Stalin полностью

53. A few days after the letter to Lenin and Stalin (dated March 26, 1921), Lakoba was one of three people to sign a telegram addressed to Lenin, Stalin, Chicherin, Kirov, all Soviet republics, the whole world, proclaiming the new Abkhaz Soviet Socialist Republic, which Lenin approved, and on May 21, 1921, the Georgian SSR signed an agreement recognizing the separate Abkhaz SSR. But on Dec. 16, 1921, under pressure, the Abkhaz signed a treaty with Georgia providing for a confederal structure. Sagariia, “K istorii obrazovaniia Abkhazskoi avtonomnoi respubliki”; Bor’ba za uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 58–9 (Gosarkhiv Abkhazskoi SSR, f. 38, d. 74, l. 176). Golos trudovoi Abkhazii, 1921, no. 134, reprinted in Bor’ba za uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 80; Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 58.

54. A partial census in 1920 had listed 55 nations, but the 1926 census allowed for 190; in the 1930s, the number would fall to around three score, then climb to 106 (1937 census). Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 284, 327–30.

55. If a nation got a Union republic, members of that nation who lived outside it—Russians in Ukraine, Tajiks in Uzbekistan—did not receive an autonomous republic there. In an exception, there was a predominantly ethnic Armenian autonomous republic in Azerbaijan, Karabakh (“Black Mountain”). Armenians there had sought inclusion in Armenia. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 133, l. 28–31.

56. Haugen, Establishment, 195–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 87, l. 73–6; d. 101, 68–9, 76; d. 107, 29, 55, d. 104, l. 165; GARF, f. 1235, op. 26, d. 28, l. 4). See also Aworth, Modern Uzbeks; Haugen, Establishment, 206–10. Uzbekistan also got Tashkent, which the Kazakhs had wanted despite its population of 96,000 Uzbeks and 172 Kazakhs, because they insisted it was surrounded by Kazakh nomads who needed a city to rise out of backwardness. Fedtke, “How Bukharans Turned into Uzbeks and Tajiks,” 19–50; Slezkine, “USSR as a Communal Apartment,” 428; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 452; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 776, l. 1.

57. Soviet Uzbekistan accounted for 60 percent of Central Asia’s arable lands and perhaps 70 percent of its GDP. But in carving out Tajikistan, Stalin perhaps wanted to blunt a too strong Uzbek entity, stabilize the border with Afghanistan, and curry favor with Iran. Berge, Birth of Tajikistan; Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 174–86. The Tajiks were shunted into the Pamirs: some 90 percent of Tajikistan’s landmass consisted of high mountains, and its “capital” was the village of Dushanbe, which was renamed Stalinabad. Perhaps 60 percent of Soviet Tajiks ended up outside the Tajik republic. Iurkevich, U vorot Indostana, 16. See also Teichman, “Red Man’s Burden,” 177 (citing RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2542, l. 155–7); and Teichman, “Canals, Cotton.” On the occasion of Tajikistan’s inaugural party congress, in June 1930, the Tajik party boss, Mirza Davud Huseynov, an ethnic Azeri, proposed sending greetings to the toilers of India, but Stalin objected, evidently concerned not to raise outcries of interference in British India. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 63, l. 58. See also Baberowski, Der Feind, 230–5, 279–82, 620; Kangas, “Faizulla Khodzhaev”; and Norling, “Myth and Reality,” 114 (citing RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 154, l. 79–92: Jan. 25, 1931).

58. There had been more than 26,000 mosques in Turkestan in 1912 under the tsarist regime, but there would be a mere 1,300 by 1942. The remnants of the Islamic legal and educational systems would be closed down, as were most of the places where mullahs were trained. Between 1927 and 1930 local alphabets were changed from Arabic script to Latin (as was done in Turkey), which cut future generations from the past and the Quran. The pilgrimage to Mecca would be prohibited from 1935. Later the regime would shift the languages to Cyrillic. Gatagova et al., TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, II: 128–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 588, l. 3, 4), 191–6 (d. 751, l. 38–47; d. 607, l. 4–5).

59. Wohlforth, “Russian-Soviet Empire,” 225. The success of the coercive Soviet project is all the more remarkable when one examines the depth of the challenges faced by national activists in mixed-language regions. Judson, Guardians of the Nation.

60. This was where the peasantry in Abkhazia had been most receptive to original Bolshevik revolutionary demands for radical land reform against local nobles. Dzidzariia, Ocherki istorii Abkhazii, 62–6, 108–9.