Письмо С. Ходжанова Сталину о результатах размежевания Туркестана Letter from S. Hodzhanov to Stalin about results of delimitation of Turkestan

Translation

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<<Stamp:  File No…./2 Box No. 45>>

Comrade Stalin.

<<Stamp:  Bureau of the Secretariat CC RKP 18 October 1924 Received No. 8530/s>>

The question of Central Asian boundary demarcation is completed.

The resolutions adopted by the Politburo do not satisfy me.

The Kirghiz wanted their center to be Tashkent, but it is reserved for Uzbekistan.

We particularly insisted on including in the Kirghiz Republic the Chirchik valley (a culturally Kirghiz raion) and Golodnaya Steppe (Mirzaul) uezd, but did not succeed.  Only Irdzhar and Slavian volosts are reserved for Kirghizia.

The only thing Kirghizia obtained is Shurakhan uezd.

Kirghizia was not allowed to participate in the economic amalgamation of Central Asia.

The distribution of the funds and capital of Turkestan is being done for the benefit of the Uzbeks.

In general and on the whole Kirghiz interests were ignored.  Now, in relation to Kirghizia itself. 

I consider:

1)  No matter how it is calculated, it turns out than in Kirghizia the European population numerically predominates (54% Russian, 46% Kirghiz);

2)  The staff of the RKP in Kirghizia is 60% Kirghiz (568 people).  Among these communists there is barely a smattering of the Kirghiz language. 

3)  The existing party organizations are falling to pieces in their Kirghiz sections under the pressure of endless squabbles and cliquishness at the top.

4)  The Soviet apparatus from top to bottom is in the clutches of elements under feudal-patriarchal influence;

5)  The leading groups of European communists foster

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and make use of all possible personal and clan communist cliques;

6)  The unification of the two Kirghiz oblasts in Turkestan, judging by the aspirations of the leading cadres of Kirghizia, will be used to deepen the intrigues and feuds in Kirghizia between responsible workers;

7) Party life in Kirghizia is ruled by a “leftist” mood that rests on arbitrary, unprincipled elements who in the interests of personal cliques are promoted by individual leaders.

8)  Everywhere all the aggrieved elements in Kirghizia are currently conducting work to demoralize the party, demagogically covering themselves with internationalism, intransigence toward the Alash Horde, and slogans of class stratification in the aul etc.    

The economic situation of Kirghizia is sufficiently known to you.  I will say only that it is characterized by total stagnation in the development of productive forces through an uneconomical pumping out of livestock resources by a variety of economic organs whose actions arise from an interest in exploiting the aul by private-capitalist methods, and who are not bound to any leadership.  

Against the background of the impoverishment of the masses, property differentiation among the Kirghiz population has achieved a colossal degree of development.  Among the Kirghiz, unemployment is not calculated in the tens, but in the hundreds of thousands (the actual pauperization of the mass).  Not without cause has horse thieving and baramta spread throughout Kirghizia at the present time.[1] 

According to official figures from Semipalatinsk gubernia, considered safe from famine and similar catastrophes,

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72% of the Kirghiz population has less than 5 head of cattle per farm.  This is a monstrously hungry norm.

I thought that the demarcation of national boundaries in Central Asia would be a turning point in the life of Kirghizia.  But this, in fact, is not happening.  I am of the opinion that the CC is not devoting sufficient attention to the situation in Kirghizia, which is truly catastrophic.

Still, the current moment is singularly auspicious, when decisive measures adopted by the CC might improve the situation in Kirghizia, to create among the masses of the Kirghiz population a move in the direction of struggle to improve its situation, to lay the basis for the formation among the Kirghiz of a party and laborers’ soviets.

But the state of affairs in Kirghizia convinces me that there are no forces there that might guarantee this type of break.  In order to halt the further disintegration of party and soviet cadres in Kirghizia, and to improve the stagnant atmosphere it is necessary above all to establish a strict party regime under the direct leadership of the CC RKP itself.  The implementation of this type of extraordinary measures, avoiding any apprehensions on account of the reaction from below is, at the same time, the only exit from the impasse that has been created.

In this regard we will place before the CC the following proposals:

1)  To dismiss the Kirghiz oblast committee and to create a Temporary Bureau of the CC RKP for one year, assigning it the task of completing the construction of the party and to establish its organizations in Kirghizia.

2)  To transfer, as soon as possible, the center of the Kirghiz republic to the city of Chimkent and, in relation to the form of administration, to consider it necessary to divide the territory of the Kirghiz republic into three

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administrative-economic oblasts:  east, west, and south.

3)  To create an economic center for the organization of cattle-rearing and the regulation of the market for livestock products.

4)  To dispatch a directive to the RKP organizations in Kirghizia on the pressing tasks of party and soviet construction in Kirghizia in connection with the addition to it of the Turkestan oblasts.

In this letter are included all written documents concerning my proposals.  I strongly request that you familiarize yourself with them. 

Comrade Stalin, let me assure you that the goal of this letter is not to complain about anyone whatsoever, but simply to acquaint you with the situation into which Kirghizia is heading.

I am far from any sort of deviationist disposition, but elements that squabble pointlessly, political intriguers, and endless pandering to clan interests have eaten too far into our Kirghiz party environment such that further tolerance of this condition of unusual independence will replace party principles with feudal-patriarchal privileges and influence.    

Comrade Stalin, I would also hope that the CC, at the cost of whatever victims, would ensure a healthy atmosphere for creative practical work.

S. Khodzhanov (Khodzhanov)

P.S. This point of view is shared by any number of comrades from Kirghizia.  I would request that you allow me to meet with you personally.  The attached materials have not been thoroughly edited.

S. Khodzhanov (Khodzhanov)

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Comrade___

I am submitting the draft of a letter of the CC RKP(b) to the RKP Organization of Kirghizia, and concrete proposals of the Delegation of the Kirghiz Turkestan oblasts.

Explanations and motives we will state orally.

We request that you allow Khodzhanov, Asfendiarov, and Dzhandosov at the Orgburo session.

 (Khodzhanov)

 (Asfendiarov)

 (Dzhandosov)

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To the RKP(b) Organizations of Kirghizia.

Dear comrades.

In its soviet development, Kirghizia has, up to now, lagged behind other national republics of the Union.  The reason for this, besides the overall conditions of cultural and economic backwardness, has been the division of Kirghiz territory between two republics (Kirghiz SSR and the Turkestan Republic), and the predominance in the Kirghiz SSR of the European population.  The predominance of the European population in the Kirghiz SSR is not a result of a healthy nucleus of industrial proletariat and the masses, it is made up of the resettled population the chief group of which is the prosperous, established and Cossack population.  The adjoining of the two Kirghiz oblasts of Turkestan to the Kirghiz SSR is eliminating these factors, laying the basis for the ultimate constitution of Kirghiz state territory; before the Communist Party and Soviet Government in Kirghizia stands the task of the concrete realization of Kirghiz national-cultural and economic development by means of a universal attraction of the broad laboring masses of Kirghizia to party and soviet construction on the basis of the creation of the National Kirghiz Soviet Republic.     

The fulfillment of these difficult tasks must proceed from a strict accounting of the existing peculiarities of the objective situation in Kirghizia.  The fundamental elements of these peculiarities are an exceptionally broad territory with a sparse population, economically isolated centers that are located at its opposite extremes, the absence of industrial and urban centers with a Kirghiz population, the weak development of local markets, and the absence of internal means of communication.  Kirghiz farms represent backward, unstable, transitional forms, from nomadic cattle rearing to sedentary cultivation.  There is acute property inequality within the Kirghiz population, an unavoidable result of the clan system that is reinforced by the drawing of natural forms of economy into the sphere of commodity-monetary exchange.   

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The rule of feudal-patriarchal relations among the Kirghiz is also one of the elements that characterize the contemporary situation in Kirghizia.  One of the biggest factors in the development of Kirghizia is the presence of a large, economically powerful group of Europeans who have enveloped Kirghiz territory with a ring of farming settlements, and who are forcing out the land-cultivating, pastoral-cattle-rearing Kirghiz economy.

The entire situation is complicated by the fact that as a result of oppression on the land, exploitation by usurious commercial capital, and the fiscal policy of tsarism, the Kirghiz population bears the heavy burden of mass poverty.  The civil war and natural disasters of 1917-21 prevented the Kirghiz masses not only from restoring the economy, but further intensified its collapse, causing the Kirghiz to abandon their homes chaotically and on a large-scale.  

The current condition of the Kirghiz economy must be deemed a catastrophe due to the complete stagnation in the development of productive forces and equally in the social life of the broad Kirghiz laboring masses.

Against the background of economic collapse, elements of feudal-patriarchal violence and arbitrariness are being reborn and are overwhelming the soviet apparatus from top to bottom.  The soviet apparatus has yet to reach the aul in the sense of serving its daily needs, on the contrary, in its lower cells complete arbitrariness and bribery reign.  Because of the absence of a sufficiently strong proletarian base, the party organizations in Kirghizia are weak and the Kirghiz constitute an insignificant minority in them, moreover the staff of the latter is dominated by representatives of the Kirghiz national intelligentsia.  On the whole, the task of constructing the party itself is still not completed.

The situation in Kirghizia cannot be allowed to continue because it will prepare the soil for the development of anti-Soviet nationalist agitation and dissatisfaction among the broad strata of the Kirghiz peasant population.  Therefore, the CC RKP(b) assigns the party organization of Kirghizia the task of achieving a decisive break in the work of all organs of Soviet power, of practically achieving an improvement in the situation of the laboring Kirghiz masses on the basis of ensuring for the Kirghiz laboring elements the possibility of genuinely

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enjoying all the achievements of Soviet power in the sphere of national liberation and economic rebirth.  There must be created, by a whole series of practical measures, a movement of the masses of the Kirghiz population toward economic and cultural-political independence, to an active social life in the struggle for improving their situation.

Among the measures of fundamental significance must be:  a marketing organization, primarily for livestock products, resolution of the land question and elimination of the feudal-patriarchal privileges of violence and exploitation that rule the population and that place the aul poor in a situation of serf-like dependence and lawlessness.  As practical measures it is proposed:

1.  The basic territorial and cultural base of the Kirghiz SSR must be the southern oblasts (Syr-Daryn and Dzhetysui) that are of predominately Kirghiz population with more favorable conditions of economic development.

In accord with this, it is necessary to concentrate the center of gravity of party and soviet construction in these regions with an immediate transfer there of the central institutions of the Kirghiz SSR.

2.  The land-economic policy in the Kirghiz SSR must facilitate the further development of the emerging tendencies of the Kirghiz population to change over to stable forms of cultivation and to create land societies in place of clan communities.  In order to destroy clan life further, to facilitate the development of the current process of resettlement.  Special attention to be devoted to pastoral-cattle-rearing regions, increasing through land regulation areas of pasture and hay growing necessary for the nomadic economy.  The conduct of wholesale land regulation underway in the southern oblasts must be completed as soon as possible.

3.  The economic development of the Kirghiz SSR is tied to the organization of the cattle-rearing economy and industry for processing livestock products.  The position of cattle-rearing farms in complete dependence on the private middleman and purchaser in unorganized and distant markets creates predatory forms of exploitation of these farms while not improving the mode of production.  The fundamental task of drawing cattle-rearing    

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into the sphere of influence of state capitalism in order to regulate the restoration and development of productive forces by organizing, on the one hand, a market and, on the other, bringing state and cooperative capital together directly in the auls by creating a network of state stores in the raions.  State stores must have as their task not only procurement functions, but to conduct commission and credit operations organized by the center for primary cooperative cells.

These measures must take into account organizational work for attracting the most productive of all the types of cooperation in forms that correspond to local conditions so that in future, through the cooperative network, economic-organizational work will be carried out to improve cattle breeds, its insurance, fodder etc.

As a first step in the organizational approach to the cattle-rearing mass, on the basis of experience, to employ the organization of the union of cattle-raisers—“Charva,” drawing into this union middle-peasant elements.  In the raions of nomadic settlements, in the centers of the settled populations, the work for cooperation to emerge from the existing organizations of the Unions “Koshcha” and “Zherla” and to create them where they do not exist.

4.  In the sphere of soviet construction, two tasks stand before the party:  the organization of the judiciary and the strengthening of local (aul) soviets.

Under the existing conditions in Kirghizia, the organization of the judiciary has exceptional significance.  The judiciary in these conditions is one of the driving forces for revolutionizing a backward society, therefore the judicial organs and procuracy must be composed of the most mature and advanced workers.  The struggle with bribery and other crimes must be established as the immediate task of the judiciary. 

To instruct the Kirghiz oblast committee to produce a draft plan for the struggle with the feudal-patriarchal deviation in the soviet apparatus.

A no less important task is the strengthening of local (aul) soviets that have been seized by the representatives of feudal-patriarchal life.  All power to the rank-and-file mass of laboring agriculturalists

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and cattle raisers of the aul, this must be the slogan of the slogan of soviet construction in the localities.  In this work the party must rely on the organizations of the poor peasant (the Unions “Koshi and “Zherla”).

5.  (It is necessary to complete the construction of the party by creating lower party cells on the territory of the Kirghiz oblasts of Turkestan; where a further increase in party composition is impossible the fundamental task is to attract Kirghiz workers and poor peasants into the party on the territory of the present Kirghiz SSR given the exceptionally small number of Kirghiz elements in party organizations (this work must in no way be scattered, but must result in the creation of active cells) the organizational methods must ensure the strengthening in them of an internal party life (a transfer) purged of alien elements and the like.) 

In order to keep party organizations from a final collapse, to proceed with the decisive liquidation of cliques at the top.  For this it is necessary:  a) to steadfastly prevent European communists from creating, supporting, and employing Kirghiz groups in as much as they are carriers of intrigue, squabbles, and politicking through the introduction of personal and clan interests into internal party life. 

b)  The selection of workers to proceed exclusively from a business-like point of view, to firmly and ultimately realize their genuine personal responsibility for the work entrusted to them.

c)  To steadfastly combat violations of and deviations from party discipline by responsible party workers that are expressed in the nonfulfillment and disclosure of the decisions of party organs, through secret agitation against these decisions, discussion outside the party fraction of party questions etc., and antiparty activities specific to Kirghiz communists.  This conduct must be punished with all the severity of party repressions up to and including expulsion from the party.

d)  In the party organizations of Kirghizia and in the party press there is little discussion of questions about the application of the party program to conditions of Kirghiz social-economic life, in particular

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the party organizations of Kirghizia stand under the threat of the development of demagogy by some aggrieved elements on questions concerning the relationship to the “Alash Horde,” the class structure of Kirghiz society etc.  The Kirghiz oblast committee is instructed to systematically illuminate these questions both within the party and in the party press.

e)  To begin work, in shock fashion, on the political preparation and enlightenment of the leading party cadres from Kirghizia.  The fundamental form of this work are Marxist circles, but party committees not satisfied with this are required to conduct a periodic verification of the knowledge of responsible workers, to hand out individual assignments for working out certain theoretical questions, and to record the fulfillment by responsible workers of mass party work.

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Concrete proposals on questions of the Kirghiz SSR.

1)  The most decisive measures are required to improve and draw up charts of the organizations of Kirghizia.  This work cannot be carried out by the present forces of party and under the current staff of the Oblast committee.

It is necessary to disband the Oblast committee and create a temporary Bureau CC RKP(b) which will be entrusted with carrying out the necessary measures for a year.  The Bureau’s staff must be selected in order to guarantee the strict carrying out of the party line and party directives.  

2)  To accelerate the transfer of the center of the Kirghiz SSR to the city of Chimkent in order to hold the upcoming congresses in the new center.

3)  To accomplish the regionalization of the Kirghiz SSR, according to natural-historical and economic features, into three administrative-economic oblasts with soviet-party oblast centers:  a) the Western oblast with its center in Aktiubin; b)  the Eastern oblast with its center in Semipalatinsk; c) the Southern [oblast] with its center in Chimkent.  The oblasts should retain the rights of gubernias and be divided into okrugs and raions.

4)  The formation of Kirghiz territory into a national Soviet republic is only possible through the creation of an internal railway transportation system.  Therefore it is necessary to accelerate the construction of the Dzhetysu railroad (the Pishpek-Alma-Ata-Semipalatinsk line) and to also include in the primary plan the construction of the Petropavlovsk-Akmolinsk-Aulie-Ata line and the  Dzhusala-Karsakba-Kustaba line and to avoid the so-called Southern-Siberian mainline. 

5)  To undertake air connections now by establishing the Chimkent-Alma-Ata-Semipalatinsk, and Chimkent-Akmalinsk routes.

6)  Expand the internal radio-postal-telegraph network.

7)  In order to guarantee the actual implementation of the projected measures to form the Kirghiz national soviet republic, and to achieve as far as possible

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an ethnically uniform structure, to recognize the necessity to conduct a review of the borders of the Kirghiz SSR and demarcate the Kirghiz SSR by nationality, within the limits possible, without, however, violating the interests of economic unity of the territory and, in particular, to consider possible the immediate separation of Orenburg gubernia, which is actually and completely isolated from the rest of Kirghizia. 

8)  To recognize the necessity to reserve for the Kirghiz republic, in accordance with the leading credit operations  on the territory of the Kirghiz SSR, a certain number of shares in the fixed and working capital of all the banking institutions operating in Kirghizia, the cities of Orenburg, Novo-Nikolaev, Tashkent and others.  The organs of the Kirghiz SSR must be granted the right to lead the activity of these organizations in accordance with the number of shares set aside for Kirghizia.

9)  To also recognize the necessity to revive in the Kirghiz SSR the maximal development of livestock raising as one of the chief export articles of the Union, and the most important source of raw material for Union industry.

The creation of a special Main Committee for livestock raising which will be entrusted with the amalgamation of all measures of both a zoological and procurement character, giving special attention to the rational organization of the processing of cattle products.  The financing of the projected Committee and its structure are established in conformity with the Main Cotton Committee that currently exists on the territory of Turkestan.