Доклад о Бухаре в НКИД от политконтроллера Report from political controller to NKID on Bukhara

Translation

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To Karakhan PC of Foreign Affairs personal Moscow to Gusev, Tsukerman personal Tashkent

Kop. por. 9 from military-telegraph station of Bukhara Group No. 53 B sl 7/5-24 30 Military report top secret through Political Inspector tlk MSK

The Bukhara situation 1) The basmachi continue to live in Western Bukhara, so even the capital of Bukhara cannot be considered outside of danger. For example, the Turkestan Front summary of 2 May notes: “A detachment of 100 to 150 basmachi has occupied the city of Karakul, armored train No. 3 ... departing Chardzhou fired four shrapnel at the basmachi who occupied the city, after which an assault detachment from the armored train occupied Karakul. The basmachi pulled out in an unknown direction. The fourth combat engineer half-squadron, sent out toward Dzhangar, was fired on as it approached Dzhangar by up to 300 basmachi. The half-squadron was forced to pull out to Gakhad – 10 versts west ... of Old Bukhara. The Bud. Cavalry Division has been dispatched as reinforcement.” In Khatyrchi (several versts from the Samarkand-Bukhara railroad line) the Bey, in the presence of the Nazir of War Arifov, who defected, held a parade for the basmach troops. The Soviet defector Daniar, with a detachment of 400 ... men, is operating in the vicinity of Kelif (along the Amu-Daria above Kerki). The Amu-Daria above Termez has been occupied once and for all by the enemy, further down in the Termez-Kerki area, the Amu-Daria is not free. Kashkas (boats) in the Termez-Kerki area are coming under attack. On 17 April, in Khatab (a few versts above Kerki) the chairman of the Executive Committee instructed our border detachment to surrender its weapons, threatening to massacre those who don’t obey and putting out provocative rumors that Kerki is surrounded by the enemy, and isolated the Red Army soldiers from water. A reinforcement dispatched from Kerki rescued our unit and the Chairman of the Executive Committee fled with the basmachi. In the area of Basach (on the Amu-Daria above Kerki on the Afghan border) substantial enemy forces are banding together under the command of the Andkhoi Khan. On 24 April a detachment of Turkmens staged an attack on a settlement (nine versts south of Kerki), stole seven camels and plundered several settlements.

2) Our Amu-Daria flotilla is in disastrous condition: they are not receiving either money or supplies, wages have been paid only for January, there are arrears totaling two billion, and there are no boards for blades. The chief of the transport police writes to me that he does not even know the body to which he could apply for money and supplies, since the international joint commission is not working, and its members have left

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for Tashkent and Bukhara. The flotilla, which is on the verge of collapse, has been inundated with urgent assignments for civilian and operational shipments. Our interests in shipments have not been met.

3) The fortified Termez Raion has been left to the mercy of fate, is not supplied with money or uniforms and has no communications with the command [garbled word]. Yesterday the raion military commander, Chirkunov, came to see me. When I asked what he intended to do, he declared: “I am thinking of going to Faizulla Khodzhaev, maybe he will issue uniforms and money.” The young fellow simply went to beg about his physical concerns, but he is no longer trying to resolve the organizational and operational issue.

4) The question of monetary circulation has been addressed in telegrams Nos. 12, 13 and 45 dated 21 April and 5 May.

5) Bukhara continues to play at sovereignty and is seeking the opening of the Afghan border, monitoring of trade with Russia and the establishment of …iakit (in-kind tax) on imports and exports and the turnover to them of the railroads and telegraph offices and, as pressure on the last issue, at first threatened to dismiss all Russian employees from Bukhara institutions, who mostly live in Kagan (Novaia Bukhara) and for whom the Bukharan Government has to pay a daily train fare, and then on 23 April a meeting of Soviet nazirs regarding the question of rebuilding the Karsh-Guzar-Kerki railroad resolved: “The question of a railroad between the RSFSR and the BPSR [Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic] has not yet been decided, therefore expenditures on repairing the railroad should not yet be linked to a decision this issue. Given the unavailability of extra food, the exchange of crossties for food is to be rejected.”

6) Bukhara’s harvest this year is unprecedented, the price of grain is falling.

7) The Afghan Embassy is closely associated with all of the Russophobe elements, directs the basmach movement and corrupts the Bukharan Government with bribes. The ambassador appointed to Khiva, General Abdul-Dzhabar-Khan, who was rejected by Khiva, continues to live in Bukhara. The Afghan ambassador sought from me a visa for his diplomatic couriers with powers by which diplomatic couriers would accept en route complaints from Afghan nationals and is requesting travel documents for them to travel to the embassy , to investigate cases in which Afghan nationals are arrested and the right of couriers to return home. The Bukharan Government granted this visa. We refused. But it is still a fact that the ambassador is using his couriers for purposes other than mail delivery. Entire batches of Afghans are signing up as citizens; the Afghan ambassador is seeking from the Bukharan Government a joint commission to try Afghan nationals. The Bukharan Government has refused and is sending a note by courier to Kabul requesting that the current Afghan ambassador be recalled.

8) Our army in Bukhara

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is numerically weak, poorly trained and garbed. There are cavalrymen, but no horses or sabers; there is infantry, but no rifles; there are rifles, but no pants. But most important, the army is not supplied with money. There are units that have received no pay since August of last year. The chief of the special department, in his report on 20 April, describes the condition of our troops this way: “They are forced to supply themselves or lose the men and horses among the troops from starvation. The local authorities respond that there are no pulias (money) the public doesn’t give anything without pulias and the center is not sending anything.”

9) On 21 March the Bukhara Cheka conducted a search of the plenipotentiary of the PC of Agriculture Orlov in carriage No. 1297 at Staraia Bukhara station and took from him gold, silver, gems, silk and other items he had purchased in Tashkent with money from the PC of Agriculture and alfalfa brought to Bukhara for sale and purchase. On 9 April the chargé d’affaires Bodrov asked the Bukharan Government to return the valuables to the Russian authorities, but they are still at the Bukhara Cheka. The very fact that an official representative of Russia was searched is typical, … and the delay of the return smells of a crime.

10) The basmachi of Eastern Bukhara are growing stronger and organizing themselves. According to the mission’s information Enver Pasha is operating in an alliance with the Emir of Afghanistan and Bukhara. There is a link between the Afghan Emir and the viceroy of India. In Report No. 2 by the Chief of the Special Department of 12 April we find: “It has been definitely established that weapons and a detachment of 500 Afghan regular troops have been sent to Enver Pasha. Next to be sent are infantry. The towns bordering on Afghanistan and the border itself have been fortified, rearming is under way, as is the replacement of commanders, the repair of roads and fortresses and the mobilization of people and horses. A few days ago the nazir of war came to Imam Sano and promised Enver to dispatch 8,000 regular troops to Bukhara. Our plenipotentiary mission in Kabul is concerned and has been deprived of radio communications. The Afghan authorities’ attitude is ironically indifferent. The mission is asking that Afghans be selected as hostages, that women be replaced and all secret documents be moved from Mazar-i-Sharif to Termez. A cable from the plenipotentiary mission underscores the Afghan government’s connection with Enver.”

11) The detachments of basmachi in the vicinity of Baisun and Shirabad include many Russians. In Daniar’s detachment, the entire machinegun crew consists of Russians.

12) In Baisun, conversions to the Muslim faith have begun among our troops, and the commanders are setting the example.

13) Enver

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is acting through the Council of Aksakals (a clan of elders, revered, aged people with gray beards). The aksakals are headed by Ibragim Bek (a former official of the Emir). and the sacrosanct person Ishan Sultan from Dushanbe, who is popular in Eastern Bukhara. The territory is divided into viloiats, which beys have been charged with governing, and under them are quadrumvirates of Turks for military organization, a zaketchik (tax collector) and a spiritual leader for propaganda and occasions (people’s judge). The number of armed troops according to my information is 3,000, according to military intelligence 5,000, with three artillery pieces. The rifles are primarily Russian, delivered by Ali-Riza’s Bukharan Soviet defectors and others, partly from the Andkhoi khanate, which had at one time been bought from our solders and finally received from Afghanistan. Two old cannons are the Emir’s and one was brought from Afghanistan. Enver is behaving like our revolutionary commanders of 1918: accessible, brave, often in frontline positions, has grown a beard and harshly punishes criminal officials. There have been cases where Enver has paid the population in gold for food. Taxes are coming in well, many are sacrificing in the name of Islam.

14) The basmachi’s slogans: fight the infidels and the jadids (in Arabic, bad people who are new in the everyday sense and have no faith, for whose murder one goes to paradise), fight the dzhuts (Jews), the Aghans, and expel the Russians.

15) The Bukharan revolution exempted the dehkans (peasantry) from the emir’s taxes, which were as high as 40-50 percent, rid them of the high-handed rule of beys and settled the water issue.

16) But in exchange for the benefits of the revolution it saddled the dehkans with the basmachi and a giant state apparatus, which all the scheming elements latched onto, both local and those who came from Russia and from the sovereign autonomous Muslim republics that are part of the Russian federation.

17) One military Nazaret [?] harbors 1,200 crooks for several hundred utterly incapable active units.

18) The current Bukhara authorities make up a dreadful picture: total impotence, ignorance, lying and cowardice. Certain comrades have become so covered with mud in this swamp that a strong and sharp weapon is needed to clean them off.

19) The Bukhara CEC in the person of Usman Khodzhaev was presented to Enver. Usman Khodzhaev told Enver and the Afghans that he is “the true Bukhara CEC, expressing the will of the people, but his arms and legs are tied by the Russians and only for that reason he cannot express his will. Usman was given tsarist honors in Mazar-i-Sharif. The Council

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of People’s Nazirs [Commissars] was also presented to Enver by the vice-chairman of the Council of People’s Nazirs and nazir of war Arifov. At one time an opulent caravan with currency and goods was sent with Rafik to Usman for transfer to the basmach chieftains. Our units arrested Rafik and thus the caravan did not fall into Usman’s hands. A portion of the valuables is still in Termez and is being plundered by representatives of the Bukharan Government. Rafik is currently the nazir of foreign affairs. Faizulla says that if Rafik and the caravan had reached Usman, Usman would not have defected to the basmachi. We think, on the contrary, that Rafik as well would have been there and the basmachi would have had more means for their objective. Usman’s family even now lives in Staraia Bukhara, enjoying all kinds of attention and protection.

20) You can judge about the communist party in Bukhara by the general secretary Karimov (Politburo, chairman of the Supreme Party Court and chairman of the Bukhara Cheka). This comrade is as far from communism as the earth is from the sun. With his own bare hands he thrashes an arrested bach (a boy engaged in prostitution) during an interrogation, and with his own bare hands he whips a delinquent militiaman. And this is done by the best of the Bukhara communists, you can imagine all the others, especially in the viloiats, the tumans [districts] and the settlements. It will not be an exaggeration to say that, except for five or ten comrades, Bukhara has no communists as we understand the term. Therefore the sore question of a right, a center and a left is simply a fantasy on our comrades’ part.

21) When I asked Karimov whether the ACEC had established oversight of the nazirs, he replied: “What is there to oversee, all of them with the exception (of Faizulla) should be shot.”

22) Thee chairman of the Baisun Revolutionary Committee Samatdan Davliatov, whom Karimov called his best comrade, showed utter ignorance in a conversation with me; according to a complaint from Chirkunov of the Termez fortified district, who was traveling with Davliatov to Bukhara, Davliatov attempted en route to flee to the basmachi and only Chirkunov’s threat with a weapon stopped Davliatov’s flight.

23) Bukharan money is being spent on supporting the gigantic state apparatus, on nurturing parasites, is going into the pockets of nazirs and Soviet office workers, while everything is borrowed from the populace in the form of taxes and requisitions.

24) We gave birth to the basmachi by putting the Bukharan people in the hands of a dishonest band of schemers (see item 16) who rely on our bayonets.

25) The basmachi have no economic slogans, because there is no economic reason 

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for the basmachi. The basmachi have nothing whatsoever in common with our peasant uprisings, who fought against allotments. Bukhara will pay a fair in-kind tax without a murmur. This basmach movement is the creation of the Bukhara counterrevolution of the Emir, the beys, the bais, the clergy and is directed from people from Turkey headed by Enver, Afghans and ultimately by England. The participation of dehkans in the basmach movement is not a popular uprising caused by some economic factors, but is a protest, not against the essence of Soviet rule, which completely satisfies the dehkans, but against Soviet bureaucrats. Due influence, of course, is coming from clerical preaching, as well as a desire to get an opportunity for peaceful labor, which is now being disrupted by the basmachi, and according to the preaching by the clergy, the basmachi will be destroyed when the Russians leave with the infidels, the jadids, dzhuts and Iranians.

26) Moscow pushes its directives for Bukhara through a very complex, collective apparatus that is united by a common will. Independently represented here are Sokolov, Peters, the revolutionary council, missions of the PCs and other major and minor plenipotentiaries. Personally all the comrades are nice and we have no disagreements, but it becomes necessary to reach agreement on each question on the basis of a comradely discussion, to lay out a line and to point out that conditions that require rapid decision-making are unhelpful.

27) Faizulla Khodzhaev and Sokolov traveled to the area of Bukhara Viloiat to put out propaganda and today Cde. Ordzhonikidze reported to me that Faizulla and Sokolov noticed  a strengthening of the basmach movement in areas populated by them and have asked for a reinforcement of 300 horsemen.

28) Today the group commander informed me that he is removing the posts in the Termez-Kerki area and the units are deploying to Kalif and Kerki, and we have left the Basiaga post bordering the Andkhoi Khanate. The commander plans to send our kurmers [?] along the route from Karshi to Baisun. The solution to the situation: 1. Convert the plenipotentiary mission from a diplomatic body to a diplomatic-political body that actually governs Bukhara; 2. To this end, make up a body of the RKP CC in Bukhara out of the Plenipotentiary Representative and chairman of the Council of People’s Nazirs Faizulla Khodzhaev, to which all of Bukhara’s institutions and Russian institutions in Bukhara, without exception, would be subordinate. 3. The duumvirate would be supported by the mission’s staff; all of Moscow’s directives would go through the mission. 4. The installation of the duumvirate would be implemented in the name of Bukharan authorities and monitored by the mission’s staff. 5. A purge of the party, a purge of the institutions. All

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appointments would be made by the duumvirate. 6. The issuance of money would be controlled by the duumvirate. 7. Faizulla Khodzhaev should simply execute the wishes of the RKP CC and discard any superstition whatsoever <<Translator: Russian word for “superstition” – “suevernost” - may be a misprint; instead, the word “suverennost” – “sovereignty” – may be meant here.>> . 8. Deliver a passport to the Afghan Ambassador in Bukhara at the conclusion of the implementation of these measures, observing the outward etiquette of sovereignty, we will be able to reduce the Bukhara state apparatus to a minimum, expel everything unfit from it, purge the party, do away with the basmachi and afford dehkans an opportunity for peaceful labor. Our base until now, we have relied on groups that do not represent anyone. Now we must rely on the dull, backward, nonparty mass of dehkans without any intermediaries. Select from the so-called revolutionaries only people of action.

Bukhara. 6 May.

Kozhevnikov.