Difficulties in Transforming the Social Psychology of Peasantry.
A considerable amount of energy was also required in organizing "Chuystroy" within the framework of the union trust for new agricultural crops. This organization put an end to the artisanal irrigation construction in the Chui Valley and allowed for the most important work for the republic to be carried out on a broad scale, at a modern engineering level for those years. This had not only purely economic but also significant political implications, as in Kyrgyzstan, which was even more peasant-oriented than Russia, agrarian policy required special attention, thoughtful consideration, and tact. Each specific step in its implementation affected the interests of the absolute majority of the population, which had not yet freed itself from patriarchal-clan remnants and hidden dependence on the beys and manaps.
Based on Lenin's teachings about the socialist nature of the cooperative movement under Soviet power, the head of the republican government made considerable efforts to expand and strengthen its diverse forms in the context of a previously backward colonial periphery, increasing its role in the struggle against the exploitation of the peasantry. Thanks to agricultural cooperation and state assistance, in the 1924-1925 economic year, the commodity output of agriculture in Kyrgyzstan increased to 15.5 million rubles compared to 9.6 million rubles in 1914.
Y. Abdrakhmanov, like many other figures of that time, caught up in revolutionary enthusiasm, wanted to move faster. He sharply remarks that the movement towards socialism is proceeding "at a snail's pace." One of the reasons for the objectively slow development of agricultural cooperation was that despite the annual increase in the import of improved agricultural tools and machines, local, primitive ones still formed the basis of peasant farming. Even in 1928, one farming household in the agricultural part of the republic's population had an average of 0.17 plows and 3.35 harrows per household.
The mass peasant organization—the "Koshchi" union—was, in his opinion, contaminated by socially alien elements in the ails and could not become "the center organizing Soviet society in the ails, and indeed a linking element between Soviet power and the broad layers of the working masses" without thorough purification.
All this allows one to feel the difficulties in transforming the social psychology of the peasantry. Abdrakhmanov's approach to the problems of economic construction in the republic was based on a foundation of real facts, understanding the complex dialectics of life. In a letter to I.V. Stalin, he paints the following picture of the specific difficulties of the cooperative movement in the republic:
"The activities of agricultural cooperation and the agricultural credit bank are mainly limited to settled agricultural areas, where the majority of the population consists of migrant peasants, and do not cover the nomadic and semi-nomadic areas populated by indigenous Kyrgyz residents. Moreover, agricultural cooperation here is not only in its infancy, which means it could not provide real support to peasant farmers, but also organizationally strengthen and formalize its grassroots cells, primarily in areas with a predominant Kyrgyz population. Additionally, the Kyrgyz population, due to its low cultural level, in certain cases underestimates the importance of cooperation and their involvement in it. Since they underestimate it and lack skills, their organization presents certain difficulties. A significant role in this matter is played by the absence of workers from the Kyrgyz population who, being familiar with the state of Kyrgyz farming and domestic peculiarities, could approach them correctly and engage them in cooperation."
Another important difficulty not mentioned here was related to the violation of the principle of voluntariness in joining cooperatives. The resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (December 1923), the decisions of the XIII Party Congress (May 1924) were decisively aimed against violations of the principle of voluntariness, which contributed to the growth of various types of cooperation. And in 1928, the most widespread type of cooperation, such as consumer cooperatives, covered almost 35% of the rural and about 30% of the urban population in Kyrgyzstan.
Appointment of Y. Abdrakhmanov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Republic