Land Disputes

Russian rule in the North Caucasus and Central Asia in the 19th century had been consolidated by encouraging Russian settlers to inhabit these regions, usually being granted use of the best land at the expense of the local population. During and after the Civil War in the North Caucasus Chechens, Ingush and Ossetians had taken matters into their own hands, driving Russian and Cossack settlers off their land. These redistributions were later sanctioned retrospectively by the soviets.^[1] In the Crimea the redistribution of large estates made it possible to increase the land holdings of Muslim peasants without affecting the majority of Russians and Ukrainians.^[2]
In Central Asia the situation was more complex. Few large landholdings were available for redistribution (other than those attached to mosques) while the early grip on power exercised by Russian-dominated soviets backed by armed force prevented local muslims carrying out their own redistribution. The problem was particularly acute in those areas where land had recently been confiscated in reprisal for the revolts of 1916. Simmering disputes prompted the Politburo to intervene, resolving on 21st March 1921 to proceed with ‘the eviction of the most hated settlements in three uezds of Semirechie (Kesnensk, Pozheval’sk, Pishchneksk), and also the consolidation of other settlements, freeing up the canals and springs for the needs of the Kyrgyz’.^[3] A more general policy of evicting better off Russian (kulak) settlers was proposed by Narkomnats in June, and in November the Russian Sovnarkom generalised the resettlement policy still further, resolving ‘to organise the migration of the recently arrived European population from those districts where old or newly established settlements radically interfere with the possibility of uniting a regular cattle-breeding economy and lead to the destruction of the nomadic population, and also in those districts in which, owing to the lack of water and land there is a worsening of national relations in the environment of a settled agricultural population’.^[4] Land for the evicted Russians was to be made available in Siberia.
The policy was broadly implemented in Semirechie, but the process was not carried through elsewhere in the face of widespread Russian opposition. By 1923, Ryskulov could claim that 7,000 families had been resettled on former kulak land,^[5] but this represented only the tip of the iceberg. The establishment of separate republics in Central Asia only provided disputes over land with a more overtly national character, as members of the titular nationality pressed their claims ever more vigorously, leading frequently to violent clashes.
In densely populated Bashkiriia, land disputes were at the heart of the failure of the Bashkir national government (Bashrevkom) in 1919-1920, as Russian settlers backed by Red Army units clashed with Bashkirs and the forces of the Bashrevkom over particular areas of land.^[6] The collapse of the Bashrevkom government in the summer of 1920 induced Russians to not only take back land expropriated by the Bashrevkom, but to drive Bashkir farmers off land which had previously been theirs. The expansion of Bashkiriia in 1924 to include a much large Russian population only exacerbated the land disputes, which continued to assume violent forms throughout the mid-20s.

Border Disputes

The most notorious and protracted of border disputes in the early 1920s occurred in Transcaucasia, most notably in the Karabakh region. The compromise solution of the latter – granting Armenian Nagornyi Karabakh autonomous status within the Azerbaijan SSR - satisfied neither side and left a violent legacy unresolved to this day. A great deal of effort was put into the delimitation of Central Asia in 1924-25, with teams of ethnographers and cartographers visiting border regions to establish the ethnic make-up of local communities. Insoluble problems arose, however, with isolated villages ending up on the wrong side of the borders, nomadic practises cutting across the new national boundaries, villages of mixed population, and some instances of villages ending up on the ‘wrong’ side of the border for apparently arbitrary reasons. The problem was exacerbated by the new national governments enthusiastically adopting the cause of ‘their’ nationals, and local authorities adopting discriminatory policies against members of the wrong nationality, denying them representation in local soviets and closing down national schools.
Along the Turkmen-Kazakh border, where nomads from both groups were active, cross-border raiding was common, while the Lalimkan region between the Turkmen and Uzbek republics remained an object of dispute into the 1930s.^[7] The Aimsk and Iskandersk provinces on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border and the whole Kazakh-Uzbek border near to Tashkent were particular bones of contention.^[8] In many cases these were continuations of old disputes, but now they took on a new form. As Francine Hirsch has put it:

“To some extent, border disputes were a continuation of inter-clan and inter-ethnic hostilities resumed against a new political backdrop. But something had changed – if not always in terms of how people thought of themselves then in terms of how local leaders and petition writers began to talk about the people they represented. Each region’s new national majorities and minorities, in a struggle for resources and rights, began to speak more about the ‘national principle’ and less about clan, tribal, and religious identities.”^[9]

In the case of border disputes, communities frequently addressed petitions to the national governments, to the TsIK commission in Moscow that had been established precisely to deal with such disputes, or individually to Stalin, Kalinin, Kamenev and Enukidze. Many of these petitions were successful, resulting in numerous small adjustments throughout the second half of the 1920s, but others were ignored or were deemed insoluble.

Islam and Communism

The relationship between Islam and Communism is an exceedingly complex one which remains unresolved in spite of numerous studies. The communal traditions of Islam in some ways made communism more compatible with the Muslim way of life than for the Russians. On the other hand, the emphasis on Islamic unity, in the hands of both religious leaders and secular thinkers like Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, went against the Bolshevik emphasis on class struggle. The influence of Islamic religious beliefs and practises varied greatly across the different muslim regions, but in general the long-term aim of secularising the state and undermining religion affected local communities and provided them with a common set of grievances. While the right to religious practise for muslims was not seriously challenged for most of the 1920s, a number of issues became bones of contention: the waqf system under which land was attached to mosques and guaranteed the economic position of the clergy; the Shariat religious courts; religious schools; and the veiling of women.
The liquidation of the waqfs between 1925 and 1930 proved relatively trouble-free, as poorer muslims already resented the wealth of the clergy and the soviets were able to popularise the measure by redistributing the waqf land to local farmers. A more circumspect approach was taken to the Shariat courts. Attempts to outlaw the Shariat outright by the Tashkent Soviet in 1917 were soon abandoned. Instead, the authorities followed a strategy of gradually undermining the courts by removing their competence over one area after the other, finally denying them all financial support and legal validity in 1927.
Resistance to the secularisation of schools provoked rather more resistance. Early attempts to abolish religious schools were met by parents refusing to send their children to school^[10] and the soviets backed down in 1922, when two decrees restored the right to religious education in Turkestan and restored the waqf revenues to schools. The subsequent undermining of the waqf, however, severely effected the situation of religious schools, the last of which were closed down or secularised in 1928.
The Bolshevik commitment to the emancipation of women, and specifically the right of muslim women not to wear the veil, provoked some of the most violent protests during and after the Civil War, leading to riots and individual assaults. On this issue, the regime appears to have been less ready to back down than on the others, and was prepared to commit troops to defend women taking advantage of this right.^[11]
The extent of local resistance to these anti-religious measures is hard to assess in the absence of thorough research. The way in which the Bolsheviks backed down and adopted a piecemeal approach from 1921 onwards suggest that resistance was widespread. On the other hand, the disdain of Sultan-Galiev and his associates for religious practises meant that this resistance never took on an organised form, and the gradual tactics employed against the waqf, the shariat and religious schools were by and large successful. It can provisionally be surmised that while local communities engaged in actions to defend their religious and cultural practises, the absence of any significant pan-Islamic movement and the rapid adoption of separate national identities made a generalised campaign to defend Islamic practises non-existent. According to OGPU reports of 1926, religious feeling in Central Asia was generally on the decline, although the schools question continued to be the major source of conflict.^[12]
As the analysis presented below will show, to these three causes of local conflict needs to be added conflicts over local and regional elections, and national abuses within the Soviet apparatus.
Ground-breaking research on local conflicts in Central Asia in the 1920s has been carried out by the American scholar Francine Hirsch.^[13] Drawing on the numerous petitions sent by villages to various Soviet leaders and administrative organs and collated by the TsIK regionalisation commission, Hirsch has analysed a number of cases of complaint by local communities which found themselves on the ‘wrong’ side of the new national borders created by the Delimitation. Hirsch accepts that nationality as a category had little meaning for most Muslims of Central Asia before 1926: ‘It was largely in conjunction with border-making and census-taking in the 1920s that the population of Tashkent had “learned” that “Uzbek”, “Kazakh”, and “Tajik” denoted separate national (as opposed to linguisitic, kinship, or other) identities’. Having ‘learned’ these identities, they were then able to make use of them in pursuit of their own demands: ‘Throughout the terrritories of former Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khiva official nationality categories took on political and practical significance as recently categorized populations used them to complain about injustices’.^[14] These injustices were many, as ‘the delimitation of new borders led to new inequalities, creating dominant nationalities and minority nationalities in each national republic and oblast….members of new national minorities – groups linguistically, physically, or culturally different from the titular nationalities (such as Kazakh native speakers in Uzbekistan) – faced forced discrimination, assimilation, and the loss of land and livelihood’. Both groups were quick to adopt the national categories: ‘Representatives of new titular nationalities who understood the benefits of nationhood redefined their concerns and interests in “national” terms’.^[15] Meanwhile, minorities addressed their grievances to the central authorities in language reflecting not just the new emphasis on nationality, but which also demonstrated an understanding of Soviet practises and policies.
Both groups showed remarkable adaptability in coming to terms with the new order in Central Asia. ‘As representatives of titular nationalities discriminated against or attempted to assimilate the new minority groups within their borders, dominant and minority groups alike began to use Soviet categories and administrative organs. Local elites and peasants in Central Asia who appealed to central authorities about disputed borders learned to frame their grievances in the language of the state and to direct them to the appropriate government institutions.’ Ultimately, the resource to the categories, languages and institutions of the Soviet state led to the complete adoption of those categories by the population and fulfilled the Soviets’ ultimate aim of centralising their rule over the border regions: ‘As petitioners expressed their demands and protests in official language – as they defined themselves in national terms and attempted to resolve their national status – they became increasingly integrated into the Soviet state and society’.^[16]
In this account, the adoption of national categories by the local Muslim population was a conscious act calculated to support their own interests. ‘As Soviet administrators and experts composed lists of nationalities and drew borders, local populations in Central Asia learned to manipulate the language of nationality to advance their own interests’.^[17] Hirsch provides ample evidence for this emphasis on rational self-interest in the adoption of national categories, on ‘learning’ and ‘manipulation’ on the part of local communities. At first glance, however, it seems unlikely that this is the whole story. At a general level, a purely rationalistic approach does not seem sufficient in explaining the development of national identity, and especially in explaining violent conflict between distinct national groups. While rational self-interest might explain the initial speed with which nationality categories are adopted, it would appear that Hirsch’s analysis could be developed in order to describe the nature and direction of national identity in Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s. The first problem is a methodological one: by relying primarily on petitions, Hirsch’s account is likely to exaggerate the degree to which national categories are employed manipulatively. In addressing grievances to the Soviet authorities, we would expect petitioners to frame their complaints in terms which they believed would most appeal to the recipients of the petition. Likewise, the rational element may be exaggerated by a focus on border disputes created by the delimitation, which were often regarded as correctable mistakes, rather than other, less rational and frequently more violent sources of conflict. Secondly, national identity, almost by definition, and certainly nationalism, if it is to be lasting and effective involves an emotional appeal, which must go beyond the purely rational.^[18] Thirdly, Hirsch’s account (along with others) does not address the dynamic of the processes involved: it provides an immediate explanation of the growth of national identity only in the border regions (or those internal regions where different national groups live side by side) but does not explain its spread to regions unaffected by conflicts of this sort, nor the development of national identity into a force which can promote the unity of a whole people, rather than underlining the differences between communities in one locality. Finally, and connected with this point, Hirsch’s conclusion that that adoption of the new national categories ultimately satisfied the regime’s aims of centralisation sits uneasily with the widespread and violent purges of national republican leaders in the late 20s which suggest, rather, that nationalism was by now regarded as a threat.
An analysis of local conflicts in Central Asia for the single year 1926, as reported by local branches of the OGPU, helps to address the first two of these problems. Further analysis of preceding and subsequent years will be needed in order to illuminate the third problem, (although I shall indicate below that there is already some reason to believe that local national conflicts were clearly on the increase in 1926) while only speculation can be made at this stage regarding the fourth problem. The year 1926 provides an appropriate starting point for this type of analysis as it was the first full year after delimitation and also the year in which preparatory work was carried out for the union-wide census.^[19]
This analysis of national conflicts in Central Asia and Kazakhstan in 1926 is based on the OGPU reports for that year on “Life in the National Eastern Republics and Autonomous Regions” (Informatsionnye svodki o zhizni v natsional’nykh vostochnykh respublikakh i avtonomnikh oblastakh). The reports are held in the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation (Tsentral’niy Arkhiv Federal’noi Sluzhbi Bezopasnosti Rossiskoi Federatsii), fond 2, opis 4, d.59. The reports vary between 2 and 8 pages in length and were prepared at least once a fortnight, more usually weekly or every ten days. The copies in the FSB archive were those sent to Iagoda, with other copies being sent to S. M. Dimanshtein, M. G. Roshal, the OGPU general office, and the State Committee for Justice. From June 1926 onwards a sixth copy was sent directly to Stalin’s office. In all there were 37 reports for the whole calendar year, of which 5 are missing from the FSB archive (one from the beginning of June, 3 from late August and early September, and one from October). In addition to national conflicts, the reports cover land reform, the activities of large landholders, nationalists, clergy, and members of the lower soviet and party apparatus, as well as economic development.
The available reports provide details of about 140 instances of national conflict for the year. These range from individual acts of violence or complaint to prolonged struggles involving up to 1000 people or, in regional elections at the end of February, ‘the whole population, virtually to a man’ of western Kazakhstan.^[20] Generally the reports contain details of the location, the cause of dispute, numbers involved, numbers of wounded and fatalities. Occasionally, the reports’ authors assign blame for the conflict to a group from among the usual suspects - bais, kulaks, Muslim clergy, nationalists. Even more rarely, individual ringleaders or agitators are named. More usually, however, the facts of each case are presented without analysis or elaboration.
Although the number of reported cases is sufficient to undertake a quantitative analysis, such an attempt should be made with great caution for a number of reasons. First, the majority of cases are reported from Kazakhstan, and it is difficult to draw general conclusion from the much smaller numbers of reported incidents elsewhere. Second, a quantification of conflicts conceals the wide differences in scale, duration, and levels of violence involved in different cases. Thirdly, the accuracy of OGPU reporting has been called into question, to the extent that reports may have been entirely fictitious. Such extreme doubts seem untenable given the precise location of reported incidents and the possibility in many cases of corroboration through party sources, petitions and correspondence, but there is at least a strong possibility of under-reporting. Incidents may have gone unnoticed by the OGPU, different agents may have considered lesser incidents not worth reporting, there may have been personal or political reasons for excluding specific incidents from the central reports. In the absence of detailed studies of the local organisation of the OGPU and the criteria laid down for reporting, it is hard to tell whether the reports represent an illustrative selection or a comprehensive listing. Thus it is possible, for example, that the predominance of instances of national conflict in Kazakhstan over the rest of Central Asia is a consequence of local OGPU organisation rather than reflecting the real situation. In the absence of further information, however, this should not prevent us from provisionally concluding that national conflict was more prevalent in Kazakhstan than elsewhere at this time.^[21] Finally, similar analysis will need to be applied to a number of years in order to establish with any degree of certainty precise patterns and trends.
In spite of all these caveats, I believe that there is sufficient evidence in this material to provide tentative support to the hypothesis that the national categories, which had been given administrative, political and legal meaning by the delimitation of 1925 and the census of 1926, achieved real meaning for the self-identity of the bulk of the population through the process of local conflicts over specific economic and political issues.
One final point that needs to be made is that I have included conflicts between different clans of the same nationality as a separate category. A shift from clan to national loyalties is a generally accepted trend of the post-delimitation era. It is clear from these reports that clan conflicts played a major role in 1926. Although the sample is too narrow to draw any definite conclusions, it appears that clan conflicts were declining in frequency as the year progressed.
As indicated above, the local conflicts of 1926 can be divided into five categories: conflicts over land, conflicts over borders, conflicts within or about the soviet apparatus, local elections, and a general category where no specific motive is given. The frequency of each type of conflict is summarised in the appended tables.

Conflicts over Land

The most common cause of national conflict at the local level in 1926 was disputes over land usage. Conflicts were especially frequent between Russians and Kazakhs in Kazakhstan (16 cases and 7 deaths), where Russian colonisation had penetrated furthest and where most of the forced resettlements in reprise for the Central Asian revolt in 1916 had taken place. Similar considerations apply to the Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic (3 cases).
However, only a handful of cases relate directly to the allotment and use of cultivated land. More common were conflicts over scarce resources such as, in particular, water, competing use of common pasture and woodland, and interference of livestock with the crops or animals of other communities. Competition over economic livelihood appears therefore to be more of an issue than avenging colonial land-grabbing. The largest local conflict, involving up to 1,000 people, did not involve Russians but took place between two Uzbek villages in Fergana oblast of Uzbekistan over access to water.^[22] While the highest number of fatalities (3 Russians and 4 Kazakhs) occurred in a mass fight on 22nd June over land previously confiscated from Kazakhs in Syr-Darya province,^[23] the next most violent conflicts (5 dead in each case) were internal feuds among Kazakhs and Uzbeks.^[24]
The destructiveness of these conflicts shows that deep-rooted clan divisions were alive and well. But the delimitation unleashed a series of even more violent and persistent conflicts between Russians and non-Russians, especially Kazakhs, often motivated by competition over land. According to one report on Aktiubinsk guberniia for November 1926, ‘inter-national relations between Russians and Kyrgyz [sic – probably Kazakhs] in a number of uezds is taking on much sharper forms. The basic reason for disputes is the question of land usage. The Kyrgyz are everywhere trying to do harm to the Russian population with the aim of driving them away and seizing their lands. Noted facts are damage to Russian meadows and sown fields, leading to fights with beatings and blows. The Russians, expressing vehement displeasure, threaten “to commit a Bartholomew night massacre on the Kyrgyz, since the authorities will not pay attention to lawlessness.”’^[25]
Of conflicts between different national groups, some fit in well with Hirsch’s model. For example, in Shir-Abadsk uead, Syr Darya oblast, Uzbekistan, Uzbeks from two villages were chopping down woodland on land belonging to the Tajik Ar-Abak village, and also depriving them of their share of water. According to the OGPU report, ‘they [the Tajiks] as a minority are not able to oppose the Uzbeks and intend to turn for help to the Oblistpolkom’.^[26] The Uzbeks, as the dominant nationality locally, were taking advantage of their position to gain an economic benefit at the expense of Tajiks, while the latter could only resort to complaints through official channels. Even in this case, however, there is a clear suggestion that the Uzbeks’ actions may have been motivated as much by national sentiment as by economic advantage.
In other cases, however, competition between national groups verged on open warfare. On the Uzbek/Turkmen border in Khorezm oblast, Turkmen were attacking ‘better land’ occupied by Uzbeks. 12 armed Turkmen horsemen seized all the Uzbeks’ cattle and drove them across the border. In another incident nearby armed Turkmen seized almost all the carts and horses of an Uzbek community.^[27] In Ganchin volost of Tajikistan, Tajiks were reported as wantonly depriving Uzbeks of water needed for their crops. In retaliation, Uzbeks had attempted to poison Tajik drinking water.^[28] Similarly, across the Kazakh/Kyrgyz border in Aule-Atin uezd, Kyrgyz were building dams on their side, which Kazakhs then crossed the border to destroy.^[29] In such cases, while there may be economic considerations at stake, it is clear that a destructive emotional nationalism is at work, similar to that in cases involving Russians.

Conflicts over Borders

The drawing of national borders in the course of the Delimitation of 1925 left a number of anomalies, including areas of mixed population, but also including cases of nationally homogenous communities left arbitrarily on the ‘wrong’ side of the border. A Borders Disputes Commission had been set up to deal with complaints and so, even if such complaints were rarely upheld, communities were encouraged to protest against border decisions. Typically in such cases, a community predominantly of one nationality would petition to have the borders redrawn in such a way as to end up in the republic or region of their ‘own’ nationality.
However, in 1926 more common than these types of complaint were demands by Russian (8), and increasingly, Cossack (9) communities in Kazakhstan to either have the borders redrawn so as to locate their villages in a Russian province, or to set up a special autonomous Russian (or Cossack) region along the lines of those granted to other national minorities. In these cases, the Russians were clearly attempting (unsuccessfully at this stage) to employ the language of Soviet nationalities policies in order to present themselves as national minorities in pursuit of their demands.
In both types of dispute, frequently motives other than purely national ones are ascribed to the demands - most commonly, the belief that taxes will be lower in another republic, or the claim that the local soviet apparatus discriminated unfairly in favour of the dominant nationality. Thus, for example, the Russians of Irdzhar volost in Kazakhstan wanted autonomy as they believed that taxes fell 85% on the Russians, and only 15% on Kazakhs.^[30] In the Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Region, Kazakhs and Uzbeks wanted transferal to Uzbekistan apparently in the belief that peasants paid no taxes at all in Uzbekistan.^[31] In Turkmenistan, agitation was being carried out among Uzbeks to have their villages joined to Uzbekistan because ‘in the Turkmen Republic all responsible workers are Turkmen, Tatars and Russian, and soon Uzbeks will not be able to be in charge of their children and women, so we need to bring our own people into power.’^[32]
Occasionally, such considerations led communities to agitate for transferal to a republic of another nationality. Thus Kyrgyz in Tashkent uezd of Uzbekistan wanted to escape a land reform ‘that is being carried out exclusively in the interests of the Uzbeks’ by transferring to Kazakhstan ‘where no land reform is being carried out.’^[33] Similar opportunism was demonstrated by Russians and Taranchin in Dzharkent uezd in eastern Kazakhstan who joined forces to call for a joint autonomous region.^[34] In the most unusual case of this kind, local Uzbeks were persuaded to support the demands of 4 Kyrgyz villages of Boksa-Itsfanii district to unite to the Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic, by ‘being promised privileges on the side of the KASSR’.^[35]

Conflicts over the Soviet Apparatus

A frequent source of conflict was competition between different groups for dominance in the soviet apparatus, expressed in two major ways - organising along national or clan lines for regional elections, and complaints against the dominance of other national groups in the existing composition of the apparatus. In the latter cases, again Russians were involved in a majority, not just in Kazakhstan (6 cases), but this time also in Uzbekistan (3) and Kyrgyziia (2). It is a measure of how far korenizatsiia had progressed that in all but two of these cases the complaints were by Russians against the dominant local nationality. The exceptions were in Pishpek and Dzhalal-Abad in Kyrgyziia, where Kyrgyz officials sought the removal of European ‘responsible workers’.^[36] Korenizatsiia may not have been as successful in Turkmenistan, where land reform was resisted on the basis that ‘it [the reform] is in the hands of Russians and Tatars’.^[37]
More common in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were Russians (together with Tatars in 4 cases) being excluded from the soviet apparatus. Frequently these were linked with examples of extreme national enmity. In Chagan district of Kazakhstan, Kazakhs were reported as declaring that ‘only we are masters here’, ‘outsiders can go back to Russia’, they ‘have illegally infringed Kazakh rights’ they should all be destroyed etc.^[38] There were further cases in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan of local officials seeking to exclude Russians and Tatars altogether from the soviet apparatus.^[39] Elsewhere it was felt that the local apparatus was conspiring against the whole Russian population. In the village of Kara-Tiurbek in Kazakhstan all the Russians were refusing to pay taxes, claiming that ‘Kazakh power wants to drive us away from here by hook or by crook’, and that all complaints through official channels were being ignored.^[40]
It was not always the titular nationality which predominated in the local soviet apparatus. In Erisaev district in Uzbekistan, Uzbeks complained of Tajik domination locally, which led to bread being distributed only among Tajiks.^[41] Tajiks returned the complement in complaining of Uzbek power in Kurgan-Tiubinsk district of Tajikistan.^[42] In border regions where it was felt that the local or republican authorities of the titular nationality were giving minorities a raw deal, the response was most usually to seek a redrawing of borders or regional autonomy as described above, rather than complaining to higher authorities or taking direct action. This implies an acceptance of the national principle in administration in favour of the titular nationality.

Electoral Conflicts

Regional and republican election campaigns and meetings provided a focus for organisation along national lines. However, what is most notable in the OGPU reports on Kazakhstan is the predominance of clan conflicts when it came to elections (seven out of ten cases). Presumably most voting was along national lines in any case, meaning there was little point in carrying out nationalist agitation at election times. The attitude of acceptance of a dominant national majority, already mentioned, would have been another factor reducing national tensions in election. Reports of national conflict over elections in the Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Region^[43] and Tajikistan^[44] perhaps reflect the relative insecurity of those titular nationalities.
Given the powers of patronage at stake, struggles between different Kazakh clans gained huge significance and led to inter-clan conflicts on a mass scale. In Chubartaev district, one faction resorted to bribing voters with 36 heads of cattle and a thousand sheep, and rivalries escalated into a fight involving at least 150 people.^[45] In Leninsk district, January elections had to be postponed by a week following two mass brawls in which at least 11 people were seriously injured.^[46] At the beginning of March it was reported that almost the whole population of western Kazakhstan was involved in clan conflicts over elections,^[47] while in November the whole of Aktiubinsk province was consumed with the electoral struggle. ^[48]

General Conflicts

A final group of national conflicts do not fall into any of the above categories, and appear to have been motivated by general national hatred rather than specific grievances or competition. In some cases mob violence was sparked off by a particular incident, as in the lynching by a Russian mob of a Kazakh accused of raping a Russian boy. In this case, however, the mob went on to attack Kazakh police at the local jail.^[49] In other cases, violence appears to have occurred at random, as in the killing of a Russian peasant by Kazakhs in the Urals uezd ‘out of national hatred’ according to the report.^[50] Violence on a larger scale typically took place in town bazaars, where members of different nationalities would have gathered in numbers at the same time. Drunkenness is twice mentioned as a factor,^[51] but presumably may have been an influence in other cases. In 4 of the most violent brawls between Kazakhs and Russians, the Russian protagonists were identified as conscripts,^[52] who therefore may not have been from the area. In Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan members of opposing clans also engaged in mass public brawls (3 times and once respectively). Even if these cases are excluded, however, there are sufficient cases of random or weakly motivated acts of violence to indicate hostile national feelings which go beyond immediate causes and rational self-interest.
This last category includes mostly random or accidental acts of violence, motivated not by a specific issue but by general rivalry or hatred. It can reasonably be assumed that these incidents reflected deep-seated emotional oppositions. Almost all of these cases involved clan rivalries, or conflicts between Russians and non-Russians. There is sufficient evidence both here and elsewhere, however, to suggest that such emotional national rivalries were already at work in conflicts between the non-Russian ‘new’ nationalities. Local minorities were particularly vulnerable to apparently wanton acts on the part of the dominant nationality. As early as November 1925, the OGPU reported ‘chauvinist Kazakh attitudes’ to the Taranchin in Dzhetisuisk guberniia: removing them wholesale from the soviet apparatus (even in Taranchin villages), and closing down Taranchin co-operatives and cultural centres.^[53]
While most of these incidents at the local level appear to have been spontaneous acts on the part of village communities, in separate reports the OGPU indicated increasing concern at the direct intervention of nationalists in promoting conflict, particularly in removing Russians from the soviet apparatus. Thus one informant provided the OGPU with names of nationalists meeting in a private house in Karkaralin to discuss how to get Russians excluded from responsible positions, at the same time as a similar meeting was held in Zaisan uezd.^[54] Particular concern was expressed at the influence of nationalists over school pupils and students.^[55] A number of nationalist students recognised that the best way of achieving their aims was by joining the Communist Party and working from within the system. In the reported words of one Kazakh student, Baigurin: ‘In Tashkent the Russians are vanquished, now we need to vanquish the Russians in Kazakhstan, as here their policy is purely colonisatory, and to struggle with them we need to be communists…’^[56] Baigurin succeeded in becoming a member of the Collegium of the Commissariat of Health. In Tashkent, a number of students known for their opposition to communism, were now reported to have joined the party.
A summary report on Kazakhstan for the year 1925 claimed that there were ‘in all, only 20-30 cases of serious national hostility’.^[57] If we assume (and this is a big ‘if’) that the OGPU carried out the same level of surveillance and reporting, and considered similar incidents to be ‘serious’, in 1926 as in 1925, then my collated figure of 94 such conflicts (76 if we exclude clan conflicts) shows a marked increase in such conflicts, as would be expected in the circumstances immediately after delimitation. In the course of the year 1926 itself, the most marked trend is the increase in the second half of the year of agitation on the part of Russian and, especially, Cossack villages to be removed by border redrawing from Kazakhstan, either into Russia, or into a separate autonomous unit. These efforts, together with the language and levels of violence frequently cited in the reports, suggest that the most bitter feelings in the region existed between Kazakhs and Russian settlers, and that Kazakhs at both the local and republican level were swift to take advantage of the delimitation and Korenizatsiia not only to improve their own position, but to vent their feelings and exact vengeance for past injustices.
There is sufficient evidence in the reports to suggest that similar emotions were beginning to be felt in relations between the non-Russian nationalities in the region. These sentiments were not yet as widespread as anti-Russian feelings or inter-clan rivalries, but the latter form of conflict was already showing a gradual decline over the course of 1926. The speed of the adoption of national categories by the local Muslim population is remarkable on any count. But if rational self-interest was a major factor at work, it was clear that it was not the only factor. The new situation provided fertile ground for existing nationalists to spread their ideas, and it was the growth of emotional nationalism which may have caught the regime by surprise and prompted its moves to destroy ‘national communism’ at the end of the 1920s.

Summary of Reported National Conflicts in Central Asia and
Kazakhstan for 1926 by Republic, disputants, and type^[58]

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The Regime and the National Question

In January 1928, Veli Ibragimov, first secretary of the Crimean Obkom of the CPSU and chairman of the Crimean Sovnarkom, was arrested, charged with ‘counter-revolutionary activity and espionage’, convicted and executed, making him the highest ranking communist official to that date to suffer this fate. In November that year, Sultan-Galiev was again arrested and a massive purge followed in the Tatar Republic. At the same time, a large number of Kazakh intellectuals were arrested and tried, and the following year preparations began in Ukraine and Belorussia for two great national show trials – of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (Spilka Vyzvolennia Ukrainy - SVU) and the Union for the Liberation of Belorussia (Saiuz vyzvalennia Belarusi - SVB). These events were the beginning of an ever more violent cycle of purges that overwhelmed all the national republics and eventually claimed the lives of almost all those leaders who had been promoted under the earlier policies of korenizatsiia, together with intellectual and cultural figures.
This sudden development was all the more surprising given the Opposition’s silence on national questions and the absence of any clear signs of possible national revolt. It is not altogether straightforward to determine the Stalin leadership’s handling of national policy at this time. Published sources are limited and Terry Martin’s excellent work on nationalities from 1923 to 1938 focuses on developments among Russians in the national regions. The Central Committee discussed national policy only once in this period (over the delimitation of Central Asia) while the Soviet of Nationalities mostly rubber-stamped decisions taken elsewhere. The Politburo clearly involved itself in events in the republics, but the main mechanism for policy implementation was the appointment of republican party secretaries and other senior posts. Turnover in these positions was high, especially in the Muslim republics. But Stalin met frequently and in private with national party secretaries, and it was no doubt here that policy directives were mostly given out.
The 1928 purges in Crimea and the Tatar Republic can be attributed directly to the uncovering of secret organisations and the second disgrace of Sultan-Galiev. The scale of the purge was unprecedented. Although Rorlich’s figure of 2,273 Tatar communists receiving the death penalty is probably exaggerated,^[59] a majority of the leading Tatars were arrested. This political purge was followed over the next couple of years by a ‘cultural purge’ of the Society of Tatarology of Kazan, the Oriental Insititute of Kazan, and the Tatar Literary Association “Dzhidigan”.^[60]
The trials of the SVU and the SVB occurred about the same time as each other and were public “show trials”. But in spite of the similar names given to the two fabricated nationalist organisations the origins and victims of the two trials were different. Martin’s analysis of the SVU trial shows that it ‘purposefully targeted the national smenovekhovstvo intelligentsia and likewise decisively marked the end of national smenovekhovstvo: that is, the use of former nationalists in cultural and soviet organs.’^[61] The trial was the culmination of a co-ordinated campaign against the increasingly outspoken nationalists in leading academic and other bodies, most notably Serhii Efremov. The 45 hand-picked defendants at the main trial were members of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Science, leaders of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, members of former Ukrainian ‘national socialist’ parties, and other prominent ethnic Ukrainian non-party intellectuals.^[62] No communists were arrested in connection with the SVU.
By contrast in Belorussia, where there was no similar history of smenovekhovstvo, the SVB trial originated from the routine enquiry of a commission of the Central Control Commission of the CPSU headed by V. Zatonsky. Similar and contemporary investigations in other republics did not result in any action. But Zatonsky’s damning report and equally damning letter to Stalin prompted the launching of a purge. Zatonsky’s most important finding was of a strong anti-Russian attitude, little regard for membership of the USSR and a provincial nationalism all of which went unchallenged by the local communist leadership, some of whom he named as having become nationalists.^[63] Like in Ukraine, prominent members of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences were arrested in late 1929, but unlike in Ukraine, they were joined by four prominent communists. Other figures were purged, but the most notable impact of the SVB trial was that the remaining communist leaders, many of whom came in for express criticism, readily reversed their policies of Belorussizatsiia.
The causes of the Kazakhstan purge are more obscure, but it seems to have been connected to the beginning of the forcible settlement of Kazakh nomads. On this occasion the main target of arrests were former members of the Alash Orda and leading cultural figures, together with a number of communists who may have been implicated in the Sultan-Galiev conspiracy.
Each of these purges, then, was different in its origins and encompassed a different group of victims. The Tatar purge was purely political; the Ukrainian purge was aimed against Ukrainian smenovekhovstvo; the Belorussian purge was a drastic way of remedying what were seen as incorrect policy implementations; while the Kazakh purge can in part be linked with that in the Tatar Republic, but may also have been an early attempt to forestall opposition to radical economic reform. On the surface it does not seem, then, that these purges were directly linked or that they can be traced to anything other than specific causes.
On the other hand, a clear pattern was emerging, and was to be repeated over the following years in all the national republics. The policies of korenizatsiia were being shifted into reverse, with former nationalists in particular falling victim to the new violence. One incident at this time might have caused particular concern for Stalin. A leading Tatar communist, Galimjan Ibragimov, previously a stalwart of the National Left, published in 1927 a pamphlet entitled ‘Which way will Tatar Culture Go?’ expressing pan-Turkic and anti-Russian views.^[64] In the previous year, Ibragimov had strongly opposed moves to Latinise the Tatar alphabet.^[65] Up until then, the delicate balance between Rights and Lefts had allowed the centre to play them off against each other, favouring now one and now the other group. If Ibragimov’s defection, possibly under the pressure of a growing sense of national identity from below, signalled a decisive shift in favour of the national Right, then this balance would be upset. By the same token, the Shumsky Affair became significant only once it became clear how much support Shumsky’s position enjoyed in both Ukrainian communist parties. The unprecedented and probably unexpected success of the nation-building policies of the 1920s combined with the resurgence of the nationalist wings of the national communist parties and the uncovering of underground conspiracies may have convinced Stalin that a genuine nationalist threat now existed, at least in potential.
In the circumstances of a radical economic reform which destroyed the traditional way of life of millions of soviet citizens, such a threat could not be tolerated, and at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s Stalin turned on possible sources of national opposition one by one. No combined attack on national communists was launched, and the change in direction in national policy was never announced and could only be deduced later from the new emphasis on Russian culture and the progressive nature of Russian history. Instead, a salami tactic of taking on one national group at a time, and often conducting a political purge at a separate time from a cultural purge, was adopted. Thus national political and cultural leaders could cling to the belief that they may survive if they did not come to the assistance of their colleagues in other republics.

Conclusion

The national question remained a taboo topic in the major political disputes which occupied the second half of the 1920s. Incidents such as the Georgian Affair and the Basmachi revolt, together with the memory of the force of nationalism during the Civil War, were sufficient to remind all the leaders of the potential danger of stoking nationalism. While there were no significant powerful nationalist organisations at this time, Shumsky and Sultan-Galiev served as a reminder of the unreliability of many national communists in the event of any upsurge in nationalism.
This consensus allowed the Stalin leadership a more or less free hand in the national republics. Cadre policies and the Left/Right national division were exploited to preserve the national order. While the major incidents of national opposition which concerned the regime were in general isolated and easily dealt with, there may have been an increasingly worrying tendency towards the resurgence of nationalism. In the second half of the 1920s, the impetus given to nation-building provided by the delimitation of Central Asia combined with a growing confidence and organisation on the part of nationalists. While further research is required to determine the precise dynamic of the growth of national identity in the second half of the 1920s, sufficient evidence is already available to suggest that local conflicts arising out of land, border, and electoral disputes were taking on the characteristics of emotional nationalism.
National conflicts for most of the 1920s can therefore be characterised as mainly local in character, and reflected the dual effects of nation-building and korenizatsiia. On the one hand, nationalist opposition movements remained small and isolated. On the other hand, the new situation encouraged conflict at the local level, especially when stoked by unscrupulous local leaders willing to exploit their new-found national advantages. This process, together with the Stalinist state’s new economic programme and a decisive move against the institutions of the Islamic religion, threatened to open up a broad front of nationalist opposition to the regime, elements of which were already evident in the Shumsky Affair. The purges can therefore be understood, at least in part, as a pre-emptive strike against the political leadership of such a movement.