THE KAZAKH STEPPE: FROM RUSSIAN EMPIRE TO SOVIET UTOPIA

The 19th century not only gave birth to Marxism, which shaped the worldview of the architects of the Soviet Union. It was also, to no lesser degree, a century of nationalism. The fruits of both Marxism and nationalism would ripen in the 20th century, producing a series of left- and right-wing dictatorships, bloody civil conflicts, and world wars.

But in the 19th century, neither Marxism nor nationalism had yet been discredited, and they only gave rise to smug, romantic illusions. It is interesting, by the way, that Lenin, then a budding Marxist revolutionary, met Benito Mussolini, the future father of Italian fascism, in 1902. They even kept in touch for a while. In the cauldron of discontent with the old world, both class and national ideas boiled over, producing a sometimes lethal brew of good intentions, amorality, vengefulness, and pseudo-scientific studies.

It should not be forgotten that the generation of Lenin's parents literally grew up against the background of numerous national liberation movements. Both Lenin and his associates from the educated class were exposed from childhood to the heroic stories of Ypsilantis and Byron, Bolivar and Garibaldi. Greece, Italy, Germany, South America, the Balkans, India, South Africa - powerful national liberation movements were shaking the world throughout the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were a number of them: the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), and two Balkan Wars (1912-1913). The First World War itself was provoked by the struggle of the Serbian people against Austrian imperialism. Finally, there were enough "non-Russians" in the Russian revolutionary movement, among them Jews, Poles, Latvians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Finns, who were aggravated by Russian great-power chauvinism, humiliating discrimination, and persecution on national grounds, sometimes bloody.

Always dreaming of power, Lenin was well aware of the force of nationalism and national movements, which could easily lift rootless daredevils to the very top of the world. Naturally, he saw nationalism as a dangerous alternative to his theory of class struggle, since nationalism set supra-class goals for society and thus consolidated it around a national élite.

The events of the summer of 1920, when the Kazakh ASSR was created, confirmed Lenin's worst fears. The Soviet offensive on Warsaw was crushed precisely by the national consolidation of the Poles. The bet on the class solidarity of the Polish workers with the Soviet power proved illusory. It is significant that the first head of the Kazakh autonomy, the Pole Stanisław Pestkowski, left his post in connection with the mobilization of Poles for Soviet work in Poland.

The war demonstrated that the Poles perceived Soviet Russia as the successor to the empire that had once liquidated an independent Poland and brutally suppressed all national resistance. Neither class solidarity, proletarian internationalism nor the slogan of world revolution could deceive the Poles. Something similar had already happened in Hungary and Germany, where attempts at Communist insurrection had ended in defeat. This convinced the Bolsheviks that the power of the Soviets, based on the class principle, had little chance of success in a situation where projects for the creation of nation-states were being realized in Europe.

Moscow was content with the fact that it already had the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics, which, after the end of the Soviet-Polish war in 1920, were to serve as an example for the Ukrainians and Belarusians who found themselves inside Poland. These republics were even called the Soviet Piedmont, by analogy with the northern Italian region that led the unification of Italy. In any case, having failed with the world revolution in the West, the Bolsheviks turned their attention to the East.

In April 1920, the Khorezm Socialist Soviet Republic was established. In June 1920, the Persian Soviet Republic appeared in the north of Iran in Ostān-e Gīlan (Gilan province) with the support of the Red Army. It tried twice to seize power in Tehran until it collapsed in November 1921. In September 1920, after the conquest of the Emirate of Bukhara, the People's Soviet Republic of Bukhara was established. In this context, the creation of the Kazakh ASSR seemed natural, although among these entities it was the only one based on the national-territorial principle.

The creation of such republics was intended to open up a new perspective for the peoples of the East. Stalin called it the "revolutionization of the East," which had "accumulated the most gunpowder to fight imperialism." Sergei Abashin aptly observed that "national ideology was an export commodity that helped Soviet Russia to play all over the international space." The Bolsheviks wanted to send a signal to Eastern societies that they would help them establish statehood. This was intended to attract to the Bolsheviks those peoples living in the colonial possessions of Western states, such as British India.

Almost until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communists did not lose interest in exporting the revolution, which looked like exporting the "communist bloc," that is, the sphere of influence of the Soviet empire, under the cover of the slogans of progress and liberation from imperialism. But when the civil war ended, it was clear that the world revolution was postponed. There were neither forces nor opportunities for its advance. As a result, the organization of a new state became increasingly urgent in the early 1920s. The Bolsheviks were faced with the task of realizing their project in a society that a priori did not conform to the classical ideas of Marxist theory. According to communist dogma, the revolution should have taken place first in Europe, with its more developed and numerous working class. But for all their enthusiasm for Marxism, Lenin and his associates were above all pragmatists. What they got was what they got. And what they got was a vast colonial empire.

According to Terry Martin, the Bolsheviks aimed “to assume leadership over the inevitable process of decolonization and carry it out in a manner that would preserve the territorial integrity of the old Russian Empire.” From the outset, Lenin declared a struggle not only against the exploiting classes, but also against the "prison of peoples," as the empire was often called at the time. Francine Hirsch wrote that “[w]hile the imperial regime, the Provisional Government, and the Whites had attempted to ignore the national idea, the Bolsheviks integrated it into their ideology and their vision of the Soviet socialist state.”

Terry Martin further observes that “[b]y granting the forms of nationhood, the Soviet state could split the above-class national alliance for statehood. Class divisions, then, would naturally emerge, which would allow the Soviet government to recruit proletarian and peasant support for their socialist agenda.” For this reason, the creation of a model of communist statehood based on the national-territorial principle was in fact a way to gain and then maintain power in a large state with many nations in its composition.

The Bolsheviks were, of course, vigilant to ensure that the nationalists did not seize the initiative. This explains their categorical rejection of Alash-Orda as the legitimate representative of the Kazakh people. From the Bolsheviks' point of view, once the national movements seized the initiative, they would inevitably seek self-determination up to and including the creation of their own state, which would be a challenge to the integrity of the country. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks seemed to follow the path advocated by all national movements — the creation of autonomies on the national-territorial principle; but on the other hand, they completely emasculated the idea of such autonomy.

For example, it was important to the Bolsheviks that the new national autonomies have many Russian inhabitants. In this way, these autonomies would not have even a hypothetical possibility of becoming independent. In 1924, 4,781,263 people lived in the Kazakh Autonomy, of whom 46.35% were Kazakhs, or 2,229,310 people. Kazakhs made up 2.8% of the population of the Orenburg Governorate, 70.78% of the population of Aktobe, 93.36% of the population of Bukey, 61.36% of the population of Ural, 99.78% of the population of Turgai, 37.38% of the population of Kostanay, 37.5% of the population of Akmola, and 97.9% of the population of Aday Uyezd. In cities Kazakhs made up 7.25% of the population. The smallest number of Kazakhs was in Orenburg - 116 out of 195,717 inhabitants; in Kostanay - 55 out of 20,785, while in rural areas Kazakhs made up 50.25%. It should be noted that the last-minute inclusion of the Orenburg region with its 600,000 Russian population into the Kazakh ASSR significantly changed the ethnic ratio.

It is significant that the first secretary of the Kazakh regional party committee from September 1921 to October 1924 was Georgy Korostelev, the brother of Alexander Korostelev, who was the head of the executive committee of the Orenburg Governorate during the civil war. In 1919-1920 the Orenburg communists were very critical of the creation of the Bashkir and Kazakh republics near Orenburg. It was the Orenburgers who played a major role in reducing the degree of independence of the Bashkir autonomy. Naturally, having found themselves at the head of the Kazakh autonomy in 1920, they saw in it an opportunity for external management of the Kazakh population. It is characteristic that Seytkali Mendeshev from Orenburg was chosen as the first chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Kazakh ASSR after its formation in October 1920.

At a closed meeting of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) in Moscow in the summer of 1923, the following figures were mentioned: “The composition of the district executive committees: 51% Kyrgyz, 49% Russian. Composition of district Soviets: 43% Kyrgyz and 57% Russian. Composition of provincial executive committees: 37% Kyrgyz and 63% Russian. Composition of provincial congresses of Soviets: Kyrgyz 34%, Russian 66%. Composition of provincial committees: 28% Kyrgyz, 64% Russian. The composition of RCP organizations - 951 Kyrgyz (the number of 951 is exaggerated by 50%), 7,878 Russians.” Russians not only constituted a significant part of the population of the autonomy, but actually continued to govern it both in the center and locally.

Interestingly, in Turkestan the Kazakhs seemed to be in a more secure position. In 1923, there were 4,597 Kazakhs in the Communist Party of Turkestan. This represented 30.4% of the total number of party members and candidates. At the same time, there were 1,614,217 Kazakhs in the republic, or 30.8% of the total population of Soviet Turkestan.

In the KASSR (Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic), Kazakhs dominated local authorities in those districts where they constituted the majority of the population. Accordingly, where the majority of the population was Russian, the local authorities consisted of their representatives. However, Russians still predominated in regional and central authorities, especially in the ranks of the KASSR Communist party. Most of them could not speak Kazakh. The Orenburg party leadership practiced classic external management, in which the central government controlled all key positions, leaving the population under its control to manage its own affairs.

Obviously, by 1920 the Russian population as a whole was generally opposed to being part of a national republic, effectively replacing its primary role under the Empire with a secondary role within national autonomies. But Moscow ignored all protests. Thus a double dependency was created - of the Russian population on the national republic, and vice versa, of the national republic on the Russian population. In this case, the Bolsheviks could act as arbiters. In essence, it was a revival of the old imperial practice of governing dependent territories according to the principle of divide et impera, divide and rule.

This policy was implemented in several stages. The creation of the Kazakh Republic with the inclusion of a large number of Russians belonged to the first stage. In 1920, both Kazakhs and Russians were organized within the framework of traditional communities. Therefore, the relations between them had an intercommunal character. The next stage would be to put pressure on these communities to overcome their internal solidarity, because such solidarity threatened the class approach itself, which was at the heart of Bolshevik ideology. As usual, the Bolsheviks decided to crush their opponents one by one, pretending to crush one in the interest of the other.

The first blow in the very early 1920s was dealt to the Russian community, which had recently supported Soviet power and had been the Bolsheviks' mainstay in the struggle against the Cossacks. Now it became the basis for widespread discontent with the policies of war communism, culminating in a series of uprisings in 1920-1921, including in the Semipalatinsk and Akmola regions of the Kazakh ASSR and the Semirechye region of Turkestan.

As early as June 1920, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) adopted a resolution on the party's tasks in Turkestan, which called for “depriving the settlers of the Kyrgyz regions of all the lands plotted-up by the Resettlement Administration or arbitrarily taken from the Kyrgyz by the settlers, leaving the settlers with plots of land equal to their work quotas.” Lenin demanded that “the Russian kulaks be crushed, expelled and subjugated in the most energetic manner possible.” One of the main organizers of the expulsion of the Russians in Turkestan, Georgy Safarov, whom we already know, once promised to send the "colonialist scum" “to Kolchak on the moon.”

Incidentally, Safarov was a co-reporter with Joseph Stalin on the national question at the 10th Congress of the RCP(b) in March 1921. In his speech, Stalin pointed out that “the old state, the landlords and capitalists left as a legacy such oppressed nations as the Kyrgyz, Chechens, Ossetians, whose lands were used for colonization by the Cossack and kulak elements of Russia. These nationalities were subjected to enormous suffering and extermination... It is necessary to save the Kyrgyz, Bashkirs and some mountain tribes from extinction by providing them with the necessary land at the expense of the colonizing kulaks.”

In his speech, Stalin essentially outlined two main directions that then became part of Bolshevik policy. The first had to do with the course of splitting the peasant community and setting certain parts of it against each other, hence the singling out of the "colonizing kulaks," although excessive social stratification was unusual for the peasant community after the 1920 revolution. The Russian village in the 1920s was dominated by average class peasants. In 1922, only 0.2 percent of all peasants were kulaks. However, the Bolsheviks faced the tactical task of overcoming community solidarity, so singling out within the community a "predatory" group of imaginary kulaks was the essence of the policy aimed at splitting it.

Stalin's second point about the need to return the land to the indigenous peoples was precisely designed to pit the national minorities against the Russian peasant community. Safarov was even harsher: "In reality, we have in our ranks a Communist Orthodox priest, a Russian policeman, and a Semirechye kulak who still keeps dozens of workers, has hundreds of cattle, and hunts the Kyrgyz." Safarov was a delegate to the congress from Turkestan, so he actually expressed the demands of the central leadership to the local party organization — "in our ranks"!

It should be borne in mind that the party and state authorities in Turkestan were largely composed of the local Russian population, dominated by peasant settlers, especially from the Semirechye Oblast. Thus, the central authorities provided ideological justification for their interference in the affairs of local power structures, where "a Communist Orthodox priest, a Russian policeman, and a Semirechye kulak" were supposedly entrenched.

Immediately thereafter, Safarov went on to paint pictures of idyllic prosperity awaiting the national minorities, especially the Kazakhs, under Moscow's rule. "The primary task [of the proletarian revolution in the eastern periphery — author's note] is the consistent elimination of all vestiges of national inequality, the restoration of the native population's right to work the land at the expense of the colonizing kulaks, all possible assistance to the nomads in their transition to a settled state (with the indispensable provision of land suitable for cattle breeding to the still unsettled part of the nomads), the effective inclusion of them in the organs of Soviet power and in the ranks of the Communist Party, the training of the intelligentsia from among the indigenous destitute population, widespread education in the native language."

The Bolsheviks were usually generous in their promises, as they had been in 1917. They were not to be taken literally, then or later. For example, in the same March of 1921, Turar Ryskulov said, "We know that comrade Safarov has not given a single piece of land to the Kyrgyz. I ask: why don't we use weapons, why don't we create an army of Kyrgyz to show that they can defend their own rights." The naivety of this question, posed by a young communist from a distant region, is explained by his lack of understanding of the Byzantine mores that reigned in Moscow. The Bolsheviks deliberately did not mobilize the local Asian population into the army on a large scale. Under no circumstances did the political center want to lose the monopoly on violence in the region that the army provided. Moreover, the Bolsheviks had no intention of giving representatives of the local nationalities the authority to implement their declared program. In general, the declared program did not necessarily have to conform to reality.

In the Kazakh ASSR, for example, there was virtually no land reform in 1921-1922, unlike in the Turkestan Republic, which included the predominantly Kazakh Sirdaryo and Semirechye oblasts. Ryskulov wrote to Stalin on February 20, 1922: "The Kyrgyz masses look upon the Obkom [Oblast Committee] as an organ of the dictatorship of the Orenburg people over Kyrgyzstan, as an evil that prevents any real attraction of the Kyrgyz masses to Soviet mores."

To be fair, it should be noted that in 1921 the KASSR also adopted a number of decisions, in particular the Decree of the Land Commission of the KazTsIK of April 19, 1921 on the return of free lands to the Kazakh population, including the lands of the Ural and Siberian Cossack armies. However, the implementation of this decision encountered considerable difficulties. In particular, it is worth mentioning the discussion about the abolition of the rights of the Cossack armies to a 10-verst strip along the main rivers on the territory of the KASSR. On March 17, 1922, the Chairman of the Inspection Commission of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) in the KASSR, A. Zhikhanov, wrote to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), Vyacheslav Molotov: "It is difficult to maintain … the point of view … on the abolition of the 10-verst strip along the Ural and the Irtysh and the transfer of land to the Kyrgyz up to the point of expulsion of the Cossacks. The abolition of this provision is there and it is being carried out, but we do not need to inflame passions by eviction. In my opinion, it is necessary to settle the Kyrgyz in those villages where there are free houses of the deceased (whole families) or of those expelled by the revolution." During the civil war, both of the above-mentioned Cossack armies suffered heavy losses, so there must have been a lot of empty houses and lands.

Considering that both Kazakhs and Russian Cossacks lived in communities, this option did not suit either side. Besides, the way of life of the two communities was different - some were herdsmen, others were farmers. That is why the Kazakhs, who expected to receive the former Cossack lands in the 10-verst strip, could not be attracted by the offer of settlement in stanitsas. At the same time, the Russian Cossacks could not be satisfied with this solution either. As a result, the problem was not solved and the situation remained as it was. In general, the distribution of land in the KASSR remained at the level it had been fixed at the end of the Civil War.

Let us return to Turkestan. From Ryskulov's remark, made ten days before Safarov's and Stalin's speeches at the 10th Congress, we learn that for almost a year after the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), the Kazakhs of Turkestan had not been given "a single piece of land" either. This was not entirely true, of course, but no one sent the "colonialist scum" "to Kolchak on the moon," as Safarov had promised, either before or after the 10th Congress. Undoubtedly, the pressure on the Russian peasant communities in Turkestan increased, and there were cases of their expulsion from the occupied lands. But at the same time, it did not take on a large-scale character, as one could imagine from Safarov's speeches.

In 1925 a commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee worked in the Kazakh regions of Turkestan. Its chairman M. Serafimov quoted data that 2.6 million dessiatins (one dessiatin is 1.09 hectares) were returned to the local population in the Sirdaryo oblast, 1.5 million dessiatins in the Jetysu oblast, and 1.6 million dessiatins in the Kyrgyz AO, in Pishpek and Karakol (formerly Przhevalsk). In total, 3.1 million dessiatins of land were returned to the Kazakh and Kyrgyz population in two parts of the former Semirechye Oblast of the Turkestan Governorate, which had already been divided in 1925 into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast and the Jetysu Oblast of the Kazakh ASSR.

However, it was only after the suppression of the 1916 revolt that the settler-peasants and Cossacks seized 2.5 million dessiatins of land from the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. After the defeat of the Cossack uprising in Verny in 1918, the settler-peasants declared the liquidation of the Semirechye Cossack Army and the Cossack system of land use. Accordingly, all the lands seized by the Cossacks from the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz after the suppression of the 1916 revolt were transferred to the peasant communities.

In other words, the 3.1 million dessiatins confiscated from peasants in the former Semirechye oblast between 1920 and 1925 and given to the local Kazakh and Kyrgyz population were only slightly more than the 2.5 million dessiatins confiscated from them after the suppression of the 1916 revolt.

Thus, in 1925, when Serafimov's commission was working, the part of the land that the peasants had received by decision of the Resettlement Administration of the Russian Empire before 1916, or that the Semirechye Cossacks had additionally received from the Russian authorities during the First World War, was still at their disposal. In essence, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz populations received back the land they had lost outside the legal framework of the resettlement campaign conducted during the years of the Russian Empire.

The same Serafimov's assessment of the situation in the Semirechye oblast in a report to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1926 is quite telling: “In the fall of 1922, the Presidium of the All-Union Central Executive Committee issued a resolution that the land reform in the Turkestan Republic was considered completed and that no further evictions would be allowed, while everything done during the land reform remained in force and could not be returned… The peasants were completely confused and believed that the central Soviet power was also against them, since it sanctioned all the illegal actions of the local authorities. The unenlightened native population became convinced that the newcomer peasants were an element not protected by Soviet laws, and that everything was allowed in relation to the newcomer population, up to and including violence and robbery.”

This is how the old principle of "divide and rule" worked in the Bolshevik version. It is noteworthy that, despite the loud statements, the Bolshevik policy on the land question in Turkestan from 1920 to 1925 was extremely pragmatic. They divided and weakened the Russian peasant community, expelled some of the rich peasants, but did not deprive the community of most of its land. First of all, it was connected with the food needs of the Soviet power. Semirechye was practically the only region in Turkestan that produced food-grade grain in significant quantities. If the Bolsheviks were interested in Central Asian cotton, which was of strategic economic importance for both civilian and military needs, they needed to supply the region with food grain.

It should be noted that the Kazakh and Kyrgyz populations did not have the same agricultural skills as the Russian peasant settlers. When the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz grew crops, they did so primarily for domestic consumption. For this reason, it was important for Moscow to maintain marketable volumes of grain production in the northern regions of Turkestan.

As long as the Bolsheviks sought to rely on national minorities, they supported them. This support led, among other things, to the preservation of the traditional nomadic way of life. We could recall Safarov's speech at the 10th Congress on the preservation of the nomadic way of life. Objectively, however, this could not last long, because the Bolsheviks certainly did not intend to preserve the archaic way of life. They dreamed of building a new world and creating a new man. Therefore, by the end of the 1920s, the next Bolshevik blow would be dealt to the Kazakh tribal community.