The other day in Kyrgyzstan, which is considered one of the closest post-Soviet republics to Russia, it was decided to rename the Day of the October Revolution, the Day of History and Memory of Ancestors. Considering the general trends in the political development of the post-Soviet states, this is not surprising. November 7 has long been not a holiday in the Russian Federation, where instead of it, November 4 is now celebrated as the Day of National Unity. So, on the one hand, the President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev acted quite in the spirit of the "big brother", renaming the holiday into a similar in meaning to the Russian Day of National Unity. All would be fine, but there are some very interesting facts.
Firstly, the Day of History and Memory of Ancestors was established in memory of the uprising against the Russian Empire, which began in 1916, when the country was just participating in the First World War. Secondly, for Kyrgyzstan, oddly enough, November 7 is a much more symbolic day than for Russia. After all, thanks to the October Revolution, Kyrgyzstan received its statehood - first as an autonomy, then as a union republic, and now as a sovereign country.
The famous uprising of 1916 broke out in Central Asia due to a number of factors. The formal reason for the uprising was the decision of the tsarist government to mobilize the native population to carry out rear work in the front line. Before that, the overwhelming majority of Central Asians were not involved in military service in the Russian army. Naturally, this decision caused a storm of discontent among the residents of Turkestan, who were by no means going to go to distant lands for hard work, abandoning their own families, land plots and farms.
Do not forget about the social background. Large plots of land in Central Asia were allocated to Russian settlers and Cossacks, which also caused discontent among local residents. There was always a latent tension between the Cossacks and the settlers on the one hand, and the native population on the other. But until Russia entered the war, relative order was maintained by the impressive forces of the Cossacks and military units. With the outbreak of the war, most of the Cossacks were sent from Central Asia to the front, which reduced the level of security in the region. Russian villages and Cossack villages remained practically without a male population, which immediately increased their vulnerability to criminal encroachments from both insurgents and ordinary criminals.
Protest moods were skillfully fueled by part of the local elite - feudal lords and clergy. It is no secret that many representatives of the Turkestan elite, while formally demonstrating their loyalty to the Russian government, in fact secretly hated Russia and dreamed of returning to the times before the Russian conquest of Central Asia. Religious fundamentalist sentiments were also widespread, especially among the Sarts (sedentary Uzbeks and Tajiks). Plus, one should not forget that by 1916 the Russian Empire was deeply bogged down in the First World War, and Turkish agents were working hard in Central Asia.
It was the conductors of Turkish influence that contributed to the spread of pan-Turkic and anti-Russian sentiments among the Central Asian elite, which, in turn, broadcast it to the masses. Already in 1914, proclamations began to spread in Central Asia that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who bore the title of Caliph of Muslims, declared jihad to the Entente and Russia, including, and all the faithful should join him. In neighboring East Turkestan (the Chinese province of Xinjiang), German and Turkish agents were operating, who arranged secret deliveries of weapons across the poorly guarded area due to the landscape and the length of the Russian-Chinese border. Preparations for the uprising were in full swing.
The riots began on July 4, 1916 in Khojent, and by August 1916 they had swept over most of Turkestan, including Semirechye. On the territory of modern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as in the Fergana Valley, the uprising reached its greatest scope. The victims of the rebels were, first of all, civilians - settlers, Cossack families. Russian villages, Cossack villages and farms were slaughtered with incredible cruelty. Today, Kazakh and Kyrgyz politicians like to talk about the fact that the tsarist government very harshly suppressed the national liberation uprising in the region, forgetting about the atrocities the rebels committed against the civilian population. What was the fault of Russian women, children, old people? They did not make a decision on the mobilization of the native population, did not call on the natives for frontline work. But they paid with their lives for the policy of the tsarist government. The rebels did not spare the civilian population - they killed, raped, robbed, burned houses. Many books and articles have been written about how the "heroes" of the national liberation movement dealt with the peaceful Russian population, so there is no need to go into a more detailed description. It was the peaceful Russian population that took the brunt of the rebels' blow, and by no means the regular troops, which had not yet arrived in time. As soon as Russian troops entered Turkestan, the uprising was quickly suppressed. Separate centers of it blazed until 1917, but on a much smaller scale.
Today, when Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, considered to be Russia's closest allies and partners in Central Asia, commemorate the participants in the uprising against Russia, this is puzzling only at first glance. In fact, this is a completely natural continuation of those attitudes that developed back in Soviet times. Already in the 1920s, the uprising in Turkestan was proclaimed a national liberation, while the atrocities against the local Russian and Cossack population were not covered in Soviet literature. In Soviet times, any uprisings and actions against the Russian Empire were considered just, and the state itself was called nothing but the "prison of peoples". They preferred not to remember the interests and destinies of the Russian and Cossack population. Sadly, the same paradigm persisted in post-Soviet Russia.
This is not surprising, since the post-Soviet Russian state was headed either by representatives of the same party nomenclature, or by younger cadres already trained by them. They see Russia primarily as a continuation of the Soviet Union, and, accordingly, Soviet nationality policy meets with understanding and approval. Hence - the attitude towards the Russian population outside of Russia proper. If Hungary immediately defended the Hungarians living in Transcarpathia and was ready to go against the entire European Union, which supported the Kiev regime, then Russia for thirty years has limited itself only to duty notes of protest against the same Latvia, where the Russian population, in violation of international law, is even deprived of the status of citizens only on the basis of the fact of nationality.
In turn, the leadership of Kyrgyzstan, like other post-Soviet states of Central Asia, needs to strengthen its national identity. To solve this problem, it is necessary to create and take root in the public consciousness of numerous national myths and symbols. Considering that the economic situation in the Central Asian republics leaves much to be desired, the level of corruption is very high, religious fundamentalist ideas are spreading, the ideal way to construct and strengthen national identity and ensure the so-called national unity is to create an image of the enemy. The entire identity of all post-Soviet states is built on opposing themselves to Russia. National history is presented as a story of endless resistance of freedom-loving peoples to Russian aggression, and then to Russian (and Soviet) oppression. Therefore, for more than twenty years, there have been numerous anti-Russian attacks of a very different nature - from the introduction of the status of "non-citizens" in Latvia to the fight against monuments, the transition from Cyrillic to Latin and so on. In addition, the elites of the post-Soviet republics are counting on some support from the United States and the West, which are interested in the final weakening of Russian positions in the post-Soviet space.
The republics of Central Asia themselves are now maneuvering between Russia, the West, China, while at the same time establishing ties with Turkey and other Islamic countries. The main problem is the complete economic fiasco of practically all republics except Kazakhstan. But the authorities of the republics are not able to clearly explain to the population why it lives in poverty, and, moreover, to try to rectify the situation by improving the economy. Therefore, it is much easier for them to continue cultivating the image of an external enemy in the person of “that wrong historical Russia” that conquered and conquered highly cultured and politically stable societies and states of Turkestan in the 18th-19th centuries. Emphasizing the friendly disposition towards modern Russia, the authorities of the post-Soviet republics cannot refrain from once again pricking historical Russia (including the Soviet Union).
At the same time, most post-Soviet states cannot refuse to cooperate with Russia. For example, from the same Kyrgyzstan, a huge number of men and women went to work in Russia. Citizens of this and other republics have been in Russia for years, earn money here, send them home, thereby solving those socio-economic problems of their countries that the elites are unable to solve. A schizophrenic situation is created when the republics of Central Asia are demonstratively switching to the Latin alphabet, minimizing the study of the Russian language in schools, but at the same time millions of labor migrants go to Russia and it is in Russia that they earn money. Would knowledge of the Russian language and culture hurt them making money in Russia?
The second main contradiction is the attitude towards Soviet power. For the post-Soviet states, the Soviet Union is a continuation of the Russian Empire; accordingly, the policy of the USSR is also assessed negatively. But the statehood of the same republics of Central Asia was created precisely thanks to the October Revolution and the national policy of the Soviet Union. The process of creating nations and national republics in many regions of Central Asia was stimulated "from above", by the Soviet government. The republican leaders, who grew up and were brought up in Soviet times, cannot fail to know this. But the political situation requires them to abandon everything Russian, Russian, and therefore Soviet. From the same series - demolition of monuments of the Soviet era in the Baltics and Ukraine.
By the way, in addition to renaming on November 7, the decree of the President of Kyrgyzstan also contains a recommendation to the country's parliament to consider renaming Lenin Peak into Manas Peak. How is this better than the demonstrative demolition of monuments to Lenin in Ukraine after the Euromaidan? After all, it was Lenin who laid the prerequisites for the modern Kyrgyz statehood. Already in the year of Lenin's death, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was created from the southern part of the Dzhetysu and northeastern parts of the Fergana regions of the former Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was renamed into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Region of the RSFSR in 1925. Subsequently, on its basis, the Kyrgyz ASSR was created, on the basis of which, in turn, the Kyrgyz SSR appeared in 1936 - already in the status of a union republic.
Of course, in Russia itself there are many supporters of renaming cities, streets, squares named after Soviet party leaders. We will not go into political discussions on this issue now. The point is that the “deideologization” in Russia and in the post-Soviet republics has a completely different nature. If in Russia the rejection of some Soviet names is based on rejection of the communist ideology, then in the post-Soviet republics the main reason for this rejection is the desire to get rid of any Russian presence. Here Lenin is not Vladimir Ilyich, but Russia.
The Russian leadership views all these processes very neutrally. Not so long ago, in June 2017, the finance ministers of Russia and Kyrgyzstan signed a document providing for the write-off of $ 240 million in debt to Bishkek. This is a huge amount of money that could well be in demand in Russia. But Russia went to meet the Central Asian republic, given its difficult economic and social situation. And this is not the first debt cancellation. Over the past eleven years, Russia has written off more than $ 703 million of external debt to Kyrgyzstan. As you can see, the attitude does not get better from these broad gestures. The East is a delicate matter, and such "gifts" can be understood here as a manifestation of weakness.
