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Dariush Rajabian
tajikistanweb.com
Freedom of expression brought by perestroika in the late 1980s is described as a double-edged sword for many Central Asian governments. Accepted axioms and decades-long established facts were put in doubt and history was about to be re-written. Among many other cases Uzbekistan’s demography was independently re-scrutinized by Tajik intelligentsia in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and claims were made about the inaccurate census statistics that put the number of Tajiks in Uzbekistan under one million. The process of Tajik national awakening was interrupted by a brutal civil war in 1992 and the reverse process accompanied by Tashkent’s swift repressive measures is still going on. Tajikistanweb will look into the past and present of Tajiks in Uzbekistan in a series of articles.
The post-perestroika years were abundant with talks about Uzbek chauvinism and Tajik irredentism that cast shadow over Tajik-Uzbek relations. The rise of national consciousness among Tajiks of both neighbouring republics appeared to be the gravest threat to Uzbekistan’s plans to build a uniethnic, unicultural and unisectarian state. The 1924 and 1929 national territorial delimitations as one of the most neglected areas of Soviet inter-ethnic relations were discussed among both republics’ academic circles. Facts that became widely known did not please the Uzbek authorities at all.
A process that began by the end of the 19 th century to promote a Central Asian Turkic national consciousness at the expense of the Persian one was inherited by the Soviet nomenklatura of the region. "The Pan-Turkists had their own interpretation for Karl Marx' slogan, "Proletariats of the world Unite!" In their version, the slogan "international union of all the workers of all countries" and "the oppressed peoples of the world" were changed to "a union of all the Turks." (Rahim Masov, The History of a National Catastrophe).
As a result Tajiks, the ancient Iranian sedentary population of Transoxiania, found themselves opposed to Uzbeks that had emerged from Turko-Mongolian nomads that migrated across the Kipchak Steppe in the fifteenth century (Olcott 1987: 7). However, the area was inhabited by some Turkic tribes even before the fifteenth century as cited by Atsuyuki Okabe:
"In ancient times, the settled people in the oasis area of Central Asia were Iranians. Since the sixth century, Turkic nomadic groups have penetrated in waves into the oasis areas including the Ferghana Valley to stimulate the Turkification of the Iranian people and to settle down in rural areas and the cities by themselves. However, despite the historical process of Turkification, an Iranian population survived in many places up to the twentieth century. While mingling with Turkic peoples and often using Turkic languages, this population preserved their mother tongue, the Persian-Tajik language, as well as Iranian traditions. In modern Central Asia they are called the Tajiks. And during the period of the Kokand khanate a number of Tajiks migrated into the valley from the southern mountain area, where the present Tajikistan is located." (Atsuyuki Okabe, Islamic Area Studies with Geographical Information Systems, 2004, p.112)
Pan-Turkism was the main element of the newly-minted Republic of Bukhara. In all areas of the republic where the principle inhabitants were Persian (Tajik), schools were in Chaghatai Turkish. Tajik students in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkistan and the People’s Soviet Republic of Bukhara had to learn by heart extremely racist and pan-Turkic verses as the one below:
Turanians rise, rush to arms,
Turks are free, Greece is finished,
May the Turks prosper!
May Kamal prosper!
Abandon ignorance,
Warrior Jamal,
Islam is established, the enemy is dead,
The Turkish world is illuminated.
Refrain
With the efforts of Kamal Pasha, the Turkish army
Is turned into the Turkish nation.
Refrain
Greece is finished, the Turks are free,
The city of Istanbul belongs to us again.
May the Turks prosper!
May Kamal prosper!
Abandon ignorance,
Warrior Jamal.
The Tajik academician Rahim Masov believes that "Tajiks' lack of concern, especially their cosmopolitanism, cost them dearly."
After Tajikistan was promoted to the status of Union republic in 1929, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic received the bulk of the Bukharan republic, the Samarkand region, the Tashkent area, and most of the Ferghana Valley that were largely inhabited by Tajiks. The unfair delimitation was disguised under even a more unfair demographical record. According to a comparative study conducted by some experts after the 1926 census, its results for many rural districts, towns and regions of the Tajiks showed that more than 50% of the Tajiks had been re-identified as Uzbek.
The thorny process was abundant with quarrels and arguments between the Uzbek and Tajik authorities. One of them happened between Islamov and Khojibaev (Abdurahim Hajibaev), the Uzbek and Tajik delegates of a special meeting to address bilateral territorial problems.
Paul Bergne in his book entitled "The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic" gives the following account of the quarrel:
"Islamov then tried a further diversionary tactic by venturing to reopen the question of areas surrounding Khojand, using economic, political and ethnic arguments wherever it suited him, without any regard to consistency. Kanibadam and Isfara (with Tajik majorities) should be part of Uzbekistan because of their economic links to Uzbek territory, and Nau (with Uzbek majority) should also belong to Uzbekistan on ethnic grounds, although it depended economically on Tajik territory. The exchanges got ever more personal and crotchety. When Islamov referred to 1926 census results, Khojibaev brushed them aside as "chuzh" (nonsense) and anyway challenged Islamov’s authority to reopen any questions that had already been agreed. For his part, Islamov pointed out that Khojibaev himself signed the 1926 census statistics for Surkhan-Darya, which indicated that he must have agreed them. At some stage, Khojibaev threw in a charge that Uzbeks in Tajikistan were three times as well treated as Tajiks in Uzbekistan, adding for good measure that Uzbekistan had not yet returned the 500,000 gold roubles which Tajikistan handed over earlier (no further details are given about when and why this money was transferred).
"Khojibaev adduced a number of historical arguments to support the Tajik case. Surkhan-Darya had been part of Eastern Bukhara. The Amir had had a summer residence in Dushanbe. The military-demographic census carried out by Russian general staff had described Bukhara as a Persian not an Uzbek state. He too yielded to the temptation to reopen other claims. Samarkand was only 70 km from the Tajik frontier and it was nonsense to say they could not administer it. The Kyrgyz had been allotted Osh, which was miles from Frunze (Bishkek). Even Tamerlane in his diary, held in London, described Samarkand as a Tajik city." (Paul Bergne, "The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic", pp 120-121).
(to be continued)