I have a special interest in Uyghur oppression for a couple of reasons.
To start with, they are a Turkic people whose language my wife and
in-laws can practically understand. Secondly, they are just another
example of how people living under Stalinist rule can suffer the same
kind of injustices as they suffered under pre-Communist colonial rule.
During the rise of the Mongols, the Turks, who were also a nomadic
people historically, settled into the region that became known as
Turkestan. As such, it was a key element in the Silk Road that
facilitated trade between Europe and Asia until the end of the 15th century.
This area languished for centuries until competition between China,
Russia, and European powers during the 19th century prompted an invasion
by the Manchus into East Turkestan with the encouragement of British
banks who were participating in the “Great Game”. “Xinjiang” or
“Sinkiang”, which means “New Dominion” or “New Territory”, was annexed
by the Manchu empire on November 18, 1884.
Meanwhile, Czarist Russia was seizing control over West Turkestan in its
own expansionist bid. In their victory over the old regime, the
Bolsheviks had to contend with the problem of oppressed nationalities,
in particular the Muslim peoples to the south in what had been known as
West Turkestan. In a fascinating debate between Lenin and Bukharin in
1919, there are some issues that are relevant to today’s struggles.
Bukharin questions the need for self-determination of such peoples,
using arguments similar to that of Rosa Luxemburg. Responding to
Bukharin’s assertion that “I want to recognise only the right of the
working classes to self-determination,” Lenin refers to the Bashkirs, a
Turkic people who had petitioned the Soviet government for the right to
form an autonomous Soviet Republic.
What, then, can we do in relation to such peoples as the Kirghiz, the
Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Turkmen, who to this day are under the influence
of their mullahs? Here, in Russia, the population, having had a long
experience of the priests, helped us to overthrow them. But you know how
badly the decree on civil marriage is still being put into effect. Can
we approach these peoples and tell them that we shall overthrow their
exploiters? We cannot do this, because they are entirely subordinated to
their mullahs. In such cases we have to wait until the given nation
develops, until the differentiation of the proletariat from the
bourgeois elements, which is inevitable, has taken place.
Our programme must not speak of the self-determination of the working
people, because that would be wrong. It must speak of what actually
exists. Since nations are at different stages on the road from
medievalism to bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois democracy to
proletarian democracy, this thesis of our programme is absolutely
correct. With us there have been very many zigzags on this road. Every
nation must obtain the right to self-determination, and that will make
the self-determination of the working people easier.
As most of you probably know, this policy was reversed within two or
three years as Stalin consolidated power and reintroduced the Great
Russian chauvinism that made people such as the Bashkirs miserable. Just
before his death, he wrote an article that has been described as his
testament. It included the following warning:
It is quite natural that in such circumstances the “freedom to secede
from the union” by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of
paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that
really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal
and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no
doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers
will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a
fly in milk.
full: https://louisproyect.org/2018/09/25/china-and-the-uyghurs/
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