Kazakhstan in 1921 -1928 1 What is New

Kazakhstan in 1921 -1928 1. What is New Economic Policy 2. Soviet nation-building 3. The process of Sovietization in Kazakhstan

Literature • Kenez, Peter. A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. Cambridge 2006 • Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Soviet State and Society: Between Revolutions, 1918 -1929. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), • Bandera V N. "New Economic Policy (NEP) as an Economic Policy. " The Journal of Political Economy 71, no. 3 (1963): . http: //www. jstor. org/stable/1828984 • Brovkin, Vladimir. Russia after Lenin: Politics, Culture, and Society 1921 -1929 (London: Routledge, 1998 • Sheldon L. Richman "War Communism to NEP: The Road from Serfdom. " The Journal of Libertarian Studies V, no. 1 (1981)

What is New Economic Policy • NEP- the economic policy of the government of the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1928, represents a temporary retreat from its previous policy of extreme centralization and doctrinaire socialism. The policy of War Communism, brought the national economy to the point of total breakdown. • Accordingly, the 10 th Party Congress in March of 1921 introduced the measures of a new course in Soviet policy. Lenin realized that the radical approach to communism was unsuited to existing conditions and put in danger the survival of his regime

The essence of NEP • The NEP denationalized service enterprises and small-scale industry, leaving the "commanding heights" of the economy-large-scale industry, transportation, and foreign trade-under state control. • market forces and the monetary system regained • Agriculture and industry staged recoveries with most branches of the economy attaining prewar levels of production by the late 1920 s.

What Were the Results of Lenin's New Economic Policy? • Trade, manufacture, and even agriculture began to boom. • Shops were set up quickly and offered goods that had previously been absent. • Peasants who worked the land began to innovate with new technologies and procedures to offer market crops. • Enterprising individuals were everywhere, appeared new businessmen who could buy and sell anything for profit, specifically for their own gain. • These were so-called Nepmen the independent private trader--became a symbol of the era, flaunted their quick -won wealth.

• the NEP period was a time of relative freedom and experimentation in the social and cultural life of the Soviet Union. • The government tolerated variety of trends in these fields, namely in the art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others became radically experimental and proliferated. Communist writers Maksim Gorkiy and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time, but other authors, many of whose works were later repressed, published work lacking socialist political content.

• Filmmaking, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of legendary cinematographer Sergey Eisenstein's best work dates from this period. • At the same time, the state expanded the primary and secondary school systems and introduced night schools for working adults.

Soviet nation-building • During the Civil War, the non-Russian Soviet republics on the periphery of Russia were theoretically independent, but in fact they were controlled by the central government through the Bolshevik party and the Red Army. • Some communists favored a centralized Soviet state, while nationalists wanted autonomy for the borderlands. A compromise between the two positions was reached in December 1922 with the formation of the USSR

Structure of Soviet Union • The constituent republics of this "Soviet Union" (the Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Transcaucasian republics--the last combining Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) exercised a degree of cultural and linguistic autonomy. • The Central Asian territory was given republic status, beginning with the inclusion of the Turkmen and Uzbek republics in 1924 and concluding with the separation of Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1936. By that year, the Soviet Union included eleven republics, all with government structures and ruling communist parties identical to the one in the Russian Republic.

The Kazakh ASSR • In 1924 and 1925, as a result of the national-state demarcation of the Soviet republics of Central Asia, the territory of Syr Darya and Dzhetysu (formerly Semirech’e) regions settled by Kazakhs became part of the Kirghiz ASSR. The Fifth All-Kazakhstan Congress of Soviets of Kazakhstan (Apr. 15– 19, 1925) restored the historically accurate name of the Kazakh people. The republic was renamed to the Kazakh ASSR. The capital was moved from Orenburg to Kzyl-Orda. Orenburg Province became part of the RSFSR.

• The chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Kazakh ASSR was Nygmet Nurmakov, (1924 -1929) , the chairman of the • Kazakh Central Executive Committee was Zhalay Mynbaev, (1925 -1927), member of the Kazkraikom Bureau Sultanbek Khodzhanov (1894 -1938) and others.

• Under the new administrative-territorial division, the Kazakh ASSR consisted of Akmolinsk, Aktiubinsk, Dzhetysu, Semipalatinsk, and Ural’sk provinces (the former Bukei Province was part of the republic, with the status of a district), and also Kustanai Okrug and Adaev District, which were under the direct jurisdiction of the government of the republic. From 1925 through 1930 the Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Oblast was part of the Kazakh ASSR.

• In February of 1932 the Kazakh ASSR was divided into six oblasts (okrugs were eliminated as early as 1930): Alma-Ata, Aktiubinsk, Vostochnyi Kazakhstan, Karaganda, Zapadnyi Kazakhstan (since 1962, Ural’sk), and Iuzhny Kazakhstan (since 1962, Shimkent). • In accordance with the 1936 Constitution of the USSR, the Kazakh ASSR was made to a Union republic. The Extraordinary Tenth Congress of Soviets of Kazakhstan (March 1937) adopted the constitution of the Kazakh SSR. New oblasts formed as larger units were broken into small ones: in 1936, Kustanai and Severnyi Kazakhstan oblasts; in 1938, Gur’ev, Kzyl-Orda, and Pavlodar oblasts; and in 1939, Dzhambul, Semipalatinsk, and Akmolinsk (since 1961, Tselinograd) oblasts.

The process of Sovietization in Kazakhstan • Leadership posts in Communist Party organizations in the Kazakh oblast (up to the year 1925), and later the krai, were given to officials who were assigned from Moscow and had no knowledge of local life or customs, and hence judged them “according to Moscow stereotypes. ” • The post was held by: S. S. Pestkovskii (1920), I. A. Akulov (1920– 1921), M. Murzagaliev (1921), M. M. Kostelovskaya (1921), G. A. Korostelev (1921– 1924) and V. I. Naneishvili (1924– 1925).

• 2. The Bolsheviks methodically and consistently propagated the view that the pre-revolutionary Kazakh intelligentsia were some sort of reactionary, counterrevolutionary force that had acted in opposition to the cardinal interests of the Kazakh population on the whole. • Stalin’s letter essentially signified the hardening of policy towards the Alash Orda intelligentsia, restricting their activities in the fields of science, the arts and especially in the press. And what is particularly interesting is that the offensive that was to be launched against the main leaders of the Alash party (which had already long since ceased to exist as such) was prepared simultaneously by the various ranks of the Communist Party and OGPU.

• From the 1925 year the process of forcing the Alash Orda intelligentsia out of printed media began. For example, on two occasions (March 2 and October 23) that year the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party reviewed the status of the press in Kazakhstan. Decisions adopted by the Central Committee’s secretariat on March 2, 1925, cite “inadequate control of printed periodicals on the part of the Kirgiz [Kazakh] Krai Committee and local party bodies” and “the influence of nationalistic members of the intelligentsia who are not party members on the leading political line in certain periodical publications. ”

• At a meeting on October 23, 1925, the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee heard a report by Secretary of the Kazakh Krai Committee F. I. Goloshchekin entitled “On the Kazakh Press, ” in which he focused on the “stranglehold” the Alash Orda intelligentsia had on the republic’s Kazakhlanguage press.

• Goloshchekin, appointed to the post of First Secretary of the party’s Krai Committee in 1925, in a letter to I. Stalin outlining the main tasks involved in state-building in Kazakhstan and confirming the commitment of the republic’s leaders to that course, noted that “in all oblasts before the Fifth conference [in December 1925] building was underway, without affecting the auls [nomadic settlements], and aimed at tackling national issues, without concerning class issues within the nation. ”

Political life • From the time of the Bolshevik Revolution and into the early NEP years, the actual leader of the Soviet state was Lenin. • But when Lenin became temporarily incapacitated after a stroke in May 1922, the unity of the Politburo fractured, and a troika (triumvirate) formed by Stalin, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinov'yev assumed leadership in opposition to Trotsky.

• In Lenin's view, Stalin had used coercion to force non-Russian republics to join the Soviet Union, he was uncouth, and he was accumulating too much power through his office of general secretary. Although Lenin recommended that Stalin be removed from that position, the Politburo decided not to take action, and Stalin still was in office when Lenin died in January 1924.

Stalin's Rise to Power • After Lenin's death, two conflicting schools of thought about the future of the Soviet Union arose in party debates. Left-wing communists believed that world revolution was essential to the survival of socialism in the economically backward Soviet Union. Trotsky, one of the primary proponents of this position, called for Soviet support of a permanent world revolutionary movement. As for domestic policy, the left wing advocated the rapid development of the economy and the creation of a socialist society.

• In contrast to these militant communists, the right wing of the party, recognizing that world revolution was unlikely in the immediate future, favored the gradual development of the Soviet Union through continuation of pragmatic programs like the NEP. Yet even Bukharin, one of the major right-wing theoreticians, believed that socialism could not triumph in the Soviet Union without assistance from more economically advanced socialist countries.

• The Kamenev-Zinov'yev-Stalin troika, although it supported the militant international program, successfully maneuvered against Trotsky and engineered his removal as commissar of war in 1925. In the meantime, Stalin gradually consolidated his power base and, when he had sufficient strength, broke with Kamenev and Zinov'yev. • Belatedly recognizing Stalin's political power, Kamenev and Zinov'yev made amends with Trotsky in order to join against their former partner. But Stalin countered their attacks on his position with his well-timed formulation of theory of "socialism in one country. " This doctrine, calling for construction of a socialist society in the Soviet Union.