Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Political Repression
Undeveloped Central Asia had no shortage of bright, sincere people
willing to work for national liberation and democracy. After the tsar fell
they jostled for power in their various parties, movements and factions.
Even after they were swallowed into the Soviet state, some members of
these groups had high profiles in regional affairs. Such a group was Alash
Orda, formed by Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in 1917, which even held the reins
of a short-lived autonomous government.
By the late 1920s, the former nationalists and democrats, indeed the
entire intelligentsia, were causing Stalin serious problems. From their
posts in the communist administration they had front-row seats at the
Great Leader's horror show, including collectivisation. Many of them be-
gan to reason, and to doubt. Stalin, reading these signs all over the USSR,
foresaw that brains could be just as dangerous as guns. Throughout the
1930s he proceeded to have all possible dissenters eliminated. Alash
Orda members were among the first to die, in 1927 and 1928.
Thus began the systematic murder, called the Purges, of untold tens
of thousands of Central Asians. Arrests were usually made late at night.
Confined prisoners were rarely tried; if any charges at all were brought,
they ran along the lines of 'having bourgeoisie-nationalist or Pan-Turkic
attitudes'. Mass executions and burials were common. Sometimes en-
tire sitting governments were disposed of in this way, as happened in
Kyrgyzstan.
Construction of Nationalities
The solution to the 'nationality question' in Central Asia remains the
most graphically visible effect of Soviet rule: it drew the lines on the
map. Before the Russian Revolution the peoples of Central Asia had no
concept of a firm national border. They had plotted their identities by a
tangle of criteria: religion, clan, valley or oasis, way of life, even social
status. The Soviets, however, believed that such a populace was fertile
soil for dangerous Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism and that these phi-
losophies were threats to the regime.
So, starting in about 1924, nations were invented: Kazakh, Kyrgyz,
Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek. Each was given its own distinct ethnic profile,
language, history and territory. Where an existing language or history
was not apparent or was not suitably distinct from others, these were
supplied and disseminated. Islam was cut away from each national her-
itage, essentially relegated to the status of an outmoded and oppressive
cult, and severely suppressed throughout the Soviet period.
Some say that Stalin personally directed the drawing of the boundary
lines. Each of the republics was shaped to contain numerous pockets
Alexander
Cooley's Great
Games, Local
Rules looks at the
resurgence of the
Great Game in
modern Central
Asia and its com-
petitive effect on
everything from
military bases to
energy contracts.
'Russia has two
faces, an Asiatic
face which looks
always towards
Europe, and a
European face
which looks
always towards
Asia.'
Benjamin Disraeli
1936
Kazakh and Kyrgyz
SSRs created. Stalin's
'Great Purge' results in
the arrest and execu-
tion of political leaders
across the Soviet
Union.
1937
The entire Kyrgyz
Soviet government
(140 people) are shot to
death and their bodies
dumped in a brick kiln
at Chong-Tash outside
Bishkek, as part of
Stalin's purges.
1941-45
More than 22 million
Soviet citizens die in
WWII, known locally
as the Great Patriotic
War. Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan each
receive over one million
refugees.
1948
Ashgabat is destroyed
in an earthquake;
110,000, almost
two-thirds of the city,
perish.
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