INTRODUCTION

The former Akayev regime in Kyrgyzstan was for a long time considered the least autocratic in Central Asia, while Mongolia is still seen as one of the most open and democratic societies in Asia. Nevertheless, the difference between the two countries’ post-socialist transformation is remarkable. Clashes between the political clan in power and the opposition in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005 in many ways resemble the social discontent of the 1920s. In Mongolia, on the other hand, attempts by the opposition to repeat the Kyrgyz “Tulip Revolution” have not appreciably escalated social and ethnic conflict. Why, then, do political and business groups in Kyrgyzstan continue a fierce struggle against each other, destabilizing the country and splitting it along ethnic lines, while in Mongolia the former ruling party (The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party – the MPRP) maintains its leadership and provides for relative political stability? This comparative study will add to our understanding of variations in power transfer and reforms in these two states.
In this article I offer a historical comparison of the formation of new political elites in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia against the background of the dissolution of former privileged groups and radical reforms in the crucial period of the 1920-1930s. The Soviet Central Asian Republic and the independent socialist state in Inner Asia are here chosen for the first time for a cross-regional comparison. Kyrgyzstan is viewed within the broader context of changes common to all Soviet Central Asia. The aim of this comparison is to illuminate the difference in respective elites’ status vis-а-vis Moscow, and to point out various degrees of center-periphery (inter)dependency in socialist societies of Central and Inner Asia. My focus on these two cases helps to conceptualize the competition for leadership within the privileged strata of socialist societies.
Local revolutionaries played a key role in the dramatic political and social changes that swept Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia in the twentieth century. The goal of this research is to examine the relationships between local, dynamically developing social groups, and those actors that represented them and played a significant role in the political processes in the republics. The specific character of many political, cultural and religious institutions and identities in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia provide a rich basis for elucidation.
This analysis of Soviet power in Central Asia and revolutionary regime in Mongolia attempts to overcome the state-oriented approach. The USSR was neither a nation-state nor an empire. The supra-national Soviet identity remained declarative for many people in Central Asia. Supra-national in the Soviet Union was the ruling strata of nomenklatura, whose socio-economic interests clamped its agents together not only on an all-Union level but also even internationally.^[1] Beyond functioning in the official Soviet bodies, this stratum had a prerogative to consolidate its reign by means of institutions of political control and police, whose activities could not be constrained by any legal code, but regulated largely by secret internal instructions.^[2] In Mongolia a similar system of institutions emerged. The rule of the Soviet and Mongolian nomenklatura was not fully legalized, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as well as the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), did not legally secure its rights over property. After the disintegration of the USSR and the international socialist system, the nomenklatura of the former Soviet Republics had to transform into entrepreneurs in order to secure access to property while in Mongolia the MPRP members succeeded in preserving the positions of the ruling party, albeit on a completely new ideological platform.^[3]
This work examines the supra-legal policy of the Bolsheviks’ party at a more local level – republican and regional – and tries to answer the question whether and how this supra-legality regime established itself in Central and Inner Asia, on the territory of present-day Kyrgyzstan, which had once been under Tsarist Russia’s rule and later became a Soviet Republic; and in a foreign country, Mongolia, where Russia’s influence had never been overwhelming.
In particular, this study focuses on the periods in the history of social systems, such as the establishment of local Soviets and party units in Asia, and the collectivization of Mongolian and Kyrgyz nomads. When exogenously generated change (e.g., the Russian revolution) causes disruption to social systems by breaking traditional economic ties and social networks, and threatening certain groups with marginalization or elimination, the existing normative social order launches mechanisms of resistance. Social systems undergo restructuralization with preservation of its latent elements and social order, albeit modified. Establishment of a new political elite accompanies this radical social transformation. Both individual and collective actors search for new alliances and networks.
The tribal, clan, kinship and territorial loyalties among the Kyrgyz and the Mongols as they had been shaped under the Romanov and Manchu dominance were, by the 1920s, forced to adapt to new realities introduced into their lives from outside. Concurring with scholars who attribute the “success” of Soviet rule in Central Asia and Mongolia to traditional social structures having adjusted themselves to Soviet state-party hierarchies,^[4] this study emphasizes the social structures, institutions and loyalties that partly went underground, and partly were transformed.
The Bolsheviks locally rooted the new type republican nationalism by promoting Kyrgyz national communist cadres and creating the new ruling strata – the national apparatchiki. The parallel process of elite formation with its own particularities was also taking place in Mongolia. In both cases, representatives of various local social groups allied with the revolutionaries to form new institutions of supra-legality.
This research utilizes previously unavailable materials from the files of the Third Communist International (the Comintern); the Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks (RKP(b)): Central Asian Bureau of the RKP(b); and the Kyrgyz Oblast Party Conferences from the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History. Additionally, the recently published archival documents of the political police (OGPU)^[5] present a valuable source on socio-economic development in Central Asia in the 1920-1930s.
The archives in Moscow contain detailed accounts of political, social and economic conditions in the Soviet Republics and Mongolia. The data was collected to provide Soviet policy makers with reliable information from the field. The most frequent types of documents are minutes of the state departments’ and party meetings at all levels and from all regions; resolutions from the center and the central institutions to local representatives; reports from local representatives to the institutions in the center; field reports of central agents; petitions from local representatives and individuals to the center; correspondence between state departments and party structures; and cadre information ranging from dossiers on rank and file individuals to heads of local institutions, representations, central departments, and party organization leaders.
Special care should be taken in approaching this documentation. Besides the views of the Soviet leadership, the collections contain reports and documents authored by local figures. These papers illustrate their understanding of the political processes then underway. At the same time, these petitions were often composed to achieve certain goals with relation to the center and the local leaders were not necessarily sincere and objective. The files contained in the former Soviet and Mongolian archives also lack in-depth information on the cultural and religious backgrounds of local politicians and their activities. The political struggle within the local elite, as well as between the Soviet departments is also reflected in the documents. More importantly, the data selected by organizations such as the OGPU or the Comintern, was meant to frame the ongoing social processes in a certain way in order to create a working concept for the prospective reforms. One could argue that the OGPU documents present a vision, a directive for the re-modeling of society than a source truthfully reflecting processes in that society. Thus, the recent revision of the first wave of the scholars’ enthusiasm in utilizing the newly accessible materials is especially welcome.^[6]

THE EMERGENCE OF NEW NATIONS AND TAX REFORM

The 1920s in Central Asia was the period of destruction for the old social system, while the Bolsheviks, inspired by their universalist and modernist views of Asian society attempted to inflict major changes upon the local societies.
Scholarly literature on Central Asia often views the period of 1924-1928 as one of relative stabilization. The New Economic Policy created conditions for some accumulation of capital and liberalized trade, while the Bolsheviks political control had not yet penetrated all loci of social life.^[7] Stalin’s mass terror came a decade later, and 1937 is as the year most frequently perceived as the culmination of mass purges.
As many scholars suggested, our historical memory is focused on the late 1930s exactly because it is supported by many literary expressions of protest by members of the Soviet intelligentsia, one of the main targets of the Great Terror. Since many of them were prominent figures in scholarly and cultural life or otherwise occupied important positions, we can find detailed records about these individuals in the archives. Still, the earlier elimination of millions of peasants and workers that accompanied collectivization and forced industrialization was not less or brutal. Unlike the intelligentsia, these latter social groups did not leave descriptive reflections on their fate. The documentation is dispersed in various local archives and it may already be too late to collect oral histories on the late 1920s and early 1930s. Fortunately, in the latest scholarly literature, local resistance and characteristics of various social groups in Central Asia in the 1910-1920s are given more examination.^[8]
As the Soviet collectivization in Central Asia is described as a brutal crackdown on the village, less focus is placed on social discontent prior to collectivization. It was land reform that anticipated the all-round collectivization. Next to the taxation of private households, land reform was among the most disruptive painful actions undertaken by the Soviet government in the 1920s. In Central Asia this policy escalated the already existing inter-ethnic and inter-kinship conflicts, as well as contributed to the emergence of new ones.
The taxation introduced by the Soviets in Central Asia in the first part of the 1920s was extremely heavy, and certainly was not easier than under the Tsarist regime. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that in practice the old tributes and labor duties were still fulfilled by the population, and the dekhan (Central Asian peasants) suffered from double, triple and even greater burdens.
In Mongolia, the nomads continued to pay taxes and dues to the noyon (hereditary nobles) and monasteries, even though these taxes had been formally abolished. Although the government issued a decree abolishing mutual responsibility in cases of robberies and repayments by insolvents,^[9] bribery and violence during the collection of taxes persisted. Limitations on the so-called urton duty (provision for the post and transportation service) did not make it easier for the arad (all the nomadic population except the nobility and high-ranking lamas). The increase of the customs tariffs had a negative effect on most households. At the same time, the arad’s petitions and applications to the party and new administration often resulted in obligatory membership fees (which translated into significant revenues for the local party cells and revolutionary unions’ budgets).^[10]
In the first half of the 1920s the revolutionary decrees and reforms were only marginally reflected in everyday life, and the gap between the provisional government and its people remained.^[11] The Mongolian government officially cancelled the rights of the former secular elite to possess home slaves and to use the arad as coerced labor force. However, the term “slave” (Mong. Hamjilgaa) was still in use in the documentation, and some high-ranking lamas kept seals (certificates) on possession of hamjilgaa, which implied that exploitation of hamjilgaa was still practiced. In the 1920s the corporate structures of the Buddhist monasteries that exploited the greater part of the Mongolian population remained practically untouched.
In Central Asia the newly introduced provision tax generated the first mass protest in the fall of 1922. The depressing memories of the Civil War served as a fertile ground for an accumulated collective feeling of fear and insecurity. In September 1922, in Semirech’e, the area of the greatest Cossack migration to Central Asia, rumors spread that all the bread would be confiscated from the peasants, and many peasants refused to collect grain from the fields. There were attempts to kill the procurement officials,^[12] and some peasants (predominantly Russian) began to abandon their households. In response to the resistance, the Soviets organized the special procurement detachments with supra-legal functions that allowed the use of coercion when collecting tax. These detachments faced military resistance from within the population.
The OGPU reports reveal constant abuses of power by procurement officials.^[13] The taxation policy as a whole was perceived by the peasants of Central Asia as a barbaric act conducted by the enemy associated with the Slavic population or another ethnic group in the area with no or minimal presence of the Slavs.^[14]
In Mongolia it was the Mongolian revolutionary government that introduced the new taxation; in those days the ordinary nomads did not associate the taxes with the Russians, Slavs, or the USSR. The arad could have had a negative attitude to their new overlords, but they showed certain sympathy to the Soviet agents that periodically visited them. With limited information about the international situation and even about the political environment in the capital Urga (renamed Ulaanbaatar since 1924), the Mongolian arad had positive feelings, if only just because representatives of the great neighboring country paid them a visit, talked with them, and expressed interest in “how they lived,” and “what problems they had.”^[15]
In Central Asia, the above-mentioned special procurement detachments failed in their mission to quickly collect the provision tax. The collected provision was also not adequately utilized, especially in the nomadic areas. For instance, in November 1922, in Pishpek (since 1926 – Frunze, after 1991 – Bishkek) the Peoples’ Commissariat on Provision collected a great amount of livestock, which due to the negligence of the civil agents partly perished, partly was stolen, and partly scattered along the steppe.^[16] The mass dissatisfaction with the taxation policy increased when the fiscal tax was introduced in February 1923. According to the plan, it was to replace the labor cartage tax. However, there were simply not enough banknotes to manage the fiscal tax. On top of all of these problems, the costs of transportation were extremely high, even more than the total amount of all the collected taxes. “Hiring a mob” for illegal expropriation was always easier than recruiting specialists: the problem of finding knowledgeable and experienced managers (khoziaistvenniki) remained a permanent setback for the Soviet economic policy in Central Asia.
In April and May of 1923 a famine occurred in the regions of Samarkand and Fergana; their inhabitants suffered from malnutrition.^[17] In June, peasants over most of Central Asia had to sell their last reserves of bread, seed stock, and livestock in order to pay the taxes.^[18] Poverty increased social conflict.
Memories of recent tsarist immigration policy (after 1906) kindled conflict between the nomadic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs on one side, and the Russians (with whom other Slavs also self-identified in opposition to the local population) on the other.^[19] The Soviet authorities attempted to exploit popular feelings for revenge under more general slogans of the struggle against the great Russian chauvinism and the remainder Russia’s imperialism.
During the Civil War the Bolshevik policy in Central Asia had clear anti-Russian features. By means of supporting “indigenous nationalities” the Soviets aimed to gain popularity with the masses. The group that lost and suffered the most as a result of the 1924 division were the Russian peasants (labeled as kulaks). The Russian Cossacks (predominantly in Semirech’e) were practically eliminated as a reactionary class.
Only “indigenous” groups enjoyed tax reduction. The communists noted the better agricultural equipment and management of the Russian peasants in comparison with Central Asians.^[20] They deemed this fact a survival of the Tsarist colonization policy (at the same time, the term “aborigine” was still in use in the documentation). The dekhan were poorly equipped but had plenty of land. In addition, they were granted opportunities to purchase better lands. The Russians, who possessed only small strips of land after 1922, rented land and bought the subsidiary seeds from the locals. After this, the Russians tended to secure their rights on the land. The lenders, in their turn, demanded the land to be returned before the actual end of the lease. The conflicts continued with frequent violent clashes resulting in casualties.
On most of the territories of present-day Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan nomadic pastoralism had been the basis of economic and social life since ancient times (even though agriculture had been known and practiced). Production changes in the nomadic economy were determined by ecological and biological factors, and had little to do with human input. Consequently, technical underdevelopment and non-differentiated economic specialization were common in such societies.^[21] Forced sedentarization of the nomads that had started in the Kazakh steppe in Tsarist times meant destruction of the matrix of social relations.^[22] The Soviet power often continued this painful process on the new foundations. In Mongolia, which had not been part of the Russian Empire, experiments on forced sedentarization began in the 1930s, but were never completed, and up until now the country has preserved pastoral nomadism.
In Soviet Central Asia, the nomadic Kazakh and Kyrgyz lost their lands as the outcome of the land redistribution in the early 1920s. Some of these forcedly settled nomads were writing petitions to the local Soviets, asking to grant them lands. The re-distribution of the requested lands to the Kyrgyz happened at the expense of the Russians. Neither Russians nor Kyrgyz felt any aversion to use any and all means to defend their interests; Russians denied the settled nomads access to water, provoking a massive loss of cattle.^[23] In return the Kyrgyz damaged the Russians’ crops and drove the Russians’ cattle to their own pastures. Whole villages sometimes clashed with each other. The Russians shot the Kyrgyz who were stealing their cattle or damaging their crops, and in revenge the Kyrgyz organized armed attacks on the Russian settlements.
In 1922 many Russian families were leaving Turkestan to Xingjian. In late 1923, a law authorizing the replacement of Russians with qualified natives was published. The only concession to the Slavic population was that they received some benefits when laid off due to budget cuts. The policies of korenizatsiia (rooting power in “indigenous nationalities”) generally supported Central Asian ethnicities and proclaimed Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Turkmen as titular nationalities in 1924. The korenizatsiia commissions in the newly established republics received money from the special fund for cultural korenizatsiia, and reported back that “the method of direct replacement of Russian employees with Kazakh was widely used.”^[24]
The tough reforms, provoking protest of the indigenous population against the Slavic settlers, had started in Tsarist Central Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time in Mongolia the Manchu policy changed, letting Chinese colonize the nomads’ lands. Chinese settlers became the target for the Mongols’ hatred. In 1916 the recruitment of Central Asians to the European front echoed in revolts against the Tsarist administration, and in 1919 the oppressive regime by General Hsu in Urga spurred the Mongolian elite into resistance (and into the hands first of the White General Baron Ungern von Sternberg, and then, later, the Red Army).
Detachments of the Soviet Red Army and the Mongolian Red Army together waged the civil war on the territory of Mongolia against the White Army and the former deputies of the Qing administration. In fact, a group of Mongolian revolutionaries established contact with the Section of Eastern Peoples attached to the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RKP(b) in Irkutsk and the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern Executive Committee, hoping to find support to overthrow the Chinese.^[25]
The anti-Chinese and anti-Russian measures taken by the Soviet government in Mongolia and Central Asia differed. Despite expectations of unity in the world communist movement and hopes for socialist revolution in China, the Bolsheviks did not welcome the Chinese presence in Urga. Mongolia had to enter the Soviet sphere of influence as the second socialist country on the map. World revolution had to be sacrificed to the security interests of the Soviet Union in Inner Asia and Moscow-Beijing diplomacy. In Central Asia, on the contrary, the presence of the Russian proletariat and the Russian Bolsheviks was logically beneficial for the incorporation of this region into the new Soviet state. However, even the proletariat, “the locomotive of revolution,” was sacrificed to the tactical interests of the Soviets in Central Asia. In the late 1920s and 1930s, with the first steps towards the planned industrialization, anti-Russian policy and inter-ethnic conflicts were transported from Central Asian rural areas to the city.
The old elites in Central Asia and Mongolia represented by religious hierarchs, aristocratic kinship networks, nobles and rich landlords had to be eliminated, but cautiously enough to avoid any counter-revolutionary political consolidation. In Kazakhstan and in the nomadic areas of Kyrgyzstan the supreme institution of the khans and the Chingizid lineage had already eroded in the imperial period, and dominance of the kinship aristocracy and military-service elite had ended. Only in the Khiva Khanate and the Bukhara Emirate did the aristocratic kinship elites remain, though weakened. In Mongolia, by the beginning of the revolution in 1921 the noyon fully preserved their privileged position at the local level; however, their political will in relation to the center had already been weakened by Manchu policy.
In the first years of the revolution in Mongolia, the Soviet and Comintern agents had to secure a wide platform for the development of the MPP; thus, having no way out, they preserved the titles of the noyon and high lamas, used their administrative experience, sought their service, and even participated in their conflicts. The religious hierarchs and noyon, for their part, viewed Soviet Russia as an ally against China. The members of the Mongolian provisional revolutionary government had private and financial relations with the noyon and lamas, and promoted them within the new administration apparatus.
For the noyon, integration into the new power institutions was a way to pay off old scores. Social stereotypes, lack of knowledge, and skewed political vision (or sometimes pure narrow-mindedness) kept many Mongolian noyon and Buddhist hierarchs under the illusion that the new revolutionary power in Urga was no different than the previous regular Manchu deputy, someone with whom they could trade. However, by 1924 the noyon were deprived of any political status. At the same time, there was greater tolerance towards the Buddhist sangha (clergy and believers) and hierarchy.
In Central Asia, the privileged institutions of Islam did not incorporate the Slavic population. Nevertheless, the Islamic institutions and groups never totally disappeared, either during the Tsarist times or even in the Soviet period, despite the official anti-religious campaigns and repressions. Regardless of the general speculative ideological statements on religion as an opiate of the masses, an alliance with Muslims was sought after throughout different periods of Soviet history.
In 1924, the campaign of expropriating waqf property (the private untaxed property of Muslim clergy in Khorezm sparked significant resistance in the population. The whole story of the “Khorezmian revolt” was exemplary of the Soviets’ policy towards Islamic institutions and identity, as well as Muslim tactics in dealing with the revolutionary power. The term waqf denoted inalienable property devoted to religious charity. This category of property became the main resource for the maintenance of cult institutions. In addition, it constituted an economic basis for the consolidation of the ulama (Muslim scholars). Many people who were in danger of losing their property transformed it into a hereditary waqf (waqf al-awla).^[26] In classical Islam studies, according to the Koran, it was elaborated that Allah had transmitted ownership of land to his prophet Muhammad, who in his turn left it to his deputies – imams, qalifs, etc., and also to secular owners. In other words, ultimate possession of land (by the state) did not exclude private property. Thus, based on shari’ah, operations with land could be interpreted as useful activities. Nationalization of land in Central Asia was often explained with a reference to Islam. The popular agitators (from the Muslim clergy) for nationalization stated that the land belonged to all Muslims. In such a way the link was made to the famous ayat: “the earth and sky belong to God.”^[27] The opponents of nationalization also referred to shari’ah, stressing the inviolability and sacred character of private property. So far, especially in the early stages of Soviet rule, the adjustment of Muslim law and its categories to the concept of the Soviet state, however contradictive they might be by nature, was urgently called for. In later periods, during and after World War II, further rapprochement and institutionalization of Muslim administration in the Soviet state took place.^[28]
In 1924, in order to protect their property, the mullas and manaps (kinship aristocracy) acted as one oppositional bloc against the Soviet power and the reforms it launched, demanding the return of waqf lands and liquidation of other Soviet innovations. These demands were also a reaction against denying the clergy numerous rights, including the right to vote.^[29]
Another reason for the active collective protest against the new reform was the lack of funds. The Soviet leaders requested that the unification of the fiscal system should be pursued in Khorezm without financial support from the center. Consequently, the Khorezm government placed additional tax burden on the population. The agricultural tax doubled.^[30] In January 1924 a revolt broke out in Khorezm, and in March, Junaid Khan – a famous leader of the Basmachi who enjoyed the overall support of the Khorezm population – made a second attempt to conquer Khiva.
No OGPU reports commented on the reasons for the revolt in Khorezm; on the contrary, they emphasized the vagueness of the events. To what extent did the Soviet policy-makers realize the consequences of their political course in Central Asia? How did they evaluate risks connected with the new taxes and other campaigns? Reading the archival material conveys an idea that the OGPU analysts were unable to foresee the outcomes of the reforms, or perhaps only realizing what was happening when it was too late. Thus, in case of “Khorezmian revolt,” the central republican organs reacted belatedly only in March 1924. The Central Asian bureau of the CC of the RKP(b) had to adopt a number of resolutions on how to broaden the rights to vote and diminish taxes, as well as how to involve the middle-income dekhan in the process of Soviet state-building.^[31] In April and May the rebels in the Khorezm region dispersed.^[32]
Earlier, in May 1922, the mass revolt against the Soviet power (the Basmachi revolt) that involved about twenty-six thousand rebels looked so threatening to the Bolsheviks that they reshaped their tactics towards Islam and its institutions.^[33] On May 18, a special decree appeared, according to which the confiscated lands of the clergy were returned to their former owners, the previously closed qadi courts were restored, and various religious schools legalized. In June 1924, the OGPU reports noted “less attention of the population to the qadi courts and more attention to the Soviet courts.”^[34] The authors of these reports misinterpreted this process as the sign of success of the Soviet power. In reality the rise of authority of the secular courts was due to the recruitment of the former qadi judges by the state. At this point, the change of the official name of the court did not lead to an essential change in its proceedings, social function, or the way people identified themselves in relation to the court and the judge.
The Soviets applied an even more flexible policy towards religion and religious institutions in a foreign country: Mongolia. By the beginning of the twentieth century lamas in Mongolia were, firstly, the most numerous (and wealthy) privileged layer of the society (more than one-third of able-bodied male population); secondly, they were the most experienced administrators, literate bureaucrats and educated politicians; and, thirdly, they were seen as the spiritual leaders of the arad. In the first quarter of the twentieth century Outer Mongolia was mainly associated with the theocratic monarch, the head of the Khalkha^[35] Autonomy, Bogdo-Gegen. Taking into consideration all these factors, the Comintern agents paid special attention to the Buddhist sangha in the struggle for power in Mongolia.
Following the advice of the Soviet communists, the Mongolian revolutionaries formed an alliance with lamas, which later they preferred to veil. The Mongolian People’s Party (MPP; since 1925 known as the MPRP) made a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the Shabin department, the top Buddhist administration. The revolutionaries acknowledged the impossibility to refuse the “service” of this department: “using the influence and strength of the Shabin Department, the MPP expected to overthrow the Chinese and proclaim Bogdo-Gegen the constitutional monarch, to destroy the class of noyon, simultaneously conducting work on popularization of revolutionary ideas in the masses and spreading among them European culture, and by doing this preparing the ground for the future final elimination of the existing order.”^[36] Between 1921-1924 the united national front was proclaimed, while the slogans of class stratification and class struggle were temporarily put aside.
The impact of local leaders and groups on the course of history is often underestimated in the studies of empires, as if the central power, the imperial core, had an indisputable and comprehensive influence upon every subject of the empire. The USSR was a special case of a Eurasian empire with the center pursuing “affirmative action” in relation to its subjects. Social groups in Central Asia resisted changes, and could shift the developmental policy applied to them by the Kremlin policy makers. In Kyrgyzstan, as well as in the whole of Central Asia, in the early 1920s, the local Soviets, which mainly consisted of representatives of indigenous nationalities,^[37] could determine how much tax was to be collected and how to manage it. No longer just the Moscow center, but also the new regional and local bodies administered the collection of taxes, using the reform to their advantage, for instance, by taking their revenge over the competing groups.
In the summer-autumn of 1924 taxation pressure on the population increased. Drought and poor crops in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan caused massive loss of cattle.^[38] From January until August twelve types of tax not less than two rubles per household were collected.^[39] The drought of 1925 led to crop failure rates as high as 100%, even on irrigated lands.^[40] Cases of bribery and mistreatment by tax collectors multiplied. The representatives of the local Soviets physically abused those who refused to pay tax.
The European communists often misinterpreted the nature of bribery in Central Asia: relationships and loyalties based on clan and kinship appeared to them (at least when approached from a distance) no more than a survival of the dark past. Mechanisms of inter-kinship relationships were sometimes confused with social stratification of the village, and complaints were made about the economic dependency of the heads of local administration on wealthy relatives, manaps (kinship aristocracies) and aksakals (heads of patrilineal communities). The Soviet agents from the center working in Central Asia also could not grasp why the poor dekhan households improved by means of connections to wealthier kin. Such phenomenon did not fit in with the class-based approach to Central Asian peasantry and nomads; on the contrary, it indicated the positive effects of inter-kinship redistribution.
In Mongolia, the Comintern agents tried to “make exceptions” for the nomads, who “had not formed any form of modern social relations,” and prevented the Mongolian revolutionaries from “blind copying Soviet economic socialist reforms.”^[41] The policies towards Mongolian domestic affairs were always treated as the policies towards a foreign state. Radical social policy was considered to be more dangerous in Mongolia than in Soviet Central Asia. The Soviets even discouraged the Mongols from naming their party “communist.”
The recently published OGPU documents vividly illustrate the logic that the Bolsheviks applied to all regions of the USSR: ethnic conflicts (“nationalist” by definition according to OGPU agents) were the outcome of economic and social factors, especially for the peasants. Such a causal scheme should also have worked in the opposite direction: the deepening of ethnic conflicts should have hastened the transition to the new socialist society. This radical and universalistic view on society, aiming at structural transformation of the system of social relationships evenly over the whole territory, distinguished the USSR from any previous imperial entity. Evidently, the same logic ought to have been applied to societies of foreign states, like Mongolia. However, in these cases revolutionary logic had to be balanced with the interests of the Soviet Union in the international arena to a greater degree than in post-Tsarist Central Asia (for the Bolsheviks, revolutionary struggle and state diplomacy were two different categories).

MAPPING SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA AND SOCIALIST MONGOLIA

In the spring of 1924 the preparation for the “historical division” of Central Asia was fully underway. In October 1924, the Uzbek SSR, the Turkmen SSR, the Tajik ASSR, the Kara-Kyrgyz and Kara-Kalpak regions (oblast) were formed. In 1926 the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was renamed the Kyrgyz ASSR within the RSFSR, and it was not until 1936 that it was finally granted the status of a Soviet Republic.
The new territorial-administrative division of Central Asia was a stage of the USSR’s formation and a crucial turn in the history of the region. The “Turkestan question” had been actively discussed at sessions of the Central Executive Committee of the RKP(b) as early as in 1920. A special commission on partitioning (raionirovanie) was established that worked upon the requests of the Presidium of the Central Asian Economic Council.^[42] Its main task was to provide the center (Moscow) with reliable and detailed data on the ethnography of the region, taking ethnic, administrative and economic factors into consideration. The Central Asian Bureau attached to the CC of the RKP(b) was established in 1922 in Tashkent, and was made responsible for dealing with the whole region of Central Asia. The Bureau became the platform for harsh debates on national delimitation in Central Asia. As argued in recent literature, the two competing approaches focused on ethnographic and economic factors.^[43] The ethnographic approach was of great importance for the Bolshevik idea of “nation,” and later the Soviet state was particularly supportive of ethnographers in the republican academies of science. The Soviet inspectors working on delimitation in the field demonstrated even more ethnography-orientated vision, since they had to rely on old Tsarist cartography.^[44] Nevertheless, common sense questioned the prevalence of ethnographic approaches over political and economic strategies. The delimitation had to be conducted in such a way that no opportunity would be left for any possible future consolidation of the former elite within certain administrative-economic boundaries of the former khanates. The new power destroyed the mechanism of the old elites reproduction and cut off all its possible sources of support.
The maps of Turkestan in the nineteenth century and of the Soviet Central Asia in the twentieth explicitly demonstrate that the 1924 re-division broke up traditional economic ties in the region. Soviet Central Asia was planned with new economic centers for grand industrial enterprises and one-company cities. The old political and economic centers, the famous cities of Central Asia, were deprived of their former significance, and a completely new network with new junctions of republican capitals and one-company enterprises developed. The republics became interdependent on each other in terms of energy and supplies of various commodities.
The minutes of the Central Asian Bureau’s sessions divulge that Moscow Bolsheviks preferred to discuss economic issues rather than political motives of delimitation with Central Asian communists.^[45] While it is possible that some documentation on the decisions by the Soviet leaders might still be closed to scholars, the available sources, nevertheless, provide much information on the tactics and rhetoric used by Central Asian communists discussing the perspective delimitation.
The new economic layout of Central Asia was fundamentally engineered from Moscow; however, the republican elite had a certain impact upon the decisions regarding the division and borders. The “titular” Soviet apparatus in Central Asia was gradually acquiring what the communists called “political consciousnesses.” Local communist cadres, already trained in recasting their search for modern identity into popular Marxism,^[46] and thus receptive to the idea of the “nation” and the “right for self-determination,” were invited to participate in drafting delimitation proposals. In the same way as Turkmen framed their position on the ground of the recently experienced oppression in Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khiva,^[47] and the Kazakhs struggled for the lands to the north of the Kazakh steppe,^[48] the Kyrgyz navigated their delimitation policy by considering relationships with many other competing groups.
The Kyrgyz communists from the Pishpek and Karakol-Naryn districts had two main disputes, one with the Kazakhs (the Kyrgyz ASSR was formed within the RSFSR, but not within the Kazakh ASSR), and the other with the southern groups in Osh, Andijan, and Namangan regions. In 1921-1922 a group of Kyrgyz communists from the “north” had endeavored to establish the Mountainous Kyrgyz Oblast excluding the Fergana region;^[49] later the same people were employed to work on delimitation,^[50] and might have preferred ceding some southern territories to Uzbekistan in order to get rid of political competitors.^[51]
It is commonly known that Mongolia’s independence and international recognition was achieved due to the support of the USSR. However, the history of the Moscow-Ulaanbaatar relations is very complex with its ups and downs. The establishment of the MPR in 1924 was a result of the Mongols’ adherence to the interests of Soviet foreign policy. Yet, in the 1920s, dissatisfaction with Soviet meddling and control from Moscow had grown among the Mongolian elite. The Mongolian leaders were grateful to the Soviets for liberating them from the Chinese, but after some time they found it appropriate to part ways. The Mongolian politicians were more inclined now to see the Comintern and Soviet influence as temporary, and were even prepared to limit these influences. Mistakes, driven in part by a lack of knowledge about Mongolia by the Soviet instructors, irritated both Mongolian revolutionaries and lamas who had already experienced firsthand how firm directives from Moscow could be, and after 1924 were eager to support any discontent against the Soviets.
Mongolian political leaders expressed their dissatisfaction by attempts to infringe on the USSR’s interests in Mongolia and prevent the absorption of Mongolia into the Soviet orbit. The Mongols decided to decelerate the rapprochement with their northern neighbor. In 1925, under pressure from the Mongolian and Chinese sides,^[52] Soviet troops were withdrawn from the territory of the MPR. Next, the Mongols accused the State Internal Security Office (the Mongolian version of the VChK-OGPU-NKVD) of spying for the USSR, and replaced its former head and formed a commission to revise the activities of the Office, demanding a reduction in the number of Soviet instructors from five to two. In addition, accusations were directed against the Mongolian Central Co-operative for “not serving the Mongols,” but giving advantages to Soviet trade organizations. Finally, the Ministry of People’s Economy and the Ministry of Finance prevented the Soviet state insurance company from entering the Mongolian market, although this venture could bring 20% of the profits to the Mongolian treasury. The Russian currency was heavily taxed on the border (20%).^[53] In 1925-1927 pan-Mongolian tendencies, also supported by Japan in Inner Mongolia, became popular among the politicians in the MPR, at the same time creating serious concern in the Comintern and Moscow. Still, as argued by many Mongolian historians,^[54] the threat of the Japanese and, possibly, the Chinese occupation in the 1930s pushed the Mongolian revolutionaries into rapprochement with the USSR.
In contrast to Central Asia, kinship and territorial identity in Mongolia did not play the main role in vertical social mobility and political in-fighting in the center. There have always been more opportunities for young, strong-willed, and charismatic activists to reach political heights in Mongolia than in Soviet Central Asia. Some scholars would even argue that this difference between Mongolian and Turkic political traditions and institutions had emerged in the thirteenth century and was reinforced over time.^[55] The political struggle in the Mongolian elite in the 1920s more closely resembled the inter-party struggle in Moscow than the inter-Republic ethnic conflicts in Central Asia.
In the 1920s, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajik, Tatars, Uigur, Germans, Ukrainians, Russians, and others remained the most important ethnic groups. Endless and often cruel clashes occurred between Kyrgyz and Russians, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Tajik, and Kyrgyz and other minor ethnicities on the basis of land and water re-division. Kyrgyz and Uzbek groups protested against ceding cities, towns, valleys, and settlements to the neighbouring Republics. In August 1924 the Kyrgyz and Kazakh sent a telegram to Trotsky, signed by thirty thousand people, which complained against “giving Tashkent to the Uzbeks.”^[56] In the Osh district the conflict was so sharp that when commissions on delimitation arrived there, the Uzbek agents were not allowed to stay for a night in the Kyrgyz ails. The Uzbeks that found themselves in the Kyrgyz Republic petitioned for their ails to be attached to Uzbekistan. In October 1924 the Tajik in Fergana raised the question of joining Tajikistan.^[57]
The preserved kinship relationships did not play the decisive role in the socio-political transformation of Central Asia. The 1924 “national demarcation” (national’noe razmezhivanie) sharpened the conflicts between kinship networks, clans, and other groups. Kinship and clan structures penetrated the local Soviets. In Central Asia during the 1920s the decisions of the Commissions on land management frequently depended on their ethnic composition.
During the elections and re-elections of the local Soviets in Kyrgyzstan, the entire nomadic and rural population was involved in inter-kinship struggle. Kinships and groups that had not previously had proper representation tried to achieve it by uniting and forming blocks against dominant opponents. Party members, members of the election committees, and agents of extraordinary executive committees were also involved in the struggle. Frequently, only members of one particular group formed the re-elected local Soviet. In those areas of Kyrgyzstan where sedentary population was predominant, the struggle was accompanied by massive graft.^[58] Overall, normative social institutions did not disappear under the rule of the Soviets in Central Asia but transformed and adjusted to the new centralized vertical structures. According to S. P. Polyakov, these social institutions might even have been strengthened and reinvigorated: the makhalla council retained its influence in its new clothes of the local Soviet of People’s Deputies.^[59] The new Soviet economic and political institutions merged with traditional ones, sometimes in a paradoxical way.
In the spring of 1924 the “national” language was introduced as the administrative language of local Soviets in Kyrgyzstan.^[60] However, many problems persisted with introducing it as a language of bureaucracy, and linguistic korenizatsiia remained a distant goal, since titular nationals were still poorly represented in the government bodies that processed the bulk of bureaucratic paperwork. Russians and Jews constituted the overwhelming majority of the technicians and trained professionals,^[61] in particular those who were in the most immediate contact with the indigenous population: agronomists, surveyors, veterinarians, and doctors.^[62] Evidently, linguistic korenizatsiia was possible only at a certain stage of evolution of the new national elites, provided some success in education reform would be achieved. Yet, even after World War II, when the process of korenizatsiia was almost complete, Russian remained the primary administrative language.
Since the Mongols still used traditional Tibetan and old Mongolian languages, they remained unperceptive to the cultural achievements of socialism. The Soviet instructors had begun planning serious language reform since 1934. By that time Outer Mongolia was already fully incorporated into the orbit of the USSR, and Japan supported pan-Mongolism and pan-Buddhism in Inner Mongolia. In March 1941, the Central Committee of the MPRP and the government Council of Minister declared the adoption of the new Mongolian alphabet based on Cyrillic. The new Mongolian intelligentsia (whether or not its representatives supported the reform) began intensive work, teaching the arad the new written language, and shaping the new Mongolian education system according to the Soviet model. Russian, on the other hand, was never a state language of the MPR.

LAND REFORM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT

As early as the autumn of 1925, preparations for introducing new land reforms were under way in Kyrgyzstan. The new land division aimed, above all, at confiscation of lands from rich peasants. In many respects, the land reform of 1925 was a preliminary experiment prior to the forced collectivization of 1929-1930.
Division of land and other vital resources, like water, provoked even greater dissatisfaction than the new taxation system. Social relationships, status, group loyalties had been previously centered and dependent on the exploitation of these resources. Any manipulation with land naturally led to new conflicts and resistance by those groups who found themselves deprived of their former possessions and privileges. Land reform in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia was also one of the top generators of social conflicts.^[63] And in the 1920s, the confiscation, redistribution and re-division of land turned out to be one of the most disastrous episodes in the social history of the region.
Given the reaction of the population by 1925, the result of the reform was predictable. The population of certain regions in Fergana, a particularly ethnically diverse and potentially explosive region, took preparations to set up actions against the Soviet power, and some people in Khokand expected the Basmachi to appear soon.^[64] Bais (land owners) expressed skepticism about the feasibility of the reform, and argued that the confiscated lands would be returned to them in a year due to the weakness of the Soviet power and the lack of technical equipment among the poor peasants. The Muslim clergy also began agitating against the land reform: in Khokand district a mullah speculated that only true Muslims were capable of redistributing land among the Muslims, while in Fergana the mullahs insisted that land reform did not correspond to shari’ah.^[65]
The reform was launched in December 1925. Large Russian peasants’ households and Cossack settlements (stanitsy) especially suffered from the land reform and the ethnic hatred of the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz accompanied by the anti-Russian Soviet policy. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the rich Russian peasant (kulak) was the main target for the Soviet power, and any effort in the struggle against him, even if based upon ethnic hatred, was encouraged. At the same time, the local kulak (bai) did not differ from the Russian kulak in the eyes of the new authorities; however, the local population perceived the former as their own and the latter as an occupant, encroaching on their kinship lands.
It is difficult to say whether or not the Soviet leaders understood this vicious mechanism of land reform in Central Asia. In any case, the side effects of the land policy was seen as nothing more than a minor obstacle towards achieving the supra-national, global goal of diversifying the activities of their extraordinary executive bodies and constructing new society at the local level.
The new initiatives of the Soviet power only escalated the existed ethnic conflicts:

[Jalalabad district]: ...as a result of collisions between the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in kishlak (village) Ak-kishlak, Uzbeks are demanding to join Uzbekistan, since they are dissatisfied with the Kyrgyz…^[66]

Samarkand district: the Kyrgyz of Hodjent demand to join Kyrgyzstan. Since the Uzbek form a majority in the local apparatus, the Kyrgyz bais thought that they could avoid taxes by joining Kyrgyzstan.^[67]

Boksa-Isfaniiskaya district: 6500 Kyrgyz. During the re-election none made it into the apparatus. They suffered from poor crops, just as the Uzbek did, but were refused assistance. Some rumours said that the Kyrgyz would even be denied access to pastures for the sake of the Uzbek… The Kyrgyz delegates went to Pishpek with a petition to join Kyrgyzstan.^[68]

In the settlement of Poltoratsk [Samarkand region] a conflict between the Russian peasants and the Muslim population took place. The conflict happened because of land re-division: the Commission on Land Management gave the Russian peasants 8 hectares of land, among which 1 hectare happened to be the land that belonged to the dekhan. The worker, who measured the land, took one pound of grain for his measurement service from every dekhan. The land division and the collection of grain provoked anger among the dekhan and the conflict still remains unsolved.^[69]

Fergana region, Samarkand village of Kenibadam district: conflict between Kyrgyz and Tajik groups. The Kyrgyz poisoned the crops of the Tajik, and killed their guards in the fields. The Tajik, being in minority, avoid open clashes…^[70]

The relations between the Russian peasants and the local ethnicities became potentially explosive. A tendency of expulsion of the Russians from Kyrgyzstan (and the whole of Central Asia) was clear. Many Russian families began selling their possessions and preparing to move. The Cossacks (particularly in Semirechie), driven into desperation by the land reform, were practically ready for an armed rebellion. The Cossacks openly announced their intention to establish an Autonomous Cossack Republic in Turkestan. People were writing petitions to the center, spreading rumors that Trotsky would arrive and take his revenge over the Kyrgyz administrators.^[71]
In the spring and summer of 1926, religiously inspired clashes began: the Cossacks were fighting against musul’manshchina (a pejorative term for Muslim religion/Islam). The clashes between Kyrgyz and Russians had lethal casualties.^[72] Kyrgyz burned Russian hay stocks and fields. In February 1926, the Kyrgyz of Jalalabad district threatened the Russians with “double revenge” for the Kyrgyz Basmachi killed in 1919.^[73]
In 1926-1927 a general decrease in the number of representatives of titular nations in the governmental positions occurred, although theoretically titular nations were favored in Uzbekistan the proportion of Uzbeks in the local Soviets diminished.^[74] The bais of Tyshkan ail of Jarkent in Semirechie were agitating the rural population against Russians, saying that the autonomy of Kazakhstan was not real as long as Russians were running the Republic: “We should take political institutions in our hands, and currently we are granted representation only in organs that are not important.”^[75] Nevertheless, in the long-term, the percentage of titular nationals, despite momentary ups and downs, was growing.
By the summer of 1926 it had already become clear that land reform had not delivered the expected results. First, the newly redistributed lands were re-occupied by their former owners, and the local units and party cells did nothing to prevent it. The land only nominally belonged to the poor: in fact, it was cultivated by the bais, who also reaped the profits. Some poor peasants returned the redistributed land or rented it out. Twenty cases of land leasing in the Fergana region and Tashkent district were officially registered. This number might seem insignificant, but taking into account that the people in charge of the registration had their own interests, one should assume that there were many more cases of leasing. As a result of these collisions, improper cultivation of land by its new owners, as well as due to the lack of equipment and livestock, the area of planted crops was reduced by 20-25% in comparison with levels in 1925, and some areas where cotton and rice were planted were reduced by as much as 75%.^[76]
According to the Soviet typology, “natural economy” predominated in Central Asia and Mongolia. Administrative measures were introduced to modernize it. As a result, the number of collective farms increased by 1925-1927 from 64 to 132. However, these farms operated with zero efficiency. Although agricultural credits in 1929 increased by 250% in comparison with 1928, they were not equally distributed among regions. The people responsible for the credits’ redistribution were not Soviet policy-makers in Moscow, but the local administrators. Russian Bolsheviks visiting the republic with inspections criticized bribery and unfair land distribution in Kyrgyzstan. From the Moscow planers’ point of view, strict centralization of the redistribution mechanism would minimize the impact of intra-clan and intra-kinship relations on the credit redistribution system. The resulting cadres’ policy aimed at diminishing the role of certain individuals occupying decisive positions in the new administration, and at making these positions insecure: in the 1930s short-term appointments, replacements, and purges proliferated.
The life of the Mongolian arad also did not improve during the years of revolution. The Comintern noted this fact, suggesting that “The exploitation of the Mongolian nomad is not less than the taxation put upon the Soviet peasant.”^[77] The social benefits issued by the government were often nominal. These included the law on the unification of the tax system from 1926, which lifted the tax burden inflicted upon the poorest nomads, and the state credit system introduced in 1927, designed to target the rich and high to middle income nomads rather than help the poorest of them. These policies did not lead to an increase in living standards. Attempts to decrease the taxes on the poor not only provoked a bad stereotype of the non-profitability of being rich, but caused losses for the government. It was calculated that the release of households that possessed less than 20 bodo (big horned cattle) from taxes deprived the Mongolian state treasury of anywhere from eighty to one hundred thousand rubles. Nevertheless, the government undertook these measures after receiving special loans from the Soviet Union.
During the first Soviet five-year plan (1928-1932) monetary aid from the center flew to the “underdeveloped” republics, accompanied by a strong developmentalist ideology. The Eastern republics successfully appropriated the rhetoric of backwardness to secure special financial help.^[78] The greatest progress of korenizatsiia, from the point of view of some scholars,^[79] was achieved in that time period.
During the first five-year plan, a course was taken to hire local, unskilled, rural labor force in the new industries in the cities. Ethnic conflict had also begun migrating to the city by the middle of the 1920s. Crises in the village impacted the city: in July 1926 mass revolts of the unemployed occurred in Tashkent.^[80] In 1925-1926, the Moscow instructors published some figures that illustrated an increase in the numbers of workers, peasants, and office employees (sluzhashchie), when in fact no qualitative growth of the working class had really occurred.
Terry Martin indicates the decline of rural ethnic conflicts in 1927: the OGPU reports began to emphasize the “growing interethnic hostility based on the battle for work.”^[81] Our analysis of the same materials shows a different picture: despite the new OGPU focus on the proletariat rather than on peasants, interethnic conflict in villages, in general, did not diminish. And with the start of the forced collectivization, the situation in rural areas even worsened.
After 1929, when the first five-year plan eliminated unemployment and created a labor shortage, ethnic conflict increased. The so-called vydvizhenie (promotion) campaigns were initiated: campaigns to promote blue-collar workers and peasants to white-collar managerial positions. The decree by the Central Asian Bureau of December 1931, listed sixty-one local nationalities that were to be promoted immediately into leadership positions in various economic organs. Consequently, many of the new important appointments were inefficient and at times even ridiculous. For example, a certain Sherief Nurmanov, a locomotive driver with twelve years of work experience and five years of party membership, was made assistant director of the Central Asian Railways and head of its cadres department. Kyrgyzstan responded to the decree by promoting 125 local nationals to positions in the capital center, and 240 to district-level positions. This brought up the Kyrgyz rate of korenizatsiia from 9.8% in January 1931, to 17% in June 1931.^[82]
In 1932 the percentage of titular nationals in positions of importance increased; however, in 1933 there was an evident regress once again. Campaigns against “local nationalism” were alternated with campaigns against “great chauvinism.” Both sides – those who ran korenizatsiia and those whom it targeted were engaged in a vicious cycle of conflict.
The Comintern supervised cadre policy in the MPR according to the Soviet pattern. The slogan of “Mongolization” of the apparatus set up by the Comintern agents implied the preparation of national cadres to work in the party and state structures. However, in different periods the Mongolian revolutionaries interpreted “Mongolization” in different ways. In 1927, the toughest year for the Soviet presence in the country, “Mongolization” was used against the left wing in the party that supported the interests of the USSR. The Comintern, for its part, used the term to demand increasing the percentage of the Mongols in the departments where they were underrepresented: the Mongolian Central Co-operative, and the Veterinarian Department. The “right wing deviators” tried to use “Mongolization” as a means to increase their presence in all party-state structures, and to secured their positions by utilizing nationalist rhetoric against the Soviet agents in Mongolia (who at that time often were associated with the interests of the left wing).^[83] The majority of MPRP members, nevertheless, seemed to support the right wing in 1927, and in March, the CC of the MPRP adopted the platform of “strengthening Mongolian national roots” and “gradual liberation from political influence of the USSR.”^[84] However, at the Seventh MPRP Congress, the left wing deviators, supported and promoted by the Comintern, won a decisive victory against the “right.”
By the 1930s the numbers of local nationals in the state-party structures of the USSR still did not reach the level expected by the party leadership. Only much later, in the Brezhnev period, did the creation of territorially and ethnically supported patron-client relationships became possible. However, why were the Easterners not as well represented as the Westerners in the central structures of the CPSU? One of the answers suggested by Terry Martin is the following: “Any sufficiently talented and reliable eastern nationals were in a major leadership position in their own republic and could not be spared for central assignments. The easterners who were sent to Moscow were those who had lost out in factional struggles and were being exiled to a distant and insignificant assignment.”^[85] The new Mongolian revolutionary elite had quite a different motive. In the 1920s, the political struggle was concentrated in Ulaanbaatar to the extent that the nomads in Gobi still thought that they were subordinate to Manchu deputies. In later periods revolutionary power remained highly centralized: all repression campaigns were issued from the capital. For revolutionaries that came from Mongol groups other than the Khalkh, the road to the central administration became available as soon as they overcame their former group identity. The Khalkh from the central parts of Mongolia had a chance to lead the campaigns in the peripheries (and in the previous centuries had done so many times), even with opposition by competitors in the center.
The forced collectivization in 1929-1930 was one of the greatest social shocks that the peoples of Central Asia experienced together with other nationalities of the Soviet Union. One of the main reasons for launching this risky and violent campaign was the lack of funds for industrial development, or in other words, the village was sacrificed to the city. Forced collectivization and rapid, intensive industrialization were central to the project of economic centralization that had been implemented after the end of NEP in 1928. Since that time party structures acquired the right to interfere directly in all social-economic relations across the entire country. And although it was believed that the proletariat should lead collectivization in villages, special detachments of twenty-five thousand urban communists (dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki) were sent to distant agrarian and pastoral areas to inspire and teach the local population.
Mass collectivization in the Soviet Republics began in the autumn of 1929.^[86] It was organized and coordinated by party cells that received plans from the center, and used all methods possible to fulfill them. In January and February 1930, the number of new collective farms increased at an alarming rate, and party cells from different districts competed against each other for the highest percent of collectivized households. The rapidly formed collective farms were so weak that they sometimes broke up in one day, and their members tended to leave the collective farms for work on private farms (which did not completely disappear).
In Mongolia, the social campaign comparable with the Soviet collectivization was expropriation of jas property (untaxed monastic property) in 1930-1932. The MPRP members (left wing) anticipated the expropriation of one-third of the national wealth from the Buddhist monasteries to fill in the gaps of the state (and party) treasury.
The project for launching such a campaign in Mongolia had a long history. It was the Comintern that first came out with the idea in the middle of the 1920s. Some Comintern agents called for the expropriation of the monastic property on a popular ground to “strike while the iron was hot.”^[87] These Soviet agents thought that it was appropriate to use the same methods in Mongolia as in the Soviet Republics. “In the near future we will have to launch [in Mongolia] a confiscation, similar to the confiscation of church property in the USSR in the Volga region, however with reservations: This confiscation is likely to be of such a character… not like that confiscation, when we captured factories and plants immediately after the October revolution. We have to be careful. Let the Mongolian CC report to the Comintern 3-4 times per year. The Comintern representative should go to the regions to collect complaints.”^[88]
The Comintern agents were mistaken: first, what had been possible in Petrograd right after the revolution became feasible in Mongolia only by the end of the 1930s; second, the Mongolian CC was not so willing to report to Moscow: the jas campaign was to be a purely Mongolian matter. The Mongols did not take into consideration the Soviet resolutions on the “improper moment” and risks connected with the confiscation of monastic property. Comparing perspectives on the expropriation policy in Mongolia with Soviet Central Asia, the Comintern agent Mamaev pointed out: “Expropriation in Mongolia is ten times more difficult than in Soviet Turkestan.”^[89] He implied a smaller degree of the Comintern influence on the population and the general involvement of masses into the revolutionary processes.
The Mongolian government decided to implement forced collectivization and expropriation of monastic property after the “success” in expropriating the property of noyon between the autumn of 1929 and the winter of 1930. In early April 1930, the Comintern informed the CC of the MPRP that it considered expropriation of jas property to be too risky, and suggested to the Mongolian party leaders a policy of gradual stratification of lamas and other members of the Buddhist clergy. Evidently, policy-makers in Moscow cared less about the positions of lamas, and more about the possibility of mass revolts.^[90] Against the background of mass discontent about the MPRP policy, lamas could have used the chance to consolidate their forces around the struggle for their incomes and property. Monastic households in Mongolia were local corporate structures, and constant elements of Mongolian society. Without either their transformation or elimination, the success of social-economic transformation remained doubtful. The forced expropriation of monastic property and repression of the lamas were supposed to shake and change “traditional” Mongolian society.
In 1930-1932, Mongolian revolutionaries began to liquidate jas in an unexpectedly cruel way. Monastic cattle was often given to other owners, even from rich strata, especially those who performed on the side of the new power and assisted in robbing the monasteries. The arad did not receive much from the campaign as the expropriated cattle were habitually given to them under extremely unprofitable conditions. The collective farms, where a considerable part of the expropriated monastic property was kept, simply ate the cattle. The collective farm was nothing but a label. In reality, the chaotically gathered arad led by an extreme leftist had vague ideas about collective management and socialism. The total number of livestock dropped, while social discontent increased.
The results of the broad-scale confiscation were tragic. In 1931-1932 the number of livestock diminished by 32% from the level in 1930 (23.5 million). Shortages of commodities spread across the country. The old transport services were destroyed, and the new ones were not yet created. In April 1932 a mass resistance evolved: rebellions burst out practically in all aimags (the larger administrative unit) of Mongolia. The rebels “robbed, destroyed cooperatives, kolkhozes and other revolutionary organizations” and “activists were captured and killed.”^[91] The expropriation of the lamas’ property produced an enormous social shock on Mongolian society in the twentieth century; however, it did not provoke conflicts that could be cast in ethnic terms, since the expropriation was administered by the Mongols themselves. It was one of the principal differences with Central Asia, where land reform and collectivization generated new and re-ignited old inter-ethnic clashes. The Soviet reforms in Central Asia – taxation, land reform and collectivization – were not orchestrated solely by Moscow, but were greatly influenced by different local groups, especially by those that made alliances with the Soviets. Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Kazakh, and other local leaders competed for status, priority, and resources in their community,^[92] especially since the old redistribution mechanism was broken. Membership in the local committees of collectivization, party cells, and police was a way to settle old scores.
The Soviet welfare emerged at a certain stage of development and strengthening of party structures. The nomenklatura in the Central Asian republics was no less strong, numerous, or influential than in the European regions of the USSR. The local nomenklatura was even stiffer, better consolidated, and bureaucratic than in the centers. By the 1960s, national cadres were promoted in all social spheres. The communist parties of the Republics had identical structures, and functioned in the same way as the CPSU. The Secretary Generals of the national parties in 1966 were all of local nationalities. The representatives of the titular nationalities occupied key positions in the administration of the Republics. However, the interests of the nomenklatura were above any form of nationalism.
For Mongolia, as in the Soviet Union, the post-World War II period was crucial in consolidation and strengthening of the state-party structures. Without the qualitative improvement of living conditions, Communist ideology seemed to lack any solid ground in the view of the population. New “economic” slogans could be heard in particular in the late 1940s: “to every bag (Mong. the smallest administrative unit) – its own school, polyclinic, veterinary, club, radio, electricity… .”^[93] In the late 1940s, after the official recognition of the MPR by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and further strengthening of the MPRP, when party members’ privileged positions in society crystallized, the focus on “socialist construction” shifted from the center to the periphery. Recruitment into the party became more selective, and discussions on the discipline and morality of the party members and officials took place at the meetings of local administration and party cells.^[94]
The most important, basic nucleus of the whole hierarchical pyramid of government was the party cell. One existed in every factory, plant, enterprise, kolkhoz and sovkhoz, military unit, and education institution. Although party cells were reservoirs of cadres for higher nomenklatura appointments, their main mission in the Soviet-style socialist society was to exercise control over individuals on the ground. This control spread not only to labor, public activities and ideology, but also to interpersonal relationships and people’s intimate lives. The party cells organized not only the party members in their free time, but also non-party activists. In rural areas of Central Asia, the councils of aksakals mutated into party cells. The authority of high officials at city, region and oblast levels in Central Asia had many features of the former councils of aksakals: the official disputes on work and performance of the first secretaries by ordinary party members were much rarer than in the European Republics of the USSR; the heads of regional, district, and town party committees surrounded themselves with more luxuries, such as elite apartments, summer homes, automobiles, etc.; and kinship played a larger role in choosing protйgйs. The patron-client relations, developed throughout the USSR, were particularly strong in Central Asia: no young party member could expect a promotion without patronage of an elder comrade. After receiving the higher post, one was expected to remain loyal to the patron who had promoted him or her. However, it is necessary to realize that patron-client relations were almost unchallenged up to the regional (oblast) level. At the republican level, and by all means at the all-Union level, this communal principle gave way to harsh political struggle. Thus, the Communist Party was a non-national, or supra-national rather than multinational party.
An important factor that worked for the stabilization of society in Central Asia was the social welfare of the 1960-1970s. The general improvement of living conditions in the region really began after World War II, particularly in the 1950-1960s, and was closely connected with the development of Soviet institutions. Naturally, better living worked positively for the new social identities, and for the involvement of newly educated national cadres into the public life in the republics. At that time individual motivation to support socialism and the party increased, because the centralization of the economy had presented its first results: the plants, the collective farms, the party cells, and various professional organizations could provide their employees and members with minimal social welfare and special benefits to work productively.
In Mongolia, since the early 1950s economic growth was supported by Soviet and Chinese help. Industrialization did not proceed evenly in the country, and investments could flow to one industry at the expense of another. Progress heavily depended on political direction, the Soviet-Chinese relationship, and later on the CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). Nevertheless, living standards began to rise. By the end of March 1959, 99.3% of households were integrated into cooperatives^[95], which meant certain social guaranties for its members. By the 1960s the life of an average Mongol arad improved. Loyalty to the existing political regime, party, and local administration was supported by employment in the socialist economy. Medals, prizes, and various encouragements was an integral part of socialist system of rewards practiced in the 1960s and 1970s in the MPR and the USSR, and served as the official recognition of individual achievements.
By the 1960s, when the redistribution of property was mainly over in the USSR and Mongolia, the common people started to exploit the social-economic benefits provided to them by the koklhoz and party cells. In the 1960s Khrushchev allowed ownership of small individual plots of land and cattle. Such a change engendered enthusiasm among all citizens of the USSR and especially in the Central Asian Republics. In the latter, the private agricultural sector contributed (unofficially) up to 70% of a family income.^[96] That was Soviet welfare (which lasted up to the mid-1980s), and the citizens of the Central Asian Republics enjoyed the same benefits practically on an equal basis with the other nationalities of the USSR.^[97] The reports on inter-ethnic conflicts in Central Asian Republics re-appeared only in the 1980s.

CONCLUSION

The extraordinary revolutionary organs, and supra-legal organizations in Soviet Central Asia and Mongolia played a key role in the elimination of the old elite and later in the transformation of the whole society. The local Soviets in Central Asia at the time of War Communism, and the MPRP’s units in Mongolia at the beginning of the 1920s, were radical organizations often without much legal or popular authority, but empowered with supra-legal functions to proceed with executions, expropriation, and repression. The OGPU in Central Asia and the Comintern in Mongolia had to report to the central power on the results of social experiments, and the latter could have cut the extraordinary bodies from sources and dislocated their members. Often the central power came out with softer reforms and measures than those taken by the local administration.
When social roles and loyalties are formed around or closely connected with property (land, water, and livestock), labor and welfare redistribution mechanism, then any changes or experiments with property, like expropriation, redistribution, imposing new rules of possession, and exploitation lead to a conflict among all collective and individual actors involved. The transformation of social roles generates tough political competition and transfiguration of loyalties. In the 1920s in Central Asia, all layers of society were engaged in the redistribution of property and resources, and exploited new opportunities of vertical social mobility. Against the background of social disarray, supra-legal organizations established by the Soviets and granted extraordinary powers not only took hold, but also breathed new life into Central Asian native institutions. The merger of older institutions and new structures became possible.
The new elite in Soviet Central Asia and socialist Mongolia was formed atop the elimination of the old. Stripped of their political influence at the beginning of the 1920s, the economic base of previously privileged groups was destroyed through land reform in Soviet Central Asia in the late 1920s, collectivization and industrialization in the 1930s, sedentarization, and confiscation in Mongolia in 1928-1934, prior to its physical liquidation. During World War II and after, through the 1940s, Stalin launched more policies geared towards local nationalism and some “traditional” institutions (e.g., religious institutions),^[98] and by the 1950s a new privileged “class” was entrenched in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. Khrushchev’s 1962 decision to reorganize party organizations along economic, rather than administrative lines, in fact led to a complete consolidation of power by republican nomenklatura among all party and state institutions. Brezhnev’s “stability of cadres” policy (1964-1982) was a period in which Central Asian “families” and “clans” flourished; in later, perestroika times, these groups were labeled as mafia and purged, together with their “long-stay” First Secretaries. However, the “clans” reconsolidated and made an alliance with Gorbachev and the central power in the 1980s to promote their representatives to the leading posts in the Republics. In Mongolia the increasing living standards corresponded to the rise of the MPRP’s popularity and authority in the eyes of the population, and during the rule of Tsedenbal (1952-1984) the repressive cadres’ policy refocused on educational and cultural institutions. Both in Soviet Central Asia and in the MPR the consolidation of the party elite on an all-union/all-country level was maintained.
As in the 1920s, in the 1990s local and territorial loyalties survived in Central and Inner Asia, sometimes creating obstacles for reform. In the socialist period, not just a titular nation identity, but also a kind of territorial identity within the republican communist parties emerged: administrative solidarity groups were formed around local party units and economic bodies. In the late socialist period, Kyrgyz and Mongolian intelligentsia developed as a leading force in politics and, after the disintegration of the international socialist system, in the nation-building processes. The current Kyrgyz and Mongolian political elites, formed in the socialist period, have retained positions of privilege, albeit with partial transformation – current policy-makers largely consist of the former Soviet/socialist nomenklatura. Concerned about questions of origin and history, the political elite in post-Soviet Central Asia and Mongolia promoted a new mythologized quasi-scientific identity and state-building concepts, demonstrating a remarkable socio-historic continuity.