THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN i THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN ii THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN For Suzanne Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Paul Bergne The right of Paul Bergne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. International Library of Central Asian Studies 1 ISBN: 978 1 84511 283 7 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd From camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN v CONTENTS Abbreviations vii Transliteration ix Acknowledgements xi Maps. Central Asia c 1929 xii Central Asia c 1919 xiv Introduction 1 1. Central Asian Identities before 1917 3 2. The Turkic Ascendancy 15 3. The Revolution and After 20 4. The Road to Soviet Power 28 5. The National Territorial Delimitation 39 6. The New Tajik ASSR – Administration Problems 55 7 Purging The Party’s Ranks 66 8. The Tajik Language 75 9. Economic Reconstruction 86 10. Tajikistan’s Foreign Relations 90 11. The Creation of The Tajik SSR 100 12. The Final Territorial Battle – Surkhan Darya 119 Conclusion 125 Notes 135 Appendix A 161 Appendix B 165 Appendix C 167 Appendix D 168 Appendix E 169 Bibliography 173 Index 177 vi THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN vii ABBREVIATIONS AO Autonomous Oblast’ APPO Agitation and Propaganda BNSR Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union EKOSA Economic Committee for Central Asia GARF State Archive of the Russian Federation GBAO Gornyi Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast’ Gosbank State Bank GPU Chief Political Directorate IKKI Executive Committee of the Communist International Ispolkom Executive Committee (of Soviet) KGB Committee of State Security Komsomol Communist Union of Youth KPSS Communist Party of the Soviet Union KUTV Communist University of the Toilers of the East Likbez Anti-Illiteracy Campaign MKK VKP(b) MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs Narkom People’s Commissar Narkomfin People’s Commissariat for Finance Narkompros People’s Commissariat for Education NKVD People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs Obkom Oblast’ Committee (of the Party) OGPU United State Political Directorate viii THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN OKRIK Okrug Executive Committee Orgotdel Organisation Department Proverkom Auditing Committee Raikom Raion Committee (of the Party) Revkom Revolutionary Committee RIK Raion Executive Committee RKKA Red Army RKP(b) Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) RSDRP Russian Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party RSFSR Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic RTsKhDNI Russian Centre for the Preservation of Documents of Recent History RVS Revolutionary War Soviet SDLK Latvian Social Democratic Party Selsovet Village Council Sredazburo Central Asia Office (of CPSU Central Committee) Sredazselkhozsnab Central Asian Agricultural Supply Agency TaASSR Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Tajikinpros Tajik Information Service TaSSR Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic TASSR Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic TsIK Central Executive Committee TsK Central Committee TsKK Central Control Commission Turksholk Turkestan Silk Agency Upolnarkomtorg Plenipotentiary People’s Commissar for Trade Uzavtopromtorg Uzbek Motor Industry Trading Agency Uzbekbirlyashu United Uzbek Agency UzSSR Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic VChK All-Union Extraordinary Committee VKP (b) All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Voenkhoz War Committee for the Economy Voenvod War Committee for the Water Supply VRK VSNKh Supreme Soviet of People’s Economy VTsK NTA All Union Central Committee for the New Turkic (and Tajik) Alphabet THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN ix TRANSLITERATION The correct English rendering of names originally written in other alphabets is cause for constant scholarly dispute. Central Asian names present particular problems in that they have been written in various alphabets, including Arabic, Russian and Latin, all of which, at one time or another, have claimed to be definitive. For example, three “correct” ways can be claimed for writing the word Tajik (Tojik, Tadzhik). Chapter 8 on the debate over the choice of Latin alphabet for the Tajik language gives some idea of the problems raised and the passions they aroused. I have no wish to arouse passions, and renounce any claim to authority in this thorny subject. In the text, I have contented myself with giving the closest English phonetic equivalent to all proper names mentioned, while trying to achieve a consistent spelling for each name throughout. In the notes, when the references are to Russian-language sources, I have given a transcription from the original Russian letters, adding the English phonetic equivalent in brackets. I have also used transliterations from the Russian spelling for Soviet and Party institutions. I have used the Russian terminology for the names of administra- tive districts and regions (e.g. volost’, oblast’) rather than attempting to translate these terms for which there is often no exact English equivalent. A guide to the administrative terms used in Central Asia throughout the period covered by this study can be found under Note 9 to Chapter 2. With regard to the huge number of Soviet and Party institutions, many of which became known by their Russian abbre- viations (e.g. Sredazburo, Komsomol, Ispolkom etc), in the text I have mostly described them in English translation with the Russian abbre- viation in brackets afterwards. xTHE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN As for the party itself, in the text I have not tried to keep pace with its various changing titles during the period in question. I have simply called it the “Communist Party”, “Party” or CP. For an account of its successive titles, the reader can consult Note 3 for Chapter 5. THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was made possible through the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust, which kindly funded this project. My thanks are also due to Professor Robert Service of St Antony’s College for guidance on how to navigate the Moscow archives and to Professor Kiril Andersen, the head of the Russian Centre for the Preservation of Documents of Recent History for facilitating my access to the Centre’s archives. Sergei Vladimirovich Mironenko, director of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, also gave me good advice on where to look for useful records on Central Asia. In Oxford, Dr Sergei Andreev was extremely generous with advice and the loan of docu- ments from his collection. Dolat Khudanazarov, former presidential candidate of Tajikistan, kindly lent me his own research materials on Shohtimur as well as supplying otherwise unknowable details from this period of Tajik history. Of all the scholarly works I consulted, special recognition is due to that of Lutz Rzehak, formerly of the Humboldt University in Berlin, on whose outstanding book (Vom Persischen zum Tadschikischen, Reichert, Wiesbaden, 2001) I have drawn heavily. By good fortune, an old friend, Susan McQuail, turned out to be the daughter of the architect Hans Adler who from 1931 to 1932 was charged by the Soviet government with designing the first modern buildings in the new Tajik capital, Dushanbe (then Stalinabad). Thanks to her generosity, I was able to use one of Adler’s unique collection of photographs for the book’s cover. Finally, my thanks to Dr Laura Newby of St Hilda’s College, Oxford for scholarly advice and guidance, and to Zina Rohan for help over style. xii THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN xiii xiv THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN CENTRAL ASIAN IDENTITIES BEFORE 1917 1 INTRODUCTION On the 16th October 1929, the Third All-Tajik Congress of Soviets in Dushanbe publicly announced that Tajikistan had been promoted to the status of a Soviet Socialist Republic in its own right. Until that day, the country had been a mere Autonomous Republic within the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan. The wife of Abdurahim Khojibaev, later to become chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Tajik SSR, was standing in the crowd beneath the tribune on that day. She recalled the fervour and “elan” of the assem- bled crowd who, in her words, repeatedly interrupted the announce- ment with applause and shouts of “hurrah”, while many embraced one another. As she put it, “all evinced an astonishing enthusiasm”.1 Knowing what we now know about the stage-management of “spontaneous” Soviet celebrations, Western readers will naturally be inclined to treat such an enthusiastic account with a certain scepti- cism. Khojibaev was a leading Bolshevik, although he, like so many of the Soviet Union’s original Bolsheviks, was shot by Stalin in the 1930s. His daughter and biographer, Baroat Khojibaeva, who recorded her mother’s reminiscence, was herself raised very much in the Soviet tradition. Nonetheless, the student of the period is justified in concluding that, behind the propaganda, there was also genuine emotion. This might not have been strong amongst ordinary Tajiks of the 1920s, many of whom supported the anti-Soviet Basmachi uprising, or were primarily concerned with staying alive. But at least it might have figured amongst what Marxist literature describes as “intellectuals” and “party workers”. The West has long been inclined to dismiss the status of “Union Republic” in the USSR as a bogus form of independence, a Russian bear-hug from which none had any 2THE BIRTH OF TAJIKISTAN genuine right to extricate themselves.