Cleaning the Soviet Apparatus of Socially Alien Elements in the 1930s
The Struggle of Soviet Power Against Class Enemies
The failure of Kyrgyzstan to meet the increased grain procurement plan in the drought year of 1932 and the refusal to "sweep away" the seed fund in the newly created collective farms were classified by the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and its Central Asian Bureau as "manifestations of localist tendencies." By the end of 1932, refugees from Kazakhstan and Siberia (more than 130,000 families) flooded into Kyrgyzstan—an artificially created famine in the country claimed thousands of lives. A. O. Shakhray (the first secretary of the regional party committee), B. Isakiev (the second secretary of the regional committee), and Yu. Abdrakhmanov (chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kyrgyz ASSR) decided: "It is better for us to be removed from our positions than to lead the republic to the situation in Kazakhstan." On May 13, 1933, the Central Committee of the VKP(b) issued severe reprimands to A. O. Shakhray and Yu. Abdrakhmanov "for manifestations of localism," "squandering of grain," but they still remained in their positions.
At a time when famine continued to devastate entire regions in Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus, Siberia, Ukraine, and the Volga region, I. V. Stalin sent a telegram to the first secretary of the Kazakh regional committee of the VKP(b), L. I. Mirzoyan, outlining the key tasks for the Bolsheviks in Kazakhstan.
"The immediate task of the Kazakh Bolsheviks is to concentrate fire against Kazakh nationalism and its deviations while fighting against Great Russian chauvinism. Otherwise, it is impossible to defend Leninist internationalism in Kazakhstan. The struggle against local nationalism must be significantly intensified to create conditions for instilling (I emphasize— I. S.) Leninist internationalism among the working masses of the nationalities of Kazakhstan."
To "instill" internationalism, as demanded by the "leader of all nations," was also necessary in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, whose leadership had allowed the failure to comply with directive instructions on grain supplies.
The directive on the struggle against deviations and the national question given by Stalin at the XVI Congress of the Party warned that the tendency towards local nationalism reflects the discontent of the dying classes of previously oppressed nations with the dictatorship of the proletariat, "their desire to separate into their national bourgeois state and establish their class dominance there." And the Kyrgyz regional committee, discussing the resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) "On the Situation in the Kyrgyz Party Organization" (September 1933) with the participation of the deputy chairman of the Central Committee's collegium, Angipov, already directly pointed to the connection of Yu. Abdrakhmanov with the recently arrested employee of the republic's planning commission, A. Sydykov, "to whose counter-revolutionary nationalist attitudes he gravitated in the name of (although not for the creation of a bourgeois state—Kyrgyzstan still I. S.), the preservation of tribal life headed by exploiters—manaps and bai."
A. Sydykov, who held several leadership positions in the Semirechye region of Turkestan from 1917 to 1924, was accused of creating a counter-revolutionary nationalist organization of the STP (Social-Turanian Party). This is perhaps the first mention of this mythical organization (no traces of its activities have been found in any of the Central Asian republics— I. S.), which appeared in the documents of the GPU in direct connection, in our opinion, with the aforementioned case of M. X. Sultan-Galiyev, as well as with the implementation of Stalin's directive to strengthen the fight against local nationalism and "instill" internationalism.
On June 13, 1933, the bureau of the Kyrgyz regional party committee, taking note of the information from the OGPU "On the uncovered counter-revolutionary Sydykov rebellion organization in Kyrgyzstan," proposed to the district party committees "in the areas where mass confiscation of counter-revolutionary elements took place, to particularly intensify mass agitation work, ensuring complete clarification among the working collective farmers and individual farmers of the party and Soviet authorities' measures directed against class enemies." Party and Soviet bodies at the local level were instructed to "take decisive measures to cleanse the Soviet apparatus of socially alien elements."
By the decree of the troika under the NKVD of the Kyrgyz SSR on February 10, 1938, A. Sydykov, who had previously been sentenced to 10 years in prison, was executed on the specified charges.
The Thirty-Seventh Year in Kyrgyzstan
