THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO OLD ELITES UNDER COMMUNISM: SOVIET RULE IN LENINOBOD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY FLORA J. ROBERTS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ vi A Note on Transliteration .................................................................................................. ix Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One. Noble Allies of the Revolution: Classroom to Battleground (1916-1922) . 43 Chapter Two. Class Warfare: the Old Boi Network Challenged (1925-1930) ............... 105 Chapter Three. The Culture of Cotton Farms (1930s-1960s) ......................................... 170 Chapter Four. Purging the Elite: Politics and Lineage (1933-38) .................................. 224 Chapter Five. City on Paper: Writing Tajik in Stalinobod (1930-38) ............................ 282 Chapter Six. Islam and the Asilzodagon: Wartime and Postwar Leninobod .................. 352 Chapter Seven. The Leninobodi Elite in the Postwar Period.......................................... 402 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 464 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 472 ii List of Figures Figure 1: Soviet era map of Khujand/Leninobod. ............................................................ 55 Figure 2: The mazar of Shaikh Muslihiddin, Khujand. .................................................... 68 Figure 3: Khudoiar Khan, last Khan of Kokand. .............................................................. 70 Figure 4: Bashir-khon Ishoqi ............................................................................................ 93 Figure 5: Apak Khoja mazar in 1910. ............................................................................. 126 Figure 6: Mu’min Khojaev and friends in Moscow, 1927.............................................. 143 Figure 7: Mushfiqi cover illustration............................................................................... 148 Figure 8: “Strengthen Worker Discipline On Collective Farms” ................................... 171 Figure 9: Family tree of the Khujandi doctor Akram-khon Akbarov. ............................ 173 Figure 10: “Saidkhoja Urunkhojaev, Twice Hero of Socialist Labour” ......................... 186 Figure 11: A Soviet-era shashmaqom ensemble. ............................................................ 204 Figure 12: Saidkhoja Urunkhojaev chairs a meeting. ..................................................... 210 Figure 13: Voroshilov visits the Moscow kolkhoz. ........................................................ 211 Figure 14: Location of the Arbob Palace. ....................................................................... 212 Figure 15: "Palace in the village" ................................................................................... 215 Figure 16: The Palace of Culture on Arbob hill. ............................................................ 216 Figure 17: Sut' delo, 1970 ............................................................................................... 217 Figure 18: Relief Map of Tajikistan................................................................................ 227 Figure 19: Partial family tree of Abdurahim Hojiboev. .................................................. 230 Figure 20: Nusratullo Makhsum ..................................................................................... 256 Figure 21: Tokcha in a traditional Khujandi home of a tura household ......................... 275 Figure 22: Illustrative connections between prominent Khujandi khoja families .......... 281 iii Figure 23: Stalinobod street view, 1928. ........................................................................ 301 Figure 24: Aerial view of central Stalinobod in the 1930s. ............................................ 303 Figure 25: Lenin monument in the Central Park of Culture and Rest ............................ 304 Figure 26: The National Theater of Tajikistan ............................................................... 304 Figure 27: Pairav Sulaimoni (1899-1933) ...................................................................... 308 Figure 28: Scenes from a buzkashi match ...................................................................... 373 Figure 29- Saifiddin Osimi ............................................................................................. 412 Figure 30: Partial family tree of the Osimi family .......................................................... 418 Figure 31 - Bobojon Ghafurov. ....................................................................................... 436 Figure 32: Mohammad Osimi ......................................................................................... 439 Figure 33: The Tajik State Medical Institute, Spring of 1949 ........................................ 453 Figure 34: Network of Leninobodi khoja families ......................................................... 471 iv List of Tables Table 1 - Notable pupils of Russian-native schools in the Ferghana Valley. ................... 67 Table 2 – Divergent reports on the outcome of the Land and Water reform .................. 122 Table 3 – Arrests made during the Ittihad-i Sharq investigation .................................... 243 Table 4 - Reasons for expulsion from the Tajik Communist Party ................................ 266 Table 5 - Members of the Tajik branch of the Writers’ Union in 1934 .......................... 332 Table 6 – Wartime school absenteeism .......................................................................... 361 Table 7 - The Leninobodi Elite in Politics, 1940s-1980s ............................................... 431 v Acknowledgements My thanks go first of all to my dissertation committee – to my supervisor, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and to Adeeb Khalid, to Holly Shissler and to Faith Hillis. Time and again, I left office hours with Sheila Fitzpatrick reeling with new ideas, armed with better questions and a fresh dose of inspitation: I felt free to follow my own interests, make my own choices, and felt supported in doing so – the highest possible praise for a midwife, as for a dissertation supervisor. The comparison goes no further, for Sheila Fitzpatrick is also a formidable role model, whose endless curiosity, eye for the absurd, dedication to the field and prose style I admire enormously. Holly Shissler combines kindness, wisdom and perspicacity, and Chicago would have been a far colder place but for her warm encouragement and friendship over the years. I owe a great intellectual debt to Adeeb Khalid, who has supported my project from the very beginning, generously shared insights and sources on the Central Asian Soviet intelligentsia, and saved me from many grevious errors (all those remaining, of course, are my own). Faith Hillis was so generous as to join my dissertation committee soon after joining the faculty at University of Chicago, and her fresh perspective and attentive feedback greatly improved my project. I also owe a particular debt of gratitude to those who supported the language acquisition endeavors which made this project possible: to Valentina Pichugina for Russian, to John Woods for Tajik, and to Kagan Arik domla for Uzbek – thank you for putting up with my questions and foibles over many years. For language lessons in Khuand, my gratitude goes to the gracious and erudite Bakhtiyor Olimov. Thank you to my comrades in arms in the University of Chicago’s Soviet History program – I benefited greatly from the advice and support of those further ahead in the program than I was, who showed me how varied and fulfilling the life paths of Chicagtsy could be. I am vi particularly grateful to Alen Barenburg, for welcoming me when I first arrived on campus, and to Rachel Applebaum, for her friendship, may our paths continue to cross! Graduate school would have been lonelier and far less fun without the sharp wit and comradeship of Leah Goldman, founder of the lunching loonies. I am grateful to Kristy Ironside, for reading chapter drafts, sharing archival tips and pointing out the best pirozhki, and to Natalie Belsky, ditto for all of the above, and for showing me how Muscovites do theatre, and Russian Jews do Thanksgiving. The camaraderie of fellow Central Asianists on campus was particularly precious – my thanks go to Sam Hodgkin, founding genius of the occasional Hyde Park musha’ira, to Brinton Ahlin and to Claire Roosien, in solidarity and with hugs. I benefited enormously from feedback given to drafts of my dissertation chapters presented at various workshops at the University of Chicago over the years: at the Russian History workshop, the Modern Europe workshop and MEHAT, the Middle East History and Theory workshop. The Russian history kruzhok founded by Faith Hillis