The Ghost In EURASIA

 

Sultan-Galiev_in_First_All-Russia_Congress_of_Communist_Organization_of_Orient_Peoples_in_1918.

“If a revolution succeeds in England, the proletariat will continue oppressing the colonies and pursuing the policy of the existing bourgeois government; for it is interested in the exploitation of these colonies. In order to prevent the oppression of the toiler of the East we must unite the Muslim masses in a communist movement that will be our own and autonomous.”

M. Sultan-Galiev, 9th Conference of the Tatar Obkom, 1923.

The Social Revolution and the East II.

Zhizn’ Natsional’nostei, 39(47), 1919.

The Soviet system, as an expression of communism, is the antithesis of the bourgeois-capitalist state. These two systems cannot peacefully coexist side by side. They can tolerate one another only temporarily, until one side having obtained a preponderance of forces, however slight, will inevitably attack the weaker one.

By virtue of the basic law of the development of the socialist revolution, it was necessary that the Russian Revolution, from its very first days would develop into a worldwide revolution; otherwise the Soviets in Russia would have become only a small oasis in the raging sea of imperialism, risking obliteration each minute by the waterspout of the worldwide imperialist bacchanalia.

The leaders of the October Revolution understood this situation perfectly well and tried to channel it in the direction of the international current. And it could not have been otherwise, or the socialist revolution in Russia would have lost all its inner meaning.

But in a tactical sense this process of the development of the revolution was directed incorrectly. It appeared correct in some of its outward manifestations (the Spartikist moment in Germany, the Hungarian Revolution, and so on) but in its totality it had a one-sided character. This one-sidedness consisted in the fact that almost all the attention of the leaders was turned toward the West. The task of turning the October Revolution into an international socialist one was understood as the transmission of the mechanical energy of the Russian Revolution to the West, that is, to the part of the world where the contradiction of the class interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie appeared most sharply and openly and where, for this reason, there seemed to exist a relatively solid basis for the success of the class revolution.

Because of the ignorance of the East and because of the fear it inspired, the idea of the participation of the east in the international revolution was systematically rejected.

It is true that the West European states, including their ally America, appear to be the countries where all the material and “moral” forces of international imperialism are concentrated, and it would seem that their territories are destined to become the chief battlefield in the war against imperialism. But in no way can we confidently say that there is enough strength in the Western proletariat to overthrow the Western bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie is international and worldwide, and its overthrow demands a concentration of all the revolutionary will and all the revolutionary energy of the entire international proletariat, including the proletariat of the East.

In attacking international imperialism only with the West European proletariat, we leave it full freedom of action and maneuver in the East. As long as international imperialism, represented by the Entente, dominates the East, where it is the absolute master of all natural wealth, then so long is it guaranteed of a successful outcome in all its clashes in the economic field with the working masses of the home countries, for it can always “shut their mouths” by satisfying their economic demands.

Our hopeless expectations of revolutionary aid from the West in the course of the last two years of the revolution in Russia eloquently confirm this thesis.

But even if the West European worker succeeds in obtaining a victory over his bourgeoisie, he would still inevitably collide with the East, because as a last resort, the west European bourgeoisie, following the example of its friend in distress, the russian bourgeoisie, would concentrate all its forces in its “outlying districts,” and first of all in the East. It would not hesitate, in the course of suppressing the socialist revolution in Western Europe, to utilize the ancient national and class hatred of the East towards the West, which is always alive in the breast of the East towards Western Europe as the bearer of the imperialist yoke, and it would launch a campaign of blacks against Europe. 

The Social Revolution and the East III.

Zhizn’ Natsional’nostei, 42(50), 1919.

Examining the East from the socioeconomic point of view, we see that almost all of it is the object of exploitation by west European capital. It is the chief source of material for European industry, and in this respect it constitutes highly inflammatory revolutionary material.

If it were possible to compute the degree of exploitation of the East by Western capital, and in this connection, its indirect participation in the emergence of the power of the European and American bourgeoisie which have exploited it and continue to exploit it, then we would see that a lion’s share of the material and spiritual wealth of the “whites” has been stolen from the East, and built at the expense of the blood and sweat of hundreds of millions of laboring masses of “natives” of all colors and races.

It was necessary for tens of millions of aborigines of America and Africa to perish and for the rich culture of the Incas to be completely obliterated from the face of the earth in order that contemporary “freedom-loving” America, with her “cosmopolitan culture” of “progress and technology” might be formed. The proud skyscrapers of Chicago, New York, and other cities are built on the bones of the “redskins” and the Negroes tortured by inhuman plantation owners and on the smoking ruins of the destroyed cities of the Incas.

Christopher Columbus! How his name speaks to the hearts of the European imperialists. It was he who “opened” the road to the European plunderers in America, England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany; all of them participated equally in the plundering, the destruction, and the devastation of “native” America, erecting at her expense their capitalistic cities and their bourgeois culture. The invasions of Europe by Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, and the other Mongol princes, in all the cruelty of their devastating strength, pale before what the Europeans have done in this America discovered by them.

The thesis expressed in the beginning of this article is strikingly confirmed by the entire subsequent development of Western European imperialism when, having plundered “native” America, and having sated itself with her, it turned its attention to the East, with India as its main goal, which, almost from the first days of the appearance of the European imperialism, has not ceased to arouse in it a feeling of greed.

The entire history of the Crusades and all the long series of later bourgeois imperialistic wars in the east represent a carefully calculated policy of economic enslavement of the East by west european feudalists and their descendents, and this policy has finally been crowned with an almost total success.

If we would examine the relations between the West European countries and the East during the last phase, that is, in the beginning of the imperialistic world War, we would see that the East was squeezed and convulsively writhing in the clutches of international capital.

All Asia and all Africa were divided by europe into “spheres of influence,” with only formal and fictional acceptance of the “independence” of some of the more outstanding states such as China, Persia, and Turkey.

The great imperialist war was the last stage in this policy, the stage where international imperialism, sensing its imminent demise, declared war on itself.

Today the victory of the Entente over Germany has provided a temporary solution to the Eastern Question—Entente rule being imposed on the East.

Already today, although the situation is not yet completely clear, the contradictory interests in the East of the basic components of the “Holy Alliance” are beginning to be visible, and sooner or later a serious confrontation is bound to occur between the powerful imperialist states, all competing for first place in the piratic “League of Nations.”

We must never forget that, if on the one hand the East as a whole is completely enslaved by the West, on the other hand its own national bourgeoisie applies a no less heavy “internal” pressure on the laboring masses of the east.

We ought not for a minute forget the fact that the development of the international socialist revolution in the east must in no case limit itself only to the overthrow of the power of Western imperialism, but must go further. After this first stage, a second stage must be reached. This second stage is the complex question of overthrowing the Oriental clerical-feudal bourgeoisie, which pretends to be liberal, but which in reality is brutally despotic and which is capable, for the sake of its own selfish interests, to instantly change its stance toward its former foreign adversaries.

We must always remember one thing: the East on the whole is the chief source of nourishment of international capitalism. In the event of a worldwide socialist civil war, this is a factor extremely favorable to us and extremely unfavorable to the international imperialists. Deprived of the East, and cut off from India, Afghanistan, Persia, and its other Asian and African colonies, Western European imperialism will wither and die a natural death.

But at the same time the East is the cradle of despotism, and we are not in the least safe from the possibility that, after the overthrow of Western European imperialism, an Eastern imperialism will emerge, which is for the time being still under the heavy pressure of its European colleague. There is no guarantee against the possibility that the feudal lords of China, India, Persia, or Turkey, having liberated themselves with our help, will not unite with imperialist Japan and even with some other European imperialism, and will not organize a campaign against their “liberators” in order to save themselves by this means from the contagion of “bolshevism.”

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The below is an attempt to provide an English translation of one of the key texts of the visionary militant Mirsaid Sultan Galiev, written between 1923 – 25 titled Some of our Considerations on the Basis of the Socio-political, Economic, and Cultural Development of the Turkish People of Asia and Europe. 1 We believe that Sultan Galiev’s work and writings are very relevant for today, in the contemporary world, in relation to the important debates about identity politics and the Left, decolonization, political Islam, the re-emergence of the extreme right-wing, Marxism, the Russian Revolution, Bolshevism and the new Eurasianism amongst other things. The presented text is one of the key sources in which Sultan Galiev summarizes the main tenets of his analysis on the current world situation in the given conjuncture (the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution), where he lays down an original and alternative strategy for world revolution. With this we are also publishing two supporting documents from the political trial against him which had begun in 1923, re-opened in 1928 and remained open until the final verdict was made in 1939, sentencing Galiev to execution which took place on January 28, 1940. 

A decade in prison and exile divides the two supporting texts: The first document is Galiev’s testimony of December 18, 1928, and the second one is the official sentence which is dated December 8, 1939. Both of these have been translated from the Russian versions. We provide a translation of these documents in order to provide a little bit of historical and materialist context, for not only the text but the conditions of its writing and distribution and its subsequent disappearance and reemergence. 

The primary text was found in the early 90s in KGB archives Box. No. 4: Volume No. 2: List No. 1. 2 The text was published in Russian (in Tatarstan) for the first time in 1995, following the opening of the archives to the public, with the following reference and with an introduction written by I. Tagirov: “Nekotorye nashi soobrazheniia ob osnovakh sotsial’no-politicheskogo, ekonomicheskogo i kul’turnogo razvitiia Tyuretskikh narodov Azii i Evropy.” The second time the article was published in 1998, this time with the title “Tezisy ob ob osnovakh sotsial’no-politicheskogo, ekonomicheskogo i kul’turnogo razvitiia Tyuretskikh narodov Azii i Evropy” in Izbrannye Trudy, together with the two accompanying texts we present below. 3   

With this translation, we have tried to overcome certain problems that we encountered and we must outline them here. First of all, we had to take as the source material for our translation the Russian text which was published in the 90s. This text was arranged and kept in the archives of the Politburo / GPU and later KGB. It was difficult to determine whether the original text was written in the Tatar language by Sultan Galiev or not. If indeed the original text was in Tatar, then the translation must have been done by the GPU and if that is the case we would not know how much is possibly lost in translation from Tatar to the Russian language. The translation could have done before, during or after the trial, or even after the execution of Galiev. This would imply that the GPU could have modified the text. At any rate, it has several inconsistencies of style and apparent absences such as the abrupt ending and missing second part.

The political and historical context in which the original text was written and received by Soviet authorities and leaders, therefore, generates serious problems about the text too. This text, whose only surviving copy is that produced and kept by the GPU, was the main grounds for Sultan Galiev’s second arrest in 1928. This was under Stalin’s orders, on accusations of anti-party political activity, at the start of the first of the Stalinist purges from the Communist Party which notably Galiev survived for a further decade. During this time he was sent to exile for ten years and sentenced to death on December 8, 1939. The article was seen as the main evidence for the betrayal of Galiev and so it is worth noting some inconsistencies in the references to it by Galiev and by the GPU. For this reason, we have tried to retain the formatting as much as possible.

In his 1928 testimony, Sultan Galiev confesses that he wrote the text in 1923, and completed it in 1925, and although he planned it in two parts he claims that he then gave up on the entire idea, and so did not finish the article.4 However, we understand from his testimony and sentence that the activities he was accused of and he actually undertook were organizational activities in line with the vision already set forth. According to Galiev’s own introduction, the second part was supposed to be where he would outline the practical and organizational aspects of his political strategy, as well as the tactics about how to realize this strategy. Notably, it is the part in which the idea of a Colonial International is supposed to be expounded since this does not appear anywhere in the existing first part but does appear in both Galiev’s testimony and in the GPU’s sentence and was also picked up by Bennigsen. The GPU sentence in particular even mentions aspects of the organizational structure of the CI as outlined in the text which are conspicuously absent from the current version. Such denial as part of Galiev’s testimony might have been an act of survival under the conditions that the author found himself at the time. Obviously, the content could have been direct and sufficient evidence to get him executed immediately. However, in the lack of such evidence, it is the existing text and Galiev’s ongoing activities after 1928 that are presented as the rationale for his sentence and execution in 1939. Although Galiev denies the existence of the second part before his executors, there is a good reason to assume that the text might have been hidden or destroyed by the author, a third party close to him or other interested parties.

This leads to the next problem of the first ever reference to this key text being made in the literature by the curious figure of Alexandre Bennigsen 5, who has established fame as a ‘Cold Warrior’ having led an academic wing of the ‘nation building’ campaign under the coordination of Zbigniew Brzezinski and his right arm Paul Henze.6 This situation creates another enigma around Galiev and the present text. We do not know, for instance, how Bennigsen and his students could have managed to penetrate the KGB archives or learned about the context of the text before the archives were opened in the early 90s. It may well be that Bennigsen or his team had discovered the existence of the text as an outcome of the study of Crimean Tatars in Ottoman Archives, which was led by Bennigsen himself in the Topkapi Palace. 7 In any case, the first reference to the text by Bennigsen, to the archived material seems to be picked up and used as secondary references by others, including French Marxist historian Maxime Rodinson.8 And this reference has made Galiev’s article known to other scholars and researchers who refers to it. Bennigsen and Quelquejay thought of Sultan Galiev as the father of the Third Worldist revolutionism, for his alternative vision crystallized in the present translation about the establishment of a ‘Colonial International”, an “International of the Oppressed Peoples.” Besides this, the controversial notion of ‘Muslim National Communism’ was attributed to Galiev’s overall thought by Bennigsen for the first time and since then the notion was adopted by other authors writing about Galiev. 9 Although Bennigsen and his students have done their work in order to undermine the unity of the USSR within the Cold War framework, by using Galiev; their work has revealed the historical originality of the person of Galiev and his ideas. Galiev’s thinking and political struggle to realize his ideas, by building an alternative to the Comintern was inspired by his version of historical materialism. According to Galiev, he builds his analysis as a revision of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and Marx’s theory of capitalism. He claims to achieving this by using a methodology he claims is a more radical version of dialectical and historical materialism. Galiev renames his methodology as energetic materialism and asserts that such a method of thinking has its roots in the East before it was established by Marx and Engels in the West. Independent of Bennigsen’s objectives, what we see in the below text is Galiev’s is a highly original analysis, that can indeed be seen as a precursor of the work of Frantz Fanon, CLR James, Che Guevara, Andre Gunder Frank, Dependency and World-System theorists. Important to note that, some authors have argued that the original ideas referred to as Galievism are initially based on the thoughts developed by Mollanur Vahidov. Galiev himself confirms this, in his 1923 testimony, by mentioning Validov’s name as his mentor.10 As Bennigsen highlights in 1986, Galiev does not cite or give resource neither for his term energetic materialism nor for the predecessors of this thinking system in the East. It was Alexander Bogdanov however who in his earlier work on empiriomonism synthesized the energetism of Ernest March and William Ostwald with the materialism of Marx and Engels. Curiously, Bogdanov in his magnum opus Tektology also makes a similar claim to that of Galiev that “tektological thinking” has its roots in the Eastern philosophy. 11 Therefore one might assume that it was Bogdanov’s thought which was the source that Galiev did not cite here. Bogdanov’s arrest on similar charges of “counter-revolutionary” activities in September 1923, some months after Galiev’s first arrest in May 1923 might indicate a connection to be further researched.12 More recent work of Craig Brandista 13, and James D. White14 might provide direction for future research. 

In any case, all references to the archived text and its published versions in Russian in the English speaking world remained secondary, referring only to the work of Bennigsen. Strikingly, but also probably because of these problems mentioned above, no English translation has been made until now. There may be other reasons that explain the lack of motivation amongst historians for translating Sultan Galiev’s work into English or other European languages, such as Galiev not being as prolific a writer as Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin or other Bolshevik leaders and intelligentsia. After all, Izbrannıe Trudı contains only around 1000 pages of material, collected in one volume, and is mainly composed of official writings which were found in the Soviet archives and published in 1998. However, Galiev was undoubtedly a key political figure, the highest-ranking Muslim amongst the Bolshevik leaders, and one of the first high ranked leader who got arrested and accused with anti-party activities and expelled from the party (as early as 1923). He and his fellows and followers were accused of being ‘Galievists’, bearers of a certain line of thinking and practice. The line of thinking and action that was labeled as ‘Galevist’ was strategically linked to the issues related to the policies on colonies, nationalities, self-determination, approach to agrarian classes, to Islam, and thus to the confrontation with the Imperialism of the West in the East. Therefore the Galiev case was not only related to the spread of the world revolution, but also to the issues of Russian nationalism and practice of revolutionary democracy in the Soviet government itself.15 

The overall enigma of the Galiev case and the lack of English translations of at least his key texts motivated us to undertake such an initial effort and make the present translation, even though we cannot read nor write Russian. Of course, we are aware of the fact that this constitutes a problem for the reader with regard to the trustworthiness of the end result. We decided to proceed anyway and then look for solutions to minimize the effects of these problems as much as we could. Our starting point was the early Turkish translations of both the present item (also published in 1998) as well as Turkish translations of other works of Galiev, a selection made from Izbrannıe Trudı and published by Halit Kakınç.17 As one of co-translators of the article below, Örsan Şenalp was then a member of the editorial board of Ulusal and was acquainted with the text and its Turkish translation. Asim Khairdean worked on the English rough translations of the Russian and the Turkish texts. Finally, we compared and corrected the outcomes of two versions and applied this to the two annexed documents as well. Needless to say, ours are just initial translations. Of course, there is still the need for a professional translation by a native English speaker and Russian literate historian.   

Before we end, we would like to thank Fabian Tompsett, Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewsky, Matthieu Renault, John Biggart, Craig Brandist, Eric Blanc, and Sebastian Budgen for the suggestions and insight they provided.  

Document I: From the testimony of M. Sultan-Galiyev to the investigator of December 18, 1928

The question is put squarely: am I ready to disarm ideologically and organizationally or not? I answer at the beginning, yes, I am ready. What is my armament and what should be my disarmament? My armament consisted of well-known ideas and thoughts, in a certain worldview about the development of the revolutionary movement in the colonies and the work of Soviet power and the Communist Party in the national republics and regions, mainly the Turkic ones, which grew gradually in the course of the development of the revolution in Russia, starting as early as 1917.

This outlook has its own dynamics, the history of its development, which was determined by the peculiar perception of certain moments in the development of the international revolution in general and of party and Soviet work in the national parliaments in particular. 

The basic principles of my outlook were laid out by me in my testimonies to the OGPU back in 1923 – when I was arrested on charges of trying to establish contact with Zaki Validov.18 I consider it necessary to repeat them now in brief. The formulation of my views was:

First: The crisis in the development of the world revolution, which forced the party to shrink into the framework of building socialism in one country, is the result of a “reassessment of the significance, on the part of the European Communists, of the role of the Western European proletariat in organizing the world socialist revolution, on the one hand, and in underestimating the significance of national liberation movements in the colonial countries in the system of international revolution, on the other.” 19

Secondly: The Party’s insufficiently firm policy on the national question before the Eleventh Party Congress, 20 in the sense of underestimating its national manifestations in the work in the national parliaments and, as a result, the growth of great-power tendencies, on the one hand, and the discontent of the nationals on this basis, on the other.

As you know, I then recognized as erroneous my attempt to establish contact with Zaki Validov, qualified it as a crime against the party of which I was a member, and declared my readiness to accept the deserved retribution from your hands.

I did not make a clear statement on my part about my renunciation of the assessment, of the course of the development of the revolution, that had developed in my mind. 

When I was released from prison, I, at least, had no clear answer: who, after all, is right on the main issues – I or the party. I remember only one thing: I had made a firm decision to put an end to all my past, in being released from prison and staying in one form or another in the party. I learned about my expulsion from the party, as you know, here at the OGPU, before my release, after you made a written commitment from me to refuse to conduct anti-Party and anti-Soviet work. The message about this had a depressing impression on me. Some hope appeared to me in the possibility of reinstating the rights of a member of the party after being visited by Stalin some time after my release from prison, when I was instructed that this question could be put in about a year. Somewhere in the depths of my soul, there was, in addition, a hope for Vladimir Ilyich. For some reason, it seemed to me that Ilyich would be interested in my business and restore me to the party. I looked forward to his recovery. His death killed this hope in me. Ilyich’s loss for me was, therefore, a double blow. I loved this man as God in my youth. If you searched me, you should find in my papers a small sheet, where I brought my impressions of the deceased, after returning from his funeral. The image I painted on this little piece of paper will forever remain in my soul.

My hope for a return to the party revived after my statement to the Central Control Commission in 1924. The promise of support for my request on the part of Mr. Stalin strengthened this hope in me. The Central Control Commission, as you know, denied me my request. It was the third fresh and heavy blow to me.

The moment of negotiation and consideration of my application to the Central Control Commission coincided with the moment of the withdrawal from Tatarstan of a group of Tatar communists – Mukhtarova, Enbaev, and Gasim Mansurov, comrades close to me through my joint work with them during the revolution. Also from the party, the local Party organization of the People’s Commissariat of the Tatarstan Republic – Yunus Validov and deputy head of the Sovnarkom Comrade Ishak Kazakov, an old revolutionary who worked among us from the days of October. It was also preceded by my open defamation, in the pages of the Tatar and Russian press and in separate pamphlets, as a counter-revolutionary. I learned about the qualification of my act, as objectively counter-revolutionary, on the part of the Second National Meeting under the Central Committee of the Party, a year later, after expelling me from the party, and before that it was not clear to me why such a furious attack was taking place on me as against a counter-revolutionary.

The counter-revolutionary label, glued to me, oppressed me even worse because in my heart I considered myself a Communist, a Leninist, a party member, a revolutionary. I am in all parts of my being protesting against it (in my notes you can find a letter to the Central Committee, which I thought to compose at the same time on this occasion, but for some reason struggled with and abandoned). I considered this a great injustice towards myself and experienced it as the greatest tragedy. To me, all the more, it was hard, that I already experienced a serious tragedy in your prison. After all, I’m not only a revolutionary, but also a person. I, as a revolutionary, signed a death sentence to myself. I considered this to be the greatest act of revolutionary honesty and courage on my part and found, in this, great moral satisfaction for myself. I think you understood that then. But as a man, as an animal organism, I still experienced a heavy sense of death. And under this heavy feeling, I was with you for 2 weeks, while my fate was being decided. You see for yourself – I’m only 36 years old, and almost all my head is gray. You will understand, therefore, that strange feeling of resentment, insult, and humiliation that I experienced, and experienced at moments when I was exposed as a counter-revolutionary. Especially in those cases when this came from the people with whom I once fought alongside, against the opponents of the October Revolution and the Soviet government.

Here is the psychological background on the basis of which I gradually matured the decision to create an independent party, based on the revision of Marxism and Leninism on colonial and national issues. This was also facilitated by the extremely difficult situation that was created around the so-called “right” Tatar and partly Bashkir communists.

The result of this was my initial sketch of a part of the theses on “some issues of economic and cultural development of the Turkic peoples of Europe and Asia.” In them, I wanted to justify the opposition to the communist slogan of national self-determination by the slogan of “the liberation of the colonies through the dictatorship of the colonies over the metropole.” Communism, according to my analysis and a new understanding, was pictured to me as a new and progressive form of European nationalism for the first time, meaning the policy of consolidation and unification of the material and cultural forces of the metropolitan countries under the aegis of the proletariat. In the future, I intended to expand these theses on the colonial question in general, based on the radical revision of the Leninist theory of imperialism and Stalin’s interpretation of it. I speak quite frankly, as I am, in front of you and before history, in the end, one person, but I have nothing to hide. If in your hands during a search I had a pamphlet by V.I. Lenin “Imperialism, as the newest stage of development of capitalism” with my notes on the margins and on the covers, then on them you will be able to form an approximate representation of my understanding of imperialism. According to my theory of imperialism, imperialism is inherent in capitalism in general, regardless of the stage of its development; it seemed to me that in this respect Ilyich nevertheless lacks clarity. From my formulation, therefore, there was a possibility in the theory and practice of the existence of socialist or communist imperialism, since at this stage of its development international capital (which must grow from a revolution into socialism) represents a system of colonial management.

I here ask you not to confuse my concept with the battered and rotten lampoon of Kautsky and the dirty lies of the imperialist bourgeoisie about the “red imperialism of the Soviets.” From my same theses, you will see that I am an irreconcilable enemy both of the world bourgeoisie and Menshevism.

The draft of my theses I first read to Yunus Validov. He insisted on making some amendments, especially with regard to the formulation of the content of the national liberation movement of individual colonial countries (including the Turkic-Tatar nationalities of Soyuzia) and questioned the correctness of the basic slogan of “colonial dictatorship over the metropole,” where we opposed ourselves to the Communist International. Validov then lived in my apartment. He was already expelled from the party. Above him was the threat of a public trial on charges of a criminal offense. We both suffered a great deal. Nevertheless, the discussion of the program for the future of the “International of the Colonial Peoples” was very intensive. Our main provisions were worked out by us, but they are not set out on paper. Tactics and strategy were defined. The social base of our future “Colonial International” party was determined by the workers, peasants and the petty bourgeoisie. Tactically, we stood for the use also of the progressive part of the large national bourgeoisie (the industrial bourgeoisie). It was decided after the trial of Validov, if he was not left in the party, to flee abroad and begin negotiations with underground or semi-legal colonial revolutionary organizations about the establishment of the Bureau of the International in one of the eastern countries. First of all, Validov was to contact Sun-Yat-Sen and then to transfer to India. I had to stay in the USSR and organize a small but strong nucleus here and also go abroad and contact the Fourth International and the anarchist organizations of Europe. Such was our decision before the trial of Validov. Validov in the court kept himself, in my opinion, revolutionary. You know that. The court, as is known, did not resolve in his favor … Nevertheless, we carried out our decision and were then detained ourselves. We once again thoroughly thought out the issue and decided to seek a review of the court’s decision before the Central Control Commission, and in case of a negative decision by him and in this instance, to appeal the decision of the Central Control Commission first to the party congress and then to the Comintern. The decision of Validov in this sense was unshakable. He believed in his own right. I supported him. Before deciding on the fate of Validov, we decided to stay in the USSR, regardless of whether you pursued us or not, whether it was possible for us to go abroad or not, that is, already having made a full break with you (as it should be understood), depending on the outcome of the resolution of the question of leaving him in the party. Severe illness and the subsequent death of Validov however, removed this issue from the order of the day.

The loss of Validov was a heavy blow to me. In him, I lost one of my most loyal friends and support. The son of a serf-peasant, he was a real rebellious and revolutionary slave.

The transcript of his speech at the trial was kept by me. It must have got to you. There on the first page, there should be a signature made by the hand of Validov himself. It spoke about the growth of the right, danger in the country and the need for an organized fight against it. Validov, before death, asked me to reproduce his speech and distribute it among the population. By this way, he wanted to rehabilitate himself after death. I, however, did not do this and kept his speech only as historical material. I did not want to endure our discord with the party in public.

After the death of Validov, I suspended the work on the preparation of the theses. It seemed to me that the planned course of our action was still wrong. In the program we are planning, there was no clarity, firstly, regarding the social entity of the organization we are creating, and secondly, regarding the definition of our attitude to communism as a system, as a principle. It was unclear what we should promise to the colonies liberated from the hegemony of metropolitan countries: communism, or capitalism, or something third “not bourgeois” and how to ensure the organizational triumph of communism as a system in general, if we accept it for the colonies. The question as to the stages in the development of the national liberation movement with regard to communism was also unclear: whether communism was established after the end of the national liberation, or whether its growth coincided with the development of the national liberation movement. And I’ve thought about this for a long time. In addition, I was sick with tuberculosis, which greatly exhausted me and I had to go to the Crimea.

Later, after returning from the Crimea, in the winter of 1925 I read extracts from my theses to Comrade Budayli from the Tatarstan Republic. He also gave readings to Mukhtarov and Enbaev, and even later, it seems in 1926, showed them to their comrade Deren-Ayerly. Reading the theses, I pointed out to my comrades that they represented only a draft outline of my views on the development of the revolutionary movement in the Turkic regions of Europe and Asia. Comrades, agreeing with the analysis of the Turkic world in the system of world economy and politics, resolutely argued against the first part of the theses, regarding the opposition of the colonial communists with Europeans and about the slogan “the dictatorship of the colonies over the metropole.”

I did not show my theses to anyone else. As you can see, the theses are not finished, but among the papers on separate sheets there are rough drafts of the formulations of the remaining parts of the theses, not only in the form of completed and ready-made thoughts but in the form of “possible productions.” In the process of their analysis, their antitheses could also arise.

I did not manage to finish them. I did not have too much time and there was no “Engels” at hand. This is the first point. Secondly, I still did not lose hope for my rehabilitation within the party. For some reason, it seemed to me that the Central Committee of the Party would finally consider my position. This hope grew especially strong in the period when you started talking about “changing the route of the revolution” in terms of a turn towards active participation in the national liberation movement of the colonies, specifically, the Chinese revolution. The result of this was my second letter to T. Stalin at the end of 1925 or the beginning of 1926 with the question of whether it is possible for me to raise the question of restoring my membership in the party and on what conditions. Moreover, even later, under the influence of the experience of the Chinese revolution and the development of the national liberation movement in India and other colonial countries, and also in the USSR itself, the question gradually arose in me as to whether I was really mistaken in the main, namely in determining the revolutionary significance of the theory and practice of Leninism in applying them to resolving the colonial question and hence in determining the revolutionary role of the CPSU(B) and the Comintern, that is, speaking simply, I do not break through an open door. 

Document II:  SENTENCE

THE UNION OF THE SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS THE MILITARY BOARD OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNION OF SSR, DECEMBER 8, 1939, CONSISTING OF:

Chairman – Brigouveneurist T. Alekseyeva

Members: Brigvoyenurist Sislina and Comrade Bukanova

As the secretary-lawyer T. Mazur, in a closed court session in the city of Moscow, December 8, 1939, examined the case on charges of – Sultangalieva Mirseida21 Haydar Galievich 1892, the birth of the Bashkir Assr, by nationality Tatar, servant, non-partisan, by the NKVD in 1928 (on June 28, 1930, Col. of the State Political University) a sentence of up to 10 years for criminal activities, is provided for by Articles 58-1a, 58-2 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code.

The preliminary and judicial investigation found that since 1919, Sultan-Galiev is the organizer and the actual leader of the anti-Soviet nationalist group which for many years has been actively fighting against Soviet power and the CPSU(B).

Throughout 1919-1920, Sultan-Galiev was in organizational connection with the well-known nationalists who were in exile: Ibragimov22, Abdurran and others, together with whom they agreed on organizing the struggle against Soviet power on the basis of pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism, with the aim of secession from Soviet Russia of the Turkic-Tatar regions and the establishment in them of a bourgeois-democratic Turanian state.

In 1923, Sultan-Galiev M. together with a certain Kara-Sacal, the foundations of a political program common to all the Turkic nationalities of the USSR and the colonial peoples of the foreign East were worked out, a cipher was developed, a password and nicknames were established.

In the period of 1925, Sultan-Galiev wrote a program of struggle under the heading “On the Basics of the Economic, Political and Cultural Development of the Turkic Peoples,” in which he put forward the idea of ​​creating a “colonial International,” with the organization of a special committee for the leadership of the Pan-Turkic movements of the Turkic peoples in the USSR, with branches on the ground, whose task was to organize the preparation of a branch off of the national Turkic republics and regions from the Soviet Union.

Since 1923 and for several years Sultan-Galiev had an organizational relationship with the Trotskyite-Zinoviev underground, contacting them with subversive work, against the CPSU(B) and the Soviet authorities.

In the period 1931-1933. Sultan-Galiev, even while in the Solovetsky camps, did not abandon his criminal activities with like-minded people – Enbaev, Bakiyev, and others –  negotiated the creation of the so-called “Turan Workers ‘and Peasants’ Socialist Party.”

In the same year of 1933, Sultan-Galiev undertook the assignment to establish a connection with the leader of the Tatar White emigration Gayaz Iskhakov.

Along with these criminal acts during the period from 1919 to 1928 and from 1934 to the date of his arrest Sultan-Galiev led a large recruitment drive to create anti-Soviet bourgeois-nationalist organizations and groups.

In addition, it was established that since 1922 Sultan-Galiev was connected with the diplomatic representatives of a foreign state who, for espionage purposes, informed about secret decisions of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) on Eastern issues about secret decisions on the national question, and also gave his consent to the transfer of information about the armed forces of the USSR. He gave the representative of foreign intelligence in 1927 a verbatim report of the so-called “Ryskulov national meeting.”

Recognizing Sultan-Galiev as guilty of the crimes provided for in Articles 58-1a, 58-2 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, guided by Articles 319 and 320 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR has agreed:

Sultan-Galiyev Mirsaid Haydar Galiyich to be given the highest measure of criminal punishment – execution, with confiscation of all personal property belonging to him. The verdict is final and not subject to appeal.

A copy of the document was transferred from the Central Archive of the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Federation.

Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organization of Orient Peoples in 1919

Document III: Some considerations on the basis of socio-political, economic and cultural development of the Turkic peoples of Asia and Europe23

Methodology  

Before we base the foundations on which we will establish the socio-political, economic, and cultural developments of the Turkic peoples of Asia and Europe in the epoch we are experiencing, we have to, at least briefly, dwell on the methodology of our views on the topic.   

To avoid any ambiguity and misunderstanding we must first point out that we approach this particular issue, as well as in general other issues, from the materialist worldview and philosophy. And from the various currents of this revolutionary philosophical school, we dwell on a more radical branch, so-called historical or dialectical materialism. We believe that this branch of materialistic philosophy is the most faithful and scientifically grounded system of cognition of individual phenomena in the social life of human society since with its help we can produce the most correct and accurate analysis of their causes and predict or anticipate their consequences.

But at the same time, let us state in advance that our belonging to this school – of dialectical, or rather, energetic materialism – should not be interpreted as a blind imitation of the Western European representatives of this school (i.e. the so-called Marxists or Communists), nor a blind copying of all that they think or produce. We do not do this for the following reasons:

1. 1. We believe that materialistic philosophy is not at all an exclusive “accessory” of Western European scientific thought, since this kind of philosophy, in one form or another, as well as a well-known system of thinking, has arisen in other non-European peoples (Persians, Arabs, Chinese, Turks, Mongol, etc.) long before the birth of modern European culture.
   2. Many of us, even before the last revolution in Russia, were imbued with an energetic materialist world outlook, and it was not artificial and grafted from the outside, but naturally arising from the essence of the conditions surrounding us: the most severe economic, political and cultural oppression of Russian nationalism and Russian statehood.
   3. Our adherence to the supporters of historical materialism does not at all oblige us to agree to and regard anything as “sacred”, indisputable and indestructible, as presented by contemporary Russian or even European monopolists of the idea of ​​dialectical materialism.

 You can declare yourself a thousand times a materialist, a Marxist, a Communist or, as is in fashion in Russia now, a Leninist, screaming about it to the whole world, with as much strength and opportunity as you have, and write hundreds and thousands of volumes on hundreds and thousands of topics on this subject, but at the same time not have the slightest dose of true materialism or communism, or a grain of genuine revolutionism in your judgments and conclusions, let alone actions. And we not only do not give any obligations to you but even in spite of all your expectations, we “dare” challenge you for the right to monopolize the idea of ​​dialectical materialism.

So, for example, we find that in the basic questions of the restructuring of the social life of mankind, which are, firstly, the national-colonial question, and secondly, the question of the methods of implementing communism, that is, the social system, where there will be no classes and there will be no exploitation of man by man, Russians, and behind them the West-European Communists at the present time make the grossest mistakes, the result of which may not be the salvation of mankind from the “oppression of anarchy and elements,” but his terrible ruin, impoverishment, and extinction. We agree with them (not always and not on all matters), when they criticize and plunder the rapacious European capitalism by predatory European imperialism; we agree with them when they speak of the reactionary nature of modern European capitalist culture and the need to fight it… but we nevertheless completely disagree with the recipes they have offered, as conclusions from their reasoning about all this. We believe that with the recipe proposing the replacement of the dictatorship over the world of one class of the European public (the bourgeoisie) by its antipode (proletariat), i.e. its other class, there will be no particularly great change in the social life of the oppressed nations of mankind. In any case, if any change occurs, it is not for the better, but for the worse. This will only be a replacement for a less powerful and less organized dictatorship (the centralized dictatorship of the forces united on a European scale) of the same capitalist Europe (including here and America) over the rest of the world. In contrast, we put forward a different proposition – the concept that the material prerequisites for the social reorganization of mankind can be created only by establishing the dictatorship of colonies and semi-colonies over the metropole. Only this way is capable of creating real guarantees for the liberation and emancipation of the productive forces of the globe, chained by Western imperialism.

Proceeding from this methodology, we establish a certain system of questions, the answer to which must give the most correct solution to our main task. We consider the issues through the following topics: 

What is the Turkic world in the present-day world economy and politics as a socio-productive organism?

What conditions are lacking (internal and external) for the normal economic, political and cultural development of the Turkic peoples (both in general and their individual branches)?

In what ways can these conditions be achieved, whether through evolutionary development or through revolutionary changes?

Specific methods of work in one direction or another:

a) strategy and tactics,

b) forms of organization.

The Turkic World in the system of the modern world economy and policy as a productive-social organism 

The question of the place and role of the modern Turkic world in the system of the current international economy and politics is, in our opinion, the main issue from which we can outline the correct solution of our main question about the fundamentals of the socio-political, economic and cultural development of the Turkic peoples of Asia and Europe.

Not knowing exactly what we are, inside the system of existing international social and legal relations and what kind of relations we have, we can not determine what we should become and what should turn into.

An analysis of this question can be started only from the second part of it, i.e. from the question of what is the modern system of international social and legal relations – economic, political and cultural-domestic.

The following factors are the distinguishing points that determine the features of this system:

1. The Slave (colonial-imperialist) character of the modern world economy and politics.

Analysis of social and legal relations between individual peoples of the world reveals that the nationalities from which modern mankind is formed are sharply divided into two camps that are hostile to each other and unequal in number according to their social and legal situation; in one camp there are peoples constituting only 20-25% of humanity, who have managed to take into their hands almost the entire globe, with all the “living” and dead riches contained in it and on it, and established the monopoly “right” to exploit them; in another camp there are peoples making up 4/5 of all mankind and falling under the economic, political and cultural bondage and slavery of the peoples of the first camp, in other words, the “master” or “civilized” peoples. 

In the “civil” language of “gentlemen”, the peoples of the first group are called “civilized,” “civil” nations, called upon to save mankind “from slavery, ignorance, and poverty.” The peoples of the second group in their language are called “savages,” “natives,” etc. and created, according to their “scientific” judgments, to serve the interests of “civilized-nations.” The “natives” and “savages” have not yet invented special terms for the designation of “civilized” peoples and, whether by the “poverty” of their lexicon or lack of scientific understanding, they call them simply “dogs,” “robbers,” “executioners,” and other similar “indecent” and incomprehensible epithets.

The peoples of the first category include the “civilized” peoples of Europe and America, which spread gradually in other parts of the world are generally called “the peoples of the West.” The second group includes the peoples of Asia and Africa and the Aborigines of Australia and America, colonized by Europeans.

Analyzing the relations between the two groups of people, we state that the entire system of economic, political and cultural relations of the peoples of the West (metropolitan countries) to the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies characterizes the system of slaveholding relations.

A number of conditions, of a historical and natural-geographical nature that influenced the progress of technology and culture of the peoples of the West, conditioned the transition into their hands of the means of economic and cultural communication between the peoples of different parts of the world, in other words the international communications and military-strategic points, thereby creating the prerequisites for the transition into their hands the entire initiative in the development of the world’s political and economic relations between the peoples of Western and Eastern cultures.

By a well-known moment of history, the technology and culture of the peoples of Europe proved to be more viable and rational, from the point of view of the struggle for existence, than that of the hegemons of the world, the Muslim peoples of Asia and Africa, who were settling on them at that time, and allowed them to break up the latter and occupy the necessary bridgeheads, to freely extend their influence to the rest of the Asian and African continent.

World trade routes, trade markets and sources of raw materials, as well as military-strategic points, with few exceptions, were in the hands of the peoples of the West. And the people of the West extended their system of intra-national slavery (if serfdom in the epoch of feudalism was a form of slave-owning economy, then class oppression in the era of capitalism is also slave-owning – the exploitation of man by man, but only in another, reformed form) entirely to their colonies – “black” and “yellow” continents, thus giving an international character to it and transformed it into an “international” system of slavery. The peoples of these continents actually turned into slaves deprived of the right to own the natural wealth of their countries and work for the benefit of their “civil” masters – the people of the metropole. 

2. The parasitic and reactionary character of the material culture of metropole as the main factor of the world development of this epoch.

The colonial-slave-owning character of the modern system of world economy determines entirely its next feature-the deep parasitism and the highly reactionary nature of the entire present culture of the peoples of the West as the main factor in the development of mankind in this epoch. These, the properties of the material culture of the metropolitan countries are expressed in the following two points:

a) The static moment – the monopolistic concentration of the means of production and circulation, and the subjects of consumption that are necessary for humanity, in the hands of the peoples of the metropole. 

In the hands of the metropolitan countries with some 300-350 million people has accumulated all the main means of production (factory industry), means of circulation (financial capital and its apparatus), ways and means of transportation and communication (sea routes, railway lines, air messages, telegraph and radiograph); as well as sources of raw materials (oil, coal, ore, animals and plant products) and markets for industrial products. In this respect, the West seems to be a giant octopus, embracing with its tentacles four-fifths of humanity and sucking from it all its vital juices. To this we must add that the octopus is not an ordinary octopus from under the waters of the ocean, but an octopus-armadillo, an octopus warrior, an octopus, a deadly bearer armed with the latest military art and military “inventions” of the West. True, these gains did not increase the courage and bravery of this octopus. But his cowardly cruelty and bloodthirstiness has increased: the octopus now sucks the lifeblood from the living organism of the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies, enriching one, the smaller, part of the world’s population at the expense of exhaustion, pauperization, degeneration and extinction of the other, the majority.

b) The Dynamic Moment – the parasitic and reactionary character of the material of the metropole from the point of view of the maximum development of the productive forces of mankind.

This moment is closely connected with the first and is its complement and development.

In fact, it is the basis for what the modern culture of metropolitan countries seeks as a regulator of the development of mankind in the current epoch.

If the essence of the material culture of the peoples of the West consisted solely in the monopolistic nature of the modern system of their economy (monopoly capitalism or imperialism), then this as a form of organization of the world economy would be only half bad. But the whole point is that the essence of the material culture of the metropolitan countries, the main internal content of it, that is, the true content of all these “monopoly capitalisms,” “imperialisms” and other social categories of the public of the West is not at all in this static form, but in its dynamic, in the specific tendency of its development.

This trend is that the existence and development of the modern material culture of the peoples of the West is based not only on the preservation of slave-owning and bonded relations to the peoples of the East, in other words on the exploitation of the natural – natural forces and resources of colonies and semi-colonies, but also on the delay of the development of the domestic productive forces of the latter, on the suppression of the growth of their material culture.

What is the basis for the modern culture of the West?

On the monopoly production and sale of goods for the metropolitan countries and colonies, in other words as a monopolist in the world economy and production process.

What is it based on?

On the delay in the development of the domestic economy, in the absence of a national industry of colonies and semi-colonies; in other words on the preservation of the agrarian, purely peasant character of these countries, when they, because of the absence or underdevelopment of national industry, are forced to resort in their economic life to the “help” of the metropolitan countries, in other words, the world monopoly industry.

Specifically, this process consists of the following elements:

a) The provision of the main elements of the economy of the metropole – industry – with cheap raw materials, hence the aggressive policy of the peoples of the West towards the countries of Asia and Africa as sources of raw materials, with all that accompanies this policy and the resulting phenomena: firstly, the ruthless struggle with the remnants of independence of the semi-colonies and the brutal suppression of the slightest manifestation of political independence on the part of the colonies, and secondly, constant competitive wars due to colonial possessions between individual national metropolitan groups. In other words, the development of social contradictions between colonies and metropole, on the one hand, and national conflicts between individual national groups of dictatorial metropole, on the other.

b) The provision of cheap production costs for the factories of industry, by improving the technology of production and exploitation of the labor of industrial workers in the metropolitan areas and subsidiary workers from the colonies. Hence, the existence of class contradictions in metropolitan areas and the emergence of class-based political parties on the basis of these contradictions.

c) The provision of cheap (profitable) markets for the products of the industry of the metropole. Hence, the deepening of the colonial-aggressive policy of the metropolitan countries directed not only to keep the colonies and semi-colonies in their own hands and under their own yoke but also to keep them precisely as permanent markets for the sale of industrial fabrics in the metropole.

The result of this policy is only an even greater aggravation of social contradictions between colonies and metropole, and these contradictions assume the importance of a factor of paramount international importance.

The last element in the process of the dynamics of the material culture of metropolitan countries occupies a particularly important place in the system of established relationships between the metropolitan countries and colonies. This element, being the main active spring of the modern culture of the peoples of the West, simultaneously acts as the main cause of all those social abnormalities that are revealed in the development of modern mankind as a whole.

These abnormalities are obvious and they can only be denied by blind people and political degenerates. They are as follows:

a) The Hostile and unproductive operation of the natural riches of the Earth, in the peculiarities of the resources of colonial and semi-colonies, from the point of view of the general interests of humanity.

This truth hardly requires proofs, it is enough to observe the management of the metropolitan areas, ‘home’, and in the colonies, so as not to be immediately convinced of this.

b) The irrational organization of the global process of production and distribution and as a whole and the unproductive waste of mass human energy.

The means of production, concentrated mainly in the hands of the metropolitan countries, are far from the main sources of raw materials and world markets and thus necessitate the transfer, of raw materials to the means of production, firstly and the products of its processing (goods) to the markets secondly. For example, some wool or leather raw materials from Tibet, India or Afghanistan should get to the UK, turn into cloth, shoes or other goods and then travel back to their “homeland.” Or, for example, Turkestan or Transcaucasian cotton (by the way, together with the Baku oil) must first make a trip to the country of the “civilized” – somewhere in Moscow or Ivanovo-Voznesensk and, turning into a manufactory or something else, to do the opposite (secondary) journey to the same Turkestan or Transcaucasia, and sometimes further – to Persia, Afghanistan, etc. From the point of view of economy of means and human energy, it would be more expedient to act in just the opposite way: to process raw materials into what is necessary for people in its “motherland,” in other words in the colonies and semi-colonies themselves where, incidentally, with the exception of the means of production (which can be moved there from metropolitan areas or organized again), there is a combination of all the necessary conditions for this: raw materials, liquid fuels, unused and extinct human energy, the need for appropriate factories from the population of the colonies, and sending it to “foreign travel” only as is necessary; in other words conforming to the corresponding natural consumer demand from there, not as a “wild” raw material, but as a “civil” commodity.

c) The waste of mass human energy for the constant and regular “protection” of the existing order of things and the structure it requires, in other words, the existing irrationality in the organization of the world economy and the relevance of this social negligence (injustice). 

It expresses itself in the rabid militarism of the West, in the monstrous growth of its land, sea, and air armaments and the corps of internal and external guards. The peoples of the West are protected not only from the oppressed peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies and from all sorts of “yellow,” “black” and other “dangers” and “panisms,” but also “from each other.”

d) The delay of the natural development of the productive forces of the colonies and semi-colonies, the majority of the world population. On this ground emerges the social inequality between the peoples of the colonies and the metropole and the prevention of the cultural development of all of modern mankind as a whole.

It is advantageous for Western predatory imperialism to maintain backward forms of economy and social relations in colonial countries. Only on the basis of this backwardness, can the predatory culture of the metropole breathe and develop. To keep the colonial peoples in darkness and oppression and not give them the opportunity to revive culturally is the most real and vital need of the peoples of the West, which have turned into jailers of the freedom of mankind. Hence the social inequality that we see in the position of the peoples of the metropolitan countries, on the one hand, and the peoples of the colonies oppressed by them, on the other. While the peoples of metropolitan countries enjoy all the benefits of culture and all the gains of technology and science, the peoples of the colonial countries, in their mass, are forced to drag out the existence of half-starved slaves and beggars. We see steel and granite skyscrapers on one side and pitiful huts and shacks on the other; cars, trams, buses, trains, steamships and airplanes on one side, pathetic nags and antediluvian airbuses and wagons on the other; electric plows, tractors, steam threshers, melioration, artificial fertilizer fields, etc. on one side and a wooden plow, a shovel, a pickaxe and a pitchfork on the other; electricity, telephone, telegraph and radio on one side, a beam and a kerosene oil lamp and the absence of everything else on the other; fine arts, literature, games and laughter on one side, hopelessness and darkness, constant suffering and tears on the other; satiety, contentment and a secure life on one side, hunger, cold, poverty, disease, death and degeneration on the other.

Can we justify this state of affairs? Can we call it a normal position, normal order? No, and again no! From the point of view of any morality, this is an expression of the greatest social abnormality and glaring world social injustice.

3. Strengthening the national cultures of the metropole to consolidation.

We would be incomplete in our analysis of the material culture of metropolitan countries if we leave unanswered yet another question, namely: where is the modern material culture of the peoples of the metropolitan countries headed and what does it want to become? This question is closely connected to the dynamics of the development of this culture and reveals one of the most characteristic and significant features of it, determining the prospects for the development of the world for the entire immediate era. We define this line as the desire for consolidation, in other words to the centralized unification of the disparate national-material cultures (capital) of the peoples of the metropole.

Does this desire exist?

Yes, it does. The recent international imperialist war, revolutionary cataclysms in Russia and other countries after the war, today’s “diplomatic” struggle between certain groups of “victorious” countries, the feverish work of the separate political parties of the peoples of the West are all the most diverse manifestations of this aspiration.

This aspiration is under pressure from the following two contradictions:

1) The discrepancy between the existing structure of the material culture of the peoples of metropolitan countries (nationally scattered, often proprietary or anarchic capitalist) of its internal essence, in other words, the needs of these people in a more organized and improved robbery and exploitation of the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies;

2) In connection with this, the emergence in the colonies of material and political prerequisites for national independence and social emancipation from the yoke of the metropolitan countries; strengthening the so-called national liberation movement of the colonies.

We take the first contradiction. What is it specifically expressed in? It expresses itself in the fact that the existing order, the existing structure of the foundations of the material culture of the peoples of metropolitan countries cannot provide them with impunity, regular and, most importantly, full exploitation of the peoples of the colonies. The material needs of the peoples of metropolitan countries have outgrown the existing form of their material culture. The robbery and sucking of juices from the body of enslaved humanity, produced individually, without a single plan and a centralized will, are not effective enough in terms of productivity and not only do not give the maximum expected results, but even contrary to the will of the robbers, are fraught with all sorts of surprises. It turns out that such a system of exploitation of colonies and semi-colonies and the rest of the oppressed part of mankind cannot stop the complete circulation of blood in their bodies. They continue to maintain their vitality, continue to live, breathe, and sometimes, when their enslavers are engaged in a fight among themselves because of someone else’s good, they even dare to oppose them. Can the peoples of the West afford such a “luxury” on the part of the peoples of the colonies? Of course not. Whether they want to or not, the question of changing the internal structure of their material culture, the question of the transition to a new, higher, more organized and perfect forms of management, rises before them and it can not be otherwise!

What is the essence of the internal structure of the material culture of the metropolitan countries of the lived (passing) era? Its essence lies in two provisions: private property within nations and private property between nations, in other words, the relative disunity of the means of production and circulation of the accumulated wealth both within the nations themselves, and between individual nations.

Let us take the first position – private property within nations. What results does it give in the course of developing the material culture of the peoples of the West? Firstly, competition between individual owners (capitalists) and their associations (trusts, syndicates, cartels, etc.) or even among whole industries themselves. In pursuit of profit and of bigger profit shares they mutually struggle among themselves and a significant part of their energy goes to the organization of this struggle and this competition. True, this competition, being the only and necessary part of capitalism based on private property in general, plays a generally progressive role in the concentration and centralization of capital. Nevertheless, on a social scale, under the condition of the existence of colonies aspiring for independent development, it is for metropolitan countries a factor that weakens their exploitative power over the former. If, for example, any capitalist enterprise of England is sent to work in India, then it must spend part of its capital to fight a similar British enterprise or joint-stock company and lose a certain percentage of its forces and capabilities on this. Due to non-centralization and non-unity on a national scale, the plundering of British capital in India does not fully and completely bring about the effect and results that it could give in case of centralization.  

The principle of private ownership inevitably gives birth to another factor that is negative from the point of view of the power of the peoples of the metropolitan countries, namely, the class struggle based on intra-national class inequality. Against the backdrop of the class struggle in the West, there were three main political trends reflecting the ideology of the respective main classes of metropolitan countries: conservatism, the political ideology of the big bourgeoisie; liberalism as a political ideology of the middle and petty bourgeoisie and socialism as the ideology of the working class. The struggle of these classes among themselves, reflecting, in fact, and to a certain extent, their desire for political power, cannot but weaken at some moments the offensive strength of the peoples of the metropolitan countries in relation to the colonies. Here we can give an example of the defeat of Russia during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, when the presence of a rather pronounced class struggle within Russia (the liberal Russian commercial and industrial bourgeoisie came up with a number of political requirements with respect to the feudal landlord, Russian workers came out with political demands both in relation to that and to the other) was the main prerequisite for the defeat of Russian troops in the theater of military operations.

The opposite example is the classic example of the victory of the reborn Turkey over the gangs of international imperialism in 1922, largely conditioned by the fact that if the insurgent Turkey was a monolithic national whole, uniting all classes of the Turkish people in one fiery impulse of the struggle for national independence, then the camp of opponents – Europe – was a bubbling volcano of national and class contradictions.

And here we have to state that the fight of classes inside the metropole in the modern conditions of their development is again a weakening the future preventative force of the hegemony of the west. 

The second contradiction – private property between the metropolitan nations – is also a similar factor. In other words, the national fragmentation of their material culture, giving rise to the strongest national competition and national struggle between them. The presence of this factor greatly hinders the position of the peoples of metropolitan countries as the hegemons of the world. It weakens their general pressure on the colonies and leaves for them the possibility of movement and maneuver. What is the basis of the preservation of Turkey’s independence, the revival of Afghanistan’s independence, the strengthening of the elements of Egypt’s independence? What is the basis for the strengthening of the national liberation movement in India, Morocco, China, etc.? What is the basis for the revival of some old (Poland) and the emergence of new state formations (Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland) in Europe itself? What is the basis for strengthening the national liberation movement of non-Russian nationalities in Russia?

All this is, to a large extent, based precisely on the national disunity of the material culture of the West. The struggle of the peoples of the metropole among themselves because of primacy and because of hegemony over the world contributes only to ease their pressure on the colony and opens up the possibility for the latter to struggle for political independence.

Let us pass to the analysis of the second contradiction, i.e. Liberation movement of the Colonies and Semicolonies. Is there really such a movement and if “yes,” is it really growing and progressing? We will answer this with the language of facts.

Japan: Half a century ago, Japan was a small semi-colonial country, which could not even think about participating in international politics. But when it came to awakening, how she crushed the thunder of the peoples of Asia and the gendarme of Europe, the hardened feudal imperialist, tsarist Russia. Ten years have not passed since Japan participates in the beating of Europe, as Germany’s next imperialist power, by Russia. For the time being, at least, Germany has been knocked out of the rut. And now Japan is forming a bloc with France, China and Russia against England. The combination may change, but the fact remains. If these plans are justified, then the next day she will participate in the formation of a bloc against the transatlantic power – America. And this is quite natural. Japan can not remain forever on its islands. The future of the Japanese people requires opening doors to Siberia for resettlement and the doors of China and other countries for the allotment of Japanese commercial and industrial capital. It is in her interest to smash the giants of European imperialism by parts.

Turkey: Even the notorious enemies of the long-suffering Turkish people are now clear what is happening in this country: a healthy process of national revival. Those who doubted, or did not believe it, experienced it on their own skin. The bayonets of the Turkish workers and peasants and the Turkish progressive intelligentsia, dedicated to the cause of the national revival of Turkey, have taught those who should think realistically. Four hundred years ago, Russian tsars had to defeat the Kazan Khanate, the citadel of the northern Turks, and through the corpses of the Tatar fighters, step further – to the East. Then the Western European imperialists had to defeat the southern Ottoman Turks to open their way to the same East. Was not the desperate attack of Turkey on their side preceding the advance of the peoples of the West to the East? To become the real masters of the situation in Asia and Africa, the peoples of Europe had to step over the corpses of the Ottoman fighters. The fall of Kazan under the onslaught of the Russians occurred not in one day. Dozens of times they attacked it, and the conquest of Tatarstan is preceded by dozens of years of struggle between the then two northern titans: Kazan and Moscow. The winners did not immediately manage to consolidate their gain. It took several decades of uninterrupted guerrilla warfare between the victors and the vanquished, with all the horrors of extermination and slaughter, until the will of the vanquished was finally broken. Europe needed hundreds of years of struggle against the southern Turks to weaken them and take away from them the Balkans, Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, etc. The rulers of Europe failed and will not be able to break Turkey. She is alive and will live. We think that she will not only live, but will also breathe life into those former parts that were torn away from her by the violence of Europe, to the rest of the Middle East.

China: China, this oldest nation of all the old peoples of the world, slept for a long time, but finally opened its eyes. He is awakening now. Awakening from centuries of hibernation, he lies on the bed and straightens his numb joints. But he will soon rise to his feet. No power can keep him in bed now. What is happening in recent years in China, this is a deep indication of the revival of these people. The Chinese people managed to make a revolution in 1911. She will also be able to complete the next revolution, after which the unified parts of China will merge into a mighty steel fist, after the impact of whose punch the peoples of the West will hardly recover. The periodic outbreaks of the civil war in China are only a prelude to the great concert of the revival of the four hundred million Chinese people. Let tens and hundreds of thousands of victims perish in this bloody struggle of the Chinese people; these sacrifices are unavoidable and they will not be wasted for nothing. Civil wars in China are only a manifestation of the great process of consolidating the Chinese nation, which will require for its completion, not one more decade.

India: India awakens as well. The process of rebuilding India is more painful than the process of China’s rebirth. And this is quite understandable: after all, India is a colony of the most powerful of European bandits – England. But no matter how terrible the old sea pirate is, it can not resist the liberation movement of India. Through repression, bribery, provocations and diplomatic tricks, England will be able, perhaps, to delay the process of emancipation of India, but it can not completely stop it.

The liberation movement of India is wavy. The rise of revolutionary sentiments alternate with their decline. But one thing is clear: any such temporary “decline” in the revolutionary mood of the Indian people is only a shift, followed by a new upsurge and a new wave of revolutionary sentiments, stronger and more formidable. We have no doubt that eventually, the day will come when the revolutionary wave of the liberation movement of India will break through all the artificial dams that Britain has barred from it and the whole world, Egypt, Morocco, and the colonies of Russia will be influenced by its flooding. It strengthens the general chorus of revolutionary efforts for liberation from the oppression of the West and the movement of Egypt, Morocco and the colonies of Russia is no different from the revolutionary liberation movement of China, India, Turkey, etc. All of them occur under the slogan of emancipation from imperialism, or rather, the hegemony of the peoples of the West. It differs only in its shape and pace: it is stronger or weaker, faster or slower, more stormy or calmer, larger or less than the movement of the former, depending on which country, under what historical conditions and with what kind of driving forces it occurs. 

We will not dwell in more detail on the movement of Egypt, Morocco and other African or Asian colonies of the West, because these are well known in their basic features. Here we will highlight the movement of the colonial peoples of Russia. We note that the liberation movement in the colonies of Russia (Turkestan, the Caucasus, Ukraine, the Crimea, Belarus, the Turkic-Finnish and Mongolian peoples) is evident. If the defeat of tsarist Russia by Japan in 1904, which caused the revolution of 1905, contributed to the awakening of national self-consciousness of the colonial, oppressed peoples of this country, its defeat on the Western and Caucasian fronts in the world war that caused the revolution of 1917 only deepened the process of the liberation movements of these peoples. The facts of the separation of Poland, Finland and the small Baltic states from Russia; the facts of the emergence of the Tatar, Bashkir, Kirghiz, Central Asian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian and other republics, as well as a dozen autonomous national regions, systematically fighting for the expansion of sovereignty rights, eloquently confirm this position. And no matter how much the pan-Russians and their supporters (under whatever mask they may be: under the guise of “democrats” or “communists”) seek to eliminate this movement, no matter how much they try to reduce their role to the role of ordinary Russian provinces, or to its weakening, they have not yet succeeded in doing so, and will not be able to, no matter how clever the frauds are, invented by them, in the direction of combating the growing activity of the “nationals” in their struggle for national independence. So far, all this has produced only the opposite results.

By establishing the USSR, the pan-Russians would like to restore, in fact, a single, indivisible Russia, the hegemony of the Great Russians over other peoples, but not a year later did all the nations declared their loud protest against the centralistic tendencies of pan-Russian Moscow (the session of the Council of Nationalities of the last session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR).

Wanting to weaken Turkestan, economically and politically, Moscow is dismembering the Turanian peoples today into small separate tribes, but in less than two years, the dismembered parts of Turan 24 will talk about restoring unity and unite into a stronger, more powerful and organized state unit. Today, Russia separates Mongolia from China. She wants to “tame” this country to herself. And Mongolia does not mind succumbing to Moscow’s embrace. But what Mongolia will say tomorrow, when it gets to its feet and strengthens its “Khuruldan”25, it is still unknown. From the experience of the last revolution in Russia, we came to the conclusion that no matter what class in Russia came to power, none of them would be able to restore the former “greatness” and power of this country. Russia as a multinational state and the state of the Russians inevitably goes to disintegration and to dismemberment. One of two things: either it (Russia) will be dismembered into its constituent national parts and form several new and independent state organisms, or the Russian sovereignty in Russia will be replaced by the collective sovereignty of the “nations,” in other words, the dictatorship of the Russian people over all other people will be replaced with the dictatorship of these latter people over the Russian people. This is a historical inevitability as a derivative of a combination. Rather, the first will happen, and if the second happens, it will still be just a transition to the first. The former Russia, which was restored under the present form of the USSR, will not last long. It is transitory and temporary.

These are only the last sighs, the last convulsions of the dying. Against the backdrop of the disintegration of Russia, the figures of the following national state entities are quite distinct: Ukraine (with Crimea and Belarus), the Caucus can exist as a union of the North Caucasus with Transcaucasia, Turan (as an alliance of Tatarstan, Bashkiria, Kyrgyzstan and a federation of Turkestan republics), Siberia and Great Russia. We do not consider Finland, Poland and the small Baltic states that have already separated from Russia.

Thus, the facts of the liberation movement of the colonies and semi-colonies are evident. It exists and it is real, it progresses and develops.

Where are the reasons and the material basis of this movement? From what does it arise and what is its real essence and sum of international social and legal mutual relations?26

References

Original Text

1. The literal translation of the text’s title from Russian goes as “Some of our Considerations…,” yet the text is referred often as a “political program” or “theses” by both prosecutors and Galiev himself. We find it rather appropriate to translate it as “considerations” here. In Galiev’s 1928 testimony, it becomes clear that the text was written between 1923 and 1925.
2. Central Archive of the Federal Counterintelligence Service. N 6169. T.2. L.101-109.
3. Togirov and Mirsaid Sultan-Galiyev, “Liberation movement exists, progresses and develops,” Gasirlar Avazi (May 1995), pp. 119-131; in Izbrannye Trudy (Selected Works), Kazan, “Gasır,” pp. 525-540 (online at: http://www.archive.gov.tatarstan.ru/magazine/res/fck/Image/prilogenia/1_0002.pdf [accessed Oct. 11, 2018]).
4. Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, “Avtobiografičeskij očerk “Kto ja?”: Pis’mo členam Central’noj kontrol’noj komissii, kopija – I.V. Stalinu i L.D. Trockomu. 23 maja 1923” (Autobiographical essay “Who Am I?”: Letter to members of the Central Control Commission of the Party, copy for Stalin and Trotsky, May 23rd, 1923), in Izbrannye trudy, pp. 446-509.
5. Alexandre Bennigsen et Chantal Quelquejay, Sultan Galiev, le père de la révolution tiers-mondiste: “Les inconnus de l’histoire” (Paris: Fayard, 1986); Alexandre Bennigsen et Chantal Quelquejay, Les mouvements nationaux chez les musulmans de Russie: Le “Sultangaliévisme” au Tatarstan (Paris et La Haye: Mouton & Co., 1960).
6. Artemy M. Kalinovsky, “Encouraging Resistance: Paul Henze, the Bennigsen School, and the Crisis of Détente,” in Michael Kemper and Artemy M. Kalinovsky (eds.), Reassessing Orientalism: Interlocking Orientologies during the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 211-231.
7. Halil İnalcık, “Review: Le Khanat de Crimee Dans les Archives du Musee de Palais de Topkapi by Alexandre Bennigsen,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (Aug. 1981), Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 373-374.
8. Maxime Rodinson, “A Forgotten Precursor,” in Gilbert Archar (eds.), Marxism and the Muslim World, trans. Jean Matthews (London: Zed Press, 2015), pp. 133-141. ; see also the report by  Marxist-Leninist Research Bureau: The Case of Sultan Galiev (1995), No.3 (online at http://ml-review.ca/aml/MLRB/Sultan-Galiyev-FINAL.htm [accessed Nov. 16, 2018]).
9. Matthieu Renault, “The Idea of Muslim National Communism: On Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev,” Viewpoint Magazine (2015) (online at     https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/03/23/the-idea-of-muslim-national-communism-on-mirsaid-sultan-galiev/ [accessed Oct. 19, 2018]).
10. Halit Kakınç, Sultangaliyev ve Milli Komünizm (Bulut Yayınları, 2004); Hakan Reyhan, Doğunun Büyük Devrimcileri Mollanur Vahidov ve Sultan Galiyev (Alter Yayıncılık, 2006).
11. Alexander Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology: The General Science of Organization, trans. George Gorelik (Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications, 1980).
12. John Biggart, “Alexander Bogdanov and the short history of the Kultintern,” (2015), revised version of an article that first appeared in Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A.Bogdanova [Bulletin of the International Bogdanov Institute] (2001), No.3 (7), pp.76–87. (online at https://bogdanovlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/2016-08-14-biggart-bogdanov-kultintern.pdf [accessed Nov. 12, 2018]).
13. Craig Brandista, Dimensions of Hegemony: Language, Culture, and Politics in Revolutionary Russia, Historical Materialism Book Series 86 (London: Bril, 2016).
14. James D. White, Marx and Russia: The of A Doctrine (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018).
15. See Brandista, Dimensions, Brill.
17. Halit Kakınç, Destansı Kuramcı Sultangaliyev: Yorumlu Külliyat (Bulut Yayınları, 2004).[/note[  The Turkish translation of the present article was made by Arif Acaloğlu, and published simultaneously by Ulusal and Toplumsal Tarih (Social History) journals.16Mirsaid Sultan-Galiyev, “Asya ve Avrupa Türk Halklarının Sosyopolitik, Ekonomik ve Kültürel Gelişmelerinin Esaslarına İlişkin Bazı Görüşlerimiz”, Toplumsal Tarih (Feb. 1998), No. 50, pp. 39‐42.; Mirsaid Sultan-Galiyev, “Asya ve Avrupa Türk Halklarının Sosyopolitik, Ekonomik ve Kültürel Gelişmelerinin Esaslarına İlişkin Bazı Görüşlerimiz II”, Toplumsal Tarih (Mar. 1998), No. 51, pp. 50‐55.;  Mirsaid Sultan-Galiyev, “Görüşlerim: Asya ve Avrupa Türk Halklarının Sosyopolitik, Ekonomik ve Kültürel Gelişmelerinin Esaslarına İlişkin Bazı Görüşlerimiz”, Ulusal (Spring 1998), No. 5/6, pp. 9-21.
18. Galiev refers to his autobiographical essay “Who am I?”
19. Ibid.
20. Galiev here refers to the eleventh RCP congress held in 1922 (online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm [accessed Nov. 11, 2018]).
21. The name is as in the document. That’s correct: Mirsaid.
22. Last name not read
23. The article was seized by the NKVD from M. Sultan-Galiyev during the search.
24. Turan is a geographical term for Turkestan-Turanian lowland. Turan is the country of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. The Turanian peoples are an outdated term denoting the inhabitants of the Turanian Highland, the Turkic language group of peoples.
25. Khuruldan (Khural) – the name of the highest central and local governing bodies of state power in the MPR.
26. This sentence ends the article.

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Sultan Galiev - a forgotten precursor. Socialism and the National Question

Maxime Rodinson

The book on which these reflections are based has just been published under the auspices of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (6e section).1 It is a conscientious and detailed study of a set of questions which have on the whole been given far more serious attention in the Anglo-Saxon countries than in France, where gratuitous political prophecy passes for scientific research all too often. A book like this is usually received with a priori suspicion in militant circles, and even elsewhere. My aim is to offer some counterweight to this traditional sectarianism.

Sultan Galiev is one of the men who played an important part in the early days of the Communist International and the Soviet Union. Most socialist militants are aware of him only through a passing reference made by Stalin,2 rather an emotional reference, I used to think. Perhaps I was right. To have aroused some emotion in Stalin is already something in the way of an achievement.

Mir Sayit Sultan Galiev was born the son of a Tartar schoolteacher in about 1900. [This date is almost certainly wrong. Other sources have him born in a village in Bashkiria in 1880 - Ed.] The Tartars were a Muslim minority within the Tsarist Empire, with a character all of their own. There were about three and a half million of them scattered throughout the Empire, but they were concentrated to some extent in the ’Government’ of Kazan, their political and cultural centre. They were mainly peasants, and the few Tartar industrial workers still kept close ties to rural life. But there was also a bourgeoisie: a few industrialists and many shopkeepers, from which a Muslim ’clergy’ and an intelligentsia had emerged. This bourgeoisie and these intellectuals were active, dynamic and ambitious. Many had long been ’modernists’ in their attitude towards Muslim dogma, and ’advanced’ in their attitudes to the traditional Muslim way of life. Their teaching activities often led them to penetrate and even establish themselves in areas inhabited by their less evolved co-religionists, such as Central Asia, Siberia and the Caucasus. In so doing, they introduced new ideas and modern ways, and generally stirred things up. They can be seen playing this role in the translations of Kazak and Tadjik novels published by Aragon, for instance.3 All this was naturally viewed with great suspicion by the reactionary Khans.

Then came the October Revolution. An important part of the Tartar intelligentsia supported it, thinking that the socialism established by the new regime would realise and deepen the reformist movement’s programme. Naturally enough they particularly appreciated Bolshevism’s internationalist orientation. They hoped that this would lead to equality between ethnic groups and put an end to Great-Russian domination, a domination the ’Whites’ would re-impose should they be victorious.

Sultan Galiev joined the Bolshevik Party in November 1917, and, thanks to his talents as an orator and organiser, soon became an important figure as the representative of this ’colonial’ intelligentsia. He became a member and then president of the ’Central Muslim Commissariat’, a new body affiliated to the Narkomnats (The People’s Commissariat for Nationalities), a Commissariat presided over by a Bolshevik leader still relatively unknown at the time, Joseph Stalin. With the help of friends, Sultan Galiev created a Muslim Communist Party, and raised Tartar military units which played a key role in the struggle against Koltchak. Despite the opposition of the local Russian Soviets and communists, he extracted a promise from the Central Government to create a large predominantly Muslim state, the Tartaro-Bachkir Republic, which was to have five to six million inhabitants and to cover the vast areas of the Middle Volga and the Southern Urals.

It was during this period that he developed a series of ideas which he hoped to defend and to realise. He saw Muslim society, with the exception of a few big feudal landowners and bourgeois, as a unit which had been collectively oppressed by the Russians under Tsarism. There was thus no point in dividing it with artificially created differences and class struggles. Since for the time being the poorer Muslims were too impoverished and uncultured to provide cadres, one should not hesitate to make use of the available ones: the petty-bourgeois intellectuals and even the reformist clergy, who had given some proof of their faithfulness to the Revolution. In fact, the socialist revolution should adapt itself to fit a society so imbued with Muslim traditions. Sultan Galiev, an atheist himself, therefore recommended that Islam be handled gently, through a gradual ’de-fanaticisation’ and secularisation. The Muslims of Russia, and especially the most enlightened amongst them, the Tartars, would then be capable of playing a tremendous historical role. For on the world scale the Revolution would have to be above all a liberation of the colonial peoples. It was therefore vital to counteract the Comintern tendency to concentrate mainly on the West. The socialist revolution would begin in the East. And who could bear the torch of both culture and socialism into Asia better than the Bolshevik Muslims of Russia?

To avoid confusion it should be stated right from the start that neither religious nor clerical demands were at issue. There were several ethnic groups in Russia whose religion was Islam, which had given them a common culture and tradition, and had similarly influenced many important aspects of their way of life. There was thus a certain incontestable cultural unity amongst these people which went beyond their ethnic particularities, especially as the latter were in many cases not very pronounced. This cultural unity had been reinforced by their resistance to attempts to convert them to Christianity and to turn them into Russians, an attempt which they perceived not as an ideological struggle, but as a colonial aggression against their common cultural heritage.

These ideas worried the Bolshevik leaders. Stalin supported Sultan Galiev against those who wanted to fan class war in Muslim circles and break off all contact with the non-proletarian elements. But unlike the Tartar, he saw the class alliance as only temporary. Once Koltchak and the Czechs had been defeated, the support of the Volga and Ural Muslims, whose cadres had been disabled during the struggle, became less important. The Muslim Communist Party lost its autonomy and the idea of a lasting alliance between the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat was rejected by the September 1920 Congress of Oriental Peoples in Baku. It was proclaimed that the national revolution had to be led by the proletariat, that is to say, the Western proletariat, and that, as one Congress delegate declared, ’the salvation of the East lies only in the victory of the proletariat’.4 The project of a great Muslim state was dropped. Instead, two small republics were created, the one Bachkir and the other Tartar. Most Tartars lived outside the latter, and its population was only 51.6 per cent Tartar. Its towns were almost 80 per cent Russian. Kazan, the capital, was a Russian centre.

It was at this stage that Sultan Galiev, who still held an important official post, moved into opposition, in an attempt to fight the manifestations of what he called ’Great Russian chauvinism’, and sought to infiltrate his Tartar partisans into Party organisations and Soviets. He wanted to make Kazan into a centre for Tartar national culture and a revolutionary seedbed from which ’Muslim Communism’ would spread to all the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union and beyond, to the whole Muslim East. He struggled against the leftists who argued for a more anti-bourgeois policy and were backed by the Russian elements. And he worked towards making Tartar and not Russian the official language of administration.

Having come up against the unflinching opposition of the Central Government and the Russian Communists, especially after the 10th Party Congress had passed a clear resolution condemning the ’nationalist deviation’, Sultan Galiev established more or less secret contacts with a number of discontented militants. He wanted to set up a common front against the Russians, whom he accused of readopting Tsarist colonial policy. How far did he go in seeking support for this front? Stalin accused him of having gone so far as to contact the Basmatsh, the gangs of insurgent Muslims who were waging armed struggle against the Bolsheviks of Turkestan. But there is no reason to take Stalin’s words at face value. Be that as it may, in 1923 Stalin had Sultan Galiev arrested and expelled from the Communist Party. He was released shortly afterwards, but Kamenev was later to regret that he and Zinoviev had given their consent to this ’first arrest of an eminent member of the Party on Stalin’s initiative’.5

Little is known of Sultan Galiev’s life after 1923. He was perhaps exiled, re-arrested, then released. He worked in Moscow in the state publishing houses. But he continued his struggle, clandestinely. He had created a whole underground organisation which had attracted a great many Muslim communists, mainly Tartars. He developed his ideas in the light of the evolving situation. As he now saw it, the socialist revolution did not resolve the problem of inequality between peoples. The Bolshevik programme amounted to replacing oppression by the European bourgeoisie with oppression by the European proletariat. In any case, Soviet rule was being liquidated; NEP was in full swing. It would either be overthrown by the Western bourgeoisie or would turn into state capitalism and bourgeois democracy. Whatever the outcome, the Russians as a people would once again become dominating oppressors. The only possible remedy was to ensure the developing colonial world’s hegemony over the European powers. This meant creating a Communist Colonial International, which would be independent of the Third International, and perhaps even opposed to it. Russia, as an industrial power, would have to be excluded. The spread of communism in the East, which this new International would promote, would make it possible to shake off Russian hegemony over the communist world.

As the Russian regime grew stronger it became less and less tolerant of dissent. On several occasions the Russians realised they were facing an organised Tartar opposition. Stalin clamped down on it. In November 1928 Sultan Galiev was arrested and sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, which he served in Solovski. He was releases in 1939 and we lose track of him in 1940 . . .

 Lessons of a forgotten history

Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Quelquejay deserve our gratitude for having revived this forgotten history. Their task of sifting, scrutinising and organising a mass of documents in Tartar and Russian was a difficult and important one. Hopefully we can draw certain conclusions from their findings.

The first thing which comes to mind is that analysis of the political struggle over the problem of the Muslim minorities in the Soviet Union clearly demonstrates that there can be contradictions under a socialist regime. This is not new of course: Mao Tse-tung himself has said so - albeit with the quite gratuitous rider that such contradictions can only be ’non-antagonistic’. But that does not change the fact that every time someone highlights one of these contradictions on a practical level everything is done to deny it or to minimise it. Naturally, the most dogmatic make no attempt to analyse such contradictions, to explain them or to understand their causes and their repercussions. On the contrary, each phase of the policy adopted by the communist leaders is presented as determined by a superior wisdom which carefully follows the twists and turns of the national and international conjuncture, guided by the infallible compass of Marxist doctrine. Of course the reality is quite different: each policy decision is the outcome of constant struggles between opposing tendencies and expresses the balance of forces between them. The social background to these struggles is probably quite different from that in a class society, but the mechanism is essentially similar. In other words, history continues and we have not yet entered the timeless realm of the holy city. Many people will answer that all this is quite obvious, but perhaps they do not grasp all its complications.

Soviet policy could have been different, more oriented towards Asia, for example. Some of Sultan Galiev’s ideas could perhaps have been put into practice. But there were very real obstacles to such a programme: the lack of Muslim cadres, the situation in the East at the time. In the interior there was a definite danger of Tartar nationalist deviation, strengthened by harmful Tartar chauvinism. Abroad, even if Sultan Galiev’s ideas, which were partly shared by the Indian communist Manabendra Nath Roy and others who defended them during the first Comintern Congresses, had been applied, the benefits would probably have been few and far between. Even Walter Z. Laqueur agrees with this pessimistic view, and nobody could suspect him of being indulgent towards the Bolshevik leaders.6 But it is clear that the choice of orientation in this respect was also influenced by other considerations: there was the dogmatism of the leaders, the fact that at certain periods the idea that the proletariat was the predominant force in the revolution was applied mechanically and against all common sense, even to areas in which the proletariat was non-existent. Indeed, on the whole, and until quite recently, the communist leaders have been as obtuse as the capitalists in their approach to the colonial people’s awakening. And, although their lack of understanding is excusable on many levels, the fact remains that it has had many disastrous consequences even from their own point of view.

 Socialism and the national question

It is also clear that socialism, by which I mean the socialisation of the means of production, does not automatically resolve all problems. Stalinism has shown us that despotism was possible under socialism, and hence that there was a problem of political power. Other events suggest that the national problem also does not necessarily vanish under socialism. ’The fact that the proletariat will have carried out the social revolution will not turn it into a saint,’ wrote Lenin in 1916. ’But eventual errors (and the selfish interests which push one to ride on the backs of others) will inevitably lead it to realise the following truth . . . By turning capitalism into socialism, the proletariat creates the possibility of entirely abolishing national oppression: this possibility will “only” [“only”!] become fact when democracy has been completely established in all fields.’7

The example of Sultan Galiev demonstrates that between 1920 and 1928 the Tartars were very wary of the Russian communists, and feared a Russian communist neo-colonialism. The Bolshevik leaders denied that such a fear was justified. Stalin himself declared, in 1923, that ’If Turkestan is effectively a colony, as it was under Tsarism, then the Basmatsh are right, and it is not up to us to judge Sultan Galiev, but up to him to judge us, as the sort of people who tolerate the existence of a colony in the framework of Soviet power.’8 But things were not quite so simple. Soviet policy towards the Soviet Union’s Muslim minorities has, on the whole, been extremely attentive. The Muslims have been well cared for and their areas have been industrialised. Indigenous cadres were gradually promoted, and this process continues. Muslims are protected by exactly the same laws as other Soviet citizens, and in practice the ’locals’ have even enjoyed certain privileges vis-a-vis the Russians. But this evolution has been carefully controlled. A tight grip is maintained over all key posts. Furthermore, the general tendency of Stalinist mores did not favour interpenetration between communities. The situation has nothing in common with colonial situations elsewhere. But national problems persist, as was clearly shown by the behaviour of many minority groups during World War II, and as is borne out by many small incidents even today.9 And incidentally, such happenings would attract less attention, and might well be less distorted abroad, if the Soviets did not put so much effort into covering them up and attacking the ’slanderers’ who dare to suggest that everything is not absolutely perfect in these areas of the Soviet Union.

 A precursor

Sultan Galiev does not seem to have had any real spiritual heirs in the Muslim areas of the Soviet Union. We do not know what would happen today if political pressure groups were allowed to emerge. But what one can surmise about the aspirations held by the peoples of these areas shows them to have little in common with Sultan Galiev. Their demands appear to be much more ’reformist’, much less revolutionary. If they could, they would press for slight changes, without questioning the regime’s right to rule. The role of propagators of the Revolution in the East seems to hold little attraction for them. It is possible, or course, that the lid of official conformism hides a much more ebullient reality . . .

But it is outside the Soviet Union, in the so-called underdeveloped countries, that the contemporary situation constantly makes one think of Sultan Galiev’s ideas. To what extent can he be said to be a precursor of the new line adopted by the Soviet Union since 1954, a line which backs the Afro-Asiatic neutralist bourgeoisie? To what extent can he be said to be a precursor of Maoist communism, which concentrates essentially on the immediate struggle for socialist revolution in the ex-colonies?

The attitude of Sultan Galiev and the Tartar communists in 1918 stemmed from their refusal to serve as a mere back-up for a European proletarian movement, however justified. They wanted the Revolution to be their revolution as well, and to follow a course determined by their own actions, not by those of their somewhat over-paternal elder brother, the Russian proletariat. One should note that one of the latter’s methods of intervention, which was later to be used elsewhere, was an insistence that indigenous support should be drawn only from amongst the proletariat. In countries where the proletariat was still embryonic, this amounted to arbitrarily designating the individuals who were worth talking to. The Tartars’ essential demand ’to carry out our own revolution’ came at the wrong time. The Bolshevik leadership was already taking a very different turn: careful bureaucratic control over every aspect of the mass movement. Both the Soviets and the trade unions at home and allied or communist parties abroad, were being kept on a very tight rein.

Significantly, the man of the moment was Stalin, whose universal and petty wariness was later to become quite pathological. The ailing Lenin was ignored when he warned that ’The harm which a lack of unity between the national state apparatuses and the Russian state apparatus may cause is nothing compared to the damage which will result from an excess of centralism; this will injure not only ourselves but the whole International, and the hundreds of millions of Asians who will soon follow in our footsteps and burst onto the historical scene.’10 In theory the International’s purpose was to further the world’s march towards socialism. Its task would therefore seem to have been to develop a Marxist nationalism fighting for national independence and socialisation in the dependent countries. The social development of the East at the time precluded any more ambitious ventures. In spite of all his mistakes, it is clear that this was Sultan Galiev’s basic intuition. The Stalinist system made it impossible for the colonial Communist Parties to accomplish this task. Essentially, it was their rigid subordination to the world strategy of an International centred on the European world which was to blame for this failure. These colonial Communist Parties were sometimes even directly dependent on their European equivalents. A Marxian nationalism did nonetheless eventually emerge, borne on the tide of history. But it did not do so in the framework of the communist parties, and it took American anti-communist imbecility to push the Moroccan and Algerian left, Castro, Sekou Toure and Modibo Keita into the arms of what remained of the Third International.

Today the Colonial International recognised by Sultan Galiev exists. It takes the form of the Afro-Asian bloc, which is beginning to extend to Latin America, and is united against white domination, as the Tartar commissar dreamed it would be. But already there are differences, which do not yet amount to a split, between a Marxist wing committed to rapid advance towards socialism, and a bourgeois wing which favours slow transformation or even no change at all. There are also a number of ambiguous cases which are particularly interesting.

Since 1954 the Soviet Union has supported this Colonial International. But Khrushchev is only apparently and partially following Sultan Galiev’s line. The colonial peoples are still seen only as a back-up force whose function is to exert pressure on the Soviet Union’s white adversaries, to extract concessions from them, not to destroy them. The Soviet Union does not encourage socialisation in the Third World and probably does not even desire it. It would seem that the Soviet authorities finally agree with Sultan Galiev on this point, but their motive is not to strengthen the revolution; the aim is a much more selfish one. The world triumph of socialism is still seen essentially as the result of the more or less revolutionary evolution of the industrially advanced countries. It is only in China, where distance and ancestral Chinese cunning made it easier to sidestep the Stalinist international strategy, that Marxist nationalism was able to emerge triumphant in the framework of a traditional Communist Party. Indeed, Mao Tse-Tung was quite content to apply the ideas defended by the Comintern during its popular or national front phases. But he applied them systematically and consistently. His victory and the ensuing circumstances, the militant hostility of the white nations and the socialisation of Chinese society, led him to take the helm of a new type of colonial communism, which he proposed as a model for the whole underdeveloped world as early as 1949. Since then, events in China have constantly brought the ideas of the new Chinese leaders closer and closer to some of Sultan Galiev’s. The primacy of the colonial revolution and the fear that a neo-colonialism, or a neo-paternalism at least, might eventually emerge from within the heart of the socialist world itself have been constantly reiterated themes.

Thus Sultan Galiev’s ideas have resurfaced in the two main currents of world communism. Of course, nobody quotes this condemned champion of yesterday’s obscure struggles. And yet he can be seen as the first prophet of the colonial struggle against white hegemony within socialism itself, as the first to forecast a break between the Russians’ European communism and Colonial communism. He could also be celebrated as the man who first proclaimed the importance of Marxist nationalism in colonial countries, and the international relevance for socialism of those national movements which do not immediately envisage complete class war and socialisation. Mao himself was still adopting this position at Yenan. The future will no doubt pass its own verdict on this first representative of the Third World within the communist movement. Surely it will not fail to recognise his role as an outcast prophet.

References

Original Text

1. Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Quelquejay, Les Mouvements Nationaux chez les Musulmans de Russie, 1: Le ’Sultangalievisme’ au Tartarstan, Mouton, La Haye, 1960 (Documents et Témoignages, 3).

2. In fact, throughout one of the speeches delivered to the IVth Conference of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, extended to include militants responsible for the republics and national regions, June 9 to 12, 1923. See I.V. Stalin, Sotshineniya, Bk. V, Moscow, 1947, pp.301-312. For important details of this conference, which had been specially called to condemn Sultan Galiev, who had been arrested in late April or sometime in May, see E.H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, Vol. IV, The Interregnum, Macmillan, London, 1960, pp.287-9; Bennigsen and Quelquejay express some reservations about the passage. A photograph of the participants in the congress, which was only numbered IVth in order to play down its importance, appears in the official Istoriya Kommunistitsheskoy partii Sovietskogo soyuza, Bk. IV/I, Moscow, 1970, p.283. The accompanying commentary makes it clear that the condemnation of Sultan Galiev still persists in the official ideology, and is indeed reinforced by contemporary considerations.

3. For example, Sariddine Aini, Boukhara, translated from the Tadjik by S. Borodine and P. Korotkine, Gallimard, Paris, 1956; Moukhtar Aouezov, La Jeunesse d’Abai, translated from the Kazak by L. Sobolev and A. Vitez, Gallimard, Paris, 1959.

4. Premier Congrès des peuples de l’Orient, Bakou, 1920, Petrograd, 1921, French edn., quoted by Bennigsen and Quelquejay, op. cit., p.140.

5. As he once told Trotsky. Cf. L. Trotsky, Stalin, Hollis and Carter, London, 1947, p.417.

6. Walter Z. Laqueur, The Soviet Union and the Middle East, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1959, p.22.

7. ’Summary of a discussion on the right of nations to self-determination’ in V.I. Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, Collected Works, Vol. 20, pp.1-34 (4th Russian edn.), (Lenin’s punctuation). For an analysis of how Lenin’s position evolved, how it differed from Stalin’s and how the problem manifests itself in the Soviet Union today, see H. Carrère d’Encausse, ’Unité prolétarienne et diversité nationale, Lenine et la théorie de l’autodétermination’ in Revue Française de Science Politique, Vol. XXI, No. 2, pp.221-255.

8. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, various edns.

9. I was probably minimising the problem. See A. Bennigsen and C. Lemercier-Quelquejay, L’Islam en Union Soviétique, Payot, Paris, 1968, for an objective account.

10. Remarks on ’nationalities and autonomy’; see Marxist Quarterly, October 1956, p.255. ’National apparatuses’ refers to the apparatuses of the non-Russian Communist Parties in the Union.

P.S.

This article was first published in French in Les Temps Modernes, No. 177, Paris, 1961, and formed a chapter of Rodinson’s Marxism and the Muslim World, Zed Press, 1979. The introductor, Richard Price, is journalist at Workers action ( UK), which has published Rodinson’s article in october 2004.