin?” (Adeeb Khalid Making Uzbekistan, pg. 340).

A Kyrgyz official once called the Bolsheviks “Colonizers with Party Cards” (what a burn) because they never understood the local needs. They only pushed what they thought the region needed.

Sobir Qodirov, an accused member of a nationalist counter-revolutionary organization, wrote:

“The national policy of Soviet power in Uzbekistan we regard as colonial policy, as a continuation of the great power policies of Tsarism. Such a policy, in reality, provides for the well-being exclusively of the Russian nation at the expense of the exploitation of the indigenous population. Thus, for example, Europeans living in Uzbekistan find themselves in the most favorable situations, when the Uzbek part of the population is doomed to the most pitiable, beggarly existence.

…We consider that Uzbekistan has enough natural wealth and commodity production for it to be an independent economic unit, and consequently to have its own industry, both light and heavy.

We consider that Soviet power wittingly does not allow the development of independent industry in Uzbekistan exclusively because it seeks to keep Uzbekistan as a base for raw materials in order to extort its riches. In other words, Uzbekistan is a colony of inner Russia, supplying raw material for its industry.”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 378

In 1929, Yodgor Sodiqov, a party member from Khujand, wrote to Stalin directly

“Peasants and artisans endure deprivation; they cannot complain, for they are afraid of arrest by the OGPU. But the cup of the peasantry’s patience is full to the brim. Waiting until it flows over is harmful. If the leadership of the party does not change and the people continue to be despised, then, without regard to my twelve years of work and the loss of my health in this work, I will consider myself to have left the party” – Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 378

Things were similar dire in Tajikistan, who had to deal with a weak infrastructure and government apparatus and constant Basmachi incursions. Their government was made out of Communists who were either in Tajikistan as a form of punishment or who had nowhere else to go. The Basmachi and questionable Communists drew a large number of OGPU into the region. Many officials actually wanted to leave Tajikistan, but the Soviets made it impossible to resettle. When that failed, the presence of the OGPU was enough to keep people in line. The OGPU was above the local government’s power, and this upset many officials. Two Soviet members in Tajikistan complained that:

“We have no authority! Our secret communication is being opened by the [O]GPU, our telegrams are not being sent. There is war against the Revolutionary Committee. You should either help us or remove us from Tajikistan”

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 49

The OGPU acted like cops always do. One time they kept an eyewitness prisoner for seven months. Another time a party member received several complaints about an OGPU member who:

“Pushed peasants off the road; they were half-dressed and half-shod with donkeys stuck in the mud up to their ears i.e., you surely know what kind of roads are here in winter. Moreover, he stopped at the mosque and raped a woman who was heading to a first-aid post. The peasants saw this and were shocked, and I have an eyewitness – the chief investigator. Does this not discredit the authority of the party and branches of the [O] GPU?” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 49

It is hard to tell how widespread this dissatisfaction was, but it made the Soviets paranoid, leading a massive purge in 1929.

Destroying Islam

For years, the Soviets uncomfortably tolerated Islam because they were afraid of sparking a mass exodus to the Basmachi ranks, but 1926 they launched a new initiative untie society and culture from Islam. In 1927, the Soviets officially closed all maktabs in the Central Asian states. However, the Soviet schools were not increased to handle the 35,000+ new students and so many kids simply went without an education. After dealing with the maktabs, they went after the madrasas, finalizing the nationalization of waqf land and cannibalizing the buildings for other purposes. Those they could not repurpose, they closed by 1928.

The Soviets also turned on the “progressive” ulama who they had relied on in early 1920s to help spread support of the Soviet reign. The OGPU worried that, to quote a report from the Kazakhstan central committee:

“Today’s clergy is not the clergy of five or ten years ago. It is a clergy that understands the moment of the struggle of labor with capital, of socialism with capitalism, going on in the country where socialism is being built, and adapts all its tactics to the current movement” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 346)

Basically, by educating the ulama about communism, they actually made them more powerful and dangerous. To counter their dangerous influence, the Soviets abolished the qazi courts and shariat administration in 1927. They increased rhetoric that placed all of the blame for the violence of the civil war on the ulama (even the reformist or progressive ulama) and the Basmachi. The Soviets argued that the Basmachi and ulama were united against the people of Central Asia (and absolving all Soviets and Europeans of violence they definitely committed).

While the committees and executive were concerned with the maktabs and madrasas, lower-level Communists turned their attention to the mosques and shrines. This movement gathered considerable support amongst the local Soviets, forcing the central committees to support them or be called counter-revolutionary. The secretary of the Bukhara party committee wrote:

“Mosques were closed by decisions of party cells, by decisions of Komsomol cells, by decisions of rural soviets, of meetings of the poor or simply without any decision at all. Such an abominable situation continued from the beginning of 1927 to the end of 1928…the closing of mosques took on the character of a competition.” – Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan,. pg. 353

Because this was led from the ground up, the closures were not as sudden or as effective as the closures of the maktabs or madrasas. When the Soviets couldn’t destroy a mosque, they repurposed them into clubs, Red Reading rooms, warehouses, schools, or stables for OGPU horses. The mosques closed in spurts between 1927 and 1929 and it picked up in the 30s as it became part of the collectivization efforts.

Shohimardon

Great violence could occur when the Soviets tried to destroy the mosques and shrines. One of the most famous examples was in March 1929 in the mountain village of Shohimardon in the Ferghana Valley. Jadid playwright, Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziy was overseeing the destruction of the mazor attributed to Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law. The caretakers of the mazor were dozens of families of sheikhs and xo’jas. Hamza wanted to convert the mazor into a resort for the poor peasants. Hamza argued that the site was corrupt, claiming:

“The Xo’jas in the hamlet of Shohimardon have turned the fake grave of Ali into a resource and they rob the people with it. The sheikhs claim to have the key to paradise in their hands because of their descent from Hasan and Husain. They send those who do the proper sacrifice [and pay the sheikhs] to “paradise,” and those who don’t to “hell.” These sheikhs of Shohimnardon have to this day never worked, never labored, but, dressed in the garb of cunning, they have adopted the principles of Satan and, turning their rosaries, have fattened like the pigs of the Shohimardon steppe…They have poisoned the minds of workers with superstition and [now] feed off their possessions.”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 351

Hamza brought with him several peasants to march on the mazor, place a red flag on its cupola, and padlock the door. He also established a Red Teahouse and kiln, hiring thirty-five families to run the site and to crowd out the xo’jas. He threatened to call the red army unless the sheikhs publicly announced that they were indeed corrupt and feeding off the people and their misplaced faith. The standoff lasted throughout the winter of 1928, until in early March, on the evening of the end of Ramadan, Soviet police entered the mosque, took off the wall hangings, and arrested the muezzin. On March 17th, the demolition began. A crowd of three hundred people defended the shrine, disarmed the police, destroyed the red teahouse, and stoned Hamza to death.

The OGPU arrested 54 people and put them on public trial in June. 9 were executed, 16 sentenced to prison, 25 exiled to other parts of the Soviet Union, and 4 were acquitted.

Despite the fact that the Soviets were anti-clerical and anti-religions, the OGPU, of all people, noticed that the closing of mosques was causing too much disruption. They asked the central committees to try and quelch the closing of mosques. Even Akmal Ikromov said

“As it is, nowhere does the population trust Soviet power…if someone wants there be an uprising in Uzbekistan, then a few more such abominable facts will be enough.”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 353

Like the hujum, the unveiling of women, the closing of mosques was constructed without taking the local population in consideration, it quickly spiraled out of control because it was left to the lower ranks of the Soviet apparatus, and once it spiraled out of control it created flash points for people who were already upset with the Soviet regime, to violently vent their frustration and anger.

Collectivization

While the Soviets were trying to slowdown the hujum and closing of mosques, in 1929 they implemented maybe the most disruptive policy: collectivization. This policy was designed to establish Soviet control over the countryside and break all resistance. It would produce great violence and mass starvation. This same collectivization effort would create the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1930 and while Ukraine suffered the most in terms of the number of dead, the suffering in Kazakhstan, specifically, shouldn’t be underestimated. To give you a sense of perspective, the conservative estimate is that 3.9 million people died in Holodomor and the conservative estimate for the Kazakh famine is 1.5 to 2 million people. It’s estimated 30-40% of all Kazakhs died.. The Holodomor and the starvation of the Kazakhs were genocides.

The goal of collectivization was to collect individually owned farmlands and livestock into collective holdings controlled by the state. The idea was that the state would most effectively decide how the food should be distributed and you wouldn’t have pesky price gouging or shortages because the state (i.e., Stalin) was all knowing and never got anything wrong.

Turning Central Asia into an agricultural dispensary came out of the pain of the Russian empire collapsing and Moscow losing access to food in Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. It was also a matter of self-sufficiency. If they could grow their own cotton, they wouldn’t have to import so much (cotton made up 1/3 of the values of all imports in 1924) and enable them to export more textiles (creating jobs in Russia proper as well). Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan, accounted for 75% of the Soviet Union’s domestic cotton supply, but it could never hope to meet the Soviet Union’s need. The Soviets imported 45% of their cotton fiber, meaning it made up 15% of all imports between 1924-1928. The world prices for cotton fluctuated widely, inspiring Stalin’s desire of “cotton independence.”

To increase cotton production, the Soviets fixed the purchase price of cotton to 2.5 and then 3.0 times the market price of grain from 1922 to 1926. Many Central Asian farmers and peasants took advantage of the lucrative prices, increasing cotton acreage from 171,255 acres in 1922 to 1,412,915 acres in 1926. The Soviets further encouraged cotton growth by offering various forms of aid such as agricultural credits, subsidies, farming implements, draft animals, and land-improvement aid. In 1928, the Komsomol even went as far as to create cotton holidays, declaring cotton as a key component of Uzbek honor, and cotton became the symbol of Uzbekistan.

In Tajikistan, cotton was identified as its pride and glory, “the happiness and hope of the Soviet Union” and “the measure of the republic’s achievement and successes” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 72). A Soviet official described Tajikistan’s role in growing cotton as:

“The Tajik SSR is a wonderful illustration of the Comintern thesis about the possibility of noncapitalist development in the world’s most backward countries under the leadership of the proletariat. Who does not understand that the Central Asian republics, including Tajikistan, already became inseparable parts of one whole economic system of the Soviet Union and that they have particular functions in the industrialization of the USSR? The cotton program in this regard is a program of Union industrialization and socialist kishlak (village) rebuilding. The Union’s industry does not only receive cotton from Tajikistan; it also gives powerful support to the development of industrial capacity, increases material support, and raises cultural awareness for the sprawling masses of working dekhkans [peasants]. There is obviously a dual relation. Those who did not understand the duality of the relationship understood nothing. They devolve from our national policy either as great imperial chauvinists or local nationalist.”

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures pg. 73

Cotton was the ultimate status of achieving Sovietization, of having a culture, of being part of a bigger whole, and avoiding conquest by other European powers who would abuse the Tajiks – unlike the Soviets of course.

Despite the desperate need for cotton, the Soviet’s policies were costly because it required the Soviet Union to ship enough grain in Central Asia to make up for the grain the region wasn’t producing. This meant that the Soviet Union was diverting grain from exporting it to world markets to feed its own people internally, increasing their trade deficit. However, many found the quality of grain and wheat to be terrible. They bought locally grown grain instead which prevented the government from recouping some of its losses and took land away from growing cotton. The cherry on the miserable sundae was that despite all of these benefits and aid, cotton growth itself didn’t improve. It never met their yield before the revolution, falling below the 80% goal.

Predictably the focus on cotton created mass food shortages in the cotton producing districts, which culminated in the terrible famine of the 1930s. Areas that had formally been able to feed themselves faced starvation as prices skyrocketed and grain shortages increased. For example, in January 1928, a year before collectivization was even put in place, Uzbekistan was supposed to receive 3.8 million poods of grain from Russia. They only received 40%. These shortages would grow to include most household items by 1930. To make up for the lack of grain, the Soviets implemented the policy of “import substitution” in 1927. The idea was to look for ways to import food from regions within Central Asia where it was impossible to grow cotton. This included transporting livestock from non-cotton regions to cotton regions, leaving the people who lived in non-cotton regions at an even greater risk of starvation. It was these regions, not the cotton producing regions, which suffered the worst during the 1930s famine.

Peasants of all strata came together to demand the reversal of new obligations and taxes, the release of those who had been arrested while protesting, the end of the cotton program, and permission to “live according to the Shariat.” When that didn’t work, they turned to the Basmachi, briefly resurrecting the failing guerilla movement (which we talked about in the last episode.) Other armed resistance movements cropped up in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and even local Communists resisted collectivization. In 1925, thirty Kyrgyz officials signed a letter protesting their exclusion from making any decisions regarding their own state. In 1927, Makhmud Tumailov, a Turkmen official, publicly attacked the Economic Council for robbing the national republics of their economic autonomy. 44 prominent Kazakh intellectuals were arrested in 1928 for opposing Filipp Goloshchekin, the European Party Secretary of Kazakhstan, plan to forcibly settle nomadic Kazakhs in order to promote grain cultivation. Goloshchekins also expelled Smagul Sadvokasov, a prominent Kazakh Communist and educator, for questioning if Bolshevik style communism was applicable to the nomadic Kazakh lifestyle.

When resistance failed, people simply left, fleeing to Afghanistan, Iran, and Xinjiang as long as the borders were open. However, Soviet (and in Xinjiang’s case, Chinese) pressure forced those states to close their borders and then there was no escape.

Collectivization was not a success because farmers didn’t understand it. It artificially cut their prices in half, they preferred to eat their cattle and sell what remained. The Moscow administration didn’t offer any clear idea what a collective farm should look like or how it should operate and so the peasants panicked, wanting to save as much of their property as possible. Tajikistan in particular was already hard hit by the confiscations that were meant to starve the Basmachi. Collectivization seemed to guarantee that everyone else would starve as well. The Soviets turned to violence, especially as the local party leaders failed to meet five-year goals and they were being accused of not being loyal communists by higher ups.

In 1929-1930, the Tajikistan’s Central Executive Committee planned to collectivize 16,000 households. By April 1930, a party newspaper reported that 98% of the collectivization plans were fulfilled. Yet, members in the know reported that Tajikistan had only fulfilled 40% of the plan because of Basmachi disturbances. The Tajik Executive Committee decided in 1930 to change plans and created Tozes, the joint cultivation of land, not the cultivation of cattle and tools (like in kolkhozes). In 1931 20-25% of all grain and 50% of cotton sowing lands were turned into Tozes. By 1932 this increased to 41.9% and by 1937, 98.3 % of all land was reported as collectivized.

Collectivization a Test for European Communists

Collectivization not only tamed the indigenous actors, but it also tested the European Communist leaders, allowing them to prove themselves as true Communists or as counterrevolutionaries. For Central Asia, this put Suren Shadunts and Karl Bauman, the leaders of the Central Asian Bureau, and Davud Guseinov, the Secretary for Tajikistan, in a tough place.

Shadunts was in charge of supervising the cotton cultivation of 1929-1930 and was responsible for the anti-Basmachi campaign that led to the capture of Ibrahim Bek. Guseinov would eventually be recalled from Tajikistan for his “failure” and Shadunts would replace him after the Central Asian Bureau was eliminated. While Shadunts was in charge of the cotton industry in Central Asia, Bauman was in charge of collectivization. Both of these men had questionable histories of nationalism which was why Stalin sent them to Tajikistan. It was an easy way to get them to “prove” themselves to him.

However, the pressure of meeting impossible goals while being hounded by OGPU members broke many Soviet officials as this conversation between Shadunts and Guseinov reveals:

“I just arrived from Kurgan-Tiube and I feel terrible. I could hardly drag myself to the telegraph…According to information of [May] 25 on the basis of the last directive from Bauman, 6,000 metric tons [of grain] must be delivered by July 15. We [now] have 2,900 metric hundredweights…I am sure we will fulfill the plan. Undivided attention is paid to Garm. There we will send our camels and take further measures. [Tajik OGPU chief] Dorofeev is in Garm one Central Committee brigade…Five [O]GPU people are also heading there; according to their information, we already collected 2,200 metric hundredweights of grain…We are thinking of bringing all our cars there from Stalinabad (modern day Dushanbe) …What’s new? What’s going on in Moscow? How is your health? Koba, Sergo? I have to inform you that there is no way I can leave Stalinabad and come to Tashkent. I need, frankly speaking, a holiday. I just physically cannot move. I insistently ask you to delay my report [in Tashkent] for at least two to three days, better, seven days. I repeated that I am unable to move from this place”

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 86

As we can see from the quote. Guseinov was not a strongman in control of the situation in Tajikistan. He was a tired and sick man surrounded by the OGPU who were as interested in forcing local peasants to give up their food as they were in turning on failing Communists.

For an ideology that is supposed to put the community first, the application of collectivization was a very individualized affair. The local leaders were held personally responsible for failures, even in places like Tajikistan which was never going to meet its grain requirements because of its landscape and raids from the Basmachi. Yet, when Bauman reported the failure of the 1931 Central Asian Cotton campaign to Stalin, he knew he would be held personally responsible. He wrote:

“I want to warn you and the Central Committee that we will not be able to fulfill the plan and I do not want to appear before you as someone whitewashing the situation…Unconditionally, there are masses of failures and mistakes in our work. But I firmly declare that I took up the struggle to the best of my abilities and I lost on the front with a clear conscience…Please let me continue my work in Central Asia for a couple more years, and I think I will justify your trust and help the Party in its struggle for cotton.”

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 87

The five-year plan was completely disconnected from reality, making it hard for local leaders to meet their goals. The peasants often asked the Soviets where they were supposed to plant their grain as they had no arable land and the Soviets would reply, “Sow anywhere you want, even in your huts!” and “You have no soil on your breast, but your hair is thick enough. You can sow the seeds there, just fulfill the plan.” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 87)

The forced stealing of food left many people, including Soviet officials starving and unable to work (even though they were forced to by the secret police). The Soviet police often went months without pay and when that happened they joined the wandering bands of guerillas and warlords, leaving Soviet officials unprotected. The peasants lead revolts when they could and sometimes managed to kill local Soviet officials.

These miserable conditions led to severe alcoholism and abuse on part of the European Soviets. Rape was frequent and even though the Soviets found people to scapegoat for the most excessive acts of violence, it was part of the plan. What the peasants wouldn’t give up willingly would be taken by force.

The Murder of the Central Asian Intelligentsia

1929 was a year of great change in Central Asia. Tajikistan was elevated to a full republic; Stalin proclaimed the year as the “year of the Great Breakthrough” and the attacks against the old intelligentsia in Central Asia intensified to new heights. From 1929-1931, the Soviet apparatus would purge the indigenous ranks, leaving no other alternative to Soviet power.

The OGPU Craft a Conspiracy

With collectivization came resistance and failures, meaning that the Soviets needed scapegoats to explain why Stalin’s “great” five-year plan and genocides weren’t achieving the results he expected. For the OGPU in Central Asia, the obvious solution was to uncover a nationalistic, counter-revolutionary conspiracy amongst the Central Asian intellectuals. People like Fitrat, Xo’jayev, and Bukeikhanov, only pretended to convert to communism so they could use Soviet resources to create a bourgeoisie, nationalist state they would then betray to the English, for some reason…As one OGPU agent wrote:

“Materials in our possession indicate that 1929, especially it second half, was characterized not just by the general growth by anti-Soviet manifestations of the bais in the countryside, but also the growth in the activity of nationalist counterrevolutionary forces [including] a significant rearrangement of forces also among the national intelligentsia”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 373

The conspiracy began with an article titled “The Bark of the Chained Dogs of the Khan of Kokand” by El-Registan, the future writer of the Soviet national anthem of 1943. He attacked the Uzbek State Publishing House for financial irregularities and for publishing chauvinistic, nationalist, anti-Soviet works. The Uzbek State Publishing House was directed by Hadi Fayzi, who had been a member of the Soviet bogeyman, the Kokand Autonomy. When the article wasn’t attacking Fayzi, it attacked Cho’lpon. El-Registan called Cho’lpon “a prostitute of the pen and a stoker of chauvinism” whose anti-Soviet songs were sung “in chorus by Basmachis taken prisoners.”

Cho’lpon defended himself by claiming, “It is an old matter, for which I was abused plenty then. Now it’s necessary to abuse [me] for new misdeeds, if there are any.” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 372). Others attacked El-Registan for being a chauvinist and in the pocket of other ultranationalists such as Ramziy, Botu, and Fitrat. The Jadids weren’t the only “snakes in the grass.” The Soviets in Kazakhstan attacked the Alash Orda just as viciously, claiming:

“The Alash party set itself the task of collectively joining the Party, thus hiding behind their Party cards in order to defend their work. They joined the Soviets only so that they could use legal forms to fracture the Soviet apparatus and use it for their own goals as bais.” – Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1917-1953, Pg 112

On November 6th, 1929, the OGPU arrested several alleged members of the Committee of National Independence. One of the people arrested was Munavvar qori, a Jadid who had been under surveillance for a long time because of his association with Zeki Velidi Togan and his “mismanagement” of the Waqf office. Munavvar was accused of

“Having preserved an irreconcilable enmity to Soviet power. [He] continued to group around himself the counterrevolutionary element of the bourgeois intelligentsia, conducted systematic anti-Soviet propaganda, in particular among the student youth, [and having] conducted espionage work on the instructions of Afghan diplomats”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 374,

The OGPU expanded their arrests from Tashkent to Namangan where they arrested several other people, including the staff of New Ferghana, where Hamza had been a contributor before being stoned to death. Based on the “activities” of the new Ferghana staff, the OGPU created another secret counterrevolutionary org called the Botir Gapchilar which consisted of thirteen formal members. The OGPU claimed:

“During this short three-month period, it had strengthened organizationally, worked out programmatic and tactical arrangements, [and] determined its most immediate goals”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 374

Not bad for an organization that didn’t exist.

In February 1930, the OGPU expanded their reach once more and arrested Sa’dulla Qosimov, the head of the chief court of Uzbekistan, and placed him on trial for corruption and using “Soviet institutions and his position in the interests of the enemy class” (pg. 374, Making Uzbekistan). During the trial, it “became clear” that Qosimov was part of a carefully planned nationalist plot. He was involved with bais, ulama, anda pan-Turkist organization in Tashkent led by none other than Munavvar qori (all the love in the world for poor Munavvar, but given his mental state after being hounded by the OGPU since his first arrest, I don’t think he was capable of organizing anything in 1929). Qosimov was charged with planting the organization’s agents in every Soviet institution and wrecking it from the inside.

Poor Qosimov was executed in June, but the chief witness for the prosecution, Obid Saidov fell ill during dinner and died on June 23, 1930. The OGPU investigated his death and discovered he was poisoned (I had a Russian babushka who used to tutted with grave disappointment that the Russian state “always use poison” to kill its victims). The OGPU took this as evidence of a grand plot and arrested Obid’s brother, Nosir, who confessed he was in on the plot that had been ordered by Botu. The OGPU “discovered” that Botu was part of the Milliy Istiqlol, Veldi’s old pan-Turkic organization. Botu supposedly claimed that the goal of the organization was:

“The achievement of the independence of Uzbekistan in the form of a separate bourgeois-democratic republic” He supposedly claimed that “it is necessary to think not only of the present, but also of the future” He told Nosir Saidov that “our Uzbek petty bourgeois youth is in a very straitened condition…excluded from schools and the Soviet apparatus. In our thinking about education, we pay very little attention to the preservation in [the youth] of national feeling. Meanwhile, in the future [i.e., upon Uzbekistan’s secession from the USSR] we will need cadres of nationalist youth. It is necessary to strengthen the nationalist reworking of the youth through the school and literature”

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 376

Botu was arrested on July 23, 1930.

More arrests followed and the OGPU made up another counterrevolutionary organization: G’ayratlilar Uyushmasi (Union of Enthusiasts). This group had infiltrated the Uzbekistan Narkompros, proving there was a conspiracy to destroy the Soviet Union from the inside out.

None of the people arrested were given show trials. Instead, they were shipped to Moscow to be interrogated in Butyrka prison. In total, 87 people were accused and 15 were sentenced to death on April 23, 1931. Munavvar qori was executed immediately but others had their sentenced changed to death at a labor camp instead. Botu would spend 1931-1933 being shipped from prison to prison until he was formally sentenced to ten years in a labor camp on Solovetsky Islands in the Artic. He would spend five years there before being recalled and shot during the Great Terror.

Over the decade, the OGPU (later turned into the NKVD) found similar secret societies in Tajikistan (Union of the East-Ittihodi Sharq) and in Turkmenistan (Turkmen Independence – Turmen Azatlygy).

While this first wave of arrests spared many Jadids, the verbal assaults increased in their ferocity. Jalil Boybo’latov, a Chekist who had been tracking Fitrat since the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic wrote a detailed attack on Fitrat’s entire catalogue, claiming he was a chauvinist and nationalist and attacked Chaghatayism as being a nationalist ideology. Fitrat defended himself (it was the last time he’d be published in a newspaper), but the die was cast. No longer were indigenous actors able to debate the future of their forming nations in the newspapers. They were officially iced out and only communist approved thought could appear in the papers.

It’s not a hundred percent clear why Fitrat, Cho’lpon, and Qodiriy survived the arrests of 1929-1930. Adeeb Khalid postulates that it may have been because of Fayzulla Xo’jayev’s protection, although there isn’t any real documentary proof that that was the case (and there may not be). It could have been because they were easy lightning rods and scapegoats that others could trip over themselves attacking to prove their own communist credentials and so the OGPU didn’t yet see a reason to get rid of them. Better to use them to turn the indigenous intellectuals against each other, fundamentally break all bonds of social and cultural ties before killing everyone – a favorite Soviet game.

Scapegoats in Tajikistan

By 1933, the Soviet machine needed scapegoats to explain the failure of collectivization and cotton growing in Tajikistan. After a year of interrogations, recrimination, investigation, and paranoia, the OGPU selected Nusratullo Maksum of the Central Executive Committee and Abdurakhim Khodzhibaev of the Council of People’s Commissars to be the sacrificial lambs. They were accused of being part of counterrevolutionary organizations aiming to eliminate Soviet rule in Tajikistan. The OGPU arrested 600 people for being connected to the Maksum and Khozhibaev plot – many of whom had been Jadids transplanted from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan. One such Jadid was Abdulkadyr Mukhitdinov who became the Tajik Fitrat or Munavvar qori.

He was attacked for being a Jadid, for distrusting the five-year plan, for being a wealthy merchant who had made money from cotton in the past. Mukhitdinov was in charge of collectivization and his letters fell into OGPU hands. In one letter he asked Karl Baumann to confiscate only cotton, not cattle, so the people would not starve. Another local party member said Mukhitdinov asked him not to press grain collection and to keep as much grain for the people. He claimed that Mukhitidnov said,

“We made the revolution, but we destroyed ourselves. We Muslims, are not united. We tried to eat each other and destroy ourselves. Russians are united, but we report on each other and hence destroyed the Bukharan People’s Socialist Republic”

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 117

Mukhitdinov was purged from the party and executed in 1934.

At first Bauman and Guseinov tried to protect Maksum and Khodzhibaev but by December 1933 they turned their backs on the pair and demanded their purge.

Publicly Maksum and Khodzhibaev were accused of being counterrevolutionaries, but the OGPU records revealed conflicting accusations depending on who they spoke with. Either Maksum and Khodzhibaev were too extreme in fulfilling the Soviet plan or they did too much to help the peasants resist collectivization. There is also an intriguing claim that Maksum and Khodzhibaev attacked the OGPU for driving people into the arms of the Basmachi and for getting in the way of collectivization. Frustrated with the OGPU and the situation in Tajikistan one of them warned another Soviet member “you worked for Soviet rule, you got medals, but now you can throw them away; you will not be thanked for your work, you will be arrested” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 119)

Surprisingly neither were executed. Instead, they were transferred to different positions and then Moscow.

Guseinov was also dismissed from his post. Between 1933-1934 the Central Asian Bureau sent 105 new workers to Tajikistan and then dozens of new secret police agents

Abdullo Rakhimbaev replaced Khodzhibaev. He actually was involved in the delimitation between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and actually argued against the creation of Tajikistan. Grigory Broido replaced Guseinov. Broido was involved in the sovietzation of Central Asia back in 1917 and played a key role in the formation of the Bukharan and Khivan communist parties and led a Khivan military campaign. Urnbai Ashurov was sent to support Broido. Shirinsho Shohtemur, who had worked with Maksum and Khodzhibaev, was in charge of the purges of Tajikistan. With the exception of Shohtemur, all of these new leaders were outsiders brought in because they needed a chance to prove their communist principles and because they owed Stalin their lives and this new chance.

From 1933-1936, the Soviet apparatus attacked indigenous actors on charges of being nationalism and counterrevolutionaries and they attacked European actors of chauvinism and incompetence. Any time anyone tried to challenge the OGPU for being lawless and violent, they were caught within the OGPU’s web.

Shadunts eventually replaced Broido as leader of the Party. He was promoted during a period of recovery for Tajikistan. People were recovering from the first and second five-year plans and productivity was increasing.

Yet, 1935 was the same year for another purge. In total 476 party members lost their party card because they were “bureaucrats’ “corrupt officials” and class enemies. This was a precursor to the great purge of 1936-1938. The party members who were purged in 1935 were restored and the hunt for those who falsely accused the “good” communists began. Shohtemur proceeded cautiously, basically asking how it was possible for the NKVD to arrest clearly good Communists. However, he also knew that a restoration could be taken away as quickly and then he would be blamed for restoring a bad communist. His caution didn’t save him and he would be executed in spring 1938.

His sudden fall shocked the Communists of Tajikistan and the only way Rakhimbaev could explain it was:

“For almost two years Shadunts led the Party and suddenly he was removed from his post. What happened? This happened, because comrades, comrade Shadunts turned out to be a bad political leader. He turned out to be a liberal…He could not combine economic work with political soberness, with Party work. He failed in Bolshevik instinct to unmask the enemy in a timely manner, this is why he had to go…The Central Committee was fully right to dismiss Shadunts.” – Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 117

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 117

Rakhimbaev and Broido shortly joined Shadunts along with an entire generation of indigenous and European intellectuals and leaders who were unlucky enough to be targeted by the NKVD.

The Great Terror

The Great Terror arrived in Central Asia in 1937 with the arrest of Fayzulla and Akmal Ikromov. They were both arrested in July 1937 and were charged with several different counter-revolutionary activities. They were simultaneously part of:

• A “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” who wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union
• Milliy Ittihod, whose goal was to either to engage in “wrecking, diversionist, and terrorist activities, undermining the military power of the USSR, provoking a military attack…on the USSR, dismembering the USSR”
• Organizations that wanted to separate Uzbekistan from the Soviet Union and join a British protectorate.

Both men were executed on March 15, 1938.

Cho’lpon was arrested on July 13, 1937, Fitrat was arrested on July 22nd, and Qodiriy was arrested on December 31st, 1937. They were joined by hundreds of others, including many who attacked them so vehemently to prove they were in fact real Communists. The charges brought against them were ludicrous. They were the clear design of paranoid and bored minds who needed people to blame for the failures of Soviet policies and because the hounds of nationalism had been unleashed and could not be recalled.

Fitrat “confessed” to being a leader of Milliy Ittihod, recruited by Fayzulla (who was the Chairman of the Bukharan Soviet Republic at the time, so clearly had a lot of time on his hands for secret societies and counter-revolutionary acts). Fitrat, Xo’jayev, and Munavvar qori among others had organized the Basmachi to destroy the Soviet Union. Qodiriy was accused of being a Trotskyite and being associated with the terrible nationalists Xo’jayev and Ikromov.

Their records are said to survive but are sealed except to a select few. They paint a depressingly familiar picture of torture, false confessions, deep betrayals, and shattering of desperate humans. The hallmark of not only the Soviet Union, but any government that wants to break its people, not support them.

Over 383 lists (with almost 44,000 names) of accused nationalists and counter-revolutionaries were sent to the Politburo and then Stalin for his signature. A vast majority of them were executed. Some of the names included Evgeniia Zel’kind, Ikromov’s wife, Hadi Fayzi, and Rahimjon Inog’amov. Others who were not on the list were still arrested and executed such as Botu, and Turar Risqulov while others, like Laziz Azizzoda were arrested and went from camp to camp before being released. And then there was Sadriddin Ayni, who somehow managed to avoid arrest and died in his bed in 1954 at the age of 76.

In the biggest farce of this entire madness was the Supreme Military Court of the USSR. It held a session in Tashkent on October 5th, 1938, to sentence the guilty counterrevolutionaries. However, everyone had already been executed the night before, on October 4th. It was shameful window dressing of a massacre based on paranoia, colonialism, and a love for power.

References

Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid

“Colonizers With Party Cards” by Benjamin Loring

Despite Cultures by Botakoz Kassymbekova

“The Role of Alash Orda on the Formation of Kazakh SSR” by Yunus Emre Gurbuz

“Challenging Colonial Power: Kazakh Cadres and Native Strategies” by Gulnar Kendirbai

“Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan 1917-1953” by Maria Blackwood