Nothing to Lose but Their Failure and ‘Success’ of the in Uzbekistan, 1927-1953

Word count: 25,896

Maarten Voets Student number: 01205641

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Rozita Dimova, Prof. Dr. Bruno De Cordier

A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in East European Languages and Cultures.

Academic year: 2016 – 2017

August, 2017

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Abstract

The title of this work is a reference to Marx’ famous quote, ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.’ When the proletariat eventually took over control of the former Russian Empire after the and the subsequent (1917 – 1923), they had to spread the revolution to the periphery; . To gain support in Uzbekistan from the local (female) population the Communist Party commenced the Hujum campaign on the 8th of March 1927. This campaign targeted traditions that they considered derogatory to women, in particular the wearing of the local , or ‘’. The campaign was a complete failure due to vehement Uzbek resistance. Yet, nowadays the paranja is little more than a museum piece. The veil disappeared from the street view from the 1950’s onwards. In my research I want to give an explanation for this delayed success. Yet, in a way the Hujum still carries on: both Central Asian and countries have a mixed stance on the modern variants of the paranja, as shown in the existence of bans. I have analysed relevant events (such as Stalin’s purges, deportations, the battle against the Basmachi) from before, during, and after the initial Hujum and placed them inside a Gramscian framework to explain their effects on the civil and political society in Uzbekistan. This has led to the conclusion that the defining event in the eventual success of the Hujum was the Second World War. Due to the surge of refugees on the one side and the conscription of the male population on the other, Uzbekistan and its population adapted to a more Soviet way of life.

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Preface

I have had my first opportunity to explore my interest in Central Asia in the courses Sociology and History of the Slavic Languages by Professor Stern. During my investigation on the status of the in the former Soviet republics I encountered the film White Desert’s Sun (Beloe Solnce Pustyni, 1970). I was fascinated by the many aspects and themes of the film (Orientalism, the Basmachi, harams, paranjas …), most of which have been thoroughly analysed in this dissertation. Eventually I focused on the paranja, and the subsequent Soviet campaign to remove this garb from everyday life. I was a bit at a loss whom to turn to with this subject. Thankfully, Professor Dr. Rozita Dimova was willing to help me. In our first conversation she warned me she knew nothing about the subject in particular. Paradoxically, this worked immensely to my advantage. (As an anthropologist) she offered me perspectives from different social sciences, suggested connections between facts I had not yet considered, and urged me to write and explain everything as clear as possible. Additionally, she sent me dozens of articles on the subject, most of which have been put to a good use. It was both an honour and a pleasure to work with her, and I sincerely hope this dissertation will meet her expectations. Additionally, she advised me to seek aid from Professor Dr. Bruno De Cordier. His enthusiasm and passion for Central Asia is very contagious, and it has motivated me to see this thesis through. In the end I’d also like to thank my mom, who has made it possible for me to pursue my passion for the Russian language and culture.

Maarten Voets, 4th of August 2017

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Contents

Abstract ...... 3 Contents ...... 5 Introduction ...... 7 The Hujum ...... 7 The current ‘Hujum’ ...... 7 Traumas ...... 9 Outline ...... 10 Sources and Authorities ...... 10 Spelling ...... 12 1. History ...... 13 1.1 Conquest of Turkestan ...... 13 1.2 Distinct Territories and Everyday Control ...... 14 1.3 Modernity, War, and Resistance ...... 16 1.4 The Rise of the Basmachi ...... 18 1.5 National Delimitation: Limits and Advantages ...... 19 2. Inducement and Background of the Hujum ...... 22 2.1 Ideological Reasons for the Hujum: Orientalism and Marxism ...... 23 2.2 Practical Reasons for the Hujum: Indigenous Support ...... 28 3. Uzbek Responses to the Hujum ...... 32 3.1 Creating the Uzbek identity: Uzbek Equals Paranja, Paranja Equals Uzbek ...... 32 3.2 Nation-Building Spectacle ...... 34 3.3 The Paranja as a Fetish Object ...... 35 3.4 The Threat of Emancipation ...... 37 4. Hegemony, Uzbekistan, and the Hujum ...... 41 4.1 Situation in Turkestan and Uzbekistan ...... 41 4.2 Soviet Counterinsurgency ...... 43 4.3 Purges ...... 45 4.4 Byt Crimes ...... 47

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5. Control of the Civil Society ...... 49 5.1 Demographics ...... 49 5.2 Soviet Tashkent ...... 53 5.3 Red ...... 54 6. The Great Patriotic War ...... 56 6.1 Uzbek Mobilisation ...... 56 6.2 The Home front ...... 58 6.3. After the war ...... 58 Conclusion ...... 60 Bibliography ...... 63 Appendix ...... 76

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Introduction The Hujum

On the 8th of March 1927 the central Soviet government started the Hujum campaign in Uzbekistan. The Hujum aimed at eliminating traditional practices that were demeaning to women, such as the qalin (bride-price) and the veil (in this case the paranja). Other goals were increasing literacy and paid employment and abolishing the practices of child brides and (Levin 2008: 96). Hujum means ‘assault’ in Arabic, and this assault would eventually be primarily aimed at the paranja. It attempted to create a surrogate proletariat by liberating women from the patriarchal system. This campaign was nothing short of a complete transformation of society (Northrop 2004: 12). This undertaking would eventually fail due to vehement resistance from the Uzbek people. At the start of the campaign only a very select group of upper class Uzbek-Tajik women wore paranjas, while at the later years the paranja had transformed into a national symbol, and couldn’t be erased from the street view. It’s difficult to pinpoint when exactly the campaign ended. The phenomenon of wearing a paranja was still in full swing in the early 1940’s (long after the zenith of the Hujum), but paranjas had completely disappeared from the street view by 1960 (Ibid.: 347). With a certain degree of arbitrariness, I have dated the end of the Hujum at 1953, the year of Stalin’s death. Many of his policies affected the Hujum, so it would be suiting to conclude the campaign with his death. The question arises: what is this paranja? It was a long heavy cotton robe, covering the whole body. In front of their faces women held a chavchon: a black screen of woven horsehair. Both pieces of attire were fairly new, appearing only after the Russian conquest in the 1860’s (Ibid.: 19, 44). Hungarian explorer Arminius Vámbéry describes the attire in his sketches:

From the head down to the bosom they wear a veil made of horsehair, of a texture which we in Europe would regard as too bad and coarse for a sieve, and the friction of which upon cheek or nose must be anything but agreeable. (Vámbéry 1868: 170-171)

The current ‘Hujum’

The chapter of the Hujum campaign is not yet finished in most Central Asian countries. Kazakh president Nazarbaev calls for a complete ban of Islamic attire. He states that complete black dresses which cover up the whole body like the burqa and the are not native to Kazakhstan and its strain of Islamic teachings. He does so because Kazakhstan is concerned about rising militant fanaticism in its youth (Najibullah 2017: online). Similar concerns are expressed in Kyrgyzstan. Last year, everywhere in Kyrgyzstan billboards were erected

7 depicting women veiled in a black burqa opposed by women in the national dresses, with the subtext: ‘My poor nation, where are we heading to? This has caused quite a commotion in the Muslim population (Alymkulova 2016: online). In response, believers erected their own billboards, but in this case the women in traditional Kyrgyz garb mirror young girls in miniskirts. Once more the same question is asked: ‘My poor nation, where are we heading to?’ But Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambaev quickly and bluntly retorted in an interview:

Нашлись умники, которые вывесили баннер, что вот мы идем к мини-юбкам. Слушайте, мы с советских времен, с 50-х годов у нас женщины ходят в мини-юбках, но ни у кого из этих женщин в голову не приходило одеть пояс шахидки и взорвать кого-то. […] Пусть лучше ходят в мини-юбках, но никого не взрывают. (Atambaev 2016: online; quoted in Čykynova 2016: online)1

Tajik president Emomalii Rakhmov, himself a very devout Muslim, has spoken out against foreign veils such as the hijab. The hijab has already been forbidden in schools since 2007. Nowadays, government officials harass the vendors of these veils, forbidding the sale of their wares and handing out random fines. Additionally, a state rapport has suggested a link between the hijab and prostitutes (EvrazijaNet 2015: online). This isn’t sheer libel, as it is true that more and more Tajik prostitutes started veiling themselves. However, this has little to do with morals or ethics. Prostitutes explain that the veil protects them from constant harassment and slander. Wearing a hijab also attracts the attention of the police, which is a double-edged sword: they have to pay a hefty fine and the occasional bribe, but in the meantime they are protected during their arrest by the authorities (Gandž, Nadžibulla, & Val'samaki 2015: online). This phenomenon reminisces of the Hujum in Tajikistan, which was at the time an autonomous region of Uzbekistan. Back then, prostitutes categorically didn’t wear a paranja or participated in veiling in any way (Northrop 2004: 134). Uzbekistan too has a hostile attitude versus this modern paranja. In Ferghana markets and bazaars, security officers in civilian frequently ask women to remove their scarfs. There appears to be a new dress code, which does not tolerate clothes of Arab, Iranian, Turkish, or Pakistani produce (Val’samaki & Pannier 2015: online). remains relatively lenient concerning the hijab or similar garments. The hijab is forbidden in schools, and in official photos, e.g. passport photos and drivers licenses (Misrichanov 2017: online). Instead, Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow strongly encourages national clothing. The national costume for women is mandatory in all academic institutions, government services, schools, and media (Mavlonij 2010: Po itogam vizita v Pariž).

1 There were some wiseguys, who hung out a banner, that we are going towards miniskirts. Listen, we are from the Soviet times, since the 50’s women with us have been wearing miniskirts, and none of these women came up with the idea to wear a suicide belt and blow somebody up. […] It’s better to let them wear miniskirts and don’t blow anybody up. 8

Traumas

It’s clear these newly independent nations are still working out their identity. Periodically a buried trauma emerges from its (pre-) Soviet past. Recently, the film Exodus (Ùrkùn, 2016) rustled the leafs in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. The film portrays the tragic events of 1916, when a revolt was ruthlessly crushed by czarist forces. This retaliation forced many people to flee into the mountains, where they succumbed to hunger, cold, and attacking wolf packs (De Cordier 2012: 153-154). According to more nationalistic Kyrgyz, there has never been a proper investigation of the events in fear of straining relations with . They argue that the Urkun constitute genocide against the Kyrgyz people (Sarygulova 2015: online). Hushing up history in order to maintain good relations is one way to handle traumatic events. The Russian language plays the role of being one of two national languages in Kyrgyzstan (the other being Kyrgyz). Russian has an equal official status to Kazakh in Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan reserved the language for interethnic communications. These three countries have also maintained Cyrillic as the official alphabet (Dietrich 2005: 468). It indicates these ex- Soviet countries are keen on maintaining relations with Russia. However, two nations in the region went rogue: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.2 In these republics the Uzbek and Turkmen languages, written in a Latin alphabet, are respectively the sole official languages (Dietrich 2005: 467). Uzbekistan opted to confront the past by building the ‘Memorial to the Victims of Repression’ in May 2000. The complex raises awareness of the casualties of the czarist and Soviet regimes, ranging from the first imperial encounters to the cotton affair in the 1980’s. The emphasis is put on the Stalin era, during which the Basmachi were subdued and the Red Terror tormented the population (Eurasia Travels 2017: Victims of Repressions Memorial). The past is quite a difficult and loaded topic in Uzbekistan. Were they not themselves part of (and even formed by) the ? Isn’t the old nomenklatura, appointed during Soviet times, still in power? It seems to me that the official historiography blames the for close to anything that went bad in the republic till its independence. Uzbekistan claims continuation from the three city-states that ruled over the modern day Uzbek territory till the 19th century: the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Emirate of . Furthermore, it establishes strong ties with the Turkiston Mukhtoriyati, a short-lived break- away state during the Russian Civil War now known as the ‘Kokand Autonomy’. Uzbek officials explain the later relationship with the Soviet Union by stating they were forced in a submissive position as a Soviet dependency, enjoying practically no sovereign rights. This of course changed in March 1990, when Karimov was appointed president of Uzbekistan and pursued a policy of national interests (Embassy of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the Republic

2 Admittedly, this subdivision is very broad and coarse. All Central Asian countries maintain relations with Russia as they would with any other country, and these relations are marked by both incidents and cooperation. 9 of Korea 2017: History). This is much harder to claim when figures proof that most in 1991 supported the continued existence of the USSR, even when Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia itself had opted to leave the Union (Stronsky 2010: 8). In short, this paragraph shows that these new countries are still working on their identity, and that these identities are still superfluous.

Outline

In this context I chose to digress on the Hujum. I commence with an introspection of this colonial past: the conquest of the region, followed by how the region of Turkestan was administered by the Russian Empire. These acts planted the seeds of further strife in the region. These seeds were thoroughly fertilized during both revolutions in Petrograd, which had immediate repercussions in Turkestan. After the war a number of Soviet campaigns divided Central Asia in nation states, including Uzbekistan. This clarifies the historical context of the Hujum, and sets the stage for this attempt at total transformation of society. It’s not immediately clear why the Soviet Union proclaimed the Hujum, or why exactly the paranja was chosen as target. The second chapter will identify and analyse both practical and ideological motives behind the ‘Assault’. The third chapter is focused on the subaltern. How did the Uzbek identity change during the prolonged encounter? How was the Hujum interpreted, and subsequently challenged or accepted? Now the arguments made by both sides have been clarified, I will analyse the situation by means of Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. Furthermore, the actions by Stalin during the 1930’s altered the situation in Uzbekistan. I will discuss these actions and their subsequent results in the Gramscian framework. Looking at the articles above we can assume the Hujum eventually ended in a success despite initial failure, or at the very least the campaign is still ongoing by the secular Central Asian governments. In my conclusion I will use this information to formulate the answer to the main question: ‘Why did the Hujum initially fail?’ or ‘Why did the Hujum eventually succeed?’

Sources and Authorities

Almost all research regarding the Hujum is at least partly based on Gregory Massels (1974) The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Central Asia, 1919-1929. He coined the recurring phrase ‘surrogate proletariat’. The reason why he isn’t used here is because all further research is based on his work, updated and expanded with newer sources. For this research I have drawn heavily from Veiled Empires by Douglas Northrop (2004). It is a detailed summary of the ‘situation in the field’ during the zenith of the

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Hujum. It has become the groundwork for any research concerning the Hujum. In a sense he laid the groundwork for this thesis. Arne Haugen (2003) wrote what was to become my introductory work into Central Asian society and history, and is arguably the best source on the National Delimitation. These two works provided much of the historical basis. There is a very good reason why these two books deserve more credit than older works written by ‘authorities’. Twentieth century literature on the region of Central Asia is heavily influenced by the ongoing Cold War. The USA even officially labelled Turkestan in 1959 as a ‘captive nation’ under Soviet control (Congress 1960: 212). This statement is very blunt and hardly true. There has never been a ‘nation of Turkestan’. The region of Turkestan, just like the entirety of Central Asia, has never been a single political entity. It was either fragmented between squabbling states or subject to a larger external empire (Fourniau & Poujol 2005a: 30). Anglo-Saxon researchers such as Olaf Caroe and Edward Allworth present an anti-Soviet narrative. They also lacked access to Soviet archives, while Northrop and Haugen could incorporate the documents made public since 1991 into their research. Not only Anglo-Saxon works should be scrutinized: the first integral works on the Basmachi revolt were written by Turkic scholars, who themselves had fought as kurbashi3 in the conflict. An example of these scholars is Zeki Velidi Togan. A published article of Hasan Paksoy (1999) on the Basmachi rebellion is almost solely based on the memoires of Togan, written down around thirty years after the events took place. Tajik scholar Rahim Masov (1996) states that during the National Delimitation, the formation of national republics in Central Asia, ethnically Tajik areas were deliberately included in Uzbekistan so they could be Turkified, asserting Uzbek dominance in the region. This claim has been disregarded by Haugen (2003: 154-155), who proves that no such intention existed. Of course, Soviet scholars aren’t without blame too. Early records on the Basmachi revolt are subjective by the use of Marxism-Leninism and its dogmas for theoretical and methodological frameworks. Many authors had fought in the conflict as well, which resulted in the substitution of facts for personal memories and anecdotes (Zevelev, Poljakov & Čugunov 1981: 191-193). The reworked ideas of Antonio Gramsci provide the framework in which to interpret and analyse my findings. I have used summaries of his work. Gramsci has written his ideas and visions down in many different notebooks without any larger cohesion. So, instead of nit- picking his books in order to formulate his ideas, I have used a summary provided by another author. I have occasionally added in remarks and commentaries of Anne McClintock (1995), who explored the delicate intricacy of nation, colonialism, and gender in her book Imperial Leather. Adeeb Khalid (1998) provides an excellent account on Turkestan and the cause prior and during the revolutions. Marianne Kamp (2006) is known through her use of many interviews with Uzbek women concerning this timeframe. These interviews provide an

3 Kurbashi are Basmachi warlords. 11 interesting insight of the women involved in this chapter of history. They also have the added benefit that interviews themselves have no expiration date and remain forever viable.

Spelling

In regards to spelling I have used the mainstream English spelling when competing possibilities existed, e.g. Turkish cedid, Russian džadid and English Jadid; Uzbek Toškent, Russian Taškent and English Tashkent. This choice is motivated by the spelling used by different ‘authorities’ on specific subjects. By example, in case of the this was Adeeb Khalid (1998). This task was very daunting due to the many different alphabets and languages involved, with each language adopting these foreign words in its own historiography and adjusting them to their own spelling. Furthermore, some names and terms change throughout history, e.g. Khiva was renamed Khorezm after the Soviet take-over. Khalid (1998: XXI) addresses the problem of surnames having both a Turkic and Russian version. I hope the critical reader will forgive me should any irregularities arise regarding spelling.

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1. History 1.1 Conquest of Turkestan

The Turkestan region consists of today’s Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and parts of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Prior to Russian occupation it was under the loose control of three states, viz. the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Emirate of Bukhara. The Steppe region, which corresponds largely with the current country of Kazakhstan, had already been incorporated into the Russian empire. Russia first entered the Steppe region through a subtle system of vassalage and forts during the 18th century. Afterwards it disbanded the local tribal confederations between 1822 and 1848, confirming Russian grip. The three southern states initially succeeded in resisting Russian conquest and maintained their independence for the time being. Nature proved to be an impermeable natural barrier against Russian encroachments: mountains, semi-deserts, and steppes separated Russia from the city-states in the oasis region. Another impediment seemed to be China and Britain, who kept a close eye on Russian actions in Central Asia (Soucek 2000: 196-198). Only after general M.G. Černjaev assaulted the city of Tashkent on his own accord in 1865 did Russian influence and power spread in the region. Impetuous generals often carried out these incursions against the wishes of their superiors, and presented the czar with a fait accompli (Khalid 1998: 45-46). Subsequent campaigns led to the complete subjugation of Bukhara, Kokand, and Khiva. The Kokand Khanate was abolished, and its territories were absorbed into the empire as the ‘Turkestan Kraj’. The two remaining city-states managed to remain protectorates with limited autonomy (Soucek 2000: 198). Russian advancements continued into Transcaspia, modern day Turkmenistan. General Lazarev suffered an initial setback after an ill-prepared assault on the fortress of Gök Tepe in 1879. Nevertheless, the fortress fell in 1881, and the earlier defeat was bloodily avenged. , a small independent city sensing that resistance would be futile, voluntarily surrendered to Russia. In 1895 Russia and the UK signed the Pamir border agreement, which settled the borders between the neutral country of Afghanistan and the Russian influenced Emirate of Bukhara. This agreement marks the end of Russian expansion in Central Asia (Fourniau & Poujol 2005a: 47-49). While the settling of the Steppe and Siberia was a process that slowly developed over centuries, the conquest of Central Asia consisted of a series of successive military campaigns in the very short time span of 1865-1885. This speed fits in the spirit of the age: as Europe gazed towards Africa in search of colonies in the ‘Scramble for Africa’, Russia turned its attention to its southern neighbours (Soucek 2000: 195). Prestige was the prime factor: Russia had recently lost the Crimean War against the combined forces of the UK, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire. Bittered and humiliated by this defeat, the Russian Empire needed a new theatre on which to show its military prowess (Sokolov 2015: 7). Economic incentives also played a role. As Russia was slowly developing her industry, she sought to expand her

13 domestic market and extract raw materials in order to sustain her new factories (Gluŝenko 2010: 42-43). Additionally, the American Civil War had caused worldwide shortages of cotton. As a result, the Russian textile industry became dependant of Turkestan cotton (Sokolov 2015: 7). Anti-slavery rhetoric aimed at the infamous slave markets of Khiva served as an extra justification of the conquest (Mulligan & Bric 2013: 108).

1.2 Distinct Territories and Everyday Control

All conquered territories were united in 1867 in the Turkestan Kraj under the command of governor-general K.P. Kaufman. He had plenipotentiary powers in the Kraj, and could only be held accountable by the czar himself. He more or less had carte blanche in forwarding his own policies in the region (Khalid 1998: 50). Kaufman opted to isolate Turkestan as much as he could, both administratively and culturally. In earlier expansions, Russia had sought to integrate new regions into the empire and add the native population to the social stratification. But Turkestan was treated as a colony on the fringe. Governors ruled the different provinces independently, they created only the most essential institutions in their most basic forms, and where possible the Russians kept earlier organs of power intact (such as the Bukharan Emirate and the Khivan Khanate) (Evgen’evna 2015: 239). Kaufman wished to keep Islam locked up in Turkestan. Firstly, he feared that their fanaticism might spread to more recently ‘pacified’ regions such as Kazakhstan, , and Tatarstan. Secondly, Kaufman strongly believed that political authority and Islam were strongly intertwined here. Now the khanates had fallen, Islam in the region, unable to produce a renaissance on its own due to the sheer backwardness, would fade away. To this purpose he took a number of preliminary cautions. The distribution of passports was curtailed (so citizens couldn’t leave the country for the Hadj), and the Russian Muslim Spiritual Administration had no authority in Central Asia (Khalid 1998: 52-54). But meanwhile, Kaufman prohibited any provocation against the native population: there was little to no interference to cultural life, religious traditions were kept alive, and conversions and general proselytism were kept at a minimum (Soucek 2000: 204). These policies frequently led to clashes between the local governments and the central authorities in Saint Petersburg. For example, the Ministry of Interior wanted more transparency and control on education in the mosque schools, while Kaufman and his successors categorically opposed any interference. Where Kaufman wished to keep emigrants out of Turkestan to prevent land expulsions of the natives, the Ministry of Agriculture kept sending droves of impoverished farmers to the region (Evgen’evna 2015: 242). Nevertheless, the Russians had to maintain a permanent presence in Turkestan. This presence differed between the ‘empty’ steppes and urbanised Turkestan. In the steppes, Russians affected the lay-out of the region more profoundly, as Slavic settlers claimed water

14 and fertile lands from the native (semi-)nomadic tribes (Ueda 2013: 34). Expansion here always followed the same pattern. First, Cossacks built and manned a military fort or outpost. Then that outpost would grow over the years. This attracted colonists, who then integrated the small settlement into the larger regional economy. Meanwhile, in the dense urban network to the south the Europeans constructed their new European-styled cities adjacent to the old city centres (Fourniau & Poujol 2005b: 61). They left the older urban centres untouched. Whenever a New City needed to expand, it expanded on new plains instead of extending itself to the Old City. This method of expansion created a physical distance between the natives and the colonisers. This in turn led to a mental distance between the two groups, as the Europeans preferred not to mingle with the other ethnicities (Stronsky 2012: 19-20). It’s clear to me the preferred method of expansion and the reluctance to interact resulted in the creation of two separate and distinct societies: a colonial Russian society and a native society. In total six of these colonial New Cities emerged next to their native counterpart: Tashkent, , Kokand, Namangan, Novy Bukhara and Novy Marghilan (Azzout 2005: 798). The most important of these New Cities would be (New) Tashkent. Railroad workers finished the Tashkent – Orenburg railway in 1906, and this caused the Slavic population of Tashkent to skyrocket. By 1909 a fourth of the city, around 55.000 people, was of European descent (Fourniau & Poujol 2005b: 64). Most of these Europeans were soldiers, administrators, exiles, and railroad or textile workers (Stronsky 2012: 18). However, famines in Russia and troubles in Poland also sent poor peasants and Polish dissidents on their way to Tashkent, which increased squalor (Stronsky 2012: 28). Railroads connecting the dispersed New Cities were vital to Russian control. Both civilians and military personnel could move about fast and easily, and economic goods could be extracted and forwarded towards Russian manufactories. Garrisons were deployed in villages all along the tracks (Fourniau & Poujol 2005b: 66-67). The situation in Khiva and Bukhara differed from the rest of Turkestan. Nominally the khan or emir maintained control. But even before the Russian conquest they never fully reigned over their domain. The neighbouring tribes of Kazakh, Uzbek, and Turkmen origin perpetually menaced the sedentary rulers. In Khiva the Turkmen tribes were only nominally dependant to the khan, and the Khanate of Kokand fell because of an internal uprising of Uyghurs and Kazakhs (Tabyshalieva 2005: 81-82). The relief didn’t contribute much to the territorial integration. For example, the mountainous terrain practically cut off East Bukhara from the rest of the country, making it virtually impossible for the emir to assert authority (Nourzhanov & Bleuer 2013: 22). Internally these protectorates lacked strong institutions. Everything depended on social standing and personal connections (Khalid 1998: 36). Power lied with both the ruling khan or emir and the local Ulama, the council of wise men. The rulers and the clergymen were as often in an alliance as they were at each other’s throats. Piety essentially dominated the society. It played a huge part in promotions and appointments,

15 such as the appointment to judge. Piety was received by being emersed by holy knowledge, which could only be received in the madrasa, which were of course run by the Ulama (Khalid 1998: 38-39). Chief administrators appointed muftis, who interpreted the Quran and other religious texts. Meanwhile, rais, who are both members of the clergy and bureaucrats, went about the daily life of religious affairs: they fulfilled the instructions provided by the and kept a watchful eye over sermons and mosque attendance (Tabyshalieva 2005: 82).

1.3 Modernity, War, and Resistance

Modernisation did find its way to the region eventually through the means of education. In general, education was abysmal and limited to male middle class citizens such as traders, clergymen, and administrators. There were three sources of education. Madrassas and mekteps (mosque schools) offered traditional religious education. The main subjects were the study of Perso-Turkic culture and the Quran (Nourzhanov & Bleuer 2013: 23). Pupils learnt a certain code of conduct (Adat) and general knowledge (Ilm). Knowledge meant interpreting the Quran within a certain scholarly habitus, and being able to quote the Quran when the social situation required it (Khalid 1998: 20). The second form of schooling came from a Russian point of view. Russian pedagogue Nikolaj Il’menskij had great success since 1863 with establishing schools in Tatarstan for converted . By advancing knowledge and teaching Russian in their own the pupils would eventually assimilate into the Russian population (Stern 2011: 758). Budilovič describes the process:

[Ш]кола Ильминского быстро отразилась на умственномъ и нравственномъ развитіи инородческихъ дѣтей, а съ тѣмъ и на болѣе сознательномъ изученіи ими русскаго [sic] языка. Отсюда же само собою проистекало ихъ сближеніе се русскимъ народомъ, его характеромъ, стремленіями и міровоззрѣніемъ. (Budilovič 1905: XIII)4

Even Lenin noticed the great achievements of these schools: he remarked that the Kazan’ Tatars had a far higher percentage of schools and teachers than their ‘Russian’ brethren (Ul'janov 1962: 514). The Il’menskij schools had great influence on the Tatar elite. Tatar reformer Ismail Gasprinskij, inspired by the success, started his own schools in Central Asia. Among other things, he developed a new method of teaching the Arabic alphabet, called in Arabic the ‘Usul–i-jadid’. His followers would go by the name ‘Jadids’. Gasprinskij meant to replace traditional religious education with a more modern and secular approach (Haugen 2003: 52). The language of instruction was of Turkic origin (often Tatar) instead of Arabic, pupils used benches and European books, and while religion was still omnipotent, courses like

4 The school of Il’menskij quickly had an impact on the intellectual and moral development of allogenous children, and with this on a more conscious study of the Russian language by them too. From here their convergence with the Russian people, its character, aspirations and worldview automatically proceeded. 16 geography, mathematics, and natural sciences were added to the curriculum (Carrère d'Encausse 1988: 85). Jadids didn’t limit their innovations to purely education. They were fixated on larger societal reforms, such as (limited) secularism. I would compare them to the European humanists in the 15th and 16th century. Two factors contributed to the success of the Jadids. The first factor was the rise of a (Tatar) merchant class who controlled local and colonial trade. These merchants were more open to modernising ideas. The second factor was the printing press: newspapers such as Terjüman (interpreter) could easily spread Jadid ideas and visions in Central Asia (Khalid 1998: 90). But influence from Russia wasn’t limited to education. Conflicts in Russia would also spread to Turkestan, most notably the Russian Civil War (1917-1923). In order to fully frame the effects of the Russian Civil War on the region, I wish to clarify the unrest prior to the conflict. Turkestan and the vassalised states sporadically saw minor peasant uprisings primarily motivated by poverty and religious infringement (Nourzhanov & Bleuer 2013: 23). The prime example of this kind of conflict is the rising in the Ferghana valley in 1898. Thousands of impoverished peasants and urban-dwellers rose up as ghazis: soldiers of a holy war against the Christian infidel (Tabyshalieva 2005: 90). The biggest threat for Russian dominance occurred in 1916. Due to serious losses in the Great War, Russian man power had been severely depleted. Therefore the czar sent an imperial decree on the 25th of June 1916 to the governor-general of Turkestan, in which he ordered:

Для работ по устройству оборонительных сооружёний и военных сообщений в районе действующей армии, а равно для всяких иных, необъходимых для государственной обороны работ, привлечь в течение настоящей войны […] мужское инородческое население империи в возрасте от 19 до 43 лет […] (Romanov 1960: 25-26)5

Drieu (2016: 2-3) indicates a number of circumstances that aggravated the situation, such as the date of the draft being in the middle of the harvest and the Ramadan, and rumours surrounding forced conversion and frontline duty. The situation escalated into a widespread revolt. While Cossacks and czarist forces managed to quench the rebellion quickly in the sedentary areas of Turkestan, the uprising would last for months in the nomadic region of what is today Kyrgyzstan. The February Revolution, the October Revolution, and the subsequent civil war set the region once more ablaze, disturbing the already fragile political situation. In New-Tashkent local Russian railroad workers and soldiers formed their own soviets (Khalid 1998: 246). The Russian left was quite strong in the region. Russian workers had been drawn to the region, lured by the higher wages and the prospect of being imperialistically superior to the local

5 For work on the construction of defensive structures and military communications in the area of the operating army, as well as for any other work, necessary for national defense, attract in the course of the current war […] the male allogenous population of the empire from the age of 19 to 43 […] 17 population which they viewed as backward and could only be saved by the prospect of . Furthermore, many of the soldiers in these soviets recently halted the 1916 rebellion, which further added to the antagonism (Khalid 1998: 251-252). The Jadids united in the Shuro-i-Islam, while the traditional clergymen of the Ulama formed the Ulema Jemyeti. Both groups had different interests: while Jadids proposed an autonomous (pan-Turkic) Turkestan within a Russian federation, the Ulema focused on the preservation of Islam in Turkestan (and by doing so, guaranteeing their social-political position). Despite this disagreement, both groups united in Kokand to form a state, later named the ‘Kokand Autonomy’ (Olcott 1981: 354). Relations with the Tashkent Soviet were initially neutral, but open conflict quickly flared up between the two states after a number of minor incidents. The new state failed to forge an alliance with any of its neighbours, while the Tashkent Soviet gained significant material support from Petrograd, with which they were able to eliminate the Kokand Autonomy (Bergne 2003: 30-31). The remnants of the Kokand Autonomy fled into the hills near the Ferghana valley, where they continued the war against the Soviets. Due to ideological differences the alliance fell apart: the moderate Jadids were led by Madamin Bek, while Irgash commanded the (substantially larger) forces loyal to the Ulema (Olcott 1981: 355). In Bukhara the local left-wing Jadids, who called themselves ‘Young Bukharans’ in analogy with the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire, worked together with the Red Army and the Bukharan Communist Party to overthrow the emir. This coup led to the formation of the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic (Becker 2004: 229). The Soviets took Khiva manu militari, and ousted the khan and his main general Junaid Khan. Once again the Russians installed a new regime in cooperation with local Jadids, the Young Khivans. However, the few communist members amongst the Young Khivans quickly asserted control (Becker 2004: 225). The emir fled to Afghanistan, where he organised the resistance versus Soviet rule, while Junaid Khan and his loyal tribesmen retreated into the Karakum desert and further into Iran (Olcott 1981: 358).

1.4 The Rise of the Basmachi

In summary, by 1920 the four groups led by either Irgash, Madamin Bek, Junaid Khan, or Alim Khan (the emir of Bukhara) formed the resistance versus the Red Army. The Soviet Union collectively called them ‘Basmachi bandits’, from the Turkic verb ‘basmak’ meaning to attack, to rob, to pillage (Panin 2013: 101). Highly disorganised, these rebels operated with limited support and with little to no cooperation between the groups, who were as often committed to internecine fighting as to combatting the Red Army. Each group had its own loyalty, and adhered to a different ideology (Broxup 1983: 65). Moreover, O’Kearney (2008:

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102) states that the Basmachi largely consisted of tribesmen fighting to preserve traditions and their faith. Only their anti-Soviet stance and shared religion bound them together. This situation temporarily changed in 1921 with the coming of Ismail Enver Pasha on the battleground of Turkestan as the rebellion had caught the attention of the former Ottoman general. He had been the leader of the Young Turks, who took control of the Ottoman Empire in the years prior to the Great War. In 1914 the Ottomans had joined the war in favour of the Central Powers against Russia. The pan-Turkish ideology was a major factor in this decision, as the Ottomans wanted to ‘liberate’ the Turkic regions under Russian control, such as and Central Asia. This is confirmed by the disastrous Caucasus campaign and the following Armenian genocide. The Armenians lived between the Turkish and Azeri people, and thus stood in the way of a potential Pan-Turkic union (O’Kearney 2008: 99-100). While Enver convinced the few rebellious Jadids of the Pan-Turkic cause, many of the ordinary jingits6 among the Basmachi were just fighting for the preservation of their traditions and religion. As a result he quickly changed his tone to pan-Islamism (O’Kearney 2008: 102). By doing so, the general came under the auspices of the former emir of Bukhara, who granted him control of all remaining forces under his command despite protests by the former commander Ibrahim Bek. Enver united several bands of Basmachi under his command and posed a real threat to Soviet authorities. However, he died in combat in 1922 (Panin 2013: 112-113). With his death, what was left of the temporary political unity of the movement was severely fractured, and by 1924 their zenith had passed. Nevertheless, fragments of the Basmachi movement continued their resistance, and still proved to be a nuisance to the Russians. Junaid Khan briefly retook Khiva in 1924, emir loyalists held out in Tajikistan till the defeat of Ibrahim Bek in 1931, and elsewhere resistance occasionally flared up as a response to Stalin’s forced collectivisation (Olcott 1981: 360-361).

1.5 National Delimitation: Limits and Advantages

In concluding this chapter, I highlight that despite this resistance the Red Army attained control of most of (Soviet) Central Asia after the civil war. At the end of 1922 the Communist Party decided to form the Soviet Union: a state with a federative structure based on nationalities (Hirsch 2005: 82). The Union might be the first state to coincide national and administrative boundaries (Suny 1992: 28). Lenin is known to have promised self- determination to all peoples of the former Russian Empire. As Velidi Togan, Bashkir leader, Jadid, and future Basmachi-supporter, discovered during the civil war, Lenin quickly fell short on his promises and regarded nationalistic matters with a certain level of pragmatism

6 A Jingit is a regular Basmachi warrior. 19

(Togan 2012: 250). The eventual change of heart has been explained differently by different sides. Either the Soviets fulfilled a lifelong dream of the Central Asian peoples for (socialist) nationhood, or the Russians divided a united Turkestan in order to maintain control. Most Anglo-Saxon sources believe the second possibility to be true, making the division a prime example of the ancient maxim ‘divide and conquer’ (Haugen 2003: 18, 21). Slezkine (1994: 414) for instance defines three reasons for Soviet nation-building. First, there’s the need to propagate the Soviet point of view to the different nationalities in their own languages. Furthermore, it would counteract possible Great-Russian chauvinism by establishing a ‘defensive nationalism’. Ultimately, nationalism would aid the local population to catch up economically, politically, and socially. Smith (1999: 239-240) also adopts a pragmatic stance by presenting the division into nationalities as a way to prevent interethnic conflicts, while creating the framework to further develop regions. Such an arrangement would inevitable add a new layer of identity, tying Soviet citizens further to their state. Whatever the reason might have been, the map of Central Asia had to be redrawn to accommodate the Soviet’s nationality policies. In 1924 the Khorezm (previously known as Khiva) and Bukharan People’s Republics, together with the Turkestan ASSR, were reorganised into nation-states. This process, called the National-Territorial Delimitation (Nacional'no-territorial'noe razmeževanie), resulted in the creation of the Uzbek, Turkmen, and Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1929 a separate Tajik Republic was established, formed out of territories of the Uzbek Republic. Kyrgyzstan was promoted from an autonomous Russian region to a full-fledged national republic in 1936 (Farrant 2006: 64-65). Arguably, these new nation states were not created out of thin air. Czarist officials had already tried to identify the population of Turkestan according to ethnicities. They used three main dichotomies in distinguishing identities: Iranian versus Turkic, settled versus nomad, and the presence or absence of tribalism. The attempt to follow this pattern inevitably failed, because group designations as ‘Uzbek’ or ‘’ had different meanings to people, and identities changed in time. Personal identification didn’t necessarily correspond with presumed identity (Haugen 2003: 33-34). A good example of this is the Russian term for nomad ‘kočevnik’, which referred to a category in the Russian tax system rather than a way of life (Ueda 2013: 34). What were the origins of the soon to be Uzbek nationality? It’s clear the term ‘Uzbek’ came into the region after the conquest of Turkestan in the 16th century by tribal leader Muhammed Shaybani Khan and his Uzbek tribal confederation. This is the only clear fact, as all the rest belongs to the realm of hypothesis and speculation: different orientalists have interpreted the boundaries between Tajik, Sart, and Uzbek differently time and again since it was impossible to establish linguistic boundaries between the three categories. At first, Sart and Tajik were synonymous. The invading Uzbek tribes called all sedentary people who weren’t part of their tribe ‘’. The main distinctions were drawn between urban and rural

20 communities, and tribal lineage. Afterwards, Sarts were defined as being the original citizens who were Turkified, while managed to maintain their Iranian heritage. The term ‘Uzbek’ gradually spread, as people identified themselves as being ‘subjects of the Uzbeks’. This had no connection with languages or tribal affiliation (Haugen 2003: 31-33). Ismailova (2001: 23) argues that the reason why the Soviet project succeeded so well was the emphasis on languages. Lenin stressed that explaining the Soviet views in people’s mother tongue would be the most effective way to spread the message. During the Likbez campaign (from Likvidacija Bezgramotnosti; the liquidation of illiteracy) Soviet linguists formed new standard languages from local vernaculars for each identified indigenous nationality. The preferred alphabet for these languages changed during the formative years. In general, the Arabic script was replaced by the Latin alphabet, which in turn ceded its place later in favour of the Cyrillic variant (Ismailova 2001: 24-25). In conclusion of this chapter, I reiterate that Soviet experts first created a nationalistic cadre based on three national languages (Uzbek, Kazakh/Kyrgyz, and Turkmen). Afterwards each nationality was designated a territory and population (Farrant 2006: 62). The Soviet Union followed the National Delimitation with the ‘Korenizacija’ campaign (‘nativisation’ or ‘indigenisation’). This campaign was a policy of affirmative action towards local (minority) nationalities. Local cadres were trained and favoured instead of Russian administrators with a goal to integrate the titular nationalities into the larger Soviet whole on an equal footing (Northrop 2004: 48, 72).

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2. Inducement and Background of the Hujum

Having outlined how nations and nation states had been formed, I now turn my attention to the next step in the long march towards socialism that awaited each of the newly-formed Central Asian states. In general, the Soviet Union aimed at nothing less than a complete transformation of society, especially in the domain of culture, where eventually all classes, linguistic groups and nationalities would collide and form the ‘Homo Sovieticus’ (Stern 2011: 759). The former semi-feudal colonies, inherited by the Soviet leadership from the czar, would prove quite a challenge. The protracted cultural engagement had consequences for both Soviet and Uzbek identities. It reshaped the Bolshevik ‘self’ through these interactions. They regarded themselves as the Europeans in this oriental society, and therefore had the duty to transform it (Northrop 2004: 8). As Dostoevskij (2015: 125) had stated it already in the 19th century: “В Европе мы были татарами, а в Азии и мы европейцы.”7 Their civilising mission started with hygienic measurements for improving public health, e.g. Soviet activists taught Uzbek women how to use soap (Northrop 2004: 62). Generous and benevolent as the attempt at improving public health seems, they also carried a strong political component. Scientific reasoning concerning public health was meant to replace traditional thinking about hygiene in terms of purity. Many of the complaints concerned women. The squalor and dirt, combined with the phenomenon of child brides, dramatically increased the chances of the mother succumbing at childbirth (Ibid.: 60). It was believed the paranja was to blame for many of these problems: some women barely saw the sun, and oxygen couldn’t circulate well through the cloth. Najma Rasulova stated that the paranja had nefast effects on her eyesight, and became healthier and more cultured than ever after casting the dress off (Ibid.: 102). In her statement, we can recognize she arguably ‘started seeing again’ in both literal and figurative meanings. But equally devastating was the seclusion that accompanied the veil. Women were kept in complete ignorance concerning health issues such as venereal diseases, and couldn’t go freely to a doctor when this was necessary (Ibid.: 63-64). We can see here how the paranja came into the limelight of the Soviets. But of course, hygienic concerns were not the prime motivator for the Hujum campaign. There were many different reasons of both practical and theoretical allure, and in the following section I turn my attention to outlining and investigating these underlying motives, for the campaign’s premises laid the seeds of its eventual failure. The main actors may have played their part with the motives unconsciously fulfilling just a minor supporting role, or as Marx points out: “Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es.” (Marx & Engels 1968: 26). Nevertheless it helps to explain why ‘Hujum’, Arabic for assault, was chosen instead of ‘Negotiation’ or ‘Slow withering of a cultural object’.

7 In Europe we were Tatars, but in Asia we too are Europeans. 22

2.1 Ideological Reasons for the Hujum: Orientalism and Marxism

During my research I identified two underlying motives that were omnipresent in everything the Soviets did in Central Asia: Orientalism and Marxism. These two world views either worked in the background of the many Soviet campaigns in Central Asia, or were the main reason why these campaigns had to be carried out at all. I will now illustrate these ideologies further, commencing with Orientalism. Orientalism is hard to explain: it has a multitude of causes and it manifests itself in various ways. We can define it here as the cultural hegemony, the set of values and ideas, that ruled in Europa in the 19th and 20th century towards the East. It assumes European superiority (and thus Eastern inferiority), and that all Easterners had common traits. It’s the conflict between the Familiar and the Strange, shaping the strange Easterner as everything the Westerner is not (Said 1977: 41-44). In Soviet Russia these presumed common Asiatic traits were dirt, laziness and unconsciousness of time. The rural areas reminded them of the half-feudal agrarian past, and Russians imagined the cities as inhabited by merchants who secluded theirs wives in veils. The Asiatic Other had to be turned into a socialist proletariat. One difference between Soviet Orientalism and standard Orientalism is that Central Asian backwardness was defined in relation to historical retardation, and not to racial inferiority (Castillo 1997: 35). Additionally, the Russians imagined Islam in the region as a source of religious fanaticism since the colonial days (Khalid 1998: 52). I presume this image originates from the fact that Bukhara was a prestigious Muslim centre of learning in the Middle Ages. Bukhara and Khiva were once the home of refined Islamic scholars such as Avicenna, Al-Khwarizmi, and Al- Bukhari. These men embodied the Islamic Golden Age (Gluŝenko 2010: 14). It explains why Kaufman had decided to seclude Turkestan as much as possible from the rest of (Muslim) Russia. The image of Turkestanis as being inherently fanatical also led to difficulties when dealing with native opposition to Russian/Soviet rule. As Edwards (1989: 655) describes it: “Establishing the enemy as fanatical denies him moral status, and affords those whose moral superiority is thus affirmed a free hand in defending their interests.” The Russians considered it impossible to negotiate with ‘Basmachi’8 or ‘class enemies’, because their fanaticism prevented rational thoughts.9 But what had caused this Russian/Soviet Orientalism? I believe the source lies in the centuries of conflict between (pre-)Russia and its nomadic pagan neighbours. This conflict had created a strong animosity. Even though both sides developed a modus vivendi, I argue that familiarity breeds contempt. Besides, the religious ideology forbade placating the enemy. The following subjugation of Muscovy in 1223 by the Mongol Empire caused centuries of

8 As explained earlier, the term ‘Basmachi’ itself already implied these rebels were just plunderers, riffraff, and bandits. 9 Nevertheless, from time to time pragmatism prevailed and diplomacy was possible. An example was the cease- fire between the Red Army and Madamin Bek (Panin 2013: 111). 23 strife and bitterness (Halperin 1985: 20). I believe this to be the most visible in the Turkestan Series (Turkestanskaja serija, 1871-1873) by Vasilij Vereŝagin. This series of paintings portray the brutal conquest of Turkestan. It has many elements of an Oriental discourse; despotism, cruelty, savagery, barbaric people, wild nature, … Nowadays, critics interpret the paintings as propaganda, ordered by general Kaufman to justify the conquest and his subsequent rule (Krylova 2015: 336). However, Krylova (2015: 338) clarifies that in contemporary sources the paintings were considered very antimilitarist. Vereŝagin shows the cruelty of the wars he himself had participated in. Hereby, he draws attention to the fate of the ordinary Russian soldier who was ordered to fight in the Far East. But this theme of conflict between Slavs and their Eastern neighbours isn’t limited to painting, as it also played a huge role in two Russian medieval epics: Zadonŝina and The Tale of Prince Igor (Slovo o polku Igore 1800). In Zadonŝina Prince Dmitrij Donskoj defeats the Golden Horde in the Battle of Kulikovo, while The Tale of Prince Igor tells the story of the defeat of Prince Igor against the nomadic Cumans in 1185. However, this Soviet Orientalism with its portrayal of Central Asian society as backwards isn’t purely a Russian phenomenon. Central Asians themselves took over the rhetoric. The different nationalities in the Communist Party portrayed themselves as ‘more backwards than the others’, in an attempt to gain more financial support for schools and public printing (Haugen 2003: 130-131). People would sometimes deny being literate and having received any education. The main source of pre-Soviet education was the madras, but anybody who had received such religious education could possibly be considered a class enemy (Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 130). Additionally, even racial differences were played out. Uzbek workers tried convincing the party to lower the legal marriage age for girls from 16 to 15, because European girls physically develop much slower than Uzbek girls. Therefore, European rules on marriage and consent should only apply to Europeans (Northrop 2004: 279-280). Another recurring aspect in Orientalism is the reference to women. Oriental women are often stereotypically portrayed as beautiful, as well as permanently lascivious and promiscuous (Shabanirad & Marandi 2015: 24). Early travellers in Turkestan explain this as the reason why women veiled themselves. Hungarian explorer Arminius Vámbéry (1868: 95- 96, 170-171) for instance abundantly describes diverse scenes such as the local fashion, the harem, and the beauty of the women in these harems. In a similar vein American journalist Januarius Macgahan (1874: 308-309) found it highly displeasing that he could only see men’s faces during his stay in Khiva because all women had veiled themselves in ragged robes. Despite their beauty, oriental women were double inferior to white men by being both oriental and women, and thus they could be (sexually) exploited in good conscience. The division of native women in predetermined cadres both matches and adds to the ruling ideologies of the time: imperialism, colonialism, and the patriarchy. These women were oppressed twice; by the local patriarchy and by the patriarchal ideas that accompanied colonialism (Shabanirad &

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Marandi 2015: 24-25). Colonial discourse extensively portrayed women as victims. This served as a justification of colonial rule. A prime example of this practice was banishing the ‘sati’ (the ritual burning of a widow at a funeral) in India by the British (Edgar 2006: 257- 258). In case of Central Asia, many Europeans believed this perceived inferiority to be inherent to the Islamic faith. Mirmamatova and Mamadaliev summarise this perception:

[В] Европе господствовало мнение, будто мусульманские народы не могут оценить по достоинству политическую свободу женщин. Помимо этого, среди европейцев было распространено о мусульманах еще и другое мнение, будто многоженство, затворничество женщины и ее низкое общественное положение увековечены в мусульманском мире учением Корана и примером пророка Мухаммада. (Mirmamatova & Mamadaliev 2014: 150)10

The best example of the portrayal of Eastern women according to Soviet Orientalism is the Soviet classic The White Sun of the Desert (Beloe solnce pustyni 1970) by director Vladimir Motyl’. The film belongs to a larger genre of films in the Soviet Union called ‘Eastern’. Just like their Western counterpart (namely the western) they revolve around the conflict of a hero and a villain for a woman or occasionally a treasure in the wild, aggressive, dangerous, and bloodthirsty wilderness (Novikova 2004: 78). In White Desert’s Sun, the Red Army soldier Suchov just wants to return home from the desert to his bucolical home and loving wife instead of fighting another war. In contrast, Abdulla is a fierce despotic scoundrel and Basmachi leader who kills without conscience (Ibid.: 78-79). Nothing more is needed to be known about him. The viewer doesn’t need an intricate identity or revealing emotions to know that the person of colour is the main foe (Ibid.: 84). Suchov is given the assignment to guard the harem a group of Red Army soldiers has captured from Abdulla. Meanwhile, he tries to enlighten the paranja-clad women on their rights, exclaiming the memorable slogan: “Женщина - тоже человек!”11 (Motyl’ 1970). Suchov symbolically saves the fifteen-year-old Gjul’čataj from the degradation caused by harem life, therefore fulfilling a part of the recurring theme of ‘colonial rescue fantasy’ (Novikova 2004: 82). In this endeavour he has two main allies. He is assisted by Said, the ‘friendly native’, who occasionally appears as a deus ex machina. Besides Said there is Petrucha, the token young proletarian element. Petrucha dies when he tries to see the face of one of Abdulla’s wives, therefore ‘dying by love’ (Novikova 2004: 78-80). It reminisces of the text by Vámbéry (1868: 96), where he describes that nobody would even dare looking at a Khivan princess in her carriage, as such a slight would be atoned for by death. Ultimately, Suchov and Said manage to kill Abdulla and his Basmachi following, after which the main hero continues his journey through the desert.

10 [I]n Europe, the opinion that Muslim peoples couldn’t appreciate political freedom for women dominated. In addition to this, another opinion about , that polygamy, the seclusion of a woman and her low societal status were perpetuated in the Islamic world by the teachings of the Quran and the example of the prophet Muhammed, was also widespread amongst the Europeans. 11 A woman is also a human being! 25

It might require some further comment on why exactly I chose the medium of film, and in particular The White Sun of the Desert to highlight Soviet Orientalism. The medium of film has the ability to communicate seemingly ‘neutral’ and entertaining messages to different segments of the population. Fiction is in essence phantasy, and phantasy is a screen on which to portray the Other at will with little concern for nuance or historical accuracy (Žižek 2008: 132). The White Sun of the Desert was a very popular film in the USSR, and achieved cult status in the latter days. It’s a known gimmick of Roskosmos, the Russian version of NASA, to make the cosmonauts watch the film every time before taking off into space as a good luck ritual. Perhaps the cosmonauts related to the main hero Suchov, who just like those cosmonauts explored unknown regions (Čtoby Pomnili 2017: Motyl' Vladimir Jakovlevič). The film is also known for its many quotable lines. Given the theme of this chapter, the most fitting quote to finish this section would be: “Восток - дело тонкое!” 12 (Motyl’ 1970). Another ideological factor that fuelled the Hujum campaign was the Marxist doctrine, which in different forms (Leninism, Stalinism) was the ruling ideology of the Soviet Union. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the ideas put forth by Marx play a vital role in explaining the actions of the Union in Central Asia. According to Marx, a society is based on the means of production, and all relations to these means. This is called the economic base. On this base a large superstructure is founded: the total of culture, institutions, and ideology. These means of production can transform over time: this changes both the economic base and the superstructure (and thus changes society as a whole) (Marx & Engels 1983: 159-160). According to orthodox Marxism, history had already gone through a couple of societal stages: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, and capitalism. Marx foresaw the socialist stage, which role was to prepare humanity for the final stage of history, namely communism (Shimp 2009: 44-48). Nationalism belonged to an early stage of capitalism. It was quickly sublated into a higher form of capitalism. Nevertheless, it has existed in the capitalist stage of history, and thus serves a purpose (Cheah 1998: 27). This explains the National Delimitation, and why the Union tolerated and even promoted nationalism. Marx incorporated this system of sublation from Hegel. This comes as no surprise, with Marx being known as a Neo-Hegelian. The main difference between these two philosophers was that Hegel was an Idealist, stating that reality only exists in our thoughts and ideas. Marx was a staunch materialist: everything happens in the ‘real life’, because only matter can be proven to exist (Shimp 2009: 38-39). I will provide a quick summary of Hegel and his (relevant) ideas, based on Spenzer & Krauze’s Hegel for Beginners (1996). According to Hegel, only the ‘Whole’ is important; the final outcome. Every stage or phase on the way is just partial. Yet, every stage already contains the Whole. Therefore, the Whole needs to be freed from its context. The means to achieve this liberation from context is ‘sublation’. Nothing is removed, but instead the entirety

12 The East is a delicate matter! 26 is brought to a higher level of being. This process of sublation is caused by Negation. Within every identity there is a set of contradictions. This Negation is the dynamic aspect that moves everything towards the Whole. The act of sublation goes as follows: first there is the phase of ‘Being’. Two contradicting concepts that appear to have no connection stand in juxtaposition. Then the phase of ‘Essence’ follows: through analyses or deduction both concepts are shown to be related, and they even imply each other in definition. In the third phase these two concepts reach a more sophisticated level of contradiction. In colloquial terms this process is explained as the triadic structure of Thesis – Antithesis  Synthesis. Hegel named this idea of logic ‘Dialectic Thinking’. Dialectic Thinking has had many critics through the years, including Slovenian philosopher and critic Slavoj Žižek. Žižek (2008: X-XI) states that this logic is based on severe simplification. Only the very essence of the concepts, their single dominant characteristic, is placed in opposition. This extensive abstraction completely removes all historical and cultural contexts. But Hegel encouraged this, for we shouldn’t cloud our minds with contemporary ideas and visions. Historical dialectic certainly has its role in sociology and social theory in helping to explain and understand the evolution of society in history. But this approach took on a heavy role of predicting the future: what if the socialist phase would be held off, and the mode of production transformed in an unknown form? Furthermore, it seems that this model of evolution is grounded mainly in European reading. The system does not allow for alternations to explain for geographical and cultural differences. Non-capitalist societies are simply stuck in a ‘retarded’ and lesser phase. There arises yet another problem. While the paranja itself might possibly be a consequence of Russian imperialism, the act of veiling predates Islam in the region. The cultural phenomenon of the paranja thus rests in some sort of limbo, covering different phases of society. Kemper (2009: 34-35) shows that Soviet scholars tried to circumvent this problem by proving the existence of an ‘AMP’: Asiatic Mode of Production. This way they sought to explain the economic differences between Europe and Asia as a whole, Central Asia in specific. Stalin ended this alternative thinking by commanding Soviet orientalists to locate the origin of the Islamic faith in feudalism. One can easily imagine the many consequences this kind of thinking gave on the field. During the National Delimitation the Soviet Union spent time and effort in constructing the Uzbek society and identity. The Soviets aided this new nationality during the Korenizacija with a policy of affirmative action. Now the Uzbeks would have to forego their newfound identity for the sake of evolution in this historical dialectic sense. As Edgar (2006: 268) states, the Hujum and the Korenizacija were a contradiction: while promoting unique identities, the Soviet Union also campaigned against traditions, and attempted to reshape these unique identities to a modern Soviet nation.

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2.2 Practical Reasons for the Hujum: Indigenous Support

The most logical reason for the Hujum was to find local allies in Uzbekistan, willing to support the Soviet cause. Earlier campaigns had gone without much success. The first campaign aimed at religion in general. The Soviet Union tried to expose the dogmas of religion as hypocritical and false. First, people were persuaded that religion was just the ‘opium of the people’, and that the clergy had been lying to them for centuries to secure their own social position. Secondly, young Komsomol13 members affronted clergymen in public and ridiculed people for their beliefs. The third phase took place on an institutional level. Muslims were restricted from performing the Hadj and mosques were converted to anti- religious centres. But the failure of this campaign lied within the internal organisation of the Islamic faith. Islam was internally very divided, with each Sufi order following its own rules with an almost absent relation to ‘higher authorities’ such as the Ulama (Northrop 2004: 73- 75). There was no upper institution to control, which could then (in)voluntarily cooperate with Soviet authorities as was the case with the Holy Synod or a Chief Rabbi. Even an imam, a position of relative power and respect, was a simple believer. His role was to ‘pray in front of others’. If there was to be an ‘upper authority’ with which to collaborate, it would have to be created by the Soviets themselves (King 1995: 174-175). The next attempt to gain popular support occurred in 1925 through the means of land redistribution. A large reform had already been planned, but had been continuously postponed by the National Delimitation and Basmachi interference (Penati 2012: 188). The reforms ranged from the expulsion of class enemies to cultivating new lands. Many different problems plagued this rearrangement. The first problem lied within the administration. The project relied heavily on European land surveyors, but they were in short supply. In total three different independent institutions were responsible for the campaign, viz. new land commissions, the Uzbek water administration, and local managers of irrigation systems. This inevitably led to counterproductive results (Ibid.: 190-191). The second problem lied in the implementation. Collaboration cells were formed on the countryside, consisting of party members, registered ‘Red farmers’, and other non-party affiliated individuals with an aim to spread Soviet institutions. But the plan completely backfired: where the administration thus had hoped for better measurements and fairer redistributions, the cells abused their power and boycotted the whole affair for their own benefit. Deserted lands (due to the consequences of the war) had already spontaneously been claimed, thus farmers in general weren’t keen on sharing their new (illegal) acquisitions (Ibid.: 196). The third issue was the general lack of reliable data. Mere months before the start of this campaign officials still didn’t have a single clue about the amount of land that would have to be redistributed. They heavily relied on old

13 Komsomol is a syllabic abbreviation for Kommunističeskij sojuz molodëži (the Communist league of Youth), the largest Soviet youth movement. 28 czarist archives, but these showed huge discrepancies because of deaths, refugees, and destruction during the conflict. And even these documents didn’t cover the former protectorates (Ibid.: 192). Only after the failure of these two campaigns the main focus shifted towards women. Soviet officials presumed that all women to a degree suffered from the ruling Islamic patriarchy. They formed the much needed fifth column, and millions of women would immediately and gladly rise up en masse to support the Soviet cause given the opportunity for change. Soviet authorities decided that this ‘change’ would be the liberation from the veil (Northrop 2004: 77). In June 1926 the slogan “К наступлению!”14 was used for the first time (Ibid.: 82). Its translation in Uzbek (Hujum) would soon become the summary of the campaign. There was a vibrant internal debate whether a more subtle approach would be more suitable. What made the balance tip in favour of a ‘Hujum’ instead of a slow negotiation? Those in favour of the soft approach argued that persuasion, not coercion, was the key. Gradually the Uzbek habitus would change, and cultural values could be properly adjusted. Those against this approach contended that a complete ban of the veil should be immediately and everywhere in effect. Any sign of protest will distinguish the class enemies in society, and appropriate sanctions will follow (Ibid.: 119). A policy of negotiation would make it possible for these class enemies to explicate their case in the public discourse and encourage others to follow suit (Ibid.: 123-124). This debate between soft and hard Hujum partially resulted from the discussions between Soviet scholars in the Islamic studies. In 1923 some scholars supported the idea that Islam was inherently communistic. The Quran had elements of primitive communism, and Sufism was a leftist movement coincidentally manned by Muslims (Kemper 2009: 6-7). However, as the years progressed, there was a gradual radicalisation in Islamic studies. This mounted in 1930 to the question whether Muhammed existed at all (Ibid.: 32). Eventually, Soviet orientalists portrayed Islam as a feudal phenomenon, and thus Islam had to be removed in order for society to advance as a whole (Ibid.: 34). Sooner rather than later, it was decided to go with the confrontational approach. A number of both internal and external causes influenced this decision. First of all, huge demonstrations followed by prohibitions would be much cheaper than building out the necessary groundwork to educate the population (schools, printing, activists going door to door, etcetera) (Northrop 2004: 120). Furthermore, the Soviet Union was in rivalry with other states regarding women’s rights. In neighbouring countries the concept of the veil as a symptom of the inability to westernise was present. The Turkish Republic under Ataturk never officially banned the veil, but it was heavily discouraged. A new penal code in 1926 abolished polygamy and established divorce rights. Women were allowed to vote and run for office in the 1930’s. Similarly, Reza Shan Pahlavi, the ruling Shah of Persia, banned the veil in favour of Western

14 Towards the assault! 29 clothing; but he fell short in any other form of emancipation. Afghan king Amanullah Khan also took steps for the improvement of women’s rights, such as: banishing veils, providing education for girls in state schools, and modernising marital laws. Unfortunately, the conservative clergy in his country vigorously opposed him and his policies, and managed to overthrow him in 1929 (Edgar 2006: 262-263). The Soviet Union couldn’t lag behind these bourgeois countries. Another threat to Soviet legitimacy came from an internal source. Unveiling had always been a pet peeve of the Tatar Jadids, as they argued that the paranja had no roots in the Quran. Therefore, the USSR feared that her policies could be interpreted as an extension of Jadid ideas (Northrop 2004: 89). The Soviets felt uneasy to align themselves with these clergymen, even if they upheld similar progressive ideas (Ibid.: 117). As a result, the Jadids were demonised. This would prove to be a small success of the Soviet campaign: from the 1930’s onwards in the eyes of ordinary Uzbeks the unveiling campaign would be synonymous with the Soviets (Ibid.: 346). I surmise that the attempt at modernisation would have been much easier with Jadid support. Now, if Uzbekistan were to be a colony15, it leaves the possibility for a minority rule. The Soviets could have used local or alien minorities to rule former Turkestan. These minorities were the Armenians, Ashkenazi and Bukharan Jews, and Tatars (more on these minorities in 5.1 Demographics). The idea is not as preposterous as it would seem at first. We have seen the czar ruled Turkestan indirectly, with mainly Volga Tatars manning the administration because of their linguistic and cultural proximity to the Central Asian Turkic peoples (Tabyshalieva 2005: 93). When Haklai was writing his thesis in 1999, there were three cases of minority rule left in the world: Tutsi’s in Burundi ruled over the Hutu majority, while Alawites and Shias dominated the Sunni population in Syria and Iraq respectively (Haklai 1999: 7). Eventually this type of rule is a recipe for disaster, as these countries have witnessed excessive ethnic conflict. All three cases are a result of colonial interference. European nations would divide the population by establishing a strict social hierarchy. This made ruling the colony easier, as segments of the population would be put one against the other to achieve maximum benefit from the overlords (Ibid.: 12). Haklai (1999: 9-10) identifies four conditions for minority rule; identification of the minority in relation to the majority, the wish and possibility for political power, ‘special circumstances’ (in this instance: colonialism) regarding government institutions, and an internally divided majority. As far as I know, all these conditions were fulfilled in Uzbekistan. Elites could have been formed by unbalanced funding in the area of education. They could have been disproportionately made factory managers or kolkhoz leaders (amongst others). The USSR

15 The interpretation of the USSR as a colonising nation is heavily debated, with most reliable sources describing it as an imperial state with a large caveat (Kassymbekova 2011: 21). I personally agree with the statement of Adrienne Edgar, who identifies Soviet policies as “not imperial in intent, but imperial in effect” (2006: 272). 30 was authoritarian enough to maintain their advantaged position in social and economic sectors. Yet, the Soviets didn’t seriously contemplate this course of action. It would have been quite hypocritical to establish nation states, and then put minorities in charge. The Korenizacija meant that allies who supported the Soviet Union had to be found in the traditional Uzbek establishment.

31

3. Uzbek Responses to the Hujum

3.1 Creating the Uzbek identity: Uzbek Equals Paranja, Paranja Equals Uzbek

A recurring criticism on Northrop is that he presents Uzbek society as a homogenous whole, using terms such as ‘Muslim women’, ‘Women of the East’, or ‘Uzbek women’ (Levin 2008: 97). The Soviet Census of 1926 shows that the process of nation building characterised by the National Delimitation was still in full swing. There were still many competing and complementing identities. While the Uzbek ethnicity is the largest, it is far from an absolute majority on the contemporary territory of the Uzbek Republic (Appendix: Table 1). Northrop (2004: 51) himself addresses this problem, by stating that Bukharan Jews wore paranjas, and paranjas were worn outside of the territory of Uzbekistan. But to a certain degree his ‘fault’ can be excused: the paranja was an essential part of the Uzbek identity which the Soviet Union tried to mould into their vision. By definition Uzbek women wore the veil: it is what made them Uzbek in the first place according to the Soviet Union (Northrop 2004: 186). Even then, he says that Uzbek men and women were not a single entity (Ibid.: 88). But we have to agree that this homogenisation was the main goal of both the Korenizacija campaign and the subsequent National Delimitation. Thus, equalizing the paranja and Uzbek identity became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Uzbek people adopted this maxim: they saw the unveiling campaign as an attempt to destroy the Uzbek nationality, and unveiled women were no longer considered true Uzbeks (Ibid.: 186). Despite the eventual success of the campaign, ‘Uzbek’ (or ‘Sart’ or ‘Turkmen’ for that matter) wasn’t the strongest sense of identity in Central Asia for a long time. The most important identity was the denomination ‘Muslim’, followed by regional habitation (say: a Ferghaner, a Bukharan, a Khivan …). These identifications were of course not defined by language or ethnicity. But even the term ‘Muslim’ was very heterogeneous. The main distinction was between settled people and nomads. In the sedentary areas the Ulama had a strong authority. The world ‘Ulama’ comes from ‘Ilm’, which means ‘learning’. Another source of piety (and thus legitimacy and authority) was a claim of ‘holy descent’. This aspect was much stronger present in nomadic tribes, who logically had weaker institutions and a lack of mosques. It was a widespread phenomenon amongst the Turkmen tribes for tribal leaders to claim family ties to the first Islamic Caliphs (Haugen 2003: 35-36). The identification as ‘Muslim’ didn’t carry much weight. Central Asia is noted for its low level of religious doctrine by Muslim standards (Olcott 1981: 366), so this identity could be filled in however one liked to. The shared confessional identity didn’t lead to a larger sense of togetherness. It appeared mainly in the dichotomy ‘Russian versus Muslim’, in which ‘Muslim’ meant ‘native’ (as in: Russian language versus Muslim languages) (Haugen 2003: 38-39). This

32 dichotomy increased in importance during the Russian Civil War. When Enver Pasha arrived in Turkestan, he had strong Pan-Turkic allegiances. While Jadids such as Gasprinskij favoured a strictly cultural pan-Turkism, Pasha believed such cultural ideas should be reinforced with political actions, including open rebellion (O’Kearney 2008: 99-100). However, when he realised such academic ideas couldn’t arouse the local Turkestan population he quickly took a pan-Islamist stance to gain legitimacy. He declared himself ‘Commander in Chief of all the Mujahedeen’, and publicly claimed to be an enemy of the infidels (O’Kearney 2008: 102). This was much to the distaste of the ex-emir of Bukhara. Bukharan emirs had always acted as the most important defenders of the faith. The function historically combined both worldly and the spiritual obligations (Gluŝenko 2010: 27). After Pasha’s death the ousted emir took over the title, and thus succeeded in gathering the Basmachi behind him. The Russians wanted to mend the broken relations with the Muslims. In his ‘Ko vsem trudjaŝimsja musul'manam Rossii i Vostoka’ Lenin appealed to all the Muslims of the empire with a simple message:

Мусульмане России, […], все те, мечети и молельни которых разрушались, верования и обычаи которых попирались царями и угнетателями России! Отныне ваши веровании и обычаи, ваши национальные и культурные учреждения объявляются свободными и неприкосновенными. Устраивайте свою национальную жизнь свободно и беспрепятственно. Вы имеете право на это. Знайте, что ваши права, как и права всех пародов России, охраняются всей мощью революции и ее органов, Советов Рабочих, Солдатских и Крестьянских Депутатов. (Ul'janov 1917: 1-2)16

Muslim reformists such as Velidi Togan found out that this was an empty promise (Togan 2012: 249). This is why the idea of Soviet rule as ‘foreign’ will live on. It explains the moderate enthusiasm later of the lower echelons of the Uzbek Communist Party regarding state policies, usually not implementing them themselves in their daily live (Edgar 2006: 268). According to ordinary Uzbeks, the Russian tried to “destroy Islam, communalize women and destroy the Muslim family” (Edgar 2006: 266). Even now, the Uzbek Embassy to the United States (2017: History) on its official website puts ‘liberate’ in the phrase ‘liberate women’ in parentheses, and claims Soviet campaigns aimed at discouraging traditional dress code and customs.

16 Muslims of Russia, […], all those, whose mosques and chapels were destroyed, whose beliefs and customs were trampled under foot by the czars and oppressors of Russia! Henceforth your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural foundations are declared free and inviolable. Arrange your national life freely and unimpeded. You have the right to this. Know that your rights, like the rights of all peoples of Russia, are protected by the might of the revolution and her organs, the Soviets of the representatives of workers, soldiers and farmers. 33

3.2 Nation-Building Spectacle

I have often referred to the National Delimitation as both the cause and the result of nation- building, but I have yet to give an example of how this ‘nation-building’ was carried out. I agree with McClintock, that public spectacles are an important aspect in creating a ‘nation’. McClintock (1995: 370-375) gives the example of the Boers in South Africa in 1938. The centenary celebration of ‘De Groot Trek’ resulted in a ‘Second Trek’. Ox carts would come from all over South Africa and go north. Up to this point, the Boers didn’t have a strong uniform culture. They spoke a wide range of dialects and had different origin stories. Nevertheless, the convoys tried to portray themselves as best as they could with traditional Boer culture: men would grow beards, women donned themselves in traditional white bonnets, black servants walked besides the wagons, etc. When these convoys passed a village small spectacles were organized. People, eager to be part of this playlet, carried flags and torches, and sang nationalistic songs. I imagine the happening as a theatre play: the villages were the scene, the cart-drives the main actors, and the spectacle was the play. But the goal was not to amuse or educate people as in classic playlets; they attempted to create a nationalistic consciousness, and in this endeavour they were highly successful. The aspect of spectacle as part of establishing identity can be carried over from South Africa to Uzbekistan. The reason why the Hujum is equated to ‘anti-paranja’ is because of the massive paranja- burnings the Communist Party organised in Uzbekistan. Public celebrations in the 1930’s (such as the 8th of March) went hand in hand with mass demonstrations. Women from all over Uzbekistan came together and threw their paranjas collectively into a large bonfire. They cleansed themselves from their oppressive past by fire. Meanwhile, huge swaths of people would chant Uzbek and Russian songs, wave the red banner, and clamour Soviet achievements of both gender related and economic allure. The next day, local newspapers would smear out the event, stating fictitious or exaggerated numbers of unveiled women accompanied with photos and drawings of women defiantly burning their oppressive garb (Northrop 2004: 3, 339-341). Logically, these events had their repercussions. Conservatives would often wait outside, ready to scold the women who (often involuntarily) attended these meetings (Ibid.: 170). The women quickly redonned themselves on their way home, buying three darker paranjas for every piece of cloth burned according to a popular song (Ibid.: 188, 344). These backlashes too would become an inherent part of the spectacle; one the Soviet authorities didn’t anticipate. But the conservatives were capable of creating ‘spectacles’ as well. An act of opposition that sporadically occurred was self-immolation. In one case on the 8th of March 1930, two Turkmen school girls doused themselves in kerosene after a women’s liberation meeting and set themselves on flames. This was detrimental for the Soviet image. First of all, the action occurred on clear ‘Soviet’ territory: in the middle of a town square after a political

34 meeting on International Women’s Day. Secondly, young school girls were ostensible allies of the regime, and the future of in general. It was a clear political act, meant to defy Soviet authority in public (Ibid.: 282).

3.3 The Paranja as a Fetish Object

Because of the attention from both sides to the paranja I argue that the paranja was or became a fetishised object. Identifying the paranja as a fetish item can help explain the vehement opposition by the native Uzbek population. First, we need to unravel the many different meanings of the word ‘fetish’. In its original sense, a fetish is an object to which the owner attributes magical powers and positive influence. The word is derived from Latin ‘facticius’; ‘fabricated’. The word has its origin in imperial colonial context. The Portuguese used it to describe the new ‘primitive’ social orders and religions of the cross-culture areas of West Africa during the 16th and 17th century. The original cross-culture was the contact of European Christian feudalism with traditionalistic African societies (Pietz 1985: 6). Pietz (1985: 10) mention four themes that reoccur throughout the fetish discourse: irreducible materiality, a fixed power to repeat an original event of singular synthesis or ordering, the institutional construction of consciousness of the social value of things, and the material fetish as an object established in an intense relation to and with power over the desires, actions, health, and self-identity of individuals whose personhood is conceived as inseparable from their bodies The sexual interpretation of fetish, disputably the most common and popular one today, wasn’t conceived until Alfred Binet mentioned it, and it was largely exaggerated by Freud and Lacan in the 20th century. Pietz (1985: 6) himself warns that this sexual definition would become dominant. He states that while a sexual aspect was possibly present in the beginning, we should stray from the alleged tendency to define everything in phallic symbols. Baudrillard (2001: 66) states that each object has four different kinds of value. The first one is ‘sign value’. This is the prestige value in ostentation an object has. The second value is symbolic: the object has value in respect to an idea or a subject. An object derives his third value, the functional value, by its instrumental use. The fourth value, namely the exchange value, is the economic worth of the object. Thus, the definition of a fetish object is an object with a high ‘sign value’. It represents the social status of the owner. It no longer has magical powers on its own, but expresses social value through its materialistic form (Dant 1996: 498). The question is: did the paranja meet these criteria? Central Asia certainly was a cultural hotspot as the contact zone of the Slavic and Muslim worlds (Northrop 2004: 14). But even in earlier days it was the region where Turkic, Mongolic, and Persian cultures both clashed and lived side by side. Additionally, there’s the strong distinction between the settled societies and the nomadic tribes.

35

The first phase of the evaluation of the veil as a fetish object starts in the pre-Hujum Uzbek society. I state that this society was male dominant: women as a whole had very little agency. Most couldn’t read nor write, they were kept out of mosques and schools, marriage laws spoke against them (forced and underage marriages, polygyny, restricted access to courts), and they were practically unable to divorce (Northrop 2004: 243). Öz (2013: 76-77) describes women in Central Asia as secondary citizens. They enjoyed practically no rights or any sort of legal protection. ‘Taissez-vous et soyez-belle’ could have been the ruling credo. Her sole responsibility was bearing children, and because of the lack of even rudimentary medical equipment this was often lethal. She was to be subordinate, and live by the rules prescribed to her by her father or husband. I argue it would hardly be an exaggeration to call them essentially slaves, being bought and sold by qalin (bride price). A veil portrays the conceived female inferiority to their male counterpart. But women were even demographically ‘inferior’. In 1924 there were only 889 women per 1000 Uzbek male citizens (Northrop 2004: 252-253). This helps make sense why this discussion is held from a male perspective. Then, what is the value of this object (according to Baudrillard)? The paranja has a basic economic value, and we can easily derive its instrumental value as a garment. The symbolic value is more difficult to determine. While the veil predates Islam, it was fully incorporated into the new religion. The symbolic value is thus between a man and his god: by veiling his wife, he dutifully fulfils as was commanded by the holy books. From this the paranja derives its sign value: a veiled woman shows the community that her husband is a pious man. Adding to the sign value is a phenomenon of a more practical nature. Veiling women wasn’t common in nomad societies as it highly limits mobility. It also hinders work in the fields: this is why female Uzbek farmers usually wore men’s clothing while at work. In combination with the high cost of a paranja, only the very wealthy could keep their wives secluded. Veiling your wife became a sign of prestige in ostentation. This sign of prestige became more and more widespread due to the increase in wealth in the region (Kamp 2006: 135-136). Northrop (2004: 44) has already stated that the paranja itself was a very recent phenomenon, appearing only after the Russian conquest of Turkestan. I believe there was more than just a correlation between the conquest and the new appearance of the paranja. Incorporation into the Russian Empire opened up Turkestan to foreign capital and gave it access to the world market, which, while destroying the local autarky, globally increased wealth (Kamp 2006: 135-136). More people had wealth to display, and the paranja was one way to do so. We can also portray the paranja as a fetish object according to Pietz. Its irreducible materiality is without any doubt. It has the power to repeat an original event, in this case her birth, as it defined her destiny as inferior for her life to come. This would be repeated every time the wife reveils before leaving the house. The paranja is a permanent expression of the structured relation between a man and his wives. I am strongly convinced this structured relation was an important reason why the Russians focused so heavily on the paranja. As will

36 be explained later in this chapter, they sought to transform society by changing the traditional gender pattern. The paranja was exactly the expression of what had to change. This just leaves the theme of ‘intense relation’. To explain the last condition I turn my attention to the definition of a fetish object by McClintock (1995: 184), who argues that fetishes project a complex system of contradictions which someone can’t personally resolve on an object. If a man then gains control over the object, he can figuratively manifest control over these contradictions. I argue that in this case, basic human lust contradicted the more rigid religious strains and imposed taboos on intercourse, even if solely for reproductive means. This results in the veil as the material objectification of this clash. This has a double purpose. By investing this power in a paranja, and then veiling one’s wife in a paranja, a man can impose control on his wife and the underlying network of contradictory values and taboos regarding sex. The second purpose is more evident. While the paranja serves to keep women out of the view of lustful men, it can also be used as an empty canvas on which to portray all the desires a man shouldn’t have. The emergence of fetish items in religious discourse isn’t a new phenomenon, nor is it limited to the veil. Pietz (1985: 10) gives the example of the Christian Eucharist (where the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is repeatedly commemorated), McClintock (1995: 202) mentions holy water and crucifixes as religious fetishes. They even occur in national culture, in the form of flags, monuments, and costumes (McClintock 1995: 192). Of course, in this region in this time the two identities were intertwined and inseparable. The paranja became a fetishized object, both in religious (Muslim) as in nationalistic (Uzbek) context. While the establishment of Uzbek nationalism was one of the goals of the National Delimitation, it was an unwanted presence in society during the Hujum. The nation state had been established (as was to be expected in Marxist doctrine for progress), but now nationalistic sentiment had to be removed. All remaining nationalistic symbolism was aimed at the larger whole: the Soviet Union. The paranja proved an easy substitute to the lack of outward symbols of Muslim and Uzbek identity. Thus, an effect of the creation of nation states and the subsequent Hujum was the embellishment of the paranja as a defining part of Uzbek national attire and identity. When assumed that women are the symbolic bearers of the nation (McClintock 1985: 354), the general prestige of women is enhanced as being the last bastion of (bourgeois) Uzbek nationalism in defiance of the classless a-nationalistic workers’ republic.

3.4 The Threat of Emancipation

But let’s return to the original purpose of the Hujum; female emancipation. What does this exactly mean? The USSR attempted to give women the same rights as men had. The sheer concept of emancipation was revolutionary. It aimed at equality, both in the domestic sphere as in regards to men in the production process (Öz 2013: 6-7). While in Western nations

37 emancipation was discussed, it was usually a justification for their rule in the (Arab) colonies. Solely the USSR translated those words into deeds (Edgar 2006: 257). Marx didn’t pay specific attention to emancipation. It was part of the larger march towards freedom and self-development of all people. He defined the ‘woman question’ with economic conditions. The wife was subjugated to the man in traditional marriage: a woman was considered a man’s personal proletariat. The oppression would end when women could leave the domestic sphere and partake in the production process. Then her identity would correspond to her class, and the inevitable revolution would free both her and her husband from the shackles of oppression imposed by capitalism. An important aspect that is often overlooked is that within the domestic sphere there must be a rational and equal division of household chores (Öz 2013: 26-29). The idea of women as the symbolic carriers of the nation is generally accepted (McClintock 1995: 354). By logical extension, this makes the family the smallest unit of a nation. Changes in gender roles have a ripple effect, changing the society as a whole. Liberating women would create a ‘Mulier Sovietica’, in correspondence to the ‘Homo Sovieticus’ the Korenizacija campaign attempted to create in the long run. The traditional family was a bulwark of conservatism: any changes in this sphere would eventually eliminate the backwardness of Uzbekistan as a whole (Öz 2013: 8). The Hujum engaged in this endeavour by providing legal protection, encouraging political participation, and boosting visible paid labour. In one form or another, these three conditions were the building blocks of the Hujum (Öz 2013: 16-18). The legal practices have already been examined. The qalin was abolished, reactionary behaviour towards unveiled women was prohibited, and the practices of child bride and polygamy were officially addressed (Levin 2009: 96). In the late 1920’s the Sharia was replaced by secular law (Northrop 2004: 256). But as seen in the example of the public paranja-burning, the Russians could only enforce ‘their’ laws in New Cities and the few public places in which they had full control. Legal protection did not extend to the mahallas (Uzbek quarters) and the countryside. I will provide more information on the evolution of the judiciary system in 4.4 Byt Crimes. The Ženotdel17 took on the task of encouraging women to take part in political activities and hold political mandates. The Ženotdel, founded in 1919, was the female arm of the Communist Party (Öz 2013: 116). Success was limited at best. According to native men, women just weren’t capable of political decisions. Their lingering ‘motherness’ and emotional fragility made them unable to make rational decisions. They generally discouraged any engagement in politics. It was ruthless and hard labour, women had little time for politics due to the ‘double burden’ (combining work and household chores), officially there was no discrepancy between the interests and concerns of men and women, and last but not least, a brother, father, or husband could practically forbid participation in politics (Öz 2013: 113,

17 Ženotdel stims from ženskij otdel, meaning ‘female division’. 38

121). Furthermore, voting rights were extended to women only by 1938 (IPU 2017: Women’s Suffrage). The Ženotdel was disbanded in 1930, because there was no longer a need to separate male and female branches of the Communist Party (Stites 1976: 189). The main attention of the campaign gradually shifted from woman’s emancipation to woman’s employment since the 1930’s. According to Stalin, work in the kolkhozes was enough equality. Formally, women had the same rights as men, which is why he considered women fully emancipated. Stalin regarded women more and more as economic resources, ready to be exploited in order to fulfil the five-year-plans. However, there was no shift in domestic responsibilities. As a result, women (mothers) had to work twice as hard (Öz 2013: 50-53, 16). It was thought that working educated women would have smaller families, which would alleviate most of the drudgery of household chores (Öz 2013: 8). In the end, Soviet authorities couldn’t understand why women didn’t grasp this chance for emancipation with both hands. Some women voluntarily unveiled themselves, even before 1927. But these women either belonged to families who already had sympathies for the Communist of Jadid cause, or had no direct family that could force them to veil (Kamp 2006: 148). The simple reason most women kept the veil was because they didn’t see their culture as inherently oppressive. This meant traditional values were still handed down to their children, despite increasing constraints. Instead of paranjas they covered themselves with scarfs, workers in the factories were segregated between men and women, the qalin was replaced by voluntary wedding gifts, etcetera (Öz 2013: 126-127). The veil was a lesser evil in comparison to full female seclusion from social life (Kamp 2006: 137). The qalin was more than just the buying and selling of brides. It established family ties, and the price itself could be seen as a moral statement (Northrop 2004: 270-271). I assume the Soviets severely misunderstood the essence of female emancipation. It’s possible that a woman completely voluntarily chose to veil herself, which would make the veil a prime example of female agency. But veiling was never interpreted this way: by Soviet standards women were considered equal in class to their husbands (as Marx had stated, save the condition that women first had to be related to the production process in order to be equal to their husband). So, when women chose to veil themselves, they were under the spell of their husband, who would happen to be a class enemy (a mullah, a Basmach, …). Wives of factory workers (‘the proletariat’) were automatically deemed unveiled, even if this didn’t correspond well to circumstances in reality. We can notice here a crisis in Soviet ideology. Whenever a discipline is in crisis, it might refer to a process of what Žižek (2008: IX) calls ‘Ptolemisation’: mistakes are explained by a change or supplement within the ruling framework. In this instance, a woman who has chosen to veil herself must have done so under manipulation of her husband, while completely ignorant of Soviet maxims of emancipation. This apparent paradox and impossibility didn’t cause a ‘Copernican revolution’: a complete rethinking of the basic framework.

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The Soviet Union eventually did help female agency, but not in the way it intended. Women stated that the veil now gave them a status of respect: they were considered prime tokens of piety in their neighbourhood (Northrop 2004: 190). As a result, these women were revered for their choice. Furthermore, women gained in status in family circles as breadwinners (Öz 2013: 123). In this and previous chapters I have explained the reasons behind the failure of the Soviet project for female liberation, also known as the Hujum. They are the answer to my first question: ‘Why did the Hujum fail?’ I now turn my attention to the second question: ‘Why did the Hujum eventually ‘succeed’?’ But first I have to discuss the question whether such a transformation of society was possible at all. In this case, the national identity, religious dogma, and gender roles would need to change. I strongly believe this is theoretically possible, and thus claim that the Soviet project wasn’t doomed from the start. Fitzpatrick (1995: 3-4) shows that ‘nation’ is a very hazy concept. There have been many different definitions of what ‘nation’ means, and all have had different criteria. Additionally, the content of a ‘nation’ is easily mendable, with the ability to quickly change and adapt to circumstances. He criticises common definitions of ‘nation’ put forward by Adam Smith, Ernest Gellner, and Benedict Anderson (Fitzpatrick 1995: 5-8). These flaws in the different definitions (amongst others) lead to his conclusion that the concept of ‘nation’ itself is inherently flawed (Fitzpatrick 1995: 23-24). He expresses this idea in the term ‘Impossibility of Nation’ (Fitzpatrick 1995: 5). King (1995: 168) adds that religion too constantly has to restructure itself to accommodate with the changes in society. These changes are even inevitable with the advent of the secular society: the separation of church and state. The existence of different gender roles in societies around the world proves that these relations aren’t fixed, nor the direct result of biological differences between women and men. They are the result of social circumstances; and while they may be inert to changes in society, this does not mean they are immobile. To further prove my point, I quote French philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir (1949: 285-286): “On ne naît pas femme, on le devient.” Before commencing the next chapter, I’d like to clarify the general approach to female emancipation so far. It’s clear the Hujum mainly had a bottom-up design. Members of the Ženotdel tried to persuade men to unveil their wives, and encouraged women to take up a larger role in society. In the years to come the Communist Party employed a more top-down approach, with coercion replacing persuasion more and more. To analyse this new approach I have chosen to place it in the Gramscian framework. Gramsci coined the term ‘cultural hegemony’. This concept deals with how an elite (the Communist Party) can impose a cultural norm (unveiling) on a population. The elite needs to use force to maintain her privileged position in a society, but needs to simultaneously persuade and deceive the population to accept their privileged position. Accepting this status quo also involves accepting the cultural norms of the elite, in this case unveiling. I will explain the concept further in the next chapter.

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4. Hegemony, Uzbekistan, and the Hujum

The main ideas of Antonio Gramsci center on the concept of cultural hegemony. Marxists before him had stressed the coercion enforced by capitalist elites to maintain ‘their’ system. These elites had obtained their position by their relation to the means of production. Government institutions, such as the judiciary, the military, and the police, serve to maintain the elite’s position. These institutions are called the political society. Gramsci adds to this view by proving that consent plays as much of a role in maintaining the prevailing order. This consent is created by the hegemony of the ruling class. They disperse their values and morals throughout society, and lower classes accept and adopt these ideas. This dispersion happens in the ‘civil society’ or ‘public sphere’: the media, schools, churches, labour unions … The civil society serves as a forum on which individual intellectuals can express themselves and attempt to convince others of their worldview. The political society will tolerate deviant opinions in public sphere within a certain degree, as long as the legitimate place of the elite isn’t subject to doubt. Political and civil societies mutually enforce each other, and form a ‘historical bloc’ (Hobden & Jones 2008: 150). A limitation to this theory is the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union. It is hard to draw a line between political and civil societies. A political party is usually regarded as a part of the civil society, but in this case the Communist Party was the sole ruler of all government institutions. It’s hard to accept dissent in regards to the religious society when the State is based on atheistic premises and thus combats all forms of religion. Labour unions can’t represent workers in their fight against the bourgeoisie when the government is the main employer because of the plan economy and already leads the struggle against capitalism etcetera. I will now attempt to fit both Turkestan and Uzbekistan in this framework.

4.1 Situation in Turkestan and Uzbekistan

The situation regarding Turkestan and its public and political sphere till approximately 1922 has already been disclosed in 1.2 Distinct Territories and Everyday Control. We have seen that czarist Russia emulated British India in regards to its rule over Turkestan. With the least amount of effort it tried to achieve the highest possible profit. Russian settlers stuck to their quarters in the colonial cities, and administration was left mostly in the hands of Volga Tatars. Northrop (2004: 28) points out that colonial rule is essentially dominance without hegemony. The Russians left some parts of Turkestan in control of the local emir or khan. In these protectorates the real control of the ruler was very limited. In each of the earlier city-states conflicts arose between the monarch and the settled population against the tribes. Even on its own territories appointed governors or ‘beks’ ruled with little regard to their lord’s sovereignty. It’s difficult to draw a line between public and civil society, as there was no

41 separation of church and state (Tabyshalieva 2005: 81-82). This strong interconnectedness is the reason why both the traditional religious establishment and the political society shunned the Jadids and their ‘secular’ ideas, as they threatened the legitimacy of both instances (Haugen 2003: 53). In regards to Soviet Uzbekistan post 1924, I argue that the two competing historic blocs, formed in the colonial era, still continued to exist. The pro-Hujum bloc was limited to the inner cities, where Russian rule was unopposed. Only in the large city of Bukhara women unveiled on a larger scale18, and this anecdote was oft used to showcase the presumed success of the Hujum (Northrop 2004: 167). Internationalist minded people, united in labour unions and other socialist organization, made up the local intellectuals. On the same geographical area the old anti-Hujum bloc remained: the wishes of the deposed emir remained the law of the law. His military means were the Basmachi, while the former Ulema and a large fraction of the Jadids acted as his intellectual representatives in the civil society. The Kurbashi used old emirist uniforms in an attempt to recuperate old loyalties. At least back in 1924 the population saw the emir as the legitimate power. Perhaps they did not fully support the movement, but they feared it and thus supported it more than they would support the Red Army (Haugen 2003: 88-89). Rumours of Basmachi assaulting any unveiled woman in the fields doing agricultural work caused extra fear, and thus further strengthened Basmachi support (Northrop 2004: 179). This in turn would motivate individuals to partake in actions that would now be labelled as ‘terroristic’: insulting, raping, and murdering unveiled women (Ibid.: 100). The Red Army couldn’t stop this vicious circle. In the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens the idea of a non-Soviet authority still existed, with the possibility of the emir returning considered real, even in full knowledge of the unsettling military balance in favour of the Red Army (Northrop 2004: 318). Even if they didn’t believe the emirist forces could take on the Soviet Union, they prayed for an intervention by other powers, such as Britain (Ibid.: 175).19 To enforce the Hujum, the Soviet Union required full control of the border areas of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. But it’s clear the Red Army couldn’t maintain permanent control outside the New Cities. It’s no coincidence that people were the slowest to unveil in the regions bordering Afghanistan where the emir resided (Ibid.: 167). Thus, in order to explain the eventual victory of the Hujum I’d like to first shed some light on the military situation and the prolonged conflict with the Basmachi.

18 I expect the ‘outstanding’ success of Bukhara is at least partly due to the substantial Jewish presence in the city, who as a group were sympathetic to the Hujum (Levin 2008: 103). 19 Paradoxically, when this intervention would eventually come, the Uzbeks suffered greatly to stop the invasion. 42

4.2 Soviet Counterinsurgency

The Tashkent Soviet, which had named itself the Turksovnarkom20, handled the first encounters with the Basmachi forces. Its isolation from other Soviet controlled hubs and its small recruitment base severely limited its military power. In mid-1919, only 21.215 Soviet soldiers stood against 10.000 to 30.000 Basmachi rebels. Russian forces consisted of Soviet regular forces, Red Guards, a Tatar regiment, militias, and a contingent of international forces, mostly of German or Austro-Hungarian origin. The Soviets couldn’t pursue the highly mobile horse backed Basmachi guerrillas, and thus focused on maintain control over the rail lines and major population centres. But even those rail lines occasionally fell into enemy hands (Johnson 1990: 25-26). Only by mid-1919 additional forces under the command of general Frunze could be spared to aid the besieged Soviets. The Turksovnarkom was disbanded in 1920, and a new organisation called the Turkomissia21 took its place (Ibid.: 27- 28). Over 110.000 well-armed Soviet soldiers arrived on the scene, opposed by no more than 20.000 divided Basmachi jingits (Ibid.: 36-37). The Red Army focused on closing supply lines to Afghanistan and permanently occupying smaller villages to prevent recapture by Basmachi when the Russian left (Ibid.: 39). According to Johnson (1990: 42), the main resistance was crushed by 1923, with just sporadic uprisings afterwards. While I agree that the main large-scale operations were finished by 1923, this was certainly not the end of the Basmachi movement. There was yet to be another phase, partaking mainly in the area between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The Soviet Union nominally had full control over Tajikistan by 1927. The country was military pacified, and NEP policies didn’t agitate the local population. The Soviet Union claimed the Basmachi rebellion had been completely crushed by now, but this was quite presumptuous. In 1926 Soviet armed forces numbered 15.000 regular soldiers, supported by an additional 3.000 auxiliaries. But by 1929 a general demobilization had lowered this amount to a mere 3.700 soldiers and border guards. Reversal of the NEP policies, collectivisation, and an increase in anti-Muslim reforms angered the local population (Ritter 1990: 550-552). Thus the limited military forces had to be spread thin, quelling both internal unrest and guarding the Afghan-Tajik border from Basmachi incursions (Ibid.: 563). In short: military control of the state and control of the civil sphere were insufficient. Basmachi leader Fuzail Maksum took advantage of the situation, and launched in 1929 a small-scale incursion into Soviet territory. His small band of warriors was supplied with British arms, which increased their combat effectiveness. A spy network made of emirist loyalists provided excellent information regarding Soviet positions, so he could evade strongpoints in the Soviet defence (Ibid.: 561). The mobile Basmachi on horseback could easily spread out, pillaging many villages and

20 Turksovnarkom is an abbreviation of Turkestanskij Sovet narodnych kommisarov; the Turkestani council of people’s commissars. 21 Turkomissia stands for ‘Turkestanskaja komissija’: the Turkstani commission. 43 purging communists and Soviet collaborators. Ritter (1990: 565-566) tells the story of three women who were captured by Maksum. They were sympathetic to the Soviet maxim of equal rights for both men and women, and for this modern behaviour the local clergymen vehemently disliked them. They stoned the women, tortured them, and eventually hanged them in the village’s market square. The insurgents, whose numbers had increased to 800 warriors in total, pressed on to the city of Garm, which they captured without any opposition. However, a Soviet counterattack managed by the skin of their teeth to force the incursion into the Darvaz Mountains, where it was defeated once more. The remnants, including Maksum himself, fled back to Afghanistan (Ritter 1990: 570-572). Much to the west a similar history occurred. Junaid Khan had been opposing Soviet forces in Khorezm ever since the Young Khivans took the city. In January 1924 he exploited the local military weakness and political turmoil to retake the city and hold it for a month. A counterattack pushed him back into the Karakum desert, and he temporarily withdrew to Iran in late 1927. With renewed forces he pushed once more into the Karakum desert, and managed to conquer Kransovodsk in 1931: an important regional centre on the . More than 20.000 Red Army soldiers were needed to cast him and his army of 5.000 strong out of the city, and fighting continued in the desert until the final defeat in October 1933 (Olcott 1981: 361-362). The last threat to Soviet control was Ibrahim Bek. He had already been thoroughly beaten by Soviet forces in 1925 (Ritter 1985: 486). He retreated to Afghanistan, where he rebuilt his forces. By April 1931 the stage was set for the final act. Ibrahim Bek crossed the Afghan border with an army of 800 men, while in villages scattered across Tajikistan another 1200 concealed warriors rose up. The usual occurred: they executed communists, sabotaged railroads, and destroyed collective farms. I would describe the excursion as a hail storm: it was violent and severely damaging, but it passed by quickly. The army failed to maintain its cohesion, and Red Army cavalry hunted down the dispersed groups, including Ibrahim Bek himself. He was captured, tried and executed in June 1931. His death marks the end of the grassroots Basmachi movement, even though sporadic border skirmishes occurred till 1935 (Ritter 1985: 490). In order to prevent the Basmachi from ever rising again, the Soviets had to permanently destroy the Basmachi bases in Afghanistan. The Afghan government promised the Soviet Union to take care of the last remnants of the Basmachi. Soviet authorities had been contemplating since the October Revolution whether Afghanistan wasn’t ready for a peasant’s revolution with a Russian template. Habibulla Kalakani had overthrown the Afghan king Amanullah Khan in 1928. He was able to gather support from the Basmachi warbands due to his Tajik descent. But in the end no repetition of the October Revolution was necessary: Muhammed Nadir Shah deposed Kalakani in 1929, and a civil war erupted. The conflict had a strong separatist aspect: the north under Kalakani, inhabited mainly by Tajiks and Uzbeks,

44 wanted to secede from the south under Nadir Shah, mainly inhabited by Pashtuns. Eventually, Nadir Shah managed to achieve victory and harassed the remaining Basmachi. From now on, Basmachi forces could no longer operate from bases in Afghanistan and quickly dissolved (Panin 2013: 113-115).

4.3 Purges

While the Red Army eliminated the external enemies, Moscow turned its attention to the internal ‘class enemies’. Stalin’s regime is most known for its extended purges, but the first purges in Central Asia aren’t the responsibility of Stalin. In 1921, when the Civil War was in full swing, the secret police carried out the first purges in nominally independent Khorezm and Bukhara. The ranks of the local communist parties had been overwhelmingly filled by Young Khivans and Young Bukharans; Jadids who had cooperated with the after the overthrown of respectively the khan and the emir. These Jadids lacked the revolutionary zeal required for positions of power, and were openly appalled by Russian anti-religious policies. Furthermore, they failed in subduing the Basmachi menace (Becker 2004: 235, 237). By 1923 only a handful of Jadids in the Communist Party survived, most notably the local chairman Faizullah Khodjaev. They spared his life because he had fully incorporated communist ideas. It marks the official transformation of Khorezm and Bukhara to official ‘Socialist’ republics (Becker 2004: 238-239). But the accused Jadids didn’t go ‘gently into that good night’, as the famous poem goes. They quickly became turncoats, and joined the Basmachi movement under Enver Pasha, which they had so recently fought against (Olcott 1981: 358). The renegades offered their services in administration, so the Basmachi could now levy taxes, enforce law, and provide supplies for the fighting jingits more efficiently (Olcott 1981: 363). In 1929, after the formation of the Uzbek Republic, members of Uzbek descent made up the upper echelon. They represent the generation brought to power thanks to the Korenizacija. In general this generation had limited qualifications: joining the Communist Party was an everyday bread-and-butter affair for most in the lower echelons. There were doubts whether their loyalties resided in the party or at their old roots (Norling 2017: 35-36). The most notable figures were Faizullah Khodjaev, a chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee and Chairman of People’s Commissars, and Akmal Ikramov, the First Secretary of the Republic (Ibid.: 33). Their power was also quite limited. Stalin continuously played out the rivalry between these two, alternately accusing the one and promoting the other. Au fond it mattered very little. Stalin executed both in March 1938 after the third Moscow trail, the ‘trail of 21’. A new generation gladly took their place, and Usman Yusupov became First Secretary (Ibid.: 40-42).

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The next series of purges originated from Russia itself. Far away in Leningrad, Andrej Ždanov (local Party Secretary) wrote an ordinance against writers Michail Zoŝenko and Anna Achmatova. He accused them of ‘hostility towards the people’ because they wrote about their own experiences instead of producing heroic war stories. Their works were empty and idealess, decadent, detrimental to the youth and alienated. It were better if they had written about the wonders of communism and the triumph of socialism versus fascism (and eventually capitalism). This ordinance marked the beginning of an intellectual war against formalism, aestheticism, and ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ (which in practice meant flagrant antisemitism). This assault was named ‘Ždanovŝina’, after its instigator, and lasted from 1946 to Stalin’s death in 1953 (Waegemans 2003: 321-322). During the war Uzbek writers and poets had celebrated their heritage. Many works written in this period regarded Uzbek (medieval) history, praising local heroes and literature. After 1946 these works were heavily censored. The Ždanovŝina wanted to bring back history to its true origin of class conflict. Anything else celebrated traditional backwardness: a produce of bourgeois-nationalist ideology. This was the first phase of the post-war purges in Uzbekistan amongst the intelligentsia. The whole affair could have ended here. But local authorities (including but not limited to Yusupov himself) had the audacity to defend these works, and attempted to rehabilitate them (Hansen 2016: 154-156). For Stalin this was the last straw. He had earlier admonished Yusupov for what is known as the ‘Yusupov affair’. Uzbekistan had failed to fulfil its quota regarding cotton production according to the latest five-year-plan. This failure was a consequence of the total mobilisation during World War Two, but also had its roots in mismanagement and corruption (Ibid.: 148-149). For these two reasons Yusupov was forced to resign. Furthermore, Stalin ordered the establishment of the eloquently named ‘All-Union Communist Party’s Central Committee Plenipotentiary to the Uzbek SSR’ in 1949, with Semën Ignat’ev, a devout Stalinist, as its leader. This enabled Stalin to bypass local institutions in order to purge more efficiently and thoroughly. The second phase of these purges commenced, and would be far more severe in its scope and profoundness. First, the plenipotentiary targeted the cultural elite. As seen above, they had glorified their feudalistic, nationalistic, and backwards past. Prominent writers and artists were sentenced to 25 years in prison. But the attention was quickly shifted towards the Party itself. Party officials were accused of economic (theft, embezzlement) or behavioural crimes (nepotism, abuse, negligence, moral decay), and as a result many were sacked, banned, or put to death (Ibid.: 157-158). Exact numbers are unknown, but Hansen (2016: 149) estimates that several thousands were affected in one way or another. It was hardly safer outside the Party. The Dekulakisation campaign in 1931 essentially expropriated and expulsed anybody who was able to or had to rely on hired labour. Thousands were sent to Siberia, and by the end virtually no free farmers remained in Uzbekistan

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(Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 121). As a result, almost all alternative authorities such as tribal chiefs or village elders ceased to exist. Soviet brigade leaders took their places on the new collective farms (Hiro 2006: 51). Repressions continued during the Red Terror of 1936-1938. People would wildly accuse anybody off having ties with class enemies in order to save their own skin (Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 134).

4.4 Byt Crimes

Changes in the judiciary made it possible to easily identify who was ‘eligible’ for a purging. The introduction of a set of new laws regarding ‘crimes of daily life’ (byt crimes) had a strong impact on the population, both in and out of the Party. Most of these laws regarded the legal age, arrange divorce procedures, banishing practice such as polygamy and qalin, … However, the main goal of these laws was to assure the safety of unveiled women and Party workers by declaring violence or slander aimed at these women as a capital punishment (Northrop 2004: 243-244). It was difficult to establish what exactly constituted a crime against daily life, what punishment should be given, and who should be punished for these crimes (Ibid.: 246). Despite these legal actions, byt crimes kept increasing in the late 1920’s and 1930’s, even when accounted for an extra surplus in rapports due to the increase in attention (Ibid.: 259). There were many issues in regards to implementation of these laws and their punishments. Regardless of motivation or loyalty, many Uzbek judges didn’t perform all instructions. This can partly be blamed on the lack of education of these judges, e.g. they couldn’t understand the juridical language in which these laws were written down. Furthermore, they condemned actions that were legal in the Soviet Union but weren’t in accordance to the Sharia, such a drinking alcohol or entering a house with an unveiled women (Ibid.: 274-275). Interestingly enough, Soviet courts have never declared veils illegal. Northrop (2004: 284-285) attributes this on the one hand to a lack of Soviet control on Uzbekistan and the judiciary system to implement this prohibition, and on the other hand to the hypocrisy of freeing women to become independent actors by force. These laws from secular/atheist Russia were meant to replace the Sharia. Despite popular belief, the Sharia isn’t solely a law that defines right from wrong and how to punish any misdeeds. It also encompasses moralism, manners, and a way of conduct. These prescriptions are supplemented by the local adat; pre-Islamic customs. In western societies there is a separation of religion, moralism, and law to make religion compatible with secular law. Religion itself has no legal status, but is in legal terms the collection of traditions, rites, and customs that come with a certain faith, e.g. halal food, clothing, honouring the Sabbath, … (King 1995: 170-171). In this way the state doesn’t have to force believers to choose between their religious identity and the state (King 1995: 174-175). I argue that the new Soviet laws are grounded on the principles of both western law and the Sharia. There is a clear distinction

47 between Muslim identity and the actions that result from this identity. At the same time ‘byt crimes’ try to instil a new code of conduct, based on the principles of the Soviet Union regarding gender emancipation. As Northrop (2004: 245, 263) tells us, these laws created a symbolic capital: by showing what was right and what was wrong the Soviets hoped to educate the population on the Soviet way of life. The many public trails had a strong deductive character in this regard. However, education is considered an aspect of the civil society. I have explained how the Soviet Union regained full control of the territory of Uzbekistan – Tajikistan and its own party. I now wish to turn my attention to evolutions in the civil society, starting with who exactly constituted the civil society in Uzbekistan.

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5. Control of the Civil Society

5.1 Demographics

In his article, Ritter (1990: 560) mentions that many loyal Communists were sent to rural Tajikistan to supervise the collectivization effort. Stronsky (2010: 49-50) mentions an increase in the 1920’s and 1930’s of Russian construction workers, engineers, doctors and textile workers. Central Asia, and in specific Tajikistan, was in dire need of educated workers to build out communism sur place (Kassymbekova 2011: 24). Kassymbekova (2011: 25) identifies three main reasons for workers to move to the outer edge of the Union. The main pull-factors were ideological motivation and a need for safety from eventual purges; being an intellectual in Moscow wasn’t a safe profession at the time. The largest push-factor was unemployment in the heartland. Alternatively, one could also simply be ordered to move. When arrived at the scene, ordinary workers faced many problems: poverty, lacking accommodation and rampant disease (such as malaria). Furthermore, there were many issues regarding communication between the workers and the local population due to the language barrier and between local institutions and Moscow due to geographical distance (Kassymbekova 2011: 25-26). Another peril was the power abuse in local institutions. The government rarely defined their goals, but technical workers would still be held personal liable for campaign failures (Kassymbekova 2011: 29-30). But of course the Russians weren’t the only population segment in Uzbekistan. Stalin’s regime is marked by deportations of many ethnic groups crisscross across the Soviet Union. Usually, peoples of the outer regions were transported deeper into the red realm. As a result, Stalin greatly upset the demographic balance of Central Asia. While I do not state that these deportations were carried out in the sole purpose of tipping the scales in favour of the Hujum, I do uphold the idea that these newly arrived people as a side-effect greatly disturbed the civil sphere in which the Hujum was fought. We have already seen how Kazan’ Tatars who voluntarily moved into Turkestan brought Jadid ideas with them, introducing the region to modernity (in this case unveiling). Polian (2004: 100) identifies three large-scale deportations that affected Uzbekistan. From 1937 onwards ethnic Koreans were deported from the Far East, with 76.525 people being resettled all over Uzbekistan. During World War II a number of presumed collaborators were deported to Central Asia. In July 1944 the Meshketian Turks were forcefully moved from the borderlands with Turkey to Central Asia. As many as 53.133 people were moved to Uzbekistan (Polian 2004: 155-156). A similar fate struck the Crimean Tatars. A total of 151.083 people were deported from the Crimean peninsula, with the majority being settled in Tashkent and Samarkand (Ibid.: 152).

49

But many more affected Uzbekistan, brought in voluntarily or forced, individually or in group. I place the cultural identities of the imported peoples in a spectrum of cultural diversity, on which the East Slavs occupy one extreme, and Uzbeks the other. Turkic peoples would speak a similar language and generally adhere to Sunni Hanafi Islam. People from the western regions would share to a certain degree European and/or Soviet gender roles. Right in the middle there would be the unlucky few, who wanted to abstain of this conflict, having nothing or very little in common with both sides. In psychological terms, I believe these three kinds of identities served as a bridge to the Other by providing a wide spectrum of identities and cultural norms. These people would transcend the walls erected between the Old and the New Cities. All these groups would have at least two characteristics in common. The first main trait is that their support for the Soviet Union would be lukewarm at best, and the Uzbeks would correctly identify them as ‘victims’ of the regime instead of Russian ‘oppressors’. The second trait in common is the absence of the (Uzbek) paranja or other forms of veiling. These immigrants were under the influence by the social phenomenon of assimilation. Non-Russian languages are locally bound and geographically defined. Whenever a non-native Russian speaker moved (voluntarily or forced) to a different part of the Union, he essentially became a monolingual Russian in social context. This process is further enhanced by the fact that cities usually had an assimilated bilingual nature. This phenomenon played to the advantage of the Russian settlers in the long run (Stern 2011: 755). But even in the rural areas bilingualism became a widespread phenomenon. In the Ferghana valley bilingualism had always been very common, as most people spoke both a Turkic and a Persian dialect. But with the establishment of nation states, local dialects became obsolete in favour of the new official national languages. The Ferghana valley was divided between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Bilingualism shifted to Russian – Tajik, Russian – Uzbek, and Russian – Kyrgyz, with Russians never learning their native counterpart (but for the notable exception). When people now wished to speak to citizens from across the border, they had to appeal to Russian as the language of interethnic communication (Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 128-129). It is often claimed that this phenomenon was a result of deliberate Russification. This is clearly not the case: Russian was a subject in most schools (for this exact purpose of inter- republic communication), but it never replaced native languages (Suny 2001: 12). As far as I know there were no realistic alternatives to Russian. Arabic wasn’t well known amongst the population, and the Soviets shunned its status as a religious language (De Cordier 2012: 178). In the early 20th century Jadids had tried to reinvigorate Chagatai, a shared Turkic language in Arabic script used in Central Asian since medieval times. However, Chagatai was mainly a literary language, so only a select few poets and administrators knew it well (Ibid.: 147). Furthermore, Soviet linguists grafted the modern Uzbek language on Chagatai, so people considered it a form of ‘Old Uzbek’ (Ibid.: 177-178). This doesn’t work well as a neutral

50 lingua franca. Technically, Chagatai could have served as an intermediary language: it would become the lingua franca for documents and newspapers of the ethnically diverse Turkestan Legion; Central Asian collaborators in the German army during the Second World War (De Cordier 2010: 39). Yet because of the aforementioned reasons it never really spread in the Ferghana and other ethnically diverse Turkic areas. With the aid of the Soviet censuses of 1926, 1939, and 1959 I have divided the population of Uzbekistan in five main groups: East Slavic, European, Neutral, Nomad, and Sedentary. I have reduced the complexity of the censuses by establishing a threshold of at least 1.000 people per perceived ethnicity. Furthermore, I would like to add that the borders of Uzbekistan differ between 1926 and 1939. Most importantly, Tajikistan seceded and became its own national republic in 1929 (Farrant 2006: 65), while Karakalpakstan, today the westernmost region of Uzbekistan bordering the Aral Sea, was handed over as an autonomous republic from Russia to Uzbekistan in 1936 (Minahan 2002: 923). This explains the sudden exodus of Tajiks and influx of Karakalpaks. The 1926 census presents a clear image of the situation before the Hujum. The forces behind the National Delimitation are still at work. People still self-identify with a location (Kashgar, Kurama) or tribe (Kipchak), and many identities are similar or overlapping (Iranian, Persian, Afghan, Yaghobi, Tajik). The pro-Hujum forces (East Slavs and Europeans) amount to 5.78% of the total population. The Nomads are out of the equation; per definition they do not veil themselves, and thus caused no issues in regard to the unveiling campaign. The Sedentaries present the sedentary portion of the population which could potentially identify as Uzbek-Tajik, and who are most likely to oppose the Hujum.22 They are the overwhelming majority with 87.37% of the total population of Uzbekistan (Appendix: Table 1). However, in this case the tiny ‘Neutral’ portion deserves further observation. Neutral refers to the ‘middle’ category on the cultural identity, stuck between pro- and anti-Hujum forces. The local Armenians and Jews are the most interesting in this aspect. The Jewish community had existed in Turkestan since the 10th century. They had undergone assimilation to a large degree: they spoke Persian dialects, wore similar clothing such as the paranja, and ate halal food. Nevertheless they were regarded as second-class citizens by the establishment. The Jews are split up in the census, to better represent the native Bukharan Jews in comparison to the Ashkenazi Jews, who migrated to Turkestan after the Russian conquest. These two groups had very little contact with each other. They each had their own quarters in the city, practiced their faith in different synagogues, and spoke different languages (Levin 2008: 99-100). However, Jewish authorities did not oppose the Hujum as much as their Muslim counterparts. On the contrary: the Jewish community was marked by exceptionally high participation rates in Party activities, such as adult education and public meetings (Levin 2008: 109).

22 This explains why I catalogued the Tatars, who were sedentary, in the ‘neutral’ section. 51

The Soviets also gained support from the Armenian community. The Armenian diaspora wasn’t an inherent part of Turkestan, as they arrived after the Russian conquest. Up to 50.000 Armenians came to work on the Turkestan railways. They mainly settled in the old cities: Samarkand, Kokand, and Ferghana city. The Russian Civil War gave rise to the Armenian nationalist party in the region, the Dashnakcutjun. They quickly aligned themselves with the Tashkent Soviet, and fought side by side with the Russian communists against the Basmachi. Despite their small population, the early support by the Armenians was vital in the continued survival of the Tashkent Soviet. It’s a fact numerous atrocities were committed by the Armenians against the Turkic population, most notably during the destruction of Kokand (Kadyrbaev 2013: 32-33). These war crimes were motivated by the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire years before, and by the sense of insecurity by being once again a minority surrounded by (hostile) Muslims (Ibid.: 35). From 1919 on the Red Army was advised by communist Turks to gradually disarm the Dashnakcutjun. In part the Soviets wanted to remove yet another armed faction in the region which could potentially turn against them (Ibid.: 37-38). Because of their recent emigration, their quasi-hatred for all Turks, and their Christian identity, I assume Armenians did not veil themselves. Other minorities such as the Tatars and Mordvins wouldn’t pose a problem to the Hujum because the veil wasn’t a part of their culture, and they had accustomed to Slavic culture by centuries of Russian rule. Very little is written about Gypsies. Northrop (2004: 51) states that they did wear veils, but this is most likely due to assimilation as had occurred with the Bukharan Jews. The Census of 1939 shows a stronger Slavic presence in comparison with the census from 1926. We also see a strong increase in both the amount and portion of the ‘Neutral’ segments, with over 70.000 Koreans appearing out of nowhere (Appendix: Table 2). These Koreans were mainly settled in rural areas or the Uzbek old cities. They commenced the process of ethnical diversification of the traditional Russian – Uzbek duality (Stronsky 2010: 50). However, most large scale resettlements had yet to be carried out. The following census was performed in 1959, many years after the Great Patriotic War. The amount of Slavs slightly increased; refugees counterbalanced those who were called upon to serve and never returned. There is however a notable increase in the ‘European’ segment. Many Jews fled to Uzbekistan during the war, when the Nazis overran the western regions of the Soviet Union (Stronsky 2010: 142). Additionally, Germans from Russia (including the ‘old’ regions such as Tatarstan and the newly acquired territory of East Prussia) were deported to Central Asia during and after the war, just like Greeks from the Crimea. The ‘Neutral’ section shows a significant increase in peoples originating from the Caucasus, including Georgians, Azeris, Ossetians, Kurds, Dagestani, and of course the previously mentioned Meshketian Turks (who identified as regular ‘Turks’). However, two numbers seem a little ‘off’. According to Soviet documents, a total of 134.111 Crimean Tatars were

52 deported in 1944-1945 (Khajali 2003: 240), but only 47.000 people declared having Crimean Tatar descent in 1959. Meanwhile, the amount of ‘regular Tatars’ reaches close to 400.000 (in stark comparison to the 150.000 counted in 1939) (Appendix: Table 3). It’s known many people died during transport because of disease, exhaustion, and hunger, but I believe these numbers have been manipulated: perhaps Crimean Tatars misidentified themselves on purpose to prevent further reprisals, or the ethnicity was forbidden or not registered properly. They couldn’t have returned to their homeland, as it was forbidden. The process of return didn’t start till the 1980’s, and has been going on ever since (Khajali 2003: 240).

5.2 Soviet Tashkent

All these people required adequate housing. The old Uzbek cities were considered insufficient: they existed of appalling huts, connected by dirt roads and narrow alleys. The Soviets considered them prisons for women and the breeding ground for a wide range of diseases (Stronsky 2010: 6). The Uzbeks needed a Soviet city: a new Western capital for a new modern Uzbekistan. A Soviet metropole as the new capital would transform both society and its inhabitants. Hence, Russian and Uzbek identities would finally fuse, creating the long awaited ‘Homo Sovieticus’ and ‘Mulier Sovietica’. In order to do so, the Old City first had to be demolished and replaced with apartments, factories and hospitals (Ibid.: 3). In Tashkent, Russian city managers took the first step in 1930: they united the Old and the New City administratively: a Soviet Tashkent (instead of the earlier Russian and Uzbek Tashkent). This integration was supposed to incorporate the Uzbeks into the Soviet system (they too were beneficiaries of the Revolution) and destroy the symbolic barriers between the two ethnicities (Ibid.: 32). Further steps had to wait till the ‘Genplans’23 from 1938 onwards, when Moscow interfered with city planning because basically all plans had failed or weren’t implemented so far. The Genplans stressed parks and squares for cultural interaction and industry with accompanying apartments for the new proletariat, separated from the rest of the city by green zones. In order to transform the narrow alleys into broad avenues, the old quarters and ghettos had to be demolished, and in some instances the former city walls were bulldozed (Azzout 2005: 826-827). But even these plans were haunted by the same problems as earlier attempts. There was a lack of skilled workers and material, there was no plan for the concrete implementation of these plans, the Old City was overwhelmingly inhabited by Uzbeks (demolishing their homes would add further oil to the fire), and in practice the population showed little appreciation for the idea of an ethnically mixed city (Stronsky 2010: 68-70).

23 The term Genplan is a blend word for ‘General’nij plan rekonstrukcii goroda’: the general plan for the reconstruction of the city. 53

5.3 Red Islam

In order to gain extra support of the population, Stalin lessened the religious restrictions during the Great Patriotic War. In 1943 the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM) was created. Its primary goal was to control and administer Muslim affairs in the Soviet Union. A newly appointed Mufti stood at the head, who dealt with the appointments of mullahs, clergy training, (religious) propaganda, and the content of Friday’s sermon. In short, he provided the correct state approved interpretation of Islam. SADUM resembles the Spiritual Assembly that had been founded in Orenburg in the 19th century, whose main goal was to keep an eye on the Tatars in the empire (Aijaz 2015: 273). Its effectiveness, however, is doubted. It is a fact that ‘unofficial’ or ‘popular’ Islam still carried on in some regions such as the Ferghana valley, where it was taught in backrooms by self-proclaimed mullahs (Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 126). This ‘popular Islam’ has enormous consequences to this day. After Uzbekistan’s independence an unofficial Mullah Tahir Yudashev and a Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani founded the Adolat Party (Justice Party), which was a secession of the Islamic Renaissance Party. Their stronghold was located in the Ferghana valley. They strongly opposed Kasimov’s’ corrupt regime of ‘former atheists’ (Naumkin 2003: 20-22). President Karimov took a hard approach towards any form of political opposition (including but not limited to Islamic Parties), so he banned Adolat in 1992. Its remnants fled to Tajikistan, where they became involved in the Tajik Civil War (Ibid.: 24). In 1999 they reorganised themselves as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan with strong ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and performed their first terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan, including car bombs aimed at president Karimov himself (Ibid.: 26, 28-29). The organisation still exists, but has been dormant for the last few years. In conclusion of this chapter, I would like to provide a summary of all the changes that have taken place in the political and the civil society. Moscow managed to gradually centralise its power between 1921 and 1938. In Uzbekistan the upper authority was exercised by the First and Second Secretary (Yusupov and Andreev) and the chairman of the Council of Ministers Abdurakhmanov (Norling 2017: 42). Nota bene, the Second Secretary was not of Central Asian descent. He kept control over the First Secretary, and regularly reported straight to Stalin about the machinations within the local Party (Norling 2017: 44-45). It’s no coincidence Andrej Andreev was simultaneously Second Secretary in Uzbekistan and Secretary of the Central Executive Committee (Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 134). Through purges Stalin managed to clear out the ‘Soviet’ political and civil society of all opposing voices. The ultimate defeat of the Basmachi threat also cemented Soviet control over the entire territory. I believe this was vital in gaining control in both spheres. We have seen that purged members could simply switch sides when there was still an organised resistance. Thus

54 the USSR had been shooting itself in the foot by removing dissidents in the 1920’s, because every defector weakened Soviet control and strengthened the Basmachi. The establishment of ‘Red Islam’ also meant that solely being a Muslim was no longer seen as a criminal offence. Now, the Soviet public sphere had been cleared, and the political society in this bloc was coloured red. But there was still the need to unify the two blocs that had existed, thus gagging the unofficial Muslim intellectuals and convincing all ordinary Uzbeks of the Soviet way of life. The symbolic walls between the New Cities and the rest of Uzbekistan would have to come down.24 The large-scale import of many different nationalities had removed the sharp edges of the Uzbek – Russian duality, while the immigrants showed at least latent support for the removal of the paranja. I believe the conditions for the removal of this garment had been set. Yet, Uzbek women still wore paranjas in the cities and the countryside. The campaign still needed a catalyst that would set the whole process in motion. I propose that this catalyst was Operation Barbarossa: the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

24 I understand that this happened due to the many deportations, but most of these occurred during or shortly after the war, and thus are to be considered a consequence of the German attack. 55

6. The Great Patriotic War

In a faraway country on a different continent an army of over six million soldiers had amassed on the borders, poised to destroy the Soviet people. In June 1941 Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the assault on the Soviet Union. German forces quickly overran the border republics such as Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States. In October, the Wehrmacht laid siege to Leningrad and prepared the conquest of Moscow. In her hour of direst need, the Motherland called upon her sons for her defence.

6.1 Uzbek Mobilisation

Uzbekistan answered the call. Over 1.400.000 people of Uzbekistan partook in the military conflict, and 400.000 of these conscripts would perish on the battlefield. This is quite a contribution from a republic numbering only 6.5 million inhabitants in 1941 (Karimov 1996: 40). Or as the late Uzbek president Islam Karimov (1996: 44) expressed it: “В нашем крае нет ни одной семьи, ни одного дома, которых не затронула бы война...”25 In 1941 Uzbekistan was an integrated part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 made military service mandated for every able-bodied man. These recruits were then divided in ethnically mixed divisions (Stern 2011: 762). This required at least working knowledge of the Russian language for the conscripts to integrate in the army. Uzbek recruits would also encounter and adapt to a more Russified way of life, including but certainly not limited to drinking vodka and eating pork (Hiro 2009: 60). The draft proceeded without any severe (collective) incidents. The men served to protect their families and country (whether that be the entirety of the Soviet Union or just the Uzbek Republic), and the women contributed to the war effort as much as they could, for the fate of their beloved ones was now one with the survival of the Soviet Union as a whole (Dadabaev 2015: 70). This stands in a very stark contrast to the events just 24 years prior to Barbarossa, when a relatively small-scale mobilization provoked a very violent response. This begs the question if there were any alternatives to complacency. One course of action could have been to join the axis powers against the Soviet Union. In December 1941 Germany allowed the formation of a Turkestan legion, compromised of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Beside the main nationalities (viz. Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Turkmen and Kyrgyz) the Legion also contained minorities such as the Karakalpaks, Dungani, and Uyghurs. It recruited from POWs and from the Turkic regions under temporary German control (Sakal 2010: 111-114). While the Legion was multi-ethnic, the smaller companies were divided as much as possible according to nationalities. For example: the 450th Turkistan Infantry Battalion was composed of a Kyrgyz,

25 In our country there is not a single family, a single house, which the war did not touch. 56

Turkman, Uzbek and Kazakh company, and a Tajik platoon, combined with several ethnically mixed support units (Hoffmann 1986: 31-32). In total, 178.000 Central Asians served in the German army between 1941 and 1945, with another 2.000 serving in the SS (Roman’ko 2004: tablica 2). This number includes any form of collaboration, from front line service soldiers to logistical Hiwi’s26. It’s impossible to determine the motivation of every single soldier for fighting for the Third Reich. Nevertheless, there were two large categories: those fighting for ideological reasons (nationalism, religion, anti-communism) and those who wanted to evade certain death in the German POW camps or after Soviet reprisals for being captured alive (Sakal 2010: 119). I think it is safe to assume that a large part, if not most, rejoined the armed forces for the second reason. But this cannot be said about the main organisers of the Turkestan Legion. These organisers were Jadids, some of whom had fled Turkestan after the Civil War or its aftermath. Most notable were Mustafa Çokay and Veli Qayyum, assisted by Uzbek historian Baymirza Hayit (De Cordier 2010: 38-39). Their Jadid (unitary) ideas are presented in the fact that an organization was formed for the entirety of Turkestan instead of for each national republic separately. Nevertheless, the success of the National Delimitation and the following rise of nationalism couldn’t be negated, which necessitated a subdivision in national terms for the companies. For the exiles hostile to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet regime there was the ‘Islamic Government of Turkestan in Exile’. This organisation stockpiled arms and resources in North Afghanistan. They prepared to strike when the Soviet Union had fallen, and then organise a defence against possible German spearheads in the region. But the inevitable collapse never happened, and the government of Afghanistan successfully took action against these potential insurgents (Dadabaev 2015: 70). The Germans also toyed with the idea of ‘Unternehmen Hansa’; training anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan so they could operate in the south of the Soviet Union. But this plan was never carried out (De Cordier 2010: 40). These two options for armed resistance have at least one big malus: they depended on third external partners (Germany and Afghanistan). There was no active native resistance to speak of. Most opponents of the regime had no intention of fighting. People who were formerly associated with the Basmachi rebellion and the previous regime simply went into hiding or kept a low profile to escape surveillance or pre-emptive measures (Dadabaev 2015: 70-71).

26 ‘Hiwi’ is a German abbreviation for ‘Hilfswillige’; volunteer helper. While some fought in the frontlines, most performed logistical duties in the rearguard, ranging from transporting and guarding supplies to doing laundry and peeling potatoes (Beevor 1999: 184-185). 57

6.2 The Home front

But this period isn’t only marked by a mass exodus of men to the front, but also of industry and refugees from the Union to Uzbekistan. In order to avoid capture or destruction of Western industry by the German onslaught the Soviets moved as many as a hundred factories to the Uzbek rear. Factory workers, often imported with the machinery, rebuilt the factory on the spot, aided by local labourers (Ibid.: 67). During the conflict a million people fled to Uzbek cities and the countryside. From these refugees, over 200.000 were orphans, who were subsequently adopted by Uzbek families. In return, Uzbek workers were sent without pardon to liberated territories in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to rebuild those regions. In this case, the term ‘home front’ could be taken quite literally. Production of war equipment such as machine guns, planes and tanks was vital for the war effort. Therefore, conditions were very strict on the factory floor, and appointed commissars subjected wrongdoers to severe and immediate punishment, even for minor offenses such as coming in late. Factories raised working hours to thirteen hours a day, six days a week. Only Sundays were off (which could be utilised for voluntary work). Any leave of absence was suspended indefinitely. But living conditions weren’t only harsh on the factory floor. People had problems acclimating to the new region. Uzbekistan had to provide homes for the sudden influx of people. The biggest practical problem wasn’t housing however, but providing sufficient food. Loss of fertile farmlands in Ukraine caused severe reductions in food rations over the years. The history of cotton monoculture in Turkestan further aggravated this problem. In the cities rations were restricted to 400 grams of bread for factory workers and 300 for dependants. On the countryside officials didn’t implement rationing, but simply requisitioned most food (Ibid.: 72-73). To alleviate this problem, municipalities tried to increase the local food production: working conditions on the sovchozes and kolkhozes were as severe as they were in the factories, but workers were still asked to go the extra mile. Soviet engineers initiated additional irrigation projects to prepare desert lands for cultivation (Ibid.: 69). But despite the boost in agriculture a famine couldn’t be averted. Abdullaev and Nazarov (2011: 137) estimate tens of thousands of civilians died in the war, despite the lack of foreign occupation.

6.3. After the war

I argue one aspect during the conflict was of primordial essence. These hardships are a case of collective suffering, as Slavic citizens weren’t better off than their Turkic brethren. The ex- colonisers didn’t enjoy a better standard of living. There was a general sphere of ‘sticking together’ for the larger goal: continued existence of the Soviet Union, of which Uzbekistan was inherently part. It resulted in a convergence of individual experiences from both sides. The prolonged contact also led to a more intimate knowledge between Russians and Uzbeks.

58

But not everything was positive: the shortages and the uncertain about the future caused civil strife for resources, and this in a way deepened chasm between the refugees and the nationals (Stronsky 2010: 142-143). People remember the war very diversely. Infrastructure and industry were expanded, and Stalin had shown the world the might of socialism. Over 120.000 soldiers from Uzbekistan received a medal for their bravery in combat, and these medals had an immediate positive effect on someone’s social standing. Soviet soldiers developed a loyalty above the level of the republic: they were proud to be Soviet citizens. But to many people Stalin was a criminal, and his personal wimps were very counterproductive to the war effort, causing possibly millions of avoidable casualties (Abdullaev & Nazarov 2011: 135-136). Because of the war cities in Uzbekistan got a more cosmopolitan character. Due to the drastic increase of ‘foreigners’ they couldn’t all be settled in the New Cities. From now on it was a common sight to see unveiled (Muslim) women in traditional Uzbek quarters in cities. I wish to refer to an interview conducted between Marianne Kamp and Saodat Shamsieva, an Uzbek woman who had unveiled herself even before the Hujum started. In the interview she states why she had done so (Kamp 2006: 124):

The Tatar girls are Muslims, and we are Muslims too. Why do we have to be veiled, while they walk around uncovered? They would walk around with their heads completely uncovered. No paranji or anything of that kind.

While this is an anecdote of one woman prior to the Hujum, it’s not impossible to image that this phenomenon repeated itself, but this time on a much larger scale. Additionally, unveiled Muslims weakened the link between piety and wearing a veil. From now on, a Soviet medal earned more respect than a veiled wife.

59

Conclusion

The story of the Hujum starts in the era of Imperialism. European powers expanded into the uncharted territories of Africa, in order to spread Christianity, gain new markets, and obtain prestige. The Russian Empire couldn’t lag behind. Between 1865 and 1881 the czar conquered Turkestan, which was previously divided between the states of Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand, and put it into the Russian sphere of influence. Russia ruled her colonies just like the other European nations: it aimed for maximum profit with the least amount of interaction between imperial authorities and local population. When the Soviets won the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), they inherited the czarist colonies. They considered a reorganization of the territory necessary. This led to the National Delimitation, which divided Turkestan in five nation states: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Soviet Union realised it was a giant on feet of clay if it lacked locally imbedded support in its fringes. Instead of importing ‘foreign Russians’ every republic would be staffed with local elites. This campaign for gaining local support was the ‘Korenizacija’. The underlying idea was that if all nationalities were treated equal, they would all assimilate to a ‘Homo Sovieticus’: national distinctions would subside, and class consciousness would prevail over all others forms of identity. This ‘Soviet Man’ could then lead the world’s proletariat to the inevitable communist revolution. In Uzbekistan the Communist Party initiated a number of campaigns in order to garner popular support. The first two campaigns, centred on anti-religious sentiments and land reform, didn’t achieve the intended results. This is why on the 8th of March 1927 members of the Ženotdel commenced the Hujum: the assault on nefast traditions derogatory to women, such as seclusion, bride prices, and veiling. They attempted to create what could be called a ‘Mulier Sovietica’. By offering women liberation they would certainly support the Soviet Union wholeheartedly. In effect, changing a woman’s status in society changes the traditional structure of the family, which in turn causes a change in the whole of society (to the benefit of the Soviet Union). The focus was put more and more on eliminating the paranja, the local variant of the veil. The paranja consisted of a long heavy cotton robe around the body and a black screen of woven horse hair to cover the face. But for the USSR the dress meant much more. It was the emblem of the ‘backwardness’ of Central Asia, and it had to be eliminated as soon as possible. The campaign completely backfired: the amount of veiled women increased in Uzbekistan, and paranjas couldn’t be removed from the street view till at least the 1950’s. The problem on one hand lied within the Soviet mind-set. While they wanted to remake Uzbekistan from a clean slate, they themselves were still haunted by the heritage of imperial rule. Orientalism continued to thrive and the Uzbek cities were still segregated between Russians and Uzbeks, just like in the colonial era. Everything the Soviets did still reeked of the earlier czarist

60 policies, and thus the native population was prone to resist all Soviet policies. The Russians held firmly tight on their Marxist principles, which further complicated daily affairs. On the other hand, the Uzbeks were given an alternative to the Soviet state by the Basmachi; a group of armed Turkic rebels. The paranja evolved due to the constant harassment to a national symbol for the Uzbek people, and women would don themselves in their veils as an act of resistance and for cultural – national identification. According to Gramsci a society is divided between the ‘political society’ (government, the legal system, the military, the police, …) and a ‘private society’ (the public forum: churches, political parties, think tanks, labour unions, …). When these two are perfectly aligned, a ‘historic bloc’ is formed. In order for a state to impose a cultural norm, it requires full control of the political society. Only after full control has been achieved can it enforce its views in the private society. I divulged that during the initial phase of the Hujum two separate societies existed in Uzbekistan. On the one hand, there was the exiled ex-emir of Bukhara who resided in Afghanistan. His armed supporters, the Basmachi, still roamed the country side and denied the Soviet Union control of the rural areas. He declared himself the defender of the Muslim faith, and so the (conservative) clergy in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan supported him. On the other hand the Soviet Union was limited to the New Cities who were founded during the czarist era. It even had difficulties imposing its modernist ideas on its own party members, many of whom were co-opted due to the Korenizacija. The first step for the Soviet Union would be to regain full control of the political society and to clear out the dissident voices in the own private sphere. Thought a number of campaigns the Red Army finally managed to crush Basmachi rebellion decisively by 1934. The Uzbek Soviet Republic reformed its judiciary system. Through the introduction of ‘byt crimes’, crimes of daily life, Moscow now made Soviet cultural norms legally binding. The formation of ‘Red Islam’ was a stride forwards: in the eyes of ordinary Uzbeks it was no longer seen as a crime to merely be a Muslim. The Uzbek Communist Party was vigorously purged on multiple occasions; both the higher and the lower echelons couldn’t evade their faith. In this way Stalin increased his role in the inner machinations of the local detachment of the Party. Meanwhile, the demographic lay-out of Uzbekistan was heavily altered. First of all, many Russians came to Uzbekistan to assist in building out the Soviet project. Furthermore, deportations threw random new elements in the demographic mix. Small Armenian and Jewish communities had already lived in Uzbekistan before the revolutions, and they usually sided with the Russian in regards to policies. Now, the entire Korean population of Siberia was moved to the region. During World War II Western Turkic peoples such as the Crimean Tatars and the Meshketian Turks would follow suit. These peoples added extra multiculturalism in the cities, and the traditional ethnic dichotomy Russian - Uzbek was expanded. They had a moderating influence on both groups. The increase in population

61 however necessitated the reconstruction of traditional Uzbek cities. Soviet city planners demolished the old city walls and combined the Old Uzbek City administratively with the Russian New City to form a Soviet City. Yet, the removal of physical and administrative boundaries wasn’t sufficient: people still had a ‘Mauer im Kopf’ so to speak. The two different ‘historic blocs’ still managed to survive. The final amalgamation of these two would occur during the Great Patriotic War. During the Great Patriotic war hundreds of thousands of Uzbek men were drafted into the Red Army. There’s very little evidence to show they resisted the mobilisation. They were divided in ethnically mixed divisions, and adapted to a more ‘Soviet’ way of life: eating pork, drinking vodka, learning Russian to understand basic orders … Meanwhile at the home front, over a million refugees arrived from the West of the Soviet Union. These refugees, in combination with the Uzbek people who stayed behind, toiled in factories that evaded capture by the Germans by moving east. While Uzbek women likely didn’t support the Soviet Union wholeheartedly in this conflict, they did realise that the fate of the men sent to war was now one with the survival of the Soviet Union as a whole. It was after the war that the two blocs finally became one. When the men came back from the front, they were proud of their participation in this huge conflict. They served with distinction, and often had medals to show for it. While the ethnic strife in Uzbekistan continued during the war due to shortages in food, the many ethnicities also developed a deep understanding of each other’s culture. In essence everybody had similar individual experiences; they all suffered deeply for the Soviet cause and eventual victory. The war caused the development of a new layer of identity as ‘Soviet citizen’, and thus Soviet policies were no longer seen as inherently hostile or foreign. While the native population didn’t develop into the ‘Homo Sovieticus’ or ‘Mulier Sovietica’ as Soviet idealists had envisaged it, they did develop a certain loyalty towards Moscow that would persist till the final days of the Soviet Union. Original social values had changed. While Uzbeks still maintained many national distinctions, from now on they participated in the Soviet political and private societies. A necessary requirement for participation was however an unveiled wife. And thus, in the few years to come, the paranja would disappear.

62

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Appendix

Table 1: Census 1926 East Slavic Total 275.840 5.23% European Polish 3411 Germans 4646 Baltic27 1290 Jewish 19611 Total 28.958 0.55% ‘Neutral’ Central Asian Jews 18.172 Armenians 14.976 Gypsies 3.710 Mordvins 1.805 Tatars 28.401 Total 67.064 1.27% Nomadic Kazakh 106.980 Turkmen 25.954 Kyrgyz 90.743 Karakalpak 26.563 Kipchak 32.784 Uyghur 31.941 Total 314.965 5.97% Sedentary Arab 27.977 Yaghobi 1.829 Iranian 9.185 Tatar 28.401 Persian 9.830 Turk 21.565 Afghan 1.294 Kashgar 4.421 Kurama 50.078 Uzbek 3.475.340 Tajik 976.728 Total 4.578.247 86.83% ‘Other’ Total 7727 0.15%

27‘Baltic’ in this instance means the combination of Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Latgallian and Lithuanian nationalities. 76

Total 5.272.801 100% Population

(Institut demografii Nacional'nogo issledovatel'skogo universiteta "Vysšaja škola èkonomiki" 2017a: Vsesojuznaja perepis' naselenija 1926 goda: Nacional'nyj sostav naselenija po respublikam SSSR: Uzbekskaja SSR)

Table 2: Census 1939 East Slavic Total 801.953 12.79% European Polish 3.652 Germans 10.049 Baltic28 1.869 Georgian 2.648 Jewish 50.676 Total 68.894 1.10% ‘Neutral’ Armenians 20.394 Gypsies 5.487 Mordvins 17.666 Bashkirs 7.516 Chuvash 2.919 Ossetians 1.932 Azeri 3.645 Tatars 147.157 Koreans 72.944 Total 279.660 4.64% Nomadic Kazakh 305.416 Turkmen 46.543 Kyrgyz 89.044 Karakalpak 181.420 Uyghur 50.638 Total 673.061 10.73% Sedentary Arab 18.939 Iranian 18.181 Uzbek 4.081.096 Tajik 317.560

28 ‘Baltic’ in this instance means the combination of Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Latgallian and Lithuanian nationalities.

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Total 4.435.776 70.73% ‘Other’ Total 11.925 0.19%

Total Population 6.271.269 100% (Institut demografii Nacional'nogo issledovatel'skogo universiteta "Vysšaja škola èkonomiki" 2017b: Vsesojuznaja perepis' naselenija 1939 goda: Nacional'nyj sostav naselenija po respublikam SSSR: Uzbekskaja SSR)

Table 3: Census 1959 East Slavic Total 1.188.175 14.66% European Polish 2.941 Germans 17.958 Baltic29 2.735 Georgian 2.474 Moldovans 1.435 Bulgarians 2.072 Jugoslavs 2.413 Greek 20.047 Jewish (Aszkenazi) 72.818 Total 124.893 1.54% ‘Neutral’ Armenians 27.370 Central Asian Jews 21.335 Gypsies 7.860 Mordvins 14.602 Bashkirs 13.500 Chuvash 5.226 Ossetians 8.755 Kurds 1.354 Azeri 40.511 Peoples of Dagestan 3.283 Koreans 138.453 Crimean Tatars 46.829 Turks 21.269 Tatars 397.981 Total 748.328 9.23%

29 ‘Baltic’ in this instance is the combination of Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Latgallian and Lithuanian nationalities.

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Nomadic Kazakh 335.267 Turkmen 54.804 Kyrgyz 92.725 Karakalpak 168.274

Uyghur 19.377 Total 670.447 8.27% Sedentary Arab 5.407

Iranian 8.883 Tatar 397.981 Uzbek 5.038.273 Tajik 311.375

Total 5.363.938 66.17% ‘Other’ Total 9.923 0.12% Total 8.105.704 100%

Population

(Institut demografii Nacional'nogo issledovatel'skogo universiteta "Vysšaja škola èkonomiki" 2017c: Vsesojuznaja perepis' naselenija 1959 goda: Nacional'nyj sostav naselenija po respublikam SSSR: Uzbekskaja SSR)

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