4
Riccardo Mario Cucciolla
‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’
This famous quote from the novel The Leopard expressed the concerns of a ruling class facing the challenges of an evolving regime – adapt to the evolution of politics, life, and society – or succumb. This condition reflects the dynamics of trasformismo (transformism), a concept applied to political practices typical of post‑unitarian Italy. It refers to the political ability of the leadership to adapt to new conditions and make broad and flexible coalitions in power by dividing, co-opting, and isolating opponents while, at the same time, presenting the old regime in a renewed style (Sabbatucci, 2003). This concept expressing the evolving political stability of a regime finds its face also in Leonid Brezhnev’s USSR and, a fortiori, in those peripheries of the Union where more autonomous ‘fiefdoms’ emerged and adapted to the evolution of the Soviet regime.
In Central Asia, nativization (korenizatsiia) and the parallel process of sovietization, the nomenklatura (Party elite appointed to key posts), selection and appointment powers, co-optation of ‘clan’ affiliates, patronage, and political legitimation were interrelated matters (Buttino, 2015, p. 27), and the survival of traditional informal power practices peacefully mitigated the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime. In the age of developed socialism, republican first secretaries mediated between the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (CC CPSU) and the obkomy (regional Party committees) which, locally, exercised considerable influence over appointments of cadres and the distribution of political and economic benefits and resources (including raw materials, technology, and specialized labour) from the state to local economic units within their jurisdiction. Hence, a pyramidal system connected the lowest levels of the local nomenklatura to the highest cadres and the first secretary of the republican Party and, then, to the heart of the CPSU. In this framework, the patronage of the republican first secretary connected the local intelligentsia with Moscow, serving the interests of both.
The charismatic Sharaf Rashidov is an emblematic case study to assess these dynamics. He was a typical product of the ‘trust in cadres’ policy, serving as the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (UzSSR) between 1950 and 1959 and then as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan (CPUz) until his death in 1983, actually ruling the republic for almost a quarter-century (Gleason, 1986, 1989; Rizaev, 1992). Although Rashidov was posthumously demonized as a symbol of nepotism, clientelism, kinship, and corruption during the Cotton Affair – and then fully rehabilitated in post-Soviet Uzbekistan (Cucciolla, 2017) – in the 1960 and 1970s, this intellectual, politician and war veteran symbolized the inclusion of the Uzbek intelligentsia within the USSR, and loyally followed and adapted his regime to the evolution of the Soviet system.
An intellectual ‘transformist’
Gramsci designated the role of ‘organic intellectuals’ in the construction of cultural hegemony. In a revolutionary context, these figures are deployed in the class struggle at the service of the proletariat or even, by extension, of oppressed colonial peoples. In this sense we could read the story of this Uzbek intellectual who led the CPUz, interpreting the Bolshevik revolution as the liberation of those peoples oppressed by colonial backwardness finding their redemption in the Soviet project.
Rashidov was born in a peasant family in Jizzak on 6 November 1917, the day before the October Revolution. Encouraged by his uncle Hamid to endure literary studies, in 1935 he graduated at the Jizzak pedagogical institute and became a teacher in the local secondary school. In 1937, he started work as an executive secretary, deputy chief editor, then editor of the Samarkand regional newspaper Lenin Yolu (Lenin’s Way), and in 1939 he joined the Party. In these years, Rashidov wrote his first poems devoted to Uzbek farmers, cotton growers and builders and in 1941 he graduated from the faculty of philology of the Uzbek State University in Samarkand. With the outbreak of war, he joined the Red Army and fought in the battle of Moscow and on the Volkhov Front. The battlefield and a severe wound characterized his political and personal life.
After a long recovery at Sverdlovsk evacuation hospital, in 1943 he was finally demobilized from the army. The joint efforts on the front – together with the inclusion of Uzbeks in the Soviet project, the emancipation of the masses, and the modernization of the ‘backward’ traditional society of Central Asia – became symbolic and recurring themes in his literary works. In his treatises, Rashidov outlined national culture, the joint efforts of different peoples in the edification of a fair socialist society and the developmental triumphs of Uzbekistan within the Soviet internationalist framework. By 1945, he had already published the first anthology of poems Moy gnev (‘My anger’), and in 1950 a collection of journalistic articles entitled Prigovor Istorii (‘The verdict of history’) in which the compatibility and integration of Uzbek traditions within the Soviet context were central leitmotifs. Indeed, he emphasized the rediscovery of national cultural roots and language as a consolidated aspect of the integration of the UzSSR within the great socialist family. He was devoted to the national culture, promoting the memory of Amir Timur, Ulug-Bek, and Babur, and restored the role of some pre-revolutionary traditional institutions such as the mahalla, which even consolidated a minor part in the raiispolkomy (district executive committees) (Abramson, 2001).
In 1951 Rashidov published the first book of his trilogy Pobediteli (The Victors); a novel that covered three main characters during the war and the post-war ‘conquest’ of the virgin lands, presenting communism as the most crucial development for modernizing the Uzbek society and redeem itself from its backwardness. In 1956, he published the romantic novel Kashmirskaia pesnia (Song of Kashmir) on the struggle for the liberation of the Indian people, and in 1958 published the second part of the trilogy Sil’nee buri (Stronger than the Storm), which reconsidered the personalities of Pobediteli in their rural dimension. In 1964, Rashidov published the novel Moguchaia volna (The Mighty Wave) dedicated to the heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War, and in 1967 published an anthology of articles under the title Znamia druzhby (The Banner of Friendship) on topical issues of Soviet literature and themes of ‘friendship’ among Soviet peoples. Finally, in 1971 he composed the final part of the trilogy Zrelost’ (Maturity), and, in 1979 he published an opera omnia of all his works in five volumes (Rashidov, 1979). His final book, Sovetsky Uzbekistan (1982), was dedicated to the edification of socialism in the republic (Rashidov, 1982) and is actually the political testament of the Uzbek leader.
Rashidov had given much space to art and literature as a vehicle for ideological (and self-) promotion. The reception of his literary work strongly correlated to his rapid political career: in 1944 he served as secretary of the Samarkand obkom (regional Party committee), in 1947 he became the editor of the newspaper KIzil O’zbekiston (Red Uzbekistan), in 1949 he completed a correspondence course and graduated from the Higher Party School of the CC CPSU, and then became chairman of the UzSSR union of writers (1949–1950) under the protection of Yusupov (Rizaev, 1992, p. 13; Roy, 2000, p. 111). Rashidov was able to establish himself as a national organic intellectual and in 1950 became a secretary of the CC CPUz, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the UzSSR, and a Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, beginning to assert his prominence within the Uzbek bureau, the republic’s highest executive Party body.
After 1956, Rashidov became a candidate member of the CC CPSU and a delegate to the 20th Congress, receiving the appreciation of First Secretary Khrushchev for his charming, erudite manners. In this phase of cadres’ reshuffling, decentralization, and profound transformation of the Soviet regime during the 11th plenum of the CC CPUz (14 March 1959), Chairman of the UzSSR Council of Ministers Manzur Mirza–Akhmedov was dismissed for alleged malfeasance, nepotism, and abuse of power and replaced by Arif Alimov. On that occasion, Rashidov also replaced Sabir Kamalov and became the new First Secretary of the CPUz.
Despite the opposition of a group of technocrats and a group of Tashkenters (Chida, 2014, pp. 66–67), Rashidov’s literature background made his candidacy credible against stronger careerists such as Nuritdinov, Kamalov, or Mirza-Akhmedov. His appointment was a compromise allowing the Jizzak-Samarkand group to break up the Tashkent-Ferghana monopoly and co-opt members of other regional factions such as Murtazaev (from Kashkadaria), Abdurazakov (Namangan), Guliamov, Sarkisov, and Alimov (Tashkent), including people with whom Rashidov established professional connections and relationships of mutual support when working at the Samarkand obkom, replicating on a smaller scale the features of Brezhnev’s Dnipropetrovsk clique.1 In this first stage, however, opposition within the Party persisted. During the 16th CPUz Congress in 1961, Rashidov’s role was challenged by Sirodzh Nurutdinov and his wife Iadgar Nasriddinova and rivals to Rashidov among their supporters such as the secretary of the Tashkent gorkom (city Party committee) Kaium Murtazaev and the chairman of the Tashkent gorispolkom (city executive committee) Rafik Nishanov. In September, the appointment of their ally Rakhmankul Kurbanov as the head of the council of ministers of the UzSSR was another compromise that Rashidov had to accept.
Rashidov’s career continued to accelerate even at the central level when he became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a candidate member of the Politburo (1961–1983), and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1970. Despite being an open supporter of Khrushchev’s campaigns, however, Rashidov directly contributed to the ouster of the Soviet leader in 1964 (Pikhoia, 2007, p. 466; Zubok, 2007, p. 390). Thus, the Uzbek leader showed his adaptability to political evolutions in Moscow. His opportunism and transformism, however, became the centre of attention at the 13th Tashkent obkom conference on 25 December 1964. On that occasion, the Deputy Head of the obkom Organizational–Party Department Vali Usmanov listed the many times Rashidov offered toadying overpraise of the First Secretary and imposed his cult of personality:
They began to praise Khrushchev in every possible way. In this matter, Comrade Rashidov played a special ‘outstanding’ role, who in one of his speeches extolled Khrushchev ten to twenty times, attributed to him all the achievements in the development of the economy and culture of Soviet Uzbekistan, especially in cotton growing. Speaking figuratively, he prayed to him as to a God. […] [In his speeches Rashidov was] sycophantic to [the point of] nausea and grovelled before Khrushchev, extolling him to the skies, as a person without whom there would be no life on Soviet soil.2
Besides denouncing Rashidov’s ‘sycophancy and servility’ to the First Secretary, Usmanov even mentioned the alleged proposal made by the Uzbek leader to rename the Mirzacho’l or Hungry Steppe after Khrushchev. Then he recalled how Rashidov reversed himself in the very aftermath of Khrushchev’s demotion and said the opposite, accusing Khrushchev of violating collegiality and Leninist norms:
[He] did not reckon with anyone, surrounded himself with sycophants, careerists, and vile people. […] Not a single person insulted his comrades as much as Khrushchev. He believed that he alone existed in the world. He considered himself to be a God in agriculture; [but] he did not understand anything in science.3
In his harsh conclusions, Usmanov accused Rashidov of arrogance, taking revenge, hypocrisy, and tyranny for arbitrarily ousting Alimov, while selecting cadres according to kinship and localism, and allowing illegal payments of hundreds of thousands of rubles in election funds.4 Several participants intervened to defend the Uzbek leader as an honest man, and Rashidov himself explained that the controversial appointments had come directly from the CPSU (Rizaev, 1992, pp. 48–63).
These kinds of allegations were typical of transition periods. Sovietologists and commentators often described Rashidov as a favoured client of Khrushchev and then a protégé and a close friend of Leonid Brezhnev who reserved ‘kid-glove’ treatment for him and did not make him sit in the waiting room outside his office (Ligachev, 1996, p. 213). Kremlin hospital doctor Yevgenii Chazov mentions, however, that Rashidov was merely indirectly linked to Brezhnev, although he had close ties with some of his most trusted collaborators – such as Nikolai Podgorny, Mikhail Suslov, and perhaps Konstantin Chernenko (Chazov, 1992, pp. 23–24).5
Rashidov was able to follow the course of Soviet political developments and to use the winds of destalinization in his favour. In this regard, in the early 1960s, he rehabilitated prominent figures from the Uzbek political history such as the former leaders Ikramov and Khodzhaev, and denounced Yusupov as the main culprit of the Stalinist terror in Uzbekistan. The latter, however, would also be rehabilitated during the ‘de-destalinization’ of the Brezhnev era, as well as another prominent Stalinist like Abdurakhmanov who received a ministerial post in the mid-1960s (Carlisle, 1991, p. 111). This dual rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinism – and then of its culprits – was in line with the Brezhnevite ‘inclusiveness’, which started to reinterpret, at least informally, the Stalinist era, ensuring a more comprehensive basis of power legitimation in a period that sought to present Soviet history as a continuous stream of success.
Tashkent reconstruction and regime consolidation
Inclusion and political compromise characterized the first season of ‘Rashidovism’. Then, during the 17th Congress of the CPUz (3–5 March 1966), the Uzbek leader further strengthened his position, reserving a more significant share of power for his group and replacing almost a quarter of the members of the CC CPUz and several obkom secretaries (Agrawal, 2012, p. 289). The real political opportunity, however, arrived with a catastrophic event. On 26 April 1966, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake (there are however other, and lower, estimates of is magnitude circulating) with its epicentre in Tashkent caused several hundred casualties, massive destruction to over 80% of the city and 78,000 homes, leaving 300,000 homeless from a population of 1.5 million, and razing most of the historic quarter of the city that was primarily inhabited by Uzbeks (Stronski, 2010). In the immediate aftermath, Rashidov was involved in the recovery operations, and even Brezhnev and Kosygin flew to Tashkent to evaluate the condition of the city. The devastation was profound. It took over three and a half years for the Uzbek capital to be completely reconstructed. Such a disaster however, became a crucial occasion for Rashidov to consolidate his leadership, reach a consensus with Moscow, and attract investment to the republic.
The Tashkent reconstruction was an opportunity for Rashidov to weaken the opposition and to leave his fingerprint on rebuilding the city in a more modern Soviet-style, with broad boulevards, parks, monuments, large apartment block complexes, and even the first subway system in the whole of Central Asia. The reconstruction programme brought forth the idea of a ‘Tashkent Renaissance’ and the efforts that the Party brought to this task were publicized with great fanfare, crediting Rashidov as a thoughtful leader who was sensitive to the needs of the population and a devoted communist for Moscow (Rizaev, 1992, pp. 88–109).
The broad publicizing of the Tashkent earthquake across Soviet media moved Soviet public opinion and the central authorities, mobilizing the country for the city’s reconstruction; about 100,000 new homes were built by 1970 (Sadikov et al, 1984, pp. 60–64). Many of the volunteers, however, remained in the same apartments that they were supposedly built for Uzbeks, creating a climate of mistrust and disaffection between local communities and these new settlers. In the spring of 1969, during the so-called ‘Pakhtakor incidents’, violent clashes among Uzbeks, Russians, and other groups broke out in Tashkent on 4 April during the football match between Pakhtakor Tashkent and Dynamo Minsk in the Pakhtakor stadium when banners appeared with nationalist slogans (such as Russkie von! – ‘Russians out!’). These gestures were exacerbated by verbal skirmishes between supporters and fuelled unrest over subsequent weeks.6
These episodes were not disclosed by the media, but created deep embarrassment for Rashidov, who complained about loopholes in the security system and proceeded with a series of purges and the replacement of top police officials. At that time, the CPUz Secretary of Ideology Rafiq Nishanov (who was affiliated with the Kurbanov-Nasriddinova opposition group) tried to shift responsibility onto Rashidov for the incidents. In response, the First Secretary took the opportunity to blame his most vigorous opponents Nasriddinova and Nishanov and ‘exile’ them from Uzbekistan.7 Kurbanov was accused of misusing his official position and illegal activities, and finally sentenced to ten years in prison for fomenting violence (Carlisle, 1991, p. 112). Conversely, Rashidov’s main allies were promoted: on 25 September 1970 Matchanov became the new Uzbek Presidium Chairman, and on 25 February 1971 the first secretary of Syrdaria, Narmakhonmadi Khudaiberdyev, was appointed the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the UzSSR, retaining the post until 1984. With this manoeuvre, Rashidov was able to oust his primary opponents, offer the highest offices of the state to his loyalists, and finally consolidate his power within Uzbekistan.
The marginalization of internal opposition meant that the next political front would be fought with other, indirect means. From the late 1960s, a new wave of anonymous letters alleging the malfeasance of the Uzbek first secretary reached the Party departments in Tashkent and in Moscow and even personally addressed Brezhnev. These letters often defended those opponents – such as Kurbanov, Mukhitdinov, Nishanov, and Nasreddinova – who had been ousted and criticized Rashidov’s anti-Party behaviour, his clientelism, and nepotism in cadres’ policy by promoting relatives and people personally loyal to him to executive posts. On 5 May 1971, a CC CPSU memorandum acknowledged the personal issues with Rashidov’s opponents and confirmed that:
The letters correctly indicate that the Deputy Chairman of the Republic’s People’s Control Committee, Comrade Rashidov, the Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of the UzSSR, Comrade Muminov, the Chairman of the Samarkand oblispolkom, Comrade Khamrakulov, are relatives of Comrade Rashidov. However, at the moment, there is no reason to raise the question of transferring these comrades to another job.8
The letter campaign against Rashidov was to continue. In December 1971, an alleged former CC CPUz member wrote to Brezhnev and to the entire Politburo defending the honour of the ousted opponents and denouncing Rashidov for falsifying cotton production figures, instructing regions to underestimate data of their sown areas. The letter even alleged Rashidov favoured the ‘Tajikization’ of the republic:
Rashidov is Tajik, and all the responsible posts of the republic are now occupied by Tajiks, mainly fellow countrymen from his homeland of Samarkand, although according to their passports they appear as Uzbeks. However, lately, they […] often switch to the Tajik language even during official functions. Television in Uzbekistan operates on three channels. The third channel […] mainly broadcasts programmes from the Tajik studio. […] And this certainly makes the Uzbeks very nervous!9
In addition to the allegations about cotton and his secret ‘Tajik’ identity, other letters attacked Rashidov for mismanaging the disorder in Tashkent in 1969 and denounced his immodest behaviour:
Rashidov’s voice [rings with] triumph, he behaves like a god. In our opinion, Comrade Rashidov has reached the last degree of the personality cult. […] He organized terror over the removal of cadres, whom he wanted to fire, whom he wanted to imprison, whom he wanted to kill. He has really given such rights. Dear Leonid Ilyich! Our republic is flourishing, fulfilling all tasks and plans. These are not his works, not his merits.10
At that time, these waves of anonymous letters appeared as the output of a well-orchestrated campaign to discredit the Uzbek leader. Conversely, Rashidov’s supporters also organized campaigns of telegrams and letters in which they complimented the successes achieved by the Uzbek leader, asked that he be awarded prizes, or thanked the organizations set up when these were assigned to him.11
After the turmoil of the post-earthquake period, the 1970s represented a moment of significant stability for Rashidov’s regime. The dominance of his group was further reflected in the Uzbek Bureau appointments announced at the 1971 and 1976 Congresses and in the promotions within local Party organs. Such stability also found in its expression also in terms of mestnichestvo (appointments based on the place of origin) and lack of inter-oblast mobility. Critchlow (1991, pp. 142–143) emphasizes how ‘under Rashidov, cadre practices allowed officials at the gorkom/raikom level to spend much of their careers in the same oblast (region), facilitating the development of a network of personal ties’. Critchlow examined the biographies of gorkom/raikom (district Party committee) officials in the group elected to the Uzbek Supreme Soviet in 1975, showing that ‘nearly all had either been recruited from the oblast in which they were serving or had served in it at an earlier point in their careers’.
Rashidov’s clique dominated even in an institutionalized dimension, for example, through the creation of the Jizzakh oblast in December 1973. By establishing this new region, the Uzbek leader further entrenched his patronage base in his home city. Hence, ‘Rashidovism’ can be understood to be a typical derivative of the Brezhnevite patronage system but adapted to the peculiarities of Uzbek transformism, which was based on ‘clan’ dimensions, dividing opposition, and to co-opting members of rival factions to create a strong network of loyal figures across the Uzbek SSR.12 Such loyalty was more career/personal than territorially based and defined a typical case of institutionalized patrimonialism of the top republican leadership that was directly linked to the First secretary of the republic and the Central Committee in Moscow. Rashidov’s transformism, paternalism, and his attitude towards satisfying the needs (with resources that patronage relations provided) of almost all of the intelligentsia led to a vast consensus toward his regime, preventing competition among his clients or looking for patronage elsewhere. Furthermore, another base to build Rashidov’s network was related to personal and family ties, ensconcing his relatives and friends in essential government positions: two of his daughters married important men affiliated to the Muminov faction, which had a decisive influence over the Samarkand and Bukhara regions. His son was also married to a daughter of Karakalpakia First Secretary Kamalov in order to maintain substantial influence over the Karakalpak ‘clan’. Such ‘patrimonial contracts’ allowed for sort of ‘fluid’ relationships and discretional autonomy at lower levels.
In the second half of the 1970s, Rashidov promoted his close ally Asadilla Khodzhaev to the top of the Tashkent gorkom (1973–1978). The post he held, his prominence, and the publicity devoted to him made him a sort of ‘deputy first secretary’ and a possible successor to Rashidov.13 In 1978, he became a CC CPUz Secretary and in March 1980 the chairman of the legislative body, the UzSSR Supreme Soviet. Nevertheless, Khodzhaev’s rise was slowed by the emergence of Inamdzhan Usmankhodzhaev, an outsider from the Fergana intelligentsia who had never served in the Uzbek Secretariat and replaced Matchanov in December 1978 becoming the new Presidium Chairman. Thanks to his father’s fame from the construction of the Great Fergana Canal, Usmankhodzhaev was not new to Uzbek politics and his centre-oriented credentials made him an essential connection between the Uzbek intelligentsia and the cadres of the CC CPSU, determining the political course of Uzbekistan after Rashidov’s death.
A Soviet (inter)nationalist
The Rashidov period was in line with the rest of the USSR in its paradoxes including the parallel promotion of both nativization and Russification. Indeed, the promotion of korenizatsiia was vital to the regime’s stability. This loyal political and administrative corpus consisting of Sovietized natives, co-opted intelligentsia, and traditional social forces in that cultural framework typical of the late Soviet period. Aware of the risks of nationalism in such a multi-ethnic republic, Rashidov did not encourage a pure, exclusive, Uzbek identity. Instead, he enhanced the influences over other national groups in order to approve an inclusive and larger interpretation of ‘Uzbek nationality’. In a system that prioritizing the titular nationality, the consequence was a further ‘Uzbekization’ of non–Uzbeks, with the ‘Bukhara and Samarkand factions, albeit more “Persian”, […] pursued a policy of Uzbekisation to the detriment of the Tajik identity’ (Roy, 2000, p. 110).
Such inclusive nationalism was a manifestation of Soviet ‘internationalism’ that sought to implement the lowest common denominator between the nations of the USSR under the banner of the friendship of peoples. In Central Asia, the further revisions of the Uzbek-Kazakh borders in the early 1960s – apparently in favour of Uzbekistan – also followed Khrushchev’s aspirations to eliminate national borders in a future communist society. These modifications were not interpreted as recognition of the ‘conquest’ of the Uzbek nation but were welcomed by a local leader devoted to the ‘Soviet national cause’ who accepted the role of Russian as a lingua franca. Indeed, even Rashidov had an active role in implementing the cultural ‘soft Russification’ of Uzbek society, promoting the role of the Russian as a ‘language of friendship and brotherhood’ that created convergence among nations.14
In January 1978, he even wrote to the CC CPSU Secretary Ivan Kapitonov about the importance of Russian as a ‘value in international communication and for strengthening the friendship and brotherhood of the peoples of the USSR’, and confirmed his commitment to enforcing the teaching of Russian in schools, universities, kolkhozes (collective farms), and sovkhozes (state farms), and in the military units of Uzbekistan.15 Actually he acknowledged that Russian was the primary condition to access the highest posts, determining a typical colonial situation where even the most devoted localists were forced to use – or simply become accustomed to using – the colonial language. The Russification campaign in Uzbekistan was finally formalized in October 1978, when the USSR Council of Ministers approved the decree ‘On measures for further improving the study and teaching of the Russian language in the Union Republics’ (Solchanyk, 1980; Staples, 1993, p. 40). This measure was strongly welcomed by Rashidov who, in his political testament, recognized:
The Russian people have provided the best examples of selfless aid to other nations big and small. They were the main force in the building of socialism in our country and are the main contributor to the building of communism. The Russian nation led by the Communist Party was the cementing force that consolidated the friendly family of all Soviet nations.
(Rashidov, 1982, pp. 82–83)
In the end, Rashidov endorsed an inclusive Soviet interpretation of a ‘mildly’ Uzbek nation, which reflected the ‘compromise’ between nations, ethnic communities, language groups, and clans but recognized a special role for the Russian language and culture. This approach demagogically publicized Uzbekistan as a model of integration, development, and modernity for the countries of the Third World. Indeed, in the mid-1950s, the critique that emerged from the Bandung Conference against the USSR made Khrushchev reconsider the Soviet geopolitical agenda and propose its support for internationalism and developmentalism to the emerging Third World. In this task, Uzbekistan assumed a substantial and emblematic role. Abroad, the republic born from the ashes of a backward colony was celebrated as the champion of the ‘friendship of peoples’ (druzhba narodov) concept of Soviet nationalities policy and sponsored as a modern and emancipated model of political, economic, social, and cultural development for the newly independent countries emerging from decolonization. Hence, the intellectual and non-Slavic Rashidov was promoted to represent the compatibility and the inclusion of Muslim society in the multinational Soviet project, becoming a key interlocutor with Afghan, Indian, Pakistani and Arab communists, leftist movements in Africa, and Third World leaders (Cucciolla, 2020b).
From the mid-1950s, the Uzbek leader conducted several diplomatic missions aimed at potentially influence the Cold War scene. This included a crucial role in Operation Anadyr when Rashidov led a Soviet delegation to Havana that covered the military officials who came to discuss the deployment of Soviet short and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, becoming then a key interlocutor for Cuban leader Fidel Castro (who even visited Uzbekistan in May 1963). Moreover, Rashidov directly participated in conferences and events summoning the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the struggle against colonial oppression and American imperialism, such as the first Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference (in Cairo, 1957–1958); in Jakarta in May 1965 when he echoed the calls of Brezhnev and Suslov for united action among all anti-imperialist forces; and even during the 1966 Tricontinental Conference of People’s Solidarity between Asia, Africa, and Latin America held in Havana.
The major impact of Rashidov’s diplomatic forays can be found in Tashkent, which became the Soviet ‘Gate to Asia’ (Stronski, 2010, p. 238). Indeed, the city was promoted as a Soviet window for the East and became a sort of obligatory first port of call for delegations from the Third World that visited the USSR. The importance of the Uzbek capital in Soviet-Indian relations is undeniable: in Tashkent – where the first Communist Party of India was founded in October 1920 – Rashidov mediated peace between India and Pakistan in January 1966. This culminated in the Tashkent Declaration that concluded the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.16 From the 1950s, the Uzbek capital was also promoted as a cosmopolitan landmark also on the cultural level in order to attract attention from the non-aligned Third World; and Rashidov himself had a direct role in promoting international festivals of cinema and literature attracting thousands of people from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1958 Tashkent hosted the International Meeting of the Writers of Asia and Africa, in 1968 the first International Film Festival of Asia and Africa, which was extended to Latin America in 1976, along with several international meetings and seminars of intellectuals, writers, poets, journalists, athletes, and activists from the Third World, which were filled with political content.17 Furthermore, on Rashidov’s initiative, Tashkent was selected to host the 11th meeting of the Presidium of the Asian and African Peoples’ Solidarity Organization in October 1982. On that occasion, presented in the press with great fanfare, the Uzbek leader proclaimed the USSR to be the very picture of peace, brotherhood, and solidarity among peoples and socialism as a universal value uniting people without depersonalizing them as was often claimed in the West. This ideological-narrative package remained part of Rashidov’s approach until his last day and, to a significant extent, also survives nowadays.
‘Brezhnev’s Islamic strategy’ (Bennigsen, 1989a, p. 73) was further aimed at attracting Muslim countries by promoting Soviet tolerance, the compatibility between Marxism-Leninism and Islam, and relaunched Tashkent as an international centre for theological studies. In the 1960s, Uzbekistan offered a façade of religious freedom, tolerance, practice, and tradition in combination with Bolshevik progress; while considerable funds were invested at the central and republic level, for the restoration of monuments, mosques, shrines, and other architectural sites, and for developing those academic institutions that studied local cultures (Kalinovsky, 2013, p. 205). Even the atheist Rashidov, who had previously argued that religion was merely superstition, in 1967 assumed a more conciliatory attitude by noting the deep roots of Islam in Uzbek society and welcomed the initiatives promoted by Moscow together with Ziyauddin Babakhanov, the head of SADUM (Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan) and Mufti of Tashkent between 1957 and 1982, which organized the first international Islamic conference in Soviet history in Tashkent. To produce reliable, high-level Islamic religious cadres, in 1971 the Soviet regime even authorized the opening of the Imam Ismail al-Bukhari theological school in Tashkent and increased the budget allocated to Islamic initiatives.
Despite the efforts of Soviet politicians and clergy to show a reconciliation between the Soviet Union and Islam, all the contradictions of this problematic relationship inexorably remerged with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in which Uzbekistan turned out to be the main logistic point for the advancing Soviet forces and the staging post for the Sovietization of Afghan communists. Besides the known consequences on the international scene, this move inexorably undermined the reputation of the Soviet Muftis and the credibility of appeasement between the atheistic USSR and Islam. As a consequence, the Tashkent conference to celebrate the fifteenth centenary of the Hegira (Muhammed’s journey from Mecca to Medina) in September 1980, which was ‘advertised by Soviet media as the most important postwar political meeting of the Muslim world’ (Bennigsen, 1989b, p. 52) was generally boycotted: only 76 of over 500 invitees attended the event, and the international Muslim boycott against the USSR would last until the end of the Soviet Union. This story undoubtedly shows the limits and paradoxes of Soviet anti-colonial discourse, which praised ‘nationalism and self-determination [as] virtues abroad and sins at home’ (Myer, 2002, p. 70). Despite the significant autonomy the republic enjoyed in the management of internal issues, on the international level Rashidov had limited initiative and represented the interests of Moscow, which, in his view, were not separate from those of Tashkent. The subjectivity and sovereignty of the republic were, like its leader, limited to a dimension that meant they were never international actors but rather proxies and symbols representing another facet of the Soviet system. Rashidov himself appears as a representative of Soviet policy towards the East, motivated by prospects of the resources this internationalism brought to Uzbekistan and even enhancing his own status as Moscow’s indispensable interlocutor with the Third World (Cucciolla, 2020b).
The Uzbek cotton king
For centuries, cotton had been traditionally cultivated in Central Asia and assumed to be a determinant of relevance, becoming the catalyser of the political, economic, environmental, social, and cultural transformations of Uzbekistan, especially in Soviet times (Lipovsky, 1995; Obertreis, 2017; Penati, 2013). In the post-war era, the imposition of a cotton monoculture finally turned the UzSSR into a ‘cotton republic’ which provided the fatherland with more than 60% of the country’s ‘white gold’ production. The unintended consequences of cotton monoculture for society and the environment were dramatic. Intensive production of cotton served to ruralize Uzbek society, separating the mostly rural natives from urban Slavic settlers, while annually exposing millions of field workers (including thousands of children) to toxic agents (fertilizers, pesticides, and defoliants) with catastrophic consequences for public health and the environment. High mother and infant mortality and the ecocide of the Aral Sea became the most dramatic and evident consequence of ‘cotton fever’ (Bassin, 2016; Cucciolla, 2020a; Lubin, 1994; Zonn et al., 2009). Exponential cotton production was, however, encouraged as it became a crucial resource in the Cold War competition. Such a versatile resource was not only the key to producing robust, cheap textiles but was primarily absorbed by the military industry to produce gunpowder and even propellant for ballistic missiles. Hence, demand from Moscow remained high and continuously rising while fulfilling the cotton plan became one of the primary sources of political legitimization and stability for local cadres at any level of the chain, from the kolkhoznik to the first secretary.
At the 22nd CSPU Congress (1961), Khrushchev’s program of ‘Communism in twenty years’ opened a different front after the Virgin Lands campaign, presenting an ambitious plan to reach an annual production of 8 million tons of Soviet cotton in 1970 and 10–11 million by 1980 (Khrushchev, 1961, p. 57). The failure of this leap forward affected Khrushchev’s political position negatively. Brezhnev sought a change in the workings of Soviet agriculture development but not its ambitions. In March 1965, the CPSU plenum defined a new course for Soviet agriculture, confirming the duties for cotton production. According to Rashidov, this plenum was the ‘first occasion on which fundamental problems facing agriculture were being tackled in a business-like manner’ (Gordijew, 1967, p. 60) and prompted further mechanization, irrigation, land improvement, and the opening of new lands, which had a profound impact on the Uzbek agricultural system. Likewise, the 23rd CSPU Congress and the May 1966 CC CPSU Plenum defined a new stage of land reclamation and water engineering developments, including plans to realize the perebroska – the diversion of the course of Siberian rivers southwards to reach the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya, and the Aral Sea. Rashidov and other Central Asian leaders strongly lobbied for the realization of this futuristic infrastructure, hoping to increase the water base in their republics.
With the promise of fulfilling the cotton plan, Rashidov could demand more investment for the UzSSR, raising the republic’s budget for the expansion of irrigated lands from 861 million rubles in the Seven-Year Plan (1959–1965) to 4.57 billion in the Ninth Five-Year plan (1971–1975) and 6.061 billion in the Tenth Five-Year Plan (1976–1980) (Rashidov, 1982, pp. 55–56). Therefore, by the mid-1970s, in Uzbekistan more than 20,000 km2 (an area roughly the size of Israel) was under intense cotton cultivation. Moreover, the CPUz devoted most of the republic’s resources and energies to irrigation, mechanization, and chemicals – even rejecting the recommendations of the Academy of Sciences – with the aim to increase the cotton monoculture, which reinforced the de facto economic dependence of Uzbekistan on a single sector.18
During Rashidov’s reign, cotton production in the UzSSR more than doubled and this success guaranteed the Uzbek first secretary unquestionable political legitimacy from the Centre. This was evident in the reciprocal adulation, self-promotion, and celebratory bonhomie between Rashidov and Brezhnev, and the awards that the UzSSR and the Uzbek leader himself received for the cotton results.19 By fulfilling the cotton plan, the local nomenklatura could also keep their posts and received material and status benefits, while millions of workers and cotton pickers (khlopkoroby) every year were mobilized on the ‘cotton front’ and decorated as heroes, receiving minor benefits and prizes, and sometimes only symbolic awards.20 The campaign for ‘inclusiveness’ and gratification proceeded parallel to ever higher demands for Uzbek ‘white gold’ and put the republic into a ‘cotton trap’.
Table 4.1 Official cotton production (thousands of tons) per year
|
Year |
Uzbekistan |
USSR |
% of Soviet production |
|
1960 |
2,949 |
4,289 |
68.8 |
|
1965 |
3,904 |
5,662 |
69 |
|
1970 |
4,495 |
6,89 |
65.2 |
|
1975 |
5,33 |
7,864 |
67.8 |
|
1980 |
6,245 |
9,962 |
62.7 |
The second half of the 1970s was the apogee of Rashidov’s regime in terms of power consolidation and cotton commitments, while the UzSSR reached the height of its inclusiveness within the Soviet system. This was, however, the beginning of the end. The Soviet economy lost any vitality and entered a phase marked by stagnation, illusory growth, and self-complacency – a system incapable of reforming itself. In 1976, during the ‘start’ of the Tenth Five-Year Plan (1976–1980), the ecological limits of Uzbek cotton production became apparent. Despite the warnings about the drying of the Aral Sea basin, Rashidov was still determined to pursue Moscow’s line on agriculture in Uzbekistan and during the opening of the 19th CPUz Congress (1976), he declared that cotton production had increased by 23% in the Ninth Five-Year Plan and that Uzbekistan was able to exceed the plan by 300,000 tons of ‘white gold’.21 Rashidov’s speech drew applause from the local Party but Moscow’s approval would have to wait until 25th CPSU Congress (1976) where the dismal performance of Soviet agriculture weighed heavily on the minds of delegates while the divisions between conservatives and critics within the Party emerged. On that occasion, Rashidov adopted a conservative approach and expounded upon the positive trend in agriculture:
As before, the CPUz concentrates its main attention on cotton growing. […] Without any exaggeration, the work of our glorious cotton growers can be called a heroic exploit. And this heroic exploit was possible [because of] the fraternal help that is always forthcoming from all the many peoples living in our homeland
(Rashidov, 1977, pp. 107–108)
At the 19th CPUz Congress Rashidov committed Uzbekistan to the ultimate cotton goal – reaching an annual production of 6 million tons of raw cotton by the end of the Tenth Five-Year plan in 1980. This was an overly ambitious, if not unrealizable, figure that would haunt Uzbek planners for the next decade, and be recalled at all the CPUz meetings. The narrative of the ‘six million’ started to absorb the press and the media, mobilizing the entire nomenklatura to the great cause of ‘cotton for the fatherland’. The ‘white gold’ itself took on a sacred significance, becoming ‘our glory, our pride, our priceless treasure!’; bonding the whole population to the idea that ‘picking all the cotton is our duty, our honour, our conscience’.22 With such high stakes, the atmosphere was tense, which was reflected in the exaggerated triumphalism of the productive harvest of 1977 and the general silence following the flop of 1978 when the Party and media declined to comment on the negative crop results in terms of quantity and masked the deterioration in quality. After this gloomy moment, the positive cotton production trend resumed and on 1 November 1980, the miracle was finally announced: the UzSSR had officially produced 6 million tons of ‘white gold’ for the first time.23 Brezhnev congratulated the cotton growers for this ‘outstanding victory of labour’, while Rashidov took the victory personally, and was acclaimed as a ‘champion of socialism’ who had been able to fulfil the commitments with Moscow.
The ‘white gold’ saga absorbed huge investment in return for relatively positive results. The 26th CPSU Congress (1981) was marked by the criticism expressed by the CPSU Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on the condition of Soviet agriculture. On that occasion, Rashidov continued to defend the results of his work and disavowed those negative trends affecting Uzbekistan’s production indexes. In his speech, he recalled the record of the previous year – 6.237 million tons – and described the cotton pickers of Uzbekistan as high contributors that showed ‘the best features of the Soviet character and socialist lifestyle’. In this moment of criticism of the Soviet economy, the Uzbek leader even staked out a stronger position to attract more funds and investments from the Centre as well as technical support for agriculture, and demanded an increase in cotton and cotton product prices, justifying such a request due to an increase in production costs.24
In 1982, Rashidov reached the peak of his political success. He had been able to confirm the Uzbek Party’s commitments to the Soviet cause and to consolidate his power while assuming a paternal role with state and Party officials. On 5 March 1982, this success was recognized in Moscow where, by decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, the Uzbek leader was awarded with the Order of the October Revolution for his ‘organizational skills for communism’ and his ‘success in completing plans and socialist duties’ and the Hero of Socialist Labour medal for the ‘increase in production and selling of cotton and other agricultural products’.25 When Brezhnev arrived in Tashkent to personally deliver the awards to the UzSSR and Rashidov, he had an accident at an aircraft parts factory when scaffolding bearing numerous onlookers collapsed and broke his collarbone. Rashidov suffered only light bruising but was extremely embarrassed about the incident, writing a personal letter to Brezhnev on 7 April where he stated his concerns:
Like an incurable wound, a large scar on the heart that does not give us peace. […] if we can, we ask for your forgiveness [and we want to] sincerely, and filially thank our dear and much-loved father Leonid Ilich for your arrival in Uzbekistan and for sending us words that we can trust.
(Rizaev, 1992, p. 136)
Despite there not being a marked age difference and the friendly relations between Brezhnev and Rashidov, on this occasion, the latter behaved like a mortified child who could not find the right words to direct towards his severe father. The Tashkent accident became a bad omen for these two leaders who were allegorically ‘crushed’ by the weight of a fragile system that was collapsing on them and that in a few years would disappear altogether. Indeed, on 10 November 1982, the 75-year-old Brezhnev died of a heart attack. Despite the claims of personal friendship for someone who was considered as a father, supporter, and most of all, a protector, Rashidov only had a marginal role in the farewell funeral. Bereft of his benefactor, to continue playing the political card of ‘cotton success’ and to cultivate a new, close relationship with the next gensek would be complicated, if not impossible, for a politician whose career developed in that very establishment. Thus, Brezhnev’s death was not the end of the world but it was certainly the end of Rashidov’s world.
Performing Andropovism
Reaching the cotton target at any cost was a matter of political stability, legitimacy, and survival for the Uzbek nomenklatura at the local and central levels, while admitting a cotton flop would be political suicide. Thus, during this period of triumphalism and performance anxiety, systemic corruption spread from the collective farms to the Central Committee, attempting to cover the inefficiencies of planned production. Falsifying data (pripiski) on cotton production on both the quantitative and qualitative levels created a ‘pyramid scheme’ of report-padding and corruption, which ended up involving, directly or indirectly, a large part of the UzSSR nomenklatura at all state and Party levels and producing devastating losses for the national economy. The KGB and prosecutor’s office revealed that between 1978 and 1983, 4.5 million tons of cotton were produced merely on paper, at an overall cost of three billion rubles wasted over the period 1976–1983 (Clark, 1993, p. 187; Holmes, 1993, p. 101).
The appointment of Yuri Andropov as General Secretary initiated a moralization campaign aimed at legalizing, cleansing, and ultimately revitalizing a system in which stagnation and fraud had reached unprecedented levels. The experienced Rashidov – who rose through the Party’s ranks during late stages of Stalinism, affirmed his leadership under Khrushchev, and obediently followed the steps of Brezhnevism – hoped to further follow the evolution of the Soviet system and transform his attitude according to the new Andropovian course. At the 8th CPUz Plenum (29 November 1982), Rashidov directly referred to Andropov and his directive declaring that ‘in his speech, there was a brilliant analysis of the Soviet economy […] a principled assessment of our successes and failures and deficiencies identifying urgent tasks’.26 At the time, the Uzbek leader, who was probably aware – if not complicit – in the machinations in the cotton sector, wanted to demonstrate his devotion the new General Secretary. Hence, he offered some scapegoats to the moralization cause and kept announcing the brilliant results of the Uzbek cotton harvest – another 6 million tons for 1982, celebrating the ‘joyful and solemn’ 60th anniversary of the USSR, and holding on to the same narrative of cotton for the fatherland in the name of brotherhood among nations.27 He could not imagine that his republic was about to enter a period of criminal cases, purges, and power reshuffles orchestrated by Moscow.
In the initial phase of the Cotton Affair investigations, corruption cases were presented as separated, marginal events which did not have a systemic dimension, and were not perceived as a systemic attack against the Uzbek nomenklatura. 28 Conversely, Rashidov perceived these cases as an opportunity to prove his loyalty to Moscow and to discredit some minor figures and potential rivals. On the eve of 1983, to give the image of a healthy organization that was following Andropov’s directives and reinforcing the ‘struggle against any violation of party, state and labour discipline’, the CC CPUz admitted ‘many shortcomings due to weak discipline and failures in meeting targets of technological development that are in the ministries of light industry, ministry of cotton industry and food industry and in the metallurgic enterprises, non-ferrous metallurgy, gas and mechanization industry’ and demanded that the vicious practice of ‘adjusting’ the plans should be halted.29 In this statement, however, cotton – the main product of the republic – was only briefly considered.
In the last months of his ‘reign’, Rashidov showed sound results and a willingness to go along with the CPSU line. In January 1983, the CPUz called on Party organizations to fight against ‘uneconomic practices, slackness, squandering and waste of socialist property, [insincere discourse], drunkenness and hooliganism, while the following month the plunder of socialist property, bribery and speculation came under criticism’ (Gill and Pitty, 1997, p. 73). On 28 January 1983, the CC CPUz Secretariat admitted that in 1982, 137 members had been expelled from the Party, a quarter of whom for criminal offenses. Yet, these were small figures for a national Party that had more than 600,000 members and candidates.30 Moreover, from the spring of 1983, Rashidov himself tried to identify several scapegoats, denouncing small episodes of malfeasance. Generally, these accusations were full of moralizing, and no significant charges were enforced. Aligning with Andropov, however, also allowed internal purges within the CPUz to proceed. The CPUz Bureau meeting of 22 April 1983 reported that some Party members had received illicit income from the illegal trade of cars, which was a common and widespread practice in the USSR, revealing that:
over the past three years, 34 executives of the Tashkent raion bought cars for personal use and one third were resold or donated. Even the first secretary of Tashkent raikom in 1979 sold two cars and purchased the third on behalf of his wife, and the chairman of an asphalt factory sold three cars and bought a forth one […] Also, Valeri Rubenovich Gabrilian, Deputy Chairman of the Committee of Physical Culture and Sports at the Council of Ministers of the UzSSR […] traded cars, illegally got a new apartment with five rooms, every year visited capitalist countries and was not truthful during party controls. [For these reasons] he is sanctioned by the party and the Council of Ministers must pay attention to his case and oust him from his post.31
Parallel to his new moralizing line, Rashidov tried to pursue the usual triumphalism on cotton. This emerged during the 9th CPUz Plenum (7 February 1983) and at the CPUz Bureau meeting on 25 February 1983, when Rashidov boasted of the victories of the republic, which for the third consecutive year produced more than six million tons of cotton for the country.32 At the same time, the CPUz promoted purges in the regions. During the Bureau meeting on 10 June 1983 A.P. Shendrik, the Second Secretary of the Andijan obkom, was accused of having built an illegal home and of giving apartments that had already been allocated to his two sons. He was punished with Party sanctions.33 At that point, the extent of the corruption phenomenon was not evident, as these serious episodes were still lumped in with the small-scale speculation and fraud present in the collective farms. The CPUz Party-economic aktiv meeting held on 28 July 1983 denounced several cases of malfeasance and black market speculation, including:
The director and the general accountant of the kolkhoz ‘Gulistan’ in Akdar’inskii raion falsified financial documents for more than 100 thousand rubles, declaring that such money was granted as prizes to workers […] In the first six months of this year, the organs of the MVD in Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, and Omsk oblasts arrested 141 people from Uzbekistan on charges of speculation in agricultural production. Of these, 21 were from Tashkent Oblast, 16 from Fergana oblast, 16 from Namangan oblast, 11 from Tashkent city, and 78 from Andijan oblast.34
Similar trends were also detected in the health system, in universities, in municipal services, and other economic departments.35 Corruption was revealed as an intrinsic, systemic phenomenon in the UzSSR whereby ‘it was possible to buy everything and to pay for everything’.36 Of course, the Party preferred to publicize only the merits of the republic but this narrative could never hide from Moscow that something untoward was going on behind the scenes.
The twilight of the Gods
In Moscow, Andropov was aware of the pripiski in the Uzbek cotton sector and wanted a possible ‘Mzhavanadze solution’ (public accusations of corruption and denouncement by state media of the Georgian first secretary, forcing his resignation in 1972), prompting him to ask for Rashidov’s resignation by the end of the year. Hence, he instructed Yegor Ligachev, a CPSU rising star who had replaced Ivan Kapitonov at the Head of the Department of Organizational-Party Work, to mediate. At that time, Ligachev was warned by Viktor Smirnov, the Second Secretary of Moldovia and Head of CC CPSU Central Asian Department (see Chapter 3), about the alarming situation in Uzbekistan. He recalled how between 1980 and 1983, thousands of letters sent to the Central Committee denounced corruption, injustice, dishonesty, arbitrariness, and abuse of power of every kind (Ligachev, 1996, pp. 210–212).37 The character of these ‘private reports’ was mostly individual, concerning small cases of injustice perpetrated by powerful local figures. The letters’ content, however, became the starting point for further investigation.
Ligachev seemed to have little respect for Rashidov – who had installed fourteen of his relatives within the CC CPUz apparatus (Ligachev, 1996, p. 211) – but he was not powerful enough to do much about it. When Ligachev got Andropov’s permission to ‘put Rashidov in his place’,38 they finally met in Moscow. On that occasion, Ligachev put a big pile of letters on the table, and Rashidov started to glance at them. When Ligachev expressed his concerns about ‘a deluge of letters from Uzbekistan to the Central Committee’, Rashidov responded curtly ‘Who do you think you are talking to?’ Ligachev answered that Andropov had been informed about the letters and he was speaking at his request (Ligachev, 1996, p. 214). Rashidov changed the tone of the conversation, and, trying to keep calm, said ‘those letters are full of slander. We have to protect our leaders and give them a chance to work in peace. Uzbekistan must give the country cotton, and not… you know, letters’. Henceforth, Ligachev proposed that a CC commission be sent to Uzbekistan in order to evaluate the facts. He sought to mollify Rashidov, assuring him that there was nothing to fear from the commission and that slander would be called out publicly for what it was and the situation would improve anyway (Ligachev, 1996, p. 217).
After meeting Rashidov in late August 1983, Ligachev reported to Andropov who requested that he ‘go deeper’ and ‘not compromise the highest principles while examining all the questions […] to mean that he wanted to get to the bottom of the matter’ (Ligachev, 1996, p. 218; 1998, p. 238). Parallel to the Party investigation, the KGB re-opened an investigation initiated in 1981 on the pervasive corruption in the highest echelons of the Bukharan regional Party nomenklatura. This included the First Secretary of the Bukhara obkom, Abduvakhid Karimov, who was famous for his patrimonial attitude and for installing his friends within the oblast administration, in the local police, and prosecutor’s office.39 Another bribery scandal involved the Khorezm oblispolkom and the chairman of the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) UzSSR Kudrat Ergashev, who was removed from his post on 30 June 1983. In this regard, Rashidov wanted to show his commitment to the Andropovian cause while downplaying these negative phenomena in the republic. He defined them as marginal and isolated cases and during the Bureau meeting on 27 May 1983, where he proceeded to shift the responsibility, commenting as follows:
The organs that should enforce the law often lack a sense of responsibility, and there are people who go on the road of corruption, such as the executives of the Bukhara OBKhSS, police of the Khorezm oblispolkom, and the Tashkent gorispolkom. These people should be involved in the struggle against the theft of socialist property […] The MVD, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court of the UzSSR do not work sufficiently to strengthen the fight against corruption, speculation, and theft, and must improve collaboration with the state and people’s control organs, improving the effectiveness of the CPSU work that is committed to the fight against the theft of socialist property.40
Rashidov was probably trying to turn the moralization campaign in his favour, blaming those figures who were at the base of the investigations for the negative results in the republic. He was still powerful enough to replace the CPUz Second Secretary Leonid Grekov (on 8 July 1983) with Timofey Osetrov, an expert politician who had served from 1970 as First Deputy Chairman of the UzSSR Council of Ministers.41 Another dismissal followed this initial pyrrhic victory for Rashidov: on 24 August 1983, the Head of the Uzbek KGB Melkumov was transferred to the Soviet Embassy in Prague and his deputy Valentin Lagunov to Tambov while much of the rest of the investigative department was pensioned off.42 Nevertheless, the new Head of the UzSSR KGB, Golovin, appealed to the USSR General Prosecutor to take up the investigation and not to let the local authorities influence it in any way.43 Therefore, in august 1983, the investigations over criminal case No. 18/58115–83 (the ‘Bukhara affair’) passed from the KGB to the central prosecutor, which created a special investigation team led by Telman Gdlyan that became operative on 1 September. At the end of summer 1983, the prosecutor informed UzSSR Council of Ministers of the disappearance of large amounts of cotton, as well as the failure to use machinery and defoliants to detect waste and inefficiency such as the presence of cattle in the cotton fields. Furthermore, several people in September and October did not show up at their official offices because they were working in the cotton fields.
Seeing the tip of the iceberg, on 7 October, the prosecutor committed to broadening the investigation, and by 14 October 1983 more than 500 checks had been organized, of which 110 were in kolkhozes and sovkhozes.44 Just a couple of weeks later, the first results of the investigations were produced.45 With them, Rashidov had no other option than to resign from his office, while a possible succession proved highly problematic when his predestined successor Khodzhaev suddenly died. Another bad omen arrived on 21 September 1983 when the famous machine operator Tursunoi Akhunova died at aged only 47 . She was a symbol of the Rashidovian cotton triumph, and her death was a portent of the end of an era.
In autumn 1983, as usual, Rashidov started his period of business trips around the republic to supervise and encourage the local cotton pickers. On 1 October he gave a speech at the plenum of the Syrdaria obkom, on 6 October he did the same at the plenum of the Jizzakh obkom, and on 13 October he participated in the plenum of the Navoi obkom. Then, on 17 October, Rashidov received CPSU Secretary Kapitonov who came to Tashkent probably trying to convince him to retire. Together they travelled the republic, visited the Andijan and Tashkent regions and on 19 October they came to visit the aircraft factory that just a year before had offered Brezhnev the worst of Uzbek hospitality. In those days, Rashidov appeared visibly tired and seemingly depressed. Furthermore, at the Bureau meeting on 21 October 1983, one of the last Party meetings attended by the increasingly nervous Rashidov, the pitch of the allegations became even more heated, acknowledging mistakes and the growing practice of making falsifications, fraudulent statistics appeared in one-third of checks.
The emerging circumstances and the doubting messages from Moscow worried Rashidov who felt the psychological pressure of the Party and the KGB, most clearly represented by Andropov and his acolyte, Politburo member Heydar Aliyev. The latter probably had a role in warning the Uzbek leader about the preparation of a judicial campaign against him. In a 2014 interview, Nikolai Ryzhkov, then a CC CPSU Secretary and later Gorbachev’s Prime Minister, told me his recollations of Rashidov’s last days at the end of October 1983, when Ryzhkov was part of a CPSU delegation to Vietnam and arrived in Tashkent for a technical stop en route:
We were welcomed by Rashidov, without much celebration. Then they took us to the residence where there was a banquet. […] I was sitting next to him [Rashidov], and Aliyev was in front of us. At that moment, I noticed Rashidov’s mood had changed. He was a completely different person. Not that cheering, charming and elegant man I had seen in Moscow [with a] funny and interesting [attitude]. He was visibly depressed and silent. I had the feeling as if there was something dispiriting him, as he was seriously ill, or something else. […] The next morning we left [for Vietnam]. He accompanied us to the airport, and the atmosphere was the same [i.e. heavy]. He was not himself. He said that he had to make a trip to the republic’s oblasts because the cotton harvest had begun. Two days later in Vietnam, we were informed that he was dead. Then, there were rumours that he committed suicide: for me it is still not clear and, to be honest, I have never been interested in this issue. Apparently, someone knows, but as they say, ‘it is not known if it is worth digging up the past’.46
During his visits to the cotton fields in Karakalpakya, Rashidov suddenly felt poorly: ‘coronary artery disease and ischemia, atherosclerosis of the coronary vessels, cardiosclerosis post-heart attack. On 30 October 1983, at 7pm he had an acute infarction, repeated and extensive infarction and as a result, an acute cardiac event and on 31 October at 5am his heart stopped’.47 Twenty-two years to the day after Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s Tomb, the UzSSR was shocked by the tragic passing of a leader who had ruled the republic for almost a quarter of a century, a death marked by uncertainty and mystery.48 On 1 November, a farewell was held in the Palace of Friendship where Rashidov lay in state. It was attended by thousands of people who formed long queues to pay homage to Rashidov and occupied the centre of the Uzbek capital for hours.49 Then, Rashidov’s body was buried on the central square in Tashkent where the huge Lenin statue stood. Just after the demise of the Uzbek leader, it seemed that the whole republic had lost its most spiritual guide, a sort of God to whom everybody was devoted. Suddenly, the CPUz had lost the authority that had characterized the previous quarter of a century, while a series of internal struggles fuelled from above inflamed the republic as the Cotton Affair rumbled on. Rashidov was dead and ‘Rashidovism’ was temporarily over.
Conclusion
Rashidov’s regime survived thanks to its transformist ability to adapt to the conditions of the time. It evolved, following the course of Soviet policies and the mutations of power patterns, endorsing, and declaring what Moscow wanted to hear and producing the results (in terms of diplomacy, cotton, purges, etc.) that the Centre wanted. These results had both a confirmatory-legitimizing intent in order to demonstrate loyalty to the Soviet cause (Cucciolla, 2017) and demonstrated the ability of a charismatic leader to continuously readapt a periphery. His long reign represented the inclusion of the UzSSR within the Soviet project and his death marked the end of an era and the moment when the Cotton Affair entered its systemic phase influencing all spheres of the Uzbek society, when Moscow put the republic under outside administration, negating to many extents the principles of autonomy that had characterized the previous decades under Rashidov. Nevertheless, his story did not end with his demise. Indeed, Rashidov was officially recognized as the chief person responsible for the criminal situation in Uzbekistan at the 21st CPUz Congress (30 January 1986), where the ‘de-Rashidovization’ campaign posthumously condemned the defunct leader as guilty of a vicious work style in cadre management, intrigue, formalism, indifference, abuse of power, corruption, theft, and fraud (Cucciolla, 2017).50 Evidently, in the Perestroika framework, Rashidov became the perfect scapegoat for the stagnation and inefficiency of the Soviet economy, becoming a key issue in the Cotton Affair that juxtaposed parts of the Uzbek Party and society. In the aftermath of the Congress, the CC CPUz and UzSSR Council of Ministers even decreed a sort of damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory) against the former Uzbek leader, removing any commemoration of his name, restoring original place names, and removing financial and housing support to his family.51
By 1990, the Cotton Affair was over, and the figure of Rashidov was rehabilitated by the new UzSSR President Islom Karimov together with the other ‘victims’ of the ‘Perestroika terror’. In post-Soviet Uzbekistan, the ‘negative phenomena’ related to the Cotton Affair would be narrated by public discourse, historiography, and museology as the natural reaction to the imposition of a cotton monoculture. At the same time, the figure of Rashidov was commemorated as a father of the Uzbek nation, a patriot, a national hero - who behaved in such a way [as] to maximize the Uzbeks’ interests, sharing power and wealth amongst the Uzbek people - and a symbol of revenge and resistance against Soviet colonial rule (Cucciolla, 2017).
This attempt to rehabilitate Rashidov as a sort of ‘Jadid’ (turn of the century Muslim modernist), a ‘partisan with a pen’ who peacefully struggled against the colonial power is paradoxical when we assess how this leader was responsible for the modernization and inclusion of Uzbekistan within the Soviet project and analogously, the endorser of an in-depth Sovietization and Russification process that partially erased national culture and tradition. Therefore, the posthumous rehabilitation of Rashidov could be read as a direct political manoeuvre resulting in the return of members of the former Soviet-era nomenklatura (Wooden and Stefes, 2009, p. 150). Another mark of Rashidov’s transformism, considering that the Rashidovian intelligentsia was mostly restored, dynastically evolved, changed symbols, narratives, and ideologies but ultimately continued to rule Uzbekistan for another three decades after Rashidov’s death.
Notes
1 Norling mentions the future head of the republic’s MVD Khaidar Iakhiaev who served in the Samarkand obkom in 1944; the head of the Samarkand (and then Uzbek) KGB Leon Melkumov who was a Komsomol secretary together with Rashidov; the head of the Samarkand obkom Bektash Rakhimov who worked with Rashidov thirty years earlier; the writer Nasyr Makhmudov who worked with Rashidov and then led the Samarkand oblispolkom (regional executive committee) (1940–1943), obkom (1943–1948), the obkomy of Ferghana (1950–1951), Tashkent (1951–1952), Karakalpakia (1956–1963), Syrdaria (1963–1969), and finally became the head of the UzSSR People’s control committee (1969–1984), representing the Fergana group in Rashidov’s clique (Norling, 2014, pp. 193–194).
2 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, hereafter RGANI), fond 100, opis 6, delo 210, list 7.
3 RGANI, f. 100, op. 6, d. 210, l. 8.
4 RGANI, f. 100, op. 6, d. 210, l. 11–14. This kind of harsh criticism against the Uzbek leader was not well received, and Usmanov marginalized. In December 1965, the Tashkent obkom removed Usmanov from his post and sent him to work as the director of the Tashkent cotton ginning plant. He considered this move as a reprisal for his critical speech against Rashidov and from 1965 to 1976 he sent dozens of letters to Brezhnev, Nasreddinova, the CC CPSU, the 24th CPSU Congress (1971), and others to complain about his unjust marginalization, and claimed the right to be critical and his full rehabilitation. RGANI, f. 100, op. 6, d. 210, l. 1, 15–23, 36–49, 54–55, 57–59, 69–88, 90–92. Despite the explanations given by the CC CPSU (which did not take seriously this matter), Usmanov kept warning Brezhnev about Rashidov and of fraud in the Uzbek cotton sector, and addressed the 25th CPSU Congress (1976) demanding his moral rehabilitation and the end of his persecution by Rashidov. RGANI, f. 100, op. 6, d. 211, l. 46–185.
5 It is interesting to note the tone of the letters that Rashidov wrote to Politburo members in order to evaluate the intimacy of their relations. He addressed Brezhnev as ‘Dorogoi nash Leonid Ilich’ (Our Dear Leonid Ilich), and took a very pandering tone with Suslov and Chernenko, addressing them as ‘Dorogoy brat’ (Dear Brother). Meanwhile he was more formal towards Yuri Andropov, whom he addressed as ‘Dorogoy Yuri Vladimirovich’ (Rizaev, 1992, pp. 128–135).
6 The ethnic tensions between natives, settlers, and other communities together with attacks on against factories, theatres, and other facilities persisted into the 1970s (Lubin, 1984, p. 241).
7 At the end of the 1960s, Nasriddinova was marginalized from local power struggles, moving her career to the centre of Soviet power. A member of the CC CPSU (1956–1976) and a deputy in the USSR Supreme Soviet (1958–1974), from 14 July 1970 (until June 16 1974) she headed the Soviet of Nationalities of the USSR Supreme Soviet and, in the period 1974–1978, she became Deputy Minister of the USSR Construction Materials Industry and head of the Committee for Asian and African Countries. Her husband Nurutdinov had been already expelled from political life in 1964 and died in June 1966. In 1970, Nishanov was exiled to Ceylon where he served as Soviet Ambassador (Vaisman, 1995, pp. 115–116).
8 RGANI, f. 100, op. 5, d. 278, l. 100. In late September 1972, the CC CPSU added these appointments ‘were in accordance with their professional qualities. There are no complaints about their work’. RGANI, f. 100, op. 5, d. 278, l. 173.
9 RGANI, f. 100, op. 5, d. 278, l. 139.
10 RGANI, f. 100, op. 5, d. 278, l. 175–176.
11 RGANI, f. 100, op. 5, d. 278, l. 180–187.
12 Among the Tashkenters close to Rashidov, the Bureau members Musakhanov and Salimov spent their previous careers in Tashkent and Moscow, while Khojaev became a new member in 1976 and developed his career in Samarkand and Namangan (Tunçer-Kılavuz, 2014, p. 120).
13 Despite these preparations, Rashidov’s ‘Dauphin’ died before his mentor in September 1983 and this defined dynastic line was never followed (Carlisle, 1991, p. 126).
14 Pravda Vostoka, 22 October 1975, p. 1.
15 RGANI, f. 5, op. 75, d. 158, l. 1–2.
16 During his long reign, Rashidov kept receiving delegations from India, and he also returned there in 1975 where he gave a speech at the 10th Congress of the Communist Party of India celebrating the ‘peace, cooperation, and brotherhood’ between the two peoples. Pravda Vostoka, 30 January 1975, p. 2.
17 Pravda Vostoka, 11 October 1978, p. 1–2.
18 Ahmed Rashid estimates that 65% of gross economic output of the republic, 60% of all Uzbek resource consumption, and 40% of the Uzbek labor force were dedicated to cotton (Rashid, 1995, p. 59; Rumer, 1991).
19 During his career, Rashidov was awarded ten Orders of Lenin (1950, 1957, 1965, 1967, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, and 1980), an Order of the October Revolution (1982), a Red Banner of Labour (1951), two orders of the Red Star (1942 and 1946), a Badge of Honour (1944), a Lenin Prize (1980), and two Hero of the Socialist Labour medals (1974 and 1977) (Hough, 1976, pp. 2–3). As Clark (1993, p. 188) comments, ‘for his part, Rashidov presented valuable tokens of homage to Brezhnev and massaged the latter’s insatiable ego in public. His reference to Brezhnev at the 1976 25th CPSU Congress as “the most outstanding and most influential political figure of contemporary times,” is but one of a large number of outlandish examples of Rashidov’s toadyism toward the general secretary’.
20 When assessing Brezhnevism as the passage from institution to relationship, we can see prizes and awards as an attempt to institutionalize relations (Schattenberg, 2018).
21 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, hereafter RGASPI), f. 17, op. 145, d. 2227; Pravda Vostoka, 4 February 1976, p. 3.
22 Pravda Vostoka, 19 September 1976, p. 1; 4 November 1979, p. 1.
23 Pravda Vostoka, 1 November 1980, p. 1.
24 In a memorandum from the CC CPUz to the CC CPSU on 13 April 1982, Rashidov asked to CPSU Secretary Gorbachev to increase the purchase price of cotton, from 466 rubles per ton in 1981 to 680 rubles and to also reconsider the price of silk cocoons. After an evaluation of the case, the CC CPSU answered Rashidov’s request on 5 October 1982 agreeing to raise the purchasing price of cotton by 11% (less than the 32% requested), for fine fibre cotton by 16–20% but not for silk cocoons. RGANI, f. 5, op. 88, d. 481, l. 3–17.
25 Pravda Vostoka, 6 March 1982, p. 1.
26 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 151, d. 2323; Pravda Vostoka, 30 November 1982, p. 2.
27 Pravda Vostoka, 3 December 1982, p. 1; 22 December 1982, p. 3.
28 In 1983, three main investigation channels were pursued: at the political level, the Party initiated its own investigation (through the Party Control Committee) that entrusted loyal figures and sought to take back the control over the periphery; at the security level, the KGB – under the direct influence of Andropov – played a crucial role in ousting the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in collecting materials, and in selecting the cases that were perceived as threats to state security; finally, at the civil prosecution level, the USSR Prosecutor’s Office (with the People’s Control Committee) proceeded with a judicial investigation before passing the cases to the judiciary.
29 Pravda Vostoka, 4 January 1983, pp. 1–2.
30 On 1 January 1983, the CPUz comprised 605,653 people of whom 578,700 were full members and 26,953 were official candidates. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2348, l. 4–6. Protocol 44/1983.
31 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2328, l. 16, 28–29. Protocol 62/1983.
32 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2317, l. 171–172. Protocol 9/1983. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2324, l. 14. Protocol 58/1983.
33 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2331, l. 12. Protocol 65/1983,
34 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2372, l. 9–10. Protocol 16,
35 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2372, l. 20 Protocol 16,
36 Interview by Riccardo Mario Cucciolla with a former official of the UzSSR Ministry of Education in the late 1970s who prefers to remain anonymous, in Moscow, 26 November 2014.
37 In 1989, Gorbachev told the Politburo that between 1978 and 1983 the Central Committee had received on average 736 letters per year from Uzbekistan, a total of 3,680 letters over five years. RGANI, f. 89, op. 24, d. 21, l. 1.
38 In Ligachev’s words: ‘I had the sense that Andropov was prepared for my report. After hearing me out, he immediately told me, “Let’s do it this way. You meet with Rashidov. Yes, you have to meet with him. Invite him in to see you and have a chat. I don’t have to teach you how to ask questions”’ (Ligachev, 1996, p. 213).
39 The case started on 27 April 1983, when the head of the Bukhara OBKhSS (MVD Department Against Misappropriation of Socialist Property) Akhat Muzaffarov was caught red-handed for bribery and arrested. A treasure trove worth 1.1 million rubles in cash, gold, diamonds, watches, and jeans – an excess of wealth in USSR where the average salary was 165–190 rubles per month – was found in his home. The case also involved Bukhara First Secretary Karimov, Director of the Bukhara city department of trade in industrial goods Shodi Kudratov, Deputy Chairman of the MVD UzSSR Davydov, and other senior officials of the oblast (Gdlyan and Ivanov, 1996, p. 15; Timofeev, 1992).
40 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 152, d. 2330. l. 6, 8. Prot. 64/1983.
41 In Rashidov’s era (1959–1983), Osetrov was the only second secretary of the CPUz who had previously a role in Uzbekistan. For the debate on the role of the second secretary, see Grybkauskas (2021).
42 According to Gdlyan, the first victims of the Cotton Affair were the employees of the KGB UzSSR, some of whom were sent to Afghanistan (Gdlyan and Ivanov, 1996, p. 22; Vaksberg, 1991, p. 119).
43 Interview by Riccardo Mario Cucciolla with Telman Gdlyan, Moscow, 17 October 2014.
44 On that occasion, there were verbal reprimands and 54 cases were reported to the Party, 166 people removed from their duties, 52 people accused of making errors in the state budget, 16 criminal cases opened, and official complaints lodged against 74 people. Memorandum No. 7/31–83 from the USSR Prosecutor (UzSSR Department) to the UzSSR Council of Ministers of the. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistan (Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan, hereafter TsGARUz), f. 837, op. 41, d. 6190, l. 69–73.
45 137 people were found responsible for poor discipline, 167 people guilty of violating the law, 537 punished with administrative sanctions, and fifteen criminal cases made against 23 people. These cases were about individuals and small quantities of cotton that had been stolen or not been harvested. Memorandum No. 7/34–83 from the USSR Prosecutor (UzSSR Department) to the UzSSR Council of Ministers (28 October 1983). TsGARUz, f. 837, op. 41, d. 6190, l. 74.
46 Interview by Riccardo Mario Cucciolla with Nikolai Ryzhkov, Moscow, 22 December 2014.
47 Pravda Vostoka, 1 November 1983, p. 1.
48 Presently, there is no evidence to suggest Rashidov committed suicide. His colleagues in Uzbekistan and in the CC CPSU – and even his rivals – exclude this hypothesis. His old foe Nishanov – who identifies Rashidov as a despot and the cause of Uzbek backwardness – believes that the ‘servile and obsequious’ Rashidov died of natural causes: he did not resist emotional stress and hopelessness, or fear looming revelations, and those who were there in the train failed to help him (Nishanov, 2012, pp. 216, 227). Gdlyan – who could opportunistically use the suicide argument – totally excludes any conspiracy against Rashidov’s life, affirming that he ‘died of natural causes […] probably he knew that everything would finish badly and perhaps this concern fostered his death’. Gdlyan also excludes the murder hypothesis saying that ‘It is not true, because he died in the presence of his relatives, in their own hands. This is just to say that [he died] close to those people who were not interested in his death and who knew that the end of Rashidov could weaken their position. [In the face of such allegations] the first secretary of Karakalpakia, Kalibek Komalov, a very intelligent man, laughed, saying that these rumours are taken from the clouds and have nothing to do with reality. His daughter, after all, was married to the son of Rashidov. It’s evident that they had a good relationship. All these rumours about the death of Rashidov, have nothing to do with the truth’. Interview by Riccardo Mario Cucciolla with Telman Gdlyan, Moscow, 17 October 2014. Conversely, his fellow Nikolai Ivanov – who was more engaged in conspiracy theories – did not exclude the possibility of suicide or murder (Nashe Kino, 2008).
49 Pravda Vostoka, 2 November 1983, p. 1.
50 See also RGASPI, f. 17, op. 155, d. 2296.
51 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 155, d. 2316, l. 9–10.
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