Work on Restoring Historical Truth in Kyrgyzstan
A certain shift in the study of our issue began to emerge during the years of Khrushchev's "thaw." However, this trend soon "choked" due to internal resistance, manifesting itself in the political rehabilitation of only a few "enemies of the people," who were not active participants in opposition activities.
The work on restoring historical truth in Kyrgyzstan still requires significant efforts. However, it can already be said that with the restructuring of society initiated by M. S. Gorbachev, traditional Stalinist schemes regarding opposition have been significantly shaken in domestic historiography, which remained untouched since the XX Congress of the CPSU, when research on the history of intra-party opposition was permeated with extreme malice, intolerance, one-sidedness, and bias against all existing "factions," "trends," and "currents" within and outside the party, where strict, scientific analysis was replaced by political labeling without corresponding analysis of the problem. Today, no one would dare to assert that the intra-party opposition during Gorbachev's time and afterward, with some exceptions, was inherently "anti-people," and in the recent past was also "anti-Soviet," "anti-socialist," and so on.
During the cult-stagnation period of domestic history, the vast majority of scientific topics highlighted in the titles of the chapters and paragraphs of our book, due to the aforementioned ideological prohibitions and restrictions, were never studied, except for what could be called "research" those scant, theoretically powerless, and biased quasi-scientific "extracts," which resemble the texts of propaganda leaflets from the civil war period, presented in the main historical-party work of the former Kirghiz SSR, which played the role of an ideological guide for the entire republic. We are referring to those chaotically arranged paragraphs dedicated to the "analysis," or rather the indiscriminate vilification of such phenomena and events as "Sydykovshchina," "Abdrahmanovshchina," "Khudaikulovshchina," "Tynaevshchina," the project of forming the Kyrgyz Mountain Region, the statements of the "thirty," the Babakhanov-Khudaikulov process, and so on. All of them are quite fully reproduced in our historical research, for everything written about this over 70 years of Soviet power would barely fill the volume of a small scientific article, unless one considers that the "conclusions" and "theoretical deductions" made in the tragic 1930s were periodically thoughtlessly rewritten and reprinted in publications of the Soviet era.
The only exception among the works of the cult-stagnation period was actually the unpublished manuscript of Yu. Abdrahmanov, where he attempted, from the standpoint of historical truth, as much as possible in his time, to shed deeper light on and, contrary to the official opinion, justify the legitimacy and legality of the attempt to establish the Kyrgyz Mountain Region in 1922, undertaken by a handful of Kyrgyz patriotic intellectuals. This work, despite a number of omissions and ideological constraints, which were conditioned by the time experienced, contains overall correct scientific premises and assessments that have not lost their value to this day, although historical science has advanced significantly since then. This gap is, of course, relative, considering that many problematic issues, frozen in the era of ideological conformity, still remain in a primitive state, as left by Stalinist ideology.
One such problem is the history of both extra- and intra-party opposition in Kyrgyzstan, the history of its struggle and activities, its origins, fate, and so on. Objective answers to these and other questions could not be provided by the domestic historiography of the cult-stagnation era; only apologetic schemes were permitted, executed in strict accordance with the Stalinist concept of "intensification of class struggle," where any opposition to the official course was initially and tendentiously depicted as extremely hostile to society and progress.
The true liberation of historical thought began in Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s, when Soviet historical science accumulated certain experience in rethinking new historical problems that had fallen outside the attention of scholars during Khrushchev's "thaw."
This period is characterized by the emergence in print of a large number of works and speeches by historians, journalists, philologists, writers, politicians, publicists, and others, where still unexplored or poorly researched layers of domestic history from the Soviet period are raised. A significant breakthrough has been made in such a new direction as political portraiture. In this field, Kyrgyz historians such as V. M. Ploskikh, S. I. Begaliyev, A. Tuzov, Dzh. Dzhunushaliev, I. E. Semenov, K. G. Karakeev, and many others are working successfully and fruitfully. Their works have allowed the creation of a new gallery of political portraits of gifted and capable party-Soviet figures of Kyrgyzstan, whose names had long remained either little known or received incomplete and biased coverage in previous periods of domestic history. Among this group, special mention should be made of the portraits of Abdykerim Sydykov, Ishehnaly Arabayev, Yusup Abdrahmanov, Ibrai Toychinov, Tash Khudaibergeven, Sadik Chonbashev, Dali Zulfibaev, and some other figures, who have only recently been freed from the shackles of Stalinist ideological frameworks. Nevertheless, it cannot be claimed that all gaps have been eliminated in this new historical direction. There are still no works analyzing the personal activities of such well-known political figures as Paxmankul Khudaikulov and Duyshenaly Babakhanov, who actively influenced the development of political processes in Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s. It would be incorrect to assert that the political activities of many other party-Soviet workers, rehabilitated during the Khrushchev reforms and transformations, have been objectively and adequately evaluated and characterized. All these shortcomings have been attempted to be addressed by the author to the best of his abilities in his scientific research.
However, it was not only the achievements of the latest domestic historiography (the 1990s) in the field of political portraiture that allowed the author to choose the topic of his research and implement it in practice. This work could not have been realized in its current form if the author had not relied on the works of his long-standing and close predecessors in his scientific inquiries. Special emphasis should be placed on the significant role of works written during the perestroika years in the spirit of new historical thinking and dedicated to various aspects of the history of Kyrgyzstan.
Among them, there are very few substantial works, mainly newspaper and magazine publications. This is likely not an expression of an intellectual crisis in our society, but rather a consequence of prolonged economic difficulties caused by the collapse of the USSR and Kyrgyzstan's attainment of state independence. The theoretical level of some of the latest publications no longer meets the demands of today and requires rethinking. This is explained by both the slow accumulation of historical facts and knowledge and the half-hearted reforms of Gorbachev's era, which also manifested in the half-heartedness of historical research. Despite the increasing criticism, the party continued to remain a "sacred cow" of the party-state system known as Soviet power. This circumstance was taken into account when the author of the book relied on the research of the latest time, striving to comprehensively and unreservedly address the emerging questions and problems.
Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s. Introduction. Part - 1