STALIN’S FIRST VICTIM: THE TRIAL OF SULTANGALIEV, Russian History, (SUMMER 1990 / ETE 1990) [17]

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STEPHEN BLANK (Carlisle Barracks, Pa. U.S.A.)

STALIN'S FIRST VICTIM: THE TRIAL OF SULTANGALIEV From June 9-12, 1923 the Central Committee, Central Control Commission and responsible workers from the national republics and oblasts met in Moscow for the fourth (and probably last) time since 1920. The subject of their meeting was the "trial" of Mirsaid Sultangaliev, the most prominent Muslim Communist in the Soviet Union and the leader of the Volga Tatars' in the state and Party apparatus. He was accused of treason for corresponding, with a view towards an alliance, with the Basmachi, specifically with one of their leaders, A. Z. Validov. Secondly he and, by implication, his followers, were also accused of having engaged in unlawful factional activity and the formation of a deviant l i n e - S u l t a n g a l i e v i s m or "national C o m m u n i s m " - o p p o s e d to the Party line. This was the first show trial of any major Communist and was linked to a subsequent purge of national "deviationists" in 1923-24. As such this trial and purge were events of the first magnitude in Soviet history. They impinged on the subsequent nationality policy of the Party and upon the rise of Stalin to leadership. They also are of profound importance for assessing the nature of the show trial and purge phenomenon and the linked issue of GPU involvement in Party affairs during the NEP. Inasmuch as the trial's ramifications and its causes in Sultangaliev's undeniable disenchantment with Soviet rule are covered in extenso elsewhere,l I propose to focus attention upon the issues relating to the Stalin succession and the related phenomena of the purge and GPU involvement. The necessity for doing so is not just traceable to the lack of Western and Soviet assessment of this trial's significance. New theories concerning the nature of the purge process in the mid-twenties, propounded by J. Arch Getty, which have aroused much controversy, enable us to test the validity of his theories against the actual record of events. According to Getty, the term purge should be restricted to those operations which were membership accountings, usually inaugurated after periods of mass enrollment in the Party 2 1.. Stephen Blank, Stalin's Commissariat o f Nationalities, 1917-24: The S o r c e r e r as Apprentice (Dekalb, illinois: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1991); Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim N a t i o n a l Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979); Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Les Mouvements Nationaux Chez les Musulmans de Russie: Le Sultangalievisme a u T a t a r s t a n (Paris and the Hague: Mouton, 1960). 2. 1. Arch Getty, The Origins o f the Great Purges (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 40-41.

Purges were generally, but not always, responses to specific situations. As responses to large-scale membership increases they were regularly decreed affairs during the twenties, as in 1921.3 After 1921 responsibility for conducting purges was vested in the Central Control Commission. Using as his model the 1929-30 purge for which he claims the fullest data is available, Getty claims that if it were a model for those of the twenties then the main targets were the corrupt, opportunists, careerists, hangers-on, those who were of class-alien origin (itself a criterion which lent itself to abuse though he does not notice that in his statements), the inactive, passive, criminal, and so on. It was not done, at least explicitly, to rid the Party of all dissenters or oppositionists even when such people, by virtue of intelligentsia origin or values might have been expelled by proletarian committees for being "alien elements."4 This view implies that the purge was not primarily a political instrument and that Party cadres had little reason to fear them as long as they executed Party policy. Moreover, they were not directed at the "Verkhovniki" of the Party, its elite. By examining the circumstances surrounding Sultangaliev's arrest and trial we can test this hypothesis. The period of 1921-23 was one of acute political tension at the center as well as in the nationality republics. In every borderland and national republic uprisings against Soviet power took place, frequently lasting for several years. Secondly, every nationality Party was a source of acute and persisting national rivalries from the Ukraine to Central Asia.5 At the center the struggle against various oppositions and worker-peasant discontent soon linked up with the growing intrigues around Lenin that antedated his first stroke and only intensified once his succession became the issue. Thus the institution of the Party purge and the use of the Cheka or later the GPU to quell dissent in Moscow or the republics entered into the government's agenda at this time. Sentiment in favor of strict discipline against dissenters on the national or any other question grew steadily. Already in 1919 the Ukrainian Party Central Committee resolved that any raising of the national question in struggle against the KPU was all the same whether done by bourgeois parties, or Soviet and semi-Communist parties, i.e., an attempt to undermine the proletarian dictatorship.6 In 1919 Stalin "jokingly" threatened dissenting Ukrainian Communists, Mazlakh and Shakhrai, with the Cheka for protesting against centralization there.7 From below the same mentality was on display at the Ninth Perm' Gubernia Party Conference in 1920 which announced, 3. Ibid.. 4. lbid., and J. Arch Getty, "Party and Purge in Smolensk 1933-1937," Slavic Review, 42, no. 1(Spring 1983): 69. 5. Blank, chapters 5-11. 6. Kommunisticheskaia Partiia-vdokhnovitel' i o r g a n i z a t o r ob'edinitel'nogo dvizheniia ukrainskogo n a r o d a za o b r a z o v a n i i a SSSR: s b o r n i k do�:um€n�of ; i m a t e r i a l o v (Kiev: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1962), 161. 7. Serhii Mazlakh, Vasyl Shakhrai, On the Current Siluation in the Ukraine, Peter J. Potichnyj, ed. and trans., Michael M. Luther, intro. (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1970), 168.

We will allow no one under the flag of freedom of criticism to slander a Party which always was strong in its unity of will and iron discipline. To all who would encroach upon that unity we say-hands up.8 The Tenth Party Congress resolution against factionalism was an extreme carrying out of this process to its logical conclusion. By the Eleventh Party Congress Lenin spoke of meeting the opposition, "with rifles" and the regime had begun to use the Control Commissions, party purges, and show trials against all sorts of opponents. Official publications from both Bashkiria and the North Caucasus demonstrate that the purges there were politically motivated attempts to exploit deep-seated ethnic animosities.9 In 1923 Astrakhan's organization was purged on account of political struggles growing out of ethnic rivalry.10 Rigby's recent research points to clear political motivation for provincial personnel policies, including purges, such as those openly political ones of 1922-23 in the Ukraine and Georgia. Finally Lenin, at his career's end, emphatically denounced the practice of using the purge to square personal or local accounts.1 I' Parallel with the growth of the purge as an instrument of political repression was the twin resort to the show trial and the linked use of the GPU as internally repressive tools in Party struggles. The show trial had its roots in the local tribunals of the civil war. However, after 1921 Lenin and the top leadership consciously insisted upon using show trials against both political and "class" opponents to cow the opposition and public discontent. These trials were intended to be, as Lenin said, "noisy, didactic, model trials,."122 During 1921-22 Rabkrin, under Stalin's authority initiated several show trials of bourgeois specialists, hounding one to his suicide, and invading the "turf' of Narkomiust. Rabkrin's activity at this time was cited for its resort to "police methods." 13 Factory show trials were also a common feature of NEP culminating in the Shakhty and Industrial trials.t4 From this one sees that a common motive of these trials was specialist and intelligentsia baiting, an at8. S. L. Dmitrenko, Bor'ba KPSS za edinstvo svoiikh riadov, oktiabr' 1917-1937 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury. 1976), 153. 9. Blank, ch. 8; G. V. Mordvintsev, "Chistka partii 1921 ee rol' v ukreplenii riiadov bashkirskoi partiinoi organizatsii," Istoriia partiinykh Povolzh'ia, vyp. 9 (Saratov: Izdatel'stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1979), 3-13. 10. M. P. Ivanov, Osu.rhchestvlenie leninskoi natsional'noi politiki v Kalmykii (1917-1937) (Elista: Kalmykskoe Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 1973), 133. 11. E. H. Carr, The Interegnum 1923-1924 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1969), 363. 12. Marc Jansen, A Show Trial Under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries (Moscow 1922), Jean Sanders, trans. (Amsterdam and The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, Publishers, 1982). 13. E. A. Lees, State Control in Russia,: The Rise a n d Fall of the Workers' and P e a s a n t s ' Inspectorate 1920-1934 (New York: St. Martin's, 1987), 35-36. 14. Eugene Huskey, Russian Lawyers a n d the Soviet State: The Origins a n d Development o f the Soviet B a r 1917-1939 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), 137.

tempt to capitalize on class animosities as a diversion from economic failure and social stratification. The political show trial also started at this time with the preparations in late 1921 and actual conduct of the trial of the SR's in 1922. On Lenin's direction from above the organizing commission for this trial was Dzerzhinskii, Stalin, and Bukharin. Dzerzhinskii eagerly seized upon this trial as a means of "educating" the public and acted in preliminary fashion even before the Central Committee gave formal authorization. 15 These trials of political dissidents and supposed class enemies were all consciously planned as specific instruments of mass political action towards particular goals of the regime and after 1921-22 became ever more conscious instruments of policy. 16 In its political and social repercussions Sultangaliev's trial certainly came under this rubric. Dzerzhinskii and Stalin were already close and shared common outlooks on the nationality issue as shown by the former's support for Stalin's chauvinism in Georgia. Stalin's elevation to the post of Gensek and his determination to discipline the Party fell in with the expanding interest of Dzerzhinskii of using the Cheka (GPU after 1922) as an instrument of general repression and control even within the Party. Their common expertise in arranging the details of show trials thus carried a most sinister connotation for the future. As the secret police grew in number and importance its leaders sought to establish a permanent and expanded role for it. Thus on July 21, 1920, Dzerzhinskii ordered the Ukrainian Cheka to report to the Central Committee and Lenin systematically about anything of major importance,.17 And after 1920 the Cheka escaped local control, becoming responsible essentially only to the Party authorities as it systematically expanded its network into one covering all areas of Soviet social and economic life.18 By 1923 the Central Committee recommended that Party members report to the GPU, Control Commission, and it, any evidence of factionalism, with failure to do so implying, of course, complicity in that factionalism.19 The great fear, amounting almost to paranoia, in leadership circles concerning opposition, could only strengthen the resolve to use the GPU and secondly to narrow down the areas of permitted political action within and without the Party. For instance Lunacharskii observed that nobody dared openly to demonstrate ideas at odds with the Party's. But, "if such a hankering exists in him, if he desires that, then the simplest mask would be defense of freedom. "20 Thus the demand for freedom, wherever expressed, was intrinsi15. Jansen, 23-27. 16. Michael Reiman, "Political Trials of the Stalinist Era," Telos, No. 2 (1983), 103. 17. Helena Stone, "The Soviet Government and Moonshine," Cahiers d u M o n d e Russe et Soviftique, 27, No. 3-4 (Juillet-Dec. 1986), 365; George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 159. 18. Ibid., 202-03, 225-26, 236, 348; Amy W. Knight, The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 14-18. 19. Leggett, 351. 20. S. A. Fediukin, Bor'ba s burzhiaznoi ideologii v usloviakh perekhoda k N E P u (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 64-65.

cally counter-revolutionary. Guided by such thinking contemporary Party resolutions, like that of the Eleventh Party Conference in August, 1922, stated that anti-Soviet forces exploited Soviet legality to incite the masses against the regime.21 Increased controls over media and tightened censorship were the responses at this time.22 This mentality also found expression in the augmentation of the concept of state crime or political crime to cover civil affairs and political opposition. The concept of revolutionary legality expanded (as did its corollary of illegality) to embrace not just actual criminal acts but also those intended (emphasis SB) or committed that could undermine the social order.23 Lenin's instructions to Kurskii and Molotov display his determination to eradicate any private civil sphere from the new codes and have the state permeate all contractual and civil relationships. Henceforth any violation or purported violation could be interpreted in this light as political crime and subjected to stringent penalties.2 Moreover the laws enacted in 1922 entrusted the definition of such political crimes and the competence to try them to the central authorities, not the republics, and also reserved to Moscow the right to indicate punishment or application of sentencing in applying a definite line of penal policy?5 Armed with these legal tools, Stalin's and Lenin's support, and guided by the prevailing leadership outlook, the way was open for the GPU to destroy the bases of any kind of "parliamentary immunity" either in the Soviets or in the Party. Thus in the Moscow Soviet of 1921-22 the regime resorted to arrests and other forms of intimidation and coercion where the Cheka played a significant role (as well as the show trial of SR's and banishments) in order to oust Mensheviks and non-Party elements from the Soviet.26 In regard to Party members there is debate among Western observers as to when GPU repression began to be used against Party members along with techniques of provocation. Already in 1921 the Cheka was intercepting the mail of the dissident Miasnikov.2�1 Lev Navrozov maintains that in the fall of 1922 the security organs received formal permission to imprison Communists.28 21. Ibid., 65. 22.7bid., 163-65. 23. John N. Hazard, "Soviet Law: The Bridge Years, 1917-1920," in William E. Butler, ed., Russian Law: Historical a n d Political Perspectives (Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1977), 241; Knight, 14-18. 24. Andrei Y. Vishinsky, The Law of the Soviet State, Hugh W. Babb, trans., John N. Hazard, intro. (Westport, Ct.: Greeenwood Press, 1948), 76. 25. E. H. Carr, Foundations of a P l a n n e d Economy 1926-1929, Volume Two (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 349; Knight, 14-18. 26. Vera Broido, Lenin a n d the Mensheviks: The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), 85; John B. Hatch, "Working-Class Politics in Moscow During the Early NEP: Mensheviks and Workers' Organizations, 1921-1922," Soviet Studies, 39, No. 4 (Oct. 1987): 556-74. 27. Paul Avrich, "Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers' Group," Russian Review, 43, no. 1 (1984), 1-29. 28. Lev Navrozov, The Education of Lev Navrozov: A Life in the Closed World Once Called Russia (New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1975), 134.

Avtorkhanov claims that Party members could not be arrested without authorization of the particular organization to which they belonged and without prior expulsion from the ranks before 1925.29 Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's erstwhile secretary, gives still another opinion that 1923 was the cutoff date, claiming that first the Central Committee had to judge any member committing purely criminal action before arrest could be made.3b Finally Michal Reiman, in his very important study on the 1927-29 period, asserts that police penetration of the Party and use of repression began only in September, 1927 against the Left Opposition. Up to this time intervention was strictly forbidden, having to be preceded (as Bazhanov suggested) by expulsion from the Party. Party control over this power was and is jealously guarded, as Amy Knight has recently indicated, even if it cannot be traced to its formal origins. Reiman confirms that there was a powerful fear of emulating the revolutionary terror of 1793-94 which inhibited the resort to such intervention.31 The evidence would suggest, however, that by 1922-23 the fear of arrest for opposition was common and that loose talk and ambition to use this weapon were already well established in the corridors of power. Kollontai told Ignazio Silone in 1922 that, If you happen to read in the papers that Lenin has had me arrested for stealing the silver spoons in the Kremlin, that simply means I'm not entirely in agreement with him about some little problem of agricultural or industrial policy.32 At the Eleventh Party Congress Lenin spoke of meeting the opposition with rifles and at the Twelfth Party Congress Zinov'ev made similar remarks to Osinskii. Zinov'ev referred to the opposition there as being among those to whom the old proverb "only the grave straightens the hunchback" should apply. Even before then in 1921 Dzerzhinskii aggressively thrust the Cheka into Party factional disputes. He believed that Party unity was the alpha and omega of life; thus nobody could conduct opposition even in the name of Party democracy. To safeguard this unity he was even willing to act against Party members in good standing.33

29. Alexander Uralov, The Reign of Stalin, L. J. Smith, trans. (London: The Bodley Head, 1953), 18. 30. Boris Bazhanov, Vospominaniia byvshego sekretaria Stalina (Paris: Tret'ia Volna, 1980), 33-34. 31. Michael Reiman, The Birth o f Stalinism: The USSR on the Eve of the Second Revolution, George Sanders, trans. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987), 28; Knight, 1418. 32. Ignazio Silone in Richard H. S. Crossman, ed., The G o d That Failed (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, Inc., 1983), 101. 33. Lennard Gerson, The Secret Police in Lenin's Russia (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1976), 261.

With the continuing evidence of disparate oppositions within the Party after 1921-22 the GPU's fear of disunity and the leadership's similar fears grew to the point where Dzerzhinskii, by 1923, was willing to act on behalf of the leadership, probably prompted by Stalin to do so. Surveillance of oppositionists began in 1923. With Dzerzhinskii personally taking part, the GPU now broke up and arrested the Workers' Group led by Miasnikov, and the Workers' Truth grouping.34 The GPU supplied Stalin with secret information to help him install Uglanov as Moscow Party secretary.35 This signified that it, too, was playing the factionalist game by supporting Stalin against his rivals to influence the Party struggle for power. At the end of 1923, the regime still shaken from new opposition of the Group of 46 and Trotskii, extended such activity still further. A Central Committee sub-committee recommended that Party members report to both the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission any evidence of factionalism.36 Dzerzhinskii demanded rights for the GPU to compel Party members to cooperate with the GPU against factionalism.3� In early 1924, after Lenin's demise, Stalin suggested, in Trotskii's presence, that all Party members should be duty-bound to report "all intrigues" against the Party that they encountered.3 This trend only continued after 1924, as was demonstrated at the Fourteenth Party Congress in 1925 and after. Adding to the coercive power brought to bear against dissent was the fact that after the Kronstadt uprising the process of holding Soviet and Party agencies to account for their members' conduct began, first in Petrograd, and undoubtedly spread to other organizations. The curriculae vitae of all appointees, Party members and non-Party officials in the state, not only had to state the agency, enterprise, or institution where they worked but also the Party fraction which had promoted them.39 This facilitated purging at one blow an entire network of patrons and clients accused of opposition and facilitated an internal Party revival of krugovaia poruka (collective surety). Party efforts to counter this drift of events were haphazard at best. In autumn, 1923, evidently with Sultangaliev in mind, a directive categorically forbade the GPU from conducting surveillance of Party members without consent of the Central Control Commission (implying that that had been the case before) and the Central Committee; and then only if the member was

34. Ibid., 262-63; Ronald Hingley, Joseph Stalin: Man a n d Gegend (New York: McGrawHill, 1974), 151. 35. Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, eds. The Soviet Secret Police (New York: Freederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1957), 41. 36. Leggett, 351. 371.. Helene Carrere D'Encausse, Stalin: Order Through Terror, Valerie Ionescu, trans. (New York: Longman, Inc., 1981), 8. 38. Paul Sheffer, "Stalin's Power,"Foreign A f f a i r , 8, no. 4 (July 1930), 535. 39. L. I. Derevnina, "Oprosnye blanki chlenov petrogradskogo-leningradskogo soveta VH-X sozyvov (1921-1925gg.)," Vospomogatel'nye istoricheskie ditsipliny, Leningrad: Nauka Leningradskoe Otdelenie, 1979), 207.

suspected of ties with criminal or conspiratorial anti-Party organizations. 40 Since the latter qualifier was the charge on which Sultangaliev was tried, it provided a retrospective sanction for trying him and others who could be so charged. This decision contradicted that of the Twelfth Party Congress in April, 1923 instructing Party organs to conduct purges with the Central Control Commission whenever deemed n e c e s s a r y . The close ties between Stalin and Dzerzhinskii, the previous encouragement given to the GPU, and the power conferred by the threat of the purges; the fact that the Party could not even abide by its own charter and decrees all indicate how flimsy were the obstacles placed before GPU and Party abuse of the purge process. The foregoing analysis would suggest that Sultangaliev's arrest and trial had as a major purpose the instruction of all concerned in an object lesson by Stalin as to the likely fate of opposition to him on the national or other issues. Sultangaliev was a warning in advance to all oppositionists, real or potential, whatever the issue, of the forces they would confront in their opposition. In nationality affairs, given the strife in Georgia, the Ukraine, Tatarstan, and Central Asia during 1921-24, it was clear that the trial was a harbinger of a repressive campaign against national opposition. But it pointed at other opponents as well. Examination of the records forces us to inquire why Sultangaliev was arrested then and at whose orders. The evidence is overwhelming that it was on Stalin's initiative that he was arrested and then tried after Stalin won Zinov'ev's and Kamenev's consent. Their recounting of the story to Trotskii, cited in his biography of Stalin, points to their misgivings about it.42 And some Western writers speculate that Kamenev's rueful remark "Unfortunately Zinov'ev and I gave our consent to it" indicates their belated awareness that this was a devastating precedent as well as their probable awareness that the charges were trumped up and a provocation. Stalin's motives must be adduced from the record as we know it and that is, of course, circumstantial. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay fix the time of arrest as being between the close of the Twelfth Congress on April 25 and the attack on Sultangaliev by a Moscow Tatar language newspaper on May 25, with the trial occurring two weeks later (June 9-12).43 Sultangaliev attended the Party congress but only as a consultative voting d e l e g a t e - a sure sign of semi-disgrace. At the trial Stalin admitted having evidence of treachery dating back to 1920, and he had confided in his deputy, Dimanshtein, that Sultangaliev "looked askance at us." Therefore why did he wait three years to 40. Paul Cocks, "The Politics of Party Control: The Historical and Institutional Role of Party Control Organs in the USSR" (Unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 503-O5. 41. Laid., 502. 42. Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of 1he Man a n d His Influence, Charles Malamuth, ed. and trans. (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1941), 417; Roman S. Brackman, "The AntiSemitism of Joseph Stalin" (Unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, New York Univ., New York, 1980), 143. 43. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 169.

arrest a traitor? This suggests that Stalin did not have the means to fabricate the "evidence" of treason till 1923, nor perhaps the power to do so, nor would he have gained politically from sacrificing his own client beforehand. While Sultangaliev had undoubtedly formed an underground faction with other Muslim Communists, the evidence of it and its extent exists only in the hands of his accusers who later branded his views an "ism" liable to attack. More recently Tatar writers have denied that anything even resembling Sultangalievism or movement grouped around his ideas existed.44 Also according to Stalin the GPU intercepted two letters of his in the spring of 1923. First of all, this indicates that the GPU exercised surveillance over major Party figures' mail by this point (Heinrich Brandler once recounted to Issac Deutscher that in 1921 Lenin's phone was already tapped). Tahirov also asserts as well that after 1922 the GPU exercised regular surveillance over Sultangaliev and his correspondence.45 One of these alleged letters was later published in Tatar and Turkish papers, but neither its veracity nor its authenticity are certifiable. Sultangaliev purportedly wrote that, knowing Moscow as he did, he could categorically describe its policies as being no different than Tsarist chauvinism. He accused the regime of betraying the principles of 1917. Therefore at the Thirteenth Party Congress we, Kazakhs, and Turkestanis, must unite to establish a common front to defend our interests.46 He also proposed joint conversations with other Muslims towards joint action in Ispolkomy and Party sessions before the next Party congress.47 The second letter was never released, though Stalin quoted it. Supposedly, it was addressed to Validov, a leader of the Basmachi, the erstwhile leader of Soviet Bashkiria and former bitter rival of Sultangaliev's Tatars. According to Tahirov this letter was sent to Akhramov, Commissar of Education in the Bashkir SSR, noting that the rising power or threat of the Basmachi might force the regime to make certain concessions to Muslim nationalities. It urged him to get in touch with their leader Zeki Velidi Togan, but with great secrecy, either personally or by coded correspondence. While there are varying accounts of Sultangaliev's efforts to contact Togan, some offered by Sultangaliev himself; it strikes one as extremely risky and unlikely for an experienced conspirator like Sultangaliev to write such a letter "En Clair," in 1923.4g This letter, after all, proposed joint action with the Basmachi and other anti-Soviet Muslims against Moscow. This evidence—contradicting the import of the first letter counselling an intra-Party struggle-was Stalin's 44. Laid.; and Azade-Ayse Rorlich, "The Disappearance of an Old Taboo: Is Sultangliaev Becoming Persona Grata?" Report on the USSR, Radio Free EwopelRadio Liberty, Sept. 29, 1989, 18. 45. I b i s . ; and Issac Deutscher, "Record of a Discussion with Heinrich Brandler and Correspondence Between Brandler and Deutscher, 1952-1959," New Left Review No. 105, (SeptOct. 1977): 47-82. 46. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 167. 47. Carr, The Interregnwn, 294-95. 48. Stephen Blank, "The Struggle for Soviet Bashkiria 1917-1923," Nationalities Papers, 11, no. 1, (Spring 1983): 1-26; Rorlich, 19.

evidence of treason and counter-revolutionary activity against the USSR aimed at sabotaging the colonies' anti-imperialist movement. According to Stalin, when confronted with the evidence of this letter intercepted by the GPU Sultangaliev broke down and confessed; though from both past and future experience of GPU confessions we know how much value to attach to such confessions.49 Sultangaliev never appeared at his trial to speak, insofar as we can tell. This evidence is, of course, highly dubious in its provenance, and problematical at best. It is hardly likely that Sultangaliev, knowing his mail and telephone to be under surveillance, would compromise himself so openly with a bitter former rival, even if the letters probably reflect his views at least regarding an internal struggle.50 His defenders grasped this point and at the trial sought to minimize his guilt (for good personal reasons as well). They denied that the faction formed in 1920 was counter-revolutionary. It was, they said, no more than a national deviation, regrettable but normal in its reaction to conditions in the borderlands.sl This later was admitted by Party officials, e.g., Razumov, o b k o m secretary at the height of the campaign against Sultagalievtsy in 1929 who stated: From 1917 to 1923, Sultangalievism formed a grouping at the heart of the Communist Party and worked to secure its own positions. It was only after 1923 (emphasis by Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay) that it was transformed into a counter-revolutionary organization seeking the reversal of the Communist Party's power and the Soviets', and the installation of a bourgeois capitalism. 2 None of the Western authors who have investigated this affair believes that he contemplated an imminent break with the Party at this time. Such ties as he had with the Basmachi and any other anti-Soviet groups were no more than a factional grouping of malcontents. Sultangaliev was a deviator at most, not yet the progenitor of an ideological system. This is also Tahirov's and Rorlich's view. Both see the ideological charge as one cooked up by Stalin against Firdevs, Sultangaliev's colleague and supposed spiritus rector of this version of Pan-Turkism. Sultangliev would not, according, to Stalin, have been tried had he not embraced this view, a dubious statement at best, but one which shows the extent of the ideological challenge that he posed.53 Thus it seems that this affair must be seen as a political provocation and an indication of the growing repression within the Party's ranks inspired by 49. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 168; Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union,: Communism a n d Nationalism, 1917-1923, Revised Edition (New York: Atheneum, 1964), 262. 50. Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny, George Sanders, trans., Stephen Cohen, intro. (New York: Harper � Row, 1981), 16-17. 51. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 168. 52. Laid., 169. 53. Ibid.; Rorlich, 17-18.

Stalin's rise to power and the circumstances surrounding it. Akmal Ikramov, a delegate to the trial, and later First Secretary of the Uzbek Party, cites a letter of Trotskii to Zinov'ev of December 31, 1923, indicting that Stalin not only ordered the arrest but convened the trial,.54 Thus the question remains, why arrest Sultangaliev (and not another oppositionist) and why now? On the basis of the evidence brought here it would seem that the convergence of four factors was at work here; the general crisis in nationality relations which culminated at the Twelfth Congress, the spread of dissent in the Party and among workers in 1923, the particular national deviation in Tatarstan, and the succession struggle for leadership. Undoubtedly, as Skrypnyk charged, Sultangaliev was tried for the Party's failings. The emergence of a national deviation betrayed a deep illness of the Party, the failure to eradicate Great Russian chauvinism and carry out earlier resolutions. Thus during 1920-24 every single Party organization was rent by bitter ethnic and political rivalries, in many cases leading to mass uprisings.55 In Tatarstan this had come to a head at the Seventh Party Conference in March, 1923 where Mansurov, Sultangaliev's friend, pushed through resolutions stating that Party work among Tatars be inspired by the doctrines of Sultangaliev. Among the doctrines defended by the Tatars there, and supported by him were the denial of the existence of a native proletariat, resistance to class struggles, and demands for the introduction of Tatar as the language of Soviet and Party administration.56 At a time when the cult of Leninism was taking root and Stalin was fighting with nationalities elsewhere and for his political life with Trotskii, such resolutions could only fatally compromise Sultangaliev. Indeed they were the culmination of a long and bitter institutional strife (e.g., with the Tatar Komsomol5�) and ideological-political warfare between Russifiers and Tatars there which spilled out into open admonitions to the Russians to "get oUt".58 During 1922-23 such struggles were commonplace in all republics, often of analogous intensity, culminating in repeated purges of central republican organs, but never was any one man signalled out for ideological-political leadership as Sultangaliev had been.59 Thus in February, 1923 the Central Committee announced purges in Georgia, Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khiva, among the most troubled of parties, and a decision to break up the Central Committee of the Turkestan Party and replace it with a series of obkomy and a supervisory kraikom.60 This decision was part of the broader process of Party takeover of political life and a reflection of the crises surrounding the formation of the USSR, the Georgian crisis, strug54. Akmal Ikramov, /z�7-�!/t�ye trudy v trekh tomakh (Tashkent: Uzbekistan, 1972), 1, 495. I am grateful to Professor Donald S. Carlisle of Boston College for alerting me to this source. 55. Blank, ch. 12. 56. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 165. 57.Ibid., 161-63. 58. lbid., 164. 59. Jonathan R. Adelman, "The Development of the Soviet Party Apparatus in the Civil War: Center, Localities, and Nationality Areas," Russian History, 9, no. 1, (1982): 86-110. 60. lzvestiia Tsentral'nogo Komiteta RKP, no. 2 (Feb. 1923), 14-16.

gles over nativization of culture and cadre, socio-economic issues, and other issues.61 Yet despite the rising crescendo of minority opposition and that of Lenin as well, Stalin won a brilliant political victory at the Twelfth Congress that consolidated his mastery over the minorities and superiority over his peers. He owed this victory to his skill in political maneuver, his allies' blindness and fear of Trotskii, the latter's astonishing ineptitude, the weakness of his minority opponents vis-a-vis the Russians and the Party a p p a r a t in the republics, the weight of his apparat and its united support for central policies. The congress' protocol shows the growing support for a functioning apparat instead of the sloppier, unbureaucratic chaos that had prevailed earlier and which was associated with decentralization.62 The prevailing chauvinism of the apparat was famously summed up by Bukharin, who related how one delegate said that nothing was new in his province, "we are throttling the nationalities and the nationals are letting off steam."63 The congress record indicates the disadvantages suffered by the nationalities as they encountered a united front of obfuscation and prevarication by the leadership and how Stalin announced his intention to add to the Party secretariat's power. This indicated that it had already begun winning in contested areas like Kazakhstan and the North C a u c a s u s This congress rejected all of Lenin's proposals, refused to diminish state centralization of the USSR, vindicated Stalin's chauvinism in Georgia, and repudiated Lenin's idea of having the Russians place themselves in a morally defensive position vis-a-vis the minorities.65 All this foretold the further restriction of political debate and the growth of Party centralization under Stalin as seen in this arrest and tria1.66 This was due to the fact that the Party resolution on the national question derived from his reports which characterized the ideological deviations of Great power chauvinism and the (bourgeois) national deviation. These labels could now be applied against any national opponents who could be characterized as enemies of Leninism. Moscow, now the center of ideological rectitude and custodianship, had at its disposal the tremendous weapon of ideological stigmatization, and in Stalin, a great virtuoso in its use. By 1924 this tactic was aligned to the medieval practice of reasoning by analogy where a deviation in one region could be made to look like that of another, indicating a concerted campaign. Thus in the Crimea the Milli Firka "deviation" which protested pell-mell industrialization of semi-nomadic peoples as being inherently unviable both intrinsically and because of its unplanned and centralizing character, was characterized by Bochagov in the following terms,

61. Blank, ch. 12. 62. D v e n a d s a t y i s'ezd rossiiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii, 17-25 a p r e l ' i a , stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1968), 75. 63. Ibid., 185-86. 64. Ibid., 66, 796, 800-01; Pipes, 291; Carr, The Interregnum, 289-90. 65. Pipes, 293. 66. Ibid.

1923,

If we examine some basic principles which Sultangaliev enunciated, and by juxtaposition with the programmatic principles and actions of the Millifirkisty, then we find complete identity of the basic principal statutes and actions.67 The arrest and trial of Sultangaliev can be explained, as well, by reference to Stalin's personal, as well as political motives, among which vindictiveness, paranoia, and criminality may well have played a role. Stalin's vindictiveness and paranoia (although the latter was obviously not as well developed in 1923) are well known as is his love of the perfect crime and aptitude for criminal behavior.68 Stalin's vindictiveness may have been triggered by his alleged suspicions of the defendant going back to 1920. For example, Stalin's suspicions may have been raised by Sultangaliev's efforts to create a politicalinstitutional-ideological basis for Tatar leadership of the revolutionary process in the East. Since Stalin saw himself as the progenitor of the Leninist Ostpolitik, this was a real threat to his own self-generated identity or status. Now that he could give his suspicion freer rein he may have also thought that Sultangaliev and his acolytes were trying or had tried to deceive him. As noted by Adam Ulam in his discussion of Stalin, it became increasingly important to Stalin, as he rose to power to prove conclusively that nobody had fooled or could "fool" him.69 Ulam also noted that Stalin liked to pursue his opponents without respite. Having won a big victory at the recent Party congress, Stalin could, according to this line of thought, strike at his enemies in nationality policy by seeking to implicate them in Sultangaliev's crimes.70 Another possible motive refers to the undoubted evidence of Stalin's penchant for p r o j e c t i o n - a classic indicator of paranoia. Stalin habitually projected onto others his deepest fears and blackest hatreds, e.g., ascribing to Trotskii et. al., a desire for Bukharin's blood, ascribing to the imperialists a belief that the USSR was just a house of cards, and so on.71 One of the charges against Sultangaliev was that he sought to separate the Crimea from the USSR and return it to Turkey. Since Sultangaliev was indeed the spiritus rector of the Crimean Muslim leadership he had numerous contacts and disciples there. This charge bulked large in Stalin's imagination as he resorted to it again in 1952-53 against the Jews. And if we examine the record of Stalin's foreign policy activity from start to finish one finds a deep-seated anti-Turkish animosity (perhaps owing to his ethnic origins). Thus the ascription to the Turks of annexationist desires in regard to the Crimea may, to some degree represent not just his suspicions of Sultangaliev, but also his own or the USSR's vulnerability on this score, which he could not publicly voice. As 67. A. K. Bochagov, Milli Firka (Simferopol: Krymgosizdat, 1930), 81-83. 68. Antonov-Ovseenko, 16-19; Carr, The Interregnum, 295; George Urban, "Stalin Closely Observed: A Conversation With Boris Bazhanov," Survey, no. 112, 25 no. 3, (Summer 1980): 95. 69. Adam B. Ulam, Stalin: The Mnn a n d His Time (New York: Viking Press, 1973). 70. Ibid.; Rorlich, 18-19. 71. Brackman.

his power grew he may have felt the ability to strike at his fears by ascribing his feared actions to Sultangaliev.�2 Politically as well, the trial served several useful purposes for Stalin apart from putting potential dissidents of all stripes on notice. By arresting Sultangaliev Stalin reconfirmed his eminence in nationality policy, and his power to arrest even his own deputy. The superior position of Russian officialdom is noted in the fact that no Russian official was so treated during 1923 for dissidence. Quite the opposite, they were only gradually stripped of power. The fact that the authorities could lay hands on Sultangaliev in such fashion had to awake the minorities to the realities of their position in the apparat. By implicating Zinov'ev, Kamenev, and the entire CC, including Trotskii, in the arrest Stalin served notice that the nationalities could appeal to no one against the apparat. They depended on Stalin alone for any political support even as he demonstrated to the chauvinist lobby that he and not the others was putting minorities in their place. From the political point of view the trial was a brilliant political maneuver. Ostensibly the conference was called to discuss the derelictions of Sultangaliev and the Control Commission reported on his anti-Soviet contacts with the Basmachi, Iran, Turkey, and the forming of an underground faction.73 However, the conference was really called to discuss all aspects of nationality policy, the competencies of the new Soviet of Nationalities, the number and structure of commissariats of the USSR, republican budgetary rights, nativization of the Party, trade union, Soviet, and state apparats, economic and cultural issues, as well as issues relating to training and improvement of cadre work?4 Other sources confirm as well the heated debate over the "leftist" deviation of artificially stratifying classes among the minorities (not just in Iakutia but in many areas) in such a way to try to force and incite class war. This raised the danger, as in Georgia in 1924 of breaking ties with the masses and triggering an uprising.75 Since the conference took on all the issues on nationality policy's agenda, this enabled the Stalinist faction to launch sweeping attacks on Sultangalievites and "Sultangalievism." Kuibyshev, Manuilskii, Frunze, and Ordzhonikidze all charged that this deviation went beyond Tatarstan and Bashkiria to embrace many other regions and manifest a general trend towards deviation and opposition?6 As chairman of the Control Commission, Kuibyshev made the general report and again adopted the official view of the Tenth and Twelfth Party congresses that national deviations resulted from great power chauvinisms arising out of the

72. Ibid., 209; Rorlich, 18-19. 73. 1. I. Groshev, Sushchnost' natsional'noi politiki KPSS (Moscow: Mysl', 1982), 150-51. 74. I. I. Groshev, "Osushchestvlenie kommunisticheskoi partii leninskoi natsional'noi politiki," Voprosy Istorii KPSS, April, 1982, 25. 75. G. L. Sanzhiev, Perekhod narodov Sibiri k sotsializmu minuia knpilalizma (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1980), 138. 76. Tamurbek Davletshin, Sovetskii Tatarstan (London: Nashe Slovo Publishers, 1974), 194.

material inequality of the republics, not from Soviet policies.77 Frunze seconded this by complaining that nationalist factions protested against factors that could not be erased overnight, abusing their legitimate right to protest against chauvinism.78 Ryskulov replied by demonstrating the hollowness of these charges, ascribing fault to Soviet policies in Turkestan that failed to achieve meaningful land reform and reverse the stratification patterns in ethnic land holding statistics?9 However, such courage did not deter men like Manuilskii, who insisted on using the proceedings not to worry unduly about the Great Russian deviation to chauvinism, but to struggle against local nationalist deviations.80 His views clearly contradicted Lenin's last writings and the recent Twelfth Party Congress resolutions. He replied by asserting that these resolutions had, in six weeks time no less, triggered an "anarchic unruly element" locally and these resolutions could not be transformed into some sort of "charter of liberties" for the minorities.81 Antonov-Ovseenko reports that the most bizarre role was played by Sultangaliev's Tatar rival, Said-Galiev. Said-Galiev had favored Russian over Tatar in the grain confiscation policies of the civil war and later was removed at Sultangaliev's order from the republican apparat for incompetence. Stalin, exploiting his animosity and resentment, used this "clown"-Antonov-Ovseenko's term-to attack Sultangaliev instead of resorting to reasoned analysis of the local situation and the causes of the deviation,.82 Said-Galiev's speech was a masterpiece of incoherence. Blinded by malice, he attacked everyone in sight, including Stalin and Narkomnats, for having tolerated, in unprincipled fashion, the anti-Party activities of Sultangaliev for so long.83 Speaking to Kuibyshev's platitudinous resolution that great power chauvinism caused undesirable reactions among minorities, he stupidly observed that, "if it is awkward to remove this passage, then it must be stressed that [local nationalism] is not a reaction, but the result of intrinsic nationalism."84 He felt that Lenin's last letter to the Twelfth Congress had been the object of "rumors and inaccurate interpretations," but its content "represents an awful lot of nothing." Not surprisingly, the conference laughed at this sally.85 His speech was a sure sign of the inquisitorial, accusative, defamatory, and vindictive nature of these proceedings whose purpose had nothing to do 77. A. Ia. Viatkin, Razgrom kommunisticheskoi partii trotskizma i drugikh antileninskikh grupp (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1966), 86-87. 78. Ibid., 87. 79. Ibid., 87-88. 80. Antonov-Ovseenko, 17. S l . l b i d . , 18. 82. Ibid. 83. S. Kasimov, M. Mukhariamov, M. Saidasheva, Sakhibgarei Said-Galiev (Kazan': Tatarskoe Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 1964), 84. 84. Antonov-Ovseenko, 18. 85.Ibid.

with inquiry into causes. Speeches by other rivals of Sultangaliev accurately illustrated the increasing resort to the police mentality in Party affairs. And those speeches served to divide Tatars still further from other M u s l i m s - r e ducing thereby their potential for combining with the Tatars for Pan-Islamic or Pan-Turkic objectives, and weakening both groups further so that they were now more exposed to central encroachments and purges. Ibragimov of Tatarstan demanded that all Sultangalievtsy, he being the first to use this term for designating a faction and conspiratorial movement, should be interrogated to determine "with which sign of the cross they cross themselves." Those not declaring Sultangaliev to be a counter-revolutionary should be driven out of the Party with clubs.86 Shamigulov, the Bashkir demanded that all those involved with Sultangaliev be "brought to account,".87 Notwithstanding Getty's contentions, such demands by Muslim Communists, not to mention those of men like Kuibyshev, indicate the depths to which Party figures considered the purge to be a legitimate political weapon against all sorts of factionalism. Indeed, the aroma of intimidation was so strong that police intimidation was cited by at least three delegates, Ikramov, Skrypnyk, and Ryskulov, indicating that its extent went beyond purging Sultangaliev. Ikramov and Khodzhanov of Central Asia lambasted Soviet policy there by claiming that conditions were no better or different than they had been in 1916, the year of the great uprising against Tsarism, not to mention before the revolution,.88 Ikramov stated that many questions of policy had accumulated locally without solution and that not a single Party official there felt free to ask Stalin or Kamenev for explanations because, "they are afraid. They have the impression that they would be arrested or shot."89 Ryskulov, the alleged recipient of one of Sultangaliev's "letters," learned that he too was under GPU surveillance. He sought to defend Sultangaliev and himself by saying that Sultangaliev had not thought in terms of a secret organization but had sought to speak out with other delegates at the next congress of Soviets in favor of an intelligent nationality policy, a rather transparent defense under the circumstances.90 Skrypnyk declared that some delegates were seeking to overturn the recent congress' decisions. Trotskii interjected in his favor here but otherwise remained silent, demonstrating his disdain for his colleagues and the nationality issue.91 Skrypnyk went on to suggest that Sultangaliev had been guilty of nothing more than of reacting to his rivals' Russian chauvinism. He pointedly suggested that this affair may have been a provocation arranged by these rivals just as a Ukrainian Central Committee emissary had been framed by those he had been sent to investigate 86. Ibid., 19. 87. Ibid. 88. 1. V. Stalin, S o c h i n e n i i a (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1946-51): 5: 313-39. 89. Antonov-Ovseenko, 19. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid.

on charges of chauvinism for being an alleged member of the Petlurist underg r o u n d .2 Even the most moderate and nuanced calls for possible reform by Frunze or Said-Galiev were met by Stalin's inner circle with the incantatory invocation of Party unity at all costs. Kuibyshev, in his concluding speech proclaimed, The Party and not left or right trends. The Party must be that element around which must crystallize all these new young, growing forces of eastern workers. Orientation towards the Party must be, it seems to me, the basic moment which must guide us in taking this or that decision. And when comrade Said-Galiev speaks of a third Uchraspred in essence he says that he is using those same methods used by Sultangaliev.93 The performance of the Party leadership, Stalin's peers and rivals, was nothing short of disastrous. Trotskii, as we have seen, remained silent except for his interjection during Skrypnyk's speech according to AntonovOvseenko.94 Other Soviet sources allege that he did speak, although it would be better for his reputation if he had been silent. His alleged speech was remarkably blind. Instead of trying to break Stalin's stranglehold over the minorities or the chauvinists by attacking Stalin's reign of terror and bureaucracy in the Party and invoking Lenin, he instead denounced Narkomnats. Sometime during 1923 he declared that he had fought two years already for its abolition.95 According to Iakubovskaia he found it not coincidental that Sultangaliev, who, it is implied, was thought by him to be guilty, was a member of Narkomnats' collegium. In other words Stalin had harbored the deviationists, Narkomnats was a hotbed of opposition to state and Party policy, which ought to have been liquidated, and inter alia, minority opposition to Moscow was not to be tolerated. It is not surprising that this remarkably obtuse presentation won nobody's support.96 Zinov'ev's performance was no better. In his speech he insulted all the Central Asian delegates displaying what Ikramov observed as utter incomprehension of the national question. Soviet sources claim that he expressed disbelief in the possibility of creating viable and large Party organizations in Central Asia on account of those republics' backwardness. He believed that for many years they would remain numerically small and insignificant political 92. James Ernest Mace, "Communism and the Dilemnas of National Liberation: National C o m m u n i s m in Soviet Ukraine 1918-1933," Unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1981, 283. 93. L. Rubinshtein, V Bor'be w Leninskuiu Natsional'noi Politiki (Kazan': Tatknigosizdat, 1930), 95. 94. Antonov-Ovseenko, 19. 95. M. 1. Kulichenko, "Sodruzhestvo bratskikh narodov v stroitel'stve sovetskogo mnogonatsional'nogo gosudarstva," lstoricheskie Zapiski, 90 (1972): 48. 96. S. 1. Iakubovskaia, Stroitel'stvo soiuznogo sovetskogo sotsialisticheskogo gosudarstva 1922-1925 gg. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1960), 225.

elements which must base themselves upon coalition with local revolutionary democratic elements, i.e., the Great Russian proletariat and the Party of chauvinists, as well as the traditional clerical elites and landed elites now loyal to the regime.97 Thus he advocated a policy of tutelage by these elites and the Russians while informing native radicals that their life work was otherwise doomed to futility and failure, not an encouraging prospect to win their support. His blindness to national issues was like Trotskii's, congenital. Four years later, fighting for his political life, Zinov'ev remained critical of nativization of the apparats because it encouraged nationalism, blind to the fact that the GPU saw the Ukraine and Georgia as seething with opposition to Moscow.98 His and Trotskii's insipid performances here left the nationalities with no choice other than to subject themselves to Stalin, whose power was clearly rising. And the chauvinist lobby could never support the Jewish Zinov'ev and Trotskii apart from profound policy differences with them.99 Thus Stalin adroitly won the support of both blocs despite their mutual enmity. Afterwards this victory greatly facilitated his capacity for using his beloved divide and rule tactics. Indeed, his performance here was both commanding and profoundly threatening for the future. His opening speech bristled with threats to the audience, yet was cunningly crafted to appeal to both constituencies. He began by noting that many had accused him of shielding Sultangaliev. Craftily he admitted that he had done so in the past and regarded it then, as he would now, as his duty to do so. This was due to the fact that intelligent, educated, capable leaders in the East were so few that Soviet power had to cultivate every possible ally for as long as possible. He defended this policy on the grounds that it coopted several minority intelligentsia at a critical time, including men like Validov, now the traitor with the Basmachi, while helping consolidate Soviet rule over the nationalities. 100 But his defense of Sultangaliev was only up to a point; when he crossed that point Stalin dropped him. Stalin typically defended his actions by attacking Sultangaliev. At the Politburo he had warned him of his dangerous path by confronting him with his letter (how Stalin obtained it is an interesting question in itself and so is the question as to why he delayed action until after confronting Sultangaliev). Sultangaliev protested his total innocence only to author another incriminating letter, a claim for which we only have Stalin's word, not the letter itself. This second letter purportedly asked Adigamov, a Bashkir, to arrange treasonous contact with Validov and the Basmachi. Only now, despite alleged previous demands for ousting

97. Ikramov, 1, 497-98; Kompartiia Kazakhstana za 50 let (Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1972), 53. 98. Reiman, The Birth of Stalinism, 14, 29-35. 99. The anti-Semitic antipathy to Trotskii, apart from differences or enmity based on his theatrical personality or his policies, is well known from many sources. 100. Stalin, 5, 302-03.

Sultangaliev by nameless leftists, did Stalin accuse him, despite his own suspicions since 1920.101 Stalin now proceeded to attack Muslim defenders of Sultangaliev. Ryskulov and Enbaev both knew of his conspiracy. The former even possessed his conspiratorial letters, yet unlike Sultangaliev, who had confessed and repented, they spoke semi-diplomatically, i.e., lied. Therefore they too should confess and recant. 1 02 Here we find the first instance of the demand for recantation that passed all bounds in the thirties. Stalin accused Firdevs, the Tatar, of being Sultangaliev's ideological guide (implicitly undermining the charge of alien Sultangalievism) and of also speaking falsely, like a diplomat. While there was nothing objectionable in Sultangaliev's ideological exercises as such, putting the lie to that charge by his supporters, they had concluded in a pattern of behavior that must be called to account.103 In effect, Sultangaliev, his supporters and any other would-be dissenters were being accused, in Orwellian terms, of thought crime. Turning to Khodzhanov and Ikramov he stated that, if they were right, than the Basmachi were right and we are wrong. He deflected Ikramov's complaints about the Central Committee's obstruction of native sentiment by saying that it alone could not raise a backward culture in 2-3 years. 104 Now Stalin proceeded in characteristically schematic fashion to outline the deviations in the national question threatening Soviet rule while deliberately contravening the Twelfth Congress' emphasis on the greater danger from the left, Great Russian chauvinism. He saw the rightist nationalist deviation as the more dangerous. This deviation could not conduct serious opposition to the popular nationalism rising from below in tandem with the NEP. Certainly the Tatars and Bashkirs did not sufficiently combat it. He hammered home the point that regional and republican parties could never attain strength and become real internationalist Marxists until they mastered this deviation. Nationalism was the fundamental obstacle in ideological terms to the raising and cultivating of nationality cadres. Resorting to the doctrine of analogy, Stalin drew an analogy between nationalism and Menshevism. Nationalism in the republics now played the same role as had the Mensheviks against Bolshevism before 1917. Nationalism was the source of the bourgeois Menshevik infection that was growing inside the Party. Typically, for him only survivals of Russian chauvinism and remnants thereof existed at this time. He characterized the "rightists" as being weak and skeptical in their attitude to i n t e r n a t i o n a l i s m - a fact which sucked them into the nationalist deviation.105 Leftism, on the other hand, i.e., Great Russian chauvinism, was a weaker illness. Its fault lay in not knowing where or how to conduct a flexible policy 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., 304-05. 103. Ibid., 305-06. 104. Ibid., 306-07. 105. Ibid., 308-09.

of winning over loyal, if non-Communist, minorities. The "leftists" simply preferred to consolidate further their majority among the (Russian) workers, lacking interest and aptitude for dealing with specific local conditions. Leftists tended to be too sectarian, insisting on Party principles and promoting an artificial stratification of peoples from above by mechanically transplanting Russian methods (Shablonizatsiia). This could lead to a severing of the tie between state and masses, or in cruder terms, mass discontent and unrest. 106 Of course, this schema was far too simplistic and self-serving to be a true description. But it politically fit the unsophisticated and centralizing audience who manifested a growing disposition to act out the logic of speaking with rifles to the opposition. Stalin spoke not a word about the policies which triggered his lieutenant's apostasy. Instead he flung threats, demanded recantation and confession. Amazingly this did not alert anyone to the character of Stalin, or if it did, it was of no avail since his skill, power, and ruthlessness, plus opposition ineptitude had seemingly foreclosed all other possibilities. Minority leaders may well have felt a powerful political vertigo after this experience. Stalin and his allies moved rapidly to firm up their victory here by his recommending a series of policies and personnel decisions consolidating his hold on the Party. Stalin and his supporters grasped that the minority intelligentsia which occupied leading roles in the republics constituted an unreliable and threatening potential for the future by their very existence in a situation where little mass support existed for the regime. To defuse the unrest and mollify the intelligentsia it was necessary to make concessions in language policy and nativization of the a p p a r a t s of the republics. This nativization would provide the means for promoting workers; less educated, cruder, and less independent men, dependent upon Stalin's machine, into leadership roles where they could then supplant the more obstreporous intelligentsia. Referring to the promotion of new Marxist cadres Stalin observed that the Party had to struggle on two fronts, against both leftism and rightist.107 Until now the Central Committee had dealt only with organizational leaders and more or less loyal elements. Now the local parties themselves had to discover the best means of converting local cadre into a mass Party. Party organs had to draw closer to the masses by speaking their languages and purging chauvinists opposed to this.108 Linguistic equality and nativization were essential if strife in the parties of Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, and Bashkiria was to be averted.109 Stalin also criticized conditions in Central Asia where Party weakness warranted alarm and the Party had to become stronger.110 Here the

l06./bid., 310. 107. loid., 317. 108. Ibid., 318. 109. Ibid., 319-20. 110. Ibid., 328-31.

problem was backwardness, not chauvinism, and a militant policy of forming native cadre was needed. 1 11I Stalin also conceded nothing on organizational issues relating either to the formation of the USSR or to calls for commissions of the Central Committee to examine the nationality issue in too.112 This ended the conference without a real answer as to why Sultangaliev felt obliged to resort to criminal conspiracy. As it was, only total recantation and promises of good behavior in the future saved his life.113 His recantation and Stalinist demands for more of the same provided compelling reasons for justifying Ikramov's Skrypnyk,'s and Ryskulov's fears of police methods in the Party. Kuibyshev, for example, was already convinced that Sultangaliev's fall was not traceable to an individual's psychology; but to a whole series of actions or relations that were perfectly clear to the Party. By analogy anyone who could be represented as traversing a similar path by another accuser could suffer the same p a t h Sultangaievism, and by extension any other opposition, constituted a clear ideological deviation, despite Stalin's artful hedging of the issue. Apart from the profound consequences for nationality policy; the outcome and proceedings of this conference strongly suggested that Stalin was abandoning debate with his rivals in favor of destroying them politically, psychologically, and personally.1 15 Tragically, this was only realized when it was too late. The conference's resolutions called for nationality policies in the directions of nativization outlined above but also called for more mass recruitment into the Party and for a purge of nationalist elements (presumably including both Russians and minorities) in the local parties confirming the political utility and rationale of purges.116 While noting offhandedly that the national deviation arose against Great Russian chauvinism; the resolutions called for a struggle on both fronts because only through the strictest Party supervision and constant struggle with nationalism and nationalist moods could the Party become strong among the masses.117 These resolutions signify that the Party understood the term or phenomenon of a purge as having already attained a quite definite political meaning, in contrast to Getty's understanding of the term. And immediately after the conference Stalin continued removing Ukrainian officials close to Rakovskii and demoting him and other opposi-

111. Ibid., 333-34. 112. Ibid., 324-25, 336-38. 113. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 170. 114. Eugene N. Hardy, "The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic: The Role of Nationality in Its Creaation 1917-1922," Unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 1955, 371-72. 115. Trotsky, 417. 116. KPSS v rezoliulsiiakh, resheniiakh s'ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1970), 2: 487-94. 117. Ibid., 487-88.

tionists like Osinskii by sending them abroad as a m b a s s a d o r s Subsequent policies relating to nationalities were clearly intended to blunt the Muslim challenge and strengthen Party, i.e., Stalin's, controls. In late summer and fall of 1923 the regional struggle was joined over all the issues of nationality policy in Muslim areas as well as the Ukraine. Particularly in Tatarstan and Bashkiria these acrimonious struggles between natives and Great Russian chauvinists led to further purges of dissident elements from both camps. 119 As cadres all over Russia came under the ever tighter scrutiny of Uchraspred and the Secretariat', Moscow's pressure to purge dissidents and alter the composition of these parties began to become clearer. 120 In early 1924, in advance of the so called Lenin levy, the Central Committee ordered the recruitment of native toilers from the native masses as part of the process of swamping the native intelligentsia. 121 Already by the summer of 1923 a year long struggle over these issues had come to the point of no return in Kazakhstan. There the CC recommended not just facilitating the entry of these elements but also the systematic purging of "alien," i.e., nationalist and educated, elements. 122 Later in 1923 and in early 1924 the emergence of a 'Trotskyist' opposition allowed Stalin and his supporters to fuse the two oppositions into one, encouraging the oppositionists to seek safety in numbers and come together as he and they charged. This occurred in Georgia and the Ukraine. On January 14-15, 1924 the plenum of the Central Committee jointly sitting with the Central Control Commission, Stalin's favorite kangaroo court, and members of the Ukrainian Control Commission, and other nationalist leaders attacked Trotskii, Piatakov, et. al., for their national nihilism and 'Luxemburgism' on the national question.lz3 Thus Stalin and his allies were able successfully to attack the Trotskii faction as being both aligned with nationalist oppositionists and for being national nihilists with no one noting the contradiction. 118. Carr, The Interregnum, 297, Franics Conte, "Autour de la Polemique Rakovsky-Staline sur la Question Nationale, 1921-1923," Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique, 16, no. 1 (Janvier-Mars 1975), 116. 119. 1. P. Drap, " D e i a t e l ' n o s t b a s h k i r s k o i oblastnoi partiinoi organizatsii po intematsional'nomu splocheniiu svoiikh riiadov (1921-1925 gg.)," Rastsvet Sblizhenie Sots ialisticheskikh Natsii v SSSR (Ufa: Bashkirskoi Gosudarstvennoi Universitet, 1971), 227; M. I. Abullin, "Bor'ba bashkirskoi partiinoi organizatsii za ukreplenie sovetskogo g o s u d a r s t v e n n o g o apparata ( 1 9 2 2 - 1 9 2 6 gg.)," Uchenye zapiski s t e r l i t a m a k s k o g o gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo insliluta (Sterlitamak, 1961), 4, 59-60. 120. 1. G. Kriukova, " 0 natsional'nykh momentakh v partiinom Sstroitel'stve v gody vosstanovleniia narodnogo khoziastva, 1921-1923 gg.," Iz istorii bor'by KPSS za pobedu sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii postroenie kommunisticheskogo obshchestva (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1974), 4, 168-69. 121. Ibid. 122. Komparliia K a z a k h s t a n , 54. 123. Z. I. Kliucheva, Ideinoe i organizatsiortnoe ukrepfenie kommunisticheskoi partii v usloviakh bor'by za postroenie sotsiafizma v SSSR (Moscow: Mysl', 1970), 139-46; M. M. Lakhitov, "Velikaia preobrazaiushchaia sila leninskoi natsional'noi politiki," Leninskie idei zhivul pobezhdaiut (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 1970), 325; Bor'ba partii Bol'shevikov protiv trotskizma v posleoktiabr'skoi period (Moscow: Mysl', 1969), 141-42.

Such moves were directly traceable to the successful outcome of Stalin's terrorizing of the nationalist and other oppositions and Trotskii's ineptitude at this conference. Immediately afterwards local parties such as that of Turkestan subjected the entire native population to greater police surveillance and regulation, undoubtedly including the Muslim political elite.124 Once started, the resort to police measures as a solution to political or even socio-economic issues became habit forming. Thus a veritable saturnalia of GPU arrests occurred against Nepmen, operating legally at the time, in 1923-24. According to a recent study such moves reflected a sense of political panic as Lenin lay dying, and strikes, the scissors crisis, and the Trotskiiist opposition, and the failed German revolution of 1923 all converged. The resulting atmosphere of fear was clearly designed not only to appeal to anti-NEP forces but also to dissuade any opposition moves of a more intense mature. 125 Stalin's fears may well have been exaggerated regarding the opposition of Trotskii and Zinov'ev and their potential for rallying disaffected minorities. Zinov'ev and Trotskii remained blind to the national issue right through 1927.t26 But exaggerated or not, Stalin's fears and those of his peers and Lenin before them helped to intensify the state of siege in the Party and the atmosphere of fear, police repression, and provocation so clearly expressed at the conference of June, 1923. From the evidence presented here it is clear that the GPU's penetration of the Party and intervention in its high politics antedated 1927, the date given by Reiman. The motive was undoubtedly a virtually hysterical fear of the opposition, and anger with it for disrupting the fetish of Party and imperial unity. The resort to the GPU only confirms Engles' observation that rule by terror is the rule of people who themselves are terrorized. And in this case the instruments of show trial, recantation, and purge were already linked together into one formidable weapon and understood as such by those involved. It is overwhelmingly clear that the purges of 1921-24 in the republics were of an openly political nature and understood by all participants as such and as a legitimate weapon of political struggle. It is equally indubitable that a reign of terror had settled upon these parties which could not be dislodged from below. If this atmosphere, depicted by minority delegates to the conference, and desired by Dzerzhinskii and the supreme Party leadership prevailed by 1923-24 at the latest, we must conclude that, a fortiori, the concept of the purge by the start of the thirties and after that of 1934-38 was meant to be and understood as being a licensed political witch hunt. Getty's conception does not in any way square with the political record and evidence of the twenties, not to speak of the thirties.

124. Guy G. hnart, "Kirgizia Between Islam and Nationalism," J o u r n a l of the Institute o f Muslim Minority Affairs, 7, no. 2, July 1986), 362. 125. Alan Ball, "NEP's Second Wind: 'The New Trade Practice'," Soviet Studies, 37, 3 (July, 1985), 374. 126. Stroitel'stvo sotsializma v SSSR krakh opportunizma (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1982), 189.

Moreover, Getty's conception does violence to the historical record of the period by not recognizing that there was a genuine politics here. Real contention existed over nationality policy and other issues and those who lost and were disgraced or worse were, not merely careerists, criminals, opportunists, or class alien strata. Such a view of the purges' victims obscures their human individuality and personality from view by lumping them together in the box marked socially undesirable or alien elements. Whatever their crimes and foibles, they deserve, at least, to be accurately remembered for who they were and what they stood for so that Stalin's side does not have the only word. Attempts to revise and improve our understanding of the period anterior to and including Stalin's reign will go on and should do so. But this kind of denial of the purge as a recognized and often chosen instrument of great utility and flexibility for political purposes obscures rather than clarifies our insights into the times. Revisionism should be made of sterner stuff. U.S. Army War College January, 1990