Central Asian Survey

Vol. 30, No. 1, March 2011, 21 –37

Helpless imperialists: European state workers in Soviet Central Asia

in the 1920s and 1930s
Botakoz Kassymbekova∗

Department of East European History, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany

This article examines everyday realities of the state-building process in early Soviet
Tajikistan. The work concentrates exclusively on the experiences of ‘European’ state
workers, that is, their uncertain position as ‘imperialists’, and points to nuances of the early
Soviet state building. By observing the mundane micro-level experiences of the state actors
from the European parts of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, the author proposes to treat
sentiments of state actors as important indicators of the Soviet statehood practices and
poses the following question: why did the European state workers feel isolated,
unsupported and even helpless and how can we understand their experiences as an integral
part of the Soviet empire state-building process? The author argues that individuals’ power
and powerlessness was at the core of the early Soviet political structure since individual
state representatives were to palliate institutional and legal deficiencies – a task that
required enormous physical and emotional sacrifices and also included personal
responsibility for anything that might have been deemed by the top as a failure.
Keywords: State building; arbitrariness; helplessness; imperialism

Introduction1
Can imperialists be described as helpless?2 Many European Soviet state workers described
themselves as European and progressive3 but also helpless and weak in 1920s and 1930s in
what is now Tajikistan.4 I propose to take their self-description and feelings of helplessness
seriously and pose the following question: what can European state workers’ experiences of
helplessness tell us about the Soviet political structure? How are we to analyse the everyday
experiences of state representatives as an integral history of statecraft? How do the intimate
experiences at the most local level connect to the overarching Soviet empire-state-building
process? I suggest that European imperialists’ or state workers’ helplessness lies at the core
of the Soviet political structure since individual state representatives were the ostensible substi-
tutes for institutional and legal deficiencies, becoming objects for and subjects of arbitrary mode
of rule. State workers’ helplessness should not be dismissed as a mere by-product of a political
structure. Their helplessness should be understood as an important ingredient of the system: the
vertical top-down arbitrary exercise of power.
The debates over the categorization of the Soviet Union have a longer history than the Soviet
Union itself. Between the two extremes of interpretation of Soviet rule – colonialism and state
modernism – recently most are inclined to treat it as something in between: an empire with a
caveat.5 Although various interpretations have been put forward, Central Asia is still being
largely studied as a non-Russian island, where various (colonial, imperial or state) ideas have
been experimented with. But the separation and the view of it as a special region where a
certain plan was realized can pose an important limitation: it can hinder us from seeing the

∗
Email: kassymbo@cms.hu-berlin.de

ISSN 0263-4937 print/ISSN 1465-3354 online

# 2011 Central Asian Survey
DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2011.554052
http://www.informaworld.com
22 B. Kassymbekova

region as a part of the whole Soviet experiment and push binary divisions into ‘rulers’/‘ruled’ as
well as ‘perpetrators’/‘victims’. I suggest that to be able to analyse, conceptualize and compare
the Soviet experience we should not only analyse visions and state policies towards peripheries,
but also study Soviet practices of governance in non-Russian regions, still integrating them into
the overall (Russian and non-Russian) Soviet context.
So far, the Soviet experience seems to be evaluated as a paradox (Roy 2000, p. xiii, Kan-
diyoti 2007, p. 602): despite the government’s claims to modernize society, for example,
through national formations or female emancipation, it produced neo-traditional relations, in
relation to nations (Martin 2000), local officials (Edgar 2004) or women (Kandiyoti 2007).
My inquiry into experiences of European officials of the new state in early Soviet Tajikistan
suggests a similar development: while the Soviet government formally established modern
state institutions, it retained a pre-modern, despotic, form of rule incorporated into government
structures.
A fresh reinterpretation of despotic rule and its application to the early Soviet context was
recently proposed by Christian Teichmann. He suggests going beyond the normative under-
standing of despotism as a political form of governance (2010, pp. 2 – 3).6 Drawing on work
of the political anthropologist of West African states, Gerd Spittler, he defines despotic rule
as an arbitrary rule by despots who decide on issues on a person-to-person, case-to-case and
face-to-face basis (ibid., p. 5). In despotic states, unlike in bureaucratic ones, ‘there are no
fixed rules, since all decisions are made individually’ (ibid.). But, as there are no clear rules,
both the rulers and the ruled exist in insecurity (ibid.). Usually, despotic rulers do not possess
sufficient or concrete information about what is going on in their territories: they are not sure
how much exactly is produced or smuggled. This, in case it is needed, is decided orally and
so despots depend on personal networks in governance (Spittler 1983, p. 63).
A despot’s space for action is limited as despotic rule requires a physical presence for infor-
mation gathering and overseeing the decision-making process. His rule requires his systematic
presence and systematic demonstration of physical might (ibid., p. 64). Thus, when and if a ruler
does not directly and systematically demonstrate and enforce his power and order, he does not
exercise control over a territory, or at least he can never be sure that he does. Despotism, one
could conclude, is a labour- and time-intensive form of statehood, penetrated with insecurity,
fear of disloyalty and revolt.
The general image of despotic rule as rule by an all-powerful despot over a weak population
is reconsidered. Spittler demonstrates that despotic rule is a decentralized rule: no central ruler
can decide on each and every case, especially in a large territory. He is necessarily dependent on
his local despots. There is thus no one absolute despotic ruler with an absolute control over a
society. On the contrary, despots’ might goes hand in hand with their weakness:
It is a common understanding that despotism and helplessness is complementary: despotic violence
makes its subjects absolute helpless, their helplessness enables despotic violence. My thesis about
the relationship between despotism and helplessness totally differs. It is not despotism of the ruler
and the helplessness of the ruled that are complementary, but rather despotism of the rulers and
their own helplessness. (ibid., p. 74)
How can the insights about despotic rule in Western Africa be useful for the early Soviet
context? Christian Teichmann (2010, pp. 9 – 10) argues that ‘chaos’, lack of transparency of
and access to information was a necessary logic of a despotic practice of rule, not simply a con-
sequence of difficult conditions of early-colonial state building. Although one cannot literally
translate Spittler’s description of West African despotism into the Soviet context, it does give
important insights into statehood practices in the absence of modern bureaucracy (in the Weber-
ian sense) in early Soviet Central Asia. In contrast to modern impersonalized bureaucratic
administrations, which are characterized by a clear division of labour and hierarchy between
 Central Asian Survey 23

institutions, stable personnel recruited on a merit basis and written communication and regis-
tered regulation of the administrative system, despotic personalized rule lacks transparency of
communication, decisions and rules are decided arbitrarily, they require personal presence
and are characterized by the absence of stable ‘personnel’ and relations of distrust.7
Indeed, as European workers’ biographies suggest, rotation rates in government institutions
were high: state workers did not stay at one place for a long time. They also suffered from a lack
of information and directives from their superiors, unclear policies and means of realization.
They complained about lack of authority as state representatives. On the other hand, they
were often made personally responsible for what has been considered by their superiors as fail-
ures and often relocated, purged or killed. When they were punished, it was difficult for them to
understand why.
In contrast to Spittler’s description of the relationship between information and despotic
rulers (a despot does not really need registered information), Soviet state leaders were obsessed
with information gathering. The secret political police, OGPU (State Political Directorate)
workers were sent into the fields to personally gather information and, especially, register
acts of disloyalty and resentment. They were also empowered, or so they understood, to
watch over and intervene in affairs of other state institutions. Their reports, however, were
sent upwards to higher authorities, keeping other state workers unaware and puzzled over
their roles and their institutions.8 Thus, although the Soviet leadership introduced what might
seem bureaucratization of information, its personalized mode of collection, access and use,
which included mutual surveillance and whistle blowing, was in reality an attempt to adapt to
gain control over a vast territory and their fears of losing control over it. Many European
state workers, longing for functional state institutions and transparency, attempted to escape
their dubious roles of imperial state workers as their craft was not only challenging and insecure,
but also dangerous.
In this work I will first examine the everyday experiences of European state workers in Taji-
kistan; secondly, I will look at their experiences of weakness/helplessness as state representa-
tives; finally, I will describe mechanisms of despotic rule and their relationship to power and
powerlessness. The findings will shed light on early Soviet practices of statehood that were
based on personal networks, sporadic controls, high rotation rates, surveillance, distrust and
purges. I argue that the neo-despotic principle that based its rule on individual actors within gov-
ernment institutions necessitated a complicated and oblique relationship between order and
chaos, legality and lawlessness, power and weakness.

‘Happy in exile’: reasons for coming to Tajikistan

Joshua Kunitz, an American communist who travelled with a group of European and American
communist writers and artists to Soviet Central Asia during the first years of Soviet rule, told a
story of an assistant to the native vice-president of the Tajik Republic. Kunitz did not recognize
him as a European at first. Given that the worker’s enthusiasm about Tajikistan was so strong and
he spoke of ‘our’ land, Kunitz took it for granted that the person he was talking to was a native of
Tajikistan. However, this person turned out to be a Jew from Ukraine; his family name was
Sluchak. Kunitz described Sluchak’s apartment as having the feel of ‘military headquarters’.
Sluchak had a very busy life in Dushanbe: ‘[e]xcept for the time that my host spent in the
office, his home, from early morning till late in the night, was crowded with people – officials
with portfolios and batches of papers, engineers with blue-prints and grandiose plans, accoun-
tants and economists with endless columns of figures and ingeniously plotted graphs and
curves. It was so in the evening, too: always working, always on the go, always in the thick
of a “campaign”’ (Kunitz 1935, p. 218).
24 B. Kassymbekova

Kunitz and his co-travellers were puzzled: did Sluchak come to another part of the world to
actually build Communism and transfer the local ‘primitive’ culture into a modern, Soviet, Com-
munist one? Although Sluchak at first talked only about the aims, objectives and successes of the
Soviet mission, which desperately needed educated workers like him to build Communism also
in the most remote areas, he once told the real story of his arrival in Dushanbe:
He was here, because he was a Bolshevik representing a national minority and as such more able to
appreciate the problems and aspirations of other national minorities. He had fought three years in the
Civil War; during the famine he worked in the Volga region; then he was shifted from one job to
another, in White Russia he remained only for a short time. Just as he had begun to take things a
little easier, to permit himself an occasional evening in the theatre or the opera, the Party ordered
him to Tajikistan. Sluchak had scarcely heard of Tajikistan before. He knew it only as wild and primi-
tive country of mountains, deserts, bandits, and nomads, somewhere near India. And how he hated to
leave Moscow, the center of everything in the Union, and go to some forsaken place in Central Asia!
He felt hurt and resentful. He came here and ‘plunged straight into work, into the very thick of it’. At
first he worked furiously, simply to forget his resentment, but the deeper he became involved in the
work, the more absorbing, the more fascinating he found it. (Kunitz, pp. 227–228)
But Sluchak wanted to go home and visit his relatives. When Kunitz and other travellers saw
Sluchak ‘nervous and worn’ they suggested that he take a vacation. Sluchak exclaimed with eyes
‘lit up’: ‘A vacation! I haven’t had a vacation for years! If I ever get one, the first thing I’ll do is
fly to Moscow – theatres, music and all that sort of thing. And next I would go to Minsk to see
my mother. I haven’t seen her for over eight years now, and I am anxious to see her’ (ibid.).
Kunitz labelled Sluchak’s life as one of ‘happy exile’. Soviet state building depended on
people like Sluchak: it was a ‘European worker’ who was supposed to be the key Soviet state
builder in 1920s and 1930s in Tajikistan. A European worker was supposed to bring ideas of
progress and knowledge of Soviet Russia, or the ‘centre’, to the ‘backward’ Eastern parts of
the new Soviet Empire. In Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan, European workers prevailed.
In 1925, in Dushanbe there were over 700 Soviet officials: 73% of these were registered as
‘Europeans’, 12% as ‘Tajiks’, 4% as ‘Tatars’ and 4% as ‘Uzbeks’ (Kampenus 1926, p. 30).

Figure 1. Alexei Usharov, a Soviet European Judicial Consultant, 1925.

Source: TsGA RT (Central State Archive of the Republic of Tajikistan).
 Central Asian Survey 25

European workers came to peripheral Central Asia for various reasons. Some, like Sluchak,
were ordered to relocate to Central Asia (Bergne 2007, p. 59). Others consciously chose to move
to the periphery since the situation in Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev was ‘not stable’ and even
dangerous. In a context where a person with higher education could be accused of belonging to
the bourgeois, that is, enemy, class, it was safer to provide your education for the Soviet goals
where it was needed.9 Unemployment in Russia and Ukraine forced many to seek work and
means of survival in Central Asia.
The first difficulty facing a European worker in Tajikistan was his material poverty. Though
most Europeans lived in the capital Dushanbe, which translates from Farsi as Monday, this was
nothing more than a small village that was used as a Monday market between Bukhara and
Kabul. The village that was to grow into a town had no sewage system, transport, none of the
basic conditions of the modern world that was largely experienced by the Soviet state
workers elsewhere. Accommodation was hard to find. In the fight for living space, as Lev Iur-
kevich (1932, pp. 15– 16) reported that it was the strongest and the most aggressive who
won. The fight was so fierce that even receiving an apartment did not mean being able to
keep it. When people left town for work-related trips to peripheries upon their return they
often found their apartments occupied by other workers who were even able to get an official
note certifying their right to occupy it. ‘Once, two workers put guns against each other for an
apartment. But the duel did not take place – wisdom won . . . Even two square meters per
person is good, people get the space enough to fit their bodies to sleep. Not more.’ Miseries
grew as the population of Dushanbe grew.10 The Tajikistan Commission of the Central Asian
Economic Council, which visited Tajikistan in 1926, warned that due to the absence of
European-style housing and extremely poor living conditions in Dushanbe, the fluctuation of
the labour force was extremely high. Since there were inadequate living conditions, the commis-
sion reported, there would be no qualified workers to build the Soviet system in Tajikistan
(Kampenus 1926, p. 9).
Moreover, salaries of Soviet workers were lower than minimum survival rate. Whilst in April
1926 the salary of a ‘responsible’ worker was 22.90 rubles, the minimum for survival calculated
by the Statistical Department was 53 rubles (ibid., p. 29). Prior to the construction of the railway,
however, prices in Dushanbe were several times higher than in Moscow and Tashkent. The
armed resistance against Soviet rule paralysed trade. Disastrous harvest years worsened the situ-
ation. As a result food prices grew fourfold. If, for example, in 1926, sugar in Moscow cost 32
kopeks (Russian cents), it cost 1 ruble 65 kopeks in Dushanbe. If a pud11 of wheat cost 1.60
rubles one year, a year later it cost 4.67 rubles (ibid., pp. 267 –270). Many went hungry and
ill (Iurkevich 1932, p. 16; Makashov 1964).
Malaria and tuberculosis were the main diseases taking the lives of thousands of people
(Degtiarenko 1960, p. 69). In the 1920s, the main enemy of Soviet rule in Tajikistan, as reported
by an eyewitness, was not armed resistance but malaria (Topil’skii 1968, p. 29). Whole squadron
detachments were dying from the disease (ibid., p. 29). News about malaria reached Russia. A
young man coming from Russia decided to take ‘medicine’ with him, and brought five bottles of
vodka to protect him from malaria. But, rumours about his medicine spread and militiamen were
quick to confiscate the ‘medicine’, as they put forward charges against the illegal trade of vodka
as a capitalist activity.12 Fleeing unemployment and purges elsewhere in the Soviet Union, the
number of newcomers still grew. If in 1927 there were 5600 people in Dushanbe, in 1929 there
were 7300, and in 1930, with the opening of a railway, there were 30,000 (Iurkevich 1932, p. 16).
Though later the salaries of workers were increased, they were still too low to permit comfor-
table living. Salaries were often unpaid, leaving state workers starving. A European doctor
wrote to the Ministry of Health begging it to pay him his salary to enable him to feed his starving
children and bring his malaria-diseased wife for treatment to Russia. He doubted the help as he
26 B. Kassymbekova

wrote: ‘I worked for three years for the Soviet government and know the bureaucracy and how it
works, this is why I ask you to pay me as soon as possible and do not enlarge the cadres of bumps
on the street.’13 He wrote that he would have to find a way to leave since ‘even a dog flees the
yard that’s not feeding it’.
Another problem for the Soviet expatriate state workers was language. Although life con-
ditions of European workers were difficult, expectations from them were high. They were sup-
posed to learn local languages quickly and use them in their work with the local population, but
since most of them did not, they were considered, for example, by the Chair of the regional court
in 1925 Vagin as ‘unsatisfactory’.14 When in May 1925 a European jurist from a Regional Court
complained about a Muslim worker who was appointed as a People’s Judge to work in Dush-
anbe, reporting that he ‘knew nothing’ and did not speak the Russian language and therefore
was useless, he received the following response: ‘There is no better candidate to the post of
the People’s Judge in Dushanbe. National Justice Committee knew about comrade Ishankulov’s
abilities and education, but this is your responsibility to train him to an adequate level, which is
part of the responsibility of all European workers in TASSR and is absolutely achievable through
a member of the Court Taktashev and through a Secretary Akchurina and the translator, whom
you will get in the near future.’15
Written communication between institutions and regions posed another difficulty. The postal
system was working so badly that the representatives of the state organs in rural areas did not
receive orders or decrees for months, forcing them to rely on their own ‘revolutionary conscious-
ness’ and use their understanding of how things should be run (but not without consequences if
things went wrong). In 1926, due to the absence of regular postal service, the Revolutionary
Committee ordered all government agencies to act as postmen: ‘in the future before leaving
to regions for work or returning from regions state workers must come to the Revolutionary
Committee and get post for their regions’.16 For convenience, all were asked to announce
their trip to the regions beforehand. Even in 1934 the Deputy to the Procurator General of Taji-
kistan Petrov warned Moscow that it took from 10 to 20 days for post to reach Moscow from
Dushanbe and 15 to 25 days from within the regions of Tajikistan.17
Working conditions were disastrous: ‘[d]uring rain periods the walls of huts suddenly fall.
Recently, the walls of the militia building melted away like sugar just as the walls of the building
of the Soviet for Economy, after the collapse of the Work Recruitment Office, their workers
escaped to the building of the Committee for Work (Narkomtrud)’ (Iurkevich 1932, p. 15). Gov-
ernment buildings were rented from local residents and were of very low quality: the High Court
of Tajikistan had to postpone trials during the winter and spring, because the rain water leaking
through the ceiling did not allow people to sit inside.18 One single typing machine was shared by
three state institutions. Fights occurred when one of the institutions broke it.19 State workers who
were supposed to represent the new victorious, strong and potent centre, which left its represen-
tatives without finances and directives, found themselves in awkward positions.
The central government in Moscow knew about the difficulties in peripheral regions. But
migration to peripheries was a key factor in safeguarding the Soviet rule. The general re-settle-
ment plan proposed to re-settle up to 10 million people from Western Russia and the Ukraine to
Southern peripheries.20 It was formally made difficult to leave Tajikistan. It was ordered that all
residents and newcomers be registered by the militia to control population movement. Those
who failed to register were at risk of being sentenced to up to three months of hard labour.
Often documents and passports were confiscated in order to ensure that a worker did not
leave the country.21
On the most basic level, the strategy to deal with the situation was to leave the region. One of
the ways to leave Tajikistan was to ask a doctor for a medical note that would certify that the
local climate was unsuitable for a person from the north.22 Medical notes were one of the
 Central Asian Survey 27

Figure 2. The Building of the People’s Commissariat for Finances. Dushanbe, TASSR, 1928.

safest ways to leave the region because they legalized the departure and guaranteed security
when finding different employment elsewhere. Departure without medical notes could be con-
sidered desertion from work and was a reason for criminal punishment. For example, a European
criminal investigator wrote that his physical and psychic condition was disastrous and he asked
for a medical leave with his family and an advance payment of the monthly salary to get better in
Tashkent. He wrote: ‘many years of work in punitive institutions broke my health and affected
the neuro-psychological system of my body; I have psychic attacks more and more often.’23 In

Figure 3. The Building of the National Commissariat for Agriculture. Dushanbe, TASSR, 1928.
28 B. Kassymbekova

1927 two Soviet workers, Zunde and Naidenov, complained to several medical committees
about their state of health and tried to force the committees to issue them medical notes with
a suggestion to leave Tajikistan for treatment. When the committees failed to find illnesses
and refused to issue medical notes, they started cursing and hitting its members with sticks.
The Chair of the Communist Party asked the criminal investigation department to look into
the case stating that ‘due to such incidents, doctors refuse to participate in medical committees’.
The Committee asked the investigation and Procurator to investigate the case and put the two
workers on trial for hooliganism and malingering.24
But there were so many medical notes issued with recommendations to leave Tajikistan, that
in 1925 the government asked doctors to issue medical notes only if absolutely necessary, since,
‘Tajikistan really needs qualified workers and great loss of them does not leave a chance to
Sovietize it.’25 Still, in August 1930 another order had to be issued forbidding doctors to
write out medical notes to European workers that recommended them leaving Tajikistan.26
The order said that the doctors would personally be responsible for each note issued, since
such medical notes could lead to, ‘abuse of state budget, loss of cadres and failure of Soviet
building’. The reason why it was decided to forbid issuing such notes was that it was most
likely that those who left for ‘medical leave’ would never return to Tajikistan again. Although
Tajikistan was experiencing epidemics of malaria, it was also the unbearable standards of living
that made Soviet Europeans seek ways to leave the region. Equally, however, European state
workers fled their jobs and the region for political reasons as helpless statesmen who did not
want to carry personal responsibilities for ‘failures’ that they felt were not theirs but of the dys-
functional state.

‘We have a polyarchy here – they do what they want!’

In 1925, leaders of the Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) complained in a letter to the Central
Asian Bureau that the workers of OGPU did not comply with the Revolutionary Committee –
they did what they wanted. As if to prove the point, the Revolutionary Committee reported that a
certain Skalov, a European OGPU worker, raped a female member of the Revolutionary Com-
mittee. ‘We have polyarchy!’ they complained, warning that if the Central Asian Bureau was not
able to deal with OGPU and, if they could not exercise authority, they would have to quit their
jobs.27 ‘We have no authority! Our secret communication is being opened by the OGPU, our
telegrams are not being sent. There is war against the Revolutionary Committee. You should
either help us or remove us from Tajikistan.’28 Sokolov and Dadabaev wrote to Bel’skii, the
OGPU head in Tashkent, that they felt sorry (nam ochen zhal’) that still, in 1925, responsible
workers (otvestvennye rabotniki) did not know the basis of the constitution which identified
the OGPU the highest instance of the republic, and thus thought that it was acceptable to
ignore the government (pravitel’stvo).29 The term ‘responsible workers’, that became an essen-
tial part of the Soviet political and government system, provides linguistic expression of the
political practice: the system was based on individuals being responsible for campaigns,
whereas it was much less clear what were the responsible institutions in decision making, as
the above-mentioned episode clearly demonstrates.
State building is an expensive project. Bolshevik state building was paid for primarily in
human lives (bodies and destinies). Repression, terror, and purges characterized the Soviet pol-
itical system and were the basis of its state building. In times when the financial means for
investment were lacking, plan fulfilment was not based on individual interest and incentives.
Purges and scapegoating served as its substitutes. But the level of helplessness of individuals
depended on their institutional place and position. Judicial workers whose professional goal
was to enforce laws of the new state felt themselves especially helpless. This is how the
 Central Asian Survey 29

Vice-Procurator of Tajikistan described the situation of judicial workers to the chief Procurator
of the Soviet Union in 1934:
. . . A lack of authority influences our work. We cannot get apartments and food. We have to eat in
chaihanas together with criminals, the dekulakisized, etc. We do not look like state workers . . . Even
the Communications Department turned the electricity off in our buildings because the electricity
bills were not paid. Procurators are constantly being mobilized for harvest campaigns and so on.
Comrade Vyshinskii,30 you need to understand our situation and its difficulty. . . Your warning
about putting me on trial for not fulfilling your proposals is not surprising to me, since I can
expect to be fired for allegations being put forward against my spotless personality and being put
on trial. What is worse, however, is that a strong desire to leave this work to another republic
rose in me just like in anyone who comes here through your direction. Please do not look at this
letter as whining, this is simply a report about the context of work that we have here that prevents
us from fulfilling your, Akulov’s and the vice-procurator’s proposals . . . (italics added)31
Another group that suffered from their uncertain positions was technical workers who were fre-
quently punished for failures of agricultural, mining and construction campaigns. During the
1930s Tajikistani newspapers accused European workers of so-called ‘Great Power Chauvin-
ism’. The main crime of these Soviet Europeans was that they excluded the Tajiks or nationals,
as they were alternatively called, from the Soviet organizations. However, cases against Soviet
Europeans usually started only when the organization where they worked failed to fulfil the
plans. Scarce resources, poverty and the failure of campaigns to implement the plan were the
reasons to accuse the directors of factories and organizations of ‘colonialism’ or ‘corruption’.
In 1933, in Kulyab Machine Tractor Station (MTS), tractors were not repaired in a timely
fashion and this impeded the cotton-growing campaign.32 The director first reported that 75%
of tractors were repaired when this was true only for 60%. When it was explained that it was
the absence of technical parts that impeded implementation of the plan, the committee disliked
the answer and sought ‘better’ explanations. It then noticed that there was an insufficient number
of Tajiks at the station and asked for an explanation, which was given by the director: ‘I would
train technicians among the nationals, but this is impossible to do so now, because we are being
asked for so many things, such as compiling information, calculating percentages, but a native
cannot do such things . . . We are forced to take Europeans.’ This was enough to find the reason
of the station’s failures. The verdict followed soon – the station failed because of ‘Great Power
Chauvinism’. The author of the article accused the director saying that according to the direc-
tor’s opinion ‘a national can only sweep the yard and throw a ketmen, a traditional plough instru-
ment, around. Is this accidental? Is this not the constant thinking of a chauvinist?’33 In reality,
however, the authorities were nervous about the fact that the overall national plans were not ful-
filled, which in turn would mean reprisals against them too.
Industrial workers were similarly prosecuted for industrial failures; accountants were perse-
cuted for corruption and the slow transfer of money; construction workers and engineers were
sometimes executed if buildings were not completed on time and/or with defects.34 Objective
reasons for failures were rarely taken into account – behind each plan failure, so the police
saw, sat a class enemy who purposefully hindered revolutionary developments. In 1933, geol-
ogists of ‘Tajik Gold’ were accused of their failure to find gold in Tajikistan. It was officially
proclaimed that, ‘behind the words about physical-geographical conditions were masked
Great Power Chauvinism, colonialism and arrogance towards the experience of local Tajiks
who have been extracting gold here for thousands of years’.35 The European geologists were
charged with trying to falsify numbers and prove that the gold did not exist in Tajikistan, and
were accused in ‘the absence of will to lead serious work with gold mines and give technical
help to local Tajiks and thus the lack of will to lead the national politics’. The hysteria
around gold, however, was directly linked to the directives from Moscow as leading Bolsheviks
were issuing decrees about the necessity of attention to gold. At last, Bolsheviks urgently needed
30 B. Kassymbekova

money for their ambitious plans. Mirza Davud Guseinov, the head of the Communist Party in
Tajikistan, wrote to his superior Orzhonikidze, Commissar of the Soviet Heavy Industry, in
Moscow promising to implement his decrees and assured him in early 1933 that, ‘without over-
estimation I can say that there is gold in Tajikistan in many places and every day we find out
about new places’.36 As Guseinov tried to please Moscow by finding the gold in Tajikistan
that was so demanded by the centre, the news about the absence of gold was devastating for
him. Blaming technical workers was a way to save one’s own face.37 However, the passing
on of responsibility for their own failures and planning to the technical workers by the state auth-
orities can be seen as signs of their own weakness.

Of despots’ craft
A young Ukrainian, Adrey Shust, a member of the Communist Party since 1921, arrived in Taji-
kistan as an assignee of the Special Department (osobyi otdel) to eliminate the basmachi
revolts.38 In his fight against basmachis he was empowered to use his ‘revolutionary conscious-
ness’, which technically could be interpreted as a licence to act as one thinks or feels is correct
for the new regime in a certain context. He was permitted, according to a decree, to take ‘extra-
judicial measures’, that is, to murder suspects without a trial.39 Although Shust was a European,
he learned the local language and could communicate with the local people. He had direct com-
munication with the local people, but had difficulties with communication with the ‘government’
he was to represent. In an article called ‘Issues of a kishlak (village) life’ he complained about
local problems and lack of directives from above:
The aim of this article is to discuss, at least partially, issues that are important to dehkans (peasants).
Most of the issues are about land. Arguments are between kishlaks, bais and the poor in who should
use the land. The decades-old argument is raised. There is a desire from Tajiks to return the land
taken by Lakais . . .There are lots of unused land owned by bais, but the owners are afraid to rent
it because they are afraid that the land will not be given back. All these issues came up now,
there are no directives from the centre, but they need to be solved somehow. What to do with the
land of the emigrated – no one knows . . .40
Shust saw himself as an agent who was not only able to solve the issues of the kishlak, but
rather the one who should and must do it. He called on other officials, his superiors, to help, for
example, to clean the water channels and give out money to peasants to help them with their
situation. But his superior, Premet, although he had sanctioned Shust’s initiatives, was
himself lacking directives and financial resources. He reacted to Shust’s initiatives with
excitement:
You, guys, howdy! What a way to show your initiative! The order was to give out advance of 1000
rubles of tax sums, but you spent 2500. It’s OK, somehow I will write this off. . . I do not know what
the conditions of issuing the sums are. I just received a permission to issue those, but the rest I do not
know. The most important thing is that those are distributed. There will be no taxation this year,
which is our trump card. When there will be products, I do not know. I write about this all the
time. They answer that the products will be given out through distributors and that those should
arrive any time soon, for now, however, just sit and wait . . . If you issued loans to them, there is
nothing bad in that, since we cannot consider money of the selhoz bank as sums of a clan . . .
There is no money and it is nowhere to find.41
In December 1925, Shust issued money to militiamen through a county basmachi council (kent
basmsoveshanie). In receipts signed by him he wrote, ‘[t]o issue militiamen 15 rubles each, 180
rubles to maintain their families and obtain clothes, since the government is not doing this’.42
Shust confiscated belongings of those people, who, he thought, supported the basmachi move-
ment. He redistributed them with the neighbouring village revolutionary committees, fed his
 Central Asian Survey 31

workers, gave clothes to basmachi wives, issued cattle to the Red Army, and so on. Andrey Shust
redistributed the belongings personally, according to his ‘revolutionary consciousness’.
When Shust received information that a certain villager named Abdusattar hid belongings of
a kurbashi (squadron commander), he gathered a group of militiaman to search his house. Shust
found the belongings of basmachis he was looking for. He killed a person hiding the basmachi
property during the operation. His head Premet wrote Shust about Abdusattar:
. . . you made a search in Djurak at the house of a supporter, Abdusattar, and apparently arrested his
brother. He has now come to Dagona kishlak with his wife and said that from this day on he will work
for the Soviet power. I must inform you that from the 25th we will start here in Lakai to ‘slap’ the
supporters. In our kent [county], Abdusattar is one of the candidates, all four of them. Mihailov and I
think that we need to wait with Abdusattar for some time after which we can clean him up from his
belongings and from his ‘soul’. We think that it is now needed to release Abdusattar’s brother and
arrest of his belongings. If you think that this is impossible, it is all right, but we strongly suggest this.
Yesterday we had a ground cleansing in the Isan Hoja region. Astanakul and his 10 djigits were killed
and Mullah Abdu Rahim with his 15-20 djigits. Now you see what we’re made of!43
The letters above demonstrate that Andrey Shust did not act simply upon his ‘revolutionary con-
sciousness’ but received directives from his leader to search the ‘supporters’ and even kill them.
Most importantly, in both of the letters, Shust was assured of his agency to act as he considers
right and his ‘small mistakes’ were considered small enough in the overall fight for Soviet rule in
the region.
However, in May 1926 Andrey Shust was sentenced to death and shot dead for ‘the abuse of
power’. The official accusation said:
. . . Shust had quite an important position during a year, during which he consciously abused his pos-
ition: terrorized local population; beat and shot individual citizens; arrested citizens on personal
motives; confiscated belongings illegally; used competencies of other institutions of power, fired
and hired people in Muslim detachment; issued with his signature to some chairs of Jamagat Revo-
lutionary Committees identifications . . . He undermined the authority of the Soviet rule among the
population . . . while foreign and local enemies of Soviet rule use every opportunity, every weakness,
against us among the dark and uneducated dehkan masses of Soviet Tajikistan. This is why Shust
must be punished strictly . . .44
Shust was sentenced to death with confiscation of belongings; but since he had no belongings,
the confiscation was annulled. Shust’s destiny is not atypical for the period: armed with the
‘revolutionary consciousness’ and guns, but very little information and decrees, OGPU/
Special Department workers were soon dismissed as ‘accidental elements’ whenever their vio-
lence and arbitrariness produced resistance among the local population.
From 1925 till 1927 ‘power abuse’ was the most frequent verdict in Tajikistan.45 Lack of
directives from the government but also authorization of his agency by his superior made
Shust conclude he was the government and it was his responsibility to act as the government.
He reacted:
I shot basmachi supporters according to a secret directive given to me personally by the Chair of
008 detachment comrade Chalov, who told me that active supporters must be shot, but it should
be done so that everyone would say that they were shot during an escape attempt. Also, special
assignee of detachment 008 comrade Sedelnikov said during the meeting in Hissar that suppor-
ters should be shot, but this should be kept a secret. Taking this into account, but also the
context, I was shooting the supporters. Those directives were also known to our head
Putovskii.46
As state institutions were nominally empowered with decrees, real power was handed over to
the political police/special departments which were not subordinated to state institutions
and whose budget was the highest, amounting to 25% of the overall state budget in 1926,
in comparison to 4.5% assigned to institutions of justice (Ianishevskii 1926, p. 334).
32 B. Kassymbekova

Representatives of judicial institutions were indeed in a different position since they lacked
the guns and finances to use violence on the scale done by the police.
It is in this context that we should understand a judicial instructor’s analysis of the OGPU
and the Special Department’s workers in the region:
One can notice OGPU’s work, but not because their work is wonderful, but because there is not a
thing that is being solved without the OGPU participation. Whether it is right or not, they do not
care, but act as they wish. If we take, for example, interrogation process or investigation, then we
could tell a whole bunch of comic stories, but let it be. The main issue is that they do not follow
any of the procedural norms – all of the decrees about acceptance of cases or issuing of punishment
according to the article 207 of Criminal Procedural Code . . . About arrest and other interrogations
they do not consider it necessary to report to Procurator and propose not to interfere into their
business . . . Special Department workers (osobisty) are infected with arrest mania, there was a
case that they kept a citizen for seven months in their jail, and when they looked at the case more
attentively they saw that they invited him only as an eyewitness. They are, of course, very crude
to citizens and there are cases of violence, they motivate it with the argument that without violence
one cannot get information, which the Special Department needs. They interfere in cases of purely
civil character, and when asked why they carry out the job of other institutions, they answer that this
work interests them more.47
Letters of complaint about the negligence of OGPU, which later merged/transformed into
NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), did not, however, produce results over
time with increasing institutional presence. When in 1932 an attempt was made by the judiciary
to limit repression by OGPU and give the organization some legal basis, Stalin reacted:
I think that it is necessary to act on the basis of the law (‘people love legality’) and not only on the
basis of the practice of the OGPU; it is also clear that the OGPU’s role will not be reduced but, on the
contrary, will be strengthened and legitimized (oblagorosheno) (the OGPU will work ‘on a legal
basis’ and not ‘arbitrarily’). (Benvenuti 1997, p. 1038)48
The OGPU’s arbitrariness was an acknowledged phenomenon. But giving legal basis for its
repression did not mean, as the USSR’s Procurator General Vyshinsky explained, building a
Rechsstaat and the concept of legality was itself considered an arbitrary ‘class’ concept (Benve-
nuti 1997, p. 1041). As one of the steps to tame OGPU it was decided in 1934 to make it part of
the all-union NKVD and earlier in 1933 procurator offices were assigned to monitor political
police’s work (Benvenuti 1997, p. 1401). In 1934, Kaganovich, a member of the Politburo
and Moscow Communist Party, stated that the reform aimed to ‘enforce punishments through
the courts, without resorting to extra-judicial repression, as happened so far’ (Benvenuti
1997, p. 1045, see also Solomon 1996, p. 166, Shearer 2009, pp. 103– 128). Yet he still legiti-
mized its arbitrary despotism as for him it was instrumental in suppressing populations’ disloy-
alty: to ‘answer kulak terror with our own terror’ (Benvenuti 1997, p. 1047). But the saga
between the judiciary and the political police was a struggle between two fundamentally
unequal partners, resulting in structural victory for the OGPU as by merging with NKVD it
did not change its essence but could now ‘gain control over all aspects of policing and penal
policy within the borders of the USSR (Hagenloh 2009, p. 149).
Though framed in some sort of legal framework, the NKVD was still considered an effective
and quick method to control and repress the ‘enemies’ and resistant groups, not only among the
‘population’, but also among state workers throughout the Soviet Union. Thus, in 1935 the head
of the Tajik NKVD, Tarasiuk, complained to the High Court and Justice Committee that, from
January till June 1935, whilst the NKVD submitted 507 criminal cases against 1004 people
the courts looked only at 203 cases against 207 people. He demanded that the NKVD of the
USSR and the Procurator of USSR deal with the slow tempo and ‘report immediately’ on pro-
gress.49 The letter clearly demonstrates the contemporary understanding of NKVD workers as
being superior to judicial institutions. An NKVD worker, Lapin, in Garm region, wrote to
 Central Asian Survey 33

Tarasiuk complaining about a Procurator picking on his work, asking about the reason for the
high number of imprisoned and demanding Procurators’ sanctions for imprisonment and
warning about freeing the arrested.50 Lapin complained that the Procurator suggested that he
was the highest controlling institution and was not subordinate to anyone. For Lapin, the Procura-
tor was ‘boyish’ and thus discredited his own authority. In the fight that took place in Tajikistan,
and USSR generally, in early 1930s, between the NKVD and Procurators it was the NKVD that
won. Procurator Kuharenko, who was assigned to examine the NKVD’s work and embodied the
struggle in Tajikistan, registered the NKVD’s illegal acts and spectacularly attempted to inter-
vene in its affairs. He was soon relocated, leaving the NKVD with a licence to act extra-legally.
When in 1934 Grigory Broido was sent to replace Guseinov as the first Secretary of the Com-
munist Party of Tajikistan, he was assigned to bring ‘order’ to the periphery. He acted arbitrarily,
as did Shust, and saw himself as the government. His despotic rule, however, should have been
ended where the despotic rule of political police started. The head of the political sector of
MTS51 in Central Asia Gorst wrote to Stalin:52
Broido considers Raikoms superior to Political Departments, which he ignores . . . Recently a
comrade Kupriianov was sent to Kuliab MTS. He did not even work for several weeks and was
fired and sent to another post due to ‘lack of knowledge of local context’. He [Broido] is trying to
deprive us of rights that were given by the Party, he breaks Party’s decisions about political depart-
ments, ignores SredAzBiuro , political sector and even Tsk VKPb [Central Committee of the All
Union Communist Party] in questions of relocations and firing of workers . . . Broido is intruding
into restructuring of the political structures in the periphery. He personally fired people without
informing the higher institutions. He places Regional Party Committees higher than Political
Sectors. Please, dear Stalin, in order to put end to those abnormalities, show Broido the absolute
inadmissibility of his attitude towards workers of political sectors.
Broido, indeed, was soon relocated and later purged. But the question arises: what were the
‘higher institutions’ Broido, the head of the Communist Party in Tajikistan, was supposed to
consult in the first place and why was there such struggle and uncertainty? There was little
clarity over roles of various institutions and individuals, each considering himself as justified
and legitimate. But by the mid-1930s, Broido, it seems, should have understood that the
context of mass resistance and ‘failures’ of agricultural production that impeded rapid industri-
alization desired by Moscow leaders, was not an excuse for the ‘polyarchy’ practised by his
predecessors. Broido did not understand the rules of the game and as a result was isolated
and later repressed.

Conclusions
It might be considered irrelevant to speak of the helplessness of European Soviet officials,
especially taking into account that their local colleagues suffered just as much from various
Soviet economic and punitive policies. But to overlook their weak positions and to forget
their helplessness would mean failing to understand the mechanisms of Soviet power structures
and the nature of central control (or lack of it). Soviet expatriate workers had to constantly move,
leaving their homes and security, stability and often hope. The history of the Soviet Union is a
history of suffering on a large scale for both its subjects and the majority of its officials.
On the most basic level, Soviet officials were helpless because they were poor, hungry and
ill. Secondly, they were helpless because the institutions they were supposed to represent were
weak themselves. Thirdly, Soviet officials were used as scapegoats whenever the central plans
were not fulfilled and rising resistance suggested political failure. They were not protected by the
government they represented, making even the most ‘empowered’ officials with an arbitrary
might subject to arbitrary penalty.
34 B. Kassymbekova

This paper has built upon insights into the relationships between the arbitrary use of power
and helplessness provided by Gerd Spittler. This is not an exercise in labelling the Soviet experi-
ence, but a sociological inquiry into its character. Unlike ideal-type despotic rule described by
Spittler, in the Soviet context government institutions and bureaucracy were not irrelevant or
non-existent. In the early Soviet context in Tajikistan, however, arbitrariness, that is, despotic
rule, worked through inchoate state institutions. The struggles over the two modes of rule
(bureaucratic vs. despotic) produced competition between institutions. This insight into the
everyday work and struggles of Soviet European state workers shows that there were individuals
who longed for modernity and modern institutions and resisted despotic governance. However,
the Soviet leadership ignored and suppressed these modernizing ideals and tendencies. My
enquiry into the experiences of Soviet European state workers in the early Soviet period in Taji-
kistan suggests that they had complex relations with Soviet modernity: they took responsibility
for the state’s institutional and legal deficiencies (many were officially labelled ‘responsible
workers’), but they were also made responsible for anything that was arbitrarily decided by
central leaders to constitute a failure. Many demanded modernization and bureaucratization
of state’s apparatus, as their arbitrary empowerment often meant for them disempowerment.
It is the central leaders’ doubt in state institutions and distrust in its abilities to meet the
challenges of the Soviet imperial mission; but also fear and perception of failure pictured by
competing institutions that the use of arbitrary force became an important part of Soviet
statecraft. It is in this context that we should understand European state workers’ vulnerability
and helplessness.

Acknowledgements
Research for this publication was made possible by the financial support of the Volkswagenstif-
tung (Hannover). The author would like to thank Gregor Thum and Maurus Reinkowski for their
inspiration to treat helplessness on a conceptual level; and also Andreas Oberender, Christian
Teichmann, Tadzio Schilling, Thomas Loy and reviewers of this journal as well as John Heather-
shaw for the useful comments made to the earlier drafts of the paper.

Notes
1. Documents from the following archives were used: Central State Archive of the Tajik Republic (TsGA
RT); Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE); Russian State Archive of Contemporary History
(RGASPI); and State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).
2. The original title of the work was ‘Poor Imperialists’, but participation at the Freiburg Research Insti-
tute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) conference titled ‘Helpless Imperialists: Imperial Failure, Radica-
lization and Violence between High Imperialism and Decolonization’ where the paper was originally
presented in January 2010 inspired the current title.
3. In Russian the term ‘European worker’ (Evropeiskii rabotnik) or simply ‘European’ (Evropeets)
referred to Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians and others who came to work in Tajikistan from
European parts of the Soviet Union, but also Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians and others who
came from within Central Asia. The division was still problematic because often Muslim Tatars, Azer-
baijanis and others were also seen as Europeans but sent to work in Central Asia because of their
‘Muslim origin’. In the 1920s and 1930s the workers in Central Asia were divided in official texts
into ‘Europeans’ and ‘Muslims’, the latter being often explained in terms of ethnic origin, such
‘Tajik’, ‘Uzbek’, and so on. Interestingly, although Europe as a political unit was highly criticized
by Soviets as exploitative capitalist and imperialist, they saw themselves as Europeans in its Asian
territory. In Central Asian context, the Europeanness did not seem to mean corrupted political and
economic structures, but rather ‘progress’.
4. From 1924 to 1929 it was a Tajik Soviet Socialist Autonomous Republic (TASSR) within the Uzbek
Soviet Socialist Republic; from 1929 on it received the status of a Soviet Socialist Republic (TSSR).
 Central Asian Survey 35

I will use ‘Tajikistan’ throughout the paper since the title was used throughout 1920s and 1930s locally
as well.
5. For a thorough review of works treating the Soviet Union as a colonial empire see Meyer (2002); for
critique of interpretation of the Soviet Union as colonialism and imperialism see Khalid (2006, 2007);
Slezkine (2000); for approaches to the Soviet Union as imperial state see Suny (2001), Martin (2001),
Edgar (2004), Hirsch (2005), Beissinger (2006) and Kandiyoti (2007).
6. Christian Teichmann discusses but denies Karl Wittvogel’s model (pp. 2– 3) and implications of
‘Oriental despotism’ as a socio-economic model by which ‘hydraulic states’, due to their ownership
of land and managerial tasks, concentrate political power in the bureaucratic top ‘to keep the non-
bureaucratic elements fragmented and powerless’. See Wittvogel (1963, p. 633).
7. Despotic rule, unlike traditional patriarchal governance (that is, based on personal familial ties and
loyalty and regulated by groups’ norms and rules), involves ad hoc decision-making and violence:
its decisions are not based on certain norms and rules that would make decisions and decision
making clear, understandable, predictable and legitimate.
8. E.A. Rees writes that by 1932 it was only Stalin, Molotov (Chair of the Council of People’s Commis-
sars [SNK]) and Iakovlev (Chair of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture) who received sensitive
OGPU reports on the countryside. See Rees (2004, p. 51).
9. Like Lev Vassil’yev, a representative of St Petersburg intelligentsia, a son of a professor of economics,
who upon graduation from the university decided to leave to the periphery since the situation in
Moscow was too chaotic and dangerous; see Vassil’ev (1954). The letters to the National Justice Com-
mittee from graduates of Kiev, Moscow and St Petersburg Universities and experienced jurists who
received legal education in pre-Soviet Russia also resemble the trend to flee the European parts of
the Soviet Union. TsGA RT, fond 485, opis 1, delo 76, ll. 9, 14, 15, 29, 30, 36, 37, 43, 46, 47, 48,
49, 50, 52, 115, 118, 130, 134, 139, 146, 150, 155, 157, 158, 178, 179, 187, 188, 191.
10. From 1929 Dushanbe was renamed Stalinabad, meaning ‘developed by Stalin’, until 1961. In this
paper, for the sake of simplicity, I will use Dushanbe throughout.
11. An old Russian measurement that equals 16.38 kg.
12. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 72, l. 5.
13. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 25, l. 250.
14. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 41, l. 27.
15. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 42, l. 148.
16. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 9, l. 86.
17. TsGA RT, fond 329, opis 18, delo 13, l. 17
18. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 177, ll. 2-3.
19. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 3, delo 7, l. 307.
20. RGAE, fond 5675, opis 1 fond 7. ‘Piatiletnii perspektivnyi plan pereselencheskih meropriyatii na 1928-
1933’.
21. In December 1925, the Dushanbe town Executive Committee ordered a compulsory degree stating that
all persons coming to Dushanbe for more than three days were obliged to register with the militia.
Chaihanas (traditional teahouses) and kitchenettes, places that usually functioned as local hotels,
could take people overnight until 3 p.m. and only with the registration at a militia’s office. Chaihana
and kitchenette owners were obliged to keep personal identification documents of guests and register
them no later than the next day at a militia’s office. Those who did not follow the rule paid a 300-rouble
fine or risked a three-month term of forced labour. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 42, l.3.
22. On the issue of medical certification in the Soviet Union see Field (1957).
23. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 2, delo 64, l. 194.
24. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 178, l. 46.
25. TsGA RT, fond 27, opis 1, delo 40, l. 15.
26. TsGA RT, fond 27, opis 1, delo 40, l. 17.
27. RGASPI, fond 62, opis 2, delo 185, l. 17.
28. Ibid., l. 18.
29. RGASPI fond 62, opis 2, delo 241, l. 18.
30. Andrei Vyshinsky was the Procurator General of the USSR from 1935 to 1939 and is known for his
attempts to promote authority of law and, paradoxically, his role in the Great Purges. For explanations
see Solomon (1996, pp. 156 –157).
31. TsGA RT, fond 329, opis 18, delo 13, l. 17
32. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (newspaper), 22 Feb. 1933.
33. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (newspaper), 22 Feb. 1933.
36 B. Kassymbekova

34. Peter Solomon writes that in Russia ‘[t]he two most common pretexts for prosecutions against officials
in industry during the 1930s were accidents and the production of defective goods’ (p. 143).
35. Communist Tadzhikistana, 18 June 1934.
36. RGASPI, fond 85, opis 27, delo 456, l. 37.
37. In an interview, Muhamadjon Shakuri complements the story with facts from his family history,
explaining his father’s arrest in 1932. During the gold rush, as the gold discovery failed in the soil,
gold was searched for among the people, who were put in jail unless they submitted their personal
gold. See Mirboboi Mirrahim (2001).
38. TsGA RT, fond 9, opis 3, delo 134, l. 99.
39. On 12 April 1925 the Revolutionary Committee of TASSR introduced martial law in the Dushanbe,
Kurgan-Tyube and Kulyab regions. According to it, OGPU organs and special departments of military
units, in order to secure revolutionary order, received the right to extra-judicial punishment of basma-
chi and their supporters. See Masov (2004, p. 405).
40. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 4, delo 32, l. 87.
41. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 4, delo 32, no page number.
42. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 4, delo 32, l. 141; l. 142, 149.
43. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 4, delo 32, no page number.
44. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 4, delo 32, l. 181 –183.
45. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 197, l. 18.
46. TsGA RT, fond 493, opis 4, delo 32, l. 98.
47. TsGA RT, fond 386, opis 1, delo 25, l. 86 –87.
48. RTsKhIDNI [RGASPI], fond 81, opis 3, delo 100, l.2 cited in Benvetti (1997, p. 1038).
49. TsGA RT, fond 329, opis 18, delo 3, l. 195 –196.
50. TsGA RT, fond 329, opis 18, delo 3, l. 218.
51. Introduced in 1933 political departments of the Machine Tractor Stations were in charge of state
control over collective farms and peasants. They participated in planning and executing agricultural
plans as well as fighting ‘enemies’ in the agricultural sector. The political departments included a
member of the political police and were not responsible to the local government.
52. RGASPI, fond 66, opis 2, delo 3246, l. 98.

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