Russian Civil War in Central Asia [Yes, forgive me, another RCW thread]

[Sir Comradical]

Who knows much about this particular episode of the RCW?


At the same time, Bolsheviks and Jadids did not always see eye-to-eye on how the socialist revolution should play out. The Jadids hoped to establish a unified nation for all Turkic, Muslim peoples, while the Bolsheviks envisioned a more divided Central Asia based on ethnographic data.[25] As a formal challenge to the Bolshevik model of nation building, the Jadids founded a unified provisional government in the city of Kokand, with the intention of remaining autonomous from the Soviet Union. After lasting only one year, 1917–1918, Kokand was brutally crushed by the forces of the Tashkent Soviet; around 14,000 people, including many leading Jadids, were killed in the ensuing massacre. Unfortunately for the Jadids, by the late 1930s, the Bolshevik nation building program resulted in the division of Turkestan into five distinct national territories: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadid#Jadid.E2.80.93Bolshevik_relations_after_1917

[A Marxist Historian]

Who knows much about this particular episode of the RCW?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadid#Jadid.E2.80.93Bolshevik_relations_after_1917

Where Wikipedia gets it wrong is in its assumption that the Soviet regime in Tashkent in the winter of 1917-18 was Bolshevik.

It wasn't. The labor movement in Turkestan was centered on the railworkers, all 100% Russian according to Tsarist law and, compared to much of the local population, rather socially privileged. So the worker Soviets were dominated by Mensheviks and SR's, and was highly Russian chauvinist. When the Red Army made it to Central Asia, not exactly a Bolshevik stronghold, there was a huge mess to clean up.

Dividing Turkestan into six ethnic pieces was Stalin's bright idea as Commissar of Nationalities, and not one of his better ones.

-M.H.-

[Sir Comradical]

Where Wikipedia gets it wrong is in its assumption that the Soviet regime in Tashkent in the winter of 1917-18 was Bolshevik.

It wasn't. The labor movement in Turkestan was centered on the railworkers, all 100% Russian according to Tsarist law and, compared to much of the local population, rather socially privileged. So the worker Soviets were dominated by Mensheviks and SR's, and was highly Russian chauvinist. When the Red Army made it to Central Asia, not exactly a Bolshevik stronghold, there was a huge mess to clean up.

Dividing Turkestan into six ethnic pieces was Stalin's bright idea as Commissar of Nationalities, and not one of his better ones.

-M.H.-

What happened to the leaders of the Tashkent Soviet once the Red Army arrived?

What would have been the ideal national demarcation policy for Central Asia? Just one big Turkestan SSR?

[A Marxist Historian]

What happened to the leaders of the Tashkent Soviet once the Red Army arrived?

What would have been the ideal national demarcation policy for Central Asia? Just one big Turkestan SSR?

Not sure as to what happened to 'em. My guess would be that some went Bolshevik, hopefully after doing some very serious self-criticism, and others went back to work on the railroad.

Not quite sure as to what the best demarcations would have been, but the best way would have been to have free discussion over this in the Soviets, after they were renovated not to be all-Russian. Rather than imposing some clever scheme from on high, which is pretty much what Stalin did.

The traditional legal/geographical boundary lines within Turkestan did not correspond to ethnic lines. Slicing the place up according to language in cookie cutter fashion was probably not a good idea.

-M.H.-

[Sir Comradical]

What about the Kokand Autonomous Government? Were they backed by the Bolsheviks, the Whites or both? Wiki is giving me mixed responses.

[Sir Comradical]

Found some info on the Tashkent Soviet.


"The Tashkent Soviet made no serious attempt to win back Muslim allegiance. During the winter famine of 1917-18 little effort was made to relieve the urban Muslim population. In the villages Russian troops requisitioned food in what was, at that time, the accepted "war communism' * pattern. All cotton was surrendered under penalty of death. Muslim peasants suspected of sympathy with the nationalist guerrillas were shot. The Russian revolutionary slogan svoboda (freedom) became known among the Muslims as svobodka (puny freedom) and was given the meaning of lawlessness and looting.4 The result was predictable: all the countryside, cities, and railroads were soon in Irgash-bey's hands.5 The basis for the future Basmachi Revolt was laid."


""A fight between the pro-Muslims and the colonialists finally took place at the Third Congress of the Communist Parly of Turkestan. WHILE MOSCOW'S COMMISSAR KOBOZEV SIDED WITH THE PRO-MUSLIMS, Kazakov, the new head of the Tashkent government, sided with the colonialists ("Being a Communist, for me the national question does not exist"). One of the leaders of the colonialists was Uspenskii, a former member of the Black Hundreds (a violently reactionary organization) turned communist.

The Tashkent Soviet also took the side of the colonialists. In order to overcome their opposition, Kobozev had a new Turkestan Parly Committee elected which included seven Russians and three Muslims. The new Party Committee immediately clashed with the Tashkent government, while local Soviet authorities as well as the security forces continued to display their usual anti-Muslim bias.

ON JULY 12, 1919, MOSCOW CABLED TASHKENT DEMANDING THAT MUSLIMS BE ADMITTED INTO GOVERNMENT BODIES. But, on receiving the cable, Kazakov called a joint meeting of the heads of all the leading soviet, party, and governmental institutions in Tashkent, during which the colonialists prevailed. A reply was sent to Moscow stating that owing to local conditions, the admission of Muslims into local government bodies was impossible. It was also decided not to publish the contents of the Moscow cable.'"


"In Tashkent, Russian and Armenian nationalists, regardless of political allegiance, began to gather around the local Soviet regime as the settlers* stronghold in a sea of discontented natives. The struggle in Turkestan continued along ever increasingly nationalist lines, with the Muslims pitted against the Russians. Concepts such as revolution and communism were no longer of prime importance.

The number of communists in Tashkent was nominal; the First Party Conference, which took place in June 1918, counted only 250 party members in the entire city. Some insignificant gestures were made toward the Muslim masses. The Uzbek language was "recognized" as equal to Russian, and 4'confidence" was expressed in the Uzbek proletariat."

- "Moscow's Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia" by Michael Rywkin

[shinjuku dori]

Rather than imposing some clever scheme from on high, which is pretty much what Stalin did.

With Lenin's blessing! This is the "right of national determination" and the Leninist idea of "the nation" in practice. Congratulations! Now you want to do this again, right? How will you slice up America? Latino SSR in Southwest? Scandanavian SSR in Midwest? Black SSR in South? Autonomous region in Detroit?

Or maybe we can remember class and disolve all nation as Communist Manifesto prescribed!

[A Marxist Historian]

With Lenin's blessing! This is the "right of national determination" and the Leninist idea of "the nation" in practice. Congratulations! Now you want to do this again, right? How will you slice up America? Latino SSR in Southwest? Scandanavian SSR in Midwest? Black SSR in South? Autonomous region in Detroit?

Or maybe we can remember class and disolve all nation as Communist Manifesto prescribed!

Self-determination means nations have the right to independence if they want it, not if some bureaucrat on high like Stalin decides that firstly they exist as separate nations and then that they want it.

Indeed, Stalin called for "self determination" for the "black belt" in the American South in the 1930s, an idea that was totally at right angles to the actual course of the black liberation movement.

Now, the Southwest is another matter, as the US stole it from Mexico after all. And the southern tip of Texas, which for many years was almost all Mexican and wanted to return to Mexico, had the right of self-determination as far as a Leninist would be concerned. You had armed rebellion there as late as WWI.

Now of course nobody in their right mind in America, Latin or otherwise, would want to be part of Mexico, indeed hundreds of thousands of Mexicans want desperately to flee Mexico, ravaged by US imperialism, for the US. So the "right of self-determination" of Mexican-American majority areas in the Southwest, which are becoming common, means the right to be in America, not get deported, and get American citizenship, if it means anything at all.

The Norse from Minnesota (like my girlfriend) most certainly think of themselves as Americans.

-M.H.-

[electrostal]

Indeed, Stalin called for "self determination" for the "black belt" in the American South in the 1930s, an idea that was totally at right angles to the actual course of the black liberation movement.
Interesting. I'd like to read more about this so I'd appreaciate if you can give a source ( preferably online). Thanks.

[shinjuku dori]

Now, the Southwest is another matter, as the US stole it from Mexico after all.

Mexico was stolen from Aztec. All of America was stolen from Indian. Part of Japan stolen from Ainu. Hungary stolen. Russia. We can go on forever. Only native born African will be left.

[Geiseric]

Were the SSR's stalin created divided among any specific national lines, or just smaller regions for the purpose of admninstration? I can't imagine it worked any better than the way africa was carved up, or the former ottoman empire, or the balkans as done by imperialists.

[electrostal]

I want to know more about the Balkans being carved up by imperialists, thanks.

Anyway, the divisions of the USSR, again, didn't really matter that much. You had Soviet Power in Tashkent and you had Soviet power in Kiev. It was a federation of a particular, new type and as such simply cannot be compared to the colonial division of Africa. These were Soviet Republics, not "independent" states.

[Omsk]

I want to know more about the Balkans being carved up by imperialists, thanks.

Search for the book called "Sarajevo 1914" by Vladimir Dedijer. It's a good work which is about the Balkans and the national-liberation struggles, and focuses on the Sarajevo assassination, in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne lost his life. That even basically "sparked" WWI. (Of course, as Marxists, we should understand that such an event was not the cause of WWI, just a starting point.)

If you have any questions, just ask. (But via pp because we don't want to destroy this thread.)

[A Marxist Historian]

Were the SSR's stalin created divided among any specific national lines, or just smaller regions for the purpose of admninstration? I can't imagine it worked any better than the way africa was carved up, or the former ottoman empire, or the balkans as done by imperialists.

Absolutely on national lines, as per the criteria in Stalin's famous pamphlet *Marxism and the National Question,* which by the way is perfectly good Marxism as far as it goes, if not applied dogmatically and authoritatively from above. Which is of course how Stalin appled it.

-M.H.-

[Omsk]

Absolutely on national lines, as per the criteria in Stalin's famous pamphlet *Marxism and the National Question,* which by the way is perfectly good Marxism as far as it goes, if not applied dogmatically and authoritatively from above. Which is of course how Stalin appled it.



I am pretty sure that Stalin's national program has degrees of independence and autonomy.

Your fellow Trotskyist Deutscher notes this, in his biography of Stalin.


There was a brighter side, too, to Stalin's activity. He worked with great vigor and determination on one of the most difficult problems that the revolution had inherited. It will be remembered that in 1918 he called to life the self-governing republic of Bashkirs. In the spring of 1920 an autonomous Soviet republic of the Tartars was founded. In October of the same year Kirghizian self-government followed. After the civil war a Daghestan republic was constituted, comprising a multitude of tribes speaking 36 languages and vernaculars. Karelians, Yakuts, and others went ahead with forming their own administrations. None of these republics was or could be really independent; but all enjoyed a high degree of self-government and internal freedom; and, under the guidance of Stalin's Commissariat, all tasted some of the benefits of modern civilization. Amid all the material misery of that period, the Commissariat helped to set up thousands of schools in areas where only a few score had existed before. Schemes for the irrigation of arid land and for hydro-electrical development were initiated. Tartar became an official language on a par with Russian. Russians were forbidden to settle in the steps of Kirghizia, now reserved for the colonization of native nomads. Progressive laws freed Asiatic women from patriarchal and tribal tyranny. All this work, of necessity carried out on a modest scale, set a pattern for future endeavors; and even in its modest beginnings there was an elan and an earnest concern for progress that captivated many an opponent of Bolshevism.
In the summer of 1922, soon after Lenin's first stroke, the Politburo began to discuss a constitutional reform that was to settle the relations between Russia and the outlying republics. Stalin was the chief architect of the reform. Throughout the second half of 1922 he expounded the principles of the new constitution. These were, briefly, his ideas: the federation of Soviet Republics should be replaced by a Union of Republics. The union should consist of four regional entities: Russia, Transcaucasia, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia. (It was in connection with this scheme that he pressed the Georgians to join the Transcaucasian federation.) He was opposed to the idea that the union should be formed directly by the constituent republics; and he insisted on the need for intermediate links between the central administration and the individual republican governments. His motive was that central control would be more effective if it were exercised through four main channels than if it were dispersed in a much greater number of direct contacts between Moscow and the local administrations. The Commissariats were to be classed into three categories: (a) Military Affairs, Foreign Policy, Foreign Trade, Transport, and Communication were to be the sole and exclusive responsibility of the Government in Moscow. The governments of the various republics were not to possess any commissariats dealing with those matters. (b) In the second category were the departments of Finance, Economy, Food, Labor, and the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. These were not to be subordinate to the central government, though they were to be subject to a measure of co-ordination from Moscow. (c) Home Affairs, Justice, Education, and Agriculture belonged to the third category and were to be administered by the provincial governments in complete independence. Sovereign power was to reside in the All-Union Congress of Soviets and, between the congresses, in the Central Executive Committee. The latter was to be composed of two chambers: the Supreme Council and the Council of Nationalities. All ethnical groups were to be represented by an equal number of delegates in the Council of Nationalities. The Central Executive Committee appointed the Council of People's Commissars, the Government.
During his first convalescence Lenin was consulted on the scheme and endorsed it. The Politburo once again pressed the Georgians to join the Transcaucasian federation. The Ukrainians demurred at Moscow's intention to conduct foreign policy on their behalf and refused to wind up their own Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Nominally, however, the scheme left the republics with a very wide measure of self-government. It allowed them to manage independently their home affairs, security, and police, under the circumstances by far the most important department.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 244

[A Marxist Historian]

I am pretty sure that Stalin's national program has degrees of independence and autonomy.

Your fellow Trotskyist Deutscher notes this, in his biography of Stalin.


There was a brighter side, too, to Stalin's activity. He worked with great vigor and determination on one of the most difficult problems that the revolution had inherited. It will be remembered that in 1918 he called to life the self-governing republic of Bashkirs. In the spring of 1920 an autonomous Soviet republic of the Tartars was founded. In October of the same year Kirghizian self-government followed. After the civil war a Daghestan republic was constituted, comprising a multitude of tribes speaking 36 languages and vernaculars. Karelians, Yakuts, and others went ahead with forming their own administrations. None of these republics was or could be really independent; but all enjoyed a high degree of self-government and internal freedom; and, under the guidance of Stalin's Commissariat, all tasted some of the benefits of modern civilization. Amid all the material misery of that period, the Commissariat helped to set up thousands of schools in areas where only a few score had existed before. Schemes for the irrigation of arid land and for hydro-electrical development were initiated. Tartar became an official language on a par with Russian. Russians were forbidden to settle in the steps of Kirghizia, now reserved for the colonization of native nomads. Progressive laws freed Asiatic women from patriarchal and tribal tyranny. All this work, of necessity carried out on a modest scale, set a pattern for future endeavors; and even in its modest beginnings there was an elan and an earnest concern for progress that captivated many an opponent of Bolshevism.
In the summer of 1922, soon after Lenin's first stroke, the Politburo began to discuss a constitutional reform that was to settle the relations between Russia and the outlying republics. Stalin was the chief architect of the reform. Throughout the second half of 1922 he expounded the principles of the new constitution. These were, briefly, his ideas: the federation of Soviet Republics should be replaced by a Union of Republics. The union should consist of four regional entities: Russia, Transcaucasia, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia. (It was in connection with this scheme that he pressed the Georgians to join the Transcaucasian federation.) He was opposed to the idea that the union should be formed directly by the constituent republics; and he insisted on the need for intermediate links between the central administration and the individual republican governments. His motive was that central control would be more effective if it were exercised through four main channels than if it were dispersed in a much greater number of direct contacts between Moscow and the local administrations. The Commissariats were to be classed into three categories: (a) Military Affairs, Foreign Policy, Foreign Trade, Transport, and Communication were to be the sole and exclusive responsibility of the Government in Moscow. The governments of the various republics were not to possess any commissariats dealing with those matters. (b) In the second category were the departments of Finance, Economy, Food, Labor, and the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. These were not to be subordinate to the central government, though they were to be subject to a measure of co-ordination from Moscow. (c) Home Affairs, Justice, Education, and Agriculture belonged to the third category and were to be administered by the provincial governments in complete independence. Sovereign power was to reside in the All-Union Congress of Soviets and, between the congresses, in the Central Executive Committee. The latter was to be composed of two chambers: the Supreme Council and the Council of Nationalities. All ethnical groups were to be represented by an equal number of delegates in the Council of Nationalities. The Central Executive Committee appointed the Council of People's Commissars, the Government.
During his first convalescence Lenin was consulted on the scheme and endorsed it. The Politburo once again pressed the Georgians to join the Transcaucasian federation. The Ukrainians demurred at Moscow's intention to conduct foreign policy on their behalf and refused to wind up their own Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Nominally, however, the scheme left the republics with a very wide measure of self-government. It allowed them to manage independently their home affairs, security, and police, under the circumstances by far the most important department.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 244

And a darker side too, in the part from Deutscher you didn't quote.

Deutscher is not altogether "my man," his conciliatory attitude to Stalin and Stalinism was sharply and correctly criticized by other Trotskyists. But in this case what he says is quite valid, Stalin was after all the Bolshevik expert on nationality questions, and while Lenin was alive followed an overall correct course with respect to Turkestan--as even Trotsky himself notes in his own unpublished and uncorrected Stalin biography, some parts of which have problems, which is why Natalia Trotsky opposed its publication in the form it was finally published.

The mechanical dissection of Turkestan into five pieces according to language boundaries took place in October 1924, after Lenin died. It was not something that people there actually resisted, and was not in itself disastrous, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

The worst aspect to Stalin's policies to Turkestan in later periods was his ignoring the place, which had disastrous results during the compulsory collectivization period, with Stalin's local appointees forcing sheep herding nomads to become collective farmers, something Stalin himself recognized as disastrous when he got around to paying some attention. Resulting in a famine on the same scale as the Ukrainian famine.

Be it noted that the Tatar woman in charge of the work of organizing Central Asian women to free themselves from medieval slavery, which Deutscher mentions, was the Trotskyist Varsenika Kasparova.

http://www.icl-fi.org/print/english/wv/975/archives.html

-M.H.-

[Omsk]

The worst aspect to Stalin's policies to Turkestan in later periods was his ignoring the place, which had disastrous results during the compulsory collectivization period, with Stalin's local appointees forcing sheep herding nomads to become collective farmers, something Stalin himself recognized as disastrous when he got around to paying some attention. Resulting in a famine on the same scale as the Ukrainian famine.



Ah, the famous question of the nomads. I don't have too much information about the event, at least not in written form.

Some information i came across not long ago:

I have told how the liquidation of kulaks resulted in a shortage of food which continued for several years. The process of de-nomadization aggravated the food shortage by causing the destruction of the nomad's herds. When the Communist "shock troops" began to break up these herds, and put pressure on the nomad owners to pool their animals in so-called collective farms, the latter simply killed their animals. At that time, I do not think the authorities worried about this, because they believed the herds could easily be replaced. They learned better later;...
In such a place as Kazakhstan, where most of the population had existed for generations on the products of the herds, the destruction of animals in the years following 1930 had very serious effects. I have been told that thousands died of starvation; whether that is true or not, I cannot say. But I can testify from my own observation that the former nomad herders were a long time recovering from the effects of this turbulent period, when the Communist authorities organized an assault upon the nomads, and the latter developed a sort of mass hysteria which caused them to destroy their means of livelihood.
Littlepage, John D. In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 108


The ex-nomads who survived this period were rounded up, as the kulaks had been, and put to work in the mines and in the few industries which had been started at that time in the nomad regions. The well-to-do nomads, such as the "kumiss king" I had visited in Bashkiria, were taken over by the police and exiled to some region remote from their former homes, where they were put to work in forests or mines, or settled on cattle farms. Many of them resisted dispossession; these were adjudged criminals, and sent to jail or shot.
By the time I was assigned to the Ridder mines, a virtual civil war with the nomads had been fought and won. There were still occasional skirmishes with some nomads who stubbornly refused to give up their old forms of life, but for the most part the Kazaks and Kirghizians had admitted defeat and some of them were already more are less enthusiastic supporters of the new order. Such supporters were greatly encouraged by the authorities and liberally rewarded.
Littlepage, John D. In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 109

I doubt that the violence was on the scale of the de-kulak storm, and the hunger was probably on a smaller scale.