Информписьмо ЦКК в Средней Азии о нацявлениях в Средней Азии Informational letter of CCC in Central Asia on the nationalist outbreaks in the Central Asian republics

Translation

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Copy No. 6

7 copies No. 382/26 August 1933

To TsKK NKRKI [Central Control Commission-People’s Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection] Uzbekistan, comrade Tiuriabekov

To TsKK NKRKI Tadzhikistan, comrade Abdullaev

To TsKK NKRKI Turkmen, comrade Batyr-Ataev

To Oblast KK RKI Karakalpak, comrade Kuliev

To Oblast KK RKI Kirghizia, comrade Taukin

Copy to TsKK VKP(b), Orgotdel [Organization Department], comrade Shkiriatov.

Am sending you an informational letter on the nationalist outbreaks in the Central Asian republics.

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Secret.

Copy No.__

Informational letter.

Pleni[potentiary] TsKK VKP(b) in Central Asia.

On the nationalist currents in the Central Asian republics.

The recent activity of hidden counterrevolutionary nationalist organizations in Central Asia, and the separate sneak attacks by bourgeois nationalists confirm that this activity is one form of the class enemy against the proletarian dictatorship, against the success of the developing socialist assault by the laborers of Central Asia by remnants of the dying capitalist and semi-feudal elements.

Among the National Republics of Central Asia we have a significant revival of demonstrations of both great power chauvinism, as noted in a number of party documents of the Central Asian Bureau CC VKP(b), and especially of local Nationalism.

It must be stated categorically that in this sphere the organs of the KK [control commissions] of the Central Asian National Republics were insufficiently vigilant as testified to by the facts in individual Central Asian republics.

The staging of “Academic evenings” in the Kirghiz National Theater, the political harm and essence of which those comrades in the party organization who leave the laborers’ class interests in shadow and who lump together the interests of the laborers of a given nation with the so-called “supranational” interests of that nation did not notice and did not wish to notice. 

What, in fact, are these “academic evenings”?

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Under the flag of academic evenings, comrade Tynistanov (coauthor with comrades Kokenov, Soliev, and Dzhantoshev) from the stage of the Kirghiz National Theater conducted open propaganda for nationalism, openly restored the ideology of the beys and manaps, of the feudal-clan system.  The open work of the nationalists can progress only as a result of the dulling of vigilance on the one hand, and on the other as a result of compromise in the struggle against deviations in the national policy of the party.

The bourgeois nationalists, Batu and Ramzi (Uzbek People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment), in league with Russian great power [chauvinists] have spoken against the proletarian indigenization of the higher educational institutions.  The son of merchants who has wormed his way into the party, the former Chairman of the Tadzhikistan Gosplan, Kameli, has dragged in bourgeois-national notions , extolling the policy of the English imperialists in relation to the oppression of India. 

The class enemies, in their resistance to socialist construction, are putting forward against the proletarian indigenization of the state apparatus, the higher educational institutions etc. all kinds of obstacles, together with the great power chauvinists are trying to discredit the Leninist national policy of the Party, asserting that indigenization and the nat[ivization] of the party exist only for show (Kirghizia). 

Agents of the bourgeois nationalists in SAKhI [Central Asian Cotton Institute] (Tashkent), whispering that Uzbekistan was a colony, but now is colonized even more, that the Bolsheviks are not communists but red militarists (the counterrevolutionary Turan Socialist Party uncovered in Kirghizia), are just repeating what’s in the imperialist press and in fact have, as the investigation showed, established connections through Chinese counterrevolutionaries, Russian white-guard emigrants, and Basmachi with English imperialism. 

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While remaining silent about unprecedented poverty, desperate hunger, proletarian unemployment, and the ruination of the peasantry as a result of colonial exploitation, Kameli, in his attack, has made the English colony India the model of development for Afghanistan, Persia, and Tadzhikistan.

Accusing the Communist Party that the industrialization of Central Asia is just for show, for exchange, to facilitate the removal of raw materials, the bourgeois nationalists of Kirghizia, in the face of the powerful growth of socialist industry that smashes their slander about insufficient tempos of industrialization are forced to put out a new lie:  that industrialization is an additional base of exploitation of the laborers of Kirghizia or “by the policy of intensifying industrialization the Bolsheviks have led the Kazakh population to extinction” (the assertion of a student-komsomol of the Central Asian Planning Institute).

This double-dealing commentary of the bourgeoisie is expounded by the nationalists even regarding our agricultural policy, in [our] measures to advance the collective-farm masses along the road to a rich and cultured life.

Belittling the tremendous significance of the “Zemvodreform” [Land and Water Reform] (group 18), that has provided the landless peasantry with land and water wrung from the beys, kulaks, and feudalists for the poor peasants of Central Asia, and then moving on to the food difficulties as a consequence of industrialization, the bourgeois nationalists—the mouthpiece of the dying capitalist classes—are carrying out harmful work against the socialist reconstruction of agriculture.  In Tadzhikistan, the nationalists (the former People’s Commissar of Supply, Mukhitdinov) planted “their people” in the apparatus and disrupted the supply of grain to cotton-growing raions, piling up grain in the grain-growing raions, and disrupting the delivery of grain to the cotton-growing raions which are suffering, as a result of this policy, from the desperate need for grain.  The Kirghiz nationalists (as well as others) have applied a policy of blowing up the collective farms from within, seizing the cheben (sheep-raising)     

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apparatus in order to bring animal husbandry to ruin and to destroy the peasantry of the livestock-raising raions.

The course of all this destructive work, carried out through kulak and bey stooges, seeks these ends:  (to compromise the Leninist national policy, typical here are the pronouncements of members of the Mavlianbekov, Ishan-Khodzhaev, Isk-Mukhamedov, and Kurmaev in SAKhU [Central Asian Cotton Administration] groups against the CC KP(b)Uz. leadership, in order to breed national dissension among the laborers of the Republics of the USSR and, in particular, dissension toward the working class of the advanced Soviet Republics.

The group members mentioned above have admitted that the goal of their struggle against the CC KP(b)Uz. was to delay the socialist development of Uzbekistan.  When asked what their position would lead to, they were compelled to answer:  to the strengthening of the position of the interventionists and the restoration of capitalism.

This idea also found its reflection in the pronouncement of a socially alien student (Central Asian Institute of Mechanization):  “The Uzbek nation is hungry.  Therefore down with Soviet power.  Better to allow the bourgeoisie.”  “We must kick out all Russians”—adds a nationalist komsomol member from the Central Asian Institute of Irrigation—“they are to blame for the famine we have here.”

These reverberations of the slanderous agitation of the bourgeois nationalists within the walls of Soviet higher educational institutions will become understandable if we consider the fact that in just a short time, in 10 krai-level institutions and technical schools, 61 children of aliens, 32 of kulaks, 15 of merchants, 4 of muslim clerics, and 2 from the families of former khans were exposed.

If we recall the cases of the People’s Commissariats of Justice—the Kasymovshchina, Bedretdinovshchina, and nepesovshchina (Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan)—that extended deep roots into the history of the struggle of the nationalists against Soviet Power, their connection with the Basmachi, then the number of some of our nationalists in these institutions will become clear.

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 “Soon it will be spring, and again our Basmachi heroes will attack Soviet Power,” (Central Asian Cotton Institute).  “If the Basmachi were here now, I would go over to their side,” (Central Asian Mechanical-Technical Institute).

Together with the multifarious revival of the old policy of national dissension, with attempts at restoring the bourgeois understanding of “the nation” as a unity of the interests of exploiters and exploited of one nationality, the plowing of notions even like “the growing of jadidism into communism,” the ideologies of bourgeois nationalism are trying in the struggle for the youth to join their ideological nationalistic aims to contemporary international bourgeois nationalism as well as to the ideology of the distant past (feudalism).  Some of these from the departments of educational institutions, from the pages of textbooks and newspapers, from the theater stage drag in exaltations of Kemal, Ghandi, and Amanullah; others also make [them] in relation to Tamerlane, Chingis Khan, Shabdan, Manask, and other heroes of the feudal epoch.”  (Kzyl-Kaliam Kirghizstan, the writer Tanistanov, Fitrat Bektash, and others)     

Naturally, the nationalists wage a mad struggle against Ayni and Lahuti, contrasting to the latter Firdausi and other old Persian and various poets and writers. 

Whereas the murders of worker and collective-farm activists, and the support for the Basmachi movement are military actions of bourgeois nationalism, the chosen course of intervention, then its counterrevolutionary work in educational institutions, the press, art, and its slanderous agitation must be seen as the moral and ideological preparation for this intervention.

The above testifies to the troubles on the front of the class struggle in the Republics of Central Asia.

In the sphere of struggle with it the fundamental shortcomings are:  insufficient revolutionary vigilance, and at times the crude mistakes

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of the local raion Party Organizations.  The wager on spontaneity in the struggle for a Leninist National Policy thoroughly facilitates the counterrevolutionary activity of all sorts of chauvinisms and deviations.

The KK RKI organs of the Central Asian Republics are focusing attention on this, at the same time we place before the National TsKK of the Central Asian Republics the question of the Leninist national policy, to work hard with all responsibility and mercilessly expose the new tactic of the class enemy, to tear off his mask, to expose the counter-revolutionary face of the bourgeois-kulak and bey nationalistic elements.  Fire on great-power chauvinism, at this foremost danger, a stronger blow against local nationalism.  Repulse the slightest deviation from the Leninist national policy.    

KK organs must give a severe repulse to even the slightest manifestation of the dulling of class vigilance, to drive from the party those who aid the work of our class enemies, who abet the strengthening of great-power chauvinism, who attempt to revive the counterrevolutionary work of local nationalists.

I request that this letter be discussed in the TsKK Presidium and that corresponding practical measures be approved that further the actual exposure and discovery of the carriers of great-power chauvinism and local counterrevolutionary nationalism.

Plenipotentiary TsKK VKP(b)-NKRKI SSSR in Central Asia [signature] (Manzhara)