Dawn over Samarkand: Rebirth of Central Asia (Joshua Kunitz)

Dawn over Samarkand: Rebirth of Central Asia
Author	Joshua Kunitz
Publisher	General Publishers
First published	1943 Kolkata
Source	https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.515346/mode/1up

IN preparing this book I had recourse to scores of studies, monographs, memoirs in the Russian language. I cannot acknowledge all of them. The authors to whom I am particularly indebted are: Faizulla Khodzhaiev, Rakhim Khodzhibaiev, Boris Lapin, Zakhar Khatzrevin, A. Briskin, P. Alekseenko, F. Boshko, Orest Rovinsky, T. Dzhurobaiev. For my information about the early career of Enver Pasha, I am indebted to Louis Fischer's The Soviets in World Affairs. The quo- tations on pages 127, 128, 162, and 163 are taken from Soviet Rule in Russia by Walter Russell Batsell (The Macmillan Company, 1929). I wish to express my warmest gratitude to my colleague, Herman Michelson, as well as to Mr. Nathan Ausubel, and Mrs. Lydia Gibson Minor, for their reading of the manuscript and their many valuable editorial suggestions. Needless to say, the responsibility for the inadequacies of this book rest solely with me. I wish also to express deep appreciation to my friend Edward Dahlberg whose enthusiastic response to the material hastened the publication of this book.

"One of two things: either we shall set in motion the deep rear of imperialism the eastern colonial and semi-colonial countries, shall revolutionize them and thus hasten the fall of imperialism; or we shall botch things here and thereby strengthen imperialism and weaken our movement. This is how matters stand. "The point is that the entire Orient regards our Union as an experimental field. Either we correctly decide and prac- tically apply the national question within the framework of this Union; either we establish really fraternal relations, real collaboration between the peoples within the framework of this Union and then the entire Orient will see that in our federa- tion it possesses a banner of liberation, a vanguard in whose footsteps it should walk, and this will be the beginning of the collapse of world imperialism. Or we, the entire federation, commit a mistake here, undermine the confidence of the formerly oppressed peoples in the proletariat of Russia, shear the Union of its power to attract the Orient which it now enjoys, in which event imperialism will gain and we shall lose. "This constitutes the international significance of the na- tional question." JOSEPH STALIN, Report on the National Question, delivered at the XII Con- gress of the Russian Communist Party,

No clouds! In a clear sky I see The sun. No night to dim bright day! No Czar! Our soil's forever free! Well done, O Bolshevik! You crushed the Khans, you did not spare The age-long foe of tribes oppressed. The victory the poor will share. Well done, O Bolshevik! Of all I've heard and seen I sing, For now my blind eyes see anew. . . . I see, I feel the joy you bring- Well done, O Bolshevik! KAR-MOLLI (A blind seventy -year-old Turkoman bard) BOKHARA, Samarkand, Dushambe, what romantic as- sociations are evoked by the mere mention of these names! Down a yellow shimmering road a long line of conquerors Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamer- laneand countless peoples and tribes move in endless caravans through the centuries, lured by the "pleasure domes" and "gardens bright" of Samarkand the Ancient and Noble Bokhara. . . . Incense-bearing trees, vineyards, pomegranates, pistachios, cotton fields, bazaars, camels, rugs, silks, harems . . . against a background of deep blue, gleaming towers of particolored mosques, turbaned mul- lahs reciting the sacred verses of the Koran, veiled maid- ens swaying gently to the weird monotone of an old chant Alluring echoes, these, of a romanticized, idealized past an Occidental's literary reveries. I recall our trip to Varsobstroy, the new hydroelectric station that was being built in the remote land of the Tadjiks, at the foot of the Pamir. We were a literary bri- gade; Egon Erwin Kisch, the Austrian journalist; Paul 11

1 2 Vaillant-Couturier, the French revolutionary writer; Luyn, a Norwegian writer; Bruno Jasiensky, the Polish novelist and poet; Anna Abramovna Berzina, the Russian writer, and Louis Lozowick, American artist. Our cars rattled up the narrow, rocky road that wound along the precipice overhanging the wild Dushambe. The mountains on both sides of the river were bare rocks, torn by deep gorges, red with the heat of the sun. Far in the distance Igomed the snowy peak of Lenin-tau. There was not a living being in sight, except for a rare native in bright cloak and silk embroidered skull-cap, prodding his long stick into the ribs of his obstreperous ishak (native ass), or an occasional eagle wheeling in the sky. The country was primitive. Only here and there one saw traces of civilization: now a green patch of cultivated land rising on a steep incline a triumph of human per- sistence and ingenuity; now an ethereally woven bridge arching perilously over the roaring Dushambe. But those things had been there for centuries. Alex- ander the Great, during his famous passage to India, must have contemplated them as rude signs of a primitive life. The ebullient Frenchman at my side, undaunted by the scorching heat and clouds of dust, grew eloquent over the rough grandeur of the scene: "Chaos . . . primordial chaos . . . magnifique! . . ." "Never mind chaos . . ." grumbled Khodzhaiev, a young Tadjik, a member of the State Planning Commission of Tadjikistan. "We are beginning to harness this chaos. There has been chaos here long enough." It was always so! Invariably those Central Asian Bol- sheviks would put a damper on our innocent enthusiasms. Small wonder. They had dwelt there for centuries, in ignorance, in darkness, isolated from the rest of the world, oppressed by the Czars, exploited by the native rulers, the Emirs, the Khans, the Beys, and the all-powerful and fanat- ical Mohammedan clergy. One could scarcely blame them for being impatient with the magnificence of chaos and

1 3 for finding romance "in this telegraph line we have put up here at the cost of infinite pain, in this road which we are building and which is to serve as an artery beating with the pulse of a modern Stalinabad joined to a modern- ized Samarkand and Tashkent." "This is our romance," insisted Khodzhaiev. "Bolshevik tempo, comrade, Bolshevik tempo!" And after a pause: "If you ever write about Tadjikistan, please don't fall into the error of most of the Europeans who visit us, don't descend to exoticism, don't become worked up over the magnificence of chaos." Khodzhaiev pronounced "magnifi- cence of chaos" with irony. "Please don't expatiate on the beauty of our apparel, the quaintness of our villages, the mystery hidden beneath our women's paranjas, the charm of sitting on rugs under shady plane trees and listening to the sweet monotone of our bards, of drinking green tea from a piala and eating pilaf wth our hands. Really, there is little that is charming about all that. Take any cultured Central Asian, cultured in a modern sense, that is, and to him most of the local customs mean simply back- wardness, ignorance of the most elementary rules of sani- tation and prophylactics." We felt that Khodzhaiev was annihilating a half the best half, we thought of our prospective books on Central Asia. We hastened to defend ourselves, attempting to as- suage him by diplomacy, reminding him jocularly that if we ever wrote anything about Central Asia, it would be not for Uzbeks and Tadjiks, but for Europeans and Americans, and that a touch of the exotic might make our books more palatable to the West. "But that would be pandering," Khodzahiev argued in- dignantly. "You would not be describing Soviet Central Asia. If your reader is interested in exoticism let him read books about us written ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago it would all be the same. But you are in Soviet Asia, and it is your duty to give what is most characteristic, what distinguishes our Soviet Republics. You must deal with the living, not the dead." Khodzahiev was, of course, right. He was speaking of a

14 modern romance, a contemporary epic the rebirth of Central Asia. And that romance, he felt, demanded not rhetoric but arithmetic, not exclamation marks but figures. Central Asia is in a paroxysm of change. The imme- morial droning of the somnolent East is drowned out by the strains of the Internationale mingled with the sirens of new factories and the hum of American and Soviet motors. Among the traditional paranjas of the veiled women there are appearing in ever-increasing numbers the bobbed hair and the khaki uniforms of the revolution- ary youth. Mullahs and beys have been supplanted by Soviet commissars and Red factory managers. Mosques and mederesse (religious academies) are being crowded out by Communist Universities, workers' clubs, people's theaters, libraries, movies. An anciently entrenched oriental feudal- ism is being shattered by the vast sweep of modernity, by industrialization, electricity, collectivization, science. For years now Central Asia has been a medley of clash- ing values. The revolution has unleashed a whirlwind of passion. The old fights back, desperately, brutally. But the new is triumphantly advancing. Even those who cling to the old cannot resist the magnificent upsurge of the new. History has executed a sudden volte face: the West is carrying its civilization back to its place of origin. Western revolutionary scientific ideas have been hurled against eastern tradition with unparalleled daring, and the emotional overtones of this collision of two world systems are surely the most dramatic aspects of the epoch-making advance of Bolshevism in the Orient. Yes, a storm is raging over Asia. The heart of the old continent is on fire. From Moscow the revolutionary flames have raced across the burning steppes of Turkmenia and enveloped the Asiatic extremities of the old empire. And the end is not yet. Beyond Khiva, Bokhara and Samar- kand, beyond Turkmanistan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, these rising outposts of Bolshevik influence in the East, there are the teeming colonial and semi-colonial peoples of Asia Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia, India, China. . . .

15 Central Asia has become a source of infinite wonder- ment to the peoples of the Orient, including the Central Asians themselves. It is significant that within the last few years the Karategin, Darvaz, and Pamir mountain Tadjiks have evolved the so-called "songs of wonderment," a new genre of folk poetry. Each of these new songs ex- presses the bard's thrill of amazement at first beholding the achievements of the new Socialist Soviet Republics. Thus, to take only one example, the Tadjik bard Mu- navvar-Sho, for instance, is ineffably impressed by what he saw in the capital. His song begins with an enumeration of all kinds of possible and impossible wonders that he had once seen or heard or remembered "soot and ashes in the caverns of the moon," "a kingdom bathed eternally in the lunar quiet of the night," a "multitudinous bazaar where the silence is never broken," the men of Darvaz who when they caress their lovely damsels find "eternity too short and a second much too long. ..." However, Munawar-Sho has visited the new city of Stalinabad, the capital of Tadjikistan, and has grown much wiser. He now speaks contemptuously of all those wonders he once be- lieved. He dismisses them as trifling, mere "fables." The one thing he now really knows, the one really great wonder is the city of Stalinabad where he saw "a great, big square with clubs and cars and cinemas and factories and lights." News spreads fast in Central Asia. Mountains, deserts, rivers and national boundaries present no serious obstacle. Everything spectacular happening in Soviet Asia is imme- diately known in all the surrounding colonial and semi- colonial lands. In remote Khokanyor, for instance, the whole village men, women and children had gone out to meet the first tractor shipped from the center. When they saw that the tractor could not be brought down the very steep hill, they decided to carry the machine down in their arms. For weeks the tractor driver was the most respected man in the village. On the other side of the border Afghans sat day and night and watched the tractor working. And at Sarai Komar, the center for the development of Egyptian cotton in Tadjikistan, I saw a delegation of

l6 Afghans who came from across the Pianj to ask the local Soviet authorities to help them organize a collective farm. "But you are not Soviet citizens," protested the Tadjik official. 'Tour country is Afghanistan. We can't come there and organize collective farms." "Why not?" asked the naive Afghans. "You have a strong army." The thing appeared quite simple to the applicants- come with your army and organize collective farms. "It's a long and very complicated story why not," dodged the official. "But why not get together your be- longings and come to us? We'll organize you in a kolkhoz all right. We'll settle you on good land, and give you credits. Remember we can use here another million and a half willing workers. Just go back and think it over." Disappointed, the Afghans left. I do not know whether those particular Afghans ever came back. But I do know of a few collective farms in Tadjikistan organized by Afghan immigrants. I have also met a number of Afghans in one of the brick factories in Stalinabad, the new Tadjik capital. Great Britain is filled with foreboding. Japan is rattling the sword. Hyashi says Japan will not brook Soviet influ- ence in Sinkiang or the rest of China. The United States is wavering, loath to see Japan gobble up China and loath to see Soviet influence spreading in the Orient. Of late it has begun to lean more to the side of Japan. Asia is in a great ferment. One little spark may set off an explosion powerful enough to shatter to bits the whole elaborate world structure of modern imperialist-capitalist civiliza- tion. And it is as likely as not that that spark may be gen- erated around Uzbekistan or Tadjikistan, the two young Soviet Republics which have risen out of the ashes of an- cient Bokhara in the very heart of Asia.

"Since the time of the formation of the Soviet Republics, the states of the world have divided into two camps: the camp of capitalism and the camp of socialism. "There in the camp of capitalism national enmity and in- equality, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppres- sion and pogroms, imperialist brutalities and wars. "Here in the camp of socialism mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, dwelling together in peace and the brotherly collaboration of peoples. "The attempts of the capitalist world for a number of decades to settle the question of nationality by the combina- tion of the free development of peoples with the system of the exploitation of man by man have proved fruitless. On the contrary, the skein of national contradictions is becoming more and more tangled, threatening the very existence of capitalism. The bourgeoisie has been incapable of organizing the collaboration of peoples. "Only in the camp of the Soviets, only under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, mustering round itself the majority of the population, has it proved itself possible to destroy national oppression at the roots, to establish an atmosphere of mutual confidence and lay the foundation of the brotherly collaboration of peoples. "Only thanks to these circumstances have the Soviet Re- publics been able to beat off the attacks of the imperialists of the whole world, internal and external, only thanks to these circumstances have they been able successfully to liqui- date the Civil War, and to secure their own existence and commence economic reconstruction." Declaration from the Constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

Humanity is plagued by four evils fleas, bed- bugs, mullahs, and the Emir's officials. Tadjik proverb. Flight of Emir THE Bokhara Emirate was overthrown in September, 1920. The Emir, abandoning his hundred wives, but taking along his letter of credit on the English bank (fifty- four million gold rubles), fled from his capital, followed by a host of officials, mullahs, merchants, and several of his comeliest bachi (young boys). The news spread like wild- fire: The Djadids (bourgeois progressives) have seized power in Bokhara; they are being helped by the Bolsheviks. A strange silence fell upon the land. From early dawn, great clouds of dust rose above the road leading from Bok- hara through Denau to Dushambe. Thousands of the Emir's horsemen moved stealthily in the direction of Eastern Bokhara. Like a thief in the night, Emir Said- Alim entered Denau. No sumptuously dressed cortege now, no music, no harem only a pitiful horde of fright- ened followers. Four nights the Emir spent in Denau. Nigmatulla, the Bek, was so anxious to please his majesty that he became hoarse issuing orders to his servants. But knowing the Emir's lechery, Nigmatulla was somewhat worried about his sisters whom he had kept unmarried because he could not find in wild Denau men of sufficient wealth and social standing to satisfy him. Now, that the Emir was his guest, Nigmatulla was in a quandary. At a conference of the local officials, therefore, he urged that something quite 19

2O extraordinary be presented to the Emir for his delectation and amusement. According to the stories of the local peas- ants, seven youngsters, daughters of the poorest peasants, were selected. They were flat-breasted little creatures, with not a single hair on their bodies. Among them was little Khozid, a slip of a girl, pale, thin, transparent. The old mother begged for mercy. Nigmatulla was adamant: "You ought to be proud, you foolish woman, that the Emir is so kindly disposed to your ragged little brat." The first day, peasants by the thousands milled around the house where the Emir was lodged, anxious to get at least one glimpse at the divine being they so often blessed in their Friday prayers. By the end of the second day, however, there was not a peasant left in Denau. They had all sought refuge in the villages, hiding their young wives and daughters, smearing dung over the faces of the pret- tier youngsters. To deflect popular resentment, the Emir incited the peasants to rob the Jews, who, he charged, had brought the Bolsheviks into the land. And, it is reported, to replen- ish his own depleted fortunes (the English bank was alas too far!) he seized the wealthiest Jewish merchants in the region, decapitated them, and confiscated about three- quarters of a million dollars' worth of silver. The prettier Jewish women he ordered seized and distributed among his followers. But his henchmen excelled even him in greed and lawlessness, forcibly taking the grain, the horses, the handsome boys and girls from the peasants. An outcry of anger and indignation shook the town. On the morning of the fifth day, when the tidings came that the Bolsheviks were in pursuit, the Emir and his ignominious train re- sumed their hasty retreat to Dushambe. In Dushambe the Emir attempted to organize a force to resist the onslaught of the approaching Red Army and the revolutionary Bokharan detachments. He drew to him- self the blackest forces who sensed in the advance of the Reds their inevitable end. English imperialism, too, was not slow in offering aid to the Emir. But the peasants, for the most part, refused to send their sons to fight for their

21 oppressor. They knew what a restoration of the Emir would mean. Deserted by his people, the Emir could not withstand the pressure of the Red troops that were ad- vancing inexorably through Baisun, Denau, Dushambe, Faizabad, Kuliab, and on March 5, 1920, Emir Said-Alim- Bakhadur-Khan, the last of the Mongit dynasty, fled to Afghanistan. Spiritual Ruler Noble Bokhara "high, holy, divinely descended Bok- hara" capital of the ancient Bokhara Khanate; home of a long line of mighty temporal and spiritual rulers, the Emirs, who next to the Turkish chalifs wielded the great- est authority among the Moslem peoples. . . . Bokhara- glorious citadel of Arabian-Persian culture; for centuries the "heart of Islam" in Middle Asia; birthplace of great orthodox scholars and expounders of the Koran; center of two hundred and fifty mosques and one hundred and fifty mederesse From the Volga, the Crimea, the Cau- casus, the Siberian deserts, the Pamir mountains, Chinese Turkestan pilgrims and students of the Koran and of Sunnite lore came here to kneel in reverence before the grandeur, the sanctity of the great city and its divine ruler. Bokhara was a powerful theocracy in its day. Headed by the Emir, the Bokharan clergy was omnipotent. Educa- tion, justice, domestic relations, everything was in its hands. Through the centuries, the Emirs and their hosts of mullahs (who were three per cent of the entire popula- tion; practically the only people who were literate were mullahs) had perfected a splendid apparatus for regiment- ing the emotions and aspirations, the very lives of the Bokharan peoples. Wealthy and disciplined, the Moslem clergy under the Emirs formed a powerful army for crushing any signs of spiritual independence or intellec- tual heterodoxy anywhere in their domain. Fearful that secular modern education, that science would undermine the established feudal order, the Emir

22 and his mullahs fiercely opposed every tendency in that direction. Education was religious education. Culture was traditional culture. The sole function of the few elemen- tary schools, conducted by mullahs or students from the religious academies, was to give the squatting pupil a smattering of religious dogma, a fair knowledge of Mo- hammedan ritual and practice, and a familiarity with a few Moslem prayers. The entire elementary "education" reduced itself to a few years of reciting by rote some verses from the Koran. In the elementary schools, few learned to read, fewer to write. In the higher institution of learn- ing, in the mederesse, the course of studies differed in quantity rather than in quality from that pursued in the elementary school. Modern languages, natural sciences, higher mathematics, all these were strictly taboo. The cita- del of ancient Arabian-Persian culture had to be pre- served. The Emir's theocratic rule had to be kept intact. In the isolated Bokharan towns and villages, the mul- lahs were everything teachers, judges, spiritual guides. People went to them for advice, seeking their authority whenever any matter came up for a decision. This custom was hoary with age, and no one could question it with impunity. For the poor, overtaxed subjects of the Emir, the only consolation, the only hope lay in death, in the glorious beyond; but even the keys to the beyond were in the hands of the mullahs. If any bold subject of the Emir ever dared to rebel or even grumble, he would be torn to pieces by the mullah-incited mobs. The Emir's spiritual authority was not to be questioned. Temporal Ruler The Emir's temporal authority was also absolute. The heads of the various government departments, the minis- ters, were appointed by him and were responsible solely to him. The country was divided into administrative units provinces, counties, villages. The corresponding adminis- trative offices were those of Bek, Amliakadar, and AksakaL

2g The custodians of religion and education in each bekdom were the Raizes and their subordinates. The financial de- partment was administered by the Ziakets the central and local tax collectors. Finally each bekdom had its own judicial apparatus consisting of the chief casi, generally a mullah, and his subordinate casiij also mullahs, through- out the amliakadardoms. All offices were under the direct control of the Emir's ministers. The Emir paid no salaries. The Beks, the Amliakadars, the Aksakals, the Ziakets, all worked on a commission basis, receiving a stipulated percentage of the moneys they collected. The more they collected, the greater the com- missions. The system lent itself to endless abuses. Nepotism was rife. Officials filled their departments with friends and relatives. Offices were opportunities to mulct the population by taxes, bribes, extortions, expro- priations. To get into office one had to make generous gifts to the high officials surrounding the Emir. Office- holding was a business and bribes to one's superiors were a good business investment. To support the Emir and his rapacious officials and mullahs, the population was taxed mercilessly. There was a tax on the crops (one-sixth of the yearly yield); a tax on the cattle and produce bought and sold on the market; a head tax on each member of the family; tolls to be paid for crossing bridges and using the roads taxes without end, and a large share of all this revenue would find its way into the Emir's coffers. More, the Mohammedan reli- gion provided for a fund vakuf to be devoted to satisfy- ing the spiritual needs of the faithful. Ten per cent of every Moslem income had to go into the treasury of the mosque. This money, according to the Holy Books, had to be used for the maintenance of religious schools, the development of "science," aiding the poor, and support- ing benevolent institutions. But even the vakuf had for a long time been appropriated by the Emirs and the upper clergy for their personal use. While the population was being impoverished, the Emir was accumulating more and more wealth. Not satisfied

24 with his income as head of the state and head of the mosque, the Emir also went in for money-making as mer- chant and industrialist, taking advantage of his position of absolute monarch to exploit the people. Besides the huge sums spent on maintaining the luxurious court and harems, on bribing the Russian officials, and on sumptu- ous presents to the Russian Czar and his family, the Emir invested more than 100,000,000 rubles in commerce, in railroad companies, and in Russian and foreign industrial concerns. As in the early period of European feudalism, so in Bokhara no distinction was made between what be- longed to the state and what belonged to the ruler. The vast riches of the country were regarded as the Emir's personal property; the state treasury was the Emir's treas- ury; the whole of Bokhara, the Emir's estate. More than a hundred million! And that was not all. Add to that the sums the Emir received for the great stocks of cotton and caracul he had shipped to England in 1919-1920, then add the moneys he deposited in the French and English banks, and you get an idea of the immense personal fortune of Noble Bokhara's divine ruler. No wonder that when the Soviet Government of Bokhara was organized it found the country in an in- credible state of devastation and wretchedness. The Emir had done nothing to develop industry, stimulate com- merce, improve agriculture; he had not adopted a single measure to provide for the health of the people, for their education and culture. There was not a single theater in Bokhara, and only one small privately owned moving pic- ture place. Of the annual eighteen million rubles that the Emir received in revenues, an infinitesimal portion was spent on the people's most elementary needs. Three tiny hospitals and an abominably laid pavement in the main streets of the capital these were all that the Bokharans ever received from their government. Not one kopeck from the Emir's huge income was spent on irrigation, on roads, bridges, schools, or sanitation. The masses had to shift for themselves as best they might. Everything was in a state of ruin and neglect.

II MILLIONS OF DAYS Along the road, Old and long, Passed to and fro Alexander who conquered the world, The great Caesar, And the murdered Genghis. And Tamerlane left his traces, And the Mongols took vengeance, And China attacked. They murdered men And they robbed the gardens. Blood, blood. ft was bad for the living where Jugi went. Along these roads Very ancient, Across these steppes And mountains and valleys, Went slaves and widows, Their necks in iron chains, Five, ten, hundreds of millions of men, Condemned, weakened, Hunted out by sorrow And they came again to sorrow. And ruin flew from Peking to Rome, Ruin went from Moscow to Bombay, And the unconquerable army moved. And all the roads were spread with human bones. Translated from the Uzbek of Gafur Gulam by Langston Hughes and Nina Zorokovina. Noble Bokhara NOW the Emir is gone. He is selling caracul in Cabul. The jeweled crown has been removed from Bokhara. Bokhara's age-long rival, Samarkand, has become the cap- ital of the new State, the Uzbek Socialist Soviet Republic, while Tashkent, another rival, has become the flourishing

26 center of contemporary Uzbek industry and culture. After a long and turbulent life, old Bokhara seems to be at rest, waiting. I rise early and take a stroll in the company of Shokhor, the local correspondent for a Moscow paper, through the outskirts of the old city. There are gray streets, gray fences, gray walls, low, flat-roofed gray houses, all merged into one monotonous mass of corrugated gray, the same as they have been for centuries, hardened, immutable. As one gropes one's way through the endless labyrinth of Bo- khara's narrow alleys, a queer sensation of timelessness creeps over one millions of days, thousands of months, hundreds of years as silent, as soft, individually as indis- tinguishable as the vague silhouettes of the few veiled women who glide mutely along the walls. A sleepy Uzbek with rolled-up trouser legs, his Mongolian face and sturdy limbs the color of chocolate, sprinkles the street from a water skin. In the distance, in the pale blue haze, gleam the minarets, tiled in turquoise and peacock colors. A stork rises from the gigantic cupola of a mosque and glides above the city. It is soon joined by others and still others. The sacred birds hail the rising sun as they have hailed it countless mornings in the past. A muezzin calls the faithful to the morning prayer in the same tones, in the same words, as a thousand years before. Outwardly, at least, it seems that life here still remains as changeless as the surrounding desert. For centuries men as identical as peas in a pod were being born here and grew and aged and died, while the same sun poured the same scorching rays on the same gray walls in the summer, and the same cold rains turned the gray dust into the same thick clay in the autumn. And behind the windowless walls husbands and wives and children lived in the same ancient Mo- hammedan traditions, with masculine and parental pre- rogatives inviolate, with polygamy, forced marriages, and bride-purchasing at the very foundation of the family structure. Somewhere on the remotest outskirts of the city beyond the high embattled walls we find the notorious dungeon

27 built by Nasrullah Khan, the Emir who seized the throne in 1826 after beheading, as a simple matter of precaution, his three brothers and twenty-eight other close relatives. The bleak structure is well enough preserved to give one an idea of the way in which Eastern tyrants treated politi- cal prisoners. The upper section is about forty feet square and far below the level of the ground. The entrance is a trap door. The lower section, a deep cellar underneath the first, is twenty feet square and pitch dark. The prisoners had to be lowered into it by means of ropes. Bokhara an- nals relate that Nasrullah considered incarceration in such a dungeon insufficient punishment for rebels. He there- fore filled it with rats, snakes, and other vermin. When the dungeon was unoccupied the pests were kept in con- dition by being fed on raw meat! I peer into the black pit and think of the hundreds of fighters for a truly noble Bokhara who had suffered within its walls and I realize that this dungeon built by Nasrullah Khan is actually more symbolical of old Bokhara than all the exotic sights I am likely to see here during my journey. In the distance looms the Tower of Death, the highest building in Bokhara. They threw criminals from the top of that tower, and at times also political rebels and re- ligious heretics. In that tower, they impaled people, vio- lated girls, killed unfortunates by the score. There is one spot in that tower where they punished thieves by chop- ping off their fingers or arms before taking them through the streets as object lessons for the populace. Yet in spite of all these cruel punishments, Bokhara was proverbially a land of lawlessness. No law-making body, except the Emir; no law, except the shariat (interpretation of the Koran) and the adat (common law); no personal or prop- erty rights, except those granted at the despot's will. Any one could at any time be seized, flogged, clapped in jail, deprived of his property, beheaded at the behest of the Emir. There were no elective offices of any kind. As in all arbitrarily ruled countries, graft, bribery, corruption, venality and violence were rife in Bokhara. A characteristic feature: the judge (generally a mullah)

28 in pronouncing sentence also determined the amount of the fine, a part of which was to go into his own pocket. The fine was presumably in proportion to the punishment, and it was quite natural therefore for the judges not to be chary of handing out severe sentences and collecting heavy fines. Justice was candidly class justice. A transgression which in the case of a rich defendant incurred the mildest reprimand the mere fact of his being haled before the court not infrequently having been regarded as sufficient punishment involved in the case of the poor man severe flogging and imprisonment. Fine, imprisonment, flogging, drafting into the army for life-long service, execution these were the most usual and frequent punishments. The venality and the cruelty of the courts were such that the population, particularly the poorer classes, feared them more than the plague. In the villages the peasants would most often settle their disputes by arbitration, thus avoid- ing the paying of extortionate fines to the Emir's mullah- judges. Peoples and Conquerors On my way back to the center of the city the memory of Nasrullah Khan and his weird dungeon haunts me. "Elsewhere light descends upon the earth, but from Bo- khara it ascends," says a native proverb. And another de- clares that "Whoever says Bokhara's walls are not straight, he is cast out of God." I think of the past: numerous peoples and nationalities hemmed in by hungry steppes and impenetrable mountain ranges; living in poverty, darkness, bigotry; exploited by a host of feudal landlords, merchants, mullahs and tax-collectors; kept enslaved by continuous artificially stimulated racial and religious dis- sension; decimated by malaria, dysentery, typhoid and a hundred other plagues; tortured by fleas, lice, scorpions, jackals, wild boars, vermin and beasts of every other kind and description. In the accepted literature exotic tales of peoples and

2 9 conquerors; underneath millennia of destruction, pov- erty, slavery; mountains of corpses; oceans of blood. And my first morning impressions of Bokhara's "eternal same- ness" were also more than a little nonsensical an idealiza- tion of a quiescence that has simply not existed. Surely even here man's spirit has manifested itself periodically with cataclysmic violence and incandescent brilliance. More than once had the blue cupola of silent years over the land been shattered by the thunder and lightning of momentous mass eruptions. As far back as the fourth and fifth centuries, the Iranian peoples here the Tadjiks had formed a number of pow- erful states Baktriana, Transoxiana, Sogdiana the fame of which resounded throughout the then known world. Roads renowned in history, joining India with China, had wound their way through these regions arteries of trade and commerce, sources of wealth and power for the states through which they ran. A great blessing these roads were, but also a great curse: the countless peoples migrat- ing interminably from the depths of Asia swirled along them, sweeping everything before them in their path, destroying cities and states, and forming new ones in their stead, which in turn were overwhelmed by the next wave of still fresh and vigorous migrants, and so on through the ages. Medeans, Persians, Tokhars, Greeks, Parthians, Huns, Turkomans, Chinese, Arabs, Mongols, Russians- all of these and more had at one time or another moved in hordes along these roads; some vanishing without a trace, others settling and amalgamating with the older dwellers. Alexander the Great Alexander the Two-Horned in native legend founded here a number of cities in which fourteen thousand Greeks had settled and finally merged with the Baktrians, but not without leaving some impres- sion on the culture of the country. In the seventh and eighth centuries the Arabs came and formed the flourish- ing state of Maverannger. In the frenzy of religious prose- lytism, they extirpated Parsism, Buddhism, Mazdaism, Nestorian Christianity and proclaimed the everlasting glory of Allah and his Prophet. But the Arabs, too, like

gO the Greeks and the others, were absorbed, assimilated. Only a few of them have remained, kinsmen of the Prophet, still cherishing a semblance of their ancient Arabian tongue. Then the Karliuks swooped down upon the land. In the tenth century it was they who were in the zenith of power. But like water in the surrounding deserts, they too were swallowed by the older population and only seven thousand of them have survived in what was for- merly eastern Bokhara, now Tadjikistan. Then toward the beginning of the thirteenth century came the vast Mongolian hordes led by the great conqueror Ghengis Khan. And after him, in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, Timur, or Tamerlane. The historians grow ecstatic when they speak of Tam- erlane. He was "the most amazing conqueror the world has ever seen," writes one, "for he sacked Moscow one summer and was at the gates of Delhi (India) the next; he de- throned no less than twenty-seven kings and even har- nessed kings to his chariot." And another writes of the "glorious pages Tamerlane had written into the history of Central Asia." One of Tamerlane's chief sports was to bury alive hundreds of captives or to pile up huge pyra- mids of living people and pour clay mixed with debris over them. True, he created an ephemeral empire which extended from Mongolia to Syria and included India and Russia, but at what price for the people who fought his battles! True, in Samarkand and elsewhere he built great and beautiful monuments for himself and his kin, but he built them on the dead bodies of millions of anonymous and forgotten subjects. And now only a few magnificent ruins remain to tell the Soviet children of Uzbekistan the sanguinary story of Tamerlane's exploits. Then came Sheiharri-Khan in the seventeenth century, leading the nomad Uzbek tribes. This was no temporary invasion, but a permanent occupation. The Uzbek tribes settled in Central Asia and made Bokhara their capital. The ancient Maverannger vanished: it was replaced by the Bokhara Khanate of the Uzbeks. The Uzbeks formed other khanates, those of Khiva, of Kokand, etc. The Tadjiks

31 who had successfully absorbed all the other invaders had to yield to the superior numbers of the Tiurko-Mongols. Great and fundamental changes in the life and culture of the country were brought about by the new invaders. The Uzbeks had marked their arrival by the razing of cities, the destruction of the elaborate system of irrigation. Re- treating before the horrors of the Tiurko-Mongolian con- quests, the Tadjiks fled into the ravines and caves of the Hindukush and Alexander mountain ranges. The whole composition of the population in Bokhara changed: the Tadjiks had permanently retired into the mountains, and the Uzbeks now filled the plains. Yet, strangely enough, it was the culture, the habits, the religion of the Tadjiks that ultimately survived in Bokhara, and the official lan- guage in the Bokhara Khanate and of the upper and more cultured classes of the Uzbeks was not Uzbek but Tadjik. Thus came into existence in the seventeenth century the theocratic, patriarchal Uzbek Khanates in Central Asia. Nasrullah-Khan was only one in a long line of despots. The khans of Kokand and Khiva were fully his match in tyrannizing over enslaved peoples. The White Czar It was in the reign of Nasrullah-Khan that the last major invasion of Central Asia came to a head. Russia's cynical seizure of the three Central Asian Moslem khanates Kokand, Bokhara, and Khiva and heedless expropriation of the semi-nomad Kirghiz, Turkoman, and Uzbek tribes are among the blackest pages in the gruesome history of Czarist imperialism. As far back as 1717, Peter the First attempted to worm his way into Central Asia by siding with one khan against another and mixing up in their feuds. But only disaster came of that. His successors found it advisable to go on with their "civilizing mission" a little more cautiously, creeping up slowly but inexorably from Siberia and the Urals in the North and the Caspian in

32 the West, and steadily crushing the age-long "anarchy" created by "those semi-nomadic, marauding" Asiatics. First the Kirghiz were smashed. A few years later the Czar had his troops on Syr-Daria. After that began the conquest of the khanates. In the sixties Kokand was bat- tered, and two of its most important towns Turkestan and Tashkent were wrenched away. Learning from Eng- land's imperialist policy, Russia avoided noisy public an- nexations, and allowed situations created by victories "to ripen." Beaten and robbed, the Khan of Kokand became an abject slave of Russia. But in 1873-1874 he was forced into a struggle with his subjects who were exasperated by Russian imperialist aggression. In 1875 another, a more general, revolt took place. The Khan, abandoned even by his two sons, who joined the insurgents, quitted his capital with his harem and his treasures and took refuge under the wing of the Russian Czar. The insurrection was crushed by the invading troops, and Kokand was formally annexed to the Romanov Empire. Bokhara was gobbled up in 1868. The Emir's frantic efforts to raise a defensive holy war against the Russian "infidels" were vain. In the end he was forced to cede to the Czar the larger part of his khanate, including Samar- kand, to open the markets of the remaining part to Rus- sian merchants, and pay an indemnity of two million rubles. The Emir of Bokhara became a vassal of the Czar. Finally, in 1873, came Khiva's turn. The Khan of Khiva, too, had to accept the suzerainty of the Czar. In the meantime, Alexander II had created in Tash- kent the government of Turkestan, headed by a sort of vice-emperor, whose pomp and magnificence were calcu- lated to give to the natives an exalted idea of their real sovereign, the "Great White Czar"! After one hundred and fifty years, Central Asia finally lay prostrate at the feet of the Romanovs. Here the Czar's government, instead of its usual policy of Russification, adopted a policy similar to that of the French in Algeria. Legally and geographically, the native peoples were kept segregated from the Russian invaders

gg and allowed to retain their old Moslem forms of life. Rus- sia's "civilizing mission" reduced itself to economic ex- ploitation of the natives through their rulers. On the very rare occasions (1898 and 1916) when the frantic natives broke out in revolt, the Czar's government resorted to savage repression, annihilating whole villages and killing native peasants by the hundreds. With the growth of Russian capitalism, Turkestan and, in a lesser degree, Bokhara and Khiva were converted into a source of raw materials, especially cotton, for Russian industry. The development of native manufactories was artificially blocked; the manufacture of textiles in these territories was prohibited altogether. While many Russian manufacturers and a few native merchants made large for- tunes, the Central Asian masses remained wretchedly poor. The peasantry was progressively pauperized, ground down by an army of native money-lenders, who acted as middle- men between the peasants and the Russian cotton indus- trialists. The natural economy of the Bokharan villages was being rapidly modified; industrial crops, especially cot- ton, and an exchange economy began to play an increas- ingly important role. The Russian capitalists were opening banks, trading posts, offices in Bokhara, buying up the raw cotton from the peasants and selling them in return manufactured products. The economic and social struc- ture of Bokhara was beginning to change. Something parallel to what had happened previously in Turkestan was now taking place in Bokhara: growth of commercial capital, disintegration of the feudal and patriarchal rela- tions, pauperization of the peasant masses, and the sharp differentiation of the village population into the extremely poor, the landless, the tenant farmers, at the one pole, and the rapidly prospering landlords and kulak class, at the opposite. Cotton-growing requires a good deal of preliminary labor and capital investment. Since the Bokharan peasants were poor, they naturally had to rely on advance credit. Even relatively well-to-do peasant households had to do

34 borrowing. In certain regions seventy-five per cent of the peasants' total investment in cotton-raising was on bor- rowed money. Bokhara, like the rest of Central Asia, had evolved spe- cial forms of credit for the cotton grower: loans from pri- vate cotton firms and loans from individual usurers. In describing the latter form, the Russian investigator, N. Koryton, wrote in 1904: These "benefactors" help the native peasant in the moment of his greatest need by lending him a small sum at an enormous interest, not less than four per cent a month. The transaction takes place before a common judge, and in the debtor's note the interest is always added to the sum borrowed. That is, if the sum of a hundred rubles is borrowed for one year, the note is made out for 148 rubles. Furthermore, if the usurer doubts the debtor's paying capacity, he takes as security a mortgage on the debtor's real property, at the same rate of interest as above and at a valuation of half the property's actual worth. Foreclosures of such mortgages are the usual thing here. Russian usurers have acquired vast tracts of land at the ex- pense of the ruined native peasants. The of cotton-growing in Central Asia as a whole proved disastrous to the well-being of the lower economic strata. In the cotton districts of Turkestan, for instance, thirty per cent of the entire population were landless, forty per cent had only one head of cattle per family or no cattle at all, thirty per cent were altogether propertyless and homeless. A vast army of landless peas- ants and agricultural workers wandered from one region to another in search of jobs. The indebtedness of the poor- est section of the peasantry mounted by almost 100 per cent from 1909 to 1911. The same was true of Bokhara and Khiva. Peasants lost their land. Farm tenancy was on the increase. Only the richer peasants, the kulaks, the beys, those who could afford to cultivate cotton without having to resort to loans, found cotton-growing profitable.

35 Also, the usurers and the Russian firms waxed rich on cot- ton. For the majority of the native peasantry the transition of Bokhara from a primitive natural economy to com- mercial farming was the cause of infinite suffering and widespread ruin. The poor were becoming poorer, the rich richer; while wealth was being concentrated in the hands of the Russian bankers, the native money-lenders, and the beys. The fact that Bokhara, like Turkestan, was a colonial country made the situation even worse. In America, in Europe, in Japan, to a lesser degree in Russia, the peas- ant's loss of land was in a measure compensated by the simultaneous growth of industry which absorbed a great deal of the surplus village population. In Bokhara this was not the case. The Czar's government brooked no in- dustrial development in its colonies; and the fate of Bo- khara's peasants was no concern of the Romanovs. Is it any wonder that, ruined, hopeless, and desperate, the Bokharan peasants, like their brothers in Fergana, be- gan to join in lawless bands of brigands, scouring the hills, attacking travelers, raiding settlements, robbing the well- to-do? Many terrible stories have been told about the notorious bandits, the Basmachi, of Central Asia. But the origin of this great social evil in Bokhara is scarcely ever disclosed. The nomad Kazak, Kirghiz, and Turkoman tribes in the rest of Central Asia were even worse off than the agri- cultural peoples. Their pastures were being taken away from them and settled by Russians from the over-popu- lated central and southern districts of Russia. The govern- ment's purpose was to reduce the agrarian unrest in Russia proper by colonizing new lands. Deprived of their pastures, their sole source of livelihood, the nomads re- tired farther and farther into the barren steppes where they were rapidly dying out. So it was for decades under the Czars and the Emirs. Then came the February Revolution of 1917, and the feudal monarchy collapsed. Then came the October (Bol-

3 6 shevik) Revolution, and the laboring masses of Central Asia immediately, in 1917, organized a Soviet Government in Tashkent; in 1919, in Khiva; in 1920, in Bokhara. For the first time in their long history, the Central Asian peoples took their destinies firmly in their own hands.

Ill CONTRASTS Along these ancient roads which have seen so many things, From China to Iran, from India to Turkestan, Across the whole world the myriads of the pro- letariat Will pass quick and fast as a steel caravan In union and solidarity. These ancient roads are our immortality. And along these roads Will pass a gale of liberty And not the smell of blood. GAFUR GULAM Water and Blood THE sun has risen higher, and old Bokhara is stirring to life. An arba appears a queer wagon on two huge wheels as tall as a man, hitched to a camel on which a drowsy Uzbek, gray little skull cap on shaved head and tattered cotton-padded cloak wrapped about him, rocks rhythmically. Soon people on asses, on horses, and on foot, begin to fill the streets. The bearded patriarchs in their long multi-colored robes and huge turbans wound fan- tastically around their heads look like veritable Abrahams or Jacobs out of the Old Testament. Through a rickety gate a bare-foot youngster in white blouse with a red kerchief round his neck darts out and vanishes around the corner a little Communist, a pioneer! And here is a chai-khanah (tea house), an open platform set high at the edge of the street, spread with carpets and blankets, decorated with many blue china teapots. The proprietor crouching over a huge samovar spits on its sur- face and rubs it vigorously with a soiled towel. Another 37

3 8 samovar is already going full blast. The customers, their legs folded under them, blow into their pialas (large china cups without handles) and enjoy their national drink, green tea. Others are crouching around the chilim, the huge tobacco bowl with rubber pipe attached to it, wait- ing for their turns to take one long voluptuous suck after their tea. The pipe passes from one mouth to another, and no one seems to have any hygienic qualms. Already two old fellows are matching their wits at the ancient game of chess, while near them reclines a wandering bard with his dutar, chanting lazily: Glory , glory without end to Him Who blew a breath of life into a handful of dust. This, of course, is not one of the Red chai-khanahs, owned by the State Cooperative and patronized by the younger element. There one sees colorful posters plastered all over the back wall, ridiculing the beys and the mullahs, exposing the machinations of the English imperialists, urging preparedness for further revolutionary battle, preaching collectivization, and, above all, hygiene. There one sees stands with Uzbek and Tadjik books and papers and pamphlets printed for the most part in the Latin alphabet. There things are much cleaner, more sanitary, "cultured." This obviously is a private establishment, run as it has been run here for ages. Everywhere we come across hauzehs or remnants of hauzehs unclean, stagnant pools of greenish water where water boys used to fill their sheepskins to carry them to the neighboring households. We come to the famous Liabi-Hauz Holy Pool. It is an enormous reservoir which was once the royal water basin. For hundreds of years the city has drunk its waters flowing from the distant river through uncovered ditches on the sides of the street. Liabi-Hauz stands in the square, the very center of the city. The water boys clamber down its worn stone steps, and with a skillful movement of their bodies dip their goat skins and fill them. Then they carry them to all parts of the city loudly proclaiming their wares. When the

39 water boy finds a customer, he bends his sweating bag, and out of the opening, once the throat of a goat or a sheep, water pours into the earthenware pitcher. Seeing those disease-bearing pools of filth and being nauseated by their stench, I understand the pride of the local residents in the huge water tower, erected in 1929, opposite the Emir's palace, on the city's main square. Such an ugly water tower in such a prominent place would be incon- ceivable in any other city in the world. But in Bokhara water is precious. Bokhara stands in an arid desert. Water is its wealth, its strength. The canals are its arteries; water, its blood. And to the Bokharans, even to Russians living in Bokhara, nothing less than the main square would be an appropriate place for such a tower. A wreath of stories and legends has been woven around Liabi-Hauz. In popular imagination the fate of almost every historical personage in Central Asia is in one way or another bound up with this source of Bokhara's life. This is how a contemporary Bokharan novelist writes about Liabi-Hauz: The Liabi-Hauz was dug by the Christians who fled here from the fires and the lions of pagan Rome. Ex- hausted by thirst, frenzied by the thousands of miles they had traversed, they dug here a ditch with bare hands, bare fingers. But they reached no water. And they filled the ditch with the tears of anger and the most transparent of tears the tears of impotence. The old men maintain that even now the water of Liabi- Hauz is different from that of any other pool. It is transparent and bitterish like tears. The pagans who came here in the footsteps of the Two-Horned Alexander to make war, themselves drank and watered their horses from this pool. Genghis Khan, displeased by the resistance of the inhabitants, made an oath that he would not rest until the blood of his enemies reached his horse's knees. Corpses were piled up higher than the houses, but the blood, instead of flowing along the land, was soaked into it. There were no more heads to be chopped. The conqueror's oath seemed unrealizable. And then

4O Genghis rode into Liabi-Hauz and halted the water almost reached the horse's knees. Forty boys, forty youths, forty adults and forty old men were beheaded over the water of Liabi-Hauz. Their blood coloring the water reached his horse's knees. And the crippled Timur made an ablution in Liabi-Hauz before he went out to conquer the world. He had been told that only he would subjugate the earth who passed through the black tears of anger and through the most transparent of tears the tears of impotence. In the years of the Civil War when the grenades set the Ark on fire, Liabi-Hauz was filled with fire-brands, weapons and treasures. Liabi-Hauz was the last pool into which the last Emir, Said-Alim Khan, spat when he abandoned his capital forever. Now the water carriers are quarreling and resting here. What have they to do with legends, with the past; with the tears, the blood, and the spit left here! Do we ever stop to think while quenching our thirst about the hands that had dug this pool? Those hands are gone. Only the gray stones that frame Liabi-Hauz lie here as of yore. In the Shadow of the Ark By midday, the bazaar, through which we are now mak- ing our way, is swarming with people the majority are Uzbeks, but there are some Kirghiz, Bokharan Jews, Tadjiks and Russians. Most of these gaily attired natives are distinctly Mongolian; there are, however, quite a few of Iranian origin round heads, oval-shaped faces, strong, prominent, straight noses, broad foreheads, and big eyes set in large orbits. The latter are for the most part dark, though occasionally one encounters a reddish-haired and blue-eyed native. These are mountain Tadjiks, the purest type of the Iranian aborigines in Central Asia. A fine, graceful lot. You will scarcely find a fat or flabby specimen amongst them. Their long, well-developed arms and legs

41 come from mountain climbing, hunting and swimming. Some Tadjiks, though, the valley Tadjiks, are more of a Mongolian cast: high cheek-bones, flat noses, narrow eyes- centuries of mixing with the Uzbeks and Kirghiz. When in doubt, one can distinguish the valley Tadjik from the Uzbek by the Tadjik's heavier growth of beard. Around us there is arduous selling, buying, haggling, shouting. Occasionally the violent honking of an automo- bile creates something in the nature of a peristaltic move- ment down the street. Like a huge morsel in a narrow gullet, the car makes its way slowly through the dense crowd which gives way in front of the car and immedi- ately draws together behind it it seems another Soviet official will once more be late to still another conference. A beautiful girl, escorted by a rather proud-looking fellow in Young Communist uniform, arrests my atten- tion. She and her companion are Bokharan Jews whom my companion Shokhor seems to know, for, in the manner of the natives, he places his hand on his breast and bows very courteously. Not so many years ago, Jews in Bokhara (not Russian Jews, but natives) were forced to live in a ghetto, were not allowed to enter the Moslem section of the city after sunset, or ride on horseback, or to appear without a rope around their waists as a sign of humilia- tion, or, at one time, without wearing a headgear of pre- scribed form, color, and material. Now all this has been swept away by the Revolution. No more humiliation, no more persecution equality. In front of the Workers' Cooperative, of the Uzbek State Trading Company, stands an Uzbek in high canvas boots, dark trousers, and white blouse of the militiaman. Here and there one sees the khaki uniform of a native Red Army man. As elsewhere in the Soviet Union and perhaps even a little more, the Red Army man here is treated with love and pride. The proximity to the border, I suppose. All along is the bizarre commingling of the receding and the emergent, the old and the new. Shokhor is indefati- gable in pointing out every Soviet institution, every school, R,ed chai-khanah, every newspaper kiosk, the union head-

42 quarters, the Uzbek library and of course every unveiled woman we meet. Nearby, crowning a high hill, are the black ruins of the Emir's castle, the "Ark," including the harem, the state prison, and the Emir's treasury, and encircled by a crum- bling loess wall about seventy feet high. The ruins lie there just as they were left in 1920, when the palace was half destroyed by a people in revolt. Inside, the rooms have been renovated. The Regional Executive Committee of the Soviets has its offices there, above the dungeon. The ancient walls are decorated with graphs and revolutionary posters. Young Bolsheviks are scurrying through the halls. Delegations of workers, of peasants, of unveiled women come and go in an endless procession. The atmosphere here is that of any Soviet institution anywhere in the Great Union. As we go out we see urchins digging in the debris, hunting for souvenirs. One of them unearths a fragment of a pitcher decorated with the Emir's arms, an- other, the inlaid handle of a knife. Through the fine loess dust gleam the Tower of Death and the beautiful Meshit- i-Kalan mosque next to it. We sit down to chat and rest in the shadow of the ruins. From the square below come the incessant clanging of the coppersmiths, the loud blare of a Red Army band, and the sweet odor of shashlik, and far above shines a silver plane, winging its way to Samar- kand, to Tashkent, to Chelkar, to Samara, to Moscow. Unreasonable Human Herd Everything seems peaceful in Bokhara. Yet I know that only yesterday some beys (rich individual peasants) and some traitorous officials were executed by the Soviets. Everything seems tranquil here, yet every item in the local papers is proof of the progressively mounting impact of the revolution in the deserts, mountains, and valleys sur- rounding Bokhara. Everything seems quiet here, yet I know that in adjacent Tadjikistan, formerly Eastern Bo- khara, the peasants and the Red Army are scouring the

43 hills in pursuit of Ibrahim Bek, a notorious brigand, and his armed detachment who had recently come from Afghanistan to disturb the collectivization campaign and to start a counter-revolution. I ask Shokhor about Ibrahim Bek: Who are his backers? To which strata of Central Asian society does he appeal? Are his slogans economic or religious or nationalist? But Shokhor is not eager to talk about Ibrahim. He suggests that I wait till I get to Tadjikistan to find ade- quate answers to my questions. "Meanwhile," he advises, "better prepare a background. To understand Ibrahim Bek, you must understand the specific nature of the Bo- kharan Revolution. Ibrahim is not merely an echo of the past. His adventure is bloody proof that civil war and imperialist intervention are still gruesome realities here. To understand what's happening now in the mountains of Tadjikistan, you must first penetrate to the very soul of ancient, fanatical, obfuscated Central Asia. For a foreigner, this is an almost impossible task. I am an outsider myself, a Russian, and personally, I have found contemporary native art folk songs, folk poems, ordinary letters written by one native to another much more revealing of the Central Asian revolution than anything one can read in the official press or observe with his own eyes." Here Shokhor shows me the booklets which he carries under his arm a number of anthologies of local poetry and prose songs of mountaineers, songs of water-carriers, mule-drivers, peasants, collective farmers, unveiled women, short stories, sketches, fragments from novels. "If you wish to get the real feeling of the clash between the old and the new in Bokhara," he exclaims, while impatiently flipping the pages of Lapin's Story of the Pamir, "this is the stuff to read. Some of it is unforget- tably, poignantly beautiful. And as a reflection of the revolution, I know nothing to equal it." Shokhor 's eyes sparkle, when he finally finds the piece he is looking for. "Here, for example, you have the spirit of the old, the counter-revolution, at its best, its sincerest. It's a magnifi-

44 cent piece of Oriental writing. Not until I read it, did I realize how appealing, how persuasive and how dangerous therefore our enemy can be. Read it, you must read it," he shoves the book into my hands. "And don't be afraid to yield to its insidious charm. I'll give you an antidote as soon as you are through." What Shokhor hands me is a reprint of a letter written in 1924 by the Tadjik Bakhrom Amri-Khudoiev of Cold Springs, on the Pamir, to his Tadjik kinsman Sobyr Djon, a student at the Central Asian Communist University at Tashkent. On the eve of the October Revolution, Sobyr Djon had left his native Tadjik village and went to Bo- khara to prepare for the career of a Moslem divine. In Bokhara he fell under the influence of the underground liberal movement among the Moslems, known as the Djadid movement. As the Revolution unfolded, Sobyr Djon, together with many of his colleagues, gradually ad- vanced toward an enthusiastic acceptance of the principles of Bolshevism. He took an active part in the overthrow of the Emir, as well as in the Civil War that raged in Bokhara several years after the establishment of the Bokhara Peo- ple's Soviet Republic. By 1924 Sobyr Djon was a student at the Communist University. In 1927 he died of typhoid fever. Khudoiev's letter was found among Sobyr Djon's papers and turned over to the archives of the City of Tashkent. It was first published in 1930 by the Russian traveler Boris Lapin in his Story of the Pamir. It reads: In the Name of the Merciful God, His Name be Blessed! From Bakhrom, the Bek of Cold Springs, to his beloved and wise teacher, Sobyr-Djon, son of Shod Ma- khmad, of Cold Springs, blessings and greetings. I hasten to communicate to you the news that the old Visir Bobo has gathered the autumn yield from nineteen mulberry trees, and has filled his bins so as to last until next spring. Also in exchange for two donkey-loads of salt, he has sold the dried oatmeal to some travelers from the land of Vakhi. These Vakhi people told us of Russians stationed in

45 their country, who were taking count of the number of smoking chimneys, hoofs and human souls. There is also a rumor that the Russians will tax our hills. This rumor comes from the Ishan-Khodja of the Upper Vakhi. In view of all these tales we have decided to address you this epistle, hoping God is Merciful, and the Russians will deliver it as far as Podnojie Druzhby. O Mullah, Mullah! Will you ever come back to this House of Sorrow? Where waters tumultuously rush by, and your brothers are dying? Where sheep are grazing, and wolves are feasting? You were our beacon when the world was a gloomy cavern, and you have failed us as deeply as we had believed in you. O Mullah! Will you, drunk with the odor of musk, still remember the faint aroma of the syndjid tree whose fruit you had loved so well as a boy? Then you, as all of us, did not allow your imagination to soar beyond the Tzygan glacier or the mountain pass of Lysia Smert. Do you remember the day when your knapsack was filled, and old Mo-Beebee gave you the bast-shoes which she had herself woven with her infirm hands? You were then a mere little crow, the first to leave the old rookery. You were the first spring waft to leave the home of the four winds, the first copper penny out of the pauper's bone-framed purse. That was a joyous occasion, because you were the first of our ravine before whom were to open the glamorous gates of the Veritable Book. For seven long years you were away from your native hamlet. Those were seven years of daily waiting. The dying fought death. The women in agonizing labor pains aided nature to heighten the great happiness of your homecoming. But you never came back to teach us the intricacies, nor to illumine the darkness of our faith.

46 Then I, your old friend, followed in your footsteps, and twelve days later I reached Garm. The town was then in the hands of the Bek Ubaidullah. You were not there. You had gone forth still farther, to Kokand. I remained at Garm to study in the midst of ten-year- olds. Later we heard that you had come back to Karategin, in the year when Said-Emir was banished, and that you were then helping the Russians to conquer Moslem lands. (A great unforgivable sin!) Then your letter came to tell us of your sojourn in the thrice damned Red House of Science in Tashkent. Amen. May Allah be praised! Truly these are the very forty thousand years of ill grace, as the exalted Mukhammad Boo Khanifi used to say. (May his soul rest in peace.) The women are filled with white rot the men are de- caying stalks. The cruel war has destroyed piety, and sowed thorns on the Moslem flax fields. We lived in dependence and happy poverty. The mighty were strong like oaks, and we, the poor and weak, clung to them like young shoots of ivy. Before my eyes were hundreds of milestones erected by the teachers of the world. Now, like a madman on ruins, I know not where the sun rises and where it sets. I am terrified by the valleys. Menacing boars of faithless- ness trample our meager fields. Bewilderment assails us, and you are not here, O Mullah, to teach knowledge and faith. You have betrayed us! You were a rock, but turned into a bog. We do not know who tempted you, and wherein did you find allure- ment. In your letter I felt the spirit of swine eaters, heretics and false commentators of the Law. Cursed be he who taught you the word of negation. May

47 he be damned and his father burned. Let in his ears ring forever and ever the voice of doom, as loud as the chariots of Hell Same to you my heart, my soul, O Mullahl You are trying to feed us the venom of Russian teach- ing. Does it occur to you what our destiny might be if we follow you? So be it! We will share all that belongs to the mighty. We will take the cow of the wealthy and divide it into seven parts of poverty will yet the cow give milk? We will share the fields that have been hoed by our forefathers and give it to lie-a-beds and idlers will the earth be more bountiful and give more bread to our land? We will shut our eyes to the grandeur of Allah, and be- lieve our souls will sprout grass in their graves will we achieve immortality and omnipotence, like God? No, my Mullah! No! No! The demon, dull and indolent, has taken possession of the women. He is peeping out of their eyes, and kindles a covetous gleam. He makes their breath quick, their tongue sharp and unruly. With sidewise glances, like bitches, our mountain vixens are seeking out the thin-shouldered youths, and their brain is stuffy and impatient. . . . Suppose we follow your teaching, O my soul, and the hills will not get richer, the ravines more fruitful, and highways less impassable. What then? How will you ever look into the eyes of your old men- tors, when led on your Day of Judgment over the bridge as thin and sharp as a razor? Mullah, we live in humility. The poor are subdued by their poverty, and the rich enjoy the vanity of their wealth. Beware! Like a granite rock stands our mighty faith. Mullah, do not come back. Do you hear the far cry of our hills? They say: "For thousands of years have we lived here guided by the laws of Allah and His prophet, and there can be no change, there can not! See, our summits quake, our mighty glaciers crumble away, ready to crush

48 you. We do not want to know you! We shall defend our unreasonable human herd from your teaching. From the sinful, sinful slave MULLAH BAKHROM. Month of Khut, year 1344. "Now this letter," bubbles Shokhor as soon as he sees me lift my eyes, "is to me the most convincing embodi- ment of the spirit of counter-revolutionary Bokhara- obtuse, inert, slavish, bigoted, self-righteous, fanatical, risen in holy wrath against the heretical teachings of the new swine-eating prophets of Marx and Lenin. It is beau- tiful in its passionate imagery. The style breathes the spirit of the Old Testament. Have you noticed the author's primitive horror of a census? An interesting detail which accounts for the paucity of statistical information about pre-revolutionary Central Asia. And have you noticed that it was a clergyman, an Ishan, who spread the rumor about the Russians making ready to tax the hills? This is also characteristic. The Ishans and the Mullahs were always playing on the native's indiscriminate resentment against the Russians as representatives of foreign aggression and exploitation. The counter-revolutionary Moslem clergy was always ready to identify the Bolsheviks with the Rus- sians just as the counter-revolutionary Russian clergy was always insisting that Bolshevism was a Jewish invention. You can understand, then, why to the author Sobyr Djon's siding with the Bolsheviks was equivalent to his helping the Russians 'to conquer Moslem lands.' Also, why to him the Red House of Science, the Bolshevik university, was thrice damned. "What is more interesting, however, is the fact that by 1924 the essential tenets of our Party, however distorted and misconstrued, had penetrated as far as the Pamir. Khudoiev's metaphor about the 'cow of plenty' being di- vided into 'seven parts of poverty' is simply his poetic way of saying that he is opposed to socialization; his suggestion

49 that the earth will not yield more bread if the land is given to the 'lie-abeds and idlers' is an argument against collectivization, and his irony about souls sprouting 'grass in their graves' is an attack on our materialistic Commu- nist philosophy. Another feature is Khudoiev's reference to the women. That by 1924 our propaganda in Central Asia was beginning to bear fruit in the remotest regions, is evidenced by his assertion that 'the demon . . . has taken possession of the women. . . . He makes their breath quick, their tongues sharp and unruly 1' And observe, despite his boast that 'like a granite rock stands our mighty faith,' the author confesses that he is 'terrified by the valleys,' and by the 'menacing boars of faithlessness' who 'trample our meager fields.' "The concluding paragraph of the letter is the quintes- sence of the old Central Asia's Moslem credo: 'For thou- sands of years have we lived here guided by the laws of Allah and His prophet, and there can be no change. . . .' ' Satisfied that his explanations have been thoroughly successful in dissipating any favorable impression the let- ter may have made on me, Shokhor now opens another booklet, an anthology of verse. "And here is your quietly victorious answer, composed only a few years later by one of the Tadjik peasants, Munawar-Sho : To the Prophet In the year of the great war I strolled along the road (It was a scorching day) Among the ruined Hissar towers (The earth was in a mist). My legs could scarcely carry me (I was hiding from the horsemen) Through the waters of the foul-smelling rice fields (Everywhere lay corpses). From a ruined cell emerged my old teacher, the guide of my childhood years, a Mullah and a lord of learn- ing. And he cried to me: "Hearken to my prophecies, will pass, you will recall my words."

50 Years have passed. I remember your words, O teacher. You said: "Crowns will not fall." They fell. You said: "Thrones will not collapse." They collapsed. You said: "The words of the Koran are eternal Our women will never unveil." They unveiled. You said: "The mosques will never be empty, Islam shall reign eternal." Hardly. You said: "The blood of the ruler is sacred." Look, behold, Here it is on the steel of my sword. You said: "From our land they will never flee, the merchants, the Mullahs, the Khans and the judges." They fled. Mullah, teacher, Where are your prophecies? Mullah, teacher, The thought of you makes me tired. . . ." Night comes suddenly in Bokhara. As I am finishing the poem, the sun is sinking fast on the horizon. On our way back to the hotel, Shokhor recites from memory a poem about Lenin by an Uzbek peasant bard: The poplar can lift its top above the mountain peaks Only if its roots drink water enough; No hills of sand can fill the hollow of the sea Unless they are as big as the Pamir Mountains; A man can make the whole world say his name Only if he commits some awful crime Or brings something good to the whole wide world. Many crimes have made the earth shudder But few men have done good deeds. The greatest of good deeds was done by Lenin, The urn of virtues, he who freed the earth.

51 The peaks of the Pamir may be leveled And the oceans cover up the earth And in their place new mountains rise Ten times as high as the Pamir- Ages may walk with iron tread across the earth Men may forget where their fathers lived Men may forget their fathers' tongue But they will not forget the name of Lenin. The name of the greatest of men will never be forgotten: Would not seas of tears have been shed without him? Would not the earth have bled dry without him? Did he not stop the great Russian war? Did he not dry our tears? Has he not warmed us with the rays of his soul? Has he not crushed the beys, the lice of the earth? We don't know where he found so much strength; Our weak eyes can't see into the soul of this great man. But this alone we know: Lenin's equal in mind and heart Earth has not yet begotten. Now we live, now we try, However little, to be like him The hero who brought us freedom.

PART TWO

"It is no exaggeration to say that at the present time the establishment of correct relations between our Russian So- cialist Federated Soviet Republic and the peoples of Turkestan is of colossal universal-historical significance. "For the whole of Asia and for all the colonial peoples of the world, for thousands of millions of human beings the attitude of our Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Republic toward the weak and heretofore oppressed peoples is of practical import. "I earnestly request you to give this question your utmost attention to make every effort to establish by example, by deed comradely relations with the peoples of Turkestan to prove to them by your acts the sincerity of your desire to eradicate all traces of Great Russian imperialism, to struggle tenaciously against world imperialism, with British imperial- ism at the head of it." LENIN, to the Communist Comrades in Turkestan , November, 1919. "We want a voluntary union of nations a union that would not tolerate any oppression of one nation by another, a union based on the completest mutual confidence, on a clear consciousness of our brotherly unity, on a perfectly voluntary mutual agreement." LENIN, Letter to the Workers and Peas- ants of the Ukraine, concerning the vic- tories over Denikin, December, 1919.

IV GATHERING OF THE STORM O land of mine, here only dreams are blood- less.... O God! Shatter the roofs of the palaces Over the crowns of the vile khans . . . O God! Lead us out of this horrible dungeon. And make the trembling princes kneel before their slaves . SADREDDIN AINI, Tadjik poet. Bold Spirits THE first time Emir Alim Khan had felt vague tremors of a revolutionary movement in his realm was in the years of the Russo-Japanese War and the revolution of 1905. The great social disturbances in the center of the Empire had spread to the backward minority peoples on the peripheries and reached even Bokhara. It was the more advanced Tartars and Tiurks from the Volga, the Crimea and the Caucasus who were serving as connecting links between the progressive Moslem movements in Russia and Central Asia. The very name "Djadid" the New of the few nationalist societies in Central Asia was borrowed from the Tartars whose nationalist papers, periodicals, and satirical journals were avidly read by the small group of intellectuals in Turkestan and Bokhara. However, in the course of time Djadidism in Bokhara, from a purely cul- tural, legal movement agitating for secular education and a few minor administrative reforms, developed into a genuine underground organization with a considerable membership, several branches, and numerous sympathizers from among the most progressive nationalist elements in the Khanate. This change came primarily in response to 55

56 the stimulus of the Turkish and Persian revolutions in 1908. Now the Bokhara Djadids, in addition to combating re- ligious fanaticism and advocating modern secular schools, began to agitate for a more liberal political and religious censorship and to demand a general lowering of taxes as well as the establishment of a well-regulated system of tax collections. Though it was never fully formulated, the Djadids also hoped for a number of legal guarantees that would in some way enable native capital to be developed unhampered. The sweetest dream of the Djadids, vaguely envisaged by a few of the bolder spirits, was a bourgeois- democratic constitution similar to that of the Young Turks. The Emir of course persecuted the Djadids. Even the cultural aspects of their work met with the savage opposi- tion of the government and obstinate resistance of the ignorant masses who were completely under the sway of the mosque. Still a few Djadid schools did manage to sur- vive. The rallying ground for everything that was alive and forward-looking in Bokhara, these schools played an important role in forging the leadership of the impending revolution. The February 1917 events in Russia, the overthrow of the Czar and the rise of the Provisional Government, brought the Bokhara Djadids into the open. Hopes ran high in Bokhara. There were rumors that the Emir was preparing to issue a manifesto granting all kinds of liberties to his subjects. Indeed, in response to a congratulatory telegram from the Djadids, the Provisional Government of Russia sent a dispatch to Miller, the rep- resentative of the Russian Government in Bokhara, and to the Emir, urging immediate reform. Assured of the support of the Russian Government, the local revolution- ary organizations began to raise their heads, growing ever more militant and aggressive in their demands. However, the Provisional Government in Petrograd, too busy with its own immediate problems of continuing the imperialist war and of counteracting the second wave of revolutionary

57 activity, paid no further heed to the problems of remote Bokhara. So preoccupied was it with the difficult task of stopping the advance of Bolshevism that it never took the trouble to appoint its own representative to Bokhara. It simply retained in this highly responsible post the Czar's representative, the arch-reactionary Miller. Naturally, Miller, instead of assisting the revolutionaries, cooperated with the Emir. Emir's Futile Incantations Still the clamor for reforms was so great that Miller felt compelled to persuade the Emir to issue a liberal Mani- festo: As ever concerned with the welfare and happiness of Our subjects, We are now resolved to institute wide-spread reforms in the various branches of Our administration, eradicating all abuses and improprie- ties, on the basis of elections to offices as demanded by Our people. Reminding all Our subjects that the only possible basis for useful reform and all improvement is the holy Shariat, We call upon every one to aid Us in carrying out Our firm decision to illumine Bokhara with the light of progress and knowledge that will be useful to the people of Bokhara. Above all, We shall lay an unshakable foundation for the just administration of Our laws and the collec- tion of revenues and taxes. Furthermore, We shall pay especial attention to the development in Our Khanate of industry and commerce, particularly with mighty Russia. All officials and government employes shall be subject to strict control, and shall receive specified salaries, and shall be forbidden to receive any other compensation for performing their official duties. Also, We shall adopt every possible measure to encourage throughout Our domain the growth and development of useful knowledge in full accord with the dictates of the Shariat.

58 In Our solicitude over the welfare of Our subjects who reside in Our capital, We have resolved to allow them to elect a council from among those whom the population deems most worthy and honorable and who would assume the responsibilities of bettering the sanitary and living conditions in the first city in Our Khanate. We also deem it necessary henceforth to establish a state treasury, to adopt a state budget, and to keep strict account of all the revenues and expenses of the Government. Believing that all Our subjects should be regularly informed as to the exact nature of Our efforts and decrees pertaining to their well-being and happiness, We hereby order the establishment in Our capital of a printing plant whose primary task should be the publishing, as need arises, of special news that may be of general use and that may help Our subjects to obtain useful information. To provide for the welfare of Our people, We have made every effort to insure in Our Bokhara Khanate the development of self-government whenever and however circumstances may demand it. To celebrate this solemn occasion, We, working hand in hand with Our mighty protectress, Russia, and with the consent and approval of Our people, hereby order the release of all those who are at present confined in Our prisons. Friday, 28 Djemadiussani, year 1335 of Khojra, in the capital of Bokhara the Noble. The manifesto satisfied no one. The left wing of the revolutionary organization regarded it as ludicrously in- adequate; the reactionaries, backed by the still deluded masses, viewed it as a national calamity, a blow at the very foundation of the established order. In the demonstrations which followed, the reactionaries made the better show- ing. Seeing this, the Emir decided to avenge himself on his foes. His magnanimous gesture of granting them free- dom was forgotten. Reaction went on a rampage. Thirty of the outstanding leaders of the revolution were arrested and mercilessly flogged. One of the leaders, Mirza-

59 Nasrulla, received 150 lashes. The Russian workers in Kogan the European settlement near Bokhara organized a protest. The Emir, frightened by the unexpected alli- ance between the Russian and Bokharan revolutionists, hastened to release his victims. Mirza Nasrulla died on the following day. On the eve of his death he composed his political testament. He wrote that he loved his people, and that his last deathbed hope was that his people would free itself from the yoke of slavery. He also wrote that death at the hand of the executioner did not terrify him, that, on the contrary, it made him happy, for he was certain that by his death he was hastening the hour of his people's liberation. Mirza was right. His death sent a shock of hor- ror through the heart of every decent patriot. Despite the Emir's threats and prohibition, Mirza's funeral attracted a vast crowd. From an occasion for mourning, the funeral procession developed into an impressive revolutionary demonstration. Yet the timid right wing elements of the Djadids decided to retreat and henceforth to pursue a more conciliatory policy. A new and more moderate Cen- tral Committee was organized which undertook to carry on negotiations with Miller and the Emir in an effort to obtain from the latter, in return for a promise not to en- gage in subversive activities, an amnesty for the political prisoners and a status of legality for the organization. United In Revolution In his memoirs, Faizulla Khodzaiev, one of the leading personalities in the Djadid movement, and until recently the president of the Uzbek Republic, has an interesting description of these negotiations. He writes: "Through such moderate decisions many had hoped to open the way for some legal Party work. To begin with, it was suggested that Mansurov, Burchanov and I discuss the matter with Miller. "We went. Miller received us. Mansurov led the discus-

60 sion. Miller said that although he did not promise success he would try to help and that of course the only way to proceed was to confer with the Emir, since there were no other means of exerting influence. "And so, on the following day, in accordance with Miller's suggestion, we went to the Emir. We were joined by Miller, Vvedenski and several members of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. . . . On Friday morn- ing we boarded a passenger train bound for Bokhara where we were met by several of the officials in the Emir's carriages. We were all seated in pairs, each pair accom- panied by two of the officials. I found myself alongside Mansurov. We were driving through the market place just at the hour when the worshipers were leaving the numerous mosques, and in the very center of the Registan we were awaited by a crowd of about 5,000 people. "All along the road the crowds jeered and threw stones at us. That boded little good for our delegation. "We finally arrived. . . . Within a couple of hours we were all invited into the Emir's throne room. Escorted by the Russian authorities we proceeded thereto in pairs, not even inquiring as to why we were being taken there. "In the throne room we met the entire administration of Bokhara: dignitaries of all ranks and chief mullahs ar- rayed in all their splendor. When we entered, we were greeted with shouts and cries and abusive language. The introductory words were delivered by Mansurov. "He began something to this effect: 'We, the citizens of Bokhara, love and respect our fatherland and the existing order and although we criticized His Highness' manifesto as not having altogether fallen in with our aims, we now extend our hand to you, great people of the State. May the will of the Emir be done.' "No sooner did Mansurov begin to speak, than they all jumped up, waved their sticks, called us traitors, heretics, infidels. Some of us were beaten up. "The Emir finally rose and addressed himself to Mansu- rov and the officials thus: 'You, and you my subjects, there is some misunderstanding amongst you. All this will pass,

6l calm yourselves. As it was, so it shall be/ With these words he quickly left the room. We heard the raging and raving of a huge mob near the very wall of the castle, demanding the surrender of our delegation. Only then did we realize the real purpose of the two friends, the Emir and Miller. However, we were not handed over to the mob, instead we were kept in the corridor and then amidst the shouts of the retreating crowd, were led back to our former places. "There we spent the whole day listening to the shouts of the excited mob still clamoring for our surrender. "And now the treacherous role of the representatives of the Russian Provisional Government fully revealed itself. Miller and Vvedenski made every effort to create the impression that they were the messengers rather than the collaborators of the Emir. They were busy running back and forth, now coming to us, now going to the Emir, now appearing before the people, supposedly to calm them, but in reality as desirous of our end as the mob outside was. "But in contrast to them, there was another element at work, an element which had already cast off the yoke of czarism, and which later proved to be the emancipator of Bokhara the national-revolutionary masses of the East working hand in hand with the Russian workers and peasants. "Were it not for the interference of this group, the bourgeois babblers and traitors Miller and his colleagues who under the mask of liberalism concealed their reaction- ary nature would, no doubt, have handed us over to the brutality of the mob. "It was they, the revolutionary Russian Army and the workers of New Bokhara, the Russian settlement, who frustrated the hellish plans of the Emir and his Russian henchmen. The first to come to our aid were the workers of New Bokhara with whom our young Bokharan party maintained the closest ties, then the revolutionary Army which was stationed in New Bokhara and on the railroad stations of Old Bokhara. "But of all this our delegation knew nothing. During

62 our entire stay at the palace we were awaiting death either at the hands of the hangman or the infuriated mob. "Then the unexpected happened we were visited by Nasrulla Kushbegi and Urgandji. They both with one voice announced that the Emir regretted the entire affair, that he was indignant at the fanaticism of the mob, whose number by that time had swelled to 10,000, which for the last twelve hours was demanding the execution of the delegation or its surrender. However, neither thing hap- pened since the Emir was anxious that everything end amicably. Then Urgandji added that by morning we would probably be released. "Evidently the visit of the workers and the revolution- ary soldiers had its effect on His Highness the Emir and his officials. "Urgandji further stated that the members of the Soviet of New Bokhara were very tired and were therefore obliged to leave. We protested very energetically against the departure of the only trustworthy protectors we had and of course they agreed to remain with us. "When Miller noticed how readily the Soviets offered to help us, he became alarmed and immediately began to make arrangements for our release. "By twelve o'clock we were freed and on our way back to New Bokhara where we were met by cheering crowds of railroad and cotton-ginning factory workers." This trip to the Emir brought about the end of both the Central Committee and the chairmanship of Mansu- rov. About two weeks later, a new Central Committee was formed at a general membership meeting of the Organiza- tion. This Committee made a final break with many of the evils of Djadidism, such as its confinement to the province of culture and its political wavering. The formation of a new Young-Bokhara party, to replace the Djadid, was begun and its program drawn up. At the same time there was a strengthening of the agitational and organizational activities in the villages and the provinces. In accordance with one of the first and most important decisions of the new Central Committee, work was begun among the

6g Emir's soldiers. Efforts were also made to revolutionize and unite those groups of craft workers and drivers in the cities who were in sympathy with the Young- Bokhara party, and who were potentially excellent mate- rial for carrying the struggle to the next stage, the overthrow of the Emir and the establishment, three years later, of the Soviet power in Ancient Bokhara.

FIRST THUNDERBOLT TWO CAMPAIGNS: A Recitation ist GROUP: We are going into battle. We are going into bat- tle against the Chadra and the Paranja. We are struggling for your freedom, O East, on our most distant borders. We are fighting for the freedom of our sisters and the lives of our daughters. And they what do they want? Their truth let us see. 2nd GROUP: They go to the edge of the world; proudly they wave the British flag. They slay our toiling brothers whose blood in rivers flows. They pet our lords and crush their obedient slaves. They stamp as foes the eyes that stare straight in their faces. ist GROUP: We go to fight to set you free, O China and O India! 2nd GROUP: But for them China and India are like a fat ram for pilaf. ist GROUP: There is no place here any more for emirs or beys or mullahs. We need no god and no servants of his from this or other lands. 2nd GROUP: There they have thrown the burdens of this earth on the broken backs of the poor. The cry of the babes, of the Hindu peasants is terrible to hear. ist GROUP: We want to open up for the peoples of the earth a new and shining world. 2nd GROUP: They want to keep the yoke on us, the rich man, the bey, the emir! They are preparing for us a glorious holiday of bullets and bombs and grenades. IN UNISON: There are open before you two roads. In front there rises the sun. Look where is good and look where is evil and fight! That's our advice. PAIRAU SULYAIMONI 64

65 Emir Ponders HPHE Bolshevik Revolution came down like a bolt from A heaven upon the Emir. Self-determination of Peoplesl Down with Imperialism! Down with the Landlords and the Bourgeoisie! We Demand Peace, Land and Freedom! Long Live the Workers' and Peasants' Soviets! Long Live the International Revolution! These, he had frequently heard from Miller during the preceding months, were some of the slogans emblazoned on the Bolsheviks' ban- ners. He had also heard of that man Lenin "a lunatic and a German spy" but he took neither Lenin nor his slogans too seriously, for he relied on Miller's optimistic inter- pretation of events in Russia. Now the sudden news: Kerensky has fled. The Bolshe- viks have seized power! And a few days later, the New Government's fantastic Declaration of People's Rights, an- nouncing the "final and irrevocable" liberation of all the people who had suffered under the "despotism" of the Czars; guaranteeing "the equality and sovereignty of all the peoples in Russia; the right of all the peoples in Rus- sia to self-determination, including the right to separation and the formation of independent states; the abolition of all national and national-religious privileges and restric- tions; the free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting Russian territory. . . ." National freedom in Russia! To the Emir the whole thing seemed absurd, incredible. Here was a country ex- tending over two continents, embracing five hundred and seventy-seven different peoples and tribes speaking one hundred and fifty different languages, a country whose entire history was one endless series of conquests and sub- jugations of neighboring peoples, a country which in the course of four hundred years had increased its territory at the rate of fifty square miles a day from 800,000 square miles in 1505 to 8,500,000 square miles in 1900! a country which for centuries had treated subject peoples with the utmost contempt, keeping them economically backward,

66 and, with the exception of the Bokhara Khanate, ruth- lessly suppressing their national languages, cultures, and institutions. And in this country the equality of peoples has been proclaimed the fundamental law in the land. . . . "A piece of strategy," reasoned the Emir, "a spectacular gesture intended to delude the non-Slavic peoples, through the flattery of their national aspirations, into supporting the government of a band of Russian anarchists and brigands." And he decided to watch his step most vigi- lantly. A couple of days later came the "Proclamation to the Mohammedans of Russia and the Orient," signed by Lenin and a certain man Stalin. This was even more disconcert- ing. The Bolsheviks now addressed themselves specifically to the Moslem East, to the "Mohammedans of Russia, Tar- tars of the Volga and Crimea, Kirghiz and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Tiurks and Tartars of Transcaucasia, Che- chenzi and other mountaineers from the Caucasus," to all those "whose mosques and prayer houses were being de- stroyed, whose peaceful customs were trampled under foot by the czars and oppressors of Russia." Yes, the godless riff-raff at Petrograd were trying to make people believe that "henceforth" Moslem "beliefs and customs . . . national institutions and cultures" were "free and in- violable." "Build your national lives free and unham- pered," wrote the Bolsheviks. "You have the right to them. Know that your rights, as well as the rights of all the peoples of Russia, are under the powerful protection of the Revolution and its organs the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies. . . ." The Emir was perturbed, puzzled. Sitting in his cabinet under the glaring empty space where the Czar's and Czarina's portraits used to hang, he read and re-read and pondered the two Bolshevik documents. Even before he had fully realized it, his class instinct told him that they contained some profound and sinister significance. First, as to the right to separate and form an independent state. As things looked now that seemed exceedingly alluring.

67 Of course, time was when he wouldn't have thought of breaking away from Russia, even if it had been feasible. But that was months ago, under the Empire, when he, Emir Said-Mir-Alim-Khan, still held the high rank of general in the Russian army and of aide-de-camp to his friend and protector Czar Nicholas II. Then under the beneficence of Russia's power and prestige, he lorded it over his domain without fear of challenge. Occasionally, some annoying interference from the Sovereign's repre- sentative would occur, but that was made up a hundred- fold by the great economic and military advantages which he and his closest friends derived from the association. After all, it was under the czars that he had become one of the wealthiest men in Asia. "Such riches as take one back to the days of the Arabian Nights," once remarked an admiring Englishman, "with a collection of jewels and precious stones worthy of the oldest Mohammedan state." In addition to the 100,000,000 rubles invested in Russian industrial and financial enterprises, he had thirty-five million pounds sterling in gold and silver coins and in- gots. More precious than gold was his power: two and a half million good, pious, obedient subjects! True, there were a few malcontents. But Great Russia's friendly inter- est certainly helped keep them in the proper place. And there was never any trouble with respect to religious free- dom and the preservation of Moslem tradition. In Bo- khara, at least, there was no Russian meddling on that score. The Mohammedan faith and tradition, Allah be praised, existed here after the Russian conquest as they had existed here centuries before, without perceptible changes. There was a time when the social structure of the Kha- nate seemed to the Emir as unshakable as those great pyramids that keep eternal watch over the African deserts. He himself was the supreme ruler, the very apex of the pyramid the focus of all religious, executive, judicial and legislative authority in the realm Chief Mullah, Chief Executive, Chief Casi, Chief Commander, Chief Mer-

68 chant, Chief Everything. And immediately below him, supporting him and cooperating with him, were his high- est ecclesiastical and state dignitaries and the financial aristocracy. A compact, scarcely differentiated social layer, rich and powerful, and inextricably bound up with his rule; impervious to new ideas, set against the slightest innovation, the iron stronghold of orthodoxy in his realm. Below were other layers, broader and thicker, but less homogeneous, and less integrated the so-called rural and urban middle classes. The most stable and loyal amongst them had always been the beys, the richest peasants. With the exception of his nearest collaborators, the beys were his most favored subjects. Their estates were for the most part not very large, but they comprised the best lands, not infrequently granted to them by himself. The Emir was proud of his strategy the bestowal of such land upon the chiefs of tribes and clans secured for him the loyal co- operation and support of the most authoritative elements in the village. In essence, each bey was a petty feudal lord, his, Alim Khan's, vassal. The bey was not really a peasant, for he rarely worked on the land. He was most usually the local administrative officer of the Emirate, and his lands were worked by tenant-farmers who received one- fourth of the harvest. Altogether the beys constituted quite a distinct economic and social category. Their relative wealth and political power made their position in the village invulnerable and their influence irresistible. Liv- ing on their own lands which produced everything they needed, the beys like the aristocracy, were among the least susceptible to outside influences and the allurements of modernity. They were the backbone of conservatism in the Khanate. In the city, the most numerous section of the middle class was the lower merchants. They were neither inde- pendent nor affluent mostly middlemen and agents for Russian commercial and financial institutions. Always in debt to the Russian banks or the Bokharan upper class,

69 always in the process of getting into or getting out of bankruptcy, this class was ignorant and subservient, but God-fearing, politically trustworthy and scarcely distin- guishable from the rest of his subjects. Socially and psycho- logically the merchants were most closely related to the lower clergy and officialdom. Associated with this perfectly trustworthy class was, however, the native professional intelligentsia, not a very numerous group but sufficiently "advanced" to chafe under what they were pleased to call the "glaring anachro- nisms" of Bokharan life. A perverse element, most of them liberals and revolutionists Djadids. Yet on the whole, with the aid of the Czar, he had never found it very diffi- cult to handle them. A little severity went a long way with them. And right below was the thin layer of city workers about ten thousand of them truckmen, water-carriers, shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, leather workers, silver- smiths, weavers, and craftsmen of various other kinds. There were no industrial workers, no industrial prole- tariat in his Khanate, for there were no industries. How- ever, the several thousand workers in Bokhara were a pretty bad lot a little too "civilized," a little too ready to pick arguments and kick up trouble, and a little too ready to listen to the Djadids and to hobnob with the Russian railroad workers and other Russian riff-raff in the New City, in Kogan. But there were so few of them and they were so poor and had so little influence on the general population that neither the Emir nor any of his aides ever took them seriously. Then there was the large mass of the village popula- tionthe broad base of the social pyramid. A stolid, inert lot; poor and humble and touching in their profound devotion to tradition, the mosque, and their divine ruler. It was on their loyalty and obedience that the whole social structure rested. There had been sporadic peasant out- breaks, but those, Allah be praised, had been easily put down,

70 Such was life in the not very distant past under the Empire a good, reverent, God-fearing folk welded to- gether by the power of their ruler and the help of the Czar into one happy, harmonious family. Surely the thought of independence would have never entered the Emir's mind in the days of the Czar. Things, however, had changed. Ever since February Bokhara had been seething with agitation. The Young Bokharans had been making more and more a nuisance of themselves. The humiliating episode of the manifesto passed through the Emir's mind, and he felt a shudder running down his spine. That could not be dismissed too lightly. What was the use of the Bol- sheviks' guarantees that beliefs and customs would be free and inviolable, when here one's own subjects, Mos- lems, Bokharans, were trying to tear everything down? And the most disturbing, the most ominous thing was the way the revolutionary Russian workers and soldiers and the members of the Soviet from the New City rose in defense of the Young Bokharans. So that's what the Bolshe- viks meant by the rights of the peoples of Russia being under the protection of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies! Now the Emir saw through the trick of the Bolsheviks. Just as Miller, the spokesman of Imperial Russia, had dealt with him as the representative of the Bokharan peoples, so now would the Bolsheviks, the spokesmen of the revo- lutionary Russian masses, deal with the Young Bokharans as the representatives of the Bokharan peoples. Feeling the whole world toppling on his head, realizing that his money, his lands, his investments, his throne, his very life were in peril, the Emir, in a frenzy of fear, issued a despairing call to all his ministers, mullahs, ishans, rich merchants, casii and other dignitaries of State and mosque to gather in secret council. His purpose was to check up the home forces that could be mustered against the Bolshevik men- ace as well as to discuss the possibilities of obtaining out- side, especially British, aid.

71 Parting of Ways The Djadids and the Young Bokharans, too, were deeply stirred by the tremendous overturn in Russia. The Bolshe- vik Declaration of Peoples' Rights and the Proclamation to the Mohammedans of Russia and the Orient gave ex- pression, it seemed, to their fondest hopes. Those were days of profound exultation and passionate discussion. Before long, however, the fundamental differences in- herent in the various attitudes ranging from the constitu- tional democratic of the bourgeois nationalists to the pro- letarian revolutionary of the Bolshevik internationalists began to come to the surface. Now that national self- determination was at last proclaimed, the bourgeois na- tionalist Djadids thought it best for Bokhara to overthrow the Emir, break away from Bolshevik Russia, form a con- stitutional democratic republic, and start on an ambitious career of capitalist development, with native capital guar- anteed every legal advantage. Like the Emir, most of them on sober reflection came to doubt the ultimate sincerity of Bolshevik protestations concerning the right of each nation to form a separate independent state. An empty gesture, another Russian trick! Let them entrench them- selves, and before long they will crush the slightest manifestation of "separatism" or "particularism" or "local independence." The Russian Bolsheviks were now advo- cating national rights, because they were trying, for their own safety, to demolish the old state structure. But as soon as the Old Empire was completely gone, they would hasten to build in its place "their own Red, but Russian empire." Once the old alignments were annihilated, the nationalism and particularism of the former colonial and semi-colonial peoples would no longer be useful to the new rulers! So reasoned the Bokharan bourgeoisie. Other Djadids, the more revolutionary ones, vehe- mently defended the Bolsheviks, and expressed faith in their sincerity. They referred to history. They unearthed old documents. They insisted that self-determination of

72 peoples was not a newly invented Bolshevik trick, but that it lay at the basis of Bolshevik ideology from the very in- ception of Bolshevism in 1903. They went farther back- to the early days of the Second International. The London Congress of the Second International, in 1896, had stated it clearly and unequivocally: "The Congress declares that it stands for the right of all peoples to self-determination." The same position had been taken by the Congress at Paris in 1900, at Amsterdam in 1904, at Stuttgart in 1907. And Lenin had worked over this question for years. In a hundred different places, in articles, editorials, resolu- tions, Lenin always maintained that national self-deter- mination meant precisely what it said the freedom of every nationality to determine its political, economic, and cultural life. He fought tenaciously those among the Social Democrats who felt that "national self-determination" should be confined to the purely cultural or purely eco- nomic phases of a people's life and that Lenin's concep- tion, if pressed to its logical conclusion, would tend to ignore the "international sentiments" of the working class and introduce narrowing "chauvinistic tendencies" into the international revolutionary movement. Lenin always insisted: "By self-determination we mean the right of a people to separate itself from alien national-collectives, the right to form an independent national state." And in 1913 Stalin, in his Marxism and the National Question, wrote: "The Social Democracy of all countries is proclaiming the right of the peoples to self-determina- tion. . . . No one has the right forcibly to intervene in the life of the nation, to destroy its schools and other institu- tions, to break down its customs and usages, to suppress its language, to cut down its rights." And in April, 1917 seven months before the Bolshevik victory the All-Russian Bolshevik Conference at Petro- grad (now Leningrad), in criticizing the Provisional Gov- ernment, reiterated the fundamental Bolshevik principle that "all nations within Russia must be accorded the right freely to secede and to form independent states . . . the de- nial of this right, and the failure to adopt measures guar-

73 anteeing its practical realization, amount to the support of a policy of conquests and annexations." But the bourgeois nationalists who distrusted the Bol- sheviks were not easily downed. If the Bolsheviks, they maintained, were honest, then they were hopelessly naive. Surely, when confronted with the practical tests of govern- ment, all their ardor and theories would be dampened. Centralization of authority and unification would become the watchwords. Before long they would discover Bolshe- vik equivalents of the "white man's burden," "civilizing influence," "trusteeship," etc. The Stuttgart Congress, as well as the subsequent history of the Socialist parties in Europe, provided an excellent example of this. It was at Stuttgart that Socialists like MacDonald and Von Kole one a citizen of Imperialist Britain, the other of Imperial- ist Holland had refused "in principle to condemn any colonial policy which under a socialist regime may have a civilizing role to perform." As soon as the Socialists had found themselves with ministerial portfolios under their arms, the arch-revolutionary doctrines of 1896, 1900, 1904 began to evaporate. The same would happen with the Russian Bolsheviks. And then woe to those of the national minorities who had reposed their faith in them! They would be crushed all in the name of helping "our back- ward brothers in the East"! Furthermore, a thorough analysis of Bolshevik writing on this subject maintained the bourgeois nationalists revealed a curious fundamental contradiction: Always separation and unification in the same breath! The germ of this contradiction was contained in the Declaration of the London Congress in 1896. Immediately after announc- ing that all nations had the right to determine their own destinies, the Congress called upon the workers of all countries to unite in struggle for the overthrow of inter- national capitalism and for the realization of the aims of International Socialism. Well, argued the bourgeois Djadids, suppose the several thousand workers in Bo- khara suddenly turned Communist, while the rest of the two and a half million inhabitants preferred a bourgeois

74 democracy by joining hands with the Bolsheviks in Russia, by inviting Russia's help, several thousand Bo- kharan workers could, through sheer external force, es- tablish the dictatorship of the proletariat in Bokhara too, and thus make Bokhara once again an appendage of Rus- sia. What the bourgeois-nationalists, therefore, insisted on knowing was what it was that the Bolsheviks really stood for, separation or unification, national independence or international dependence? The few young Bokharans who were most familiar with Marxist dialectics denied that there were any contradic- tions in the Bolshevik national program. It was all a matter of defining who was the exponent of the nation's will. And here they felt the Marxists had always been lucid and consistent. In the Communist Manifesto, in 1848, Marx and Engels wrote: Formally, though not intrinsically, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is in the first place a national one. The proletariat of each country must, naturally, begin by settling accounts with its own bourgeoisie. The proletariat must begin with the conquest of political power, must raise itself to the position of the national class, must constitute it- self the nation; in this sense it is itself national, though not at all in the sense of the bourgeoisie. Also Stalin, in 1913, made it quite clear that the whole purpose of the Bolsheviks' struggle for national self- determination in Russia was ultimately "to undermine the national struggle, to rob it of its sting, to reduce it to a minimum" and thus enable the laboring classes of the different peoples to unite against the common enemy the bourgeoisie. "In this way the policy of the class- conscious proletariat is sharply distinguished from that of the bourgeoisie, which aims at intensifying the national- ist struggle and continuing and redoubling the nationalist agitation." The Young Bokharans knew that unification, in Marx- ist theory, was always the fundamental motive of the

75 apparently separatist slogan of national self-determination. It always meant "national" not "in the sense of the bour- geoisie," but in the Marxist sense of the proletariat seizing political power, and "constituting itself the na- tion" by winning over the vast majority of the working population. The same thought was expressed even more clearly by the April Conference of the All-Russian Bol- shevik Party in Petrograd: "The question of the right of nations freely to secede is unjustifiably confused with the question of the expediency of the secession of one or another nation at one or another moment. This latter question must in each separate instance be determined in entire independence by a party of the proletariat, from the point of view of the interests of general development and of the proletarian class struggle for socialism." * * The Communist understanding of self-determination is excellently revealed in Resolutions of the Communist International on the Negro Question in the United States: ". . . Complete right to self-determination includes also the right to governmental separation, but does not neces- sarily imply that the Negro population should make use of this right in all circumstances, that is, that it must actually separate or attempt to separate the Black Belt from the existing governmental federation with the United States. If it desires to separate, it must be free to do so; but if it prefers to remain federated with the United States it must also be free to do that. This is the correct meaning of the idea of self-determina- tion, and it must be recognized quite independently of whether the United States is still a capitalist state or whether a proletarian dictatorship has already been established there. "It is, however, another matter if it is not a case of the right of the oppressed nation concerned to separate or to maintain governmental con- tact, but if the question is treated on its merits: whether it is to work for state separation, whether it is to struggle for this or not. This is an- other question, on which the stand of the Communists must vary accord- ing to the concrete conditions. If the proletariat has come into power in the United States, the Communist Negroes will not come out for but against separation of the Negro Republic from federation with the United States. But the right of the Negroes to governmental separation will be unconditionally realized by the Communist Party; it will unconditionally give the Negro population of the Black Belt freedom of choice even on this question. Only when the proletariat has come into power in the United States the Communists will carry on propaganda among the work- ing masses of the Negro population against separation, in order to con- vince them that it is much better and in the interest of the Negro nation for the Black Belt to be a free republic, where the Negro majority has complete right of self-determination but remains governmentally federated with the great proletarian republic of the United States. The bourgeois

76 When the bourgeois national Djadids finally grasped the full import of what the Bolsheviks meant by "national" self-determination they were horrified. They had yearned for a constitution, a parliament, an opportunity to de- velop native industry and trade, and to exploit their poorer compatriots without Russian competition or inter- ference. They had dreamt of a prosperous and growing native bourgeoisie liberal, cultured, modern as the best social expression of a revolutionized Noble Bokhara. They had hated the Emir and his entire clerical-feudal set-up. However, now that they had discovered what Bolshevism actually stood for, they knew that they hated Bolshevism even more. For it was not the refined and cultured bour- geois intelligentsia, but the worker and peasant masses, led by the most class-conscious proletarian sections, who were to be the exponents of the national will! That would never do! If forced to make a choice, the liberal Djadids would regretfully choose the clerical-feudal forces of the Emir. One hope for a "democratic" government remained and that was Great Britain, although, in view of Britain's record in Asia, even that was highly questionable. Still if forced to the wall, the Djadid nationalists would choose even England in preference to the Bolsheviks. In the Shadow of Empires The Emir's and the bourgeois nationalists' hopes of British help were based on a sound evaluation of the fine web of geographical, historical, economic and political factors which entered into Russo-British relations in the East. It must be remembered that Great Britain, besides being a world center of trade separated by a narrow chan- nel from the European Continent, is a vast Asiatic Em- counter-revolutionists, on the other hand, will then be interested in boost- ing the separation tendencies in the ranks of the various nationalities in order to utilize separatist nationalism as a barrier for the bourgeois counter-revolution against the consolidation of the proletarian dictator- ship."

77 pire. In India, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey, China, her interests in Asia are all-pervading. The Near East, the Far East, the Middle East England is everywhere. Until the relatively recent rise of Japan, Great Britain's only serious rival on the Asiatic continent was Imperial Russia. Like an insatiable octopus, the monster from the north had for centuries been pushing its greedy tentacles further and further south, tightening their coils around the Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, crawling out to the south and east to Constantinople, Persia, Afghanistan, India, Mon- golia, China. It had a vast hunger for the cotton bolls and silk cocoons of the south, and a vast thirst for the warm Mediterranean and Indian waters. Everywhere it found Great Britain in its way. Not only that, but England her- self had been fixing a covetous eye on the Caucasus with its oil and on Central Asia with its vast riches. For decades the two Giant Empires in the East were making ready to leap at each other in a life and death struggle. Occasion- ally, when the British lion was engaged elsewhere, the Russian octopus would snatch as great a piece of territory as it could. So it was during the Boer War. While Britain was busy in Africa, Russia grabbed at Tibet and Persia. However, in 1907, when Czarist Russia, enfeebled by war with Japan and internal revolution, became fearful of the ominous shadow of Imperial Germany spreading from the west, she temporarily abandoned her expansionist dreams, and entered into a military alliance with Britain against Germany. Yet the basic antagonism between the two rivals in the East remained. Persia offers one instance. Ever since the Treaty of Torkmanchei (1828), Persia, deprived of her tariff au- tonomy, had been forced to yield greater and greater con- cessions to her northern neighbor. Czarism's most insidious method of directing Persia's economic policy was to grant loans at exorbitant interest to the degenerate Persian Shahs. When Russia launched a modern textile industry in the latter half of the last century, the Czars began to evince an increasingly keen interest in Persia's cotton- growing regions. Moreover, in order to assure the arid

78 districts of Central Asia of adequate grain supplies, the Czars began to feel an overpowering urge to lay hands on the fertile provinces of Northern Persia. At the same time, England was pressing her imperialist weight against Persia from the South. Finally in 1907, this country of twenty million population, rich in oil, coal, iron, virtually lost her last shred of independence: Russia and Britain had divided her between themselves into "spheres of influence" in the North, Russia; in the South, England, Afghanistan, too, after many years of friction between England and Rus- sia, finally became an English dependency. With the World War, Russia's dormant appetite for southern lands and waters stirred once again. And in 1915, to stimulate the Czar to even greater sacrifices of the lives and the goods of his peoples, Great Britain and France were forced to sign a secret agreement guaranteeing to the Czar as one of the spoils of victory the Turkish capital, the resplendent city of Constantinople. Whatever the obstacles, the rapacious northern monster was pushing ruthlessly southward. The conflicting, fundamentally irreconcilable interests of the two temporarily allied imperialist rivals were challengingly reasserting themselves. What held them together was the dread of a victorious Germany. In Bokhara it was clearly understood that the Bolshe- viks' long-proclaimed threat of withdrawing Russia from the war and of confiscating all property belonging to land- lords, banks and foreign concessions and Britain had vast and profitable concessions in Russian gold, oil, and other fields would break the truce between the two countries. Also, it was correctly argued, the Bolshevik Declaration of Peoples' Rights and particularly the Proclamation ad- dressed to the Moslem peoples of Russia and the Orient were bound to arouse the greatest apprehension and the bitterest resentment of the English imperialists in Asia. For it was precisely here in Asia in India, in Persia, in Afghanistan, in Turkey, and even in China that English imperialism was most relentless in exploiting the native masses. And the Bolsheviks' dramatic disavowal of Rus- sia's czarist past, especially as regards her oppressed peoples

7Q of the Orient, naturally carried with it the implication of sharp censure of the predatory practices of the remain- ing imperialist countries, chiefly England. There were in Asiatic Russia about thirty million Mos- lems, several million Mongols, Buriats, Jews, Armenians. All those nationalities, settled along the southeastern borders of the former empire, had national or religious or economic ties with millions of related peoples in the contiguous lands which were under English sway. And Great Britain would certainly be greatly alarmed over the possibility of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the released peoples sweeping across Russia's boundaries. Even a greater revolutionary threat to England, it was felt in Bokhara, was contained in the Bolshevik announce- ment that, in addition to liberating all the peoples enslaved by the Czar, the new workers' government vol- untarily and without expecting any compensation re- pudiated and canceled all czarist treatries, debts, capitulations and ambitions in the East. "Moslems of the East," read the declaration, "Persians and Turks, Arabs and Hindus, all of you whose lives and properties, whose liberties and customs have for hundreds of years been sold and bartered by the blood-thirsty European beasts of prey, all you whose lands are intended to be divided amongst the robbers who have started this war, we say to you that the secret treaties concerning the seizure of Constantinople signed by the now deposed Czar and confirmed by the now deposed Kerensky are abrogated and canceled. The Russian Republic and its government, the Soviet of People's Commissars, are opposed to the seizure of some- body else's lands. Constantinople should remain in the hands of the Moslems. We declare that the treaty about the partition of Persia is abrogated and canceled. As soon as military operations stop, the Russian armies will be with- drawn from Persia, and the Persians will be assured their right freely to determine their political destiny. We de- clare that the treaty pertaining to the partition of Turkey and the wresting of Armenia from her is abrogated and canceled."

80 The Emir and his councilors understood very well what the revolutionary domestic and foreign policy of the Bol- sheviks meant to the peoples of the East not only to those who had for long been chained to Russia's imperial jugger- naut, but also to those who, like Persia, Afghanistan, or Turkey, were in constant dread of foreign aggression and occupation, as well as to those millions in India and China and Korea who had long been trampled under the im- perial heels of England, France, Japan, and others. And they felt reasonably sure that in Central Asia it would be England who would lead the fight against the Bolsheviks.

VI A COLOSSUS PROSTRATE The Shah said: "Two truths are struggling in heaven" The Shah said: "Why need you worry about bread? Poverty is needed in the world. Wealth is needed in the world. Let us wait for whatever lot befalls us. Glory to you, conquerors, who have drowned the world in blood. Glory to you, slaves, who have fed the world with bread." "Lying foolish old man," I answered the Shah. "Your words are contemptible," I answered the Shah. "Everything on earth comes from peasants' and workers' hands, Great and wonderful is their work," I answered the Shah. . . . Your evil world, your shop of oppression, Your smithy of chains, your goat-skin of malice and fat Must fall before the songs of the Catling guns In the firm hands of the poor peasants and workers of the world. The time has come. The arm of our class is strong. A new world, without classes, will arise from the ashes! G. LAKHUTI, Tadjik poet. Not All Lenins EARING for his throne, recognizing that compromise ith the Bolsheviks was impossible, the Emir broke off relations with Red Petrograd and declared intercourse with Soviet Turkestan a capital offense. He began to nego- tiate definitely for help from the Russian Whites, the Eng- 81

82 lish imperialists, the Afghan government. He began feverishly to augment his army, increasing the already too heavy taxes and taking vigorous measures to stop the growth of revolutionary sentiment among his subjects and the increased activity among the Left Djadids. The one great advantage he had over the Reds was that the class-conscious proletarian stratum in Bokhara and not only in Bokhara, but in the whole of Central Asia, including the most industrialized Tashkent and Kokand regions was exceedingly thin and narrow, a small group of Russian and native revolutionists in the vast mass of faithful Moslems. The readiness of the mob to lynch the very moderate Djadids during their visit to Alim Khan indicated what treatment real rebels could expect at the hands of the fanatics. Then the Djadids were saved by the revolutionary Russian soldiers and workers from Kogan. But obviously there were not enough Russian workers in the Khanate to effect an overturn against the will of mil- lions of natives, even if such a course were desirable or feasible. To overthrow the Emir, the Young Bokharans, still too weak to attempt anything by themselves, would have to invite outside help, especially from adjacent Turkestan, where the few Russian railroad workers and Bolsheviks who had happened to be in Central Asia during the Oc- tober days formed a revolutionary soviet government at Tashkent. And that was precisely what the Young Bo- kharans did. They entered into a secret agreement with Kolesov, the chairman of the Soviet of People's Commis- sars in Turkestan, who promised to assist them with arms and men. They then began to make energetic preparations for an armed rebellion and the seizure of power. But be- cause of unforeseen developments Kolesov proved unable to give the promised aid. The Tashkent Soviet was itself in a highly precarious situation and was busy fighting for its own life. To understand why the Emirate maintained itself for three long years after the Bolsheviks had formed a govern- ment in Turkestan, it is essential to bear in mind that the

83 course of the revolution in Bokhara depended in a thou- sand different ways on the vicissitudes of the struggles elsewhere in Central Asia, especially in the adjacent regions. Any Bolshevik mistakes or weaknesses or diffi- culties anywhere in Central Asia had their immediate repercussions in Bokhara. "The end of the Bolsheviks is at hand," the Emir would gloat. "The end of the Bol- sheviks is near," the Young Bokharans would lament. And of course there were always, especially at the outset, plenty of reasons for the optimism of the one and the pessimism of the others. The main reason was the overwhelmingly Russian com- position of the revolutionary organizations in Central Asia. Even in the Bolshevik Party itself there was at first little harmony between the Russian and the few native workers and intellectuals. The general differences in race, language, tradition and culture were aggravated by the great and apparently irreconcilable psychological differ- ence between the representatives, albeit proletarian and peasant representatives, of a victoriously imperialist people and of a subject colonial one. The cardinal task of a proletarian revolutionary party in a colonial peasant country is to attract the peasant masses, to wean them away from reactionary, feudal, and clerical influences, is, in short, to revolutionize that most potent, though ordinarily inert, stratum of society. In con- tradistinction to the technique of the imperialists, who cooperate with the native rulers in exploiting the native masses, the technique of the Bolshevik posits unqualified cooperation with the native masses in eradicating both foreign and native capitalist exploiters. This is an ex- ceedingly exacting technique, and calls for a highly ex- perienced, homogeneous, and genuinely revolutionary organization and leadership. The Bolshevik, particularly if he happens to be a mem- ber of a formerly dominant race or nationality, must win the confidence of the native masses, must convince them of his sincerity, must impress them with his tact, sympathy, familiarity with local conditions. He must be open, com-

84 radely. The least trace of prejudice or patronage in his attitude is bound to cause resentment and stir suspicion. No one was more aware of all this than was Lenin. He once said to his Russian comrades: ... in the question of nationality it is not possible to proceed from the assumption that economic unity is necessary at any price. Necessary, of course, it is. But we must attain it through propaganda, through agitation, through a voluntary union. The Bashkirs, for instance, distrust the Russians because the Russians are at a higher level of civilization and have used their civilization to rob the Bashkirs. Conse- quently in these remote districts the name Russian means "oppressor." . . . We must take that into ac- count, we must combat it. But that takes a long time. It is not to be got rid of by decree. We must go to work on this very cautiously. Above all such a nation as the Russians, who have excited a hatred in all other nations, must be particularly cautious. We have only now learnt to manage better, and even that only some of us as yet. This tendency still exists in many of us, and we must wrestle with it. Consequently, we must say to the other peoples that we are internationalists through and through, and are striving for a voluntary union of the workers and peasants of all nations In Central Asia, especially, the Bolsheviks needed great diplomatic skill, for the influential native ruling groups were cleverly utilizing the prevailing fear and hatred of the Russians for their own purposes. As against the Bol- sheviks' class slogans, they appealed to the nationalist, re- ligious, and family loyalties and prejudices of the ignorant and fanatical natives. This was so everywhere in Tash- kent, in Khiva, in Kokand, and, of course, in Bokhara. Unfortunately, even in the metropolises, not all Bol- sheviks were Lenins, and certainly in remote Central Asia the first Bolshevik leaders were not especially distinguished for their revolutionary experience or mastery of the funda- mentals of Marxism.

85 "Before admitting the Moslem masses to social and political activity," maintained some of the local Russian Bolsheviks, "they must first go through a period of de- velopment and training in the socialist spirit." And at the Fourth Congress of the Turkestan Soviets which met in November, 1917 (shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution), a certain Tobolin, speaking in the name of the Bolshevik fraction at the Congress, enunciated the following prin- ciple: "At present the policy of including Moslems in the regional organs of our Revolutionary government is un- acceptable, first, because of the native population's un- certain attitude toward the Soviet Power; second, because of the absence of such native proletarian organizations whose representatives might be welcomed into the higher organs of our Revolutionary government." Obviously, at the beginning, some of the local Bol- sheviks regarded the native masses with a definite feeling of superiority or at least distrust an attitude which seemed to justify the Emir's assertions that the Bolshevik Revolu- tion in Central Asia was being imposed by a foreign force upon an unwilling population. Even the pro-Soviet or- ganizations of native workers the Union of Toiling Mos- lems in Fergana, the Ittafak in Samarkand, the Union of Building Trades in Tashkent were not sufficiently drawn into the work. It was only in June, 1918, eight months after the Bolshevik Revolution, that the First Congress of the Communist Party in Turkestan adopted a resolution urg- ing "complete confidence in the Moslem workers" and allowing "their admission into the ranks of the Red Army." The resolution did not come any too soon. The utterly un-Bolshevik and anti-Leninist attitude condemned by the Congress would undoubtedly, if persisted in, have brought about the alienation of the native masses and the ultimate destruction of the Soviet Government in the whole of Central Asia. Certainly it would have precluded the pos- sibility of a Soviet Government in Bokhara for a very long time. Though a grievous mistake was finally corrected, eight months had irretrievably slipped by, and very little