Despite Cultures Central Eurasia in Context Series Douglas Northrop, Editor Despite Cultures

Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan

Botakoz Kassymbekova

University of Pittsburgh Press Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260 Copyright © 2016, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kassymbekova, Botakoz, author. Title: Despite Cultures : Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan / Botakoz Kassymbekova. Description: Pittsburgh, PA : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2016] | Series: Central Eurasia in Context Series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016039709 | ISBN 9780822964193 (paperback : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Tajikistan—Politics and government—20th century. | Nation- building—Tajikistan—History—20th century. | Local government—Tajikistan— History—20th century. | Communism—Tajikistan—History—20th century. | Political culture—Tajikistan—History—20th century. | Tajikistan—Relations— Soviet Union. | Soviet Union—Relations—Tajikistan. Classification: LCC DK928.85 .K37 2016 | DDC 958.608/42--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039709

Cover art: Public show trials of basmachi, Tajikistan, 1926. Cover design by Alex Wolfe To Camilla Sharshekeeva and Saliha Mukasheva This map is based on the map of the Council of People’s Commissariat, 1929. CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Chronology xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter one An Open-Air Rule 19

Chapter two A Nation to Serve Empire 53

Chapter three Empire as a Personal Responsibility 71

Chapter four An Empire of Numbers 94

Chapter five An Empire of Chauvinists and Nationalists 111 viii CONTENTS

Chapter six An Empire of Inner Struggles 136

Chapter seven An Empire of Liars 160

Chapter eight A Speechless Empire 179

Conclusion 199

Notes 205

Glossary 249

Bibliography 253

Index 267 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

adeleine Reeves, my mualimma and ustod, inspired my interest in social sciences and history when back in 2000 she taught Soviet M history and social anthropology in Kyrgyzstan. Her courses at the American University in Kyrgyzstan made me realize how little we, in Central Asia, knew about the region’s past and present. Her curiosity, orig- inality, empathy, enthusiasm, and passion for the region and social life generally inspired and empowered a whole generation of students to undertake research and produce knowledge of and insights about societies in which we live. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Madeleine for her in- spiration and limitless intellectual and personal support. I also would like to thank Chad Thompson, William Hansen, John Heathershaw, Thomas Wood, Sarah Amsler, Julia Dröber, Ari Katz, and Dina Ginzburg-Selkoe for coming to Kyrgyzstan in the “wild 1990s” to talk about agency, anarchism, socialism, capitalism, East Timor, law, Spinoza, Foucault, Ibn Khaldoun, and, of course, structural linguistics. This work would not have been possible without the personal and intellectual support of Professor Jörg Baberowski at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Passionate and deeply analytical, Professor Baberowski proved to be the toughest and the most valuable critic throughout my years in

ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS the department of Eastern European History in Berlin. I was honored to observe his thinking and performance as a historian and a theorist and to enjoy his full Doktovater support. I profited immensely from his advice and passionate encouragement in all my undertakings. The book is based on a doctoral dissertation at the Department of Eastern European History of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Colleagues and friends encouraged writing this work. Christian Te- ichmann kindly supported me (without my knowledge) with finalizing a research grant for this work. Always optimistic, he never warned of the difficulties of the write-up period; for that, I thank him. A special thank you goes to Felix Schnell, who spent hours reading, advising, arguing, and chatting with me. His immense support made the craft of history the most pleasurable undertaking. Robert Kindler, Benedikt Vogeler, Philine Alpen- burg, Daria Isachenko, and Sandra Grether offered support at various stages. My meetings with Ulrike Huhn, Stefan Wiese, and Benjamin Beuerle were some of the most intellectual and entertaining hours of my research period. Ulrike’s tea and cookies, whether from Berlin, Moscow, or Bremen, encouraged great debates over the role of the Soviet state in Russian church affairs, pogrom violence, Duma debates, and Tajik Sovietization. The group not only provided useful and critical comments but also friendships to last. Beate Giehler, a Tajikistan fellow, and Andreas Oberender were a kind company to struggle through the final stages of my writing. Sergei Abashin, Till Mostowlansky, Felix Schnell, Lisa Walker, and Franziska Exeler read the manuscript and offered valuable criticism. Ingeborg Baldauf, Thomas Loy, David Shearer, Shoshanna Keller, Claus Hansen, and Marianne Kamp commented on parts of the work at seminars, conferences, and lectures. David Shearer, Judith Beyer, and David Montgomery offered critical advice on publication. Conversations with Jane Burbank at the Wissenschaftskol- leg zu Berlin and Till Mostowlansky in Berlin helped to move away from a normative approach. Lauren Oyler proofread the manuscript. The Volkswagen Stiftung kindly funded the research project and insisted on closer project-based cooperation with colleagues in Tajikistan. Resulting teamwork and exchange with Sherali Rizoev, Shodiboi Atoev, Samira Rakhimova, and Hafiz Boboyorov on issues of nationalism and state building were critical for this study. I was honored to enjoy their warm hospitality, compassionate work, and belief in education, history, and phi- losophy. I would like to thank the VolkswagenStiftung and especially Dr. Wilhelm Krull, Dr. Wolfgang Levermann, and Dr. Mathias Nöllenburg for ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi their interest in and support of many important projects in the region. In Dushanbe I was honored to work at the Aga Khan Humanities Project (now the University of Central Asia), where students’ curiosity and strong desire to learn—as well as the collegial support of Sunatullo Jonboboev, Sharafat Mamadambarova, Yasmin Lodi, Zarangez Karimova, Viktoria Ivanenko, and Shiraz Jariani—helped me settle in Dushanbe and explore its history and present. The Project helped with archival access and supported with various research activities. Participation in the “Oral History of Civil War in Tajikistan,” led by Tim Epkenhans of the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, helped to connect Tajikistan’s Soviet past and its post-Soviet developments. I would also like to thank Fotima Abdurakhmanova of the Central State Archive in Dushanbe, who supported me immensely not only in finding material but also in sharing the last heater available in the archives when the –25°C temperatures were piercing. Archival staff in RGASPI and GARF offered critical suggestions for navigating in various collections. My dear Farsi teacher Riso Ismatulloev not only could read Turki and Farsi in various scripts and offered classes in calligraphy but also shared many personal memories of Soviet times and the war in Afghanistan, which gave a new dimension to my perception of the region. I would like to thank Douglas Northrop, the editor of the Central Eur- asia in Context Series; Peter Kracht of the University of Pittsburgh Press; and reviewers of the manuscript for suggesting and publishing it. I would like to thank Alex Wolfe of the University of Pittsburgh Press for designing the cover of the book and Leslie English for editing and suggesting crucial improvements to the text. Many friends and family made my life enjoyable during my research. Lilly Langbehn not only helped take care of my family while I was away at the archives, she was also confident when I was at my most doubtful. I would also like to thank Saleban Omar, Iftikar Akhmed, Wendy Werner, Lorena Alvarez, Makiko Ojiro, Anna Basanova, Marina Ozerova, Evgeniia Mardenskaia, and Shakhlo Sanginova for sharing many happy moments. In Moscow I was hosted by Antselevich Emma Davydovna, who kindly offered warm shelter after long (and full of terror) archival days. I dedicate this book to two Central Asian women who made Central Asia a better place. First, my grandmother, herself a jurist, survivor of the Kazakh famine, and natural optimist, who helped many people in need and taught me the lesson of life’s complexity. Second, Camilla Sharsheke- eva not only made it possible for Central Asians to study in a world-class xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS university, full of intellectual vigor and spirit, but she also set an example that establishing such institutions in Central Asia is possible and, of course, necessary. Her commitment to Central Asia is exceptional. She helped many of us to follow our dreams. Last, but most of all, I thank Kai, David, and Eldar for dragging me out of the archives and insisting on exploring Tajikistan’s stunning nature, cheerfully crossing its highest mountain passes. All photographs reproduced in this book, unless mentioned otherwise, come from Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kinofoto i Fonodoku- mentov Respubliki Tadzhikistan (TsGAKFD RT, Central State Archive of Film, Photo, and Audio Documents of the Republic of Tajikistan). CHRONOLOGY

1864–1868 Russian conquest of Emirates of Kokand, Khiva, and Bukhara

1868 (1873) Bukharan agreement not to exercise international relations without prior consultation with Russia and loss of the Samarkand and Zeravshan valleys to Russian Turkestan

1870s Russian support of the Bukharan Emir in conquering eastern Bukhara, territory of the future Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic without the Hojent, Ura-Tiube, Penjikent, and Badakhshan regions

1873 Agreement between Russia and Britain that territories located on the left bank of the Amudarya River be subject to Russia’s sphere of influence and those on the right bank to Britain’s

1880–1890s Military ethnographic expeditions to eastern Bukhara

xiii xiv CHRONOLOGY

1890s Russia’s tax poll stations relocated to the border with Afghanistan to keep British products from penetrating the emirate and facilitate exports of Russian products to Afghanistan

1918 Attempted failed coup led by Mikhail Frunze against the Bukharan emirate; Bukhara retains independence until 1920

1920 People’s Bukharan Soviet Republic with seat in Bukhara- the-Great; Emir of Bukhara flees to eastern Bukhara and in 1921 to Kabul

1920–1924 Military pacification of eastern Bukhara

1925 Proclamation of Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Re- public within the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic

1929 Merging of Hojent, Penjikent, Ura-Tiube, and Gorno- Badakhshan regions with Tajikistan

1929 Proclamation of Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikistan Despite Cultures

INTRODUCTION

hen a Tajik Communist Party member was asked at a Party Congress in the early 1930s—a decade after the Soviet takeover—what the Communist Party meant to him, he answered: W 1 “a pure, tender rose.” When asked to explain what he meant, he ran away. Another Tajik communist said he joined the Party because only Party members could buy fabric. When it was explained to him that in the Soviet Union any person, with or without Party membership, had the right to buy fabric, he replied: “Good, then you can exclude me from the Party now.” Soviet Europeans in early Soviet Central Asia regularly reported expressions of ignorance about the Communist Party but also lack of a desire to learn, to raise questions, and simply to speak at Party gatherings.2 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Muslim communists were publicly ridiculed at republican Party congresses for openly practicing Islam, accepting traditional authorities, resisting female emancipation, and generally impeding and misinterpreting Soviet goals.3 Some thought, despite reports of public ridicule, that communism would secure them five to eight wives while others hoped for a strengthening of Islam. As one of the European communists in Tajikistan put it, “People did not understand the meaning of [Soviet] words.” More importantly, “People generally could not orient themselves” within the new regime.4

1 2 INTRODUCTION

These acts of contempt toward Muslim communists could be interpreted as crude acts of a “civilizing process” to define and impose notions of Cen- tral Asian Muslim backwardness and Soviet (European) civilization. They also can be seen as acts of legitimization of Soviet presence in Central Asia: since Muslims could not (and did not) develop themselves, there was an apt reason for the Soviet European presence in Central Asia. But performing rituals of a civilizing mission in the early Soviet project was more than an expression of Soviet European superiority or Muslim backwardness. It was also a pragmatic tactic, on the side of both Soviet Muslims and Europe- ans, to deal with their responsibility and vulnerability in implementing the Soviet project. Rather than understanding such narratives on Muslim backwardness as “facts” that impeded the Soviet project, one ought to treat them as mechanisms of adaptation to early Soviet state building. Perfor- mances of backwardness did not take place during educational congresses or Party study seminars but occured as regular witch hunts staged at plena before or after a government campaign such as collectivization or grain requisitioning. Such plena aimed to identify and punish those communists who supposedly hindered plan fulfillment and, hence, Sovietization. In this context, performances of backwardness were defense mechanisms against purges and other reprimands for not achieving government plans, on the side of both Europeans and Muslims. Just as they allowed Europeans to shoulder mishaps on the “backward” nature of the region and its people, Tajik officials regularly pointed out that it was Europeans’ responsibility to teach them the Soviet way of life and that is why any responsibility should first be addressed to them.5 Thus, when asked why Muslim communists did not join kolkhozes (collective farms), some explained that it was due to their lack of education (neobrazovannost’) and backwardness.6 Even the highest and most educated officials in Tajikistan resorted to the backwardness argument. An Iranian communist who was sent to build the Soviet system in Tajikistan excused his mishaps at a Party congress in 1936 as follows: “I think that I have many defects, a lot of mistakes, a lot of misunderstanding, which need to be reeducated [perevostpitat’].” He was quickly and wittily corrected by a fellow Tajik communist: “Too many defects will not do. A little bit is OK.”7 Tactics by Soviet officials—central, intermediary, and local—to enforce, evade, and communicate the new Soviet regime in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s comprise the primary focus of this book. This is a study of governance tactics, and perceptions thereof, by a ruling communist elite and their subordinates in a geographically and culturally distant territo- INTRODUCTION 3 ry. Its main emphasis is Soviet ffi ocials’ understandings, strategies, and representations of the new system that they were tasked with and entitled to install and represent. That system, the book aims to demonstrate, was composed of multiple trajectories, considerations, and shifting tactics that were shaped by the ideas of communist justice, concerns about military conquest and governance, and physical, linguistic, financial, and political diversity and constraints. A multiplicity of ways of perceiving and carrying out these strategies lies at the heart of the investigation. Several initial considerations and tensions shaped the book’s focus. My original objective was to study what role Soviet law played in instituting the Soviet regime in Tajikistan. However, the ideologically charged language of legal material, the weakness and dependence of legal institutions upon arbitrary political campaigns and officials, the widespread resort to extrajudicial penalties by officials, and, more importantly, distrust and disregard of legal institutions and officials by the Moscow center made me ask: how should one treat material that was manipulated, distrusted, and disre- garded by officials themselves? Legal quotas and statistics were constantly changed, documents and protocols manipulated to adhere to communist vocabulary and central plans, and legal officials politically isolated. Vio- lence and repressions outside the legal framework (and documentation), which shaped and often annulled the legal realm, were crucial for understanding the written material.8 I, a historian—whose basis for investigation is written documents—confronted a situation similar to that of Moscow officials, who had to find ways to deal with information and language that could not be trusted. Even though Moscow double-checked their officials, turning to secret documents on extralegal “justice” or private memoirs did not (and could not) deliver “truth.”9 The secret police was tasked with seeking out enemies according to quotas and strictly relied on Moscow’s directives on what constituted antirevolutionary activities. Rather than providing a diversity of views of Soviet officials about the state of affairs, secret reports reflected strict rules of reporting. I asked: if official Soviet language did not become the primary means of information sharing but rather of tactics, how can a historian make sense of it? If speeches at the plena, reports of Soviet officials, and letters from the population cannot be considered trustworthy indications of what really took place or was thought, how can we make use of them? In the midst of the growing fear of open communication that characterized the 1930s, how could central leaders know they exercised control? If official language— considered to be key for modern state building10—did not become the 4 INTRODUCTION primary means of communication, how were policies and norms installed and communicated? Rather than treating these issues as limitations, I used them to help define my research questions in analyzing the dynamics of the early Soviet regime. The intention changed from learning, in Rankean terms, “objective” facts about the past to understanding how knowledge and communication were constructed, perceived, and ignored as strategies of rule. As a result, instead of seeking “reliable” information about what really happened in every village and town in early Soviet Tajikistan, this work evolved to understand how new political actors developed strategies to secure control, communicate their rule, and develop practices of governance to sustain it. Rather than rendering reports, proclamations, and plena debates as lies, truths, or expressions of ideologies, I treat them as tactics and practices. Who used, understood, and fashioned knowledge and information in the process of state building—and how and why they did so—became my primary focus. As a result, the book analyzes several selected interrelated strategies by Soviet officials in Moscow, Tashkent, and Dushanbe/ Stalinabad to imagine, define, and force through their agency under the new political regime. As an archival study, it is based primarily on written communication in which actors consciously spoke to power in terms they thought were accepted by that power. How they imagined this power and how they were shaped by new constellations of power became my primary interest. Rather than bringing in, for example, “voices from below,” I analyze how “voices from below” were constructed and ignored in the politics of rule. Instead of using the legal material as a source of truthful reflection of facts and opinions, I focused on the politics of production of knowledge for tactics of rule. While influenced by its initial legal focus, the book goes beyond its scope.

LANGUAGE AS LIE, DEEDS AS TRUTH, PEOPLE AS RULE

How can one rule if one does not trust one’s own language? Theories of modern state formation suggest that language plays a key role in the development of modern political governance. Education, news, laws, debates, and public events must be conducted in a national language accessible to the people living in a bureaucratic state. This language (or, in some exceptions, languages) is learned at school, used at work and in court, in print and other media. Linguistic diversity must be overcome through the establishment of a common, often designated “official,” “state,” “literary,” INTRODUCTION 5 or “high” language.11 Commonly perceived as a product of industrial modernity, a state language is understood as the basis for quick and uncompli - cated communication. It becomes a considerable investment of state elites because more “numerous, complex, precise, and context-free messages need to be transmitted than has ever been the case before.”12 If, according to Ernest Gellner, in the agrarian age “some can read and most cannot,” in the industrial age “all can and must read.”13 This is why governments sponsor school education and ensure high literacy rates. Linguistic diversity threatens miscommunication, which leads to production failures and costs. A common standardized language is a must for an industrial state that strives for rapid production and workable governance based on con- formity to signs, rules, and forms. Using the same concepts does not mean that people use them uniformly or agree on them; misunderstandings occur, but the basic requirement—general, mutual understanding of what is being said—is met.14 Significantly, the development of a common vernac- ular language leads to the formation of a common communicative and cultural field. Just as linguistic diversity can hinder the process of production, cultural miscommunication can also interrupt efficiency in industrial and government activities. Soviet leaders were wary of the language issue and came up with their own model. Cautious of being labeled an imperial power and wary of anti-imperial resistance, Soviet leaders at first promoted and financed the diversity of national and various minority languages and cultures.15 Yet, although republican national languages were formed,16 Soviet leaders still aimed to develop one Soviet language for the entire Soviet Union. National in form, socialist in essence was Stalin’s evasive response to the dilemma:

It might seem strange that we, the defenders of the future merger of national cultures in one common (in form and in essence) culture, with one common language, at the same time are defending the development of national cultures in this moment, in the period of dictatorship of the proletariat. But there is nothing strange about this. We should let national cultures unfold and develop, discovering their potential, in order to prepare conditions for merging into one common culture with one common language.17

For Stalin the development of national republican languages was a necessary but temporary solution “until the proletariat wins throughout the whole world and socialism enters everyday life.”18 His ultimate goal was the creation of a single socialist language, both in form and in essence. The 6 INTRODUCTION development of a single language that transcended cultural ff dierences, “socialist in form and in essence,” was thought to be possible because, according to Lenin, all cultures, independent of ethnicity, religion, and race, were essentially alike: they had “even if undeveloped, elements of democratic and socialist culture, because every culture had workers and exploited masses; their work conditions necessarily gave birth to socialist and democratic ideologies.”19 The support of national languages and cultural differences was an intermediate measure; the development of a single socialist culture and language was the primary goal.20 This goal was partially achieved: individuals in the most remote areas of the Soviet Union from early on started using words and phrases such as “class enemy,” “revolution,” and “capitalist oppression.” Parents across geographic borders started naming their children Traktor (tractor), Elektrifikatsiia (electri- fication), Revolutsiia (revolution). Soviet vocabulary quickly infiltrated national languages—whether Russian,21 Uzbek, or Ukrainian—across the vast multiethnic territory of the previous Russian Empire:

From the time of the great proletarian revolution, our sociopolitical usage was enriched with a great amount of new words, which linguistically designed new political and economic notions and formulas. First decrees of the intermediate worker–peasant government, transmitted through radio . . . brought the wide masses of workers these words, maybe not always understandable to all, but dear and exciting with their emotional revolutionary spirit. . . . Revolutionary phraseology soon became property of a million masses: new words rang out [zvuchali] at the front, in town councils [sovdeps], in remote villages, in newspapers, schools, in courts.22

Applying Foucault’s ideas23 to the Soviet context, Stephen Kotkin argued that Soviet citizens did indeed develop a single Soviet language. This is because Soviet citizens went through “[t]he process of ‘positive integration’ by which [they] became part of the ‘official society’” through learning and appropriating Soviet “terms at issue and the techniques of engagement.”24 Labeling Stalinism a (modern) civilization, Kotkin argues that the system’s strength resided in the point that people internalized and articulated politics within their social identities and learned to speak in acceptable terms. Although Kotkin admits that this process entailed a certain cyn- icism, he argues that Soviet citizens generally accepted and internalized the Bolshevik language, knowledge, and power. Similarly, Jochen Hellbeck, after studying diaries of Soviet citizens written under Stalin, concluded INTRODUCTION 7 that Soviet citizens learned and internalized Soviet language through the media and public shows and successfully merged “their subjective voices into the collective project of building a socialist society.”25 While there is no doubt that Soviet citizens used Soviet vocabulary to “work the system to their minimum disadvantage,”26 one is compelled to ask whether “speaking Bolshevik” as coined by Stephen Kotkin and described by Jochen Hellbeck was the same unifying cultural language meant by Ernest Gellner. Did it allow the precise and context-free communication, efficiency, and mobility necessary in modern nation-states? Did it produce meanings, standards, and categories that could be understood and internalized by all? Th official Soviet language, while widely used, contemporaries reported, stayed incomprehensible and devoid of meaning, even to Soviet officials themselves. Tajikistan’s communists, both Muslims and Europeans, complained that they did not understand plena speeches, some openly attacking the usage of abstruse words with exclamations: “Party questions should be discussed with a clear Party language,” or “Are we talking to Americans? This is a plenum, speak more comprehensibly.”27 The problem of Soviet language was not peculiar to Tajikistan, nor to its “backwardness.” Officials and citizens throughout the Soviet Union “expressed frustration, alienation, and mistrust toward the ‘language of authority’ [iazyk vlasti] and turned away in great numbers from newspapers, agitators, and the Party itself.”28 Anatoly Lunacharskii, head of the Enlightenment Commis- sariat in the 1920s, supported the development of the Institute of the Living Word (Institut Zhivogo Slova), whose aim was to teach students, agitators, and officials to speak the new Soviet language comprehensibly in order to be able to spread the Bolshevik word to the masses.29 Actively supported by poets like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Blok, and Anna Akhmatova, the Institute also attracted Soviet officials and intellectuals. But the Insti- tute did not survive for long and was closed in 1924. Soviet writer Mikhail Gus, who in the footsteps of the Institute strove for the planned socialist construction of the new language, admitted in 1931 that despite attempts to rationalize the Soviet language, “[w]e still cannot talk concisely, clearly, understandably. We cannot use speech in the process of production. Here reigns looseness, inaccuracy, obscurity.”30 It is not surprising that Soviet or Bolshevik language became for most peasants and workers “little more than a mystifying babble.”31 “He’s speaking incomprehensibly—must mean he’s a Bolshevik,” a columnist of the Moscow newspaper Rabochaia Moskva overheard someone saying in 1926.32 8 INTRODUCTION

But it was not only the listeners who were disoriented by the new phraseology; speakers themselves wrote and produced sentences they intuitively believed were necessary but could not understand. As a judicial official in Soviet Russia complained to the journal Sotsialisticheskaia Zakonnost’ (Socialist Legality), judges sprinkled “high communist words” into the old language arbitrarily, without a system of understanding them, hence rendering the Soviet language not only meaningless but also “vul- gar.”33 Despite its socialist pretense of simplicity and straightforwardness, Soviet language confused and alienated both speakers and listeners: “[i]nside the Soviet language formed a totally unique, specific jargon, which the ruling people used for the people they ruled and among each other. They did not use words, but word-signals that meant something complex, but what exactly—nobody really knew or could explain, including those who uttered those words.”34 The obscurity of the Soviet language was everywhere. A delegate to a Party congress in Tajikistan in 1931 asked that members of the Commission of the Central Committee explain what they meant when they wrote in their report “to highlight articulated right-wing deviation in cultural organizations that expressed in undertaxation.”35 Th request sparked laughter, perhaps because of the understanding that, as one commentator stated, “It seems that there is a fashion to write such things [zapisyvat’ takie veshchi] and [people think that] if such things were not written down, then they would not be considered 100% communists.”36 So- viet words were used as recently seized foreign words, not quite understood and not quite mastered, any time speakers wanted to appear communist regardless of the awkward nonsense they produced. The opacity of the Bolshevik language did not simply reflect the start of a new era of transition and change; official Soviet language and speech stayed intangible and a subject of ridicule until the Soviet Union’s demise.37 The obliqueness of Soviet language was part and parcel of the Soviet political regime. They were not by-products or failures of the early Soviet system; they were outcomes of a conscious political design. Since Soviet leaders were “obsessed with authenticity and transparency” in their hunt for bourgeois enemies and their supporters,38 they argued that words were weapons that killed and this was why people who produced “dangerous” thoughts and speeches were enemies of the Soviet regime.39 Since words were considered weapons, language a battlefield, and revolutionaries’ aim was to disarm enemies (real or potential), the only way to protect oneself was through self-censorship, which produced silence and fear of saying anything wrong.40 Those who spoke, fearful of being misunderstood and INTRODUCTION 9 disarmed, made sure they showed that they belonged to the Soviet camp: by using Soviet formulas in their speeches, they strived to survive in the battlefield that Soviet language had become.41 And in that context it did not matter whether what they said made sense or nonsense.42 Rather than producing “truths,” Soviet speech became a ritual of loyalty, producing speechlessness and secrecy.43 Silence, on the other hand, produced suspicion, distrust, and the perception among the rulers that they could not control the “masses” and their own functionaries. This is why Lunacharskii once demanded: “the person who is silent in an epoch of political crises is only half a person. He is obliged to speak. He is obliged to speak even when to fully speak his mind is to put his life at risk.”44 While Soviet leaders suspected liars everywhere, they believed that they were entitled to use decrees and proclamations for propaganda purposes, even if it contradicted their parallel projects and secret operations. Official Soviet speech quickly lost credibility also due to the discrepancy, according to Terry Martin, between the Soviet government’s official, usually regarded as progressive, “soft-line” politics and “hard-line” implementation. If the first promised its citizens protection, development, justice, and equality, the second often disempowered and forced them to act against their own will and interests. This tension, according to Martin, was the result of two conflicting aims: Bolsheviks sought “mass political support” (hence proclamations of humanism) but aimed “to implement . . . core Bolshevik values, which involved a dramatic and wrenching social transformation” (hence violence).45 In other words, the government aimed and proclaimed to satisfy what it thought was preferred by “the people,” but, on the other hand, also wanted to pursue its own agenda, even if it contradicted “the people’s” wants and needs. If, however, central officials were aware that their rule was not limited to policies, decrees, and proclamations, how did they ensure they could communicate their governance and assure its implementation? How—as my initial question asked—did Soviet officials rely on written communication that they themselves distrusted? And how should I, a historian, make use of it? Soviet central leaders had to invent new ways to communicate their constantly changing programs and projects; they also had to come up with new mechanisms to ensure their authority, the implementation of projects, and loyalty to the state. The disregard of official language by the Bolshevik leaders was partially connected to their general distrust of modern state institutions. “We wish the state’s death,” Stalin wrote, adding that “[w]e are for strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat,” which, following Marxist and 10 INTRODUCTION

Leninist doctrines, he considered the “the most powerful of all rules.”46 For Bolsheviks, modern states’ bourgeois ruling class legitimized inequalities and injustices of the oppressive system by means of political proclamations, laws, and media to install false consciousness in the population.47 Since language and laws were treated with suspicion, they never became ends of the Soviet leaders. Lenin and the leading Bolsheviks were also highly suspicious of laws and the legal profession. 48 Laws, in the Western European version, were necessary only under capitalism in order to celebrate, impose, and protect the interests of the capitalist elite and hence, their dominance at home and abroad. Modern state building and colonialism, according to Bolsheviks, were intrinsically interconnected. Both modern nation- states and colonial regimes were based on the same premises of capitalist oppression. In the modern nation-state the bourgeoisie ruled the masses with nationalism rhetoric (hence bourgeois nationalists) and the colonies with civilizing discourse.49 As a result, Soviet leaders aimed not simply to overthrow colonial elites, but also to restructure the nature and means of state governance. The Soviet response to the colonialism/modern-state juncture was a stately appropriation of industrial and agricultural production. In a society where the government managed production and property, Lenin believed that “people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.”50 Since crime and violence were considered natural elements of the capitalist oppressive system, violent behavior was explained as a normal expressions of class struggle. While in a society with socialist production and socialist property, there would be no reason for crime, oppression, and injustice; in the intermediary period of revolutionary struggle for classless society, violence was considered a legitimate and natural means to achieve it. Once class inequality was suppressed, there would be no need for state monopoly on violence or laws. In the immediate period after the October Revolution, Soviet laws and courts were treated as temporary creations to fight class inequality that would eventually fade away.51 “Revolutionary legality” was implemented not by bureaucrats who followed strict application of laws— they were, first and foremost, revolutionaries who used their personal “revolutionary consciousness” to bring justice. Language and laws were treated as means and not ends, because it was people—not alienated and oppressive institutions—whose decisions, words, and actions were the basis of the early Soviet state. For Bolsheviks, socialist governance was a personal and personalized project. Its power lay INTRODUCTION 11 in zealous, devout individuals who embodied purity and class empathy, which could not be provided by institutions.52 People, not soulless institutions, could recognize class inequality, understand the reasons for it, and bring class justice. These persons—communists—were supposed to have a natural understanding of Soviet principles, a revolutionary consciousness, a class sensitivity, and to know by the nature of their oppressed condition what class justice meant and how it was to be achieved. Communists were not to (fully) abide by laws and decrees because bringing justice went beyond laws and words. Truthfulness, loyalty, and real communist spirit could be measured only in action. A lie was not a lie if told for the higher purpose of communism; collaborating with enemies for strategic reasons was not sinful or contradictory for true Bolsheviks, who justified all methods possible to end capitalist oppression. Since the revolutionary antistate and anticapitalist principle was neither straightforward nor based on a strict set of laws and doctrines, it could not be taught, but was inscribed in one’s biography. Communists throughout the Soviet Union had to prove they came from the masses, suffered from class oppression, and were ready to sacrifice themselves for class struggle and equality. Those who did not fit this profile had to be disempowered, reeducated, and, in certain cases, eliminated. Anyone could lie, abuse, and manipulate. Only truthful communists could risk their lives and prove through their actions that they were real, moral humans. Soviet officials were the basis of the regime. They were the cadres, as Stalin proclaimed, who determined the fate of the Sovi- et regime, who “decided everything.” The Soviet leaders’ decision to construct the regime around individuals, not laws and proclamations,53 was a strategy that was based on ideological premises, Bolshevik prerevolutionary experience, and pragmatism. It responded to several considerations. First, the person-based rule was perceived and could be legitimized as an anticolonial tactic. Since the modern state and its institutions were oppressive, the Soviet system would rest on individuals who could prove loyalty to the oppressed and thus possessed the communist spirit. That system was inclusive and open to negotiation, producing a large number of followers throughout the Union. Second, that system was financially advantageous. Institution building is a slow and expensive process that necessitates monetary and human investment. Human enthusiasm was considered free and could be used in any context. Third, the system of personal responsibility enabled mass-scale campaigns to be realized in short periods of time. Since the system was based on people and dependent on a wide range of membership in remote villages 12 INTRODUCTION of the vast territory, the Communist Party rapidly grew throughout the Soviet Union. These new communists were entitled to rule in their regions, often above and despite law as long as they pledged loyalty to the Party and implemented top-down agricultural and industrial campaigns. They could punish, civilize, and educate; they had relative liberty to experiment and implement their version of socialist justice.54 This is why the Soviet “system” was widely diverse in space and time, depending on the visions, tactics, and interests of officials throughout the Soviet Union. Fourth, personalized rule enabled overcoming the problem of diversity and the multiplicity of traditions, norms, and languages that made up the state. Each personally appointed Soviet official responsible at each level of authority could, through connections, knowledge, and experience in their localities, connect the Soviet center in Moscow with the remotest villages throughout the Soviet territory. Soviet officials were the pillars of the vast Soviet project; they both embodied and implemented it. As a result, the Communist Party was extremely diverse: people did not have to be able to read or write as long as they expressed full loyalty, “spoke Bolshevik,” and carried out the state’s orders. In this context, their performances of backwardness were accepted as normal deviations of an expanding network and could be used strategically by new and old Party members, and by both Muslims and Europeans. The Soviet authorities were the ultimate foundation of the Soviet state. They were enormously empowered to implement state goals. Soviet officials—Muslims and Europeans—were celebrated, idolized, and entitled to rule, develop, modernize, control, and implement the Soviet mission. Yet, though fully entitled to represent and install Soviet authority, their loyalty to the Soviet center had to be constantly observed, tested, and reinstated. While highly efficient on one side, this system, based on individuals, had limits. Soviet officials exercised vast powers in their locations, but were also perceived as a potential threat. Those who showed disloyalty or were simply considered to be potentially disloyal toward the leaders in Moscow, and ultimately Stalin, could be eliminated as traitors and enemies of the state. Officials’ loyalty in the field could produce enormous results, while disloyalty threatened the whole system’s collapse. Since the Soviet state was based on a large network of individuals, however open and flexible, this model, according to Moscow Bolsheviks, could also be used to subvert it. By claiming and accepting privileged rights based on new Soviet categories, Soviet officials participated in and strengthened the system.55 Th y quickly learned to “speak Bolshevik” and otherwise implement the rituals INTRODUCTION 13 of the new regime. They studied and learned Bolshevik formulas of class oppression and, in the Central Asian context, masterfully situated themselves in the “class backwardness” schemata. As previous colonial subjects of the Russian empire, they could creatively use the anticolonial rhetoric for their own visions of the post-revolutionary future. But in doing so they also shouldered responsibility for anything that could be classified as not fitting into the overall devleopment of communism. As a result, the main founders of the Soviet regime could easily become its victims. “Speaking Bolshevik” could easily turn into “speaking enemy,” revolutionary speakers of truth into liars, and colonial oppressed subjects into bourgeois nationalists and imperialists. Since language and actions were open and flexible, the system based on individuals embodied a crucial dilemma for Party leaders: how does one check loyalty if one’s own envoys are empowered above laws and words? Flexibility on the part of state and officials could jeopardize “real” central state control. How can one trust officials who failed to implement campaigns but could legitimize them in terms corresponding to Bolshevik rhetoric? How can one prove one was truly communist if one’s words were not trusted? These puzzles inspired insecurity on the part of central leaders, who had to constantly come up with strategies to motivate, empower, and celebrate—but also check, secure, and purge—their own envoys. This dual dependence on individuals and insecurity about them marked the dynamics of the early Soviet regime throughout the Soviet Union. Overcom- ing the limits of personalized rule—the book argues—crucially shaped its development. Terry Martin argues that a system of signaling by means of violence was developed to communicate central orders throughout the Soviet Union.56 In a situation where promises and decrees were distrusted and ignored, rather than communicating what was right by means of words, the Moscow leadership communicated what was wrong by purging those whose behavior it considered so. It became a common practice that officials throughout the Soviet Union had to guess what Moscow really meant—and what orders, decrees, and signals they had to follow. Signaling by means of violence, as Martin suggested, was regularly used by Moscow leaders, and ultimately Stalin. However, while useful in communicating, violence did not become an exclusive tool for governance. While highly efficient in certain situations, it was also a limited resource and had to be applied according to context. Violence alone could produce disorder and chaos and run out of control, as in the situation of Russian civil war, and therefore could not be the only exclusive tactic of governance 14 INTRODUCTION for the central leaders. Violence was used situationally, any time leaders felt they exercised sufficient control over a particular situation and possessed means for its implementation. Any time they felt that violence threatened their order, they sought alternative means of rule. A mixture of strategies was used flexibly—making pacts with local authorities, implementation of decrees, material support of the poor, use of show trials, amnesties, and extrajudicial violence—and all constituted the repertoire of early Soviet central power. Moscow central leaders used them according to a particular situation, fluctuating between interests, possibilities, ideology, and pragmatism. The ultimate goal was securing Moscow’s control inside the Kremlin and over the vast Soviet territories. Their envoys in the field responded accordingly, seeking their role and their agency as implementers of the Soviet project. This book investigates some of these mechanisms and dimensions.

RULE DESPITE CULTURES

Soviet state building was eminently actor-centered. Yet we know very little about who carried out Soviet state building in Central Asia or how they did so. Recent historical studies on Soviet Central Asia concentrate on cultural designs and policies toward the region. In these studies, the question of whether the Soviet state should be considered a colonial empire or a modernizing state plays a crucial role. These debates are connected to those over the modern vs. colonial nature of the Soviet rule.57 Presented by Soviet leaders as an experiment in modernization and alternative governance to Western political institutional development, Soviet policies in the East have puzzled historians. Since colonial governance is generally assumed to be based on the production of “difference” while modern state projects are based on its elimination, it is illuminating to see how the Soviet “center” perceived, constructed, and reconstructed its Asian peripheries. Historians’ attention to the cultural dynamics of the early Soviet state naturally attracted attention. The cultural turn of the 1990s and the open- ing up of archives coincided to produce insightful works on the cultural production of the early Soviet Central Asia. As a result, historians analyzed how Soviet officials and scholars classified and managed their subjects through ethnic, religious, and gender categories.58 These studies produced productive debates and dilemmas about the nature of early Soviet rule and its relation to colonialism and state building. They helped to move away from the Cold War totalitarian paradigm that focused on Moscow leaders INTRODUCTION 15 and economic history. Yet, while the cultural paradigm contributed to our understanding of Soviet policies, it could not resolve the issue of the -na ture of the Soviet regime. Cultural policies, as historians have shown, were contradictory and entailed elements of both modern(izing) and colonial rule.59 Crucially, cultural history could not explain how cultural policies were connected to the early Soviet regime of terror, Soviet economic mobilization campaigns, and other tactics of rule such as large-scale human displacements and terror against both the leading European and Muslim officials. Some historians concluded that the early Soviet state was akin to modern European states: it was based on the idea of universal citizenship and a secular understanding of polity.60 Others argued that the Soviet state used modernization as a policy, yet should still be classified as a European colonial (even if modernizing) empire.61 More recent studies presented the early Soviet project as containing the elements and logic of both.62 But these rigid attempts to classify the Soviet case—as a modern state or colonial empire—are somewhat misleading, as they treat both as separate and unrelated systems of governance, as if they developed historically on opposite premises; these studies ignore the systems’ complex interrelation- ship in historical and analytical terms. First, the transformation of one into another took a long time and had no clear-cut boundaries in world history.63 Second, modern state building also based its discourse on differences between local “savages” and “civilized” metropoles.64 Hence, the focus on Moscow policies toward Central Asia (or any other region) can reify the separation and the view of Central Asia as a region separate from the Soviet Union, based on governance different from that practiced in “met- ropolitan” and other areas. It can push binary (often ethnic) divisions into rulers versus ruled, as well as perpetrators versus victims.65 In conducting a complex analysis of Soviet rule(s) in Central Asia, we should scrutinize the practices of governance that developed within and in relation to them.66 In order to understand the Soviet Central Asian relationship to the overall Soviet project, we need to ask if the type of Soviet rule there was different from the one practiced in Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union. Did cultural diffe ences dictate diffe ences in governance? Rather than treating colonialism and modern state building as normative or “neutral” sociological systems of governance—the former as illegitimate/indirect/personalized and the latter as legitimate/direct/ institutional rule—it is more productive to discuss both as repertoires of power.67 In the Soviet case, these were shaped in and by local and global contexts, ideas, and actors and were combined to produce an arsenal of 16 INTRODUCTION possibilities. In contemporary discussions about the relationship between colonialism and modern state building the Soviet experience plays a sur- prisingly marginal role,68 yet perfectly exemplifies that connection. Soviet leaders selectively used tactics deemed colonial/traditional and modern because they were trying to outdo both of these systems. The focus on the modernity/colonialism dichotomy as possibilities of governance shifts the focus from comparing systems to an actor-based approach. It allows an understanding of how actors imagined, constructed, and used possibilities, trajectories, and perceptions of their local and global political, financial, and ideological frameworks to shape their authority, agency, and strategies of rule. For Soviet leaders, modernity, like colonialism, was a system to resist but also a set of tactics to be used. The Soviet system—due to its open and experimental nature—allowed different methodologies, practices, and repertoires to develop. This logic often acquired its own dynamics and developed in unpredictable ways—in respect to those who designed and shaped it as well.69 This book is an attempt to redirect or, better, reconnect the focus on cultural politics to strategies, perceptions, and miscalculations of political and administrative governance. The basic explanation for my approach is based, first of all, on the assumption that top Soviet leaders realized that what they ultimately envisioned was not a conglomeration of cultures and ethnicities, but rather a regime beyond or despite cultures. Cultures were perceived and used as temporary and instrumental for various purposes, but were never the ultimate goal of Soviet leaders. Bolshevik leaders’ celebration of cultural differences notwithstanding, it was understood that their rule could not fail because of them. This is not to say that cultures did not matter or exist for the Bolsheviks. On the contrary, it is because cultures mattered and differences existed that a regime that could transcend cultural differences was not simply an experiment, but a tough necessity for Bolshevik leaders who, with very few financial and physical resources, attempted to safeguard their small revolution on a vast culturally and socially diverse terrain. A scarcity of material resources and a surplus of cultural difference shaped the early Soviet system of governance.70 This book suggests that the early Soviet state’s reliance on personalized rule in the 1920s and 1930s was a tactic that provided a pragmatic yet limited response to questions of fast industrial and agricultural transformation and ambitions for centralized governance in the context of vast cultural and linguistic diversity. Even if personalized rule responded, among other things, to issues of diversity, material collected in Tajikistan described INTRODUCTION 17 a political regime that was practiced in other parts of the Soviet Union. Whether in Russia, Ukraine, or Tajikistan, the methods and vocabulary used by Soviet officials and ordinary citizens, reactions to the new regime, and strategies for dealing with changes were painstakingly similar. Responding to concepts and realities of difference, the regime of personalized rule attempted to overcome them. Another reason for my approach is that during my research I found little discussion of the specifics of local ethnic cultures, religion, and issues of gender that were not linked to Soviet campaigns of collectivization or cleansing, top-down purges, economic planning, or territorial defense. National culture did not play a critical role outside specific political and economic campaigns. This work links some of the Soviet cultural policies to practices of collectivization, terror, resettlement, and planned economy.71 Critically, the focus on early Soviet governance brings the discussion of violence into early Soviet Central Asian history, a topic that is suspiciously absent from much of its history writing.72 Resort to physical violence was one of the crucial mechanisms that sustained the Soviet regime throughout the Soviet Union, including Central Asia. The planned yet arbitrary application of violence was an apt resource for a cultureless rule because it aimed to compensate for the absence of a common cultural language. Violence transcended cultures and differences; anyone could be disciplined regardless of what language they spoke and what cultures they understood. Considering the Bolsheviks justified the use of violence for class struggle, following earlier Marxist doctrine, it also became a tool to advance projects and behavior despite cultures. Since violence was viewed as a product of class antagonism, it was considered only natural and acceptable to use it in the class struggle. The Bolshevik belief was that a gun, coupled with good intentions, was revolutionary, humane, and just. Blurring boundaries between imperialism and socialism, colonialism and state building, the Soviet political design combined ideas and mechanisms of liberation and oppression, universalism and difference. Personalized rule with resort to violence was vaguely deemed a dictatorship of the proletariat to provide a political formula of a regime alternative to bourgeois democracy and colonialism. It is important to understand that this construct was made in the context of global imperial and internal political competition, inspired by progressive ideas of global justice, limited by economic and technical backwardness, and grown from a political context of coercion. Accordingly, the Soviet terrain was supposed to be ruled by loyal zealous communists from the rows of the proletariat, who would liberate it from oppressive state 18 INTRODUCTION and colonial institutions. By privileging those who defined themselves as part of the proletariat, the Bolsheviks aimed to install a new method of political governance. But what did it mean for the wide postempire they were trying to decolonize and develop? Since much of the power in peripheral localities lay in the hands of a selected official, the Soviet regime was widely diverse, depending on an envoy’s understanding of his (and it was almost always a he) definition of Soviet rule. To a certain extent, this open-endedness allowed Central Asians to participate in that project and integrate their visions of a new society. They were powerful agents of the new regime. Yet personalized rule quickly created problems. Since Moscow leadership appointed individuals with different backgrounds and visions to implement Soviet goals in every region, the regime had to find ways to level various visions and interests. In the multiplicity of trajectories and interpretations, it was difficult to understand which truth and which rule prevailed. Although the Soviet repertoire of personalized rule empowered and united, say, an urban Latvian Jew and Sunni communist in Tajikistan over the message against oppression, it could not explain or provide mechanisms to determine whose behavior was truer, more authentic, communist, and correct. Soviet central leaders used this ambiguity in order to create definitions of truth according to a particular political context. Because early Soviet governance was based on accommodation, improvisation and violence were used to institute and communicate the state’s rule throughout the diverse territory. While it was beneficial to keep governance open-ended and subject to constant revision, personalized governance empowered but also frustrated central and peripheral officials. Its arbitrariness often resembled feudal and colonial rule, both to the Bolsheviks themselves and those whom they tried to emancipate and develop. Moreover, dependence upon individuals and their visions irritated central officials who sought increased centralization and homogenization of governance. They decided to abandon their own envoys when those visions contradicted political goals and when it was possible to ignore them. While open-endedness allowed space for improvisation for various actors on all levels of governance, it also turned into a burden for agents of Soviet state building. CHAPTER ONE

AN OPEN-AIR RULE

A BAZAAR’S NEW LIFE

On February 4, 1924, Soviet military commanders organized in East Bukhara, the territory of the future Tajikistan,1 a gathering of Lakais, a seminomadic people of Turkic origin whom they considered the strongest group in the region.2 The February gathering was an attempt to win over Lakais to the Soviet side and humiliate Ibragim Bek, a Lakai leader who mobilized military resistance against the Soviet regime. Fëdor Il’iutko, one of the Soviet commanders present at the event, reported successful collaboration with Lakais. He wrote in his memoirs that the Lakai Mullah Ishan Hoja Domullo Donakhan said at the meeting: “Since Allah forced out the Emir and gave the people Soviet rule, then basmachi who fight against Soviet rule also fight against the Shariat. I will go and personally tell this Ibragim Bek.”3 Figure 1.1, a picture of one of the first Soviet meetings in East Bukhara, seems to perfectly illustrate Il’iutko’s recollections. He and the Soviet pho- tographer presented a peaceful pact, albeit one made in hostile conditions, and collaboration between local leaders and Soviet officials. The speaker in the picture, dressed like a person of authority, is staged at the center of the message. Placed on a pedestal, he speaks to “his” people in his language.

19 20 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figure 1.1. Proclamation of Tajikistan, 1925.

This is not a dialogue between representatives of the Soviet “center” and Asian “periphery.” The Soviet officials (one of them of Asian origin) are both stagers of and witnesses to the spectacle. Reporting on several such meetings, Il’iutko noted that local speakers were given prepared speeches, which they could not read but learned to present in a week’s time with So- AN OPEN-AIR RULE 21 viet officials’ help.4 As directors of the show, Soviet officials were not direct participants, but observers of the orchestrated action. As Il’iutko noted: “Of course, one could not trust the sincerity of bais [local authorities] who welcomed the Soviet power and land reform. Still, their speeches showed that bais realized their powerlessness.”5 Although Soviet commanders, and later Soviet historians, presented the collaboration of local persons of authority as the latter’s defeat, they saw this collaboration also as the result of Bolsheviks’ own limited circumstances. Soviet victory spectacles took place amid total economic and administrative collapse, disastrous hunger,6 massive outmigration to Afghanistan,7 and military attacks against the Soviet presence in the region. Official statistics reported 1,400 men in 46 basmachi groups (anti-Soviet militants) fighting against the Soviet regime in early 1925.8 Physical Soviet presence was a pressing concern, as the absence of roads and transportation in the mountainous terrain posed a threat to political governance. Until the railway construction in 1929, the Soviet presence in the region was geographically limited to several military garrisons.9 Open- air Soviet spectacles were organized under watchful military protection. Holding ceremonial moments of state activity was a crucial and expensive investment, given a constant shortage of food, medicine, and personnel. Outside of these formal representations of dominance, which could be used as propaganda—evidence of a heroic fight in harsh conditions—the Soviet state was scarcely to be found anywhere. Apart from the communist star and flags, which were part of the regime’s symbols, Soviet commanders pragmatically (and out of necessity) used local actors and traditions to expand the new regime.10 Soviet public events were conducted on community gathering days such as Ramadan celebrations,11 regular prayer Fridays,12 or bazaar days.13 Horse competition festivals and theatrical performances accompanied Soviet gatherings to attract the population. The new “ceremonies of revolution” aimed “to gain legitimacy from divine sanction” and to signify that “the new power came from the people and their participation in the state.”14 Weekly organized bazaars were especially convenient for spreading the Soviet word and were used at least until the mid-1930s for various state campaigns. Just as the Rathaus belonged to the Markt in medieval Germany, so was public life intertwined with bazaars in East Bukhara. Bazaars were an occasion to gather, not only for residents of a single town or village; they also brought people from neighboring and more remote regions. The Lakai gathering in February 1924 mentioned above was on a Monday and a major bazaar 22 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figur e 1.2. Dushanbe bazaar, early 1920s. day in East Bukhara.Th e bazaar location was the settlement Dushanbe, translated from Tajik as Monday. This Monday bazaar settlement Dushan- be was located at the crossroads between the mountainous valleys of East Bukhara, Soviet Turkestan, and Afghanistan, and attracted traders from these regions on Mondays for commerce and news. Dushanbe was a strategic location from which to conquer the region and spread the word.15 While a place of gathering, it was not a seat of a government authority. This is why Soviet commanders chose the bazaar settlement as a place to found the new capital city of the future Tajikistan, on Monday. Soviet public events were used to seek alliances with the local population. In 1920, the year in which Soviet troops entered the territory of East Bukhara, Stalin was reported to declare: “We know that the enemies of the Soviet regime are spreading rumors, according to which the Soviet regime is preparing to abolish Shariat. I declare here, in the name of the Russian SFSR, that these rumors are untrue. The Soviet government views Shariat as a customary law with similar effect among other peoples of Russia.”16 On May 1, 1924, Soviet military commanders officially confirmed their promise to Muslim religious leaders to respect Shariat law and local traditions.17 In an attempt to win over real or potential resistors to Soviet rule—who had been mobilizing in East Bukhara since at least 1920—Soviet commanders AN OPEN-AIR RULE 23

Figur e 1.3. Granting of amnesty certificates to basmachi, Dushanbe, 1925. promised and partially provided food, agricultural investments, land, free - dom from taxation, and security.18 One of its strategies was to announce amnesties to those who laid down arms and joined the Soviet side. On the day of the announcement of the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan19 in Dushan- be on March 15, 1925, Soviet commanders proclaimed: “On this great day for Tajikistan . . . the Revolutionary Committee aims to return to peaceful work those workers and peasants who committed crimes due to their dark - ness and ignorance, under the influence of emir and tsarist officials. We wish to give them a chance to redeem their guilt before the rule of workers and peasants.”20 The newly constituted government announced that it would immediately free all those sentenced and imprisoned for under two years and those who had completed half their sentences, and shorten incar- ceration periods by one-third for those sentenced to longer terms.21 Th se who had fought against the Soviet army but surrendered within three months up to June 15, 1925 were to be granted full freedom and immunity.22 Mass open-air amnesties, just like celebrations, were a regular tactic for the Soviet state. Throughout the 1920s amnesties were repeatedly announced for prisoners and anti-Soviet militants called basmachi on major state holidays and government meetings.23 Pledging a better future to the “masses,” the Soviet commanders promised to forgive defiance to their rule 24 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figur e 1.4. A public show trial of a basmachi, Tajikistan, 1925. as a result of what they called local backwardness. Mercy was conditional: a resistor had to surrender his arms, provide information about collaborators, and publicly denounce previous deeds. In return, he received an amnesty certificate and, usually, a freedom from taxation and land acquisition certificate.24 Soviet officials aimed to “display the ruler’s benevolence and capacity for mercy, particularly toward those subjects who presented themselves as redeemed and loyal.”25 One could also suggest that Soviet officials successfully adopted the discourse and even practice of the modern state’s “civilizing mission.” Apart from the symbolic role and publicity of mass amnesties, they aimed to physically mark the state’s presence: if one’s life was saved on a state holiday, it turned the state into a personal affair. Those forgiven and “saved” by the Soviet state, it was calculated, became loyal Soviet citizens. Amnesty was to serve as a rite of passage into their new lives under the new regime. These interpretations of Soviet amnesties in early Soviet Tajikistan are not erroneous, yet mass amnesties were also a practical adaptation to the region’s physical conditions and the new state’s limitations. Soviet commanders certainly tried to portray themselves as representatives of a great new power that could afford benevolence and mercy. But local conditions dictated that there was neither enough space nor personnel to keep people AN OPEN-AIR RULE 25 under arrest. Some prisons already exceeded 300 percent of their capacity, holding, for example, forty-five people instead of fifteen; most had to house prisoners on floors and in hallways.26 In February 1926, the head of the central prison in Dushanbe asked the Revolutionary Committee for permission to send “surplus” prisoners to concentration camps (kontslage- ria), as there was no space in the small prisons.27 Red Army soldiers were reported to be dying from malaria and hunger, and there were simply not enough people to feed and guard prisoners.28 The head of a detention cell wrote in 1926 that overcrowding was making it difficult to find food for prisoners, not to speak of “enlightening work” (prosvetitel’skuiu rabotu) in which they could engage.29 Official liberation in the form of amnesties was not simply a matter of new Soviet symbolism and the civilizing process, but a practical consideration. Amnesty campaigns were gestures intended to signify a new owner of the monopoly on violence. Upon closer inspection, they also signified a pretender. In reality, in the first years of Tajikistan’s existence the judicial system more frequently issued death sentences than amnesties against basmachi.30 In the spring of 1925, the High Court of Tajikistan—the only Soviet judicial institution at the time—had few members; its only physical base outside Dushanbe was a couple of tables.31 By camel or horse, “the court” literally traveled together with the judge, Revolutionary Committee members, and the political police under Red Army guard.32 This “justice system” simply had no resources for the normally slow and costly judicial processes, and there were even fewer resources to spend on prisoners’ lodgings. According to High Court judge Grigory Meilikhovich,33 in 1925 traveling field sessions necessitated quick and pragmatic decisions because, for him, they were a semimilitary strategy: “[b]asmachi resistance demanded quick show trials and strict justice. . . . [D]elay of an execution, not to mention the revision of capital punishment, would undermine all our efforts in the fight against the basmachi. . . . [D]uring this month we heard 70 cases, 45 of whose defendants were sentenced to death.”34 Often without paper or pen, the “military situation” had Meilikhovich adjudicating cases day and night.35 He considered the death penalty the most effective way to deal with rebels because, he argued, otherwise the prisoners could easily escape from poorly secured jails or “courtrooms.”36 Formally, the National Justice Commissariat demanded a seventy-two- hour period between show trials’ pronouncement of death penalty and execution.37 Since it was reported that there were no qualified judicial workers and no means of communication with the outside world in Tajikistan, 26 AN OPEN-AIR RULE it was determined that the Revolutionary Committee had to approve death penalties with Moscow via telegraph. But the telegraph worked sporadical- ly, if at all, and the system was a constant target for rebels.Th is disturbed the underprovided Soviet officials in the field, so they usually ignored the required waiting period. Isaak Zelenskii, head of the Central Asian Bu- reau, complained about the requirement to Lazar Kaganovich, at the time secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow. In 1925, after traveling to Tajikistan, he wrote that the population was on the side of basmachi leader Ibragim Bek because his trials against Soviet supporters were followed by immediate execution, whereas Soviet trials demanded sanctions from the center. The seventy-two-hour rule pro- longed the process and created the impression among the local population that Soviet rule was weak.38 Zelenskii, like Meilikhovich, insisted on quick and uncomplicated “justice.” Public show trials with immediate sentences and executions organized in the 1920s were, like mass amnesties at state holidays, a practical adjustment: the overtaxed judicial “system” in Tajik- istan could not (and did not wish to) permit slow bureaucratic procedures and judicial hesitations. Neither could it afford a “civilizing” process.

THE EMPIRE’S CONVENTIONAL STRATEGIES

While public demonstration of benevolence and justice represented occasional moments in early Soviet statecraft, its everyday basis rested upon mundane actions of securing military command. To achieve this end, various strategies were used. First was the military strategy of identifying and eliminating enemies within or outside a legal framework. From March to September 1925, according to one estimate, Soviet troops killed 48 kurbashi (basmachi leaders) and 1,423 basmachi.39 The large majority of those labeled basmachi were killed outside any legal framework whatsoever. Shortly after introducing the amnesty on the day of Tajikistan’s public proclamation, which required full surrender during the three months from March 15 until June 15, 1925, the Revolutionary Committee also introduced a secret martial law for three major regions in Tajikistan, which granted the political police (OGPU, or Ob"edinënnoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie) and special departments of military units (osobye otdely) the right to mete out extrajudicial punishment, including shooting basmachi and their supporters without trial.40 The head of the Revolutionary Military Council Mikhail Frunze did not allow official announcement of martial law because he feared that it would signal introduction of special harshness and lead to radical- AN OPEN-AIR RULE 27 ization.41 Martial law, however, was supposed to serve the region’s “pacification.” Between 1925 and 1926 in Tajikistan 208 basmachi supporters were shot by the OGPU in extrajudicial proceedings.42 This secret decree contradicted the amnesty campaigns publicly staged by the government. It allowed Soviet officials to shoot suspects without trial or opportunity for collaboration. As twenty-one-year-old military commander Andrei Shust reported:

I shot basmachi supporters according to a secret directive given to me personally by the Chair of 008 Detachment comrade Chalov, who told me that active supporters must be shot, but that it should be done so that everyone would say they were shot during an attempted escape. Also, the Special Assignee of the 008 Detachment comrade Sedel’nikov said during a meeting in Hisor that supporters should be shot, but that this should be kept a secret. Taking this into account, and in that context, I shot the supporters. Those directives were also known to our head [Cheslav] Putovskii.43

Similarly, although show trials presented some kind of procedures, very often they carried out sentences predetermined by military officials. This is how Meilikhovich reported on the process:

In reality, the process was of the following nature: the [O]GPU prepared information, and we, the directive organ, together with the Basmachi Committee, arranged all decisions beforehand and formalized them in a show trial. . . . Before my departure to the show trial the head of the [O]GPU Detachment Putovskii, who actually controlled the Basmachi Committee, invited me and, as usual, acquainted me with the materials in Ura-Tiube and advised me of the decision to eliminate basmachi supporters. This was backed by Boris Tolpygo from the Organizational Bureau. Putovskii told me, “If you do not liquidate Said Murat, do not return.”44

But the OGPU’s orders were not always possible to carry out. Meilikhovich reported on occasions when local power holders prevented trials and executions. They would “not supply translators, jury, or public defense.”45 He complained that during the trial of basmachi Said Murat, for example, the latter’s supporters were able to instigate the population against the (planned) trial outcomes:

When the second case was coming to an end and a local investigator, who was an old tsarist administrator, and a row of others were invited to speak, every- 28 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

thing started moving: from one side, his [Said Murat’s] supporters from the local administration and from another side the Basmachi Committee argued that there was a complete watershed in regard to basmachi support in the region and it was the best moment to crack the basmachi. . . . The representatives of the convicted won—it is quite clear how all the eyewitnesses withdrew their testimonies. All those who know the realities of Central Asia know its low-level apparatus is full of rebelling clan leaders—and the methods they use are well known as well.46

Basmachi leaders and perceived supporters were eliminated (in show trials or extrajudicially) whenever the political situation allowed. In one such case, a commission was sent to check whether Meilikhovich’s complaints were correct—that is, whether local leaders–turned–Soviet officials prevented the organization of a trial. As a result of the investigation, all officials were accused of sabotaging the Soviet work and purged. In addition to extrajudicial killings and show trials, Soviet commanders often collaborated with strong power holders in order to facilitate the region’s Sovietization. Officially, Soviet commanders declared wealthy regional and local clan leaders and persons of authority (bais) oppressors of the poor, whom the Soviet state came to defend. In reality, Soviet officials chose to collaborate with those in power despite an ideological caveat. As a certain Verkhovskii, representative of the Special Meeting, wrote to Faizul- la Hodzhaev, head of the Soviet government in Uzbekistan to which Tajiki- stan was subject at the time, “This is true that our rule is based on bais, but if we want to base our rule on dekhkans [peasants], we need money, and we never received it.”47 As a report from Tajikistan’s Party Organizational Bureau to the representative of the People’s Commission of Foreign Affairs in Central Asia stated:

In January [1926] the situation became easier since the population started providing information. In February, due to the fact that people with authority among the population started traveling with [Soviet military] detachments, the latter became more successful. For example, from September until Jan- uary we sustained fewer attacks than in the previous eleven months. . . . Without knowledge of the composition of the groups and their relationship to the population and to influential people, through whom one could attract the population to our side and destroy [razlozhit’] the groupings from the inside, our troops did not prevail.48 AN OPEN-AIR RULE 29

Military commanders reported that the population accepted only local leaders and that they had to collaborate with them. Commanders - pro posed to their heads in Tashkent Bureau (or directly to Moscow) to hire and train local authorities to work for the Soviet state.49 In exchange for their collaboration, pragmatic Soviet commanders granted willing local leaders positions in the new state structures.50 Tapped into local logic, Soviet commanders soon also replaced the idea of class antagonism with local clan and ethnic politics (or as they perceived them) to conquer the region.51 Attempting to navigate between a complex ethnic composition of the region, crudely divided by Russian imperial and then Soviet military ethnographers into Tajik, Lakai, various Uzbek clans, and other groups, Soviet officials constantly experimented and revised their knowledge and strategies using a trial-and-error logic. Il’iutko wrote in his chronicles:

First we wanted a Tajik from western Bukhara to become the chair of the Revolutionary Committee. But Lakais would not listen to a Tajik, especially if he was brought in from the outside. This is why Mirza Makhmut could not be effective. First we thought that it was Mirza Makhmut’s problem because he did not understand the [local] clan system. As a result Spiridonov, Mirza’s deputy, became more important. But then Mirza Iakub was sent instead of Mirza Makhmut. He was also an experienced Soviet worker, but he was a chauvinist and did not understand the local culture. He too was called back. Instead, Abdul Gazis was instituted as the head of the Revolutionary Com- mittee because he was influential in the region.52

This is how he described the mutually beneficial—and mutually manipula- tive—relationship between Soviet officials and local authorities:

The Shurabad Revolutionary Committee was formed from the following people: chair—Abdul Rashid, a bai from the tribe Isan Hoja; his deputy was Abdul Kaim, a bai from the Badra Ogly tribe; kazis [judges] from Isan Hoja; one representative from the Badra Ogly tribe; and a representative from the Red Army. Abdul Rashid bai was appointed as chair with the following rea- soning: the leading organs of East Bukhara thought this appointment would appeal to Abdul Rashid’s self-esteem, as he had fought against Ibragim Bek for a long time and would encourage him to fight against basmachi with full energy and responsibility. But our hopes were not borne out; he supported the basmachi.53 30 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figur es 1.5 and 1.6. Public show trials of basmachi, Tajikistan, 1926. AN OPEN-AIR RULE 31

Soviet collaboration with influential leaders was strategic and perceived as the only sensible option at the time. The Bolshevik division of the population into proletariat and bourgeoisie did not exist in Tajikistan and did not make sense to the people. The division into clans or village-based communities was much more useful, because, as one Soviet commander stated, “the bulk of the poor agreed with what influential individuals of their tribe and clan said and did.”54 The nature of relationships within a tribe linked poorer or weaker members to more wealthy or influential members through a set of obligations to support one another: a clan leader was responsible for the rest of his tribe, and vice versa.55 As a Soviet commander noticed, “If a leader was arrested, people went to great lengths to get him out of jail, certifying their work against basmachi.”56 The photographs of public show trials against basmachi (see figures 1.5 and 1.6) perfectly captured the collaboration between Soviet commanders and local power holders. At the center of the Soviet justice table, dressed like a person of authority, a local strongman carries out verdicts in tandem with Soviet commanders; while the former's names are not known, Soviet commanders reported on many such local Soviet chieftains.57 In 1925 it was reported that there were twelve Muslim Voluntary Detachments (Musotri- ad), which included 234 fighters. The Soviet government paid per diem (kormovoi oklad) 1 ruble and 35 kopecks per day for a fighter and his horse, the commander received 50 rubles, an intermediary officer 20 rubles, and a regular fighter (riadovoi jigits) 1 ruble 40 kopecks per month. For medical purposes and smithing 1 ruble per month was allotted.58 Ishniiaz Iunusov is a case in point. In the 1920s, Iunusov was a clan leader (rodonachal’nik) who first fought against the Soviet invasion and was subsequently labeled a basmachi. Later hired as the head of a Soviet Muslim voluntary detachment that was organized to fight basmachi, he and Soviet officials found grounds to collaborate. As a Soviet commander, Iunusov received two Red Banner medals and several other Soviet distinctions and eventually became a member of the Communist Party. He was reported to exercise total authority in his region, especially after he was made the head of the Administration Department and commander of the Voluntary Detachment. This is how Iunusov’s profile was summarized: “His authority was based on his Soviet position and his [Soviet] distinctions. As the head of the Administration Department and Voluntary Detachment, he thought of himself as the absolute master. He formed his detachment as he wished, from his close people and from 30 members of his detachment; six of them were bais and kulaks [wealthy peasants].”59 Despite the chaos and lawless- 32 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Fig u r e 1.7. A Muslim Voluntary Detachment, Tajikistan, 1920s. ness that the Voluntary Detachment was reported to cause, nobody (from the Soviet side) dared to complain: “Not a single arrest of a disenfranchised or a bai in the region evaded him. In all cases he took the arrested out on AN OPEN-AIR RULE 33 bail and tried to help him. He even participated in illegal searches, arrests, and extrajudicial shootings.”60 Clan, regional, and ethnic divisions and animosity were manipulated to form military strategy to conquer the region. From the start, the local Par- ty offices recorded immense growth in their ranks. In 1925 there were 211 members and 224 candidates for Party membership; in 1926 there were 368 members and 374 candidates; in 1927, 473 members and 495 candidates were counted.61 New local Soviet clan and tribal leaders, who were perceived as influential and useful, were entrusted with limitless powers in their regions in exchange for collaboration in fighting against other competitive groups, families, and clans that were perceived as dangerous. To fight the Lakai leader Ibragim Bek, the Soviet army was reported to have hired members of Ibragim Bek’s own extended tribal network who were themselves former basmachi. Hiring these “enemies” was justified by the idea that they knew the local context well enough to be able to push Ibragim Bek out to Afghanistan.62 While the strategy of collaboration allowed the securing of some districts in Tajikistan, harsh punitive measures angered many others, who argued that the Soviet policies increased rather than decreased anti-Soviet sentiment.63 In November 1925, after visiting Kuliab in southern Tajikistan, an instructor named Lokotkov on the Justice Commissariat wrote:

I consider punitive policies to be too harsh in both the sentences and the process of the preliminary investigation. It is enough simply to write a denunciation to put a person in jail. Moreover, there are peasants in the guardhouse who voluntarily surrendered, and although the center ordered that the cases of those who have surrendered voluntarily must be investigated within 24 hours, some are kept in prison for 5–6 months. As a result, some jigits [fighters] lose hope that their cases will be investigated, and they flee prison and return to their gangs.64

Due to parallel military onslaught on all those thought to belong to anti- Soviet fighters, Soviet amnesties quickly lost appeal. Many of those who surrendered were put on trial anyway and those who were released often received none of the promised practical support.65 As a secret police agent reported: “Some kurbashi say that it is better to surrender. But surrender is scaring them, because most of those who surrendered are hungry, barefoot, and receive no assistance from the Soviet regime.”66 Many were jailed for months without due process and in prison they were cold, hungry, and ill.67 34 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Repressive measures were both a successful military tactic and a cause for resistance. The Soviet government made peace agreements, also in the form of amnesties, with local strongmen in exchange for their support of the Soviet state. However, after amnesties and new land redistribution took place, clan and inter-regional conflicts persisted. If Soviet commanders privileged one group over another in a certain region, any tribal, clan, or regional conflict was translated into pro-Soviet versus anti-Soviet terms. When these conflicts occurred, group leaders used Soviet institutions and agents in their struggle against the rival. Abdukarim described his collaboration with the Soviet state and the reasons for ending it:

At the beginning I was a basmachi, and from your side many good words were said, so we surrendered and gave up our guns and sat calmly in our houses. But all your talk turned out to be a lie since we did not know what your rule was about, [your rule] actually made us basmachi. The reason is that among us there are many bad people and each of us has many enemies, and so these bastards give you information that one or another person has weapons. You arrest these people only on the basis of their words without asking people themselves. This is the only reason we became basmachi again.

In another letter, Abdukarim complained to a Soviet commander about the Soviet agents supporting his enemies with weapons, although his people were loyal to the Soviet state: “Mirza Abul Khan worked for your rule so hard, but he did not receive any salary for eleven months. But today Imam Ali Mukhat, the messenger who is unrighteous [kofi ]—does not accept Shariat—informed us that he has two three-line rifles, two sabers, one Ber- dan rifle, and one revolver.”68 From the start, Soviet officials employed the “carrot and stick” policy.69 In 1925 and 1926, they officially freed the local population from taxation,70 organized amnesties, and distributed food, but they also carried out extrajudicial shootings and public trials of all who resisted. These campaigns intended to demonstrate the benevolence of Soviet rule as well as its force. However, the Soviet military was poorly equipped and often confiscated food from the population. But resistance to food confiscation by the population could be categorized as assistance to basmachi. Thus, many who were labeled ideological rebels and enemies of the Soviet state were often those who simply did not consent to providing food to the Soviet army. In 1926, members of the Ura-Tiube Party cell, Union of the Poor, and Komsomol complained that the Soviet army resembled the basma- AN OPEN-AIR RULE 35 chi themselves: “The government knows that Ura-Tiube region is full of basmachi and that we suffer [first] from their treatment of us; second, we suffer from high prices; third, from expenses for the Red Army soldiers who are defending us from basmachi.”71 Explaining that Red Army soldiers and basmachi were equal burdens, the members wrote, “People run away to the mountains when they see the Red Army soldiers. If grain costs 5 rubles on markets, the Red Army pays only 1 ruble 40 kopecks. There are many deficiencies here; if some commissions would come and investigate things thoroughly, they would find a lot of material.”72 The Organizational Bureau reported that when the Red Army shifted to self-financing and started paying for products, some basmachi switched over to support the Soviet rule.73 Lack of material basis, hunger, and military resistance to the Soviet rule turned concessions to some local leaders and the Soviet ideology into a pressing necessity, yet they also had their limits. Empowering Soviet commanders and local collaborators with extrajudicial powers under the Soviet banner seemed to be a functioning model. Yet it is perhaps both surprising and sensible that Tajikistan’s miniscule High Court recorded “abuse of office” as the highest crime among Soviet officials.74 Abuse of authority on the part of Soviet representatives pushed many civilians to turn to the basmachi side. It is no wonder that it was disturbing for Soviet officials to learn that among the basmachi a kind of quasi-state order was emerging. In some regions basmachi were not allowed to loot aimlessly, and those who did were subject to harsh public punishment; basmachi started receiving military training and even vacation days.75 Averting the rising basmachi alternative and resistance meant ending the abuse of authority that occurred among Soviet officials’ own ranks. Throughout the 1920s, Soviet courts staged open trials of Soviet officials, both local and European, for power and abuse of office.76 In 1926, for example, the head of the High Court of Tajikistan, Grigory Meilikhovich, and the head of a special military detachment, Andrei Shust, were put on trial for abuse of office. Shust was sentenced to death and publicly shot. His verdict could be interpreted as indicative of the Soviet state’s genuine attempt to protect the “oppressed masses” from Soviet officials:

Shust had quite an important position in the course of the year, which he consciously abused: he terrorized the local population; beat and shot individual citizens; arrested citizens based on his own personal motivations; illegally confiscated belongings; assumed power from other institutions of power; fired 36 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

and hired people in Muslim detachments as he wished. . . . He undermined the authority of Soviet rule among the population . . . at a time when foreign and local enemies of Soviet rule use every opportunity, our every weakness, against us among the dark and uneducated dekhkan masses of Soviet Tajiki- stan. This is why Shust must be punished strictly.77

Shust and Meilikhovich tried to defend themselves, begged for amnesty, and accused local anti-Soviet leaders for their trials. Shust understood and presented himself as an agent whose task was not only to fight basmachi, but also to solve social issues. He argued that he honestly redistributed belongings among the local population, used confiscations to feed his workers, gave clothes to basmachi wives, and issued cattle to the Red Army “since the government is not doing this [added emphasis].”78 He was puzzled why he, empowered to take military measures, should be put on trial for work well done.79 Both Shust and Meilikhovich accused local strongmen of trying to get rid of the truly loyal Soviet workers.80 It is probable that Shust and Meili- khovich were eliminated in the interests of the local authorities and because of massive complaints from the local population. There were at least two petitions—signed by 105 and 83 local men respectively—against Shust; people complained that Shust did not pay for products, and that he arrested and terrorized people without due process.81 Both sentences against Shust and Meilikhovich were issued by non-Europeans. Public trials of Soviet military envoys who “abused their powers” were not widespread. Once organized, though, they were public events intended to show the local population that the Soviet state aimed indeed to bring mercy, justice, and civilization to the local people and was on their side. The “civilizing mission” also had practical considerations. Soviet commanders in Tashkent and Moscow sacrificed Shust and Meilikhovich in response to signals from the field that harsh Soviet policies, such as Shust’s extrajudicial killings or Meilikhovich’s death sentences, weren’t just ineffective in the fight against the basmachi; they actually aided the rebels’ cause.82 As twenty-eight-year-old basmachi leader Abdukarim, who had previously been a Balzhuan kazi and led some fifty-six jigits, wrote to a Soviet commander: “If [Soviet rule was just] in reality, it would not intervene in every person’s business for the past two or three years; I mean basmachi resistance would have ceased to exist in the past two or three years.”83 It was Soviet military action, he argued, that had produced basmachi in the first place. “We have nothing but Allah and the Prophet. We have no guns, no finances, AN OPEN-AIR RULE 37 no soldiers to wage war, but because of fear for our lives, we run around without having any relation to your workers, nor to your business . . . I swear by Allah and his Prophet thatyour rule made us basmachi [added emphasis].”84 While trials of Shust and Meilikhovich in the mid-1920s were part of the strategy to signify good intentions to the local population and strong local leaders, by the late 1920s and early 1930s local Soviet chieftains such as Iunusov were also purged from Soviet offices. Iunusov was put on trial in 1931, and his verdict was identical to that of Shust: abuse of authority and the confiscation and distribution of basmachi property among his (Soviet) army.85 Yet the crucial difference between Shust and Ishniiaz is that Ishniiaz and those like him were arrested in the late 1920s and early 1930s, during a period of growing administrative and financial strength. With the construction of the railway in 1929, which allowed a stronger physical presence, local leaders like Ishniiaz were increasingly considered useless, if not hazardous, to the Soviet cause. The elimination of local intermediaries served both the pacification of the region and the centralization of Soviet administrative governance. Trials of Soviet envoys were signals by Soviet officials in Tashkent and Moscow that it was them, not their envoys or collaborators, who exercised a monopoly on violence.86 By sacrificing some of their representatives, Moscow leaders could demonstrate loyalty and empathy to local complainants and mark themselves as the ultimate rulers in distant peripheries. The Party cleansing in the late 1920s throughout Tajikistan (and the rest of Central Asia) was a sign of the Soviet state’s growing confidence in the region. During the mid-1920s, however, it was local chiefs, like Iunusov, not people like Shust and Meilikhovich, who formed the broad foundation of Soviet rule in Tajikistan.

SOVIET OFFICIALS AS GUNMEN

Early Soviet tactics to secure “open-air” control in the region by means of collaboration and violence directly influenced the early Soviet institutional design and the nature of Soviet officials’ everyday existence. Lead- ing officials in early Soviet Tajikistan came from widely diverse cultural, geographic, and social backgrounds. Russian, Latvian, Polish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Tatar, Azeri, Iranian, and other communists came to construct Tajikistan. In 1925 there were over seven hundred Soviet officials working in Dushanbe—73 percent of these were registered as Europeans, 12 percent 38 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figur es 1.8 a nd 1.9. Soviet Europeans in Tajikistan, 1920s. as Tajiks, 7 percent as Tatars, and 4 percent as Uzbeks87—and they came to peripheral Tajikistan for various reasons. Soviet Europeans were considered the primary state builders who could transfer central knowledge and skills to a “backward” periphery and connect Moscow and Tajikistan.88 While a common identification “united” a diverse group, most came to Tajikistan for different reasons. Some were ordered to relocate to Central Asia.89 Joshua Kunitz, an American communist who traveled with a group of European and American communist writers and artists to Soviet Central Asia during the first years of Soviet rule, once told the story of an assistant to the native deputy head of the Central Ex- ecutive Committee of the Tajik Republic. The employee’s enthusiasm for AN OPEN-AIR RULE 39

Tajikistan was so strong—and he referred to the place as “our” land—that Kunitz took it for granted that the person he was talking to was a Tajikistan native. He turned out to be a Jew from Ukraine named Vladimir Sluchak. Sluchak had a very busy life in Dushanbe: “[e]xcept for the time that my host spent in the office, his home, from early morning till late in the night, was crowded with people—officials with portfolios and batches of papers, engineers with blue-prints and grandiose plans, accountants and econo- mists with endless columns of figures and ingeniously plotted graphs and 40 AN OPEN-AIR RULE curves. It was so in the evening, too: always working, always on the go, always in the thick of a ‘campaign.’”90 Kunitz described Sluchak’s apartment as having the feel of a military headquarters. He and his fellow travelers were puzzled: did Sluchak come to another part of the world to build communism, to transform the local, “primitive” culture into a modern, Soviet, communist one? Although Sluchak at first talked only about the objectives and successes of the Soviet mission, which desperately needed educated workers like him to promote communism, he once told the story of his arrival in Dushanbe. He was there as a Bolshevik representing a national minority and thus better able to appreciate the problems and aspirations of other national minorities. He had fought for three years in the Civil War; during the famine he had worked in the Volga region; then he was shifted from one job to another, staying in the heart of European Russia for only a short time. Just as he began to take things a little easier, to permit himself an occasional evening at the theater or opera, the Party ordered him to Tajikistan, a country he had barely heard of. He knew it only as wild and primitive, populated by mountains, deserts, bandits, and nomads, located somewhere near India. He hated to leave Moscow, the center of everything in the Union, for some forsaken place in Central Asia. He felt hurt and resentful. So when he arrived, he “plunged straight into work, into the very thick of it.”91 But what Sluchak did not tell Kunitz, or what the latter did not reveal, was that Sluchak was reprimanded by the Party because his voting at a Council of Trade Unions was considered wrong. While details are not known, the Party registered Sluchak’s open admission of a political mistake. Sluchak’s relocation to Dushanbe and zealous work was an attempt to prove he was a true Bolshevik and his suffering a righteous punishment and cleansing of a past “wrong deed.”92 Few consciously chose to move to Central Asia to develop and spread communism. For example, a certain Vera, a member of a town council committee and secretary of the bureau of enlightenment, wrote a friend in Russia in 1928 about her sincere desire to develop Central Asia. She wrote, however, that this could not be achieved due to the old imperial Russians, who were only interested in enriching themselves. She wrote: “It is half a year that I am sitting here, but nothing has been done. And it is all led by Party people! It is all wild here. There is no possibility to apply my knowledge and energy, as most people are antirevolutionaries and think only of their own interests. . . . What is needed is honest Party Leninists here, we need to clear up the rotten masses, which stink with old regime’s stagna- tion. . . . It is hard to breathe here. All the above is true only of Europeans.”93 AN OPEN-AIR RULE 41

Some Europeans, such as P. P. Vvedenskii, who cooperated in designing internal Tajik resettlement (see Chapter Two), were tsaristffi ocials in Turkestan who stayed in the region after the revolution. Originally sent to Turkestan as a diplomat and colonial officer, Vvedenskii took over Soviet administrative work and later used his knowledge of Farsi for ethnographic work.94 Others, like Leo Vassil’ev, a representative of the imperial St. Pe- tersburg intelligentsia, consciously chose to move to the periphery because Moscow, Petrograd/Leningrad, and Kiev were not stable and sometimes even dangerous.95 At a time when an educated person could be accused of belonging to the bourgeoisie, the enemy class, it was safer to lend one’s skills to distant outposts of the Soviet regime, where one was considered useful.96 Yet the majority of Europeans came to Tajikistan to escape dekulakization—the repression of better-off peasants—and unemployment in Russia and Ukraine.97 Demobilized soldiers who were actively called to build socialism in Soviet borderlands constituted another large portion of those on a personal mission of survival in Tajikistan.98 Soviet state building, just like military takeover, could not be implemented without “local” workers. Identified as “Muslim workers” (musul’manskie rabotniki) or simply “Muslims” (musul’mane), the umbrella classification referred to Tajiks, Uzbeks, Arabs, Turks, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. Although statistical reports primarily categorized Soviet officials by ethnicity, blanket references to “Muslims” were widespread. Connoting the notion of progress and backwardness, respectively, the terms ”Eu- ropean” and “Muslim” were contrasted as two simplified categories that (re)produced the antipodes of development. While Soviet European officials usually worked in central republican outposts in Dushanbe, Soviet Muslim officials were often sent farther away.99 Muslim workers, like Europeans, did not constitute a homogenous group. Regional and clan divisions were salient. “He is an outsider, he comes from Matcho,”100 said one aksakal (elder) explaining why a Tajik resident in Dushanbe was not accepted at the local Party office.101 As mentioned earlier, in the 1920s many Soviet Muslim officials were village, clan, or tribal leaders in their local communities. They adapted to new Soviet institutions, and their Soviet posts served as one of their sources of authority. Maksum Ab- dullaev, for example, reported: “When in 1924 Ibragim Bek wrote me that if I join him he would make me bek [lord] of Kuliab [region], I answered that Soviet rule had already made me a bek. Soviet rule is strong, but you are an outlaw.”102 There were also Muslim workers transferred from other parts of Central Asia or the Caucasus, officially due to a lack of educated personnel 42 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figur e 1.10. Soviet Muslim officials, Dushanbe, 1920s.

Figur e 1.11. Soviet Muslim jurists, Dushanbe, 1920s. AN OPEN-AIR RULE 43 in Tajikistan. Some were ordered to move to Tajikistan under the threat of repression.103 Some, such as Abdulkadyr Mukhitdinov of the Revolutionary Committee104 and Abdurakhim Khodzhibaev of the Council of People’s Commissars, were members of the Muslim liberal reform movement. Mukhitdinov was the son of a Bukharan cotton millionaire and together with his father and brothers helped to overthrow the Bukharan emir and received major government posts in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. His father was chair of the Young Bukharans’ Party and later, with his sons, a member of the Central Committee of the Bukharan People’s Republic. In Tajikistan Mukhitdinov and Khodzhibaev embraced the idea of Tajikistan and often clashed with Uzbek colleagues in Uzbekistan.105 Yet, Muslim officials who moved to Tajikistan from elsewhere often experienced difficulties finding a common language with local groups. Some were terrorized and killed by their “Muslim” brothers as intruders. Others were simply ignored. But while being a “European” implied cultural and economic superiority in Central Asia, they, like expatriate Muslims, all had the same taste of what it meant to be a Soviet worker. Living conditions were difficult. “Once, two workers threatened each other with guns over an apartment. But the duel did not take place—rationality won out. . . . Even two square meters per person is an achievement; people get just enough space to fit their bodies for sleeping. No more.”106 Many went hungry and became ill.107 Although Europeans received higher salaries than their local Muslim colleagues due to their distance from home, it still barely covered living expenses. A European doctor wrote the Ministry of Health begging for his money to feed his starving children and bring his wife to Russia to be treated for malaria, but he doubted help would come. “I worked for three years for the Soviet government and know the bureaucracy and how it works; this is why I ask you to pay me as soon as possible and do not enlarge the masses of bums on the street.”108 He wrote that he would have to find a way to leave Tajikistan, just as “even a dog flees the yard that’s not feeding it.” Even basmachi wrote to Europeans that they knew that Europeans suffered like “hungry wolves” far from their homes and families.109 But expatriate Muslims suffered no less; a Muslim judicial worker, Nasyrov, wrote: “I have been in Tajikistan since January. Since I was sent to Kurgan-Tiube, I have not received a single kopeck. I cannot work in such conditions. I have not sent money to my family for 3 months; their condition is critical. I strongly urge you to send me to Dushanbe, because from there I can escape Tajiki- stan and visit my family. I warn that if you do not heed this report, I must 44 AN OPEN-AIR RULE leave without permission as I cannot work in such conditions.”110 In 1925 Zhironov from the Organizational Bureau wrote to Zelenskii of the Central Asian Bureau in Tashkent that Tajikistan needed 8 million rubles’ worth of food. Tajikistan ended up sourcing products worth 400,000 rubles, and 50 percent were spoiled. Zhironov wrote that people in Dushanbe were lining up at midnight in order to get at least something (in the morning) and that whatever they received was in “microscopic doses.”111 Living conditions were difficult, but working conditions were too. A European described government buildings thus: “[d]uring rainy periods the walls of huts suddenly fall. Recently the walls of the militia building melted away like sugar, like the walls of the Economic Council building. After the collapse of the Work Recruitment Office its workers escaped to the building of the People’s Commissariat for Labor.”112 Government buildings were rented from local residents and were of very low quality; the High Court of Tajikistan had to postpone trials during winter and spring because rainwater leaking through the ceiling made it impossible for people to sit inside.113 Three state institutions shared a single typewriter; fights broke out when one of the institutions broke it.114 Officials’ personal safety remained an issue at least until the mid-1930s. In 1925 the Organizational Bureau complained that the Soviet military enforced its presence only in the Lakai territory in the south of Tajikistan, but that the entire region 2,000 sazhen (4,320 meters) from Dushanbe was in the hands of basmachi.115 Zhironov, of the Organizational Bureau, protested the political police, who claimed they could occupy the region only after it was Sovietized (obrabotan v sovetskom poriadke). Zhironov responded that “Sovietization could be possible only after security and peace were safeguarded.”116 Infectious diseases presented even greater danger. According to one citizen, the main enemy of Soviet rule in Tajikistan in the 1920s was not armed resistance but malaria, which, along with tuberculosis, was the foremost threat to the region and took the lives of thousands of people.117 Aware of the negative mood among Soviet officials in Tajikistan, the government made it formally difficult to leave. Soviet workers became prisoners of their mission. All incoming Sovietizers were ordered to register with the police; those who failed to register risked being sentenced to up to three months of punitive labor. Often documents and passports were confiscated to ensure a newcomer could not leave the republic.118 Chaikhanas (teahouses) and kitchenettes, places that usually functioned as local guesthouses, were permitted to take in guests before 3 P.M. with registration at police headquarters. Its owners were obliged to keep guests’ AN OPEN-AIR RULE 45

Figur e 1.12. National Commissariat for Finances. personal identification documents and register them no later than the next day. Those who did not follow this rule had to pay a 300-ruble fine or risk a three-month term of forced labor. Officials, both Europeans and Muslims, could not leave government posts as their absence would be considered desertion, subject to punitive punishment. When European agronomist Rotter-Prokopovich was accused of work desertion, he explained that the only reason he had left his place of work at a bread cooperative was because he was starving due to salary delays and was in urgent need of medical treatment.119 Even the unemployed needed official permission to leave the republic.120 In one case, a European worker was sent from neighboring Uz- bekistan to Dushanbe for a month to work as a consultant. As his time in Dushanbe came to an end, he organized a farewell gathering at his apartment with other European workers. When he announced to his guests that he was leaving Dushanbe, nobody believed him; it was almost impossible for a European to obtain official permission to leave Tajikistan. He decided to show the passport kept under his pillow to prove that he could leave. Alcohol flowed; the evening was spent chatting and dancing, albeit in an atmosphere of envy. The next day he could not depart for Tashkent—a guest had stolen his passport. The host had to spend another two months in Tajikistan trying to prove that he was the true owner of the passport, and that he still needed to leave Dushanbe.121 46 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

The difference between officials did not lie in their identity as Muslim or European. A crucial source of strength under the early Soviet regime was an official’s position within the government structure and, more importantly, whether it entitled him (and it was usually a he) to carry a gun. The early Soviet state design was clearly divided between institutions whose officials could exercise direct physical force and those who could not. Representatives of “soft line” state branches responsible for general government administration (Central Executive Committee or TsIK), education (Commissariat for Education), state planning (Gosplan), legislation (Council of People’s Commissars), and legal enforcement (Justice Commis- sariat) were usually not entitled to carry weapons.122 The “hard-liners,” on the other hand, did not simply represent but were tasked to force through the Soviet rule. They had a radically different standing among the population and Soviet officials. These were officials of the political police (OGPU), revolutionary-military committees (Revkom),123 later to be replaced by Party Central Committee (TsK), some heads of district Party offices (Rai- kom), control commissions (RKI), and the regular police. Although army officials also carried guns and exercised special rights to make decisions, they were subordinate to the political police and Party Central Commit- tee. Representatives of “soft line” institutions often asked “hard-liners” for permission to carry guns since, as a member of a statistical committee explained in Dushanbe in 1925: “the necessity to carry a gun is dictated by necessity to travel, which is impossible without a gun.”124 Government officials rarely carried out campaigns, such as transferring land from poor to rich, without an army escort who could secure Soviet officials’ safety.125 Soviet officials could become members of the Communist Party, but only some were members of the Party’s Central Committee, which was the ruling Party organ throughout the republics. Members of the Communist Party Central Committees were not regular communists; they were Party bosses who were responsible for the republic’s Sovietization. Republican Party Committees in Central Asia were administered by the Central Asian Bureau (Sredazburo) of the Communist Party located in Tashkent, a sat- ellite office of Moscow’s Party Politburo, the ultimate decision- and policy-making organ in the Soviet Union.126 Leading Bolsheviks such as Lazar Kaganovich, Isaak Zelenskii, Ian Rudzutak, and Karl Bauman were among the heads of the Sredazburo in the 1920s and early 1930s, and they regularly visited the Central Asian republics to inspect and instruct based on the Party line.127 The Republican Party and government institutions, but also the Central Asian Bureau itself, however, were all subject to control and AN OPEN-AIR RULE 47

Figur e 1.13. Soviet European and Muslim officials, Tajikistan, 1920s. inspection by Control Committees (RKI) and the secret political police (Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD), which were controlled directly by Moscow and until 1934 also by Tashkent. 128 Thus, while republican Party bosses were officially entitled to rule the region, the political police and control commissions, which were not subordinate to these leaders, constantly observed them. This political arrangement confused officials, producing conflicts. In 1925 Sokolov and Dadabaev of the Revolutionary Committee complained to the political police head in Tashkent that they regretted that political 48 AN OPEN-AIR RULE

Figur es 1.14 a nd 1.15. Soviet European and Muslim officials, Tajikistan, 1920s. AN OPEN-AIR RULE 49 police agents (OGPU) believed themselves to be the most powerful arm of the republic and that it was acceptable for them to ignore the government (pravitel’stvo).129 Dadabaev and Iarkmukhamedov complained in another letter, to Isaak Zelenskii of the Central Asian Bureau, that OGPU employ- ees did not follow the Revolutionary Committee’s orders, that they acted as they wished, and that the OGPU officer Skalov raped a female member of the Revolutionary Committee. “We have polyarchy!” they wrote, warning that if the Central Asian Bureau was unable to deal with the OGPU, they (Dadabaev and Iarmukhamedov) would have to quit their jobs.130 “We have no authority! Our secret communication is being opened by the [O]GPU, our telegrams are not being sent. There is war against the Revolutionary Committee. You should either help us or remove us from Tajikistan.”131 The rape, even only as a metaphor, symbolized both the powerlessness and self-victimization of Revolutionary Committee members. Complaints about political police were common. Judicial workers complained that the OGPU workers ignored them and, when requested to follow laws, suggested the judicial officials not interfere in OGPU business.132 A judicial consultant in Kuliab wrote in 1927 that the OGPU workers were infected with “arrestomania”: “There was a case when they kept a prisoner for seven months, only to find out that he was an eyewitness.”133 According to the consultant, the OGPU workers told him that without violence they could not obtain necessary information, since that was the only language locals understood. Judicial officials complained that the OGPU damaged the Soviet state’s authority among the population. The head of the regional court in Garm wrote about the OGPU, also in 1927: “One of the [O]GPU workers on his work trip to Kalai Khumb pushed peasants off the road; they were half-dressed and half-shod with donkeys stuck in the mud up to their ears, i.e., you surely know what kind of roads are here in winter. Moreover, he stopped at the mosque and raped a woman who was heading to a first-aid post. The peasants saw this and were shocked, and I have an eyewitness—the chief investigator. Does this not discredit the authority of the Party and branches of the [O]GPU?”134 The political police constituted a parallel extrajudicial institution that had the right to jail and execute without legal procedures. Originally empowered by Moscow leadership to fight “bandits,” it was given special powers to deliver extralegal punishment—including shooting or purging to concentration camps for up to three years—to bandits and their supporters.135 They were also allowed to examine any criminal case, from any court.136 Soviet officials reported that OGPU workers regularly imprisoned 50 AN OPEN-AIR RULE them without a reason in order to extract release bribes or taxed the local population for their personal gain. One OGPU worker was reported to say that he was the master of the (Garm) region and had the power to arrest anyone, even the chair of the Republican Executive Committee, Nusratullo Maksum.137 Militiamen (regular policemen) were other workers who eagerly took over judicial functions, especially in places where no other legal o fficials existed. They were also reported to be infected with “epidemic arrestomania” and to be keeping people in jail for several nights while trying to extract information, or simply in hopes of receiving a release bribe.138 Some police were reported to collect illegal taxes for their personal needs,139 others to literally rob the population on the streets.140 Like OGPU workers, militiamen were empowered to carry arms and imprison suspects for a short period of time. At the first convention of judicial workers in Tajikistan in 1927, it was reported that a group of militiamen spent 3,000 rubles of the state budget on personal needs and sold 3 rifles, 2 revolvers, and 7,000 bullets.141 It is no wonder that while most Soviet officials complained about their material poverty, some militiamen prospered during their work for the government. The head of the Ura-Tiube militia, Turaev, was reported to tax traders for his personal benefit and use short-term jailings and a gun to force people to sell him products at lower prices. During the years of his term as militia head, he built a house and bought an orchard.142 A head of militia operating in Hisor in 1926, Nugumanov Iusup, was similarly reported to terrorize the population and extract money for releases.143 Mirza Aminov who headed militia in Penjikent was reported to “use the darkness of the mountain people, exploiting the mountain folk, scaring them and threatening them variously, extorting money, cattle, sheep, horses.”144 Probably some of the weakest representatives of the Soviet state were judicial workers such as judges and legal consultants. This was a conscious Soviet design. Vladimir Lenin, who was a lawyer himself, and the leading Bolsheviks were highly suspicious of laws and the legal profession and argued that in the socialist society, law and the legal profession will cease to exist.145 This is because, as argued by one of the leading legal theorists, Evgenii Pashukanis, socialism would eliminate oppressive economic relations. Laws were necessary only under capitalism in order to protect the interests of the capitalist elite. In a society where the government managed production, there would be no need for legal management. Once communism was achieved, Lenin believed, “people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and AN OPEN-AIR RULE 51 without subordination.”146 During the immediate period after the October Revolution, Soviet laws and courts were treated as temporary creations that would fade away sooner or later.147 This is one of the reasons why So- viet judges never received lifelong appointments or legal immunity. In the context of socialist society, judges’ immunity was considered a “bourgeois irrelevance.”148 Soviet leaders in Moscow planned that until law and legal institutions disappeared naturally, “revolutionary legality” would regulate society. Referring to Lenin, this is how the Justice Commissariat defined “revolutionary legality” in Tajikistan: “It was an order in which everything that was not forbidden was allowed, and all those who broke existing laws would be punished, irrelevant of their position [added emphasis].”149 Ac- cordingly, judges also fell into the category of punishable people. While lawyers, like other officials, were equipped with “revolutionary consciousness” to restore class justice, they rarely had an opportunity to do so. In 1927 legal officials stayed in their positions for three to four months before leaving their posts permanently.150 This is because Party (TsK or Raikom) and government (TsIK) officials could easily fire them, especially if the latter questioned their work. Officially, many were fired or put on trial for failing to follow Soviet laws; some had more than one wife, others had abused their office.151 In 1928 the Justice Commissariat reported that forty-two judges were purged when only twenty-one positions existed throughout the country.152 The Commissariat calculated that only 10 percent of its personnel fit their official designation and that, due to constant personnel change, many positions stayed vacant for several months. In 1929 the Jilikul Regional Executive Committee in southern Tajikistan wrote to the Council of People’s Commissars that the region had had no procurators (public prosecutor) for the past seven months: “The last procurator, Akhrarov, left in May, [and] shortly afterward the people’s judge fled, taking with him documentation of some important cases.”153 Jurists were completely dependent on local government offices because they were hired by them.154 From November 1927 the courts were transferred to the budgets of local government offices, rendering them dependent on local officials both politically and financially. Judges and investigators, who together constituted the core of the people’s courts, were chosen by local Soviets but could be fired by (1) local Soviets and the Party, (2) the People’s Commissariat of Justice, or (3) the regional procurators who supervised their work in the field. Thus, it was natural for the District Party Commit- tee secretary, Dzhuraev, to order the District Court to immediately release an investigator, Iakubov, to perform in an orchestra during a Party plenum 52 AN OPEN-AIR RULE in February 1927.155 Moreover, judges, investigators, and procurators were constantly recruited for tax collection, grain provision, and reelection campaigns, leaving vacant their primary positions as legal representatives for significant periods of time.156 Although the People’s Commissariat of Justice occasionally asked district Party representatives not to recruit legal officials for any work outside their responsibilities, such requests were usually ignored.157 It is not surprising that the judicial profession was one of the least popular among Soviet officials, both European and Muslim, in Tajikistan. In hopes of finding people to go through judicial training, the Justice Commissariat had to report in 1926 that they could find only five people who were willing to study law, instead of the anticipated ten.158 Officials who understood the role and strength of OGPU workers aligned themselves with them. In 1926, for example, the Ura-Tiube procurator allied with the local political police agent when he wanted to imprison local government officials. The political police carried guns during the arrest, and the jailing was successful.159 The alliance with the OGPU was practical because in order to arrest and imprison, legal officials must have material proof and written testimonies of crime. Alignment with the political police eased the procedure because OGPU workers did not need to overcome any bureaucratic hindrances. Since OGPU workers and militiamen could use guns as certificates of their state power—some proclaimed the right to solemnize local marriages—some legal officials pretended they were OGPU agents themselves; the investigator Turgunov claimed to be a OGPU worker for four months in Ura-Tiube without anyone noticing that he was simply an investigator with a gun.160 When Ruben Katanian of the Russian Procuracy inspected Tajikistan in 1932, consulting a procurator in Hojent on judicial matters and asking him whether he had questions, the Hojent procurator replied, “No, except for one question: can a procurator wear the clothes of [O]GPU workers?”161 Larichev, another inspector in Tajikistan, explained the issue even more aptly. He said, “Ninety-eight percent of our [Party] secretaries are alien elements; only 2 percent are Soviet-oriented. But if we give guns to these 2 percent, they will flee.”162 In comparison with Soviet laws and office, a gun carried much more power and prestige. CHAPTER TWO

A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE

TERRITORY, ETHNICITY, RULE

Physical presence was one of the most pressing concerns for the new Soviet regime.1 The absence of roads and transportation posed a threat to political governance. Any attempt to rule the new territories entailed building a railway, roads, telegraph, and a functioning postal system.2 In 1925 and 1926 the largest portion of the state budget was spent on their construction.3 Until then, donkeys, horses, and camels provided the main transportation and communication means that could be used in mountainous terrain.4 As late as 1934, it took ten to twenty days for the post to reach Moscow from Dushanbe (then Stalinabad), while it took fifteen to twenty-five days for it to get from one region of Tajikistan to another.5 The Soviet state had few means to spread its influence into the mountainous areas of the republic. In 1926 the Revolutionary Committee ordered all government agencies to act as a postal division due to the absence of regular mail services.6 In 1930, Kordekov, the head of the Organizational Bureau of the Executive Committee, wrote that in an administrative unit forty-five kilometers from Kurgan-Tiube, representatives of Soviet organizations had been effectively absent for the previous decade: “In some villages no representatives of Soviet rule, except for forestry workers, have visited

53 54 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE

Figur e 2.1. Government caravan from Tashkent to Dushanbe, 1925. for the past ten years, since this mountainous region could be reached only by foot. This is why peasants have only a vague understanding of the existence of Soviet rule. In 1928 there was a decree to resettle them to rainfed lands, but nobody carried it out.”7 Another secret police agent wrote in 1931 that it was impossible to check the Soviet apparatus in the northwest- ern region of Matcha due to its mountainous terrain, and this was why its Soviet apparatus was “littered with alien elements.”8 The vast region of Badakhshan, covering the mountainous southeastern territory of the republic, was literally unreachable in winter.9 Reporting on the situation with resistance movements, a secret police agent stated that “in the south we have a problem; in the north there are simply criminals; we cannot say anything about Badakhshan as there is no way to get there because of the snow.”10 In Garm, the head of the People’s Committee for Land reported that there was no communication among different districts in this part of Tajikistan for six months of the year.11 The border with Afghanistan was of special concern. “The border is not secured; we have no guns or people to guard it; the militia is drunken and amoral. It is impossible to guard the border; it is impossible to stop basma- A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 55 chi groups [and] to prevent damage to agricultural campaigns,” a secret po - lice worker complained to his superiors in Tashkent and Moscow in 1927.12 It is not coincidental that in 1928 entry to border districts was prohibited for those charged with espionage, participation in counterrevolutionary organizations, border crossing, or smuggling contraband.13 Fears of unstable borders were intensified by rumors of a basmachi takeover triggered by England’s support. Secret police reports warned that the local population was ready not only to support the resistance but also to welcome British rule.14 In 1929 it warned that serious problems were to be expected if an authoritative basmachi leader crossed the border and reentered Tajikistan.15 The Soviet government used several tactics to conquer and secure Ta- jikistan’s territory. In addition to leading the military onslaught against those who resisted its presence, attracting the population with land distribution benefits, collaborating with local power holders (see Chapter One) and building roads for physical expansion, the Soviet government sent expeditions and commissions to study the situation and propose efficient strategies for dealing with the region. The Central Asian Economic Bureau and State Planning Committee under the Assigned Council for Labor and Defense in Central Asia, located in Tashkent, formed a Special Commis- sion for Tajikistan Affairs in March 1926 to investigate and propose further strategies of state building in Tajikistan. The Special Commission’s reports, published as the National Economy of Tajikistan, provided the first system- atic study of the republic for the central government. The volume presents a collection of articles that illuminate how state officials conceived and categorized the past, present, and—more importantly—future of the sociopolitical composition of Soviet Tajikistan. Three authors are of particular importance: I. Kampenus, who served as head of the Central Asian Bank in Tashkent;16 P. Vvedenskii, a former Imperial Russian administrator, Orien- talist, and cofounder and member of the Society for the Study of Tajikistan and Iranian Peoples Outside of Tajikistan, in Tashkent; and A. Ianishevskii, a professor at the Institute of Water Economy, also in Tashkent.17 Commission members identified two important issues for the new government: resources and population. The two were considered profoundly interlinked, and it was determined that the southern lowland valleys were ideal for planting cotton and that Tajikistan should specialize in its production. At the same time, the southern valleys were described as “empty” and lacking in manpower due to massive emigration to Afghanistan. The proposed solution was to transfer the needed manpower from the mountainous regions: the resettlement of highlanders, the Commission experts 56 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE claimed, would not only enable the realization of future grand cotton plans, but it would also reshape the political landscape of the country and, crucially, correct a “historical injustice” ispravlenie( istoricheskoi nesprav- edlivosti) by bringing “back” oppressed “sedentary agricultural groups” long ousted into the mountains by “seminomadic tribal” groups that “conquered” the valleys for their cattle.18 As had happened with Imperial Russian explorers before, the division between the “sedentary agricultural groups” identified as Tajiks and “seminomadic tribal groups” labeled Uz- beks/Lakais was primarily determined by language, community structure, and economic activity. Tajiks were categorized as Persian speaking, lacking a clan/tribal structure (vnerodovye), and living on agricultural production. Uzbeks/Lakais were identified as Turkic speaking, organized by a clan/tribal structure (rodovye), and functioning on an economy based on nomadic and seminomadic cattle breeding. Although “racial” differences were not explicitly articulated by the Commission, earlier and later reports by various state officials highlighted the “racial” factor. A delegation that was instructed to study the economy of Central Asia operated, for instance, with the following distinction: “Tajiks—a people of Iranian descent. The original inhabitants speak Iranian dialects. Through Turko-Mongolian invasions, they intermixed with the Aryan conquerors and adopted their language. They formed a new people, keeping most Tajik characteristics but speaking Turkic languages. The purest Aryan type is preserved by the mountainous Tajiks.”19 In 1925 Vvedenskii had declared that although two-thirds of the country was populated by sedentary Tajiks, this did not ensure their dominance; much of the proclaimed “land of the Tajiks” did not, in fact, belong to Ta- jiks. Commission members wrote that the tribal minority (Uzbeks/Lakais) was a “strong” group, and even if it constituted a numerical minority in a certain province, it was always stronger than numerous nontribal groups: “[e]ven an insignificant proportion of tribal groups (up to 25 percent) gives reason to say that tribal groups are taking the initiative in their hands and spreading the tribal base [rasprostranenii rodovogo nachala].”20 Commis- sion members argued that during the emir’s rule, “tribal groups” were privileged by the previous regime and could thus take the country’s most valuable lands—the lowlands.21 The Tajiks were identified as an “oppressed nation” because, it was argued, they had been expelled by tribal groups into the mountains.22 According to the report, the tribal groups populated and dominated three major southern lowland regions in Tajikistan: Hisor, Kurgan-Tiube, and Kuliab. Without interference in these groups’ activi- A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 57

Ta bl e 2.1. Percentage of Uzbeks (1926)

Province Town Hisor, 32 Dushanbe, 15.7 Kuliab, 20 Kuliab town, 34; Kyzyl Mazar, 74.9; Mumin Abad, 0.2; Havaling, 0; Kongurt, 8.6 Kurgan-Tiube, 54.9 Kabadian, 55.6; Kurgan- Tiube town, 76.2; Sarai Kamar, 68.2 Garm, 0 Badakhshan, 0 Penjikent, 19.3 Ura-Tiube, 33.1

Source: TsGA RT, f. 17, op. 3, d. 43, ll. 37-39. Vypiski iz protokolov zasedaniia SNK TASSR, 1928. The table is reproduced as in the original, noting only the number of Uzbeks and no other national groups. ties, it was warned, the tribal groups would further press the Tajiks, “the weaker party,” into the mountains. State planners urged the government to take care of the oppressed Tajiks by “returning” to them the “confiscated” lowlands, as well as by supporting them provisionally in order to “halt the pressure of closely knit tribal groups” (ostanovit’ napora splochennykh rodovykh grupp).23 It was argued that southern Tajikistan—particularly what would be called the Vakhsh Valley—should again be populated with Tajiks, the region’s “aborigines” (starykh aborigenov—Tadzhikov) and thus its rightful owners.24 Why did researchers, and later the government, collaborate with the “weak” Tajiks? First of all, the problem was viewed in class terms: the nontribal Tajiks were described as oppressed groups who were “colonized” by earlier Bukharan elites, who themselves, it was claimed, belonged to tribal groups. This was an excellent case for applying the logic of decolonization, or “anticolonial reparation.”25 The reason the tribal groups could press the settled people into the mountains, it was explained, was because the former were stronger due to having more cattle, better lands, and being more united due to their clan structure.26 As a result, “enslaving” (kabal’nye) re- 58 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE lations between “bai cattle-owners” and agricultural groups had emerged. Because the emir and his regime had been overthrown, the logic went, his people were to be overthrown as well.27 Second, the Bolsheviks perceived a settled lifestyle to be more progressive than a nomadic one and the agricultural economy more useful for the Soviet project.28 Vvedenskii argued that the settled population practiced “a common type of civil organization, in which functioned normal laws of development of simple civil society.29 Tajiks, in other words, were seen as aligned with principles of religion, territory, and estate; Uzbeks and Lakais, by contrast, were united according to clan principles. Vvedenskii stated bluntly: “By comparing the two kinds of principles [tribal and nontribal] of the four major regions of Tajikistan, wefi nd advantageous factors for the new Soviet system first of all in [the] Garm province, and in those regions where nontribal groups live.”30 Thus, the settled population was seen as more helpful to the Soviet state-building project than the tribal groups. Crucially, it was believed that, since Tajiks lived on agricultural production (and were called “agricultural groups”), they would be more suited to Soviet cotton production than the seminomadic cattle breeders. Garm, as a home of settled Tajiks (statistics show that 100 percent of the population there were Tajiks, see table 2.1), was to facilitate not only “good” Soviet citizens, but also the major workforce. “There is no basmachi movement in Garm,” a member of the Organizational Bureau Fomichev said in 1926, “only simple farmhands [batrak] and workers’ masses [!].”31 Just as growing cotton would liberate the Soviet Union from dependency on the West,32 so too would the relocation of the “oppressed” Tajiks liberate them from seminomadic tribal groups. Third, the Turkic tribal groups were perceived to represent a greater military threat. Most of the basmachi leaders were believed to belong to tribal groups; the leader of the resistance movement, Ibragim Bek, for example, belonged to a Lakai tribe. A military report from August 1926 stated that Uzbeks were good fighters and could “be dangerous for Europeans in small wars.”33 Similarly, some military reports from 1924 revealed that richer cattle breeders were more anti-Soviet and more likely to support the resistance.34 Tribal groups, moreover, had a direct impact on the region’s Sovietization, as one military agent argued in 1926: “It would be too early to talk about Sovietization, since Kongurats [a tribal group] are assisting the basmachi.”35 In a similar vein, the Special Commission openly stated that “the major Lakai economic group must be definitively disempowered [opredelenno obessilina]: first of all, with a buffer [prosloika]—by creating A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 59 among them strong groups of agricultural importance by resettling them from other regions; by creating not only separate households, but, more importantly, separate, strong [Tajik] villages.” Tajiks, it was hoped, with the help of the Soviet government, “could grow stronger and create a counter- weight [sozdat’ protivoves] to the cohesive tribal groups.”36 Incorporating, strengthening, and collaborating with the “oppressed” Tajiks represented important strategic steps for dealing with tribal groups whose leaders opposed Sovietization. Although there were tribal groups who collaborated with the Soviets or expressed the readiness to do so, the predominance of and loyalty to the tribal base seemed to discomfort state planners. Finally, the resettlement was explained in class terms: “resettlement was used not only to correct historical injustice of the Emirate toward the Tajiks; it was also pressed by economic necessity, since it provided a possibility to liquidate poverty in Badakhshan, Darvaz, and Garm.”37 Be- cause, according to the officials, Garm was overpopulated and the majority of its households were classified as poor (46 percent, or 8,835 out of 19,292 households)—and because, in previous decades, up to 20,000 people had had to leave the region to work in the Ferghana Valley—the resettlement was designed to enable the poor to receive land, alleviating their poverty.38 The resettlement logic was not only a local adaptation of Soviet principles in Tajikistan; it was programmed into the core Soviet legislation. Article 8, “Decree on Land,” stated that “if in some regions there is not enough land to be satisfactorily distributed to the local population, then the oversupply of the population is to be resettled.”39 However, since the government impeded the land-water reform in Tajikistan due to “the weakness of the Soviet apparatus and events at the Afghan border,” rather than redistributing land from the rich to the poor, the resettlement provided an alternative option.40 Since all land of those who emigrated from Soviet territory was automatically nationalized, the government claimed a great amount of land in the southern border region, which it described as the “richest natural oasis.”41 The Revolutionary Committee reported to Aleksei Rykov, chair of the Council of Labor and Defense, and Georgy Chicherin, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in August 1926 that about 44,000 households, or 206,000 people, emigrated to Afghanistan. Over 60 percent came from the Kurgan-Tiube and Kuliab regions, which, the Revkom noted, “was most agreeable for the development of the cotton industry”; the rest emigrated from the Hisor and Garm regions. Most, the Revkom reported, were seminomadic cattle breeders.42 In 1925–1926, 15,041 households were resettled to the “emptied” south, 8,030 of these to 60 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE the Vakhsh region. Each household, it was reported, received 4–5 hectares of land, deemed “sufficient to run a household without renting additional land from a bai.”43 Although resettlements started taking place as early as 1925, the government issued a resettlement plan according to the recommendation of the Special Commission for the period between 1928 and 1933, which envisaged the transfer of 21,500 households to the southern borderland to support its security and the overall First Five-Year Plan.44 As a result, 70,000 people would be resettled from Garm, 15,000 from Badakhshan, 6,000 from Faizabad, and 7,000 from Iangi-Bazar.45 Just as the planners proposed, the mountainous Garm region, populated exclusively by Tajiks, was identified as the major labor provider for the cotton-growing valleys that bordered Afghanistan. Nusratullo Maksum, chair of the Revolutionary Committee46 and originally from Garm, was tasked with leading the resettlement and bring his people to the valleys.47 To do so, he was proclaimed head of the Central Executive Committee, and his post lasted until the end of the campaign in 1933. Resettling Tajik groups aimed not only to bring them closer to Soviet institutions, but also to decrease the influence of tribal groups in the southern plains. The latter were deemed “parasitic” in official reports and were purged from border districts on the grounds that they “were not involved in agricultural production by means of their labor” and spread anti-Soviet propaganda.48 The Central Executive Committee warned in a secret directive signed by Nusratullo Maksum that in new places these groups must not be settled homogenously (nel’zia selit’ kompaktnymi khoziaistvami) but dispersed, so as to weaken their influence (rasselit’ . . . dlia oslableniia ikh vliianiia).49 In 1929 officials reported that the proportion of Tajiks and Uz- beks in the Kurgan-Tiube region had changed from 18 percent to 45 percent for Tajiks and from 60.1 percent to 35 percent for Uzbeks:50 “15,000 people were resettled, of whom all were Tajiks.”51 Those who were identified as Tajiks were also more likely to receive government posts in the new territories. When local state institutions in the Aksun region gave Lakai lands to Tajiks, Lakais petitioned the Kungurt Regional Executive Committee; while Tajiks had been promoted to governmental positions and given a priority status, the Lakais argued, they had become a national minority, with no government representatives to represent their interests.52 (Their petitions fell on deaf ears.) In the Dashti Bidona district, Uzbeks of the Karliuk tribe continued to demand the return of the land that had been taken from them and given to Tajiks. Karliuks sent a A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 61 delegation to the first all-Tajik Congress of Soviets to submit a petition with forty-five signatures to the Presidium. When one of the Karliuk’s leaders learned about it, he ordered the complainants to abstain from submitting their petition because he was “afraid of repressions against Karkliuks from Tajik workers who were promoted to membership in the TASSR’s Central Executive Committee [TsIK].”53 In Kuliab region, an Uzbek told an OGPU worker that Uzbeks wanted to form an Uzbek administrative unit but that it was impossible because all the state workers were Tajiks. The OGPU worker reported that now, with no Uzbek state workers, Uzbeks recalled wistfully the days of having an Uzbek representative in the government who would take care of their issues and address their concerns.54 But when a government post was given to an Uzbek in the Kuliab region, the Tajiks requested their territory be included in an administrative unit with a pre- dominantly Tajik population.55 In the official schema, ethnicity was critical to one’s understanding of one's place within the newly constituted republic. The ethnicization of resettlement, territories, and resources (including government posts) produced conflicts that increasingly came to be articulated in ethnic terms, mapped onto class in turn. Soviet officials highlighted the ethnic component in their reports, which became a permanent category in the official documentation. In 1927 an OGPU official, Bel’skii, elucidated the escalating conflicts between Tajiks and Uzbeks in Hisor and Kuliab: “Uzbeks, who ruled during the emirate and during the period of basmachi movement, took the best lands and now Tajiks try to return to their lands. Arguments for land are accompanied by mutual denunciations and accusations of siding with the basmachi.”56 In another report an OGPU worker revealed that Uzbeks wanted to leave the Kuliab region because Tajiks would not give them water: “They [Uzbeks] asked to be allotted another territory where they could resettle and demanded they be supplied with guns.”57 Population transfers served economic and political purposes. The “ethnic” strategy allowed officials to quickly identify and fix strategic alliances in order to reshape and secure the political and geographic landscape.58 The perceived differences between tribal and settled groups provided an important ideological basis, since ethnicity seemed to provide a “natural” and legitimate category for claiming power and territory in the era of (anticolonial) nationalism.59 “Territory” and “state” came to acquire ethnic connotations, and claims to territory or particular rights were made most effective when framed in terms of one’s belonging to a certain ethnic collective. Various groups rapidly assimilated state language into their 62 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE appeals. In the context of political and economic restructuring, conflicts over land, water, and government positions were framed as—and thus transformed into—interethnic disputes.60 As a Soviet official reported in 1924, there were no tensions between Tajiks and Uzbeks in the Lakai and Jilikul regions except for those that were sparked on the basis of one group’s political standing with the government (na pochve zanimaemogo politicheskogo polozheniia pri Sovvlast).61 Empowering and affirming a supposedly oppressed titular ethnic group became a strategy employed by a strong (albeit more “backward”) ethnic minority, and it politicized the meaning of ethnic belonging. This became a founding narrative of the Tajik state, inextricably linking the Soviet regime with Tajik historical discourse.

HUMANS AS TERRITORY

One might discern that the history of resettlement, while unfavorable for Uzbeks, was profitable for those who were identified as Tajiks. But the reality was much more complicated. For one thing, while Uzbeks were often identified as troublesome and oppressive, various military reports also point to an intensive collaboration between Soviet officials and Uzbek tribes (see Chapter One). Much of the Soviet official letter writing and decree issuing was also conducted in Uzbek, so that Shirinsho Shotemor of the Central Executive Committee complained in 1926 that even the Tajik first anniversary was celebrated in Uzbek.62 Moreover, while it was reported that it was mostly Uzbeks who fled Tajikistan in the mid-1920s, members of the same groups were welcomed back in the second half of the 1920s. Soviet officials, logic would suggest, should have been satisfied with their emigration. However, the Soviet state (as elsewhere in the So- viet Union) attempted to return emigrants to Soviet territory. In the case of Tajikistan, Soviet officials explained that they needed emigrants as a workforce for cotton production. Another reason, as explained by Revkom officials in their letter to Rykov, chair of the Council of Labor and Defense, and Chicherin, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in Moscow in 1926, was that “tribal emigrants” left as rich bais but returned as powerless beggars. “The maximum period for their half-starved existence amounted to 1.5–2 months; without government help they are destined to starvation, beggary, or slavery,” wrote the Revkom officials. In other words, those who returned could not pose a military threat and could be attracted to the Soviet regime through governmental aid.63 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 63

For the Tajiks, the primary subjects of the domestic resettlement policy, the move from the highlands was often a tragic and traumatic experience rather than a change that benefited them. Settlers were often forced to leave their homes without food and transportation.64 Many died along the way, as well as in their new locations. There was no housing prepared for them, and people were left to build grass huts for themselves. There was no water or food in the new locations, and hunger was compounded by state-led campaigns for grain and cotton requisition.65 This is why, starting in the mid-1930s, the Resettlement Committee accepted only settlers who moved with their entire families; those who moved without them were more likely to flee back. The Committee ordered the distribution of cattle exclusively to resettled families in 1935, although they still constituted only a minority: out of 1,466 households in the Vakhsh Valley at the time, only 383 were families.66 This is not surprising, because malaria and tuberculosis also took the lives of thousands of people.67 In 1932 it was reported that 300,000 people were infected with malaria in the southern valleys. Considering that the whole population of Tajikistan in 1932 amounted to approximately 1 million,68 this was an impressively tragic number. Moreover, Tajikistan’s wheat crisis also left ew opportunities for successful resettlement.69 Unsurprisingly, most settlers had to be transferred using violence and force. In 1929 Garm residents refused to resettle to the lowlands, and many joined resistance bands and fled to Afghanistan to escape resettlement.70 The head of the National Committee for Land, Anvarov, complained about the lack of desire for resettlement among landless Tajiks in Garm who lived “in misery, were sick, and had to eat food substitutes” (roots and grass) once they were resettled. Anvarov complained that he could register people for “voluntary” resettlement only when he personally agitated them; after he left a region, local institutions failed to register people for resettlement, so he suggested resettling by force (primenit’ nasil’stvennoe pereselenie).71 He also had to exercise “known” pressure (izvestnoe davle- nie) on local institutions to ensure that there was somebody to resettle.72 Similarly, Nusratullo Maksum, the resettlement leader, was accused of using violent measures against his own people.73 In 1930, during a meeting of the Central Committee, Maksum was rebuked as it was revealed that, of 10,000 households that had been relocated, 40 percent had been relocated against their will:74

Edel’son: Garmers asked the Central Executive Committee to issue a decree forbidding forced resettlement. The Executive Committee did not 64 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE

issue the decree, but the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree according to which all returnees be put on trial, judged in show trials, and penalized with the harshest sentences. We have a case when a member of the Central Executive Committee Bureau, [Nusratullo] Maksum, comes to Garm and announces that “we will crush and ruin all the households that return back!” Maksum: Don’t you shout! Edel’son: I think that at this meeting I should shout loudly about this!

Everywhere resettlement was carried out with the use of force. Secret police agent Karutskii informed the Central Asian Bureau that when the regional Communist Party Committee of the Hojent region in northern Tajikistan received permission to resettle the disenfranchised, it taxed all the disenfranchised and confiscated their belongings in order to resettle them without any property.75 As he wrote: “People come to recruit and say that you must give us, for example, 80 resettlers. If the local government does not, they put them in jail.”76 More importantly, given the economic basis of the resettlement policy, the hopes that the historically settled mountain population would prove successful cotton farmers were soon dashed. It became clear early on that they had difficulties physically adapting to the lowlands and—unsurprisingly, given the use of force to resettle them—failed to take the initiative to cultivate their new lands. In 1927 a state official stated to the Council of People’s Commissars and the Organizational Bureau:

The [s]pecial condition of Garmers forces us to pay attention and reveals that they are not to be trusted. The majority of the land that they received stays un- ploughed . . . I personally traveled through the regions and became convinced of the absolute lack of independence of the newly arrived Garmers. I saw Garmers, who were barely able even to drag their feet, start working on their piece of land only now . . . Moreover, I am shocked by the inattentiveness of Garmers to the household, to [their] responsibilities, and the absolute absence of signs of collective discipline. It is impossible to regard Garmers as experienced agriculturalists. I will not be mistaken that Lakais are much higher in land cultivation and understanding than many Garmers.77 (added emphasis)

An article in journal Revolution and Nationalities criticized Garmers for unskillful resettlement in a similar vein: “They [Garmers] took only a sack with a bit of food as if for Hajj, whereas Ferghanis78 came with whole A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 65 families and showed exemplary skills.”79 The author compares Ferghana households to orderly, Russian-style homes and suggests that Garmers and Pamiris be resettled together with Ferghanis because, for him, “Ferghanis were much higher in cultural development and cotton cultivation skills.”80 This discovery was an important factor for separating the Hojent region in southern Ferghana from Uzbekistan and joining it to Tajikistan. It was soon explained that Hojent region had many ethnic Tajiks who were under the threat of “Uzbekization”; they urgently needed to join their Tajik brothers, also in the Vakhsh valley.81 Experienced cotton-growing Ferghanis were now to be saved by Tajikistan to protect and save their Tajik identity. Many of them now had to physically relocate en masse to the southern cotton border. The economic factor was ingrained into the ethnonational rhetoric and practices, and vice versa. Where one factor—linguistic or economic—failed to produce a useful political strategy, it could be (also strategically and consciously) ignored. Tajik-speaking Bukharan and Samarkand regions were not added to Tajikistan, despite Tajik leaders’ claims of the necessity to do so based on linguistic principles.82 The lives, bodies, and skills (real or imagined) of Ferghanis, Garmers, and Pamiris—who were now all united under the idea of Tajikistan and Tajikness—turned into the physical and material basis of the Soviet political borderland project, in word and deed. Ethnic rhetoric on its own, however, was not sufficient to smoothly realize the project. Contrary to expectations, Garmers were accused of disloyalty toward Soviet rule when compared, paradoxically, to the tribal population. In 1927 it was reported that there were far higher rates of con- scription to the Soviet army in Hisor and Kuliab than in Garm. Garmers, officials warned, did not want to serve in the Soviet army and preferred to leave for Afghanistan.83 Finally, in 1929, devastating news from Garm that Fuzail Maksum, a Tajik, was organizing armed resistance against the Soviet rule crushed the hopes of Soviet officials to identify loyal supporters among this regional group.84 Just as Garm Tajiks began to show distinct signs of disloyalty and unruliness,85 Edel’son and others proposed inviting experienced cotton growers from old cotton centers in Uzbekistan to Vakhsh, disregarding ethnicity altogether. “There are tens of thousands of people who want to come from Uzbekistan, but some nationalists [referring to Nusratullo Maksum] are not allowing it,” Edel’son stated in 1930.86 Ethnicity, once an empowering classification, now appeared to be taking on a life of its own when invoked against the group of former privilege. 66 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE

FOR PERSIAN BROTHERS

Tajikistan’s internal resettlement of a Tajik ethnic group to strategic border regions was not only an economic and military strategy to populate, use, and develop territories otherwise barely controllable; it was also intended to construct and promote a political and territorial understanding of Tajik ethnicity and to highlight its linguistic connections to populations outside the border in hopes of attracting the latter to Soviet rule. In questioning Martin’s argument about the Piedmont principle (the promotion of an ethnic group in hopes of attracting their “ethnic brethren abroad”), Polian argues that “if one follows Martin’s logic, similar buffer zones designed to spread the Soviet influence abroad were bound to emerge (at least in the 1920s) on the borders with Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, which never transpired.”87 In the case of Afghanistan, such a policy was instituted, and Tajikistan’s internal resettlement policy played a key role in creating a “buffer zone” with Afghanistan.88 Soviet Tajiks would be promoted and their culture celebrated in hopes of attracting their Persian-speaking “brothers” from Afghanistan and, to a certain degree, Iran.89 In the context of failing revolutions in Europe, Bolsheviks turned their attention to the East in the early 1920s.90 But after a failed attempt to invade and spread the revolution in Iran in 1920–1921, the formation of Tajikistan would allow the building of a potential “Suez Canal” to India on territory controlled by the Soviet state.91 Having communist Farsi speakers was considered profitable, as the same language was spoken in neighboring Afghanistan and Iran.92 Solely ethnographic principles cannot explain the Soviet territorial construction of Tajikistan. Tajiks within Tajikistan were privileged and promoted not so much for their sedentary culture (for in this respect Uzbeks in the region were also experienced in agricultural production), nor simply because they were Farsi speakers. The great majority of Farsi speakers of Greater Bukhara and Samarkand, after all, had been incorporated into the Uzbek SSR. Although their linguistic background was important, it was also their location in the border zone and the potential to showcase Soviet might and supremacy to Farsi-speaking neighbors and their allies that made Tajiks come to be viewed as strategically important.93 It is for this reason that East Bukhara was transformed into Tajikistan and Tajikistan’s birth should be understood in a larger geopolitical context. In 1920 Stalin welcomed the Soviet military onslaught in the foothills of Indostan, in which Soviet Tajikistan would serve as an example.94 Their internal resettlement was closely linked to Soviet leaders’ external ambitions. A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 67

Given that Tajiks themselves, before the formation of Tajikistan, had never claimed or formed a nationalist movement, the formation of Tajik- istan and the privileging of Tajiks through resettlement should be understood as an essentially top-down and arbitrary process.95 Although the resettlement was justified through the language of “affirmative action,” the celebration of Tajik culture should be seen less as a reaction to potential opposition that could use nationalism as a mobilizing force against the Soviet regime (as was the case, for instance, in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan), and more as a deliberate attempt to construct a national movement for strategic foreign policy objectives. Affirmative action toward ethnic Tajiks was inseparable from the broader “trans-frontier factor.”96 The principle of favoring groups that might “serve as a bridgehead to enable the USSR to extend beyond its frontiers and, inversely, to break up those that might function as bridgeheads for another power” constituted the key Soviet strategies in Tajikistan.97 It was for this reason that Stalin proclaimed that Tajiks represented the region’s most ancient inhabitants.98 In his speech to the peoples of Tajikistan he called them “the toilers at the gates of Hin- dustan” and wished them “success in the transformation of their republic into a republic which will be exemplary for the countries of the East.”99 Th affirmative action principle was not a solid set of principles, but rather a strategy used situationally according to a political context. But construction of a stately ethnoterritorial Tajik identity was not an easy task. Soviet leaders had to “forcibly impose” the ethnic category “on people who either ‘hid’ or did not know their ‘true’ nationality.”100 Back in 1925, a report by the Tajik Organizational Bureau to the Central Asian Bu- reau in Tashkent said that it was problematic for Soviet officials to find Tajiks due to their assimilation with the Turkic-speaking groups in Central Asia. It was explained that this was because most of its intellectual leaders were brought up on Tatar, Turkish, and Azeri literature and that Tajiks did not maintain relations with Iran.101 Tajiks were also accused of forgetting their native language and choosing Uzbek-language schools for their children.102 As there were not enough literate and politically experienced Tajiks who would choose to move and work in the newly formed territorial entity, the Soviet state decided to send Iranian communists to Tajikicize the new territory and population.103 The choice to recruit “ethnicizers” from Iran was not accidental. Inviting Iranian communists to Tajikistan served not only to “build and develop” Tajikistan, but also to present the Soviet state to its Persian “brothers” as the superior alternative. In 1925 the secretary of the Organization Bureau, D’iakov, reported to colleagues in Moscow that 68 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE welcoming Persians from Iran into Tajikistan did not pose a problem because the national movement in Iran did not have a pan-Islamic character and Iran did not border Tajikistan and thus there was no threat that Iran would annex Tajikistan. D’iakov wrote: “[w]e send Lahuti to Baku to mobilize Persian workers” for Tajikistan. 104 Abulqasim Lahuti duly, albeit tem- porarily, arrived in the newly formed Tajikistan, and, in tandem with the poet Sadriddin Aini,105 became one of the “founding fathers” of Tajik literature. In his works Lahuti introduced Soviet Tajik achievements to Farsi- language literature. He was also responsible for “political work” among communist Iranians in Moscow.106 As a result, the Iranian Kasym Deil- iami became deputy commissar of the Commissariat for Enlightenment and also worked as the editor of the Tajik-language newspaperTojikistoni Surkh. Rafiq Aliquli Zoda, another Iranian, worked as a translator in the same newspaper.107 Both Deiliami and Aliquli Zoda participated in the revolution from 1907 to 1911 in Iran, went to Soviet Russia after its failure, and were sent to Tajikistan. Political leaders quickly learned to “maneuver on a national [rather than on a class] basis.”108 A. Dadabaev, deputy head of the Revolutionary Committee, wrote to the USSR’s People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in 1926 in the hope of attracting more financial, medical, and technical support from Moscow: “The Tajik Republic’s borders with Afghanistan, India [sic], and China constitute 135 thousand kilometers [sic], and the question of strengthening work in border regions of Tajikistan is acute and has great all-Union importance.”109 Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, officials in Tajikistan, when reporting on their successes, usually compared their developments to those in Afghanistan and Iran, highlighting the national purpose of the republic. In 1931 Abdurakhim Khodzhibaev, head of the Council of People’s Commissars, boasted at a government conference: “Our government spends 25 million rubles on education, while in Afghan- istan this amounts to the whole state budget and the government of Persia spends only 4.5 million, almost 6 times less.”110 He then asked for greater investment in roads, since the absence of those, he declared, undermined all previous achievements. Similarly, European officials showed their Tajik brothers the need for revolutionary zeal.111 Znamenskii, representative of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Tashkent, told the audience of the Second Congress of Soviets in 1929 in Dushanbe:

There are many countries and peoples who understand Tajik speech, for whom the Tajik word is native, and in places where a Tajik word will be heard, A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE 69

news about revolutionary work in Tajikistan will be heard, too. News about it will reach foreign countries, Persia, and the West. . . . Could those who understand the Tajik word stay indifferent, knowing that if they follow the examples of Tajiks, they would be able to liberate themselves? . . . And in a moment when workers and peasants related to you by language will rise for a struggle—and they unavoidably will—every one of YOU must be ready to leave peaceful work for armed resistance. By building your peasant-worker state, every one of YOU tells his brothers, languishing in slavery under the capitalist yoke: “take example from us, rise for a struggle, and know that when you will need our help not only by example and advice, but by armed support—this help will be provided to YOU.”112

While the telegram from the Central Asian Bureau called for Soviet Ta- jiks to become “a doorway [pridver’e] to freedom to millions of workers of India, China, and all countries of the East,” a telegram from Moscow appealed to Tajiks to “become a cultural magnet for the enslaved Iranian peoples of Asia [poraboshchennykh iranskikh narodov Azii] and for millions of Tajiks who groan under feudal reign.”113 The Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow sent a telegram with the words: “Let’s turn Tajikistan into an exemplary republic that will influence the revolutionary struggle of the exploited masses of the colonial and semicolonial East.” A regional Party member, Chicherov, called Tajikistan the “forward post” of the USSR on its eastern border and called on the Soviet Union to fight for liberation of exploited peoples of all countries of the East.114 Nusratullo Maksum said at the Congress: “Tajiks live 5–6 versts behind the Amudarya River in Afghanistan under the tyranny of bureaucrats and bais, but our economy strengthens. Afghanistan’s peasantry sees how our peasants’ lives improve every day. Our foreign [zarubezhnaia] republic must be a model and an example to our foreign peasants and workers.”115 In this context, it seems, rumors circulating among those to be resettled in Garm in 1927 that they were to be moved for forced labor and future war were not so far from the truth.116 Pavel Dybenko, head of the Red Army in Central Asia, named Afghanistan “England’s base for attacking the Soviet Union”; he announced at the Congress in 1929 that war with England was unavoidable and that the Soviet people must be ready for war at any min- ute.117 Znamenskii’s open invitation to a struggle for “Persian brothers” in 1929 coincided with the Afghan civil war and Soviet military, albeit covert, penetration into its territory.118 It is in the context of the possible conquest of Afghanistan’s territory that Moscow leaders decided to grant Tajikistan 70 A NATION TO SERVE EMPIRE the status of a full Soviet republic, which could be enlarged with “brother- ly” population and territory.119 In 1929, with the proclamation of Tajikistan into a full Soviet Socialist Republic, the seventh in the whole Soviet Union to boast this status, the government announced another major mass amnesty, as the New York Times reported, to “peasants, chiefs and religious leaders imprisoned in the years from 1918 to 1926.”120 CHAPTER THREE

EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

COTTONIZATION AS (DE)COLONIZATION

“Today, in a town that was built on an empty land, in a town that has no past, in a town without historic monuments, without mosques and churches . . . we greet you at the Congress of the Soviets.”1 Th s proclaimed Dushanbe’s Party Committee in 1929, just several years after the Soviet rule—and Stalin personally—had promised religious leaders to respect Shariat and local traditions. That same year, after a decade of toleration of and collaboration with the Muslim leaders, the Shariat courts were officially forbidden in Tajikistan.2 The year 1929 was meant to be a defining moment for Tajikistan and the Soviet Union in several respects. First, Tajikistan was proclaimed a full Soviet Socialist Republic (see Chapter Two). To celebrate the new quality of the place, its capital city Dushanbe was renamed Stalinabad, Stalin’s city. Second, the Tajik alphabet was changed from Arabic to Latin script.3 Third, Tajikistan received an additional Tajik-speaking and, more importantly, historically cotton-growing region in the Ferghana Valley from Uzbeki- stan, which in 1929 had a longer history of Russification and Sovietization and was supposed to help forge Tajikistan’s socialist development.4 Fourth, railway construction connected Tajikistan to the rest of the Soviet Union,

71 72 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY which radically changed the political and physical possibilities of Tajik- istan’s Sovietization. All of these developments and the First Five-Year Plan’s (the Plan) collectivization campaign provided new instruments and strategies to restructure the region’s economic and political constitution. The Plan was used to Sovietize the most outlying regions, centralize Mos- cow’s control, and push through direct rule in the most distant villages of the vast Soviet Union. The economy was turned into political strategy at the rise of economic power (khoziaistvennoi moshchi), so the official program was “tightly connected to the rise of [military] defense capacity [ob- oronnosposobnost’].”5 Collectivization was deemed the economic-political campaign (khoziaistvenno-politicheskaia kampaniia) to not only develop Tajikistan but also increase Soviet presence there.6 In Tajikistan’s context, it also meant writing its history anew. Scheduled for accomplishment between 1928 and 1933, the First Five- Year Plan was designed to push the rapid industrialization of the Soviet economy. The Plan was officially proclaimed to “raise the economies and cultures of backward national peripheries and regions lagging behind . . . on the basis of the relation between these regions’ needs and demands with those of the Union.”7 In other words, the Plan was supposed to develop peripheries, but this development was supposed to take into account regional needs as well as the general needs of the Soviet economy. This meant, among other things, that rural areas were assigned to feed the fast-growing numbers of industrial workers in urbanized regions.8 The Plan tasked Tajikistan, and Central Asia generally, with producing cotton in order to secure the Soviet Union’s “cotton independence.”9 Since in 1927 and 1928, the Soviet Union still had to buy 41 percent of its cotton—145,000 ,000 tons—from foreign countries, the Soviet Union had to spend yearly more than 100 million rubles in gold.10 Since cotton counted for 15 percent of all imports between 1924 and 1928 and its price could strongly fluctuate, this was a considerable investment.11 Tajikistan was categorized as an agricultural region designated to provide Soviet industrial workers with grain, cotton, dried fruit, wool, and cattle. Cotton was especially lauded as Tajikistan’s pride and glory, “the happiness and hope of the Soviet people.”12 Its southern Vakhsh valley, earlier described as an unruly frontier with Afghanistan, was to be turned into a cotton paradise. The construction of a grand water channel in the valley was supposed to reshape the valley (and the Soviet Union) economically and socially. Given that Tajikistan’s cotton harvest was officially proclaimed “the measure of the republic’s achievement and successes,” EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 73 it is important to mention that the country’s share of the overall Central Asian cotton production was relatively low: it was supposed to produce 6.5 percent by 1932 (or 2.9 million poods), but its output was still behind that of Uzbekistan (63.5 percent), Turkmenistan (13.5 percent), Kazakhstan (11.3 percent).13 Nevertheless, as part of the Plan, Tajikistan was supposed to double its cotton acreage (the aim was at least 100,000 hectares) and increase cattle breeding by 1.5 percent.14 The Plan’s major component was the collectivization of agriculture, which aimed to make peasants work in collective farms run by the government. The way collectivization was implemented in Tajikistan did not radically differ from other parts of the Soviet Union, yet it meant a new era of Soviet European presence in the region. In Tajikistan’s newspapers and official public speeches the First Five-Year Plan and its collectivization was explained as Moscow’s anticolonial program for the periphery. Collectiv- ization was supposed to integrate Tajikistan into greater socialist industrial progress and lay the groundwork for its modernization and civilization. In return for cotton, Soviet industrial centers would share their cultural progress with their Tajik brothers. Cotton promised to bring Tajikistan closer to Moscow and Moscow to Tajikistan:

The Tajik SSR is a wonderful illustration of the Comintern thesis about the possibility of noncapitalist development in the world’s most backward countries under the leadership of the proletariat. Who does not understand that the Central Asian republics, including Tajikistan, already became inseparable parts of one whole economic system of the Soviet Union and that they have particular functions in the industrialization of the USSR? The cotton program in this regard is a program of Union industrialization and socialist kishlak [village] rebuilding. The Union’s industry does not only receive cotton from Tajikistan; it also gives powerful support to the development of industrial capacity, increases material support, and raises cultural awareness for the sprawling masses of working dekhkans [peasants]. There is obviously a dual relation. Those who did not understand the duality of the relationship understood nothing. They devolve from our national policy either as great imperial chauvinists or local nationalists.15

The First Five-Year Plan was a political strategy to spread Soviet rule and legitimize the Soviet presence in Tajikistan, placing it in a new light. Previously, the reason for Soviet Europeans’ presence in the country was explained by the lack of educated Tajiks, which gave them a suppressed 74 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Figur e 3.1. Portrayal of wicked Europeans. Tojikistoni Surkh, July 1932. position in their own territory.Th e Soviet state claimed to be enacting ethno-national historical justice and instituting a regime to liberate and emancipate Tajik peasants. Tajiks, according to the rhetoric of Soviet officials in the early 1920s, needed initial help and guidance to improve their education system and develop socialist policies. In the late 1920s, however, the Plan’s cotton program was supposed to provide a practical means to achieve the communist goal. A Tajik, according to leading Soviet officials, must understand that “the maximum development of cotton for him [sic] is the only instrument to overthrow the bai oppression and to raise his well-being [blagosostoianie].”16 The Plan, it was argued, would integrate Tajikistan into grand socialist industrial modernity within the larger union of liberated classes inside the Soviet Union. In that Union all Soviet nationalities—Tajiks, Russians, and Uzbeks—would be united by means of a common qualitatively new economy and culture. Although that process was to be designed, managed, and controlled by Moscow, the message implied that it would benefit ultimately the suppressed classes and peoples like Tajiks. Sovietization by means of collectivization and “cottonization,” it was explained, would also protect and liberate minority peoples like Tajiks on a global level. Integration into the bigger Union would help avert possible EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 75

Fig ur e 3.2. A Soviet Tajik defends a seized Indian. Tojikistoni Surkh, May 1933. invasion by “wicked,” “oppressive” Europeans such as the British and Ger- mans. The Soviet radical onslaught into its periphery was accompanied by horrifying stories of European colonialism in India and Africa, to warn Central Asians of an alternative danger.17 Central Asians were previously and potentially colonial subjects in any case: they now had the choice of either becoming the avant-garde of the Soviet anticolonial struggle or be- 76 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ing oppressed by European colonialists, just as their Indian and African counterparts had been. Repellent portrayals of European imperialism in Tajikistan’s newspapers were intended to frighten the new Tajikistan’s So- viet citizens, warn them of the threat of colonial invasion, and convince them to appreciate Soviet rule. Despite their aggressive critique of European colonialism, repurposing vocabulary and images from the European imperial civilizing mission did not bother Soviet officials; Europe was an oppressive colonial machine, but Soviet officials still embraced European identity and portrayed the Soviet regime as a positive European alternative. European officials in Tajikistan were officially warned about their mission to teach Tajiks to run the state and develop their culture.18 By implication, collectivization became the responsibility of every Soviet European. The division into civilized Europe and backward Asia and Africa was not eliminated but adapted to the Soviet mission.19 In propaganda materials, common symbols of American and British cotton colonialism—naked bodies of slaves—were coupled with revolutionary proletariat imagery to appeal to Tajiks to support the Soviet European global anticolonial project. Drawing parallels between black colonial subjects and Tajik peasants, Soviet images called upon the global liberation of colored peoples, by means of cotton production. But the parallels were drawn not only in pictures. The Central Asian Bureau in Tashkent actually invited black cotton growers (negry-khopkoviki) from the United States to teach Tajik peasants to grow cotton.20 The experiment connecting “cotton brothers,” however, almost turned into a “colonial” endeavor. The Bureau signed a contract to pay black American cotton growers in dollars, which the government could not find, making the Americans complain that they were now enslaved to work free of charge, as they considered rubles unacceptable. Human movement constituted an integral part of the Sovietization process in Tajikistan, and collectivization was key in forging that process. Soviet European civilizing discourse legitimized and mobilized the rapidly increasing European resettlement to Central Asia.21 The general resettlement plan of 1928 to 1933 proposed relocating up to 10 million people from western Russia and Ukraine to the southern regions of the Soviet Union.22 But whereas the First Five-Year Plan emphasized internal resettlement in Tajikistan, the Second Five-Year Plan used resettlement to populate Tajiki- stan’s southern borders with Soviet Europeans. The specific plan of 1934 to populate the Vakhsh Valley, for example, envisioned more non-Tajik—that is, Europeans and Uzbek (usually Ferghani)—households resettling there.23 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 77

Figur e 3.3. A Tajik worker’s flag: “Proletariats of all countries, oppressed colonial peoples, join the ranks of fighters against imperialism under the flag of the Komintern.” Kommunist Tadzhikistana, May 1, 1930. 78 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Thus, in 1936, only 750 households were to be resettled from northern Tajikistan, whereas 1,000 households would come from Uzbekistan, and 2,000 from the rest of the Soviet Union. In 1937, 500 would come from northern Tajikistan and 100 from Uzbekistan, and 1,100 households would come from outside Central Asia. In 1938, the Plan envisioned moving 3,000 “Soviet” (meaning European) households to the southern border zones and only 900 from Uzbekistan and 500 from northern Tajikistan. The plan, it was proclaimed, aimed to “strengthen the peripheries in political and economic terms.”24 It was hoped that European settlers would build true Soviet villages, towns, and societies. Collectivization and the repression of kulaks (wealthy peasants) in European parts of the Soviet Union were part of the Soviet European “civilizing mission.” Since collectivization was conducted everywhere in the Soviet Union, albeit to varying degrees, it allowed those who were purged from collective farms in European areas to be sent to Central Asia (and only partially vice versa).25 Those who were dekulakized elsewhere in the Soviet Union received a second chance to integrate within the new Soviet system as European developers in the Asian periphery. In addition to explaining the European resettlement to the local population, the construction of the Soviet European civilizing mission aimed to ascribe a mission to Soviet Europeans themselves. The Soviet state had problems convincing them to relocate to Central Asia out of conviction and sense of responsibility for oppressed Asian brothers (and sisters) throughout the 1920s. Danger of armed resistance and poor living conditions did not attract Soviet Europeans to the East. In 1926 the Tajikistan Commis- sion of the Central Asian Economic Council warned that extreme housing conditions was causing dangerously high employee turnover among Soviet Europeans so that the commission reported that soon there would be no qualified (European) workers to build the Soviet system in Tajikistan.26 To solve the problem of defiant Europeans, the Soviet state forbade officials to leave government posts. The passport and registration regime was introduced to keep Europeans in Tajikistan. While an all-Union passport system was officially launched in 1932, in Central Asia passports played an important role from the late 1920s as they were used to register communists’ relocation, for which they had to receive an official permission.27 Yet these Europeans found multiple ways to leave the region throughout the 1920s. One was to get a medical note to certify incompatibility with Tajikistan’s climate. But there were so many medical notes issued with recommendations to leave Tajikistan that as early as 1925 the government had asked doctors to issue medical notes only if absolutely necessary, since “Ta- EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 79

Figur e 3.4. “Houses for specialists” (Doma spetsialistov) were built for highly skilled workers such as engineers, agronomists, scientists. Stalinabad, 1936. jikistan desperately needs qualified workers, and their loss does not give us the chance to Sovietize it.”28 In August 1930, the government issued another order, forbidding doctors from issuing medical notes that recommended Europeans leave Tajikistan.29 The order said that because such medical notes could lead to the “abuse of state budget, loss of cadres, and failure of Soviet state building,” doctors would be personally responsible for each note issued.30 The ultimate decision to forbid such notes came down to the simple fact that most people who went on “medical leave” would never return. While it was difficult to find Soviet European enthusiasts to build the Soviet regime in Central Asia, they now were forced to move there en masse without (or with a very small) a possibility of return. The First Five-Year Plan aimed to cultivate and discipline the newly hatched Soviet civilizers. They were tasked to act in accord to their ascribed mission. The concept of “humans as territory” for the development of Soviet Tajikistan applied equally to Europeans as to their Tajik brothers. Capital city development was an important part of the Plan and was heavily marked by civilizing grammar. Turning a previous bazaar settlement into an outpost of Soviet European modernity without the memory of a previous life was a common strategy throughout Central Asia. Portrayed as dirty and chaotic, cities like Bukhara and Samarkand were to sink into 80 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY amnesia about the old glory and (semi)independence. Cities like Stalinabad were built in place of old “masses of dirt” to mark a new era. The construction of Stalinabad was a physical, symbolic, and political construction of Soviet rule in Tajikistan. Early Soviet urban architecture played a crucial role in constructing Soviet European identity in Tajikistan. European imperial-style buildings of unprecedented size for the region were built to represent Soviet European superiority and might.31 In the 1920s the government had to organize open-air shows to attract the population and rent little huts for its government institutions; by the mid-1930s, several years after the railway construction, the size and structure of European architecture aimed to impress the local population with its might and grandeur. Technical equipment, armament, medicine, grain, and cotton suddenly and radically changed the face of Stalinabad, and Tajikistan generally.

COLLECTIVIZATION FOR CENTRALIZATION

Collectivization and cottonization were used to centralize Moscow’s Party powers. The new urban “ordering” and “cleaning up” was coupled with political cleansing of the Party ranks. The earlier Soviet European presence, achieved by means of violence and collaboration with bais, was now criticized as evil deeds conducted by “elements alien to the Soviet mission” and ex-tsarist officials, who abused the weak connection between Moscow and Tajikistan. It was argued that these criminal officials recruited bais and local anti-Soviet elements to the Soviet Party to weaken Soviet rule. A major Party and Soviet apparatus cleansing aimed to prepare the soil for the collectivization and cottonization era. The purges in 1928 and 1929 of “old people” were to lay the groundwork for the new. In Tajikistan in 1929, around 20 percent of Party members lost their Party tickets and the right to elect, which meant, for example, that children of purged Party members could not study or receive certain privileges.32 This was a blow for all those who wanted to secure seats within the state apparatus and signaled a new Soviet onslaught in the country’s peripheries. The “cleansing” in Tajikistan was directly linked to Stalin’s attempt to consolidate his personal power in Moscow as well as throughout the Soviet Union. He used the debates around the First Five-Year Plan, which aimed for rapid industrialization, to eliminate rivals in the Politburo, and he then used this purge of rivals in the late 1920s to force collectivization through the government. The Politburo purge of the so-called “right opposition” (represented by leading Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Aleksei Rykov, and EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 81

Mikhail Tomsky), who argued for free-market incentives to regulate the agricultural sector so that peasants could sell grain and other agricultural produce according to market prices, was framed as a struggle between “capitalism” and “socialism.” While the right opposition was being accused of attempting to return to a system of capitalist oppression, the “left camp,” prominently represented by Karl Bauman, argued that the agricultural sector, like the industrial sector, had to be nationalized so that peasants would be working on state farms that paidfi xed salaries and were managed by the Party.33 Since the struggle over collectivization was set in (and partially sparked by) the context of the 1928 grain shortage, which caused problems for the rate of industrialization, Stalin took the side of collectivization proponents, which allowed him to purge his main rivals from the Party.34 The successful purge of agriculture’s free-market defenders meant full collectivization of the agricultural sector, which allowed the Party to order collective farms to produce a strict amount of cotton and grain. In all, collectivization was supposed to make the First Five-Year Plan more predictable and efficient, strengthen the Party’s control over the peasants, and centralize Moscow’s, and Stalin’s, control. Crucial for implementation of the Plan was to send people from Mos- cow considered loyal to Stalin and the Politburo to reorganize agricultural production and “trade.” Stalin was the main recruiter of the Party and made major cadre decisions, which included assigning officials to run collectivization in republics. As “Moscow people,” the envoys became the Party’s first men in their republics and brought the Kremlin to Soviet peripheries. While previously Soviet Central Asian republican officials had to communicate their decisions to the Party’s regional bureau in Tashkent and carry out the Central Asian Bureau’s35 decisions, they now, through Stalin’s envoy, also had “direct” communication with Moscow. Although new Moscow representatives did not completely replace all local state leaders, they became the primary decision makers empowered to use all available means to collectivize households and extract agricultural products.36 The collectivization campaigns fully depended on these envoys’ ability to mobilize and organize the campaign. To ensure that Kremlin envoys enthusiastically carried out Moscow’s plans, Stalin sent those Bolsheviks who had prerevolutionary backgrounds, were close to the Politburo circle, and had experience in major military campaigns to lead the major agricultural onslaught. Thirty-six-year-old Davud Guseinov (1894–1938) was appointed as Stalin’s man to lead Ta- jikistan’s collectivization. Once Azerbaijan’s first head of the Communist 82 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Party, Guseinov was actively involved in the attempt to institute the Soviet regime in Iran.37 He was known as afi erce and fearless commander who successfully, albeit briefly, instituted the Gulian Soviet Republic in Iran. In the military campaign for Soviet Iran, Guseinov worked closely with Sergo Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937), a Georgian Bolshevik since 1903, Polit- buro member, and one of Stalin’s closest associates since 1907. In Tajikistan Guseinov regularly corresponded with Ordzhonikidze, the head of the All- Union Heavy Industry, and occasionally with Stalin. On the Central Asian level, thirty-one-year-old Suren Shadunts (1898– 1938) and thirty-five-year-old Karl Bauman (1892–1937) were sent to lead the Central Asian Bureau in Tashkent and supervise Kremlin envoys such as Guseinov in the Central Asian republics. An Armenian Party member since 1917, Shadunts was a “communist internationalist” who had argued against Armenian autonomy in Azerbaijan earlier in his career—an extremely progressive standpoint, considering Turkish–Armenian history. He had hoped the idea of the nation would become irrelevant in the land of communism and thus considered making the Armenian nation a separate republic an unnecessary endeavor. He later revised his thoughts, and as his nationalistic feelings grew, he was sent to Central Asia (Turkic Uzbekistan) to lead the cruel cotton campaign of 1929–1930. He led the Central Asian Cotton Committee in Tashkent from 1929, and in 1931successfully headed the anti- basmachi campaign in Tajikistan, contributing to the capture of Ibragim Bek. At this time he also supervised Tajikistan’s Party head Guseinov, an Azeri known for his nationalistic sentiments. By assigning an Armenian as a superior to a Turk in a challenging campaign, Stalin seemed to have plans. When Guseinov was called back to Moscow in 1933 after his “failed” leadership of Tajikistan and the Central Asian Bureau was eliminated in 1934, Shadunts was sent to Tajikistan to amend Guseinov’s mistakes.38 Karl Baumann was originally from Latvia; a Bolshevik since 1907, he participated in the revolution from Kiev. A member of the Central Com- mittee since 1929, he was also the first secretary of the Moscow Party Bureau between 1929 and 1930. A leading communist, Bauman was one of Bukharin’s strongest opponents, arguing in 1927 that there could not be two—urban and rural—socialisms in one country and that peasants’ “industry,” just like urban factories, had to be nationalized.39 A leading defender of the collectivization campaign’s tough measures, Bauman was sent to lead the Central Asian Bureau in 1931as the first secretary and oversee Central Asia’s collectivization. Theoretically, one could assume that the Moscow Politburo sent the EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 83 most ideologically and politically reliable Bolshevik leaders to head up the collectivization process. However, Stalin often chose upper-level Par- ty members with long Bolshevik experience and “spotty” biographies.40 Guseinov and Shadunts were noted for their nationalist sentiments; Karl Bauman was accused of “deviation toward the left”41 and released from his prestigious seat in Moscow’s party bureau.42 By sending officials with checkered pasts to run an important mission, Stalin gave them a chance to return to Moscow as “proven” and “rehabilitated” communists and loyal Party members. It also forced them to feel indebted to Stalin for giving them a great chance to prove themselves, indirectly securing his personal power within the Party. Another tactic to ensure efficiency and loyalty was to send the secret police with military and extrajudicial powers to supervise the process as well as Stalin’s envoys. The secret police was not subordinate to the Kremlin envoys and reported directly to Stalin. This combination was supposed to secure great enthusiasm, loyalty, and diligence on the part of the Kremlin emissaries.43 Soviet peripheries were testing grounds for Stalin’s personnel policies and provided perfect missions for where to send loyal, but also undesirable or suspicious comrades. It was both an economic and political tool to deal with opposition, real or potential, against Stalin’s leadership in Moscow. The campaign’s militaristic design was necessary because the state chose to take grain and cotton from peasants by force. Since collectivization was not advantageous to peasants—state prices on agricultural produce and cattle were fixed low—they did not want to hand over their produce to the state, preferring to store it until better prices were offered, or to sell it. As a result, in 1930 Tajik peasants flooded bazaars to sell their cattle at half price. If horses previously cost 200 rubles, they could now be bought for 100 rubles, and even on credit.44 Since nobody in Tajikistan, just like elsewhere in the Soviet Union, understood what collectivization was supposed to mean, it was safer to consume one’s cattle and sell the rest. The Moscow administration and their envoys in the field offered no clear guidelines for what a collective farm should look like or offer, or how it should operate.45 This inspired panic among the peasants, who wanted to save as much of their property as possible.46 Taking into account the experience of the Red Army’s confiscations during the basmachi campaign, another campaign did not seem to offer promising outcomes. Given peasants’ reaction to collectivization, there seemed no way to get them to give up their produce other than by force. 84 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Stalin was the major figure behind the initiative to use violence instead of market economy mechanisms.47 In the winter of 1928, Stalin set a personal example for the use of extraordinary measures when he led violent grain requisitioning in the Urals and western Siberia.48 In January 1928 he issued directives criticizing low grain procurement results and accused lower-level government and party officials of poor leadership.49 He called for harsh penalties against rich peasants. Penalties included imprisonment, confiscation of property, and deportation to labor camps or distant agricultural regions. Collectivization was akin to a military operation and required officials experienced in military action. All those opposed to collectivization now became enemies and could be accused of supporting Bukharin and Rykov. The First Five-Year Plan used the collectivization and rapid industrialization goals to achieve full loyalty to the Party on the part of all citizens and state officials. As a result, by June 1929 it was reported that 1 million out of 25 million households were collectivized in the Soviet Union. Stalin’s speech calling for rapid collectivization was published in the leading Party newspaper, Pravda, on the twelfth anniversary of the October Revolution, and this led to the most intense period of Soviet collectivization, the infamous winter of 1929–1930. When a few months later, in March 1930, Stalin published another article publicly criticizing excessive measures of collectivization, some 55 percent of households—albeit only nominally—already belonged to collective farms. More than half withdrew as a result of Stalin’s critique of low-level organizations’ excesses, but his criticism soon proved to be a superficial maneuver to demonstrate his goodwill to the peasants. In reality those who did not join collective farms were heavily fined, driving more people into them. By July 1931, 53 percent of all households in the Soviet Union were collectivized; by 1932, 61.5 percent belonged to collective farms. By 1938 kolkhozes united 93.5 percent of households and 99.3 percent of all arable land in the Soviet Union.50 Due to the backward conditions of its economy and the danger of armed resistance, Tajikistan was identified as an area of slow collectivization.51 In 1930 only four regions in the north were identified for large-scale collectivization, and in March of that year the Central Executive Committee forbade dekulakization.52 Collectivization statistics for the first and subsequent years in Tajiki- stan are often contradictory. In 1929–1930 Tajikistan’s Central Executive Committee planned to collectivize 16,000 households.53 But in April 1930 the newspaper Kommunist Tadzhikistana wrote that 98 percent of the EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 85 collectivization plan was fulfilled: 27,357 households, or 13 percent of all households in Tajikistan, were collectivized into 556 kolkhozes.54 Yet Lev Iurkevich, who was personally involved in the collectivization process in Tajikistan, stated that Tajikistan had fulfilled only 40 percent of the plan in 1930 due to basmachi revolts.55 This is probably because half of the peasants left kolkhozes after Stalin’s speech in March 1930.56 In 1930 the Tajik Execu- tive Committee had already changed its policy and announced that TOZes, or associations for the joint cultivation of land—not kolkhozes—were to be organized throughout Tajikistan. The difference between the two was that the first collectivized only land, not cattle and tools. As a result, in 1931 20–25 percent of all grain and 50 percent of all cotton-sowing lands were turned into TOZes. In 1931, 36.6 percent of all households were turned into TOZes; in 1932, 41.9 percent of TOZes collectivized 65.3 percent of all agricultural land.57 By 1937, 98.3 percent of all land was reported as collectivized.58 But while collectivization rates provided by local governments to the Moscow center were impressive, what really interested the Moscow leadership was how much grain and cotton the collectivized households planted, collected, and sent to central Russia.

COLLECTIVIZATION AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Collectivization became a personal responsibility for Soviet officials—both Europeans and Muslims—at all government levels. They would be glorified if they succeeded and purged if they failed. It was a war based on Soviet officials’ ability to mobilize and carry out semimilitary tasks. In the context of Tajikistan, carrying out the collectivization campaign meant the ability to organize sowing and harvesting and confiscation of grain and cotton. A telephone conversation with Suren Shadunts of the Central Asian Bureau in Tashkent illustrates how this mobilization was carried out in Tajikistan. In late May 1931, Guseinov said:

I just arrived from [the town of] Kurgan-Tiube and I feel terrible. I could hardly drag myself to the telegraph. . . . According to information of [May] 25 on the basis of the last directive from [head of the Central Asian Bureau] [Karl] Bauman, 6,000 metric tons [of grain] must be delivered by July 15. We [now] have . . . 2,900 metric hundredweights [sic!] . . . I am sure we will fulfill the plan. Undivided attention is paid to [the region of] Garm. There we will send our camels and take further measures. [Tajik OGPU chief] Dorofeev is in Garm, and one Central Committee brigade. . . . Five [O]GPU people are 86 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

also heading there; according to their information, we already collected 2,100 metric hundredweights of grain. . . . We are thinking of bringing all our cars there from Stalinabad. . . . What’s new? What’s going on in Moscow? How is your health? Koba, Sergo? I have to inform you that there is no way I can leave Stalinabad and come to Tashkent. I need, frankly speaking, a holiday. I just physically cannot move. I insistently ask you to delay my report [in Tashkent] for at least two to three days, better, seven days. I repeat that I am [physically] unable to move from this place.59

The ability to lead semimilitary mobilization campaigns was crucial during collectivization because confiscating foodstuffs from the population produced resistance. In Tajikistan, that meant all members of the central government, army, and the secret political police, and all means of transportation (including camels) were mobilized to extract and transport the grain. The telegram does not give the sense of a strong, potent Soviet leader building a new communist society in Central Asia. Rather, we see a picture of a tired individual, armed and guarded by policemen, who is trying to complete plans he is not sure he will be able to carry out. Mos- cow envoys and their local colleagues had every reason to be sick. Even though Guseinov almost belonged to Stalin’s circle—he could call Stalin by his nickname, Koba, and came, as Stalin did, from the Caucasus—he had yet to prove he was a true communist, which, in the context of the First Five-Year Plan in Tajikistan, meant being able to mobilize the masses and collect grain. This was not an easy task. First, Tajikistan was never known for grain production; it could never flourish in its 93 percent high mountain territory. Second, resistant émigré Tajik insurgents from Afghanistan attempted to restore Bukharan rule in Tajikistan and had to be defeated. Third, Soviet citizens fled collectivization to Afghanistan or fought Soviet officials in the hope of saving their harvest. Although Moscow envoys were experienced in military operations, they now had to fight not only with leaders’ open political resistance, but also with regular peasants for whom they had instituted the Soviet system in the first place. As Soviet convoys throughout the Soviet Union were assigned to extract crops from peasants, they were turned into perpetrators and victims trapped between two interest groups: the peasants and the central Soviet leadership. To ensure that Soviet officials carried out the Plan zealously, it was explained to them that the Plan was their personal responsibility—the lack of educated personnel, local inefficiency, and so forth would not be accepted as excuses for any failure that could prevent the general fulfillment of the EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 87

Plan. At a Tajik Party Congress in 1932, Karl Bauman of the Central Asian Bureau said: “Socialism cannot be built at random samotëk[ ]. The harvest also cannot collect itself. This can only be achieved through the mobilization of the masses, only if you direct the masses under your leadership. Only capitalism can be built of its own accord, not socialism. And those who forgot it, those who do not understand, they gave up on the true fight for socialism, for uplifting agriculture.”60 All Soviet officials were declared warriors for socialism whose communist spirit would be judged by their ability to fight in the (cotton) fields. When Bauman informed Stalin about the failure of the 1931Central Asian cotton campaign, he knew that it would be made his personal problem. Central Asia’s republics had fallen short of the plan, and deliveries were 65,000 metric tons below target. “I want to warn you and the Central Committee that we will not be able to fulfill the plan,” Bauman wrote in a confidential letter to the leader,

and I do not want to appear before you as someone whitewashing the situation. . . . Unconditionally, there are masses of failures and mistakes in our work. But I firmly declare that I took up the struggle to the best of my abilities and I lost on the front with a clear conscience. . . . Please let me continue my work in Central Asia for a couple more years, and I think I will justify your trust [in me] and help the Party in its struggle for cotton.61

Soviet officials were empowered to ignore bureaucratic procedures and laws for the sake of Plan fulfillment. The Plan did not just become the law; it was above the law. The decline of rule of law was not a deviation in the fields; leading Moscow legal theorists propagated it. In 1930, Evgeny Pashukanis, a leading legal scholar, wrote that “law occupies among us . . . a subordinate position with reference to politics.”62 Those who did try to follow formal rules were accused of “bureaucratic soullessness” (biuro- kraticheskoe bezdushie) and often dismissed.63 Digurov, head of the Tajik Justice Commissariat, proclaimed in 1930 that it was not enough to issue decrees and hope that people would follow them. “We need less paper, more live performance,” he said.64 Procurators who in the Soviet judicial system were responsible for checking legality, for example, were asked to forget about legal bureaucracy and physically move to agricultural sites to exercise the “live method” (zhivoi metod).65 Digurov said that in the context of Tajikistan, laws and decrees were not effective in any case: the Justice Commissariat sent fifty-five decrees to peripheral locations in 1929–1930, but because they were all in Russian, they were not understood and never 88 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY followed.66 He instructed procurators to travel personally to inspect the collectivization and grain procurement processes in thefi eld. The Justice Commissariat wrote: “We need to change the method of instruction. Previ- ously we worked through decrees; now we need a live method—to organize meetings, revisions, inspections—we need to show by our personal example how to work.”67 Judges, procurators, and their assistants were expected to work in the fields and oversee the agricultural process just like peasants and party officials. Cotton and grain became their primary responsibility. In 1931 the head of the National Justice Commissariat, Khodzhiarov, led the grain preparation campaign in Hisor region. When the Central Com- mittee asked Khodzhiarov to deliver a report on institutions of justice, Guseinov responded irritably that they should reschedule the meeting and not drag him away from his responsibility to make sure grain was gathered efficiently in the fields.68 The realization of the First Five-Year Plan led to a drastic decrease of legality. Nowhere was the uselessness of law and legal procedures as obvious as during confiscation campaigns. The head of the Justice Commissariat announced at the Second Congress of judicial workers in Tajikistan in June 1930 that the main goal of the institutions of justice was to implement the Five-Year Plan in four years.69 The Plan was to replace law because it was proclaimed to be “the manifestation of the will of a classless society.”70 Since collectivization would collectivize individual property, it would eliminate class conflict and class exploitation. Since property and exploitation would cease to exist, there would be no reason for criminality; in a classless society crimes would be committed only by the mentally ill.71 The realization of the Plan thus became the direct responsibility of institutions of justice, since this would transform Soviet society and render it forever just. By assisting the collectivization and grain procurement campaigns, legal officials, the theory went, realized a higher purpose in the name of justice. Tajikistan’s Council of People’s Commissars reflected on the period of collectivization in Tajikistan as follows: “In 1932 [and] 1933 it was forbidden to talk about revolutionary legality.”72 Agricultural campaigns entitled Soviet officials to use extraordinary mass repressions.73 Stalin personally encouraged the use of violence.74 He appointed the political police, whose reports he personally read, as the main force for conducting and overseeing the requisitioning process. Since resistance was expected, the OGPU was given regional repression quotas. In 1930 the OGPU was assigned to repress (by means of expropriation, forced resettlement, and imprisonment) 1,000 kulaks and all those who EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 89 resisted collectivization in Tajikistan. Assigned with a plan for repressions, the OGPU overfulfilled the plan, repressing 1,224 individuals.75 In 1931 it repressed 5,840 people and exiled 6,000 families from Uzbekistan and Ta- jikistan to the Caucasus.76 In the field, OGPU commissars often acted as a militia that was called into action when struggles broke out between Soviet officials and the local population. In January 1931, for example, people in the Matcha region in protest against collectivization and requisitioning robbed the state cashier’s desk, killed six state officials, and held two teachers captive. OGPU officers, together with twenty-five armed militiamen, had to restore “Soviet order.” Without their assistance, the OGPU reported, the grain procurement and collectivization campaign could not proceed.77 The secret police was also tasked with reporting on Party envoys and their work to ensure Soviet officials carried out the campaign and did not compromise the local population. Kremlin emissaries and local Soviet officials had no way to control what the secret police was reporting, since the latter was declared a fully independent body. Just like their colleagues in the Communist Party, the secret police—also often recruited from the pool of the unreliable—was judged by the number of “anti-Soviet deeds” they discovered and reported to Stalin, as well as by the number of prisoners they produced.78 Hence, while Party envoys were interested in reporting collectivization’s successes, the secret police had an opposing task: it was interested in reporting failures and antagonistic behavior. Throughout the 1930s, the political police reported personally to Stalin about peasants’ revolts, attempted escapes to Afghanistan and China, hopes that England would attack the Soviet Union, and refusal to work without pay.79 The secret police portrayed collectivization as a chaotic campaign with devastating consequences. In 1929 at the closed session of the highest Par- ty leaders of Central Asia, Isaak Zelenskii said there were questions that simply could not be discussed before the broad masses.80 Among these was that local cadres complained about “the lack of understanding, absence of politics and information; most of the time they complain about the helplessness, the inability to connect their work with leading (Party) tasks. . . . For these people the Plan changes are surprising, they want to build something but then ask: “How can one build anything if plans are constantly revised?”81 Bel’skii described the 1930 campaign realization as “fever, absence of a plan, and proper leadership” since nobody knew where and how many kolkhozes were organized.82 Contrary to the design of collectivization, people of all social groups sold their cattle, and bais joined the kolkhozes.83 Resettlement from mountainous regions was carried out 90 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY without diligence or planning. Housing was not prepared; settlers did not receive money or tools to work in thefi elds. As a result, many fled back to the mountains and left the fields uncultivated. The Soviet government purged the wealthier groups anyway, but a secret police officer alarmed Moscow authorities by saying that “the most awful thing is that they say that 50 percent [of the emigrants] are the poor.”84 This was problematic not only because the Soviet state wanted to portray itself as progressive and developed compared to Afghanistan, but also because it urgently needed workers to carry out its agricultural plans. The secret police reported that officials terrorized peasants, forcing them to emigrate to neighboring Afghanistan. In 1930, thirty-year-old Vasilii Abramovich Karutskii (1900–1938), deputy head of the political police in Central Asia based in Tashkent, wrote to the authorities in Moscow that people considered the collectivization plans unrealistic.85 They asked Soviet officials where to sow their seeds, as they had no land. In southern Tajikistan, Karutskii reported, Soviet workers answered: “Sow anywhere you want, even in your huts!” and “You have no soil on your breast, but your hair is thick enough. You can sow the seeds there, just fulfill the plan.”86 Karutskii informed that peasants who did not sign contracts because they considered them unrealistic, were told by state officials, “They believe my finger [fingerprint signature] not less than yours,” suggesting that peasants had no say.87 The deputy head of the political police wrote that he himself considered the plans unrealistic because peasants had no land on which to sow grain. Given the desperate situation that collectivization produced, he warned about the basmachi danger if one of their authoritative leaders crossed the border and entered Tajikistan.88 Workers on collective farms did not go out to work since they had nothing to eat.89 What’s more, locusts were destroying cotton fields in the south, but when an airplane came to combat them, it had to stay in the fields because there was no fuel to fly.90 The secret police worker Bel’skii wrote that local officials beat up peasants, confiscated their last grain, and literally tortured them by forcing them to work in the fields day and night, hungry and ill.91 Even those stricken with malaria were not permitted to leave cotton fields and were physically forced to collect cotton.92 In first half of February 1930, the infamous first year of collectivization, Central Asia, as reported by the political police, experienced thirty-three revolts and ninety-eight riots between February 25 and March 17.93 Soviet officials also fled their posts. Soviet Europeans felt increasingly resentful of their European mission, which they considered an unwanted EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 91 burden. One European noted that while Stalin had announced that “cadres decided everything,” he knew in reality that “meat decided everything.”94 He wrote to his superiors that they would not “get it [the Soviet regime] through without meat.” Hungry, tired, and ill, Soviet Europeans on all levels of government were fleeing their missions. A European communist wrote: “I can explain that there is no meat, sugar, milk, but how should I explain to my child that there is no bread?”95 While they were supposed to represent the new victorious and strong center, they increasingly found themselves in awkward positions as disenchanted imperialists. Europeans complained about the danger of being killed by the local population and even local Soviet workers refused to work in certain locations.96 There were rumors that the local population would start slitting the throats of all Russians, inspiring many European workers, political and technical, to flee their posts.97 Even the most loyal 25,000 -ers—young communist enthusiasts from Moscow, Leningrad, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and Tver—openly protested the unrealistic plans of 1931. Two enthusiasts wrote: “Help, comrades, two 25,000 -ers who are about to die. . . . Comrades, we can no longer tolerate this, we walk unclothed and barefoot, and our families are starving.”98 Some threw away their Party membership cards and argued that they could not endure the hungry existence and basmachi threats of Central Asia.99 Many demanded to be sent back to industrial production sites. Criminal investigator Dergachev wrote the Justice Commissariat in 1933 that he had not received his salary for four months, starved for the entire period, and could no longer think. He lacked the concentration to mentally process criminal investigations. Rather than request a salary, he only asked to be fired and for permission to leave.100 Another criminal investigator, Zeiler Iosif, a German member of the Red Front in Germany and participant in the 1920 workers’ uprising of Szczecin, decided in 1930 that since he could no longer afford to eat on his judicial salary, he would join the circus.101 It is not surprising that in 1930, 1931, and 1932 Tajikistan (like other republics) failed to fulfill the agricultural plans.102 While in May 1931, on the phone to Tashkent authorities, Guseinov promised to follow the plan, the secret police reported that there was absolutely no grain in most of Tajiki- stan. They reported to Stalin that people in Tajikistan were eating grass and suffering mass stomach illnesses with deadly outcomes. When in May a government inspection troop came to demand grain from the population, the hungry people started killing the officials and then joined resistance bands.103 While in 1930 Guseinov blamed bad roads and in 1931 the basma- 92 EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY chi penetration into Tajikistan, in 1932 he had tofi nd other explanations for the repeated failures to collect the planned amount of grain.104 In Sep- tember 1932 the secret police reported that 300,000 people could not work in cotton regions due to infection with tropical malaria, which caused high death rates. There were only nine kilograms of quinine (the medicine) and although it was promised that ten doctors would be sent to Tajikistan to help, this did not happen.105 Troops did not receive salaries for months and joined resistance bands, leaving Soviet officials without protection.106 As a result, in 1932 Tajikistan produced 20 percent less cotton than in 1931. On March 16, Stalin and Molotov wrote an angry letter to Guseinov and Khodzhibaev of the Council of People’s Commissars, saying that their failure was unacceptable and that Moscow expected 56,000 tons of cotton that year.107 The letter requested them to:

(1) organize irrigation (2) prevent those who had been resettled from fleeing (3) “fight” for cotton (4) not lie about plans or give fantastic statistics (added emphasis) (5) fight the locust.

The members of Tajikistan’s Central Committee had no choice but to travel throughout different regions in Tajikistan to personally oversee the process. Nusratullo Maksum, chair of the Revolutionary Committee, was responsible for his region, Garm, where his task was to continue resettling mountain Tajiks to cotton fields in the south (see Chapter Two). Suren Shadunts, head of the Central Asian Cotton Union, arrived from Tashkent and headed to Kurgan-Tiube. Mirza Davud Guseinov worked in the Kuliab region. The latter two valley regions were perceived as the most strategic, dangerous, and difficult.108 Using personal responsibility to run the Plan’s agricultural campaigns was in the short run the most efficient, yet humanly the most expensive technique. Also described as Stalin’s war against the peasantry,109 the collectivization process was based on early Bolshevik revolutionary struggles that highlighted the role of personal networks, unconditional loyalty to the leader, and secret observation of the population. Bolshevik revolutionaries used these strategies for survival and struggle in the context of revolutionary struggle in tsarist Russia.110 Once they came to power, they continued to apply the same strategies to transform the country. While they considered violent intervention essential (and most Bolshevik leaders had no EMPIRE AS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 93 experience of government administration), military revolutionary tactics proved disastrous for the Soviet peasantry.Th ey also proved devastating for the Soviet officials who served as primary soldiers in that war. In 1935 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan wrote to its regional representatives that it would make judgments about their future employment as heads of local Party committees and of the Soviet organization based on their ability to rally masses in the fight for cotton.111 Disbelief in plan fulfillment, warned Bauman of the Central Asian Bureau, would be considered treachery and all were ordered “to fight any attempts of demo- bilization on the part of Soviet officials.”112 Peasants too were called to fight for the Plan; one request was to organize local pioneers into semimilitary troops to guard cotton fields from possible robberies.113 Like in the rest of the Soviet Union, the collectivization and requisitions of the First Five-Year Plan in Tajikistan were marked by state violence, personal engagement of the entire government apparatus, and peasant resistance. Interestingly, Stalin himself never supervised a campaign. As a recruiter for the Party, he wielded great influence over decisions on where, when, and how other leading Bolshevik members would run campaigns.114 This is because the collectivization campaign was used politically by Stalin to consolidate the power of the Politburo.115 Although he once undertook an inspection trip to Siberia, where he demonstrated his version of collectivization, for the most part Stalin stayed in Moscow (or his holiday home in Yalta) and never took a post that would make him responsible for production or harvest. Although he announced to others that loyalty to the Party was equal to the officials’ ability to mobilize the masses, fight the enemy, and fulfill Party plans, he himself abstained from firsthand action. He knew that leading a campaign could make him vulnerable, since collectivization and industrialization were largely unpredictable. In this mobilization campaign Stalin acted as sole arbiter of the situation, centralizing power in his hands.116 CHAPTER FOUR

AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS

DEALING WITH A KISHLAK

In June 1930 procurator Rozenwasser was sent to investigate the collectivization process in the northern regions of Tajikistan. In the Shakhristan region he heard and noted down interesting, even shocking, eyewitness reports. A boy, a man, and a young woman were reported to have been raped by a group of local Soviet government officials including the leading figure, Usar Khalmatov, apparently for entertainment during the collectivization campaign. One of several dozen eyewitnesses reported:

As we were in kishlak Kermit, Usar Khalmatov suggested I go with him to Shakhristan to Mullo Dzhura Akhmetov, who was supposed to have a pirushka [debauched feasting]. Akhmetov had around 40 guests. In half an hour a Hojent bacha [a boy for entertainment] was invited. He was given alcohol and led into another room. There, one by one, the following officials had sex with him: Usar Khalmatov, Dodabai Khuseinov, Tuichi Tursunov, etc . . . and he lay there unconscious. Dodabai Khuseinov said: “How could he bear it, 21 people had [sex with] him.” Then they left. Dodabai Khuseinov and his guard stayed. The latter was awfully drunk and was lying unconscious. Dodabai Khuseinov opened bacha’s mouth and forced himself into his mouth. After some time in

94 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 95

village Kemkul’ a bai, Kadyr Iuldashbaev, had circumcision of his son’stui [feast]. This was attended by all the above-mentioned officials. They stayed in Ismail Ibragimov’s mekhmonkhona [guesthouse]. Iuldashbaev sacrificed two sheep; two officials brought two sheep and a lot of food and vodka. With them came Irmatova, who stayed with Ibragimova’s family. When they drank enough, Dodabai demanded that Irmatova be brought to them. Ibragimov tried to persuade him [not to do this]. Then Dodabai Khuseinov, brandishing a knife, forced him to bring the woman. She was put in their midst, plied with alcohol, and [raped].1

The account aims to shock, scandalize, and denounce. Usar Khalmatov, a thirty-seven-year-old official—head of the District Executive Committee in 1929 and head of the Shakhristan District Land Department (Raizemotdel) in 1930—was accused, together with his group of “responsible workers,” of raping at least three people (two men and a woman) publicly as part of his official governmental mission: the grain procurement campaign, supposedly combining his work with tuis that the procurator translated as “pirushka”: a debauched feast. At these tuis, Khalmatov and his group were said to have consumed 200 liters of vodka and participated in violent sexual orgies. At the time, accusations of alcoholism and sexual orgies at tuis were widespread in Tajikistan and throughout the Soviet Union.2 The Central Asian Bureau reported in 1927 that up to 40 percent of all reprimands against Party members were connected to drunkenness.3 Also in 1927 the Central Executive Committee wrote a letter to all regional and district party organizations forbidding them from participating in tuis.4 A tui in judicial and police vocabulary became synonymous with criminal gatherings of corrupt Soviet officials and local power holders during which they beat, raped, and sometimes killed poor peasants. The numerous feastings reported in the documents of this trial were indeed connected to bais throwing parties for their sons’ circumcision, a traditional key ritual that signified the transition to an adult, male, and, broadly, Muslim community. The mingling of the Soviet system with the traditional alien world irritated the reporters, such as judicial workers and the OGPU. They generally considered traditional Central Asian customs corrupt, resistant, and backward. Onslaught against local officials was part of the general logic of collectivization and the First Five-Year Plan. Behind each failure, so it was thought, hid an enemy who purposefully impeded the Plan fulfillment. The basis for the above-mentioned investigation was Stalin’s infamous speech “Diz- 96 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS zy with Successes,” delivered in March 1930. It aimed to scapegoat Soviet officials who had used excessive violence against the peasants during the grain and cotton requisitioning campaigns. Like many trials of the period, the Shakhristan Affair was a witch-hunt against “corrupt and amoral” officials who, instead of fulfilling plans and building communism, supposedly deceived central powers by (1) protecting the rich and taking bribes from them, and (2) abusing the local poor by overtaxing and physically assault- ing them. In the context of a failing agricultural campaign, Soviet jurists and the secret police were sent into the field to search for scandalous and illegal activities on the part of local Party and state officials. Named the Shakhristan Affair, the criminal case required dozens of people to be interrogated, and the investigation went on for over a year. The place-based title aimed not only to devote importance to the case, but also to isolate the scandal, implying that it was a single localized occur- rence, not a general trend.5 Nevertheless, because it was made public and the behavior deemed “criminal,” the case was intended to warn officials in other regions that similar situations would not be tolerated. The affair was treated not as a singular occasion but as an educational show trial to redefine what was considered normal and what was considered deviant. The investigation’s dynamic provides important insights into how central and local actors understood the process of collectivization and their roles within the political transformation of the country. Numerous eyewitness reports, mostly renarrated by European officials, combine rich symbolic references from a local and Soviet (Russian) context in what first seem like horrific, intangible, and scandalous ways. Two worlds, the local world of Shakhristan (with tuis, circumcisions, bacha, sheep sacrifice) and Soviet, Russian, and European worlds (otvetrabotniki [responsible workers], pos- evkampaniia [harvest campaign], vodka), collide in narratives that aimed to “speak to power.” In this case, the categories and symbols were used to denounce Usar Khalmatov and his company. How are we to understand these accounts? What should the narratives of drunkenness and rape tell us about how Soviet officials perceived the Shakhristan situation and its Sovi- etization? Why did one have to use a rape to denounce and punish corrupt local Soviet officials? Why didn’t accusations of bribery, debauchery, abuse of office, violence, and drunkenness (common in previous years) suffice? What could rape have meant to narrators, both local and European, and why was it chosen as a weapon against Usar Khalmatov and his company? Mamurdzhon Irmatova was a thirty-two-year-old woman alleged by at least two dozen eyewitnesses to have been raped by Usar Khalmatov AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 97 and his group. Reported to be the only unveiled woman in the region, Irmatova naturally attracted attention and rumors. She was not simply the only woman to take off the veil and subsequently be used as an example for central officials who checked the region’s emancipation progress; she also held a position in the new Soviet system—she was chair of the Ialdar Kipchak village Soviet.6 The Soviet state’s launch of an unveiling campaign in Central Asia (hujum) in 1927 explains why and how a woman figured in the trial.7 Local officials could easily be accused of abusing both political and social power. They were criminalized for their resistance to the cultural changes the Soviet state was trying to impose. At the time, Soviet discourse used women as a “surrogate proletariat” that needed to be liberated from “backward Muslim oppression.” Soviet officials could present an attack on a woman as an attack on Soviet values and, indirectly, on the state itself. However, eyewitness reports of the rape were more complex than anticipated. Although European Soviet officials recorded them, there is no guarantee that they did so accurately or even truthfully. Many peasant reports also contradicted the narrative Soviet officials expected; they claimed Irmatova was a prostitute.8 Moreover, many said she worked as Khalmatov’s assistant and forced other women to have sexual intercourse with Khalmatov and his people, describing her as a seducer of local women. Some argued that she involved local prostitutes in orgies. Others claimed that she forced decent women to have sexual intercourse with “responsible workers” in exchange for their husbands’ release from prison and tax burdens; those who refused were threatened with prison themselves.9 One peasant, Maulianberdy reported that he had two wives and that once “Mamurdzhon [Irmatova] took one of them for a long time. I went to bring her back. I saw Usar Khalmatov, Daudbai Khuseinov, etc. I wanted to take her [my wife], but Mamurdzhon did not let her go. She had [sexual] relations with them. She [my wife] then left me and charged a case against me in court: she demanded things and one of our children; another child she left to me. I heard that she married a militiaman.”10 A chair of a neighboring village, Madzhmur Fazirov, also reported that Irmatova had assisted Khalmatov in seducing Maulianberdy’s second wife, unveiling her and marrying her to a militiaman. He explained: “She left because he [Maulianberdy] was old, but the militiaman was young, she unveiled, and she had [sexual] relations with Khalmatov.”11 Dispossessing men of their wives and transferring them to state officials instigated resistance, in this case through rumors. None of the eyewitnesses claimed to have witnessed 98 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS sexual orgies themselves. They had heard of them from other people and described them in their testimonies. Irmatova rejected the accusations and claimed that she had tried to convince local women to attend schools, unveil, and participate in local politics. According to another European female eyewitness, Irmatova visited villages and introduced women to European doctors. Interestingly, despite the official mass celebration and unveiling campaign propaganda that suggested there might have been a chance to use Irmatova’s case as a trial of an assault on liberated women, Irmatova was arrested and put in jail together with Usar Khalmatov. It is not clear how the case against Khalmatov began in the first place. According to a Euro- pean investigator from Tashkent, Khalmatov threw him out of the region when he came to inspect water distribution battles between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. As a result, the investigator complained to the regional procurator. Originally, when the investigator came to Shakhristan to investigate Uzbek citizens’ complaints of Tajik mirabs (water distributors) blocking water to Uzbekistan, Khalmatov and local Party cell members almost killed him; they gave him ten minutes to leave the region. Khalmatov claimed that the investigator worked for Uzbekistan and that he was bribed by Uzbek mirabs to get them water. Khalmatov told the investigator that he, the investigator, was too young and inexperienced to solve a ten-year dispute. Khalmatov, himself an Uzbek, defended the Tajik side. Neverthe- less, during the process several Tajik eyewitnesses argued that as an Uzbek Khalmatov did not have the right to lead a Tajik government organization. Khalmatov rejected the ethnic argument, convinced that a certain clique (gruppirovka) of Soviet officials in Raikom had initiated the case against him in order to seize his post. But regardless of how it came about, the assault against Khalmatov aimed to delegitimize him as a state official and remove him from his post. Usar Khalmatov, like Irmatova, is described in different ways. On one hand, he was reported to have exerted physical violence against peasants, physically beating them when they failed to fulfill his orders, raped local women, and taken bribes from the rich in exchange for tax reduction and prison release. An eyewitness described how Khalmatov and his company would consume 200 sheep, drinking 200 liters of vodka, and raping men and women during their visits to villages as part of the grain and wool requisition campaigns. Khalmatov was responsible for grain collection in the region and was claimed to have taken more grain from the poor and made concessions to the bais.12 Many eyewitnesses reported that bais pre- AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 99 pared tuis for Khalmatov and his company, providing housing in each of the target villages Khalmatov managed. According to all witnesses, before Soviet rule Khalmatov was a poor man who did manual labor in Tashkent, joined the Red Army in 1918, and served in the Soviet government. Like many members of his group, he was a newcomer to Shakhristan and was accused of leading an Uzbek faction against Tajiks. Though poor when he came to the region, by 1930 he was riding a valuable horse, had built a house, and was on good terms with the district's wealthy. He secured these good relations by marrying a local bai’s daughter and by assisting the marriages of newly appointed local Soviet workers and bais’ families. By integrating himself into the society, he and his people secured authority in the region.13 In exchange, it was reported, he provided local power holders state concessions and protection.14 Just as these accusations were typical of most show trials at the time, so too were the responses of those convicted: they rejected the accusations as nothing but acts of revenge for good work. Khalmatov and his group stated that they had purged bais who did not assist the government in grain collection and that those who accused them were bais themselves. It was initially procurator Rozenwasser’s task to identify whether Khalmatov was an overeager communist or a fake one. While Rozenwasser initiated the case and preliminarily fired Khalmatov and his group from their positions, he could not bring it to an end. Rozenwasser was himself accused of corruption and participation in drinking and sexual orgies.15 Another European procurator, Riazantsev (who just a year later was also accused of organizing sexual orgies),16 continued interrogating witnesses and found it difficult to establish whether Khalmatov was a “good” or a “bad” communist—despite the clear message sent by the testimonies.17 Unlike Rozenwasser, Riazantsev not only concentrated on Khalmatov’s connections to bais and his “orgies”; he also investigated his success in fulfilling the agricultural plan. He took seriously Khalmatov’s and his ex-colleagues’ arguments that Khalmatov was forced to secure good relations with bais in order to secure grain requisitioning. Riazantsev requested the regional department responsible for grain collection (Zagotzerno) to send statistics of plan fulfillment during Khalmatov’s term as its head; he wanted to know how much grain was collected before and after Khalmatov’s imprisonment. The department responded: in 1929, when Khalmatov led the campaign, he gathered 100 percent; after he was jailed, the campaign failed. A supposed member of Khalmatov’s group testified: if Khalmatov had failed to maintain good relations with bais, it would have been impos- 100 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS sible to implement the plan because peasants did what bais decided.Th is, according to a witness, Khalmatov had to learn himself. When he first came to the region and began purging bais, peasants refused to give up their grain. A European official assigned to grain requisitioning, Andrianov, wrote to Riazantsev: “When a bai is detained, grain collection stops; when a bai is released, it continues. This is why one had to imprison only with signals [from Khalmatov]. We detained [bais] but did not put on trial.”18 To safeguard grain submission, one first had to discuss it with a local bai. If he agreed, the peasants who belonged to his “clan” would agree, too.19 Thus, in areas where Khalmatov’s people were in charge, the necessary amount of grain was collected.20 Despite the fact that Khalmatov compromised with bais, he was not under their control. In one case, a bai refused to deliver grain, and Khalmatov visited him personally. He confiscated the bai’s land, transferred him to a kolkhoz, and jailed him.21 It was in Khalmatov’s interest as a state official to collaborate and prevent an exodus of the population (bais and peasants) like the one that had taken place in southern Tajikistan. Khalmatov depended on bais and peasants, just as they were dependent on him; he’d had to balance a complicated situation with conflicting interests. As a result of the investigation, Khalmatov was imprisoned and sentenced in a show trial to three years of imprisonment. He was released six months later, after filing a complaint. During another investigation, he was released due to an absence of corpus delicti. But the initial question remains: why rape? If the staged trial of the Shakhristan Affair aimed to send a message denouncing the dangerous, amoral, and corrupt local officials (men) who instead of implementing plans abused their power and assaulted peasants, then why was Irmatova presented as a perpetrator and put on trial? One would expect Irmatova to have been victimized and celebrated while Khalmatov was put on trial and purged. Instead, Irmatova was detained and reported to have escaped from prison.22 Orgies and rape, it seems, were not simply about women and men, nor were they about the liberation of the Soviet woman; in fact, no judicial or government official commented on female emancipation, and no one delivered a speech in the spirit of hujum. More questions arise. If the show trial was meant to weaken and destroy local networks, why were bais not presented as perpetrators of sexual violence? Why did they only play passive roles, feeding officials and offering their daughters to them? What made local eyewitnesses talk about rapes so much and so eagerly, and why were their accounts so diligently recorded by European officials? AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 101

The language of rape spoke to a range of groups. It was understood and spoken regardless of political orientation or integration in the political system. Given that the investigation lacked the official vocabulary of “ideological deviation” or political resistance, Soviet political struggles in rural areas during collectivization hovered at the level of the everyday. However, taking into consideration the somewhat complicated outcomes of the case, rather than looking for “true facts,” we may interpret it as an expression of grievances. In accusing Soviet officials of “raping” their wives and men, one could suggest that the local population, both bais and peasants, was expressing frustration at the illegitimate violence of 1929 to 1930 and the loss of control over their lives. These accusations can also be interpreted as expressions of state officials’ fear that they exercised insufficient control over the population and local Soviet workers. Irritated by the lack of control that they wanted and felt justified to exercise, Irmatova and Khalmatov represented ambiguous figures in an ambiguous situation—a situation that signifi d change. Throughout the 1930s procurators, secret agents, and other state representatives continued to uncover and construct scandalous networks between local bais and Soviet officials, both local and expatriate. The Kani- badam Affair, for example, disclosed that the leadership of a 700-employee fruit factory were participating in debauchery, sexual orgies, corruption, and drunkenness. This time the leader was a European, Grigorii Abramov, who was accused of organizing an “abscess” (gnoinik). He was, supposedly, offering women jobs in exchange for sexual services and appropriating factory funds. Central inspectors had trouble investigating the case because, they argued, all members of the local government, judiciary, and political police were closely knitted into a single net of corruption.23 In another case, the Isfara Affair, kolkhoz bais managed to keep their region’s best lands to themselves, revealing a similar pattern. In 1933 the kolkhozes “Karl Marx” and “Red Partisan” were accused of being Soviet in name only.24 In reality, it was argued, bais and kulaks ruled them and foisted the responsibility for failing to procure grain onto poor peasants. Reminiscent of the accusations levied against Khalmatov, a young Komsomol member, Shakurov Said of the Khanaka Executive Committee and later head of the militia, married a bai’s daughter and organized orgies and debauchery during the grain procurement campaign of 1931.25 Investigators explained that since Soviet officials were in collaboration with bais, they did not bother them.26 Im- portant to note is that the scandals involving sexual orgies were primarily registered in Tajikistan’s periphery—in the mountainous Zeravshan and 102 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS

Garm Valleys—where the Soviet presence was weak. In more accessible Hi - sor and Vakhsh, where the Soviet state had a stronger presence, cases were rarely sexualized and did not need to rely on occasional scandals and raids. Leaving aside the question of whether those orgies and parties actually took place, they represent the scale of anxiety among Soviet officials about the state’s presence in the periphery.27 The incidents in Tajikistan point to the central state’s insecurity about its ability to control the peripheries. Sexual discourse in the Soviet penal system during the first years of the collectivization campaign in peripheral Tajikistan was an expression of hysteria and powerlessness on the part of central state representatives. They uncovered and described the local Muslim and European officials’ pathological behavior, often describing them as uncontrollable. It was their “degenerate” behavior (bytovoe razlozhenie) and everyday alliance with “alien elements” that irritated central leaders. They felt unable to exercise control over their own envoys, physically, politically, and morally. The Shakhristan Affair reflected conflicting understandings of what a true Soviet official stood for. Should his loyalty be measured by the amount of grain, cotton, dried fruit, or wool he managed to collect? However, if collectivization and industrialization were used as political devices for changing societies, how should the state have interpreted the methods of “Sovietization” that strengthened rather than weakened local power groups and the traditional order?28 European officials in Central Asia found such conflicts difficult to resolve. It was in their interest to fulfill plans, requiring collaboration with, not repression of, local power holders in the interest of Plan fulfillment. However, while their communist mission required them to disempower the wealthy and reorder society according to communist values and norms, they found these means counterproductive to achieving the Plan. The conflict between relying on indirect methods (collaboration with intermediaries) and striving for direct rule without intermediaries could hardly be resolved. Was it acceptable for the Soviet regime to let the locals keep their social structure in case they delivered their tribute? How important was it to change the makeup of local power and culture, especially if doing so would jeopardize Soviet economic and political goals? To what extent, in Stalin’s words, should “socialist essence” be forced through and “national form” preserved? The critical issue of a direct versus indirect rule was at the heart of the collectivization process in Tajikistan. How did Soviet officials there resolve the matter? The easiest and the safest way to solve the conflict was to try to satisfy and implement both methods. The central state marked its presence AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 103 and provided a perception of its strength in the peripheries by means of show trials and imprisonments. By setting repression quotas for each -re gion, it forced Soviet officials to interfere with local politics. Soviet officials implemented central repression plans by imprisoning “corrupt” local officials and power holders, but often only for short periods of time. Since the “corrupt” officials were often the only actors who could implement the Soviet goals—that is, organize requisitioning—they were often, though not always, released after their initial detention or even trial. Stalin’s infamous speech “Dizzy with Successes,” which he delivered in March 1930, helped to justify the releases. The speech officially aimed to denounce Soviet officials who had used excessive violence against peasants during the procurement campaigns as well as to calm resistance sparked by Soviet officials’ repressions. In practice, the speech also provided a basis for the mass release of kulaks and “corrupt” officials. Thus, while in January 1930 the police arrested hundreds of people, including officials such as Khalmatov, throughout Central Asia, in March during the sowing period the Central Asian Bureau ordered the regional executive committees to release prisoners and stop investigations against those who did not submit cotton or pay taxes as well.29 The mass releases allowed for the maintenance of the number of workers in the fields, as well as dealing with officials like Khalmatov. The process of collectivization and industrialization was accompanied with arrests and releases that became “weapons of the weak” in the hands of the state and its various Soviet officials in the “fields.” During collectivization and grain procurement campaigns, officials’ resort to revision of sentences was a useful and safe tactic to balance conflicting political interests and arrangements. Both provided a useful gap to deal with the state’s collectivization dilemmas.

DEALING WITH A STATE

Officials in the field could creatively use central orders and laws to maneuver between plans and local political realities. Although Moscow regularly issued mass amnesty to release peasants to go to work in the fields, this did not mean central leaders were ready to compromise their rule. Despite the fact that they issued contradictory decrees to repress and release, they did have an ambition to know what was going on in the fields—and that their decrees were being carried out. Central officials in Moscow were aware of the situation and they fully realized that gaps in the legal system could lead to arranging local compromises rather than 104 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS the enforcement of central directives. To secure jurists’ zealousness in the fight for Plan fulfillment, the Moscow center decided to send special legal plans. Planning and statistics in the legal field became the lingua franca of a time characterized by chaos and violence. To make sure new, continually changing laws were followed, the legal work was now also treated like agricultural or industrial production, which had to follow strict plans. Jurists, for example, were instructed on the exact number of crimes that had to be harvested in each republic. The central government regularly sent orders on crimes that legal officials were supposed to look for in their areas. In March 1930 it was ordered that people be put on trial for the “inaccurate storage of agricultural tools” and “inattentive usage of tractors.”30 In the 1930s procurators were supposed to concentrate on speculation, and in 1933 they were in charge of penalizing the theft of socialist property, inspecting the quality of production, delayed payment of salaries, purposeful car accidents, and false weighing.31 In 1934 judicial workers were instructed to search for crimes against state orders as well as for manifestations of bureaucratic formality and delays.32 Collectivization laws often bordered on the absurd. In 1935 crimes such as untimely tractor repair, fuel robbery, and cattle “murder” were given high priority. In 1935 the Central Executive Committee forbade the riding of horses under three years of age or having horses under the age of five months do any kind of work, and decreed that older horses were not allowed to carry more than one person. Procurators were ordered to punish severely those who did not heed this decree. Pioneers—members of the communist youth organization in schools—were ordered to take personal responsibility for colts and to organize Pioneer 24-hour posts (pionerskie posty) to guard the fields.33 Since most crimes were now classified as political sabotage and counted as counterrevolutionary offenses, this led to the increase of “political crimes” and the decrease of civil litigation. In Tajikistan, 2,906 civic and 2,482 criminal cases were registered in 1932; in 1934 there were 3,060 criminal and 1,058 civic cases.34 Importantly, however, all statistics were provisional because the chief procurator filing reports had to guess them. He received statistical data from the peripheral regions only occasionally and had to resort to producing the expected numbers by guesswork.35 Even when laws failed to usher in clarity and order, officials argued that good planning could overcome judicial shortcomings. Since jurists were officially empowered to follow their “revolutionary consciousness” to decide on cases, they often did so in the interest of citizens, not the state.36 Soviet central leaders had to set quotas to make sure their order, not ju- AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 105 rists’ decisions, ruled the day. In November 1932, for example, the Justice Commissariat wrote that because there were no cases filed according to the speculation law of August 22, 1932, the procuracy did not achieve its goals in the fight against speculation.37 While judicial statistics in the 1920s had been produced more or less to obtain information on criminal activities in the field,38 during collectivization crime statistics were planned from above, and judicial workers in the field had to implement central plans. Previously, it had been considered normal that the “backwardness” of judicial workers meant many people in courts of cassation were acquitted on the basis of the absence of corpus delicti. But during the first Five-Year Plan the Justice Commissariat demanded 100 percent plan fulfillment: it would not tolerate missteps from investigators or peripheral judges. It also did not want to tolerate acquittals and demanded investigators stop cases that did not qualify for penalty. Thus, when out of 1,895 cases in Tajikistan in the first quarter of 1930, 81 percent resulted in penalties and only 18.4 percent were acquitted (a relatively low number in comparison to statistics from the 1920s, when acquittals were often applied in 70 to 100 percent of cases), the Justice Commissariat stated that the percentage of cases acquitted was too high.39 In 1932 the conference of judicial workers in Tashkent proposed charging investigators for each acquitted case, since each alteration—and at the time 20 percent of cases were stopped—cost the judiciary money.40 Thus, the number of sentences left intact by the courts of cassation also increased. This change had dual aims: first, it demonstrated how the work of the judicial system was “improving” and second, that judicial plans were being fulfilled. The judicial journal Sovetskaia Iustitsiia (Soviet Justice) bluntly stated, “Planning is the highest lever in the work of judicial operations.”41 It argued that if judicial institutions planned their work well ahead, the number of false sentences could be successfully minimized. Planned legality aimed to have a better grip on Soviet envoys’ work and decisions in the peripheries. It also aimed to force through the direct rule by minimizing the freedom of creative application of law by individual Soviet jurists. The law of August 7, 1932, penalizing the theft of socialist property serves as a good example. Stalin, the law’s designer, demanded capital punishment in the worst cases of theft and a ten-year prison sentence for milder ones. At first, local judicial workers throughout the Soviet Union used the law moderately, especially in the countryside. In Central Asia, for example, one and a half months after the law was issued, not a single show trial was organized in accordance with it. When Stalin’s January 1933 speech criticized this mild application of the law, openly stating that it exemplified the 106 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS

Ta bl e 4.1. Tajikistan’s Court of Cassation Criminal Case statistics (percentage)

Change of Sentence Sentence Sentence Year sentence remained corrected terminated 1931 17.2 35 33 16.8 1932 11.9 55 17 15.2 1933 21.16 48.3 20.61 9.93 1934 18.24 73.62 — 8.14

Source: TsGA RT, f. 18, op. 1, d. 866. revolutionary legality of the period and was the foundation of judicial work in the countryside, republican institutions of justice reacted.42 Thus, while the High Court of Tajikistan examined 77 criminal cases according to the law in 1931 and 208 in 1932, after Stalin’s speech in 1933 the number more than tripled to 721 criminal cases. In 1934 it processed 761 cases according to the law; in 1932, 50 percent of cases were decided according to the August 7 law, while in 1934 most were.43 In Tajikistan in 1933, 60 percent of people who were sentenced according to the law of August 7 received five to ten years of imprisonment, and 20 percent received the death penalty. When in May 1933 Stalin signaled that sentences could now be lightened, the High Court in Tajikistan immediately lessened harsh sentences by 50 percent.44 The law was still in force throughout the 1930s, and it was difficult for the Tajik republican procuracy to decide how exactly it should be applied. For example, in November 1933 the republican procurator reported that in Ho- jent the court overused the law, applying it to 26.6 percent of all criminal cases and giving the death penalty to 50 percent of the penalized. In Isfara the court used the law in 16 percent of criminal cases, but the procurator suggested that this was not sufficient.45 Absence of planning became a frequent explanation for anything that was considered a failure. When in 1931 the Justice Commissariat learned that the orchard confiscation campaign had failed in northern Tajikistan— little portions of orchards were confiscated from bais in different regions and were left unirrigated and destroyed—it called for more planning from judges and procurators. The Commissariat resolved that if a court wanted to confiscate orchards in the future it had to create a plan to allow confiscations to be merged into one kolkhoz and prevent damage to the fruit trees.46 Other statistical planning was even more confusing: in 1933, AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 107 the Commissariat’s members complained that too many specialists were falsely imprisoned while a large number of pseudospecialists roamed free to sabotage plan fulfillment.47 When analyzing the Central Asian judiciary, Ruben Katanian, head of Moscow’s procurators’ commission inspection trip to Central Asia in 1932, exclaimed: “They do not plan their fight against crimes. They work unplanned, spontaneously [stikhiino]; there is no leadership over investigations, there is no efficient work.”48 The reason for his concern was that he could not check judicial work, as statistics, the basis for review by the central organs, were for the most part absent. It might be puzzling that legal planning and statistical control became increasingly important at the same time that legality began to decline as part of the Five-Year Plan. How can we explain this obsession with numbers when laws were not considered important? If those who relied upon laws, decrees, and statistics were accused of “soulless bureaucratism” and were encouraged to use “live leadership” by example, not paper, how could they understand the parallel and contradicting demands of paperwork? Of- ficially declared “uselessness of paperwork,” it seems, had its limits. Central leaders still needed paperwork and bureaucracy to deal with their own envoys. Statistics and plans were practical resources that would allow central leaders to signal to peripheral legal officials that they still had a say in a situation where chaos, unpredictability, and lack of control were prevalent.49 Rather than ends in themselves, statistics were a tactic, a mechanism, and a tool to discipline Soviet officials who were the basis of the Soviet state. However, rather than simply control the “masses,” the essential part of the statistical process was the desire to control Soviet judicial officials themselves. It was a way to monopolize their “revolutionary consciousness” and centralize legal decisions and punishments. It was not only new crimes to be uncovered by Soviet officials in the field but also the ability to comply with new rules of “finding” new criminals that played a crucial role. Thus, the seeming “modernization”—the use of legal and bureaucratic tools— was designed not only to “restructure” backward societies, but also to deal with an open and flexible system of the Soviet structure itself, which based its rule on persons, not only paper and law. While most collectivization was based upon the use of arbitrary violence, the use of law and statistics offered, or at least hoped to, a way to signal Soviet central presence in that process. It is in this context that we need to understand, for instance, the organization of “socialist competitions” among Soviet peripheral courts and procuracies. Just as kolkhozes and factories did, regional and republican 108 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS

Ta bl e 4.2. Tajikistan’s Court of Cassation statistics

Year Criminal cases Civic cases Total 1931 1,505 — 1,505 1932 1,319 988 2,307 1933 1,050 628 1,678 1934 (9 months) 1,268 982 2,250

Source: TsGA RT, f. 18, op. l. 13. courts and procuracies organized competitions between each other. In 1930, for example, Hojent regional procuracies competed with those in Ura-Tiube, and Tajikistan competed with Turkmenistan.Th ese competitions aimed to publicize the work of these institutions by means of statistical reporting. In 1930 the Hojent and Ura-Tiube procuracies competed for the (over)fulfillment of the following tasks: investigating criminal and civic cases within ten days, organization of newspaper reading with peasants, processing petitions within one day, and so on.50 Quantitative rank could give a certain measure of work and success for judicial institutions and ultimately created the sense of some relationship between peripheral institutions and the center. The major aim of legal statistical planning and control was to demonstrate, and imitate, the presence of the state and some kind of order: (1) to the central state; (2) to officials and (3) to the population. All three had to believe that there was a state, an order, and a form. In other words, given the freedom of extralegal punishments and institutions, law exceeded punitive function. As Ruben Katanian put it after inspecting judicial matters in Tajikistan: “It is not enough to kill—we can kill, this is not a problem. What we need is a show.”51 The show, however, did not aim to clarify Soviet goals, procedures, concepts of justice, and class-consciousness, neither to the population nor to the Soviet officials. The show was necessary to in- volve Soviet officials and the population in the common act of state presence. This explains why, for example, although the central legal officials propagated correct and planned application of law among its peripheral colleagues in Tajikistan, they failed to explain to them what this meant. During Katanian’s inspection trip, when Central Asian jurists demanded explanations from their Moscow colleagues about correct application of law, he forbade commission members to deliver speeches or otherwise in- AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS 109 struct on the “appropriate” way to conduct Soviet justice. 52 This created tension between Moscow and Central Asian jurists, but also among Moscow envoys themselves. Katanian’s order—not to communicate with peripheral legal officials—was met with resistance from Farkin and Boguslavskaia, also from the Russian procuracy, who argued that it was the Moscow procurators’ responsibility to teach judicial workers in Central Asia how to apply Soviet laws. Katanian, however, argued that their trip to Central Asia aimed to seek out enemies within the ranks of legal officials, not to excuse them. Accepting the Central Asian legal officials’ failures as natural and historical realities of their weak education or fragile Soviet state structures (as Farkin suggested) would render them innocent and stave off the possibility of spotting a counterrevolutionary movement. Moscow envoys disagreed on what an inspection was supposed to achieve: “live leadership,” instruction, and correction of failures (Farkin) versus a silent inspection whose aim was to signal to Moscow leadership about counterrevolutionary activities in Central Asia (Katanian). The ultimate question was: Do we accept shortcomings, such as overcrowded prisons, slow processing times on criminal cases, and inactivity as “shortcomings,” “failures,” or “sabotage”? Did legal officials make mistakes, or were they consciously allying with the enemy? The discrepancy between these visions of what judicial workers were supposed to do in Central Asia revealed a larger dilemma and a conscious strategy: if one would accept that “live leadership” was necessary (Farkin and Boguslavskaia), then one would have to accept that it first required Moscow representatives to move to Central Asia and work there among the local judiciary. But nobody wanted to move to Central Asia. When Katanian asked a trusted procurator from Moscow to move to Tashkent to personally lead the judicial system, he replied: “I will not go.” Katanian explained: “I could force him to move there, but I could already see that [if we did force him] he would be useless there.”53 Forcing peripheral legal officials to follow statistics differed from teaching them legal concepts. Teaching or even discussing legal concepts could lead to open acknowledgment that, for example, legal officials were completely dependent on political actors in the field and could hardly exercise independently any law whatsoever. Open communication would entail the acceptance of institutional weaknesses. Since the Moscow delegation’s aim was to show the central state’s power, not its weakness, such conversations about fragility and helplessness had to be avoided, if not punished. Purges of the peripheral judiciary allowed blaming them—not institutions—for corruption and lack of understanding. It allowed Moscow to mark its 110 AN EMPIRE OF NUMBERS presence and physical strength. More importantly, repression, rather than education, was also a safer option for Moscow representatives because it let them off guilt-free, even if it contradicted their own decrees and words. The failure to communicate their rule disappointed and disoriented republican workers. When a Turkmen procurator asked Moscow leaders to disclose what they found on his territory and did not receive an answer, he said: “If previously the procuracy of the High Court had authority for me, I am now disgusted by you, because you did not talk to me.”54 A few months following the inspection, the entire Tajik procuracy had been purged. While demanding clarity, planning, and correct application of laws from the peripheries, central leaders were unable to practice what they preached. Moscow’s procuracy used silence and the language of violence, not open communication, to deal with peripheral envoys. This was not because silence and repression produced better results, but because by the early 1930s it was often the only way for Soviet central officials to protect their own position. CHAPTER FIVE

AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS

PARTY CLEANSING AS A NATIONAL AFFAIR

In December 1933, despite mountain passes being almost untraversable, the Fourth Congress of the Executive Committee in Tajikistan brought together delegates from the farthest regions of Tajikistan. They were all invited to take part in a serious matter: to publicly denounce and purge their republican government leaders Nusratullo Maksum of the Central Executive Committee and Abdurakhim Khodzhibaev of the Council of People’s Commissars. The event was a scheduled and ordered gathering, among dozens of similar events which took place all over the Soviet Union. The end of the First Five-Year Plan led to the notorious 1933 Party cleansings of national cadres throughout the Soviet republics. Although 1933 was the first time Tajikistan officially completed its agricultural plan (like other republics, due to a major plan revision), the cleansings were supposed to punish a lack of discipline and any signs of disloyalty officials exhibited during the Plan fulfillment campaign. The Party cleansing was an inter- Party affair without legal due process and aimed, as the January plenum of the Party’s Central Committee in Moscow resolved, to “ensure iron proletarian discipline and the cleansing of Party rows from untrustworthy,

111 112 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS unstable, and elements that had wormed their way in [ primazavshchikhsia] throughout the Union.”1 During the long December sessions, the peripheral Party delegates narrated the consistent criminal story about Maksum and Khodzhibaev, accusing them of aiding bais and repressing peasants. The secretary of the District Committee, Satarov, from the Matcha region, said that at a time when the Tajik economy was crumbling, Maksum owned three shops, in which he sold milk, gold, and other expensive goods. Satarov said that Maksum sold his daughter for four hundred sheep, and exchanged the sheep for gold in Uzbekistan. The gold, he guessed, must be hidden in Maksum’s house. Considering Tajikistan’s task (and failure) to extract gold in the country at the time, the choice of gold as fodder for an accusation was especially powerful. Furthermore, from 1931 to 1932 Maksum supposedly released 100 to 200 basmachi from prisons in Ura-Tiube and Hojent. Satarov claimed that when Maksum returned from a Moscow trip, he gave the local mir (religious leader) two revolvers; he concluded that Maksum’s aim in Tajikistan was to starve people to death in trying to fulfi l the plans.2 Anvarov of the Resettlement Committee similarly complained that Maksum surrounded himself with bais and kulaks (kulakon va bojonro dar atrofi xud cam mekard) and did not care about the poor.3 He said that Maksum wanted to annex Bukhara and Samarkand to Tajikistan, defy- ing the nationality politics of the Soviet Union.4 Navruzov from Kurgan- Tiube said that Maksum taxed only the poor and made concessions to the rich. A delegate from Lakai complained that once Maksum came to the region in winter and forced men, women, and children to work in the snow in the fields (dar vaqti boridani barf tamomi mekhnatkasonro zan, baca, mard va hatto zankhoi khomilaro ba kusak cini barovard). As a result, a pregnant woman went into labor in the field.5 Zenatshoev from Badakhshan said that when he told Maksum that their authority among the population had decreased and wrote letters about this to the Central Committee in Stalinabad, central leaders never answered them, demon- strating that neither Maksum nor Khodzhibaev cared about peripheral officials.6 Staged as an internal national affair without Moscow’s intervention, participants confronted Maksum and Khodzhibaev as the main source of Tajikistan’s failures to fulfill the First Five-Year Plan. They were accused of leading a counterrevolutionary organization that aimed to eliminate the Soviet rule in Tajikistan. Unlike previous plena, it was held exclusively in AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 113 the Tajik language, to highlight the local initiative, and all followed the same script. According to the stenograph, no one dared to defend Mak- sum or Khodzhibaev; all praised Stalin and confirmed their full loyalty to the Party. The delegates understood that the Congress was not only about Maksum and Khodzhibaev but also about them—several months of large- scale interrogation and imprisonment of Party members in Tajikistan prior to the Congress signaled this. In July 1933 Stalin personally ordered a “very well-organized secret observation of Maksum and Khodzhibaev’s possible [antirevolutionary] network,” drawing special attention to Mukhitdinov, the deputy head of the Council of People’s Commissars.7 Stalin forbade the arrest of Maksum, Khodzhibaev, and other selected responsible workers. As a result, in August 1933 the Tajik Cleansing Committee, which consisted of Karl Bauman, Abdullo Rakhimbaev, and Grigory Broido of the Central Asian Bureau, together with members of the all-union political secret police, arrived from Moscow to collect information on possible antirevolutionary networks in Tajikistan.8 By September 1933 the OGPU had arrested 270 people in the republic, 17 from republican institutions and 84 from the district apparatus.9 One month later, in October, Bauman reported to Stalin and Kaganovich that 600 Soviet officials had been arrested throughout the country.10 Among them were the head of the Justice Commissariat, district procurators, heads of district party committees, heads of revolutionary committees, and so on. The choice to accuse Maksum and Khodzhibaev as leaders of counterrevolutionary organization initially surprised Bauman, the head of the Central Asian Bureau and the main advocate of rapid collectivization. He wrote Stalin that he could not believe the OGPU reports about Maksum’s and Khodzhibaev’s counterrevolutionary activities, since he considered them loyal and, especially Khodzhibaev, sympathetic.11 On September 28, 1933, it was reported that Bauman and Guseinov had “bombarded” the Politburo “about the necessity of Maksum and Khodzhibaev,” whom they considered “correct leaders” for Tajikistan, for the realization of the autumn procurement campaign.12 Maksum and Khodzhibaev’s public denunciation was scheduled for December—a month free of agricultural work. Shortly prior to the December plenum, however, Bauman revised his attitude toward Maksum and Khodzhibaev and asked to purge them as soon as possible since, he argued, they still led their counterrevolutionary network throughout the country and thus presented a danger. The December 1933 plenum in Stalinabad was not a “natural” outcome of Tajik Party members’ zealousness toward the Soviet regime or hatred of 114 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS

Maksum and Khodzhibaev. The plenum was the result of an almost year- long process to terrorize, punish, and discipline the members of the Tajik Communist Party. The preparatory process consisted of various closed and open plena, informal meetings, secret interrogations, and letter writing. Public events such as plena were crucial in promoting the Party cleansing process and involving the local leaders as active participants. Hence, it all officially started almost a year earlier in February 1933, when the republics’ Party officials were tasked with drawing conclusions about the realization of the First Five-Year Plan at a general plenum, highlighting reasons for failures. The early 1933 plena were conducted in the Russian language and their stenographs registered some support but also anger, sarcasm, disappointments, and rejection in regard to the First Five-Year Plan on the part of local Party officials. When Guseinov talked about the successes and the high numbers of industrial and agricultural production, proclaiming that these were significant not only for the Tajik Republic but also for the whole of humanity, a voice from the audience said: “not always [are those numbers] representative [of the actual state of affairs].”13 When an official said that he did not understand Soviet goals, another voice asked: “how could anyone?” Such cynical comments from plenum participants, recorded as “voices from places” (golos s mesta), indicated that Party officials thought they could express criticism. Moscow leaders made note of this, ensuring that Tajik communists lost such convictions and that by December 1933 Soviet rule was praised. Following the February plenum, which revealed the negative attitude of local communists toward collectivization, Soviet central officials ordered Moscow envoys, and most importantly the secret police, to observe Party members and report any class “deviations” on their side, including criticism of Moscow’s policies. At one such plenum in early 1933, which gathered up to 300 people, Kameli, an Iranian communist who was sent to build Soviet rule in Tajikistan, was reported to make one such “deviation.” He compared Soviet rule to colonialism and argued that local Tajik cultural elites (intelligentsia) were discriminated against; he was reported to say that he could not understand why local nationalists could not be Party members and generally did not understand why (western) European imperialism could not be understood as progressive.14 Kameli was reported as openly criticizing Soviet rule. His speech was used as the key motive for higher Soviet officials and the secret police to purge the entire Tajik cultural elite. Kameli was interrogated on several occasions, forced to publicly accept his mistakes, and, more importantly, AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 115 explain who “influenced his thinking.” Most probably under psychologi- cal and physical pressure, Kameli wrote a long letter on April 30, 1933, in suspiciously perfect Soviet Russian, in which he denounced members of the Jadid cultural elite who had come to Tajikistan (from Uzbekistan) to develop its language and literature. He wrote that Abdulkadyr Mukhitdi- nov,15 a former Jadid, was a central figure for the Tajik cultural intelligentsia. He regularly met with poets and writers such as Mirzo Abdulvakh- id Munzim, the founder of the first new-method school in Bukhara and member of the Bukharan aristocracy (which he labeled as pan-Turkist); Mukhamediev (a former ambassador and representative of the Bukharan People’s Republic in Turkey); Shamansurov (in words of Kameli “a former Moscow speculator and Jadid”); and others. Mukhitidinov, according to the letter, organized a literary circle to discuss classical Persian literature. Even Lahuti sometimes visited his meetings, calling Mukhitdinov the greatest expert on the subject. Kameli’s criticism was used to eliminate Mukhitdinov and his circle. Mukhitdinov, in Kameli’s (most likely fabricated) denunciation, did not take seriously his role as Soviet leader. For example, Mukhitdinov was reported to have told a thirty-three-year-old poet, Bektash,16 that Firdausi, a Persian poet from the tenth century, was widely celebrated in Tajikistan because he, Firdausi, wrote in his works about the renaissance of a great Persian state. While Mukhitdinov admired Firdausi, according to the accusation, he failed to provide the young generation of Tajiks with a Marxist analysis of his works. He could theoretically write a Marxist analysis of Firdausi, but never did. He suggested that Bektash—at the time head of the literature department of the pedagogical academy—write about Fir- dausi, but Bektash wrote an essay claiming that there was no class nature in classical literature and refusing to accept socialist “class literature” as literature whatsoever. Due to the “cult” of classical literature among the literary elites, young people, according to the denunciation, did not understand what the new Soviet literature was supposed to be about, and young poets uncritically imitated works of such classical Persian poets as Hafiz, Bedil, and Sa’adi. In Kameli’s denunciation letter, Mukhitdinov was accused not only of sympathizing with the Jadids, but also of distrusting and doubting the First Five-Year Plan. The letter noted that Mukhitdinov said at the Stalin- abad Party meeting that not all failures could be explained by class antagonism.17 Mukhitdinov, according to the accusation, told other Party officials that if a kilogram of rice cost 100 rubles and cattle died, this was not the 116 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS result of class antagonism. When Kameli asked Mukhitdinov about Soviet politics before collectivization, Mukhitdinov replied that in earlier Soviet years, cotton was the most profitable crop to produce—things were simply different. When the Council of People’s Commissars promised to raise prices for silk cocoons to be paid to peasants, Mukhitdinov said this was the right path to take because it would benefit the peasants. This sentence was considered antirevolutionary because Mukhitdinov’s praise of a new path implied that the Central Party Committee followed incorrect—or at least worse—policies before. Using Kameli’s plenum speech against Mukhitdinov and other liberal “bourgeoisie,” Tajik leaders produced the impression that it was a local affair. Yet it was no secret that open criticism of Jadids in Central Asia had begun in 1927, when the Central Asian Bureau publicly condemned many local Soviet officials as “bourgeois” enemies who impeded Soviet goals in Central Asia.18 Since it was widely known that Mukhitdinov belonged to a clan of Bukharan cotton millionaires who invested in education and liberal reforms in Bukhara and literally overthrew, with Russian help, the emir of Bukhara, it is surprising that it was as late as 1933 that Moscow finally decided to get rid of such a prominent figure (and members of his prominent circle) in Tajikistan. Using the Five-Year Plan to eradicate Tajikistan’s, and Central Asian more generally, cultural and political elites aimed to exchange its local leadership. Kameli’s open self-criticism did not save him from the purge. He was immediately excluded from the Party; his critique of Soviet policies produced an array of interrogations and denunciations directed against a wide circle of Tajik intellectuals and political leaders. Many had to defend themselves or explain how they stood in relation to Kameli, Mukhitdinov, and others. An interrogation of Burkhanov, another Jadid, for example, produced a similar denouncing letter (probably under physical pressure), in which Mukhitdinov, Kameli, and all the representatives of Tajik literary circles were accused of a lack of class-consciousness or understanding of nationality politics.19 Burkhanov, who headed the Tajik newspaper Tojik- istoni Surkh, accused Tajik writers of incorrectly translating Soviet road- maps, misinterpreting Soviet nationality politics, and opposing Latiniza- tion of the Tajik alphabet. Moscow officials felt insecure about the Arabic script: they could not check what was published in Tajik Soviet newspapers, so they accused writers of stalling realization and fomenting secret plans to overthrow the Soviet regime.20 Tajik newspapers were supposed to transition to Latin script more quickly so that articles could be read by Soviet AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 117 officials as well as prepare and reeducate the younger generation of Soviet journalists and writers. In addition to denunciations, the secret police used reports produced during the First Five-Year Plan in which local Party officials were said to have evaded Plan fulfillment. The secret police reported that during collectivization many peripheral officials simply left their regions.21 Often, the OGPU and militia were the only Soviet institutions that stayed to repress bais and lead the requisitioning process. Moreover, the OGPU reported that some officials, militiamen, and even convoy guards openly wept while sending the bais away; some even fought for their rights.22 The central OGPU interpreted Soviet officials’ open tears as sabotage and a lack of discipline; they were instructed to run repressive campaigns, not cry and flee. Mukhitdinov, who was, like many others, in charge of requisitioning in Tajikistan, was accused of taking an active role in the secret nationalist movement against the Soviet regime. His secret letter in early 1933, now in the hands of the OGPU, revealed a criminal act: he had asked Karl Bauman, the head of the Central Asian Bureau, to confiscate only cotton, not cattle from the people because he feared mass starvation.23 Nadzhaf Khasanov, a Khovaling Party secretary, was reported to tell the OGPU during an interrogation that Mukhitdinov asked him not to press grain requisitioning and keep as much grain for the people. He said that Mukhit- dinov told him: “We made the revolution, but we destroyed ourselves. We, Muslims, are not united. We tried to eat each other and destroy ourselves. Russians are united, but we report on each other and hence destroyed the Bukharan People’s Socialist Republic.”24 Khasanov was also reported to say that Mukhitdinov stated:

The Bukharan Republic was a totally different republic than contemporary Tajikistan, back then we wanted to build something different than what turned out. . . . There is no bread, we cannot eat cotton, and even cotton is not left for us. If the Bukharan emir took one tax, the Soviet regime takes a hundred: it takes wool, cattle, milk, butter, grain, and so on. There is a new decree issued that even poor dekhkans [peasants] must give away their grain and meat. If they do not, they will be put on trial.25

Later, in 1936 Abdullo Rakhimbaev, during another purge, mentioned Mukhitdinov’s fate due to his open complaints to the Party that cotton was unprofitable, that peasants worked like slaves, and that everything, cotton and food, was taken to Moscow.26 118 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS

Abdulkadyr Mukhitdinov and his head Nikolai Bludau, who led - Ta jikistan’s Council of People’s Commissars in 1932,27 were purged from the Party prior to the December plenum that was staged against Maksum and Khodzhibaev, which ensured more tractable behavior from Tajik communists. This is how Bludau interpreted his purge. He complained to Bauman that during a Stalinabad Party meeting Guseinov and others accused him—a Party member since the age of fifteen—of counterrevolutionary activities and that nobody defended him. People tried to connect him to Trotsky, the counterrevolutionary and nationalist group of Maksum, Khodzhibaev, and Kameli. He complained, “I was mixed with his group in one pile, whereas all know that I first signaled about Kameli’s counterrevolutionary speech at the February plenum.”28 He wrote that even Guseinov did not understand Kameli’s counterrevolutionism and allowed him to join the Central Committee. Bludau explained that by accusing him, Guseinov tried to conceal his own mistakes, such as a liberal attitude toward the right-wing, left-wing deviations, and so on. During the 1933 series of interrogations and denunciations, everyone accused everyone and anyone could be subject to purging. Mukhitdinov and others were accused of bourgeois nationalism and subsequently shot in 1934. The delegates at the final December meeting were the survivors of the purge, yet they also knew they could be the next to be suppressed. Thus, delegates made the point of stressing that their regions had completed their plans over the limit and were outwardly happy with Soviet developments in Tajikistan, highlighting the success of Soviet roads and schools. They promised the central leaders in Stalinabad to lead the development further. Of course they also asked for additional funds, machinery, and, importantly, training of local cadres to spearhead technical work, which would help them fulfill the plans even more successfully. Their only criticism was expressed toward Europeans who, according to the Muslims, did not really care about plan fulfillment and could not be effective in regions they barely knew.29 Delegates pointed to their more embedded and privileged position, which granted them knowledge of local circumstances and lands, highlighting their important position and usefulness as locals. Important to note is that while delegates accused Maksum and Khodzhibaev, they did not necessarily mean it. In 1936, Shirinsho Shote- mor, one of the heads of the Tajik government, described the staged and performative nature of public accusations: “some comrades publicly denounced [Khodzhibaev], but in the corridors they walked with him and spoke in a friendly and polite manner.”30 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 119

PARTY CLEANSING AS A SECRET OPERATION

In contrast to the plenum show trial, secret reports of investigations differed from unanimous public accusations. Unlike the single narrative produced at the December plenum, the secret police interrogation material contains two contradictory narratives. Some Party members were reported to tell the secret police that Maksum and Khodzhibaev wanted to free people from cotton campaigns and allowed them to grow grain in order to avoid starvation. Maksum was also reported, for example by Bludau, to want to offer subsidies to collectivized nomad–farmers (kolkhozni- ki-kochevniki) in the Kuliab, Kurgan-Tiube, and Hisor regions.31 Others, in accordance with public denunciations, were reported to accuse Maksum and his network of aiding the rich. While these accusations were in accordance with those aired at the December plenum, still others reported that Khodzhibaev and Maksum terrorized rather than helped the local population and forcefully extracted their last grain. Maksum and Khodzhibaev were accused of using excessive measures, that is, violence, during the collectivization campaign, which aimed to discredit Soviet rule among the population and led to basmachi-led revolts, outmigration to Afghanistan, and the rise of banditry.32 Since collectivization had turned the population from the Soviet to the basmachi side, or so the argument went, it was in Maksum’s and Khodzhibaev’s interest to press ruthless collectivization and requisitioning. The same Mukhitdinov was recorded to say that in Kyzyl Mazar Khodzhibaev demanded grain requisitioning at all costs: “Let them go bankrupt, let them die, let them go to Afghanistan or basmachis, our work is to collect grain. Here I will assign Nazarov, who will not leave the region until 1,600 centners [unit of measure equal to 100 kg] are gathered. After that they brought assignees ([O]GPU), who looted the peasants. They forced people to sell cattle, buy grain, and submit it to them. As a result, eleven kolkhozes completed the same plan several times.”33 Violent measures by Maksum and Khodzhibaev, the secret police determined, were conscious measures against the Soviet state. It was organized by a parana- tionalist organization, Ittikhodi Shark (Union of the East) led by Maksum and Khodzhibaev to overthrow Soviet rule and construct a Greater Tajiki- stan, consisting of Tajikistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Muslim India.34 Another set of materials described Maksum and Khodzhibaev criticizing the OGPU’s harsh collectivization measures. In May 1933 Maksum publicly denounced the OGPU arrests of local Soviet officials whom he considered loyal to the Soviet rule.35 He said: “This year those who previ- 120 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS ously fought for the Soviet state are being accused of counterrevolutionary activities, leaving for Afghanistan, joining basmachi bands. . . . Muzafarov, previously in the Red Army—why did he join the basmachis? Because he was arrested, beaten up, and tortured [by the OGPU]. . . . We need to know who is behind these arrests. If we join them [unclear], I do not know what will happen; we need to have all the information.”36 Maksum and Khodzhibaev were reported to have told Ismailov, a secret police o fficer, that they were responsible for everything that happened in the republic. This is why they could not allow arbitrary OGPU arrests such as those of Alikul’ and Mukke. Such arrests, of which, Maksum and Khodzhibaev said, there were too many lately, would spark outmigration to Afghanistan.37 Alikul’ Khalmuradov reported during an OGPU interrogation that Maksum had warned him about his imminent arrest, adding, “you worked for Soviet rule, you got medals, but now you can throw them away; you will not be thanked for your work, you will be arrested.”38 Khalmuradov also reported, according to the interrogation stenograph, that Khodzhibaev told him in Kyzyl Mazaar:

The conditions of dekhkans deteriorate every day—we need to do something. Tomorrow there will be a big dekhkan meeting here, at which I will talk about the need to fulfill plans. You need to tell your people to raise a big protest during the meeting to issue a decision to fulfill the plan only up to 50 percent. Your people need to talk to individual dekhkans about it. If I start shouting, or get angry during the meeting—they should not pay attention. And generally, pay attention to the fact that you do not need to fulfill the plan fully. Do not press the bais about grain preparation. Remember that we do not have bais anymore—all are equal. The same with meat preparation. Take a bit from everybody, and do not press the kulaks.39

Other sources also indicate that Maksum complained about the OGPU and their massive arrests on several occasions. He was furious about agricultural plans, claiming that only 5 percent of the population was left in some regions because everyone had gone to Afghanistan; he said that people left the regions and kolkhozes because of the arrests and because peasants were not paid for their work.40 Further, he said that Makhkamov, secretary of a district Party committee, had shot himself because the Central Committee assigned him an additional 1,500 hectares that he was not able to handle. On another occasion—also in May 1933, at a closed meeting of the Tajik Central Committee—Maksum protested against the OGPU arrest of a sup- AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 121 posed counterrevolutionary group. The meeting protocol explicitly noted that “on request of comrade Maksum” it was to be recorded that Maksum was “categorically against the [already conducted] arrests of Shakhobutdi- nov, Mulla-Akhmeda, and Alikul’ because all were given Soviet medals for participating in fights against basmachi.” Maksum further requested in the protocol “that the Central Executive Committee inspect the OGPU materials.”41 Similarly, Khodzhibaev attacked the OGPU and stated that they were contaminated (zasoreny) up to 70–80 percent.42 At this meeting Mak- sum and Khodzhibaev were warned that attacks against the OGPU—“the strongest organ of proletarian dictatorship” (samogo moshchnogo organa proletariata diktatury)—were considered counterrevolutionary.43 The contradictory accusations of Maksum and Khodzhibaev aimed to explain the basmachi onslaught against the Soviet state. On March 21, 1931, the troops of Ibragim Bek entered the territory of Tajikistan and occupied southern provinces. Guseinov complained that Tajik leaders (referring to Maksum and Khodzhibaev) misinformed him about the state of affairs in Tajikistan, telling him there were no longer any kulaks in Tajik- istan. Guseinov explained that this “theory” led the number of basmachi to grow. He was furious that some Soviet workers proposed organizing troops with influential leaders against the basmachi without providing weapons to the poor.44 Maksum and Khodzhibaev were presented as anti-Soviet and anti-Russian operatives who prepared their own nationalist alternative regime for the region. The chair of the Iangi Bazaar District Committee, Kasymbekov, was reported to have said: “In early 1932 Khodzhibaev invited me and said there was crop failure in Russia; this is why the last grain is taken from us. The Soviet talk about independence of nations is empty.”45Ashur Mukhamedov noted that Khodzhibaev and Mukhitdinov had said Kazakhs and Uzbeks fled to Tajikistan and then to Afghanistan because of hunger in their countries and that they needed to expel Russians and build their own national state.46 Alikul’ Khal- muradov was recorded saying: “In 1932 I, together with Shir Sultanov, my brother-in-law, and Alla Berdy went to Moscow. On our way, as we crossed Kazakhstan we saw Kazakhs—old and young—who were starving and begging. We asked them why they were begging. They said because of meat procurement campaigns. Their households were bankrupted and they had to go begging. When we came back, we told this story in our villages and decided to grow more grain to avoid starving like the Kazakhs. After several months grain requisitioning started here.”47 Rumors about disastrous outcomes of the collectivization in Central Asia mobilized 122 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS some Tajik leaders, so reports noted, to unite against the Soviet state with their Persian brothers. While OGPU agents used ethnic nationalism to politicize crimes, they refrained from explaining what exactly the Ittikhodi Shark was aiming for. Was its purpose to collaborate with bais and starve the peasantry—were they class enemies, that is, evil bourgeois oppressors? Or did they want to unite with the masses to construct Great Tajikistan (hence the concessions to peasants) and were thus nationalist bourgeois leaders? While communist ideology implied that nationalism was a bourgeois construct to be used by the bourgeoisie for national mobilization, what the OGPU reporting ultimately failed to explain was how starvation and murder of the “masses” by the supposed Ittikhodi Shark could be effectively used for nationalist purposes by its purported leaders. Did the national movement not entail some alliance of the bourgeoisie with the masses, not its extinc- tion? The reports did not aim to clarify these or other questions, nor could they. Instead, they provided simple answers to complicated questions. The repressions and the construction of accusations was a top-down order to seek out and purge local national leaders throughout the Soviet Union, not an accurate reflection of what happened in the republics. Prior to 1933 those who were considered Tajiks were positively distinguished, at least in the official discourse, as oppressed people. Their national awakening in the 1920s was declared communist in nature and was used in a global anticolonial appeal to their oppressed brothers abroad. The 1933 purge attacked that same national discourse as a source of liberation and independence. If previously Tajik nationalists were celebrated as victims who rose to the consciousness to unite with Persian brothers, they were now criticized for anti-Soviet behavior and Great Tajik–Persian nationalism. Although presented as scandalous findings, the OGPU officers should have known that Moscow leaders themselves inspired the dream of Great Tajikistan. Re- public ethnonationalism in the Soviet Union was used to create and affirm ethnic groups in the 1920s, but it was also used in the 1930s to disempower them and their (political and cultural) elites. What is remarkable about the December plenum is not only how it was staged, but also what came out of it. Neither Maksum nor Khodzhibaev spoke in their defense. Most likely this was a result of Stalin’s tactic to pacify selected officials prior to their public Party purge; he probably ensured their safety if they followed the theatrical script.48 On November 28, 1933, Stalin spent six hours conversing with Maksum and Khodzhibaev in his Moscow office together with leaders such as Viacheslav Molotov (chair AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 123 of the All-Union SNK), Lazar Kaganovich (chair of the All-Union Cen- tral Party Committee), Genrikh Iagoda (deputy of the OGPU and future NKVD chief) and his deputy Yakov Agranov, Karl Bauman of the Central Asian Bureau, Guseinov of Tajik Central Party Committee, Gai and Piliar (both were responsible for the cleansing of Tajikistan’s Party), and a certain Zagvozdin and Solonitsyn.49 Another almost two-hour meeting took place on December 1, 1933, also in Moscow, immediately before the plenum.50 As a result of the December plenum, Maksum and Khodzhibaev were not imprisoned but transferred to different posts and ultimately to Moscow, officially for studies at the Institute of Red Professorship (Institut Krasnoi Professury). In 1934 Maksum even became a member of the All-Union Cen- tral Executive Committee, officially in a position akin to president (together with others) of the Soviet Union. Remarkably, although Guseinov and Bludau were also dismissed from their positions as a result of the cleansing, they did not become central figures of the publicly staged accusations.51 Although Guseinov was dispatched as a central “responsible worker” to Tajikistan to implement the First Five-Year Plan, he was barely mentioned anywhere. When Stalin, Molotov, and Ordzhonikidze sent telegrams to Tajikistan to discuss plan fulfillments and directions, they addressed primarily Guseinov, not Maksum or Khodzhibaev. Since, according to the message, Maksum and Khodzhibaev—not Guseinov or Bauman—were the “real” local leaders, it was their responsibility to account for failures. While it was Europeans who were sent to Central Asia to lead the Five-Year Plan, the purges and repression were to carry the stamp of “affirmative action.”

PARTY CLEANSING FOR PARTY STAFFING

Officially, the cleansing of 1933 aimed to instill “iron discipline” among communists throughout the Soviet Union. But its main real aim was to replace old cadres and networks with new ones. Already between Novem- ber 1933 and May 1934 the Central Asian Bureau in Tashkent sent 105 “responsible workers” and Moscow sent dozens of new secret police agents to Tajikistan.52 Some “old” European workers were removed from Tajikistan and Broido was tasked to work primarily with the new officials, mobilize them around his leadership, and prevent possible struggles between the “old” and “new” cadres.53 The new Party leaders who were sent to replace Maksum, Khodzhibaev, and Guseinov in Tajikistan were experienced in Central Asia and Stalin personally knew them. However, they were, for the large part, raised outside Tajikistan and were newcomers to its capital 124 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS

Stalinabad. Abdullo Rakhimbaev, the new head of the Council of People’s Commissars appointed by Stalin in Khodzhibaev’s place, came originally from Hojent (still part of the Uzbek SSR in the 1920s) and made his career in Soviet Turkestan. After joining the Communist Party in 1919, he headed Hojent’s Town Committee and in 1920 was elected chair of the Central Executive Committee of the Turkestan ASSR. From April 1922 until 1925 Rakhimbaev was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Front and acted as a secretary of the Turkestan Party Central Committee. Like others, Rakhimbaev had “dark spots” in his communist biography: son of a trader, he was once fired from the Turkestan Executive Committee for “tough mistakes and nationalist deviations.” In 1926 he was transferred to Moscow for studies and called back in 1934 to Tajik- istan. In Rakhimbaev’s first speech in Tajikistan, he excused himself for his poor knowledge of Tajik.54 He said that although he was a Tajik and came from Hojent, he had spent the last nine years [sic] in Moscow and therefore was not fluent in Tajik [Rafiqon, agar ci man tojik bosham va johi tavalud shudanii man Hojent boshad azbaske ki man 9 sol boz dar Maskav kormekunam zabonimo dari tojiki zajodam kam u besh faromush shudaast va guftan mumkin ast ki man onqadar naqz namedonam]. A Rus- sian-speaker and Moscow man, Rakhimbaev led the Uzbek commission on national delimitation between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and was known for his open protest in the early 1920s against Tajikistan’s autonomy, including 1929 independence. He did not share ethnonationalist sentiment with his Soviet Persian brothers55 and thus was a new type of cadre raised by Moscow to replace old elites who were ingrained in Tajikistan’s social, cultural, and power matrix. Rakhimbaev had a Russian wife and named his son after the French revolutionary Marat.56 Grigory Broido, who replaced Guseinov, originally from Vilna, gradu- ated from the law faculty in St. Petersburg in 1909 and went on to work as a lawyer in Tashkent and Bishkek. In 1916 he witnessed Kyrgyz/Kazakh mass uprisings and from 1917 chaired the Tashkent Council of soldier delegates, entering the Communist Party in 1918.57 Broido shaped the early Soviet onslaught in Central Asia. He worked for the Turkestan Commission, organized the Council for International Propaganda, assisted in forming the Persian, Bukharan, and Khivan Communist Parties, and personally led a Khivan military campaign.58 From 1920 until 1925 he worked and led the Communist University for Eastern Toilers, from 1921 to 1923 he was Stalin’s deputy chair at the Commissariat for Nationality Affairs, and from 1925 through 1933 he served as rector of the Saratov Communist University. AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 125

Although he was one of the Bolshevik leaders close to the ruling central circle and personally to Stalin, Broido was twice removed from leadership positions. First Lenin sanctioned him for “unacceptable behavior” during the Khivan campaign; the reason for the second snub is unknown. Broido was a Menshevik from 1903 until 1918, which could spark tensions between him, Lenin, and later Stalin. In 1933 Stalin gave him another chance to gain entrance to communist leadership asfi rst secretary of the Communist Party in Tajikistan to replace Guseinov. As mentioned, Stalin preferred to appoint people with checkered pasts, whose vulnerability he could use for his own purposes. This is why Broido’s chance in 1933 was also Stalin’s chance to strengthen his power.59 In 1933, Urunbai Ashurov was appointed second secretary of Tajikistan’s Central Committee to assist Grigory Broido. Originally from Uzbekistan, the press did not mention his exact place of birth or previous posts to avoid highlighting the Uzbekistani profile of the new Tajik leader.60 News sources informed the Tajik audience that Ashurov had worked in publishing with the urban proletariat (implying Russians), who sparked his revolutionary tendencies. Ashurov fought against basmachi and from 1920 until 1923 worked in the Soviet central security organ VCheKa (Emergency Commit- tee), later transformed into the OGPU/NKVD. For his “zealous struggle against antirevolutionaries,” Ashurov received the Order of the Red Banner, the highest distinction in the Soviet Union at the time. In 1923 he worked in Ferghana’s revolutionary committee and until 1929 he held several Party posts in the region. He successfully led collectivization in Andijan and in 1928 was appointed a member of the Central Asian Bureau. In the early 1930s he was sent to lead grain requisitioning in the northern Caucasus, where he showed “exemplary diligence.” In 1933 Ashurov was deputy head of the kolkhoz section of the Central Asian Bureau in Tashkent and later also of the Bureau’s educational department. While most assignees were new to Tajikistan, Shirinsho Shotemor, who worked with Maksum and Khodzhibaev during the 1920s and fought for Tajikistan’s independence from Uzbekistan, was also called back to Tajik- istan from Moscow, where he studied in 1928 and from 1932 to 1933.61 A native of Badakhshan, Shotemor studied in a Russian school and was “adopted” by a Russian soldier, according to his Soviet biography. He married a Russian woman and moved to Tashkent, where he joined the Communist Party. While Shotemor shared the Uzbekistani profile of Rakhimbaev and Ashurov, he already had worked in and led the construction of Tajikistan for several years, together with Maksum and Khodzhibaev. Shotemor 126 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS joined the new team and, with I. M. Bekker and P. Zaitsev,62 supervised massive purges of the Tajik Communist Party and other organizations throughout 1934. The new cadres of Tajikistan were made up of consciously chosen outsiders to prevent the possible development of their nationalist sentiments, now considered anti-Soviet. Their appointment was a move to revise the earlier nationality politics in Central Asia. In the early 1920s the Soviet state promoted nationalities and claimed to grant them a “voice” as part of their Sovietization. In 1933, after the attempt to centralize Soviet state power by means of semimilitary collectivization and cottonization sparked resistance, “nationalism” was used as a device to pressure silence out of national leaders who increasingly opposed Soviet central policies. If previously Tajik nationalism was forged for international struggle, resettlement, and cotton campaigns, in the context of economic failures it was instru- mentalized against those whom it meant to privilege. Any verbal resistance and criticism of Soviet campaigns was regarded as an expression of nationalism. Nationalism was proclaimed as an expression of disloyalty and disloyalty as an expression of nationalism. Importantly, whether promoted or silenced, the nationalism rhetoric served as a device for political, military, and economic goals. While just a few years earlier Tajik ethnicity was celebrated as a legitimate foundation for Tajikistan and a potential force for expanding Soviet borders, the start of collectivization meant that claiming rights on the basis of ethnicity could elicit repression. While previously ethnonational sentiments were nurtured, during collectivization they (carefully noted by the secret police) were considered counterproductive and irrelevant. Those who instigated conflicts, it was announced, inter- rupted campaigns and undermined Soviet state building.

SOVIET EUROPEAN (ANTI)COLONIALISM?

Moscow’s onslaught against local nationalism and the repression of Tajik- istan’s leaders was not an unproblematic move because it resembled Euro- pean colonial politics against the “natives,” both to the local population and to Moscow leaders themselves. The latter could not ignore accusations of colonialism, which were publicly proclaimed by Tajik leaders, widely circulated among the population, and documented by the secret police. Conflicts between Europeans and Muslims could jeopardize Sovietization, its legitimacy in Tajikistan and abroad. Moscow leaders thus had to find ways to demonstrate that the Soviet state differed from European capitalist AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 127 colonial empires. In order to claim an alternative, anticolonial regime, So- viet newspapers in Tajikistan were disseminating images of evil European colonialists who oppressed Tajik “brothers” in, say, India. Yet repressions of Tajikistan’s cultural and political elites contradicted anticolonial propaganda, and Muslims’ accusations of Soviet colonialism persisted. To de- escalate these accusations, Soviet leaders chose to appropriate the charges against European colonialism. They publicly and widely acknowledged semicolonial tendencies among its European representatives, but designated them as anti-Soviet deviations. In the press and public speeches, Soviet European leaders openly criticized incorrect behavior among Soviet Euro- peans and declared a struggle against it. While acknowledging colonial tendencies among its representatives, Moscow leaders made sure they did not equate themselves with European colonialism. They consciously framed their actions using a different vocabulary, calling their work Great Russian (velikorusskii) or great power chauvinism (velikoderzhavnyi shovinism). Employing the term “chauvinism” showcased a distinction between Soviet and European regimes. Chauvin- ism, Soviet leaders thought, was not colonialism because chauvinism was an attitude, not a system. It was the idea of superiority, not a structure of exploitation. The Great Russian and great power designations also entailed references to Russia’s imperial past, and they enabled accusations against certain individuals “from the old Russian imperial regime,” distinguish- ing them from new Soviet Europeans.63 Chauvinism was also explained as a “form of class struggle.”64 Since, to the National Justice Commissariat, chauvinism was expressed toward various national minorities, it was not a fixed form of racism against one nationality but the result of socioeco- nomic tensions. In 1932 the Commissariat established that 47 percent of all chauvinist acts in Russia were reported in newly organized sovkhozes and construction sites where most of the population came from rural areas, “proving” that chauvinism was an expression of backwardness, insufficient Sovietization, and the influence of class enemies.65 Moreover, since Stalin warned that increased class struggle would lead to national tensions, chauvinism was a “natural” outcome of Soviet social restructuring, which would disappear after the successful elimination of class enemies.66 Hence, chauvinism and nationalism were inextricably linked as expressions of the same phenomena. In one case the National Justice Commissariat literally proclaimed both to be “great power and local chauvinism.”67 By linking them as equal evils, Soviet leaders implied that both Muslims and Europeans suffered from the same evil; one was 128 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS a version of the other. “Great-power chauvinism and local nationalism” (velikoderzhavnyi shovinism i mestnyi natsionalism) became a single formula describing anti-Soviet behavior. They both arose as a result of misunderstanding “true” Soviet policies. Because, as a European official explained in a Tajik newspaper, the Soviet center took cotton in return for developing Tajikistan economically and culturally, there was an “organic relationship” between the two. He explained: “Those who did not understand the economic and political essence of the two-way organic relationship [between center and periphery] unavoidably [neizbezhno] lean toward one or another tendency [uklon] of our Party’s nationality politics: the path of great power chauvinism or local nationalism.”68 Both—nationalism and chauvinism—were viewed by central leaders as expressions of distrust of Soviet policies and thus anti-Soviet behavior. The chauvinism campaign was a consciously orchestrated top-down undertaking, publicly inspired by Stalin in his 1930 speech “On Creeping Deviations” (O polzuchikh uklonakh) at a XVI Party Congress. While the abstract critique of possible European chauvinist attitudes had been aired by Soviet leaders since the first days after the revolution, only with the start of collectivization did antichauvinism turn into a conscious state operation. The campaign called on Soviet judicial workers to ferret out chauvinists of all kinds, since so far they were neither registered nor taken seriously.69 The state ordered judicial institutions to include cases of chauvinism in its fulfillment plans, forcing officials to organize trials against suspects.70 In Tajikistan the campaign started around 1932–1933, to coincide with purges of Muslim cultural and political elites, but its widespread coverage, especially in Tajik-language newspapers, was not achieved until 1934. In comparison to accusations of local nationalism against those who were political leaders in their communities, accusations of great power chauvinism in the early 1930s were directed almost exclusively at technical workers such as accountants, engineers, teachers, and drivers.71 Accusa- tions of chauvinism were categorized entirely in the context of plan fulfillment, not politically motivated antistate activities, as in the case of charges against local nationalism. In the early 1930s newly arrived European technical workers were accused of discriminating against Tajik colleagues and not taking them seriously, which, supposedly, led to conflicts and impeded the plans. Unlike Tajiks, in the early 1930s Europeans were not accused of organizing political resistance against the Soviet state. In case of reactions against Europeans, it was not the secret police, as in the case of local nationalism, but two important newspapers that were tasked with addressing AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 129 great power chauvinism. The Russian-language Kommunist Tadzhikistana and Tajik-language Tojikistoni Surkh were the primary platforms where Soviet European chauvinism was discussed. In one, the journalist F. Sama- rin, a European himself, called for an open public trial of an organization’s director who refused to hire Tajik drivers.72 In another article, European officials of the Seed Preparation Department (Zagotzerno) were accused of not hiring Tajiks specially trained for that department and discriminating against Tajik workers in questions of housing and food provision.73 Al- though most of these chauvinism accusations never ended in punishments other than job transfer, there were sometimes widely publicized trials. This is because Moscow leadership, through Party newspapers, demanded open public action against “chauvinists.”74 More often than not, Soviet European chauvinism was portrayed or im- plicitly described as an economic, and not a political or ideological, crime. Rather than a struggle against colonial relations, accusations of chauvinism became a mechanism to explain Plan failures. When in 1933 the Kuliab Machine Tractor Station (MTS) failed to repair tractors in a timely manner and, it was alleged, impeded the cotton sowing campaign, the inspection committee ignored this logistical issue and, as the general practice of the time dictated, used great power chauvinism as a rationale.75 The commission noticed that there was an “insufficient number” of Tajiks at the station and requested an explanation. The European director replied: “I would train technicians among the nationals, but this is impossible to do now because we are being asked to do so many things, such as compiling information and calculating percentages, but a native cannot do such things. . . . We are forced to take Europeans.” As a result, the director was accused of great power chauvinism.76 In failing to trust the local population, he stalled the Plan. In 1934 the European Pavlin complained that out of 430 staff members of the National Commissariat for Land, only 20 were Tajiks, among whom were drivers and translators.77 He also deplored the attitude of some Eu- ropeans who thought that often Tajiks were appointed to lead an organization or an office, while in reality Europeans did all the work. In 1935, Ivan Skorikov, a tractor course teacher, was also accused of sabotaging agricultural plans due to his “great power chauvinism.” He was reported to have claimed in his courses that liberal bourgeois ideology was similar to that of the proletariat and that Tajiks were incapable of learning how to use tractors. This statement, it can be assumed, offended his Tajik students, who dropped the courses. As a result, there were not enough trained 130 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS tractor drivers for the harvest campaign; thus Skorikov contributed to the failure of the 1934 plan.78 Authorities throughout the republic were nervous that overall national plans were not being completed, which might lead to retaliation against them as well. Using “great power chauvinism” as an excuse to blame technical workers was convenient because anyone could be accused of that “crime”—it required no evidence and was politically salient. Similarly, in 1933 European geologists of the state enterprise Tajik Gold were accused of failing to find gold in Tajikistan. The allegation read: “Be- hind the words about physical-geographical conditions were masked ‘great power chauvinism,’ colonialism, and arrogance toward the experience of local Tajiks who have been extracting gold here for thousands of years.”79 European geologists were charged with trying to falsify numbers to prove that gold did not exist in Tajikistan and “the absence of will to lead serious work with gold mines and give technical help to local Tajiks and thus the lack of will to lead national politics.”80 The hysteria around gold in Tajiki- stan was directly connected to Moscow’s demand to find it there. Moscow leadership urgently needed money for its ambitious plans. Davud Gusei- nov, typical of his desire to prove he was a perfect communist, promised that he would fulfill all plans. In Moscow in early 1933, he wrote to his superior Sergo Ordzhonikidze, commissar of Soviet heavy industry, that “without overestimation I can say there is gold in Tajikistan in many locations, and every day we find out about new places.”81 Guseinov was trying to please Moscow, so the news from European geologists about the absence of gold was devastating for him. Accusing them of “great power chauvinism” was an acceptable way to explain the failure.82 To understand the government movements against chauvinism and nationalism, one needs to place them in the context of related contemporary campaigns. First was the indigenization campaign (korenizatsiia), which officially intended to staff Soviet institutions with representatives of local nationalities. It could be called an institutional anticolonial instrument to hand over Soviet rule to local leaders. As part of this campaign, state and Party organizations were obliged to write regular reports about the indigenization process and send statistics on how many Europeans and Muslims worked in their offices. Ideally, each institution was supposed to employ more local workers than Europeans, and the indigenization campaigns were part of the larger campaign to strengthen local cultures. In 1930, a European commentator wrote in Kommunist Tadzhikistana: “We should not forget that the national question is, in essence, according to the precise [metkii] definition of Stalin, a peasant question. This is why AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 131 ignoring the question of the development of national cultures is at the same time ignoring the task of strengthening the union between the proletariat [Europeans] and the working dekhkans [Central Asians] and therefore is criminal and harmful.”83 Developing local cultures through education and indigenization, according to the message, was an essential part of the communist state. Developing, celebrating, and modernizing local cultures, on the other hand, had to be done delicately since it was not supposed to spark nationalistic sentiments on the part of Muslims.Th e author of the article reminded readers of the “national in form, socialist in essence” formula and cautioned against spurring any bourgeois or reactionary nationalism.84 The second was the recruitment campaign to draw Europeans to Mus- lim peripheries so as to develop and civilize them. These two campaigns contradicted each other somewhat. While the first (indigenization) was anticolonial, the second (European resettlement) followed the path of settler colonialism.85 Officially it was explained that since there were not enough qualified local workers, the recruitment of Europeans to the peripheries aimed to solve the cadre problem. As a result, republican-level operations with headquarters in capital cities and organizations that needed highly qualified staff (e.g., engineers, scientists, agronomists, planners, professors) employed more Europeans.86 The Communist Party asked Europeans to move to Central Asia to help the state build communism in its underdevel- oped peripheries. European specialists were praised for their heroic movement to the Muslim periphery. The newspaper Kommunist Tadzhikistana wrote in the article “Against Great Power Chauvinism and Local National- ism” that it was indeed a Russian worker (russkii rabochii) who was essential in solving the most difficult questions.87 It stated that the Russian worker approached the question of transition from capitalism to socialism by taking central control in Moscow into his hands and liberating peripheries of other nationalities (inonatsional’nye okrainy, i.e., non-Russian peripheries) from tsarist Russia. The Russian worker, therefore, was the major hero (and the focus) in the Soviet Union. Without him anticolonial liberation would not be possible. However, in this anticolonial endeavor he and other Euro- peans could turn into chauvinists. Examples of chauvinist behavior were identified as Europeans securing better salaries and housing, or refusal to employ local cadres.88 Such behavior, the newspaper argued, could produce the impression of colonialism among the local population. To deal with contradictory policies of indigenization and European settlement in Tajikistan, but also to disqualify the latter as colonialism, several tactics were undertaken. The first was to draw a connection between 132 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS great power chauvinism and local nationalism.Th e antichauvinism campaign in Tajikistan was closely linked to local nationalism, such that trials against Europeans also involved trials against Muslims. A 1935 trial against chauvinism–nationalism in Kuibyshevsk (Aral, southern Tajikistan) is a telling example of how the link was put into practice. It began with a group of thirteen “indigenous” tractor drivers (traktoristov korennogo naseleniia) of the Kuibyshev MTS who refused to appear at work, the investigation reported, due to “counterrevolutionary agitation, sabotage, and organization of counterrevolutionary activity by anti-Soviet and other class alien groups” of European workers.89 A group of European workers was accused of discriminating against Muslim workers, thus sabotaging the Plan fulfillment campaign. Importantly, however, both Europeans and Muslims were equally accused of being instigators of the same problematic behavior. Eu- ropeans were cited for initiating disturbances, Muslims for carrying them out. Among the accused were Sakhno Moisei, a supposed kulak who fled Ukraine during dekulakization in 1930 and worked as a mechanic at the Kuibyshev MTS; his wife (an MTS accountant) and two daughters (MTS accountant assistants); Korostelev Trofim (an MTS tractor driver); and Nasyrov Khabib and Sotretdinov Mirosh, Muslim tractor drivers. Sakhno, investigators claimed, did not hire Tajik interns and purposely performed substandard tractor repairs. Moreover, a worker named Korastashev told Muslim kolkhoz members that the food contained pork so he could save meals for Europeans. He also physically attacked Muslim workers who openly criticized Europeans. For her part, Sakhno Moisei’s wife was accused of not issuing food coupons to Muslims. But Muslims were also accused of anti-Soviet behavior. The police claimed Sotretdinov purposefully did not fulfill his plans and rallied Mus- lims to leave work in protest against the Europeans’ behavior. Crucially, as a result of European–Muslim tensions, the brigade fulfilled less than 50 percent of the Plan. This was interpreted as counterrevolutionary activity for both Europeans and Muslims. In 1936 the Special Field Commission of the High Court sentenced Europeans to eight to ten years of labor camps. Muslims received roughly half that term. Another strategy to deal with contradictory policies of European settlement and indigenization was to publicly proclaim European chauvinism to be more dangerous than local nationalism.90 Soviet leaders explained in Tajikistan that local nationalism was the result of backwardness and a lack of education, whereas chauvinism was the result of dominance. This standpoint was contradictory to earlier arguments made in Russia, yet AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 133

Figur e 5.1. “To the Procurator of the Tajik SSR about great power chauvinism and local nationalism according to instructors’ investigations and the press. Through the newspaper Krasnyi Oktiabr’ [Red October], the Vakhshstroi [Vakhsh Water Chanel Building Organization] workers of local nationalities (of the Tajik SSR) wrote to the All-Union Council of Nationalities about the fact that the Vakhshstroi administration ignores the interests of workers of indigenous nationalities and violates rights of working nationalities [sic].” The note exemplifies a case of a “correspondent” denunciation by Tajik workers against the Vakhshstroi administration by using the “nationalism-chauvinism” formula. From Bogdanov, instructor of Presidium TsIK SSSR. “Perepiska s Prokura- turoi Soiuza,” TsGA RT, f. 329, op. 18, d. 90, l. 109. also a safe tactic to explain interethnic tensions in the context of the Soviet grip on Tajikistan during the First and Second Five-Year Plans. First, the argument that it was European chauvinism that sparked local nationalism depoliticized local nationalism. Local nationalism, in that view, was not resistance against Soviet rule, but rather the result of the wrong behavior of some of its representatives. Moreover, such a reading aimed to neutralize local antagonism. By symbolically allying with “locals” against European “chauvinists,” Soviet central officials were making a statement. It was not the Soviet state per se, the argument went, that sparked anticolonial resis- 134 AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS tance, but rather some of its representatives, which the Soviet state would punish. The antichauvinism campaign was also used to produce an image of a good, anticolonial Russian (and the Soviet state generally) juxtaposed with a bad European. European specialists were needed to work in the peripheries, and the campaign, paradoxically, indirectly aimed to legitimize their move. Significantly, leading communists at the republican level—including secretaries of the republican Party committees, councils of people’s commissars, control commissions, the secret police, and judiciary—were not, or extremely rarely, accused of great power chauvinism. This is a big difference from the 1933–1934 campaign against local bourgeois nationalists, which purged local cultural and political elites. Top Europeans were not publicly accused of chauvinism because it could jeopardize the Moscow center. The use of imperialist and nationalist accusations and the difference in this campaign’s application bore a strategic logic. It was used as a tool to pacify and disempower actors at different levels and at particular periods of time. The onslaught against great power chauvinism spoke equally to Muslims as well as to Europeans, who could be reminded of their unstable position, either as new liberated subjects or as civilizers. By punishing those individual “chauvinists,” Soviet leaders signaled that what they built was indeed a just, modern, and civilized regime, which punished all expressions of nationalism, whether on the part of Europeans or locals. Notably, accusations of chauvinism and nationalism were connected to the realization of the First and Second Five-Year Plans. When in the 1920s Europeans were invited to work in Tajikistan, they were valued as representatives of a higher European civilization. Tajikistan, on the other hand, was celebrated as an oppressed nation that had been liberated, poised to lead avant-garde revolutionary work alongside its Afghan, Indian, and Persian “brothers.” Against the various Plan failures, the backgrounds of Europeans and Tajiks were used as scapegoats for the state’s failures. Ironi- cally, purges of European chauvinists and national elites were coupled with the rhetoric of “affirmative action.” Both were accused of undermining the Soviet state’s anticolonial attempts by discriminating and repressing the population. This rhetoric attempted to conceal the fact that discrimination and repression were institutionalized by the Soviet state itself. Accusations in nationalism and chauvinism allowed for localizing larger regime problems. The campaign’s message was that it was individual people, not the Soviet state or its idea, that sparked nationalism, chauvinism, and any kind of oppression. To prove this, the true, good Soviet AN EMPIRE OF CHAUVINISTS AND NATIONALISTS 135 officials promised to punish, eliminate, and warn all potentially antagonistic people, whether Muslims or Europeans. While differences between Europeans and Muslims were nurtured, they similarly experienced their mission to fulfill state quotas. They were equally made responsible for the collectivization and industrialization campaigns and were subject to persecution if they failed. Just as in the countryside, workers in industrial locations were prosecuted for industrial failures. European accountants were prosecuted for corruption and the slow transfer of money; Europe- an construction workers and engineers were executed if buildings were not completed on time and/or had defects.91 Objective reasons for failure were rarely considered. Behind the failure of each plan, central officials explained, sat a class enemy who purposely stalled the development of the revolution.92 Personalized rule was based on personalized “networks,” but also on personalized scapegoating. CHAPTER SIX

AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES

THE MAY INSTRUCTION AND THE “RETURN TO LAW”

While political police agents1 were interrogating (without judicial protection and most likely using torture) the network of the supposed counterrevolutionary nationalists led by Maksum and Khodzhibaev in Tajikistan (see Chapter Five), top communist leaders in Moscow—Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich, Akulov, Vyshinskii, Kalinin, and Molotov (but not Stalin)— declared at the All-Union Congress of the Procuracy that the Soviet state was finally ready to adopt a legal system.2 At the same time that the secret police rampaged throughout the Soviet Union and tortured “bourgeois nationalists,” Soviet top officials discussed and publicly criticized the use of extrajudicial repressions by the political police. Mikhail Kalinin, chair of the Union’s Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), argued that the main problem with the secret police was that it purged without investigation, relying only on the confession of the guilty. However, Kalinin accurately noted, the OGPU could not do otherwise as this was their task, adding: “Today we have other tasks.”3 Molotov, a member of the Council of People’s Commissars and one of Stalin’s closest men, told the procurators, with some exaggeration: “The special rights of the OGPU in the judicial field have been canceled, restricted to administrative functions, and the corre-

136 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 137 sponding rights have been transferred to the ordinary branches of justice.”4 Although the top leadership questioned the lawlessness of the collectivization process, all were cautious when criticizing the OGPU. Mention of the OGPU’s oppressive measures was always followed by an assurance that it was not the fault of the OGPU but rather of the entire structure that led to the mass abuse of violence and disregard of law. Session members were called upon to reinstate the law faculties at the universities and train more legal officials to help the Soviet state and society enter a new legal era. When Soviet leaders openly declared the need for law and criticized the lawlessness of the First Five-Year Plan, they were met with Stalin’s support. He issued an instruction, signed by Molotov on May 8, 1933, demanding that the massive extralegal repression cease.5 The May Instruction, at last, specifically criticized extralegal repressions against peasants, not state enemies, who, it was implied, carried out these repressions in the first place. The May Instruction said that state institutions of justice were now to play a greater role in the class struggle in the countryside. Because, the argument went, by the end of the First Five-Year Plan the Soviet state had grown strong and stable, the need for extraordinary, extrajudicial measures had passed. The Instruction forbade mass expulsion and mass forced resettlement of peasants, the arrest of officials (responsible workers) without legal grounds, and investigative arrests prior to trial for “petty crimes.”6 Th People’s Commissariat for Justice, the OGPU, and the Main Militia Ad- ministration (Glavnoe Upravlenie Militsii) (except for camps and colonies) had to adhere to an arrest limit reduced from 800,000 to 400,000 imprisonments.7 Importantly, while political police would still deal with political crimes—such as those violating the law of August 7, 1932, against socialist property—the Instruction mandated stronger supervision by institutions of justice, that is, procuracy.8 How should we understand this radical change? What did Soviet leadership, and particularly Stalin, mean by their promises to institute the rule of law in the wake of the tragedies of collectivization? Did the May Instruc- tion acknowledge the leaders’ belief that collectivization had been carried out wrongly and illegally? The decreased grain quota (from 18.1 to 14.9 million poods) at the start of the Second Five-Year Plan might suggest this. Yet this number was still high and obligatory—it had to be realized at all costs. Did Soviet leadership think it was convenient to take time and resources to eliminate oppressive, extralegal organizations, which constituted the basis of the First Five-Year Plan? Before considering these questions, two immediate formal results of 138 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES the May Instruction should be examined. First is the centralization and relative strengthening of the Soviet procuracy. Before the campaign, the Soviet procuracy’s major task was to supervise the implementation of a Soviet legal system throughout the Soviet Union.9 Introduced in 1922, the main function of the republican procuracy was to monitor legal institutions.10 Established in each republic, procurators were charged with the task of supervising the law’s universal application. Among its immediate responsibilities was to observe the conduct of preliminary investigations, check the accuracy of arrests, revise sentences, supervise the legality of decrees issued by various state agencies, and so on. Importantly, republican procurators were now proclaimed independent of local Party officials and were subject to supervision only by the Justice Commissariat. Prior to 1933 procuracies submitted to the Justice Commissariat; after Stalin’s May Instruction, the USSR General Procuracy was established to directly supervise procurators throughout the Soviet Union and bypass the Justice Commissariat. Republican procurators would now communicate directly with and be subordinate to the General Procuracy, not the republican Jus- tice Commissariats. Independent of the Justice Commissariat, procurators’ (official) aim was to identify any breach of the law by an institution or official.11 But although this responsibility might have suggested the empowerment of law, the reform actually caused a further weakening of institutions of justice. Judges were already dependent on Party and police officials; an additional supervisory body weakened an already fragile justice system. The chair of the Justice Commissariat, Nikolai Krylenko, complained to Stalin in February 1934 that if the justice system did not undergo a serious reform, there would be no need for the Justice Commissariat whatsoever.12 The second change that resulted from the legal campaign of 1933 was the transformation of the OGPU into the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs). The reform’s official purpose was to limit the OGPU’s extrajudicial powers; indeed, just one day before the May Instruction was issued, the Politburo forbade the OGPU to issue death sentences, except in the far eastern region.13 One of the most significant consequences of the First Five-Year Plan was the expansion of the political police, which was crucial for the conduct of extraordinary and extralegal purges, repressions, and deportations of state enemies during collectivization and industrialization drives. The May Instruction limited the political police and sub- jugated citizens to the new procuracy, except in cases involving specific regime crimes such as terrorism or counterrevolutionary organization. Leading Bolsheviks, except for Stalin, argued that judicial functions should AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 139 be returned to the institutions of justice while the new NKVD should implement sentences.14 In March 1934 Lazar Kaganovich and Valerian Kuib- yshev (both Politburo members) and Genrikh Iagoda (head of the OGPU) proposed that OGPU give up all previous functions except for handling counterrevolutionary and state crimes. In retrospect, the proposed changes seem surreal. Since we know that during the Second Five-Year Plan repressions did not cease and OGPU/ NKVD powers grew stronger, one is inclined to say the 1933 “return to law” campaign was a populist move to calm striking,fl eeing, and fighting peasants, workers, and low-ranking officials throughout the Soviet Union.15 But the May Instruction was not extensively communicated in newspapers. Moreover, its promises of the “return to law” were short-lived. Already in July 1933, just a couple of months after the May Instruction was issued and the OGPU was forbidden to issue death sentences, secret permissions renewed the OGPU’s powers for extrajudicial executions and death sentences, mass deportations, and mass resettlements.16 In August 1933 the OGPU was granted the right to send those sentenced to over two years to labor camps, although previously the limit was three years. While Stalin’s May Instruction said that pregnant women, women with nursing babies, the handicapped, and the elderly could not be sent to camps, in August 1933 another decree reestablished the practice.17 Thus, while the May Instruc- tion aimed to limit the OGPU, several summer decrees overturned it. Why was the May Instruction issued, and what were its aims? If the campaign was nothing more than a populist step and an illusion, why was it necessary in the first place? Was it not dangerous to admit weakness in such a precarious political situation? Did legal debates in Moscow reach peripheral regions? If so, what consequences did they carry for judicial and OGPU/NKVD officials?

LEGAL FEVER IN TAJIKISTAN

Throughout 1934, 1935, and 1936 Tajik NKVD (previously GPU) officials and procurators replayed the Moscow debates over the authority of Soviet law and legal institutions. Procurators attacked the NKVD for excessive oppression (particularly in accordance with the law of August 7, 1932), interference in procurators’ work, and disregard of the procuracy’s authority.18 The procurator for NKVD affairs, Kukharenko, pioneered the crusade against the NKVD in Tajikistan.19 In April 1935 he and procurator Lebedev wrote their patron Andrei Vyshinskii in Moscow that relations between 140 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES the Tajik NKVD and the procuracy were aberrant. Dozens of peripheral procurators complained that the NKVD ignored them and excluded them from the investigative process by withholding material.20 The Tajik procurator’s attacks mimicked Vyshinskii’s December 1934 attacks on the central NKVD several months earlier in both language and content. He argued that the NKVD falsified evidence, often using torture, sabotage, and counterrevolutionary actions to demonstrate its efficiency.21 The Tajik procurators mastered the language of Moscow’s May Instruction and, as advised, used it as a weapon against their colleagues with the political police. But the plan quickly backfired. Sergei Tarasiuk, head of the Tajik NKVD, did not have to search for original arguments, instead copying his patron Iagoda’s attacks against Vyshinskii. In June 1935 Iagoda accused Vyshinskii and the procuracy of issuing lenient sentences for counterrevolutionary crimes that supposedly thwarted police work. Iagoda’s statement proposed the Politburo transfer all cases that dealt with more than three years of imprisonment exclusively to the NKVD, which proved to work more efficiently than the slow procuracy.22 Thus, Tarasiuk wrote to the procurator Lebedev, the head of the High Court Mamedov, and the Justice Commis- sariat Shirinov that from January until July 1935, the Tajik NKVD sent 507 cases—1,004 people—to legal institutions. However, courts processed only 103 cases involving 207 people. Tarasiuk then demanded that the All- Union NKVD (Iagoda) and the USSR procurator (Vyshinskii) make sure Tajik courts processed cases quickly and immediately (the day after a trial) report to the Tajik NKVD.23 That same month, echoing developments in Moscow, the Tajik NKVD ordered the Tajik Justice Commissariat and Ta- jik procuracy to organize show trials for embezzlement (rastrata) by trade organizations.24 Tarasiuk argued that the NKVD was effective not only in quickly and effectively dealing with crimes, but also in assisting and enabling the successful implementation of agricultural campaigns. In November 1934, he declared that Party cleansing of regional committee secretaries substan- tially improved cotton harvesting.25 The arrival of an NKVD worker, he noted of the Kurgan-Tiube region, forced peasants to work more intense- ly.26 The Kurgan-Tiube Party Committee secretary asked NKVD agents to expel “evil anti-Soviet elements” from the region in order to speed up the cotton harvest. However, while NKVD officials expressed full confidence in the organization’s superiority over the current institutions of justice, it was still publicly accountable for excesses. While suggesting that physical threats were effective tools for cotton harvesting, Tarasiuk admitted that AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 141 district secretaries and political police agents tended to replace leadership with oppression and excess.27 In the Lakai region NKVD agents arrested peasants without concrete evidence; district committee secretaries in Iangi-Bazar together with the NKVD arrested kolkhoz members; in the Stalinabad region NKVD agents issued arrests to the head of a district Party committee.28 Tarasiuk’s confessions about the NKVD’s abuse of power were inspired by Iagoda’s admitting similar abuse had occurred during the NKVD— procuracy debates. Nevertheless, Tarasiuk, also in accordance with Iagoda, pressed for the ultimate necessity of harsh punishment even if it entailed excess. This is because, the argument went, sabotage by class aliens presented the greatest danger to the cotton campaign. Kolkhozes that failed to carry out the plans were sprinkled with dangerous elements that inten- tionally destroyed cotton. Tarasiuk reported in the autumn of 1934 with an element of satisfaction that the Tajik NKVD had arrested 267 people (134 by institutions of justice and 170 by NKVD): 91 for sabotage, 96 for wrecking (vreditel’stvo), 58 for theft, etc.29 Of those arrested, 133 were reported to be “socially alien” (bais and wealthy peasants) and 134 “socially close” (peasants and workers). Among the arrested were 52 kolkhoz chairs. Tarasiuk’s general message reflected the general NKVD line: although the NKVD’s punishments sometimes did exceed legal procedures, in general they were effective and necessary. Moreover, the NKVD was the only institution that ensured collectivization, as regional officials could not be trusted. Periph- eral communists, Tarasiuk argued, lied about the existence of kulaks in their regions because they were connected through family ties.30 This, he argued, led to the undertaxation of kulaks and overtaxation of the poor.31 While reporting on cotton sowing and harvesting he felt wholly responsible for the task since, he wrote, nothing could be expected from judicial officials, a group that was often sprinkled (zasoreny) with bais and traders.32 Without stating so openly, he implied that Tajik NKVD agents (who by and large consisted of outsiders to the region, i.e., Europeans) were more objective than local Party representatives and judicial workers, and thus could guarantee real Party control.33 With the help of the NKVD’s condemnation of the procuracy and institutions of justice, the legal campaign was accompanied by repression of procurators and judges. Headed by Piliavskii, the Moscow Procuracy Inspection Commission to Tajikistan in December 1934 stated that the 1933 cleansing of the judicial system revealed it was littered with “socially dangerous elements.”34 During several months between late 1934 and late 1935, 142 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES fifteen court workers were put on trial and dismissed, mostly for corruption, appropriation of material evidence, and issuing sentences according to personal motives.35 The cleansings led to a decrease in the number of legal officials in Tajikistan: thirty-nine procurator positions stayed vacant in forty-five regions; fifteen procurators in the republic had up to one year of education, and only three had formal legal education.36 In 1935 further cleansing vacated nineteen procurator offices and left thirteen people’s courts unstaffed.37 This desperate picture was only worsened by procurators’ material poverty. In the Hisor region the court was literally located in a dirt hole (sud pomeshchaetsia bukval’no v zemlianoi iame). Unguarded court and procuracy buildings led to the theft of criminal cases.38 The chief procurator and his deputies lived in their offices because they did not receive apartments.39 The vice procurator of Tajikistan described the judicial workers’ situation to Vyshinskii in late 1934:

A lack of authority influences our work. We cannot get apartments or food. We have to eat in chaikhanas (teahouses) together with criminals, the dekulakized, etc. We do not look like state workers. . . . Even the Communications Department turned the electricity off in our buildings because the electricity bills were not paid. Procurators are constantly being mobilized for harvest campaigns and so on. Comrade Vyshinskii, you must understand the difficulty of our situation. . . . Your warning about putting me on trial for not fulfilling your proposals is not surprising, since I can expect to be fired for allegations being put forward against my spotless personality and put on trial. What is worse is that a strong desire to leave this job for another republic arose in me just like in anyone who comes here under your orders . . . Please do not consider this letter as whining; it is simply a report about the context of our work here that prevents us from fulfilling your, Akulov’s, and the vice procurator’s proposals.40

Although they suffered from understaffing and inadequate funding, procurators in Tajikistan imitated heads in Moscow by announcing a new legal era for Tajikistan in which they vied for a special role. The special procurator who observed NKVD affairs, Kukharenko, declared that a procurator was the only person (litso) in the region who defended the interests of the USSR.41 According to Kukharenko, a procurator enjoyed legal immunity in the process of criminal investigations, dismissals, and appointments, and nobody had the right to exercise his rights without a corresponding AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 143 document from the republican procurator.42 Referring to Stalin’s May Instruction, Kukharenko demanded that procurators sanction all NKVD arrests.43 Thus, when Kukharenko complained to Zagvozdin, one of Tajik- istan’s leading NKVD officials, that the Sary Assiia NKVD had arrested the district’s procurator and kept him in prison together with the kulaks whom the district procurator had jailed earlier, Zagvozdin called for the immediate arrest of those NKVD workers and criticized his colleagues for imitating the NKVD by attempting to sentence the maximum number of people.44 He said: “We can imprison half of the region, but we do not need to. . . . Punishments must be infrequent, but precise. . . . We need to imprison only the most harmful.”45 While Kukharenko proclaimed and fought for procurators’ immunity, he also argued that procurators who did not follow his instructions were to be punished and “expelled with a burning iron” (kalenym zhelezom).46 But procurators’ complaints about the NKVD’s despotism and their corresponding powerlessness fell on deaf ears. The NKVD responded by attacking procurators for despotic behavior that disrupted Soviet work. In July 1935, NKVD agent Lapin from the Garm region complained to Tara- siuk that the regional procurator, Zhikharev, had attacked the NKVD by declaring that arrests could be made only with his, the procurator’s, ap- proval.47 Shortly after arriving in the region, Lapin reported, procurator Zhikharev drove a wedge between the NKVD and the procuracy. Lapin complained that the procurator considered himself the highest controlling official, would not submit to anyone, and considered everyone his subordinates. Zhikharev, Lapin reported, did not want to go to the district Party committee, insisting its members come to see him instead. For Lapin, the procurator’s behavior was “childish” because it discredited the NKVD, the Justice Commissariat, and himself personally. As a result nobody wanted to travel with him, and he isolated himself. Similarly, procurator Kucherbaev of the Shakhrinau region was reported to arrest people and take bribes for their release, while the regional procurator in the Shurabad and Kangurt district was said to have used physical violence and imprisoned a communications officer who demanded he pay for his telephone calls.48 The head of the Communications Department wrote a letter to Suren Shadunts, the current head of the Tajik Communist Party, complaining that the procurator had cast aside all restraint and pushed the limits of revolutionary legality.49 NKVD workers often portrayed themselves as the sole observers of the law since, they argued, procurators and jurists were too corrupt and 144 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES arbitrary. Usually, the former complained that procurators released prisoners whom the NKVD had imprisoned at random and without due process; procurators responded that this was a necessary measure in the fight against the NKVD’s own illegal, arbitrary actions.50 In January 1935 an NKVD official wrote to the Tajik Central Executive Committee and republican procurator Lebedev that in the Kuliab region, a procurator had rudely accosted a local Party secretary, asking him “what he was doing there.” The secretary ran away, afraid of being arrested. Only an NKVD officer could return the secretary safely to his workplace.51 In September 1935 Guliamshaev, a peripheral procurator, complained that the Kaganovich region had no procurators and as a result women were being raped without consequences. The NKVD, it was reported, was the only institution to do something about this.52 Attacks on the procuracy came from sources beyond the NKVD. The central Party committee and regional committee secretaries continuously accused procurators of lacking an understanding of the local situation, corruption, and the arbitrary use of violence. Shadunts, the head of the Com- munist Party in Tajikistan from 1935 to 1936, warned that the procurators who did not process cases on time or fully engage in agricultural schemes, sometimes even impeding them by issuing lenient sentences, would be dismissed.53 Party secretaries in the region imitated Shadunts’s behavior, criticizing local procurators for corruption and demanding all criminal cases begin with secretarial sanction.54 Thus, in May 1935 the Party secretary of the Nau district wrote to the Justice Commissariat that the local procurator, Alimbaev, although educated, could not manage to “assemble a circle of acquaintances and comrades” so that he lacked authority among local officials and could not fulfill his duties.55 He demanded a replacement. Another complained to Shadunts about the procurator of the Stalinabad region, Aul’bekov, who imprisoned and tortured kolkhoz members in order to claim bribes for their release. Aul’bekov also took food from stores without paying, threatening imprisonment when questioned.56 The Khorog District Party Committee secretary Schmidt complained that procurators initiated cases against many people, but the lack of investigators meant they could not prosecute. Schmidt wrote that all of Khorog demanded: “Prosecute or rehabilitate us.”57 Procurators also attacked district committee secretaries who continued to mobilize procurators, investigators, and judges to carry out agricultural campaigns.58 When accusing district committee secretaries, procurators, as usual, demanded immediate trial.59 Thus, in February 1935, the procu- AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 145 rator Konev from the Baumanad region wrote to the deputy head procurator Petrov that the secretary of the district Party committee interfered in his work and demanded that all kinds of investigations be sanctioned, threatening to expel the procurator from the region if he did not comply.60 The head of the Justice Commissariat Rozenberg complained to Akulov in 1935 that the republican Party’s head, Shadunts himself, had ordered jailing without any legal process.61 Interestingly, when a procurator of the Khait region complained about the NKVD’s interference and the corruption of local investigators and judges, Deputy Head Procurator Petrov demanded that the procurator address the district Party committee when dealing with his problems.62 When he later wrote to Vyshinskii in 1935 complaining about the fact that local district committees employed and dismissed procurators as they wished, he asked him about the real status of the procurators in the republic: “What confuses me is under whose jurisdiction is the procuracy here, except for the all-union procurator?”63 It seems that nobody could answer his question.64 Formally, in June 1933 procurators were empowered to observe the legal implementation of Soviet laws and enforce those whenever they felt they were not being followed. However, they were given very little practical means to do so. More importantly, other officials similarly received instructions about their ultimate power and responsibility for plan fulfillment and political developments in their regions, just as the procuracy did. All felt they were the institution with the highest priority and responsibility. But although procurators were officially independent from the Justice Com- missariat, they were still subject to the control of the Party committees, both central and regional, and were often powerless when dealing with local situations—when the NKVD and district Party secretaries exercised full political control of their regions. While the May Instruction promised power to the procurators, there were no practical steps made to support its text with action. Procurators were still underfunded, understaffed, and subject to political purges both internally and externally. The May Instruc- tion (and further instructions that claimed the superiority of one institution over another) sparked the struggle between individuals (and their subordinates in the periphery) that claimed their institution’s supremacy over that of law and order. Contradicting declarations of empowerment obscured who was in charge of any given situation. So it seemed to many that there was neither law nor order. In his analysis of the May Instruction, Peter Solomon argues that the legal campaign of the early 1930s and attempts to limit the OGPU/NKVD 146 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES should be seriously considered because it was Stalin’s genuine intent to stabilize the country after collectivization by handling “political challeng- es through courts and according to laws.”65 His analysis relies on written records of investigators’ salary increases, introduction of the minimum obligatory training for legal officials, and the transfer of OGPU personnel to legal institutions such as regional courts and procuracies. However, the reorganization of the OGPU under the formal framework of the NKVD proved to be a largely formal endeavor that did not entail structural changes. David Shearer doubted Solomon’s conclusions, arguing that “[e]xtra- judicial repression was so thoroughly intertwined with the everyday operation of the police system by the mid-1930s, even regarding relatively petty crimes, that reforms of the judicial system ultimately made little difference in the overall direction of Soviet criminal justice.”66 Moreover, the reorganization of the OGPU allowed it (under the new formal framework of the NKVD) to “control all aspects of policing and penal policy within the borders of the USSR.”67 Thus, the legal campaign launched in 1933 was not simply a window-dressing campaign, but a move to further strengthen the OGPU/NKVD. While it would be naïve to think that the May Instruction represented attempts at political change in the Soviet Union, it is important to understand the kind of communication it forged and the political effects it had on state institutions. Hence, rather than analyzing the contents of the campaign, one needs to pay attention to its implementation and the political dynamics that it sparked. As a political tactic for governance, the campaign aimed at and achieved dimensions not openly stated in its public declarations and documents. The May Instruction campaign generated institutional struggles that were based on denunciations, open and secret. When Tarasiuk, the NKVD head, complained that the head of the republican procuracy, Lebedev, employed a purged communist as a procurator, the latter countered that Tarasiuk was using blackmail, a kompromat.68 He explained that the employed procurator was wrongly punished, allowing that Lebedev could legitimately employ him. Lebedev was irritated both because the NKVD head had questioned his integrity and by the unfair effort of his blackmail attempts. Blackmail became a regular tool employed not only by the NKVD, but by officials throughout the Soviet Union and Tajikistan. The overwhelming number of complaints that various officials levied against each other, in turn, fostered the need for further commissions, inspections, and controls that eventually resulted in further cleansings and purges throughout 1933, 1935, and 1936.69 Thus, while by the fall of AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 147

1934 top legal officials began to struggle over law and legality unabated, the struggle between the NKVD, the procuracy, and the Justice Commissariat continued into 1936. The NKVD and procuracy continued to accuse each other of “illegal” behavior. Although thousands of inmates were occasionally released and basic rights reinstated, by mid-1936 the NKVD fully restored the right to deliver extrajudicial punishment.70 While it is evident that the May Instruction only nominally empowered the procuracy and disempowered the NKVD for a short period of time, what has been missing from these debates is that by 1934 procurators understood themselves to be not simply followers of the law, but agents placed above the law. Thus, the institutional struggle that took place in the mid-1930s between judicial and political police officials should not be understood simply in terms of the struggle between law and arbitrary violence, but rather as a conflict between representatives of institutions, each believing they had the right to decide, implement, and represent law. Given the context in which they were operating—poverty, a lack of education, dependence on Party secretaries and NKVD agents, and, crucially, vulnerability to purges coupled with the responsibility to realize plans—procurators ultimately sought not so much to legally limit the NKVD or Party secretaries (they realized this was impossible) but rather to acquire their powers. Procurators did not question their own right to act arbitrarily and enforce laws as they saw fit. Procurator for NKVD Affairs Kukharenko’s complaint about the district procurators imitating NKVD agents revealed an unpleasant truth: true power lay with those who were physically empowered to carry out formal duties. Gaining NKVD powers was therefore logical for the republican procurator, Lebedev, as well. In June 1935 he asked the Tajik NKVD to supply the procuracy with revolvers. The Tajik NKVD, unsurprisingly, responded that they did not have any to give them.71 At this stage procurators did not question that plan fulfillment was designated as their ultimate goal and personal responsibility.72 When in 1935 the Tajik Plan was not realized, the Justice Commissariat and procuracy had to openly acknowledge that the “blame is on us.”73 By the early 1930s legal officials were socialized to view power as ultimately personal and arbitrary, which was the crucial difference to the 1920s.74 And it could not have been otherwise: laws were still issued at random, legal officials were not educated, and institutions of justice still lacked the personnel and finances to gain authority in their regions. More importantly, judicial officials were still held responsible for Plan realization. When struggling with the NKVD and the executive committee, Tajik procurators turned to 148 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES

Vyshinskii for help. NKVD workers addressed Iagoda as their patron. The struggle between the two institutions was based on the struggle between two individuals who were given contradicting information about their roles. In Tajikistan it was expressed through the struggle between procurators, Party secretaries, and the NKVD, who each felt they embodied Soviet law, power, and control. The May Instruction was followed by the 1936 Constitution, which was also designed by Stalin and set a context for mutual denunciations. If the May Instruction divided officials struggling to represent the state and law, the Stalin Constitution produced a wave of mass complaints and an outcry from the population against all officials.75 Leaving aside the question of whether officials or population groups sincerely believed in the promises, they used any chance to fight against actions they perceived as unjust or to gain rights/goods they felt they could claim. Legal campaigns laid the foundation for further purges in 1936 and 1937, based on the rhetoric of laws, “order,” and “rights.” Official Soviet language and laws became everybody’s resource to see through interests, authority, and influence on the part of central officials and their subordinates. Their attempts and struggles were conditioned by their (in)ability to outdo their own physical and political constraints.

MOTORS FOR VILLAGE COMMUNISM

The rule of law rhetoric was a tactic between the First and the Second Five-Year Plans to cleanse and rotate officials in the center and peripheries. Under the pretext of correcting mistakes of the First Five-Year Plan and preparation for a more effective Second Five-Year Plan, new leaders were identified and new institutions created while old officials and institutions were purged. For Tajikistan, the Politburo ordered Party envoys Karl Bauman of the Central Asian Bureau, Abdullo Rakhimbaev, and Grigory Broido to move to Tajikistan to check on the mishaps of the First Five-Year Plan and the resulting cleansing of Party cadres (see Chapter Five). The order read: “The Central Executive Committee believes that the [O]GPU in Central Asia did not consider the local specificity of Tajikistan and in fighting with anti-Soviet elements made mistakes in an abuse of power that led to massive arrests.”76 The troika was empowered to reverse the OGPU’s arrests and was ordered to “personally lead the work of the Central Execu- tive Committee and regulate all Party and Soviet affairs.”77 The inspection troop subsequently replaced Tajikistan’s leadership. Grigory Broido took AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 149 over Davud Guseinov’s office and Abdullo Rakhimbaev the People’s Coun- cil of Commissars. The two were made responsible for Tajikistan’s Second Five-Year Plan. The troika’s head, Karl Bauman, was Moscow’s loyal Bol- shevik who was to teach and oversee Broido and Rakhimbaev, newcomers to Tajikistan. In addition to changing the republican leadership, the Politburo instituted a new organ to work and report on the implementation of the Second Five-Year Plan. Stalin, at a plenum of the Central Committee in January 1933 known as the January plenum, which criticized local party officials for failing the First Five-Year Plan, said that village communists did not understand the meaning of the new grain problem and the importance of grain requisitioning. Also, village communists did not look for class enemies in right places. Class enemies, he explained, could seem like “quiet” and “sweet” people who worked as accountants, secretaries, or storekeepers in the kolkhozes and look like loyal kolkhoz members. Since, according to Stalin, village communists could not fulfill the tasks of the Plan, the Party could not rely upon interventions into peasant agriculture; it had to constantly lead it in the fields. To do so, political sectors of the Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) were to organize agricultural work and implement political goals in the fields.78 Originally organized in 1922 to provide the kolkhoz with draft power, agronomists, and seeds, the MTS hence gained political power and the responsibility of controlling the village.79 The institution of the MTS was given high priority throughout the Soviet Union. Valerian Kuibyshev, a Bolshevik since 1904 and one of the most influential and closest of Stalin’s associates, directed the State Planning Committee. In 1934 he became a member of the Politburo and personally traveled to Stalinabad to introduce the importance of the new organ.80 Th powerful inauguration highlighted the MTS role for the central state. The heads of the MTS political sections were tasked as “responsible workers” to fully control the implementation of the Second Five-Year Plan in their village locations. The cleansings of 1933 and 1934 of local officials as bourgeois nationalists prepared the ground for their action.81 As empowered sole rulers in the fields, they did not expect to share power with other, also republican, officials. Thus, political section worker Bas- kakov in 1933 complained that the local district Party committee met and made decisions without him, which he quickly changed (yet he still complained that sometimes consultations were made in his absence).82 When the head of the political sector of the Lakai MTS, Poliakov, decided to organize a trial against a district executive committee and control commission offi- 150 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES cials, who supposedly did not help with the grain requisitioning campaign, a field session with Khodzhibaev, head of the People’s Council of Commis- sars, arrived to rule it. They decided to leave the case open, not repressing local officials. This inaction angered Poliakov, who, referring to Stalin’s speech at the January plenum, hinted at Khodzhibaev’s nonfulfillment of Stalin’s orders.83 Similarly, the Shakhrinau MTS political sector worker Anvarov raged about government officials interfering and reversing legal repressions he had initiated. He invited a control commission to repress a kolkhoz chair, Ismailov, who supposedly lied and impeded the plan fulfillment. Anvarov complained that the secretary of Tajikistan’s Central Committee, Ashurov, decided at the republic plenum to reverse a judicial decision against Ismailov. Under Ashurov’s pressure, Anvarov reported, all the workers who carried out the repression, including the procurator, agreed with Ashurov and acknowledged their “mistakes.” The only person who did not agree was the deputy of the control commission, Sheger. Ashurov’s critique of the repression was followed by another commission organized by Tajikistan’s Executive Committe [TsIK], which released the repressed. Then, after further complaints from MTS, the procurator of Tajikistan’s High Court, Korobka, together with Ashurov, visited Shakhrinau to review the case. They decided that the original sentence, while necessary, was too harsh. Thus, they kept the original punishment but released the kolkhoz chair so that the “executed” stayed free.84 MTS political sectors’ chairs were tasked to teach, organize, and lead local officials and they did not want to share their power with republican officials because they were considered responsible workers sent directly by the “center.” Unlike traveling judicial or government committees that only occasionally visited villages, MTS political sector workers were tasked to permanently observe and look for enemies in the field.85 They were ordered to organize cavalry raids in kolkhozes to check how they ran agricultural campaigns, such as how they took care of the machinery, cattle, and so forth.86 Crucially, in 1935 they received their own telegraph stations, which were directly connected to Stalinabad, Tashkent, and Moscow so that they could report on issues directly to central institutions and ultimately to Moscow.87 Repressing enemies was one of their primary obligations, for which MTS political-sector workers were judged. Not repressing workers would render their work suspicious and they could be accused of collaboration with “corrupt” local officials. Hence, Lakai MTS political-sector worker Poliakov reported repressing some lower-level officials for nonaction and anti-Soviet attitudes.88 Similarly, Mussakhodzhaev of the Kuliab MTS AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 151 reported in November 1934 that he had repressed assignees of the local Party administration who “produced chaos,” such as organizing a wedding paid for by the local administration. He also reported imprisoning, for two years, a certain Abdul Aminov for not watering and plowing cotton fields. He imprisoned the chair of the Naukadam kolkhoz, Mullo Alimov, for six years for not writing down peasants’ workdays, calling it sabotage. Finally, Mussakhodzhaev reported imprisoning a certain Ismail Mata for one year and three months for stealing seven kilograms of cotton.89 MTS political-sector chairs were assigned to act as “big brothers” to their village communists and educate them (and, if necessary, repress them as well). Political sectors consisted of six staff members: a head of the political section, two deputies (one of whom was also a member of the NKVD), an assistant in leading work among the Komsomol and women, and a newspaper editor. Most MTS political-sector heads were Europeans from large Russian cities and many had Red Army backgrounds. Almost half had a higher education and 80 percent had over twelve years of work experience in Party organizations. The MTS special department chairs were officially subordinate directly to the Political Administration of the National Ministry of Agriculture (Narkomzem), which was controlled by the Party.90 The political sectors were not subordinate to village Party committees and were turned into permanent central Party representatives in the agricultural fields.91 They organized local newspapers (see Chapter Seven); village cavalries92 to oversee sowing, watering, and harvesting; and Komsomol and Party events; and reported on Soviet officials, female emancipation, and other issues. Akin to the OGPU/NKVD they were granted powers to force peasants to work, extort grain, and repress them. They were also paid relatively well for their work. In 1934 a Kurgan-Tiube MTS political sector worker reported receiving 21 kilograms (kg) of wheat, 2 kg of meat, 900 grams (g) of oil, 900 g of animal fat, noodles, vegetables, 1 kg of sugar, and 16 kg of rice per month. Those who had children also received 1 liter of milk a day.93 This was a considerable wage considering the reports of hunger among the population, but also among judicial officials. When they arrived in villages, MTS officials expressed outrage about the work of their fellow communists in the field—uneducated, corrupt, and “fierce beasts.” Thus, a Jilikul MTS political-sector worker complained in November 1933 that local Party officials could not read or write and be- haved like commanders in the fields, not organizers.94 Adopting the language of Stalin’s January speech, which criticized village communists for despotism, they complained that local officials forced peasants to work in 152 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES the military way and did not care about their education. A special assignee of the republic Communist Party, Iakobuv, a Turkmen, killed a thief on the kolkhoz square, arguing that he, Iakubov, was the kolkhoz’s authority (upolnomochennyi kolkhoza). While MTS officials criticized village communists for overusing their office’s powers against peasants, they ultimately had the same goals and used almost the same means: in fall 1933 the MTS political sectors were ordered to solicit grain, cotton, and other agricultural produce from people. The main difference lay in the fact that they were also tasked to expose corrupt officials. But this did not prevent them from obtaining similar results. Several months after they were tasked to improve village work—in spring 1934—they had to confront the outcome of their harvest. The Kuliab political-sector chair Mussakhodzhaev, who reported on the harsh punishment of peasants in autumn, now found himself reporting on the devastating results of the sector’s “good” autumn work.95 Peasants, he reported, were literally dying in the fields; their bodies were lying in ditches; other starving peasants stole from the fields trying to survive. Mussokhodzhaev himself had twice contracted malaria. The situation was, in his words, catastrophic; he did not know what to do. People had no bread, could not work in the fields, and the militia did nothing about it. Similarly, the Shakhrinau MTS political-sector chair Liebknecht reported that workers were in a devastating condition. They received 600 g of bread per day (he later increased this to 800 g) and had no energy to work.96 The Parkhar MTS political-sector workers wrote that resettlers from the mountainous areas were ill and had nowhere to live.97 The Lakai MTS political-sector worker Iskandarov reported that all villages were infected with malaria, and thus could not work and fulfill plans.98 MTS political workers and Soviet central officials faced a deep yet consistent dilemma. The former were sent to lead agricultural campaigns, yet they often did not speak the local languages or understand the local hier- archies or, importantly, anything about agricultural work, such as raising cotton. In 1934 all workers in MTS political sectors were required to study the agricultural manual Sel’khoz mashiny i orudiia (Agricultural machines and tools) to learn how to grow grain.99 They were responsible for the Plan fulfillment, yet, armed with their understanding of the communist spirit and revolutionary consciousness, practically they could be of little use. Some chose to act as discipliners in the field, policing the village communists, but felt alienated and weak. The Shakhrinau MTS political worker Anvarov, for example, wrote to his superior, Krinitskii, in Moscow that 80 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 153 percent of local Party workers were “alien elements”; he, Anvarov, was a lonely fighter in the field; he did not trust the comrades; it was impossible to work alone; nine people from the Party Central Committee had an attitude of “disbelief” and he had no hopes in them.100 Schmidt, the head of the Kanibadam MTS political sector, complained in 1934 that he had problems finding enemies in his region due to the low level of locals’ self-criticism.101 Feeling alienated and disoriented, Schmidt signaled that he had problems finding enemies because people did not see them, or, perhaps worse, lied that there were no enemies. Some MTS political workers decided to work in cooperation with the local officials. Zadnev, a political-sector worker of the Kurgan-Tiube MTS, reported in spring 1934 that Komsomol members overfulfilled plans and generally developed the kolkhoz cultural life.102 He praised local enthusiasm and promised good harvests. Both options—alienation and cooperation— however, were considered problematic for central leaders because, they argued, alienation could lead to inaction on the part of true communists: as lonely fighters in the field they would not be able to achieve anything. But cooperation with the locals could lead to opportunistic collaboration with local enemies and hence the demise of the communist spirit. This is what Karl Bauman taught at a Central Asian meeting of the MTS political-sector workers:

Sometimes we observe the following: [MTS political-sector workers] get acquainted with all the people, all seem to be decent, good people and then they let things get a little too free, they do not act in the Bolshevik spirit, they become too casual, they tap each other’s shoulders, smile pleasantly, drink tea together; then they steal motors, repair things badly, etc. . . . Be conscious. . . . Your eyes must be sharp, but you should not fall into another extreme. Because then you won’t trust anyone and will live like a lonely tiger [laughter]. You must be able to unite all the kolkhoz members, poor, batraks [manual workers], all those who are truthful toward the Soviet state. At the same time you must bite all the swindlers, liars, all those who will fight for the old world, the world of oppression.103

The MTS workers often chose the safest option. They fought with the village communists, denounced and repressed them, but some only on paper. In return—the saga’s twist—they were reprimanded themselves by officials who claimed highest powers. Between 1933 and 1934 Tajikistan’s Party head, Grigory Broido, is a case in point. He was furious about the MTS political 154 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES sectors, which were not under his direct jurisdiction. MTS political-sector workers sent their reports directly to Tashkent’s and Moscow’s MTS sections of the Ministry of Agriculture and the NKVD. Broido argued that the MTS people disturbed the political situation in the countryside as they did not know the region and the people. Using the official rhetoric against “useless paperwork” to work in the villages, Broido masterfully presented MTS sectors as parasitic bureaucrats without communist spirit. He complained that MTS political-sector workers issued inappropriate decrees and gave useless suggestions. He wrote Sergeev, head of the political sector of the Bauman MTS, in 1934:

I warn you that because you do not know the local conditions, you can make a lot of bad mistakes if you do not work in a comradely way with Dadabaev, which I strictly urge you. Stop commanding, change your conviction that you understand the best way to work. I order you to be in kolkhozes more often, to look, listen, and understand better the complaints of kolkhoz workers, and help in action, not with your decrees and strict orders. I obligate all political-sector workers to do so.104

MTS political-sector chairs fired back at Broido. They sent reports in the spring of 1934 about Broido’s control over them, accusing him of arbitrary dismissals and relocations of MTS workers. They were frustrated about the parallel authorities of MTS political sectors and local Party offices and had difficulty deciding how to proceed with this double structure: who was the chief decision maker in the districts and the republic? Poliakov, who was then the head of the Nau political sector of the MTS, wrote extended complaints to Gorst, the head of the political sector of the Ministry of Ag- riculture in Central Asia, and copied them to Levin, the All-Union head of the political sectors of MTS. Poliakov wrote that the head of Tajikistan’s Communist Party, Grigory Broido, had ordered the MTS chairs to complete only his tasks (and not those designated by the political MTS of the Central Asian Bureau), threatening to relieve them of Party membership and their job positions if they did not comply.105 Poliakov wrote: “A series of decrees and orders from the Political Section of the Land Commissariat and telegraph orders by the Central Committee of the Tajik Communist Party contradict each other and force me to disobey one side. I want to receive clarity and precise orders in this question.”106 While the Central Asian Political Sector ordered Poliakov to reform the MTS, Broido threatened a Party purge and demanded that all reforms cease. Broido, according to the AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 155

MTS complaints, regularly fired the heads of political sectors and relocated them from one region to another as he saw fit. Poliakov also complained that Broido destroyed Poliakov’s authority in the region so that nobody listened to him anymore.107 Oleinikov, head of the Faizabad MTS political section, also wrote to Gorst (and copied the letter to Kaganovich from the Politburo) about Broido’s dismissal of him. He wrote that he could no longer stay in Tajikistan because he was afraid to lose his Party membership. Broido dismissed the Hojent MTS head, Baskakov, for the wrongful dekulakization of only one kulak108 and relocated the Kuliab MTS head to another region for “absence of knowledge of the local situation.”109 Broido was reported to have highlighted the supremacy of the heads of regional and district Party committees over the MTS political sectors and to have ignored the MTS altogether.110 An unsigned report about Broido’s attitude toward MTS chairs stated that by shunning them, he ignored the Central Asian Bureau and the central Communist Party itself. Gorst wrote Stalin personally in May 1934 to complain about Broido’s dismissals and threats to the MTS political-sector chairs, noting that he trusted local Party committee secretaries more than MTS officials and ordered them to control the latter.111 Zorin, head of the Tajik MTS, complained to Levin, head of the All-Union MTS political sector, that when reporting on successes in Hojent Broido highlighted only those of Party committees, accusing the special departments of MTS of all failures. He did this in front of 500 Party members and hence, so the report stated, tried to marginalize Hojent MTS head Baskakov.112 But Broido was reported to act arbitrarily not only toward the heads of MTS political sectors. He dismissed the chair of the Council of People’s Commissars without confirmation from the Central Asian Bureau.113 Paskutskii and Gorskii, members of the Central Asian Bureau, were sent from Tashkent to find the source of the problem. They reported, among other things, that Broido had indeed dismissed the chair of the Council of People’s Commissars, changed the Party line, attempted to place rural Party offices over MTS political sectors, and “shouted at everyone.” Broido was reported to tell some Party members in Tajikistan that he personally had made sure that some of them were released after the Party cleansing and warned that none of them was immune from future repressions.114 Th Central Asian Bureau complained that Broido privileged local Party secretaries but deemed heads of political sectors guilty for failures.115 It was reported that he sent telegrams to political sectors through local Party offices, thus subordinating the MTS to local Party officials. He was also reported 156 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES to grant rural Party ffi o ces the right to make decisions independently.116 Gorst, the head of the political department in Central Asia, complained to Stalin in a personal letter that Broido trusted rural Party officials more than political departments and instigated artificial conflicts between them by dismissing and relocating them as he saw fit.117 Mark Gai, who led the 1933 Party purge in Tajikistan, wrote to Piliar of the Central Asian NKVD in July 1934 that Broido refused to organize a show trial against a group of Soviet European officials whom Gai suspected of embezzlement. Broido also ignored Gai’s recommendation to dismiss Dadabaev, the permanent representative from Tajikistan in Uzbekistan, and although Dadabaev had already been expelled from the Party in the 1933 Party purge, he kept him in his position.118 Complaints about Broido were numerous and contradictory. The MTS political-sector workers complained that Broido defended local government officials, and Tajikistan’s central government officials also complained about Broido and his open fight against the Central Asian Bureau. Islamov and Maksumov, members of the Tajik Central Executive Committee, wrote to Mikhail Maiorov and Akmal’ Ikramov, secretaries of the Central Asian Bureau, that Broido did not toe the Party line. They complained that Broido decreased plans for dried fruits and potatoes without communicating the changes to the Central Asian Bureau. Moreover, Broido was reported to openly state in meetings that informing the Cen- tral Asian Bureau was not necessary because it only disturbed and confused Tajikistan. He proclaimed that those who thought it was necessary to follow the Central Asian Bureau’s orders were not true Tajiks because the Bureau represented Tashkent’s interests.119 Broido accused the Central Asian Bureau of failing to help bring bread to starving peasants and to MTS workers themselves, and suggested ignoring the Bureau and following his (Broido’s) directions.120 In another report, Broido was said to have declared that he was brought to Tajikistan to institute “order” and that he would do it without middlemen, whether MTS officials or the Central Asian Bureau. Abdullo Rakhimbaev who was sent with Broido to implement the Second Plan quoted Broido’s explanation of his role in Tajikistan: “The secretary [and Broido meant himself here] of the Central Committee is the Central Committee and the Central Committee is its secretary.”121 Rakhimbaev said that Broido isolated Muslim workers and rendered them faceless (obezlichivat’): the latter lost authority among the local population and were powerless. He also complained that Broido had dismissed Miku- lich, the deputy head of the Council of People’s Commissars, for overrated AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 157 plans for cattle procurement. Rakhimbaev wrote that the plans were made by old leadership (since cleansed) and had been recently fi conrmed by the new leadership, including the Central Asian Bureau. He stated that although he was not against Mikulich’s purge, he was against Broido’s arbitrary methods.122 It seemed that all complained about Broido. The Central Asian Bureau workers used what they thought could be the harshest evidence against him to make sure the central officials heard and purged him. The worst accusation against Broido was his refusal to publish Stalin’s “roadmap” (putevka) for the Second Five-Year Plan immediately: the telegram was sent on April 17, but he didn’t publish it until May 14. Even worse, Rakhimbaev of the Council of Peoples Commissars, Maiorov of the Central Asian Bureau, and Paskutskii of the Central Asian Economic Council argued that Broido had adapted the “roadmap” in an unacceptable way, publishing it under his name and changing its text to imply anti-Soviet sentiments. The text read: “Kulaks and ex-emir officials who now worked for the Soviet state disgraced the Soviet rule and the Party, and they often continued to work using old ‘emir’ methods.”123 Maiorov and Paskutskii contended that kulaks and emir officials could not disgrace Soviet rule, only undermine it, and argued that the sentence “kulaks and ex-emir officials . . . often continued to work using old ‘emir’ methods” was unacceptable because it suggested that they in fact were allowed to head Soviet politics. Finally, they could not understand how the roadmap could blame kulaks for “not commanding and explaining” the Soviet line. They asked: What could kulaks and ex- emir officials possibly explain?124 Broido chose a telling tactic for defense. He responded furiously in a long, polemical letter accusing Maiorov and Paskutskii of not being harsh enough in their analysis and critique of the published roadmap. He wrote that the published roadmap could have been produced only by a counterrevolutionary. Broido shamed Maiorov and Paskutski in that they did not understand, as any honest (dobrosovetsnyi) reader would, that the text contained some technical mistakes: a paragraph was apparently missing, and this technical failure had produced the anti-Soviet sentiment. Broido accused Maiorov and Paskutskii of sabotage, pointing out that if he were a saboteur then they were, too, having reacted to the article with critical remarks and recommendations (blackmail); true anti-Soviet propaganda should elicit much harsher condemnation.125 Broido chose attacking the Central Asian Bureau as his tactic of defense. This is because he understood that in such struggles only successful denunciation of the other could 158 AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES guarantee one’s victory. The logic of Broido’s defense reflected the general dynamics of the political situation. The first two years of the Second Five-Year Plan were years of bitter inner struggles in the villages, offices, streets, and, most importantly, in letters between various Soviet institutions and their representatives. They all argued about who was a responsible worker in the regions and the republic generally: the Party officials, headed by Broido, or their colleagues in the MTS with their heads in Tashkent and Moscow? Who could decide on everyday practical issues of Soviet state building and why was there vague- ness over roles? Moreover, how much cooperation could and should there be between MTS envoys and local officials and how could cooperation take place if the former were supposed to suppress the latter? In trying to figure out their roles and legitimize their actions, all used the vocabulary against “regime enemies” that was set by Stalin’s January plenum. While seeking legitimacy for their actions in Stalin’s words, and presenting themselves as empowered and clear about their actions, they were also disoriented by the actions of others, who used the same strategies. This confusion among Soviet officials was not accidental. One of the reasons Broido dared attack the MTS workers is that in 1933 he, together with Karl Bauman, was ordered to reverse OGPU repressions, which, the order from Moscow said, were too harsh.126 He became a natural enemy of the OGPU/NKVD, because he had to find among them those who “over- stepped” their responsibilities. He thus felt that he was a notch higher than the OGPU/NKVD and was the sole ruler in the region. Moreover, the reason for his attitude toward the members of the Central Asian Bu- reau was because, as Maksum and Khodzhibaev told OGPU agents during interrogations just a year earlier, Stalin personally told Rakhimbaev, head of the Council of People’s Commissars in Tajikistan, that he did not like the fact that they (Tajik Party leaders) listened to the Central Asian Bu- reau and proposed that they sometimes ignore the Bureau’s directions.127 It is likely Stalin made the same suggestion to Broido. This would explain Broido’s daring behavior against the Central Asian Bureau as well as the sudden elimination of the Bureau in October 1934. Formally, its closure was justified by stating that it had implemented all the goals it could possibly achieve. However, the Bureau’s primary goal was to inspect the Central Asian republics’ adherence to Party protocol, and it remains unclear how that could have been achieved by 1934. The struggle between Broido, the MTS chairs, and the Central Asian Bureau resembles the one that divided procurators, the NKVD, and the AN EMPIRE OF INNER STRUGGLES 159

Central Party Committee. All were empowered to become primary agents of collectivization and Sovietization. Yet the empowerment also disoriented officials, as their roles and relationships to other state officials were not made clear. All thought they exercised sole decision making, yet all were subject to denunciations and controls. Proclaiming all as responsible workers produced conflicts, struggles, and disappointments. In a context where officials were warned to be suspicious of their colleagues, blackmailing them became a duty but also a strategy that also allowed officials to defend themselves against possible attacks. However, by compiling negative reports against one another, each party subjected the others—and therefore, themselves—to repression. After the 1933 campaign to strengthen “law and order,” creating a scapegoat was a losing battle: the Central Asian Bureau was dismissed, MTS political agents were eliminated, Broido was relocated from Tajikistan, and local communists went through another Party purge. Stalin’s politics in the mid-1930s once again reflected the differences between Soviet ideology and the “techniques of imperial practices.”128 Where- as the first proclaimed to strengthen law and empower officials, the second divided and disoriented, fostering struggles that could be manipulated. Disorientation of Soviet officials over their roles was, it seems, a strategy that allowed for double-checking officials’ loyalty, rotating and keeping them under surveillance. They also allowed Moscow, and ultimately Stalin, to remain the arbiter in unclear situations, throughout the Soviet Union. CHAPTER SEVEN

AN EMPIRE OF LIARS

AN ALLIANCE WITH THE “MASSES”

The Soviet Union was, Moscow leaders imagined, a place of liars. Every- where, it seemed to them, people lied about everything. While peasants lied about the amount of produce they had, most dangerous were the numerous Soviet officials who provided wrong information about Soviet plans to the population, lied about the situation in the fields and their own activities. It is due to such window dressers (ochkovtirateli) and bootlickers (podkhalimy), according to public proclamations, that the First Five-Year Plan was not realized. They were a threat to the Second Five-Year Plan fulfillment as well. The perception that the Soviet Union was full of liars came from the Soviet leadership. Since the Politburo instituted a system of denunciation by ordering, for example, the secret police to look for “liars” and “counter- revolutionaries,” it constantly received information about them. Stalin and Molotov personally read weekly summaries of the people’s complaints and secret police reports about Soviet officials and their “counterrevolutionary behavior.”1 The information from officials differed from that provided by the population and the secret police. While the former wanted to describe their successes, the latter complained about permanent failures. The dis-

160 AN EMPIRE OF LIARS 161

Figur e 7.1. A view from the front: “No bread!” (left glass), “No bais!” (right glass). A view from behind: “Bread” (left sack), “Bread” (right sack). Kommunist Tadzhikistana, November 11, 1932. connect between these two versions produced a feeling of misinformation and deceit. The sense that the Politburo did not get to the truth, or too many versions thereof, became an increasing problem. Everywhere they saw cliques that attempted to overthrow the Soviet state.2 Officials were constantly reminded, if not ordered, not to lie about plan fulfillment and to 162 AN EMPIRE OF LIARS provide “truthful” data. Information gathering and trust toward its population and government apparatus, considered to be one of the main attri- butes of bureaucratic states, constituted a key aim and challenge for central Soviet leaders. How did it deal with the issue? While open trials and Party purges were regularly organized to rid the Soviet apparatus of corrupt officials, there was a perception that as these cleansings were conducted by corrupt officials themselves, one simply could not know what was going on throughout the Soviet Union. The Politburo constantly had to come up with new strategies for getting reliable information and controlling their own officials. The “worker and peasant correspondent movement” (rabsel’korovskoe dvizhenie) was one such tactic. It called on the population to report on corrupt government officials throughout the Soviet Union through the press. Since it was considered that officials and hence state structures were corrupt, newspapers, so the logic went, could become a popular (practical and cheap) platform for Soviet democracy, providing access to justice for ordinary people. In the early 1930s in Tajikistan, newspapers produced such an image of popular democracy on Joshua Kunitz, an American communist. He commented on worker and peasant correspondents (rabsel’kors) as follows: “Failures? Naturally. Absurdities? Inevitably. Abuses? Galore! . . . But do they not reveal an extraordinarily active participation of the masses in the molding of their own life? Do they not reveal an unusual willing- ness of the authorities to listen to the voice of the people? For, it should be noted, any such complaint sent to the Soviet papers, whether published or not, is immediately followed by an investigation, and by an invariable improvement.”3 The worker and peasant correspondent movement was directly linked to the “return to law” campaign (see Chapter Six) and was part of the general attempt by the Politburo to centralize its rule throughout the Soviet Union. During the 1933 debates about the need to “return” to legality, Ni- kolai Krylenko, head of the All-Union People’s Commissar for Justice, actively called for the Soviet “masses” to collaborate with the Soviet judiciary in disclosing illegal activity of any kind. He particularly highlighted the role of those whom he called “tentacles [shupal’tsy] and levers [rychagi] [of the state] in the fight against nontruth in all its appearances and forms.”4 Krylenko appealed to the Soviet masses to use newspapers as tools to aid in Soviet state building. Since Soviet officials were considered profoundly deceptive, the “good and loyal Soviet masses” were the only hope for the state to approximate “truth.” Since they had to deal with the local corrupt AN EMPIRE OF LIARS 163 officials and cliques on a daily basis, they were best suited to assist the state in eliminating treachery and subversion. Pavlik Morozov, a thirteen-year- old boy who allegedly exposed his father for supporting kulaks in the Ural region in Russia and was murdered in 1931 by his own relatives, was declared a model Soviet citizen, who, despite obvious danger, fought against injustices and class enemies in his own family and village. The new Soviet man in the early 1930s, so the message went, was supposed to show alle- giance above all to the government, not family or friends. Soviet citizens were asked to become denouncers.5 It was their sacred duty to help the government destroy traditional structures, disclose cases of corruption, and help the state get to the “truth.” It is this collaboration with the “common man” that would enable the government to finally develop communism.6 The government’s call for the population to report corrupt officials had already seen a decade of history. The worker and peasant correspondents’ movement was initiated in the early 1920s by Maria Ul’ianova, the sister of Vladimir Lenin (Ul’ianov). She called on the population to help the Soviet state identify corrupt Soviet officials. Ul’ianova’s decision to use newspapers as a tool for revolutionary struggle had roots in the history of the Bolshevik movement. Lenin, Stalin, Bukharin, and most other leading Bolsheviks used “revolutionary journalism” long before the October revolution. Dis- closure in the press of tsarist corruption and repression was a key strategy for liberal movements in late imperial Russia. Bolsheviks produced under- ground literature and used the media to disclose “bourgeois oppression.” However, even a decade after the revolution, Bolsheviks still attempted to use revolutionary tactics in governing the country. The difference between postrevolutionary mass journalism and prerevolutionary writing lay in the fact that while before the revolution, Bolshevik leaders could claim that journalists used covert means to fight corruption of officials, in the postrevolutionary context they installed the system from above.7 Although Bolsheviks had claimed to provide freedom of speech in the struggle for justice and equality, they limited it to extreme circumstances, so Party leaders could not be targeted. The intention was that only peripheral Soviet officials such as village or regional Party bosses, engineers, kolkhoz chairs, or school directors—not Moscow leadership—could be attacked in the press. The state and the masses were portrayed as victims of regular bureaucrats; the newspapers were to unite them in struggle against the latter. In that struggle, the Moscow center portrayed itself as a just arbiter on the side of the “masses.” Postrevolutionary denunciations were limited to the extent that the system ultimately remained unquestioned. 164 AN EMPIRE OF LIARS

Another difference between Bolshevik leaders’ revolutionary jour- nalistic undertaking and its insertion into the postrevolutionary context was its linking to judicial, governmental, and police organizations. By the mid-1920s correspondents were already semiformally integrated into institutions of justice. Specially organized departments of correspondents’ notes (zametki) at newspaper offices worked directly with procurators who inspected the information in the notes. These officials were assigned to study the notes, investigate cases if necessary, and report outcomes. Thus, writing to a newspaper also meant addressing procurators, whose primary duty was to secure officials’ implementation of law and disclose crimes. Newspaper notes were advertised and designed as a shortcut to a judicial process. Complaints published in newspapers were meant to ease the usual bureaucratic process and to bring institutions of justice closer to the “masses,” and vice versa.8 Although not completely a substitute for institutions of justice, the newspaper denunciations were to fill gaps in the Soviet government. Interestingly, citizens were not called on to act as semisecret agents and covertly provide information to the state. Nor were they asked (at least officially) to forge clandestine collaboration with the secret police. Rather, they were asked to publicize their opinions by sending letters of complaint to local newspapers. Published letters of denunciation, Krylenko suggested, would allow government agencies unprecedented awareness of corruption and enemy activities. In return for people’s help, the government promised correspondents protection against potential attacks by denounced officials. As early as 1924, the National Justice Commissariat of the USSR issued decrees stating that if an attack against a correspondent had counterrevolutionary aims and the attacked or murdered correspondent belonged to a state organization (e.g., Komintern, the Party, the Trade Union), the murder was to be classified as a terrorist act against the Soviet state and punished by the death penalty.9 Another measure to protect peasant and worker correspondents was to issue a decree (this time by the High Court of the USSR in 1925) requiring the nondisclosure of correspondents’ names.10

STRONG WORDS, SILENT VOICES

The worker and peasant correspondent movement was promoted from the early 1920s, but until the early 1930s only very few notes reached and were published in Tajik newspapers.11 In the period from 1926 to 1927, the Nation- al Justice Commissariat in Tajikistan reported that the procuracy received AN EMPIRE OF LIARS 165 only eighty-eight correspondents’ notes.12 During the first meeting of the judicial workers in 1927, it was reported that Kuliab newspapers received twenty-three notes, Istaravshan four, and Hisor eighteen.13 The Hojent region was reported to have received fifty notes, which were left unopened.14 With the start of collectivization, the Central Asian Bureau started an offensive campaign for strengthening the correspondent movement, arguing that it must become a weapon for socialist construction. The Bureau hoped that millions of letters would connect the central government with the masses, who in turn would signal criminal activities in the peripheries. Isaak Zelenskii bluntly stated at the Central Asian conference of press workers (rabotnikov pechati) in 1929 that peasant correspondents should “press” (davit’) denunciations against (corrupt) workers of the So- viet apparatus.15 Rather than accusing peasants of failing to denounce, the Bureau explained that newspapers themselves were the reason for the low number of notes. There were thirty-six newspapers in all of Central Asia at the time, twenty-eight of which were issued in the republics. However, the Bureau noted, “the big problem is that the newspapers are not available, their language is not clear, the material is heavy, and the articles are long and ‘toothless’ [insufficiently critical].”16 In 1930 newspaper personnel were accused of believing and trusting information provided by Soviet officials without double-checking it.17 More importantly, however, newspaper staffs were reported to be infiltrated with alien elements such that “enemies of the people” were in charge of spreading the Soviet word.18 The Central Asian Bureau explained that the failures of the First Five-Year Plan were the result of people’s inability to publish truthful articles about the situation in their local areas, so that “all newspapers without exception overlooked the sowing campaign [in spring of 1930].”19 Tojikistoni Surkh, for example, was accused of not publishing any material on collectivization and failing to mobilize Tajik peasant correspondents to send information. Agricultural plans were simply reprinted from central newspapers.20 Instead of warning of problems, the Bureau claimed, local secretaries, newspaper editors, and kulaks conducted kulak politics, generated anticotton sentiment, and pro- voked emigration. As a result, the launch of the correspondent movement coincided with a 1930 purge of Soviet newspaper staff.21 But only a couple of years later, in the early 1930s, Tajik newspapers provided a strong impression that the Tajik population was actively helping the state to control “evil” officials in peripheral locations. Almost every issue of central newspapers such as Kommunist Tadzhikistana and Tojik- istoni Surkh published several correspondents’ notes. By 1932 Kommunist 166 AN EMPIRE OF LIARS

Tadzhikistana was reported to have had almost four thousand correspondents throughout the republic.22 Tajik newspapers claimed the number of correspondents’ notes was steadily rising, becoming a mass phenomenon.23 What united these notes was the use of Bolshevik vocabulary to adhere to contemporary government policies, intimate knowledge of officials’ “crimes,” and a clear message of loyalty to the Soviet state. The notes, it seemed, merged “the public transcript” of the Party with the peripheral officials’ “hidden transcript.”24 Accusations included names, locations, and exact information on how much the accused official spent, stole, or otherwise abused his powers of office. The authors identified themselves as victims who wanted to help the Soviet state identify its enemies. Corre- spondents themselves usually preferred not to disclose their identities. In February 1934 the newspaper Tojikistoni Surkh published a note by a certain H.N., who disclosed that the chair of the Qal’aji village of the Hisor district had received 190 poods of grain from the government for the kolkhoz, but only distributed it among “his” people.25 The village chair, H.N. added, was a kulak who forced poor peasants to work on his personal fields. Using perfect Bolshevik vocabulary, the “correspondent” called for Soviet law to bring the full extent of socialist justice onto the village chair.26 The writer also deemed unacceptable the “corrupt” regional secretary of the Khonako district, who allegedly took bribes for marriage arrangements.27 Another people’s correspondent, “Bolshevik,” reported a case of corruption in the financial department of the Matcha district. He accused D’iakov, deputy director of the financial department; Sidirov, the secretary; and Mel’nikov, the accountant, of arbitrarily and unofficially overtaxing local kulaks and appropriating the collected funds. Ironically, “Bolshevik” defended the kulaks and noted that the deputy of the Party cell, Pushkin— also involved in the affair—had traveled to Stalinabad twenty times over the preceding several months, abandoning 2.5 months of work.28 An article signed “Kolkhoz Members” claimed their leader, cursing the government, had told a group of peasants that the government paid the kolkhoz in newspapers instead of cash. The note denounced the head as a “newspaper enemy” who appropriated kolkhoz grain and did not let inspectors check the kolkhoz.29 In another issue, an anonymous tractor driver said he was shouted at and arrested by a militiaman for pausing in his work. Due to his arrest, the kolkhoz lost six hours of valuable work.30 Despite clear and precise messages, most notes had no consequences. Tajikistan’s National Justice Commissariat reported that procurators examined only 5 percent of notes between 1933 and 1936.31 The major reason, AN EMPIRE OF LIARS 167

Fig u r e 7.2. “For procurators’ attention.” Tojikistoni Surkh, February 5, 1934. they explained, was a lack of personnel to undertake investigations. An- other was that procurators did not take notes seriously. In 1934 an NKVD agent reported that the Hisor district procurators did not have any relationship with correspondents or newspapers.32 Even if investigations occurred, they were considered ineffective in bringing justice. Their structure did not permit an impartial examination, since it was usually delegated to the same officials (or their colleagues) who were under attack.33 If articles were written about heads of regional executive committees, the investigation was assigned to their deputies.34 This process doomed any sensible investigation to invalidity and, importantly, risked the whistleblower’s life because the correspondent’s anonymity could not be guaranteed. For example, take the case of Acheikin, a former worker at the Communist Institute. He complained to the procuracy that he and his comrade were fired after they wrote to a newspaper regarding the illegal murder of work cattle by university administrators. Their note produced results opposite of their expectations. Investigators came to the university and interrogated the accusers, not the accused. When the administration found out about their “revolutionary journalism work,” administrators sent the correspondents to prepare university buildings’ windows for winter; they were arrested shortly thereafter for allegedly attempting to steal lightbulbs. In his third letter to the procuracy, Acheikin begged to be hired again by the university, since by losing his workplace he had also lost the right to living space and had to spend the winter in a barn.35 He could not tolerate a justice 168 AN EMPIRE OF LIARS campaign that ended up with such injustice. In another case, when a group calling itself “The Knowing” complained to the newspaper that their local store director gave out deficit products to “his” people, the investigator—a member of the same organization as the director (Tajiktorg)—wrote that all evidence suggested the director was honest and there were no signs of corruption.36 It was only natural that one would save the other. This is how Sukharev, a demobilized soldier who regularly volunteered as a denouncing correspondent in Stalinabad, explained it to a newspaper editor:

After [writing notes] I am full of hope, I observe how quickly things can change [with their help]. . . . I send a number of notes. For each note I use a different pseudonym. I want to explain why everyone in the Trust started despising me and calling me “blotter.” This is because some of the letters in which you confirmed the receipt of my notes were read by those I was writing about. During the arrest of comrade Osin, head of the economic planning sector, the NKVD found letters where I denounced him. . . . Although I asked you not to answer me, I receive letters. I would rather come personally to learn about the results of my notes. In notes I shared only some of the facts. There is more serious stuff here, but correspondents and critics are already being expelled.37

Another reason these notes did not (and could not) work can be explained by a proverb of the day: “Blat [nepotism] is stronger than Sovnarkom [Council of People’s Commissars].”38 A correspondent explained the proverb from firsthand experience. When the Labor Union sent him to work in a sewing factory in Tajiki- stan, the human resources director told him: “I don’t care about the Labor Union, since I am giving jobs, not they.”39 For a person without connections, the note writer explained to a procurator, notes were the last resort to find justice. But if officials had a good network, the notes were useless—there were always friends who protected powerful officials. Thus, when a people’s correspondent, Valiev, denounced a Tajik procurator, the latter quickly made sure the correspondent publicly admitted that he was involved in a squabble with the local Party secretary.40 Newspaper note struggles could spiral out of control, especially if accusers flaunted their own powerful networks. Thus, in January 1934 a classic note appeared in Kommunist Tadzhikistana about a school director, Mukhamediev, who was accused of disorganizing his school, appropriating its funds, and hiring his own people. As usual, no actions on the AN EMPIRE OF LIARS 169 part of the judiciary, the Ministry of Education, or Party organizations followed its publication.41 The correspondent then published a second note in a Tajik-language newspaper, Tojikistoni Surkh. Action followed, but, as often was the case, not the kind the correspondent expected. Although articles were written anonymously, their author was quickly identified—it was a neighboring Sary Assiia school director, Iakh’iaev. As a result, the town’s Department of People’s Education (GORONO) sent a commission to check the denouncer’s school before heading to that of Mukhamediev, the original subject of denunciation. The GORONO commission declared on January 25, 1934, that the note was partially correct—the school’s work was weak—but the allegation that Mukhamediev hired his own people was incorrect. Mukhamediev was given a warning and a probationary month to improve the school’s conditions. But, contrary to Iakh’iaev’s hopes, he was neither fired nor penalized.42 This is unsurprising, as just a year earlier Mukhamediev had won the national competition for best school director and received the “shock worker”43 prize with an excursion from Stalinabad to Baku via Tashkent, Moscow, and Leningrad, as well as 1,000 rubles.44 In April 1934, a report about GORONO’s investigation was sent to the Inves- tigation Department of Correspondents’ Notes of Tojikistoni Surkh, where his work was again found exemplary. Furthermore, the GORONO commission found that it was not the accused Mukhamediev, but his denouncer Iakh’iaev (“the correspondent”) who had mismanaged his school—it was dirty, children were barefoot, the food was appropriated by workers, who were generally undisciplined, and 113,000 rubles were missing from the school’s fund. Moreover, Iakh’iaev was identified as a purged resettler who had been sentenced to forced labor in the southern plain regions of Tajikistan. The commission fired Iakh’iaev and transferred the case to the procuracy. A new director, Faizullaev, was chosen.45 A copy of the protocol for the investigation results was sent to Tojikistoni Surkh on Febuary 9, 1934. The case resulted in an unpredictable outcome for the correspondent. How and why could such a twist take place? Iakh’iaev mobilized his network. His village stood up for him by responding to the GORONO commission that his work was good and that the local council would not let him be fired. As a result of the complaint, the Stalinabad GORONO organized a meeting with participants from the Ministry of Education, the town council, the Party bureau, the Komsomol, and the procuracy, most of whom agreed that although Iakh’iaev had achieved certain results as a school director, his complaint and libel were not to be tolerated—it was agreed that he should have long ago understood 170 AN EMPIRE OF LIARS that conditions in Tajikistan did not offer the opportunity to run a school in perfect conditions and that his note aimed to destroy, rather than aid, the education system and generally Sovietization.46 The local officials openly punished Iakh’iaev as an evil whistleblower who harmed local Soviet development. Iakh’iaev, unsatisfied with the public reprimand, appealed to his other connections. About two weeks later, a brigade of the editors of the Tojikistoni Surkh, all local to Central Asia, addressed a letter of outrage to GORONO stating that the commission that inspected Iakh’iaev’s note and dismissed him did not include Sary Assiia secretaries of the Party, Komsomol, representatives of the village soviets, or Iakh’iaev himself. They claimed that the commission did not find enough