Доклад о положении в Туркестане в ЦК РКП Султанова The current status of affairs in Turkestan. Report by Sultanov to the CC RKP

Translation

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Turkestan 125/2 (15)

Incoming Ts…No. 1351/21 March 1922

24 March to comrade Molotov 798d

Central Committee Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

<<Stamp:  Turkestan CC RKP Bolsheviks Incoming 10800 24 March Outgoing 192_>>

…

The current status of affairs in Turkestan.

Turkestan’s prerevolutionary past.

I.

In the past, Turkestan lived its own life under its peculiar conditions, the constrained legacy of the ancient past and patriarchy.

Russia, having conquered Turkestan with its old regime, did not attempt to rouse the mass of native peoples.  On the contrary, the autocracy effectively took into account the great advantage in exploiting native backwardness so to secure this country once and for all for itself.  And this is literally exhausting all forms of activities of the old Turkestan government. 

In this way, a Russian element capable of colonizing the territory gathered together in Turkestan.  This outside contingent was taken with the notion of a privileged position in the territory, as sentries of the Russian government in the East.  Mistrust was constantly excited and swelled up toward the aborigines of the country, the eternal fear that they would abandon the obligatory obedience. 

It is perfectly natural that in the most conscious element of native society, as a counterweight to this, there grew a sense of national awareness and of ill-defined protest against the yoke of the conquerors, the enslavers of Turkestan.

This ill-defined struggle of views dug a deep chasm [preventing] the rapprochement of the two peoples and completely overshadowed the emancipatory revolutionary workers’ movement in the territory.

So it is becoming apparent that the workers’ movement and revolution had not touched Turkestan after five years.

This is also explained by the fact that in a territory completely devoid of mills, factories, industrial centers with workers’ districts, no illegal underground literature was distributed at all, and there were no worker-revolutionaries.

A small group of workers from a Tashkent workshop could never exert influence on all of Turkestan.

Thus, the October coup pushed Turkestan into the arena of world revolution unprepared, with vestiges of the old attitudes.

The first period of revolution in Turkestan.

II.

And this was immediately and sharply reflected in the process of the Turkestan revolution.  From the outset Turkestan was cutoff from the Red Center, from the fount of fresh revolutionary forces, from the primary source of revolution.

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The absence of old genuine revolutionaries crowned by the experience of revolutionary leadership, pushed Russian party workers holding the old Turkestan outlook, and native young progressives into the arena of revolutionary struggle.  The general misunderstanding between them, the break between the two elements—Russian and native—and the undeniable lack of consciousness and preparation of the native and Russian laborers, all this began to produce bloody incidents that lay heavily on Turkestan like a nightmare.  The sadness of the Kokand autonomous region, a tragedy where a river of blood was spilled, Kolesov’s marauding advance on Bukhara, initiated the disgrace of Turkestan—the formation of the Fergana front—and ceaselessly followed one upon the other.   

Left to itself alone, having contact with the center only by means of radio-telegraph, revolutionary Turkestan harnessed all its strength to defend Soviet power on its own.  All other revolutionary tasks in the sphere of soviet construction receded into the background.  And even that work was impossible.  This reached comic proportions when, for example, it was necessary to search for a printed copy of comrade Bukharin’s “Communist Program” in the press.

Enclosed within itself, surrounded on all sides by battle fronts—Orenburg, Ashkhabad, Semirechensk, and facing its own internal front in Fergana—revolutionary Turkestan stood firmly on the platform of Soviet power and even during the harsh adversity of the civil war experience it did not waver, it did not lay down its red flag.  In this regard, without any doubt, Turkestan can fully compare to the Red Center.  

The work of the Turkkomissia [Turkestan Commission] in Turkestan.

III.

Following the liquidation of the Orenburg Front, at the end of 1919, the center comes to the aid of Turkestan in light of its extreme backwardness and the confusion of its soviet apparatus, and dispatches for the closest leadership of central party workers for Turkestan affairs, the Turkestan Commission.

The laboring masses in Turkestan had long awaited this fraternal revolutionary aid from the Soviet leadership.  It is completely understandable that the arrival of the Turkestan Commission and central workers is greeted loudly.  The laborers of Turkestan are placing all their hopes on the Turkestan Commission for a future life according to the platform of soviet construction.  New forms of work are anticipated with impatience, the desire burns to be inspired by the fresh influx of genuine revolutionary forces.

Together with the Turkestan Commission staff, central party workers arrive, known by the Turkestan name “the centrists,” they assume leadership of the party   

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organizations ruling Turkestan.  Thus, all soviet work from here on passes through the crucible of the Turkestan Commission. 

In Turkestan a new phase of revolutionary work begins:  leadership from the center.

All the desires of the Turkestan Commission were exclusively directed to regularizing the soviet apparatus and inculcating the idea of communism in the laboring masses of Turkestan.

It is terribly unfortunate, however, that with the first steps of high-level, responsible work, the central leaders who arrived in Turkestan immediately ran up against the wall of special conditions of Turkestan life.  The revolutionary experience which guided them in central Russia was completely inappropriate in Turkestan, and even had a ruinous affect on revolutionary progress in the East.

A complete lack of familiarity with the situation of the country, with the psychology of the local population, with the conditions of local life, of the life of the East, the lack of linguistic knowledge, of the daily life of the masses, all this prevented the leaders from independently and sensibly dealing with the chaos of the present revolutionary reality. 

Having already received an incorrect warning from the center that the evil of Turkestan’s backwardness in Soviet work rests, primarily, on the colonial and nationalist tendencies of the Turkestan laboring intelligentsia, the Turkestan commission immediately disassociates itself from the advanced revolutionary forces of the indigenous laboring masses on its arrival in Turkestan.  They completely ignore this element of workers.  But having lost the natural connection between these workers and the broad masses of laborers, the Turkestan Commission remains completely divorced from them.  This is the cause of the fruitlessness and undoing of any beneficial start to soviet construction in the country.

Recognizing the complete lack of success of its work among the laborers of Turkestan, the Turkestan Commission placed all the blame solely on the obstacles that the colonizers and nationalists of the territory supposedly use to impede it.  Thus, the complete isolation of those who, in the opinion of the Turkestan commission, can exert a harmful influence on the indigenous laboring masses.

A new revolutionary era is opening in Turkestan, that of persecuting and annihilating the colonizers and nationalist.  And the persecutions are quite pointless.  In this regard, the Turkestan Commission is reaching comic, if not terrible, proportions.  Anyone may be placed in the category of colonizer or nationalist.  The poor indigenous peasant who served at some time or other as a cook or coachman to a police official, the homeless former Russian soldier—a party member—who fifteen years ago had the misfortune to work for three months as a junior policeman, the railroad worker who took part in the Turkestan revolution      

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but who, under the old regime, guarded railroad freight, the translator who earned a crust of bread thanks to knowledge of a foreign language, and the central party worker who disagrees with the political activity of the Turkestan Commission etc.  Under these two terms (colonialism and nationalism) is placed any, even the pettiest, malfeasance in office.  In the best case, [the penalty is] arrest and deportation from Turkestan; in the worst case, confinement in a concentration camp.  But exile itself is not the only horror of these persecutions.  The fact of the matter is that real Turkestan laborers are accused of being colonizers and nationalist, while the actual colonizers and nationalists avoid these traps.  The horror is that after any citizen of the Turkestan republic is declared [guilty] of one these crimes, often due to false denunciation on the basis of information given in personal testimony without a trial and investigation, he is arrested (investigation and trial are not practiced here) taken to municipal jail, and then, when after a few months they remember him, transported to the Samara gubernia Cheka.      

All Turkestan is proclaimed under siege by colonizers and nationalists.  No one, falsely denounced as a colonizer or nationalist, is immune from being arrested tomorrow and without any hearing of the case being shamefully expelled from the territory. Sickening horrors are taking place that really belong to the inquisition of the Middle Ages.  Particularly ferocious in this regard is Turkestan Commission member, comrade Safarov.  In this he has reached the pathological symptoms of a psychosis.     

Factual materials in the archive of the Turkestan Cheka confirm all this, because the majority of deportations on the basis of the vices indicated were carried out by this organ. 

Thus, thousands of the poorest laboring Russians and native peoples who had no connection to colonialism and nationalism ended up among the contingent of colonizers and nationalists, like low ranking policemen, railroad workers, party workers etc.  Among the unfortunate native-colonizers (exiles like the petty former policeman) was an elderly man more than 60 years old.

If to the many exiles to central Russia such a measure of punishment seemed like an unattainable dream, like being sent home to their old birthplace (it reached comic proportions, there were cases when, having lost hope of getting out of the Turkestan republic, a worker or other soviet official would proclaim himself a former low-level police official and under the laws for colonizers was sent off to Russia.  The opposite also occurred.  On the basis of a false denunciation a well-known person was accused of having earlier worked for the police and also

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without a hearing was sent to Samara gubernia), then to the unfortunate natives, unaccustomed to the severe Russian climate and black bread, exile to Samara gubernia was like the lash of Nicholas II’s Siberia.  It was not surprising, then, that some of the elderly died on the way.  Besides this, this measure—struggle with colonizing and nationalist tendencies in Turkestan—cannot bear up under any criticism.  It is simply shooting sparrows with cannon. 

The Turkestan Commission completely distorted the meaning of colonizers and nationalists.  By colonialism and nationalism must be understood the economic superiority over the local laborers of the former state element—outsiders from the central gubernias, genuine colonizers—kulaks awarded land by the old government at the expense of the indigenous masses.  To the kulak-colonizers can be ascribed the local native bloodsucking-nationalist-beys, manapy [feudal lords], aksakaly [elders].  In this regard, the addenda to comrade Stalin’s theses on the national question in Pravda of 11 March in the name of the Turkestan delegation attending the 10^th Congress of the RKP definitely identifies just who is the internal enemy of Turkestan.  But there is no mention in these addenda whatsoever of the Russian worker, the native intelligentsia, the former petty policeman, former local officials etc. against whom the Turkestan Commission carries out its persecution.  The colonizing and nationalist tendencies that the Turkestan Commission is punishing in Turkestan are already practically nonexistent.  The 1917 coup immediately destroyed the barrier between the laboring Russian and the native masses.  People became brothers.  And if at times one observes the by-gone crisis of the disease, of the faint impulse and inclination to colonialism and nationalism, then one needs to fight them not with the methods of the old regime—the Cheka and the Special Department—but by the beneficial methods on which we now build our soviet construction—widespread agitation, propaganda, the holding of lectures, meetings etc.  It is necessary to enlighten the consciousness of the laboring Russian and native masses, and not to punish them for the sins of the old regime.          

What, ultimately, was the result of the Turkestan Commission’s persecutions?  Apart from causing harm, nothing.  Only what remained of the genuine representatives of the indigenous worker and the Russian party intelligentsia, those who had worked underground during the old regime, were tossed out of Turkestan.  They abandoned the territory, those who were forced to and those who simply did not want to live under the black yoke of colonialism and nationalism.  Many schools for the native peoples remained empty.  In addition, the old factory owner, the kulak-colonizer, the bey, the nationalist feudal lord, the former conquerors of Turkestan, all are sitting in their places calmly and without a worry. 

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The failure to understand the workers of the territory, the handing out of reprimands left and right for colonialism and nationalism resulted in the Turkestan Commission attracting to itself the local adventurist element, with its depraved past and total lack of trust in the native laboring masses.  These people make themselves useful to the Turkestan Commission, while behind its back they feather their own nests.   

The Turkestan commission sees colonialists and nationalists everywhere, just like the red flag to the old bourgeoisie.  It extended its powerful hand into the Turkestan TsIK, the Sovnarkom, and the other central organizations of the Turkestan republic, searching for the faint specter of colonialism and nationalism.  The established order declared the worthless nationalists and deported from Turkestan abroad and the servile were put in their place.  Even the highest courts of the Soviet Federated Republic danced to the tune of the Turkestan commission.

But the Turkestan commission did not deprive the republics, Khorezm and Bukhara, of its competent leadership.  Through its representatives it carried out the same policy as in the Turkestan republic.  In the end, in the Khorezm republic a fratricidal war broke out between Turkmen and Uzbeks, and even now Bukhara wants nothing of the capable leadership of the Turkestan Commission.

The policy enacted by the Turkestan Commission had characteristic results that manifested themselves in the terrible scourge of Turkestan, the disgrace of the revolution in the East—the Fergana front.

The Fergana front.

IV.

The incalculable harm the Fergana front carries for the Turkestan republic in general, and the course of the revolution in the East in particular, has been known for a long time.  The devastation of the best and largest cotton and seed-oil pressing plants along with hundreds of thousands of puds of cotton, the destruction of all industry in the richest oblasts of the territory, the terrorizing of the entire population of Fergana through robbery and murder, the stagnation of all activity in these oblasts, the moral oppression of all Turkestan.

Typically, starting long before the arrival of the Turkestan Commission, the Fergana front was almost completely liquidated in March and April of last year.  The leaders of the most powerful gangs—Madamin, Irgash, Kur-Shirmati, and others—switched over to the side of Soviet power.  It seemed that the front would be totally liquidated.  However, thanks once again to the inept tactics of the representatives of the center, it is beginning to flare up anew in even larger dimensions, even involving the gangs of the emirs and beks.  

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The representatives of the center view the Fergana front completely incorrectly as a front of the Basmachi, i.e. of thieves and robbers.  One must look at it with dispassionate eyes, because if the Basmachi were only robbers, then they, of course, would have been handed over to red forces by the laboring native masses themselves.  As the experience of this war shows, the native population holds a different view otherwise it would not support the Basmachi with food supplies, would not hide and help them with support by infusing the ranks of the gangs with reinforcements.  This leads to the conclusion that the Basmachi in the eyes of Fergana are not robbers, but are known as defenders of the interests of the laboring indigenous masses.  Such a view is advanced by the Basmachi themselves in their own proclamations that our red forces have found after the withdrawal of the Basmachi.  In appealing to the population in these proclamations, the Basmachi say, [“]We are not Basmachi as they label us, but sincere revolutionaries.  Only we can introduce genuine Soviet power among the laborers of Turkestan.[”]

The impossibility of crushing the Fergana front is mainly because the Basmachi are conducting a partisan war.  They may suddenly appear in the bright of day in the center of the city, or in a flash dissolve undetected among the peaceful population while concealing their weapons.

But there are reasons for the combustibility of this front.

Our red forces, the commanders of which are unfamiliar with local conditions of life, often provide the cause of the great discontent among the laboring native masses.

Illegal requisitions, the seizure of various items, disrespect toward local rites and customs, the unsuitable economic conditions, turn the laborers away from the arriving red forces, and thereby only undermine the trust and prestige of Soviet power.  For example, the typical collection of materials by the special commission of the department of supply of the Turkestan front concerning requisitions, and the seizures of different items from the native laboring masses by the special Ablyk detachment on the Ablyk front (part of the Fergana front 90 versts from Tashkent).   

The improper conduct of some central representatives on the Fergana front is explained simply by the narrow nationalist point of view.  So, for example, during a Basmachi attack, the defense of Russian cities is carried out while the rich native city with a population several times greater than the Russian is left helpless at the mercy of the Basmachi.  Thus, the inept command itself delivers the native laborers into the hands of the Basmachi.  This necessitates a fraternity with the Basmachi who are not even sympathetic to them, because of the threat that, in the worst case, during an attack they will be crushed by them.

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The Fergana Special Department also plays a large role in intensifying the Fergana front.   On the pretext of [being] a Basmachi, or of belonging or sympathizing with their movement, anyone from the laboring population of Fergana indiscriminately, right or wrong, at any time day or night, is subject to search and arrest; detention sites are full of those arrested on the suspicion of [being] a Basmachi.  Without any trial or investigation they deport hundreds of peaceful indigenous laborers from Fergana under the pretext of being a suspicious element close to the Basmachi.  In this way, the very same ruinous tragedy as in the persecution of colonizers and nationalists is repeated here.

The laborers of Fergana are forever in a panic in the face of arrests and searches.  All of which only encourages the laborers to turn to the Basmachi.  And, extraordinarily, there are frequent instances when a laborer who was peaceful yesterday, who sympathized with Soviet power, after his arrest, search, or deportation, switches sides to the Basmachi.  A typical case, the revolutionary, not unknown in Turkestan, Sultanbek Takhtabekov, a member of the 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th Turkestan TsIK sessions went over to the Basmachi.  It is noteworthy that Takhtabekov went over to the Basmachi.  He went after the Turkestan Commission wanted to arrest him as a nationalist.  Takhtabekov was an active participant against the Basmachi gangs.  After one battle with them, he was captured and was sentenced to be shot by the Basmachi.  By some miracle, he survived the shooting, recovered from serious wounds, and once again began to work in the Turkestan TsIK.  A number of Muslim party workers left along with Takhtabekov. 

The continued existence of the Fergana front is very characteristic of Turkestan life.  It is also important that the Turkestan Commission cannot now grasp that the way its policies are implemented on this front cannot liquidate the front.

In addition, the liquidation of the Fergana front is only possible bloodlessly, through the mediation of the native laboring intelligentsia which the Turkestan Commission ignores and drives from the territory.

The central representatives have not introduced anything new, vital, or fruitful in the sphere of the internal improvement and economic situation of the country.  The cotton question remained unresolved, the country is in extreme need of grain deliveries, but the agricultural issue remained a question hanging in the air and the Turkestan commission has disappeared in the intricate labyrinth of its resolution.

The conduct of the policy of the central representative of the Turkestan Commission in regard to Bukhara and Khorezm republics has not gone far beyond those methods that are employed in the Turkestan republic.  Also at the helm are 

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those from the center who are completely unfamiliar with the daily conditions of the countries of the East, and are ignored by the local party workers who everywhere evince distrust of the work of the central organs etc.  This gives rise to a mass of incidents, delays in party work, the renewal of the Uzbek-Turkmen war, and in general all that undermines the prestige of Soviet power and does not make possible the smooth development of the revolution in the East.

As a result, the dictatorial policy enacted by the representatives of the Turkestan Commission in Turkestan not only has not eliminated the Fergana front, on the contrary, the front is expanding,  as observed in the attacks on the cities of Samarkand oblast—Khodzhent and Samarkand.  According to rumors, a Basmachi center is being organized in Chinese Kashgar.

Party work is also not being conducted among the indigenous laboring masses of Turkestan.

So it is quite understandable that while before the arrival of the Turkestan Commission whole delegations were dispatched to the center on the matter of requesting a special instructor for soviet work in Turkestan, now the request is all the stronger, from both individual representative of the Turkestan republic and in the name of the central organs of Bukhara and Khorezm republics, for the recall of the Turkestan commission to the center.

Because the laboring native masses are not conscious, the administration of the Turkestan Commission reminds one of the old regime.  This conceals from them the central Soviet proletarian power.  All this only leads to the prevention of a feeling of consciousness and respect for proletarian Soviet power.  It is much more productive when the central representatives are not organized in a separate legal independent unit, [but] are created by the central organs of the Turkestan republic and made up only of competent old party workers in the culture of soviet construction of Turkestan.

In conclusion, a few positions on the state of affairs in Turkestan; we cannot avoid expressing some wishes the realization of which at the present time in Turkestan, in our opinion, are quite necessary and are dictated by the situation.

Wishes.

V.

1.  The immediate recall of the Turkestan Commission from Turkestan in accord with the above enumerated reasons.

2.  The immediate ending of all the horrors in regard to colonizers and nationalists, so-called, by the Turkestan commission.  All deportations from the territory to cease and to be conducted only through the Turkestan TsIK with a preliminary and thorough investigation and hearing of the case in court.

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3.  To organize immediately a special commission from the laborers of party representatives of Turkestan for the systematic struggle with kulak-colonizers, beys, manaps, aksakals.  To arrange through this commission the correct deportation from the territory of this harmful element.

4.  To return at once all victims of the Turkestan Commission’s arbitrariness, who were exiled from Turkestan’s borders without any judicial hearing, except the former higher administration, gendarmes, and kulak-colonizers.  To particularly expedite this relative to the unfortunate natives deported as colonizers from Samara guberniia.

5.  The complete liquidation of the antagonism, exaggerated by the Turkestan Commission, between Russian laborers and the native masses on the grounds of colonization and nationalism by means of widespread propaganda, the press, meetings etc.  For vital and model work employ the temporary short-term dispatch of Turkestan, Russian, and native party workers for work in the center so that they can completely free themselves from any shadow of reproach for the colonizing and nationalist deviation.

6.  To acknowledge as unproductive the sending of central representatives to Turkestan who are unfamiliar with the language, daily life, and conditions of life in the East.

7.  To remove completely the burden of disgrace from the laboring Russian and native intelligentsia of Turkestan and to enlist them in soviet construction on an equal footing with the centralists who are holding responsible posts here.

8.  To create special communist universities of the East and middle schools in Turkestan to prepare a special cadre of party workers to organize soviet construction and to carry out the revolution in the East.  To take as a model for the organization of the communist university the recently opened communist university in Moscow.

9.  To create as soon as possible an extraordinary commission in the Turkestan Republic consisting of party workers whom it itself names, and who are on an equal footing with the aforesaid members and representatives from the center.  This commission must immediately get down to liquidating the Fergana front by purely non-bloody means on the grounds of arousing the consciousness of the broad poor laboring masses of Fergana, settling prior incidents, and smoothing out the unevenness created by the economic conditions.

Representatives of the center who enter this commission will see for themselves how wrong was the policy enacted by the Turkestan commission on the Fergana front.

10.  To organize under units of red forces who are active on 

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the Turkestan fronts special committees from local native party forces.  These committees in the localities occupied by red army units will stand as mediators between the red army and the native laboring masses and, as such, will protect the red army forces unfamiliar with the language, daily life, psychology, and life style of the native population of Turkestan from various missteps and large errors which might place a stain on the great name of the Red Army that defends the interests of the poorest laboring masses and creates the revolution in the East.

12 March 1921.

Moscow

Former member of the Turkestan TsIK, currently responsible secretary of the Khorezm Plenipotentiary Representative of the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic of the RSFSR, Sultanov

Former military commissar for military-economic supply of the Turkestan Front and responsible assistant to the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic of the RSFSR

Gr. Albreev.