Historian Adeeb Khaleed notes that, when the Communist Party of Turkestan was formed, ‘all evidence suggests that Jadids flocked to join it as soon as it was possible’.34 However, it had taken a real fight to smash the Russian chauvinists in Central Asia who had jumped on the revolutionary bandwagon after 1917, usurping the slogan of ‘workers’ power’ and turningit against the local, mainly peasant population. For two years the region was cut off from Moscow by the civil war, and these self-styled ‘Bolsheviks’ hada free hand to persecute the indigenous peoples. As a result, the Basmachi movement—an armed Islamic revolt—broke out. Lenin talked about the ‘gigantic, all-historical’ importance of setting things right. In 1920 he ordered ‘sending to concentration camps in Russia all former members ofthe police, military, security forces, administration, etc, who were products of the tsarist era and who swarmed around Soviet power [in Central Asia] because they saw in it the perpetuation of Russian domination’.35 As part of this purge, party policy in Central Asia stated that ‘freedom from religious prejudice’ was a requirement for Russians only: in 1922, more than 1,500 Russians were kicked out of the party in Turkestan because of their Orthodox religious convictions, but not a single Muslim.36
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 10:49:58 +0000
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