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).