The Soviet Middle East (Routledge Revivals) : A Model for Development? 9781136310270, 9780415682411

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Routledge Revivals

The Soviet Middle East

First published in 1967, The Soviet Middle East provides an analysis of the economic and political status of the national republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia, which were, at the time of the book's initial publication, a part of the Soviet Union. The authors analyse their economic achievements, as well as their rapid progress in health and education, comparing their situation with that of their non-Soviet neighbours and indeed with the rest of the USSR. They seek to define the relevance of the Soviet planning system and Soviet ideology to the development of these countries, and also to contextualise their study in terms of the problems of other developing countries and the political stability of the Soviet Union as a multination state. Written by two leading authorities on the Soviet Union, this reissue will be welcomed by students of Soviet and Middle-Eastern history, and by all those interested in the political, social and economic devel­ opment of Communist republics.

The Soviet Middle East A Model for Development?

Alec Nove and J. A. Newth

First published in 1967 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd This edition first published in 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1967 George Allen & U n w i n All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now k n o w n or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC Control Number: 67078004 ISBN 13: 978-0-415-68241-1 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-11852-8 (ebk)

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

By Alec Nove THE SOVIET ECONOMY revised edition

WAS STALIN REALLY NECESSARY?

The Soviet Middle East A MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT? BY

ALEC NOVE Bonar Professor of Economics University of Glasgow

AND

J. A. NEWTH Lecturer in Soviet Studies University of Glasgow

London

GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE . MUSEUM STREET

FIRST P U B L I S H E D I N 1 9 6 7

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers © George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1967

P R I N T E D IN GREAT B R I T A I N in 11 on 12 point Plantin

type

BY SIMSON SHAND LTD L O N D O N , HERTFORD AND HARLOW

CONTENTS AUTHORS' PREFACE

page 10 13

INTRODUCTION

1 GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE 17 (a) Transcaucasia 17 (b) Kazakhstan and Central Asia 22 2 A NOTE ON THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE 3 INDUSTRIALIZATION (a) The low starting-point-and the statistics (b) Natural resources (c) Pattern of industrial development before the war (d) The war and since

32 39 39 44 46 47

4 AGRICULTURE

55

5 SOCIAL SERVICES

65 65 67 75 78 86.

(a) Pensions and benefits (b) Schools: Central Asia and Kazakhstan (c) Schools: Transcaucasia (d) Higher education (e) Medical services 6 FINANCE

93

7 INCOMES

98

8 COMPARISONS WITH NEIGHBOURS

105

9 ASSESSMENT (a) Colonies? The case against (b) Colonies? The case for (c) Colonies? Yes and no (d) Industrialization, agriculture and land reform (e) Colonialism ala fran;aise? (f ) Capital import and technical assistance (g) Relation between nationalities

113 113 116 n8

APPENDIX

133

BIBLIOGRAPHY

154

MAPS INDEX

122 124 125 127

8, 9· 155, 156 157

THE MIDDLE

SOVIET EAST

A U T H O R S ' P R E F A C E

Our object has been to examine the development of the eastern and southern republics of the Soviet Union, that is to say Central Asia and Transcaucasia. This study originated in the Overseas Develop­ ment Institute, where it was felt that worth-while results could be achieved from a look at the progress of the peripheral republics of the Soviet Union, the more so as they border upon other nonSoviet developing countries. We have done our best to present a fair picture to the reader. However, we are well aware of the diffi­ culties which stand in the way of sound judgement. The facts are seldom unambiguous and are frequently contradictory. In these circumstances the problem is not only one of interpreting but also of weighting. If facts A and B are negative and C and D are posi­ tive, one's conclusions must depend on the relative importance of A, B, C and D. This further raises the question: important to whom? Evidently, different individuals are affected in various ways, and must be expected to have widely different views of the relative importance to them and to their fellow-citizens of this or that policy or action. Thus, to take just one example, let us suppose that the freedom of Uzbek writers and literature is adversely affected by a Moscow-imposed censorship. Let us further assume that there have been great advances in education, partly financed by Moscow. We could legitimately regard these phenomena as negative and positive respectively, but we know of no objective standard by which they can be quantitatively compared. Nor could we even begin to estimate what would have been the situation in these republics in some hypothetical political circumstances. We cannot pretend that there is any single correct view of such ques­ tions as these. All we have tried to do is to present as much as we can of the essential data and to make (we hope) sensible comments upon them. The area has been very little studied from the point of view of its economic development. An exception is the valuable report on Soviet Central Asia, published by the Economic Commission for Europe and referred to in the bibliography. Indeed, apart from Colonel Wheeler's valuable work and a very few others, even non­ economic aspects have received little attention. We suspect that this relative neglect is due to three main reasons. Firstly, the areas

AUTHORS' PREFACE

II

with which this study is concerned lie at the very margin of what is often loosely denned as the Middle East. British Oriental and Middle-Eastern studies have until recently suffered from a curiously blind spot, in that attention has been far more closely concentrated on the classical, literary cultures than on the contemporary phenomena. The idea that the present and the recent past are not respectable topics for academic study may now be dying, but it is still influential. The recent active interest in economic develop­ ment of Middle-Eastern countries is not unnaturally concentrated on such countries as Egypt and Iran, to which access is easier and which employ Western economic advisers. Secondly, there is the widely held (and far from unjustifiable) view that Soviet statistics in general, economic statistics in par­ ticular, have been open to serious criticism. They are suspected of either being so biased in their selection as to present a deliberately false picture, or so ingeniously misdefined as to leave the enquirer with no tangible picture at all. Since the information which can be gleaned from this kind of source as the development of the individual regions of the USSR belongs to the same system of mis­ information, any discussion of the topic would appear, on this view, to be rather profitless. Thirdly, while a century has now passed since the Russians took Tashkent and appeared to be posing a long-range threat to the British position in India, this has created some political attitudes which hardened into a tradition which is apt to look at these areas, if they are looked at at all, from this political-strategic angle. Official policy has, of course, responded to the changing situation, but some traces of the old attitudes may still linger in the public mind. Nevertheless, it is surely clear that much of interest is to be gleaned from a study of the area from the standpoint of its econ­ omic development. Soviet statistics must be used with caution, but no serious specialist will now assert that they are unusable. In many respects they are fuller and more reliable than the statistics available for many developing countries, and particularly for the southern neighbours of these republics. Thus, for example, while the death rates for Uzbekistan and Armenia may perhaps be some­ what understated, the figures for Iran are little better than a guess, so wild as to be virtually meaningless. Some critics may wonder whether a concentration on economic aspects might not lead to an unjustifiable neglect of politics. We entirely agree that politics have

12

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

played a very active role indeed in the process of social and econ­ omic change, both in the Soviet Union as a whole and in these republics. We will, therefore, repeatedly touch on political factors. No doubt there is need for a more thorough study of political development too. None the less, we consider it right and proper to concentrate our attention first and foremost on the economic and social aspects of the story. Various drafts of the study were sent to the Overseas Develop­ ment Institute and we benefited greatly from the comments and criticisms made by Mr William Clark and his colleagues. Our grateful thanks go also to Colonel G. Wheeler, Miss V. Connoly, Professor O. Lattimore, Professor D. Lang and Mrs M. Holdsworth, who read drafts of the manuscript and expressed their comments. We have done our best to take all criticism into account, but the views expressed here are our own. A. NOVE J. A. N E W T H

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The object of this book is to enquire into the Soviet record in their Central Asian and Transcaucasian republics from the standpoint of economic and social development, and to do so without bias, to see both the positive and negative features of a complex reality. It is clear enough that both features exist and that a determined propagandist can make a powerful and well documented case either for or against, provided he selects his material with that end in view. Except for pure propaganda, such an exercise would be an entire waste of time. There is no point in starting such a study with the already held conviction that these areas are colonies ex­ ploited by Moscow for its own evil purposes. Nor is it sensible to adopt, as an initial hypothesis, the official Soviet picture of happy native toilers building their own freely chosen brand of Commun­ ism. We should examine the facts which are available and see what kind of conclusions they support. The kind of questions which will be asked are these. Are the republics which will be analysed examples of rapid economic development? If so, by what means, financial and other, has this been achieved, and at what cost? By reference to the rest of the USSR, and also to non-Communist neighbour States, are some or all of these republics still comparatively under-developed? If so, why? What role has the Soviet system itself played in the development process? How far has it been associated with Russian settlement, with Russification, with political control from Moscow? Does the word 'colonialism' correctly describe the situation of these areas, or does the use of this name evoke the wrong kind of picture? How does the standard of life compare with other parts of the Soviet Union, with their neighbours, with the past? These are surely questions of genuine interest. Comparatively little has yet been written on this subject from the point of view of economic develop­ ment, though, of course, there have been several serious and valu­ able studies on the Soviet areas of Asia by political analysts. It is far from easy to provide a satisfactory picture of the situa­ tion, and it would certainly be quite wrong to pretend that there is sufficient evidence on which to base firm conclusions on a number of important issues. For example, there is the significant question of the attitude of the inhabitants to Soviet policies within their

14

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

republics. It is obviously useless in this connection to base oneself on material published in the Soviet Union, since with isolated exceptions this is devoted to endless repetitions of the theme of 'friendship of the peoples', and emphasis on the love and respect which these members of various nationalities showfor their Russian brothers. This is observed even where, in the case of Georgia, it is completely contrary to the facts, as every visitor to Georgia who has spoken freely to local inhabitants must have repeatedly noticed. Of course, it does not follow that the Georgia situation is typical of other republics; we will return to this point in Chapter 9. But it does follow that no statement made in printed Soviet sources on this kind of issue can be accepted as evidence. This brings one to another essential point. The republics which are the subject of this book have certain things in common. They are non-Russian, indeed non-Slav; they were annexed to the Russian empire in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. They share a common legal status within the USSR; they were economically and culturally backward areas. This is why it is useful to consider their common experiences within the covers of the same book. However, there are also some important differences between them. Some, like Georgia, were ancient kingdoms with a proud history and cultural traditions. Others, for instance Kirgizia, were far more backward in every respect and there is little historical warrant for their separate existence. Georgia and Armenia differ from the other republics also in having been traditionally Christian and not Muslim. There are also differences in natural endowment. Some of the republics are largely desert, or lacking fuel and other mineral resources, while others are more fortunate in these respects. There are also contrasts in the proportion of the native nationality and of Russian immigrants among the inhabitants of the various republics. Therefore, there is bound to be some danger of making misleading generalizations of which the authors are very conscious and of which the reader should be warned. Several of the republics are commonly presented by Soviet propagandists as development models for their non-Soviet neigh­ bours. Delegations from Asian and African countries have been taken to Tashkent and Alma Ata, and shown prosperous collective farms, modern factories, well-equipped research institutions, and were told that these developments were due to the special nature of the Soviet régime, and that they should draw the appropriate morals, Many of the republics have close affinities with their Asian

INTRODUCTION

15

neighbours. Thus, there are probably about as many Azerbaijanis in North-west Iran as there are in Soviet Azerbaijan; there are more Tajiks in Afghanistan than in the ussR; Uzbeks also live in Afghan­ istan in large numbers (a good million), while the Soviet-Chinese border cuts through several major ethnic groups. The Azerbaijani language (and also that of a number of other republics) is close to Turkish. The Tajiks are hardly to be distinguished in race or language from the Persians. There is some natural curiosity about the progress of Soviet Asia in these countries. There is also a more general curiosity among those who, whatever their race or nation­ ality, are conscious of the acute problems which economic develop­ ment brings with it, of the many social and economic obstacles to modernization. There may be lessons, positive or negative, to be drawn from the experience of the backward (or formerly backward) Soviet republics. One is reminded at this stage that the process of adjusting a traditional society to modern life is everywhere a difficult and sometimes painful one. While no doubt we will find that a number of the troubles are peculiarly associated with the Soviet form of government, others are common to countries with different social and political systems. The social habits of a pre-industrial age, often associated with Muslim traditions, have been or are being eroded in many countries. For example, a deliberate attack on these traditions was a prominent feature of Kemal Ataturk's polices in Turkey, for reasons which were obviously totally unconnected with Communist ideology. This is not to justify any anti-religious measures in Soviet Asia or anywhere else. The point is that these things have happened in a number of countries. It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that this kind of social coercion does not repel but, on the contrary, attracts many modernizers in under-developed countries who are all too well aware of the need to tackle the ob­ stacles associated with traditionalism. The plan of campaign of the present book is as follows. Firstly, the reader will be briefly introduced to the history and geography of the region and to each of its republics. There will follow a section on the arrangements common to them all, i.e. the Soviet political and planning system, the powers of the various republics within the USSR, the role of the Communist Party, and so on. There will follow an examination of the industrial and agricultural develop­ ments of these republics, with due emphasis on common features as well as on peculiarities. Social services and living standards will

16

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

next be considered, as well as the problem of finance, of growth, and of services. On all such matters there is a great amount of statistics available but some of these are complex and, without careful handling, misleading. There is danger in overloading the text with figures and explanatory footnotes, and thereby boring the reader. But it is also undesirable to make bald and unsupported assertions and to leave oneself open to criticism for quoting 'convenient' figures in isolation or out of context. To avoid such charges as these, some detailed economic and cultural statistics will appear in the text and in the appendix with such detailed explanations as are necessary, so that figures cited in the text can be shown to be properly documented and soundly based. There will also be an assessment of national and social problems, which will unavoid­ ably reflect the fallible judgement of the authors, since it is the very nature of this subject that evidence is sometimes contradictory and proof impossible (imagine the conclusions a Soviet scholar would reach if he studied Scottish nationalism). Finally, a concluding section will attempt to assess the progress made, by reference to that of neighbouring countries, and the question whether there can be said to be 'colonialism' in these areas receives critical examination. The picture that emerges should be of interest in the context of discussions about economic development and the many problems that arise.

Chapter I

GEOGRAPHICAL

AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

(a) Transcaucasia

Since the two major regions with which this study is to deal have in common only their distinction in historical tradition from the main mass of Russia, it seems appropriate that the following sum­ mary sketch of the geographical and historical background apper­ taining to each should form two sub-chapters. We begin with the republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, which lie mainly to the south of the Caucasus chain. First, as to the size of this region: the three republics taken together have an area very roughly equal to that of two-and-a-half Scotlands, Georgia and Azerbaijan each equalling one Scotland, and Armenia the odd half. The population is a little thinner on the ground; whereas Scotland has rather more than 5 million inhabitants, Georgia and Azerbaijan each have about 4 million, and Armenia about 2 million. The main range of the Caucasus which separates our region from the main body of Europe has relatively few passes and has peaks rising to over 18,000 feet (Mount Elbruz, at 18,526 feet, is the highest peak in Europe). The roads across the range, originally built for military purposes, are now principally employed in carry­ ing tourist traffic; the main links of the region to the north are the coastal railways, that along the Caspian coast dating from Tsarist times, while the much more difficult engineering problem of building a line along the Black Sea coast was undertaken only in the Soviet period (completed 1947). The main burden of heavy traffic, however, is borne by coastal shipping (oil from Baku direct to Astrakhan and up the Volga; oil piped across to the Black Sea ports, and manganese from Chiaturi, sent to Rostov and the south of Russia). South of the main range of the Caucasus and roughly parallel with it runs the Lesser Caucasus range, which forms the north-east corner of the mountain massif of Anatolia and North-west Persia; B

18

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

the southern border of the USSR, defined for the greater part of its length by the Araks River, runs some distance to the south of this range. The whole of the region between the main ranges is ex­ tremely mountainous (especially landlocked Armenia), except for the two river basins of the Rioni, in Georgia to the west and the much larger Kura basin to the east; much of the lower course of the Kura is below sea-level, as is the Caspian Sea into which it runs south of Baku (about –92 feet). It is in these river basins that a great part of the Soviet supply of subtropical produce is grown; the Rioni Valley enjoys a Mediter­ ranean climate (Batumi is in the latitude of Rome) with adequate rainfall—up to 100 inches per annum. Here are produced tobacco, tea, and citrus fruits as well as wine and silk. This area is also part of the coastal belt of holiday resorts fringing the Black Sea. The Kura Valley in Azerbaijan to the east is much drier and has a rigid continental climate; here the main crop is cotton, grown with the aid of irrigation. Only in the extreme south of Azerbaijan (Lenkoran) are conditions found approximating to those of the Rioni Valley, and here, too, Mediterranean-type cultures flourish. Armenia is too mountainous for large-scale agriculture, but here, as throughout the region, the hill slopes are terraced for vines and fruit trees and the whole region produces large quantities of wine and dried fruit. In addition there are valuable forests of Mediter­ ranean timber. But the principal wealth of the region consists in its mineral deposits, first among which is the oil of Baku. This oilfield, one of the earliest in the world to undergo exploitation, is now a century old, and it has been found possible to maintain pro­ duction in recent years only by extending the drilling area well out into the Caspian. The oil industry has become the parent of a wide range of industrial activity: engineering equipment for the oil in­ dustry in this and other Soviet oilfields, and for export, chemicals, general engineering and so on. As the cost of extracting oil mounts, the trend towards diversification continues. Baku indeed is almost a classic case of a city with one major pre-revolutionary type of industry—and with a history of revolutionary conflict, not all of it Bolshevik—which has gradually been transformed into a com­ munity with a more complex economic structure. At the present time Baku accounts for about 40 per cent of the total industrial out­ put of Transcaucasia. Other deposits of mineral fuel in the region are small; the principal areas are in Georgia (coal at Tkibuli and Tkvarcheli), but the mountainous terrain and swift rivers provide

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

19

a number of good sites for hydroelectric stations; the largest such scheme is in the neighbourhood of Erevan (the Lake Sevan scheme). The manganese deposits of Chiaturi, in Georgia, which were al­ ready being exploited before the Revolution, areof greatimportance to the Soviet economy; the reserves have been estimated at 10 per cent of total world reserves, and together with the much larger deposits at Nikopol in the Ukraine, make the USSR the largest pro­ ducer in the world. Until recent years the output has been shipped to other parts of the USSR, but a sizeable steelworks at Rustavi, near Tbilisi, was built in the late 'fifties. Its output—currently of the order of one million tons annually—is of little more than local significance. In spite of the distance of Transcaucasia from the main metallurgical centres of the USSR, one may surmise that this plant owes more to local demands for prestige than to exact con­ siderations of economic advantage. Transcaucasia has a history going back to well before the begin­ ning of the Christian era. In this sense, this area is far older than Russia itself, and the traditions of past glory remain and still exert their influence. The Caucasus is the land to which the Argo sailed, where Prometheus was chained to the rock, the homeland of Zoroaster (there may well be some connection between the fireworship of the Parsi religion and the seepages of oil and inflam­ mable gas in the Baku region). Long before the Varangians of Kiev, Christianity had come to the Caucasus; by the fourth century A.D. it had been introduced into both Georgia and Armenia, and it is not without interest to note that their scripts (of Iranian origin), which derive from this early period, have remained in use in the USSR, while the Cyrillic script—a later Christian creation—has been brought into use for all the other languages of the USSR, except those of the Baltic States. In the period when Islam was at its apogee, the principalities of the Caucasus formed a frontier zone beyond which the Muslims hardly passed, although Georgia was subjugated for a time, and the less mountainous areas of the present Azerbaijan became permanently converted. After the Mongol episode, which had such a profound effect in separating the main body of Russia from western Europe and retarded its development for several centuries, the Caucasian States became part of the frontier zone between the powerful Turkish and Persian Empires, and although Peter the Great was strong enough to defeat Persia and acquire the eastern and southern shores of the Caspian, these conquests were not retained, and it was

20

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

only in 1801 that Paul succeeded in consolidating Russian author­ ity over Georgia. During the rest of the nineteenth century, Russia continued to expand southwards into the area, acquiring the Khanates of Azerbaijan by the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), Armenia by the Treaty of Turkmanchai (1826)—both of these from Persia— and southern Georgia by the Treaty of Adrianople with Turkey (1829). Local revolts, savagely suppressed, continued for many years, both within Transcaucasia itself and on the lines of com­ munication to the north of the main Caucasus range, but these were brought to an end by 1864. A further war with Turkey in 1877–8 brought the Russian frontiers further to the south-west, to include areas which were lost again after the Revolution of 1917. Georgia was now wholly within the borders of the Russian Empire, while Armenia was still partially under Turkish, and Azerbaijan partially under Persian control. The gradual break-up of the Turkish Empire in the latter part of the nineteenth century (and particularly the independence of the Balkan States) encouraged the growth of Armenian nationalist parties on Russian soil, the most powerful of which (the Dashnaktsutiun) combined demands for autonomy within a republican and federal Russia with economic demands influenced by the socialism of the Second International. In Georgia, the nationalist and socialist elements were similarly blended; Georgia remained a dominantly feudal and agricultural land, with commerce and in­ dustry concentrated in the hands of foreigners, principally Armenians. Even in relatively primitive Azerbaijan the growth of the oil industry in the Baku area produced a small socialist move­ ment, offset by a still rudimentary Muslim (anti-Armenian) party, the Mussavat. In consequence, the revolution of 1905 in Trans­ caucasia largely took the form of Armeno-Azerbaijani riots and massacres, which the Russian authorities were unwilling or power­ less to curb. The number of Russian colonists remained small, and the development of industry (Baku oil and Chiaturi manganese) was largely carried out with foreign capital, and it is therefore not surprising that when the old régime fell in March 1917, the Russian imperial authority in Transcaucasia collapsed instantly. The history of the next four years is one of extreme confusion, the main elements being the struggle of the three new States to achieve in­ dependence—the overlapping of populations being such that these aims could not be reconciled—at first with the assistance of the European powers which were still at war. The Germans controlled

21

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

Georgia for a period in 19 18; the British occupied Azerbaijan and expelled the Germans from Georgia; the Turks pressed forwards in the west to recover their lost Georgian territories . The Soviet government of Baku was short-lived, and soon fell to a combina­ tion of British and White pressure; the central Soviet Government was too preoccupied with the Civil War and intervention to attempt to recover its principal centre for the supply of oil or to support the sporadic risings which took place in Georgia. By the early part of 1920, however, the road to the south had been cleared, and on Apri128, 1920, a Soviet government was set up in Azerbaijan. Armenia followed in December, and finally the Red Army invaded Georgia in February 192 1 . The three States were linked in a federation (the Z SF SR-Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic) analogous to the Russian Federation (R SF SR ) in 1922, and combined with the latter and the Ukrainian and Belo­ russian S SR's a little over a year later ( 1924) to form the

u s s R.

By

the Constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian Federation was dis­ solved, each of the three members entering into the Union as in­ dividual members. The present constitutional arrangements re­ flect the difficulties of drawing boundaries according to strict national principles; the Georgian S SR contains two autonomous republics, the Abkhazian (capital Sukhumi) and the Adjarian (capital, Batumi), the former being associated ethnically with the Adyge group to the north of the Caucasus range, while the latter are Georgian speakers who were converted to Islam. Georgia also contains the autonomous province of South Ossetia; the Ossetes speak an Iranian language with no connection with Georgian and are divided into two administrative areas, the other (the North Ossetian A S SR) being to the north of the main range. Part of Azer­ baijan-the Nakhichevan A S SR-is located within Armenia, and is inhabited by Azerbaijanis; on the other hand, Azerbaijan also includes the Mountain Karabakh autonomous district, which although it falls under the administrative control of Azerbaijan, is inhabited almost exclusively by Armenians. The basic population statistics are (as of 1959):

Georgia Georgians Russians Armenians Azeris Ossetes

4,044 thousands 2,601 408 443 154 1 41

22

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EA ST

Azerbaijan Azeris Russians Armenians Armenia Armenians Russians Azeris

3,698 thousands 2,494 501 442 1,763 1,552 56 108

(b) Kazakhstan and Central Asia1 Unlike the republics of Transcaucasia, the area which comprises Kazakhstan and Central Asia is not defined by clear geographical boundaries to the north, where the more or less featureless steppe can only arbitrarily be demarcated into political units . To the west, the Caspian Sea forms a natural boundary; to the east, the region is separated from Chinese territory by some of the highest and most inhospitable mountain ranges in the world; and to the south, the borders with Persia and Mghanistan-produced by a series of boundary agreements in the course of the last century-are as 'natural' as possible. The size, again, of the region is of a totally different order of magnitude. While the Transcaucasian States are analogous to the smaller European States, Kazakhstan alone is similar in size to the empire of a medieval Asiatic conqueror; it is larger than all the other Union republics, excluding the R SF SR, put together; it covers an area of more than a million square miles, and is about equal in size to Algeria, which it superficially re­ sembles. The republics of Central Asia proper, although still large, are much smaller than this. Turkmenistan, the largest of them, is about the size of Spain or Sweden; Uzbekistan a little smaller; Kirgizia and Tajikistan-both mountainous-are comparable in size with England and Wales . East of the Urals the Russian plain contracts to a triangle of usable land with its eastern point in the general vicinity of Lake Baykal, and the northern fringe of Kazakhstan forms the southern 1 Although we use here the now conventional term Central Asia, the Russian expression Srednyaya Aziya really means Middle Asia, as distinct especially from Hither Asia (what we nowadays call the Middle East) and Central Asia proper (Sinkiang, Tibet, etc.), for which there is now, in English usage, no clear term. Since it may be supposed that we cannot hope for the restoration of the old usage of Middle East to denote (e.g.) Anatolian Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, it would be most convenient if another traditional appellation (Russian Tur­ kestan, as distinct from the ethnologically related Chinese Turkestan-Sinkiang) could be restored to favour. This term is, however, politically loaded to such an extent that its revival may no longer be possible.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

23

margin of this triangle. At such a distance from the open sea—the Arctic is nearer than the Atlantic—the winters are bitterly cold (January mean temperature —20 deg. C) and the summers hot (July +20 deg. C). Precipitation in Northern Kazakhstan is rather slight at the best, and there are frequent drought years; the rainfall of the order of 6 to 15 inches is concentrated into the summer months. South of about 50 deg. N, the steppe gives way to semi-desert (approximately 45–50 deg. N), with rather hotter average annual temperatures, and with even less precipitation, and that spread out more evenly over the year. South again is the belt of true desert (south of 45 deg. N), with a scanty rainfall concentrated into the winter months. This last belt covers most of the area of the Central Asian republics. At right angles, so to speak, to these climatic belts, the land tends to rise from the Caspian depression in the west, to the high mountains of the east, with the southern edge of the region defined by the belt of mountains from Central Persia across to the Pamirs. This last mass of mountains, like the Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains) to their north, lead up to the roof of the world, the Tibetan plateau, in a series of ridges which generally trend east and west. The river systems of the region fall into three main groups: in the extreme west of Kazakhstan, the Ural and Emba Rivers flow from north to south into the Caspian Sea; the great rivers of Siberia rise in Kazakhstan (or in Chinese territory) and flow north across the Siberian plain, being of relatively little use to Kazakh­ stan itself; and within the region a number of major rivers rise in the mountains to the east and flow either into the Aral Sea or disap­ pear into the desert. First among these is the Oxus (Amu-Darya), which rises in the knot of mountains where the frontiers of China, India and Russia meet, and flows along the southern edge of Soviet territory, until it bends northwards and ultimately flows into the Aral Sea. The second of the two great Central Asian rivers, the Syr-Darya, rises in Kirgizia, and after pursuing a course some­ what parallel to that of the Amu-Darya, also falls into the Aral Sea. These two river basins, together with other rivers of local im­ portance (Chu, Naryn, and so on) from a chain of oases where in­ tense irrigated agriculture is possible, oases which are the centres of a civilization that has survived the vicissitudes of five millenia at least. Of the three major climatic zones, the northernmost has been the

24

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

most transfigured in recent years; during the eastward expansion of Russian peasants in the nineteenth century the most easily worked and best watered land was taken up, but it is only since the death of Stalin in 1953 that the grandiose scheme for the cultivation of enormous tracts of Northern Kazakhstan has been put into prac­ tice, with the result that this area is now a major grain producer, accounting for between 10 and 15 per cent of Soviet grain, although with enormously fluctuating yields (in 1958, the yield of winter wheat in Kazakhstan was 11 . 8 quintals per hectare; in 1961, only 4.8 quintals) and at the price of rapidly developing soil erosion. This expansion of grain cultivation, accompanied as it has been by the immigration of workers from all over the Union, has tended to overshadow the progress of livestock rearing, which is characteristic of the second, semi-arid zone. Here vast flocks of sheep are reared, in the old days by semi- or fully nomadic tribes­ men, the Kazakhs, and now by the survivors of their descendants who have been forced to settle at least for part of the year. Over the greater part of this belt, the pastures are used in spring and autumn, while pasture in the summer season is found on the lower slopes of the hills towards the east, and winter pasture wherever the water supply (river banks, lakes, etc.) is sufficient. Kazakhstan produces about a quarter of the USSR'S output of wool; its share in the output of meat and dairy produce is much smaller. The southernmost belt, with its oasis-irrigation type of agriculture, comprises the southernmost fringe of Kazakhstan (Chimkent oblast) and the Central Asian republics. Much of this area is devoted entirely to one crop—cotton (mostly medium-staple, long-stapled cotton being cultivated in quantity only in the extreme south of Uzbeki­ stan). All cotton is grown on irrigated land, occasional experiments in dry cultivation having proved unsuccessful, and apart from relatively small areas of the Transcaucasian region, Central Asia is the only Soviet area where cotton is grown; but here it has dis­ placed, under strong pressure from the central authorities, the cultivation even of food crops. It is worth noting that when this pressure relaxed, as during the first years of the Soviet regime, and again during 1941–5, the need to produce foodstuffs for local con­ sumption has reasserted itself at the expense of this crop. In more normal times, however, this concentration on a valuable cash crop commanding a relatively high price has ensured the prosperity of the Central Asian peasant. Other fibres are also produced in this southern region; there is much production of silk, and some of

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

25

hemp and jute; with the addition of tobacco, fruit, and medicinal plants. The rearing of livestock and the growing of grain is con­ centrated on land which is too high and rugged for irrigation. The transport problems of such an enormous area with its population concentrated into small pockets are extremely severe. The railway system was set up in its broad outline before the Revolution largely for strategic aims (the potential conflict with Britain at the gates of India), but railways built during the Soviet period have had basically economic ends. The main northern system of railways consists of the Trans-Siberian line, which passes through the extreme northern edge of Kazakhstan, to­ gether with a set of parallel lines to the south of this. Most of these are of recent origin, and are designed to facilitate the opening up of the Virgin Lands area. Tashkent, the heart of Soviet Central Asia, is the meeting point of three main lines: two are branches of the Trans-Siberian arterial line, the older running south-west from the southern end of the Urals to the Aral Sea, then up the SyrDarya Valley to Tashkent; the newer line, built in the late 'twenties, runs south from the Kuzbas through Semipalatinsk to Alma Ata, thence westward to Tashkent (the Turksib). Another easterly route from Petropavlovsk through Karaganda now joins this line east of Tashkent, at Chu. The third and oldest line runs from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian coast along the Persian border to Merv, and thence north-east towards Tashkent also. As for water transport, only the Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya systems are significant. In the mountains of the east, investment in roads has been heavy in the Soviet period, and in recent years an increasing volume of air traffic has helped to unify this enormous territory, so much of which would be hardly accessible on the surface. Fuel and metals are the two main branches of industry in Kazakhstan. The Karaganda coal basin was discovered as early as 1833, but the difficulty of access delayed development on any sub­ stantial scale until the thirties of the present century. It was developed both as an auxiliary to the Magnitogorsk-Kuzbas com­ plex and as a source of fuel for the area to the south, where coal is found only in rather small deposits. The other field in Kazakhstan, that at Ekibastuz, is worked in connection with the metal mines in its vicinity. The oil deposits of the Emba district between the Caspian and the southern end of the Urals produce rather less than 1 per cent of Soviet output. However, some 250 miles to the south of these fields, considerable oil deposits have recently been found in

26

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

the Mangyshlak Peninsula, and they are expected to yield over 80 million tons per annum by 1980 (total Soviet oil production in 1965 was 243 million tons). There are only a few sites within Kazakhstan suitable for large-scale hydroelectric stations; the biggest of these is in the extreme east, at Ust-Kamenogorsk. But the most import­ ant contribution which Kazakhstan makes to the Soviet industrial economy is in the production of non-ferrous metals. The site at Jezkazgan, south-west of Karaganda and near the rocket-launching site of Baykonur, is one of the largest copper-producing sites in the world. Total output figures are jealously guarded, but it is known that the Kazakh mines produce a good half of all Soviet copper. The Altai Mountains in the north-east of Kazakhstan contain large amounts of lead, zinc, and silver and supply the majority of Soviet output of these metals. Other mineral products of Kazakhstan in­ clude the large iron ore deposits of Central Kazakhstan, manganese and chromium. A large chemical industry has been built up on the Caspian coast, where there are deposits of boron salts; and there are bauxite deposits in Central Kazakhstan. Most of the metallic ores are now being processed locally, and in addition ferrous metal­ lurgy is being developed in the neighbourhood of Karaganda (iron from Temir-tau and Karaganda coal). The prospects for further developments in these fields are very great. Engineering is some­ what less developed, but light industry is scattered all over the republic, to satisfy local needs, including the beginning of a textile industry using local cotton in the south. Food processing is of more than local importance and has been greatly built up during the Soviet period. The development of industry further south, in the Central Asian republics, has been hampered by the distance from the main in­ dustrial centres of the USSR, and until recently production was dominantly for local use. Fuel was relatively scarce and of in­ different quality; but a new dimension to this problem has been added by the exploitation of the great natural gas field at Gazli, near Bukhara, in Uzbekistan. The greater part of the output is being exported by pipeline to the Urals and beyond, but enough will be retained locally to give a great stimulus to plans for local development. There is some coal in the Tashkent area (Angren), but this even combined with deposits in Kirgizia and Tajikistan would not sustain any great extent of industrial growth, while the oil of western Turkmenistan tends to cross the Caspian Sea to the Volga-Urals region. Tashkent and its new satellite towns form,

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

27

however, a major industrial complex (machinery for electrical, chemical and textile works; agricultural machinery; pumps, cables, and many other items, some of which are exported far beyond the boundaries of the USSR). A local textile industry has also been built up, using the cotton and silk which is produced on such a large scale; but the bulk of the raw material is still exported to the industrial region surrounding Moscow (particularly to the Russian Manchester, Ivanovo). In Kirgizia, the capital Frunze is an engineering centre of some importance, but the bulk of local production consists of food processing. One major product of the local extractive industries is mercury (Khaydarkan and a few other sites). Tajikistan and Turkmenistan also are relatively weak in in­ dustry at the present time. The history of the region falls essentially into two parts: the oasis culture of the southern fringe, and the vast steppe of the north, which has always been the home of a fluctuating population of nomads. The main trade routes of the ancient world, from Egypt and the Mediterranean to China, pass through the region, and for at least five thousand years the rulers of the oases have founded their strength on this caravan traffic. During this time, the nomads have usually hovered in the vicinity of the caravan routes, severing them whenever opportunity arose, but never building a strong, longlasting empire which could maintain control over them for long. Access to what is now Uzbekistan has always been easier from the south-west, and at least from the coming of Islam, in the seventh to eighth centuries, the cultural ties have been with the Caliphate and its successors. The nomads have been used over and over again by the rulers of the settled land as troops have often seized and held power over the oases, where a civilization of advanced types has from time to time flourished. In the late Middle Ages the caravan routes began to fall derelict as the sea routes, with their greater freedom from the risk of attack, replaced them, and Central Asia fell into a long sleep which lasted for centuries. By 1700, the east­ ward tide of Russian conquest was beginning to be of interest to the rulers of the Central Asian principalities, but the distance across the desert was too great for the Russians to attempt to control them. In the eighteenth century, the better-armed and organized Russians were able to bring the Kazakhs of the northern steppes under some kind of control which gradually hardened as line after line of fortified posts, manned by Cossacks, began to be built across the steppe.

28

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the Tsarist Government, drawn on by the magnet of India, began to press south across the desert in a determined drive; and then the now backward principalities of Khiva, Kokand and Bukhara col­ lapsed under the Tsarist pressure. Kokand was embodied in the Tsarist empire; Khiva and Bukhara were reduced to the status of vassals, while the ancient cities of Tashkent and Samarkand soon developed new European-style suburbs which had little contact with their Muslim neighbours. By the end of the nineteenth century the southern border had been advanced until it came within striking distance of the passes into India, and after much diplom­ atic discussion (not facilitated by the fact that the Russian military governor on the spot was a long way from St Petersburg, as was the British representative in India from London), agreement was reached on a border between the two great empires which included a buffer strip of Afghanistan to prevent them from actually touch­ ing each other. The border with China also was defined (in such a way that some danger of difficulties in interpretation remain to this day), and the Russian administrators could get on with the job of administering. The existing social structure was little disturbed by the new regime, and the Tsarist Government preferred to rule through the local magnate. A great expansion of the cotton industry developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century (the original conquest had coincided in time with the cotton famine produced by the American Civil War, but the latter had been over too quickly for the situation to be relieved by new plantings; but the lesson was learnt). To the north, in the steppes, native hostility increased as more cultivable land was taken over by new Russian peasant settlers, driving the Kazakhs away from some of their best tradi­ tional grazing, but although a new native middle class began to emerge, the Kazakhs were slow to develop a political organization. By 1905, however, when for a moment the prestige of the Tsar was almost destroyed, the combined effect of contact with the Russians and the revival of Turkey as an intellectual stimulus pro­ duced the beginning of a nationalist movement among the peoples of Turkestan. This was most marked in the freer atmosphere of Russian-held areas, but even in traditional Bukhara the idea that reform was not entirely incompatible with Islam began to stir. In the period between the shock of 1905 and the final collapse of Tsar­ dom in 1917, this nationalistic feeling spread widely particularly among the intellectuals, many of whom were influenced by

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

29

Westernizing trends in Turkey and the growth of national feeling among the Turkish-speaking population of Kazan, Azerbaijan, and the Crimea, and also among the developing class of traders—many of whom were Volga Tartars—who had by 1917 begun to pass over from trading to small-scale capitalism, particularly in connection with the processing of local raw materials (e.g. cotton-ginning). Tsarist failures in the Great War led to the proposal in the summer of 1916 that the native population, who were not regarded as eligible for active military service, should be conscripted for work behind the lines, and a revolt broke out in Kazakhstan and parts of Kirgizia. Resentment at the loss of traditionally-held lands to European settlers added fuel to the flames, and although the rising was put down with great severity, the resentment continued to smoulder. At the time of the 1917 Revolution, the machinery of administration passed easily enough into the hands of the new government (spring 1917) and little was changed, while the nationalists began to press their claims to autonomy more strongly. The Bolshevik successors of the Tsarist officials did not consider that they had come to power in order to preside over the winding up of Russian rule, and in ensuing confusion of the Civil War the nationalists were caught between two fires, and tended to polarize between the pro-Bolshevik modernists and the more conservative nationalists supporting the Whites. The final Bolshevik victory in 1920 was followed by a revolt of the Left-inclined in Bukhara and Khiva, and the traditional rulers were expelled. The distress associated with the continuous fighting between 1914 and 1920 had reduced the economy of Central Asia to a skeleton, and the conservative wing, with its appeal to the traditions of Islam, found willing hearers among the peasantry, especially in the more remote areas. Another three years elapsed before the country had been cleared of the Basmachi, or part-con­ servative-part-opportunist-part-bandit groups who gradually re­ tired to the most inaccessible corners of the south-east (the last raid over the border from Afghanistan was defeated as late as 1931). By 1924, with NEP in full swing in the rest of the country, the central government was strong enough to dissolve the quasi-independent Turkestan Republic based on Tashkent, which had continued the traditions of the Tsarist administration, and pass over to a new form of political organization. The People's Republics of Bukhara and Khiva, which had replaced the traditional rulers in 1920, were dissolved, as was the Turkestan Republic, and the region was split

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

30

up into the Turkmen SSR, the Uzbek SSR (with Tajikistan—at that time very backward—as an autonomous unit within it), and the Kazakh, and Kirgiz autonomous republics within the Russian Federation (somewhat confusingly, when the future Kazakh Republic was first created in 1920, it was named the Kirgiz ASSR; the future Kirgiz Republic, formed in 1924, was called the KaraKirgiz autonomous oblast, which became the Kirgiz ASSR in 1926). Since that time, the Tajik ASSR has become a full Union Republic (in 1929), as have the Kazakh and Kirgiz Republics (in 1936). The principle adopted in determining the boundaries of the new States was that of bringing within the boundaries of each as many persons of the given national group as possible, and a reasonably satis­ factory job was made of it, at the price of some very eccentric boundaries (especially in the Fergana Valley, which, being the richest part of the whole region, was divided among the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kirgizians). The 1959 consensus showed that in the Central Asian republics proper, the titular nationalities retained a majority over at least the Russian immigrants, the figures being: ( ’OOO)

Titular nation

Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

837

1,051 924 5,038

Russians 624 263 263 1,091

Others 605 666 * 329

i>977t

Total 2,066 1,980 1,516 8,106

* including 454,000 Uzbeks. f including 168,000 Karakalpaks (who have an autonomous republic in North-west Uzbekistan).

In the four republics taken together the approximate percent­ ages are: per cent

67-5 Titular nationalities 3-2 Kazakhs Tartars 4 ’3 Koreans 1*0 about 2-0 Other Asiatics* about 78 Total native 18-5 Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians about Other immigrant groups 3-5 about 22 Total immigrants * Including indigenous Jews.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

31

In Kazakhstan the situation is markedly different. Here the Kazakhs formed only 30 per cent of the population, while the principal immigrant groups (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians) totalled 52 . 1 per cent. The Germans deported from the Volga area at the beginning of the war formed another 8 per cent while the remainder of the population consisted of an enormous range of relatively small groups. The Kazakhs formed an absolute majority of the population in only two out of the fifteen oblasts (Guryev and Kzyl-Orda), these being semi-desert areas of pasture land, rather unsuitable for the mechanized farming characteristic of Northern Kazakhstan in recent years.

Chapter 2

A NOTE ON THE POLITICAL

STRUCTURE

The republics which we are here analysing share a common con­ stitutional position within the USSR, and it is necessary briefly to describe this position and to comment on its real significance. According to the Soviet constitution, the USSR is a federation of fifteen union republics. The larger republics are divided into provinces (oblasti), save where the presence of a compact national minority has led to the creation of an 'autonomous soviet socialist republic' (ASSR). There are a few ASSR in the area in which we are interested; thus within Georgia is the Abkhaz ASSR and the Adjar ASSR. Territorially isolated from, but legally part of Azerbaijan, is the Nakhichevan ASSR. Uzbekistan contains the Kara-Kalpak ASSR. For all practical purposes, however, the powers of these ASSR are identical to those of oblasti, save in respect of representa­ tion in the Soviet of Nationalities of the Union (see below). The all-Union government is elected by the Supreme Soviet. The latter body consists of two houses: the Soviet of the Union, elected in single-member constituencies in proportion to popula­ tion, and the Soviet of Nationalities, in which Union republics are represented on a basis of equality and the ASSR (see above) are also separately represented. In the Soviet of the Union, therefore, the Russian republic (RSFSR) has fourteen times as many deputies as Uzbekistan because it has fourteen times the population. In the Soviet of Nationalities, however, their representation is, in prin­ ciple, equal (though if one adds the larger number of ASSR within the RSFSR together they outnumber Uzbekistan's deputies, since Uzbekistan has only one ASSR within it). The Supreme Soviet elects a praesidium, which acts as a species of standing committee between the sessions of the Supreme Soviet. The latter meets on average for about a week in the year, and the praesidium is therefore an important body. It has power to issue decrees which have the force of law, although any decree which

A NOTE ON THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE

33

changes an existing law or creates a new one must be ratified by the Supreme Soviet at its next meeting. The chairman of this prae­ sidium—at present N. Podgorny—is generally considered to be the president of the USSR. There are fifteen vice-chairmen, one from each of the fifteen Union republics. Finally, the Government of the USSR, i.e. the Cabinet, includes as ex officio members the premiers of each of the fifteen Union republics. Thus, the interests of, say, Uzbekistan are given special repre­ sentation in the Soviet of Nationalities, in the praesidium of the Supreme Soviet and in the Government. Such, at least, is the con­ stitutional position. Reality, as we shall see, is rather different. Each of the fifteen republics possesses its own (single-chamber) Supreme Soviet, which elects its own praesidium and its own government. Each republic has the theoretical right of secession, its own foreign ministry, even the formal right to have an army. It exercises 'sovereign' powers save where the constitution provides that the all-Union organs have competence. Republics have their own legal codes, their own educational system. From 1957 most economic enterprises within their borders were subordinate to sovnarkhozy (regional economic councils) which have been either co-extensive with the republic or were subordinate to the republi­ can government, with an important exception to be noted. How­ ever, in September 1965 the reform of the planning system involved the subordination of many branches of industry to all-Union ministries located in Moscow. If the political reality corresponded to the above provisions, then the powers of the republics would be formidable. However, effective political power does not in practice reside with any of the above organs of authority, but with the Communist Party. This is why elections are a pure formality, with voters allowed to place in the ballot box a piece of paper bearing the name of a single candi­ date.1 The party effectively handles the process of nominating the candidate. The 'representative' organs always vote unanimously. Not a single dissentient vote on any issue has been recorded in any Supreme Soviet (all-Union or republican) under the present con­ stitution—which came into force in 1937. Not even an abstention is known. Critical speeches are made, it is true, and argument behind closed doors, especially in committee, is by no means uncommon. 1

If they wish to vote 'against', they have to cross this name out, and would be seen doing so, since for no other reason would they wish to mark the paper. Hence 99 . 9 per cent affirmative votes. C

34

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

But the Supreme Soviets are large bodies which adopt official resolutions, laws, lists of members of the Government, etc., by acclamation. Power obviously resides elsewhere. This brings one to the Communist Party. The supreme organ of the ail-Union party (CPSU) is the central committee elected by the party congress. This too is elected by acclamation, and control over the behaviour and composition of the central committee is effect­ ively in the hands of the Central Committee Praesidium, now (1966) renamed the Politbureau. Although itself nominally elected, the praesidium usually may be said to nominate itself, or to be chosen by the party leader. Under Stalin's rule, the central com­ mittee met seldom, and supreme de facto authority was in the hands of Stalin and his personal secretariat or current favourites. Under Krushchev, the party's rules were generally respected and the central committee met and debated important questions at regular intervals—though unanimity is still the almost invariable rule.1 It is still not known whether Krushchev's removal from power was by a majority vote of the central committee, or whether the tradition of unanimity prevailed. The Communist Party leadership, i.e. the praesidium, plus the senior central officials, the secretariat, is the de facto supreme government. Where, in this context, do the Union republics find themselves? The republican parties are in a much weaker position, formally speaking, than the republican governments are under the constitu­ tion. The republican governments do have certain clear powers granted them. It is true that they cannot exercise many of them— thus there are no separate armies, the right of secession is meaning­ less when advocacy of such secession would be regarded as a criminal offence, foreign affairs are very firmly centralized in Moscow, and so on. But within the party there is not even any pretence to there being any right to autonomy for republican party organs vis-d-vis the centre. The principle of 'democratic centralism' involves obedience to any decision of superior organs. The centralized nature of the party was reaffirmed by F. R. Kozlov at the twenty-second party congress in October 1961. and indeed it is the foundation of the Soviet system. Thus the republican party organizations of Uzbekistan or Georgia, and their respective first secretaries, are 1

When, in 1957, the 'anti-party group' was defeated, only one of its members, Molotov, went so far as to abstain from voting on a resolution condemning them.

A NOTE ON THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE

35

local subordinate organs of the all-Union party. This is not to say they are unimportant. Party secretaries of large territories are, of course, influential people, and much is in practice decided by republican party organs. Indeed, this is also true of republican governments. The point is simply that they exercise in practice only such powers as are delegated to them by Moscow. There is no matter, however important or detailed, on which guidance from the centre may not be binding. It might concern itself with the pattern of crop cultivation, with the penalties for currency specula­ tion, with the salaries payable to accountants, or with the sevenyear plan; in all these or other matters, great or small, orders are orders. 'Cadres decide everything'; this used to be a popular Soviet political slogan. One of the most important ways in which the party authorities in Moscow control activities all over the country is through their control over appointments. Every job of any political, military, cultural, economic, technical or social significance in the USSR is 'allocated' to a party committee, whose nomination or assent is required before it is filled. This applies to officials of party organizations, and also to State and social organs of every kind. It extends to Government ministers, directors of factories, chairmen of collective farms, editors of literary journals. Regardless of who is supposed to elect or appoint officials, the appropriate party committee has a key role. Senior posts are within the competence of the central committee in Moscow, or rather of its secretariat. Secretaries of republican party organizations, their principal sub­ ordinates, republican premiers and their principal subordinates, are senior posts. Therefore, it must be expected that they are in fact appointed by the central committee in Moscow, which may or may not take into account local feeling in the matter. On many occasions in Soviet history, republican party secretaries have been dismissed or even executed on orders from the centre, with the republican organizations expressing their always unanimous agree­ ment. Within each of the republics, the Government organs are with­ out doubt subordinate to the republican party leadership. One can­ not document this seemingly bold assertion with any 'constitu­ tional' text, but no one who knows the Soviet system can doubt that this is so. It can be observed by analysing the influence and the course of promotion of Soviet politicians, and indeed it follows logically from the fact that 'the party forms the directing nucleus

36

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

of all political and social organizations', a sentence which does occur in the Soviet constitution (article 126). The same is true, indeed even more true, as one goes lower in the hierarchy. Thus the feebleness of the oblast (provincial) Soviet, compared with the party organs at this level, has been a species of music-hall joke. This is so also at raion (county) level. Does this mean that the republics have in fact no powers at all, and that the federal provisions of the constitution are a mere farce? The answer to this question must surely be 'no'. A British colonial governor, for example, is subject to colonial office orders, but it would be absurdly unrealistic to regard him as a powerless nonenity for that reason. Similarly, a senior British civil servant is nominally wholly subordinate to his superiors, yet, as everyone knows, he is an important part of the British system of government. We have deliberately cited here two examples of persons who do not have any even formal autonomy, yet who in fact decide many things. A fortiori party and State officials in Uzbekistan, for in­ stance, take many decisions, and their advice is often listened to even where the ultimate decision needs to be taken or approved in Moscow. In fact local party and State officials frequently reflect local vested interest, and complaints about this are occasionally voiced in Moscow. It is quite unrealistic to imagine that detailed orders in every issue can be drafted by an all-powerful, all-seeing official at the centre. The extent of local decision-making has naturally varied at different periods in Soviet history. The Stalin period was one of centralization. Great powers were exercised by the police, which was a tightly centralized organization. Since Stalin's death, more decisions are delegated to republics, a variety of issues are in fact decided by party, Government and police officials in Tashkent, Tbilisi and other republican capitals. A correct picture of the facts must take into account both the chang­ ing amount of power actually exercised locally and the fact that major decisions almost always require Moscow's consent even if they do not originate in Moscow. Also it is essential to note that those who exercise power in the republic are appointed and may be sacked by the central party authorities. One feature of Soviet administration is worth a mention. This is the system known as 'dual subordination'. It may be illustrated as follows. Let us take a republican ministry, say of finance. The minister is a member of that republic's government, is under its orders, is responsible to its Supreme Soviet. But at the same time

A NOTE ON THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE

37

he is subordinate to the all-Union ministry of finance, acts as its representative within the republic in question. Many Soviet in­ stitutions suffer from this kind of built-in schizophrenia. It is true also within the republics. Thus the educational (or trade) depart­ ment of the Bukhara town Soviet is simultaneously under the city Soviet and the Uzbekistan ministry of education (or trade). This situation complicates further the already complicated question of assessing how much can be decided within the various republics. The events in recent years are a useful reminder of the severe limitations of republican autonomy, particularly in economic affairs, though its extent certainly varied. Under the Stalin econom­ ic and political system, virtually every factory of other than purely local significance was under the orders of a ministry in Moscow. This situation was modified, in 1955–6, by an increase in the role of republican economic ministries. The immediate superior of many enterprises was in the republican capital, even though the orders which they passed on normally originated in Moscow. A republican economic ministry (e.g. of light industry or agriculture) was under dual subordination, in the sense defined above. In practice this meant that many orders were passed direct between all-Union and republican ministries, by-passing the republican Governments. In 1957 industry was almost wholly placed under the control of sovnarkhozy, as stated above. The eight republics with which we are here concerned each constituted a sovnarkhoz, except that Kazakhstan, the largest, contained nine of them. They were sup­ posed to run the industries within their areas, subject to general direction and co-ordination of Moscow. Gradually, recentralization took place, for good economic and administrative reasons. By the end of 1962, the situation was as follows. A long list of economic functions were once again directly subordinated to Moscow. Thus there were a number of State production committees, with direct controlling powers, e.g. over electricity, natural gas, fisheries. In addition, all construction organizations were placed under the direct or indirect control of the all-Union Construction Committee (Gosstroi), and the republics' powers over investment were drastically reduced. Republican planning organs were themselves placed under 'dual subordina­ tion', i.e. were henceforth to be given direct orders by the all-Union planning organs, which was a change in the legal position up to that date. Water conservancy and State-farm construction in Central

38

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Asia, became branches of the all-Union Government. The Com­ munist Party throughout the USSR became split between industrial and agricultural parties, which weakened (no doubt designedly) their territorial or republican cohesion, even though republican parties remained unified at the top. Finally, a special blow was struck at the four small Central Asian republics. Their Communist Parties were placed under the author­ ity of a Central Asian Bureau (Sredazburo) of the all-Union party, under a Russian secretary. At the same time, their sovnarkhozy were merged into one inter-republican one, with a Russian as chairman. This was done in November 1962, and at this time there was a consolidation of sovnarkhozy in other parts of the USSR also. However, only in Central Asia did this lead to a liquidation of republican sovnarkhozy, as if Krushchev felt that there at least the local officials were incapable of running their affairs. He has indeed been much upset by inefficiency and doubtful 'localist' practices in Central Asia. The Transcaucasian republics too had a party bureau, but it seems that it was more of a co-ordinating body, and there was no liquidation of three separate sovnarkhozy for Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. After Krushchev's fall, in December 1964, we have learned of the end of the Central Asian sovnarkhoz, so in this respect matters return to the status quo ante 1962. In September 1965, the sovnarkhozy were abolished throughout the Soviet Union, and, as already mentioned, many of the re-created economic ministries are of the 'all-Union' type. Similarly, Krushchev's party reforms have been reversed. However, these reforms and counter-reforms serve to underline the key role of the party and State at all-Union level. They give, they take away. They appoint, they dismiss; the turnover of Central Asian ministers and high officials has been particularly great in the most recent years, though the men who lose their jobs do not lose their lives, as was the case under Stalin (who, despite himself being a Georgian, was a Russophile centralizer in practice).

Chapter 3

INDUSTRIALIZATION

(a) The low starting-point—and the statistics

In 1928, the republics analysed here were almost wholly unin­ dustrialized, with the one important exception of Baku and its oilfields, and some rather primitive semi-handicraft industry in Tiflis. Baku was, early in this century, one of the world's bestknown oil centres, and it attracted large numbers of workers of assorted nationalities—Russians, Armenians, Ukrainians, as well as Azerbaijanis. Some of the best-known Bolshevik leaders— Stalin and Mikoyan among them—learned their revolutionary trade in Baku. This has certain unavoidable statistical consequences. A very low starting-point can give rise to immense percentage increases. Thus in a recent Soviet work it is claimed that the output of largescale industry per capita in the period 1913–38 increased 736-fold in the Kirgiz republic, as against 7.3 fold in the Ukraine, but this still left Kirgizia's output at a level 17 . 7 per cent of that of the Ukraine per capita. By contrast, Azerbaijan showed much slower growth rates. But these facts must not lead us to the conclusion that there was a policy of relatively neglecting Azerbaijan or the Ukraine. Even the opening of a medium-sized textile mill in the 'thirties had the effect of multiplying several-fold the very modest output of the Central Asian republics, Armenia and Georgia. A second statistical point should be made at once. It is widely believed, and with reason, that certain Soviet statistics are exag­ gerated, notably for the period 1928–50, and that consequently the growth rates claimed in various official statements are overstated. In addition, there is a tendency to understate, or to leave out, the output of individual craftsmen and small workshops (as well, of course, as purely domestic activities), all of which played a signific­ ant role in the period before 1928. This is no place for an analysis of the reliability of Soviet statistics. Suffice it to say, for our present

40

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

purpose, that there is no reason to suggest that they affect 'our' republics more than the rest of the u s s R. Therefore if, for instance, the official figures claim a six-fold increase in output for the u s s R as a whole and a ten-fold increase for Kirgizia, it could well be that both figures should be reduced, but we have no grounds for sup­ posing that the relative rates of increase are mis-stated, and so the above figures would entitle us to the conclusion that industrial growth was significantly more rapid in the above-named republic than in the u s s R as a whole. On the other hand, these figures should be used with great care in any international comparisons. Thus if, for instance, Uzbek industrial output is said to have risen by 750 per cent, while that of, say, Turkey increased by only 200 per cent in the same period, then, while we ought surely to agree that Uzbek output rose the faster, it is likely that the disproportion is smaller than these figures would indicate. We have no means of reliably substituting the 'correct' index numbers for the official ones. Much depends on the year chosen as base, and on detailed information on the composition of output which cannot be derived from published information, certainly not without immense labour. The Soviet data are for 'gross industrial output' which could benefit from double-counting. Yet we can certainly agree and admit that the rates of industrial growth have been impressively large.

T A B L E A. Industrial Output Indices, Official Data I940

U S SR

Total Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan

I958

I965

(1928 =100) (1940 = 100) (1958 = 100) 430 1 84 646 179 502 352 213 820 563 205 510 1 ,053 1 83 goo 359 151 606 299 340 157 770 195 870 630 161 245 454

Despite the necessary warnings about misinterpretation of statistics, it is by no means insignificant to conclude that, with the exception of Azerbaijan, the republics we are investigating can legitimately claim to have grown impressively by any comparison. None the less, they are, on the whole, relatively much less in­ dustrialized than most other Soviet republics, less than the average for the u s s R as a whole, whether one's measure is output per head,

I n d u st r ia liza t io n

41

proportion of industrial (or non-agricultural) labour in the total labour force, or any other measure one would care to apply. TABLE B

USSR

Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan

Industrial workers as Percentage percentage of of total total in population of

Steel per capita

Electricity generated per capita

(.1962)

(1962)

USSR

(kwts.)

(i959)

(kgs.) 345 33 34

1,668

779 495

576 897 1,296

1,936

175

(1962) ioo-o

100*0

1,165 615

Neg Neg Neg 285 Neg

USSR

3.9

1-7

4*5 1*0 o*9 o-7 1*9 o *8 i*7

29

0-5 0-4 0-3

1-2 0-7 10

N eg= negligible or zero

Another way of looking at the picture is the following, the figures being taken from the Census data: Percentages of total working population engaged Industry Building ussr

average

rsfsr*

Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Georgia Azerbaijan Kirgizia Armenia Tajikistan Turkmenistan

1939

Industry Building

1959

I ransport

Agriculture

I ransport

Agriculture

30*1 33*9 14*3 21*7 19*4 23*1 13-9 17*8 10*9 20*3

50-1 45*9 70-8 54*0 61-9 57*5 70-9 65*4 75*3 59*1

36*9 43*2 21 *i 33*8 24*9 26*5 24*9 30*6 18*9 26*7

38*8 30-4 58-9 39*1 50-7 49*6 52*2 45*7 62*0 48*6

* r sfsr : Russia proper.

These figures clearly show that, while in all the republics the proportion engaged in industrial, building and transport under­ takings increased significantly, it is still far below that of Russia proper, and the figures would look relatively less favourable, in Central Asia and in Azerbaijan, if only nationals of the relevant republics were included.

42

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

A Soviet author has pointed out that the industrial output in­ dices, because they are gross of the value of all inputs at all stages, understate the rate of growth of the Central Asian republics, be­ cause of the gradual decline in the relative importance of such items as the processing of raw cotton, which are greatly overvalued by the method of computation used. (They include in industrial out­ put the value of raw cotton, i.e. the product of agriculture.) In terms of net output, he argued, the picture would look more favourable.1 However, the relative share of different republics in industrial output is also distorted thereby, in the direction of over­ stating that of the Central Asian republics, since, despite all the changes of the past decades, the processing of agricultural produce in these areas plays a relatively larger role than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. There is no double-counting of this type in national income data. So it is worth reproducing a calculation by a Soviet economist, which points to a considerable gap between the republics. Some­ what oddly, he takes the 'richest' Soviet republic, Latvia, as his basis of comparison. Per capita national income, Latvia = IOO ( I 96 I) RSFSR

81 · 2

Kazakhstan Azerbaijan Georgia Armenia Turkmenistan Kirgizia Uzbekistan Tajikistan

58 · 8 55 · 4 55 · 4 61 · 7 51 ' I 49 · 3 47 ' 7 41 · 8

Source : Y. Vorobyov: Vyranivanie urovnei razvitiya soyuznykh respublik (M. 1965) p . 193 ·

There are some doubts as to just how these figures have been calculated, but they seem of a reasonable order of magnitude. As might be expected, the more agricultural republics show up least well. This does not tell us anything about the comparable earnings of given categories of workers or peasants, of course. But urban citizens in general earn more than villagers, and the higher the proportion of villagers the lower (other things being equal) the per capita income, in the u s s R and in most other countries of the world. It is interesting to note that the disparity may actually be in­ creasing in the most recent years, because of the much faster rate I

K. Popadyuk, in Ekonomicheskie nauki, No. 2, 1966.

INDUSTRIALIZATION

43

of population increase in the republics with which we are con­ cerned. The effect of this is that if, say, the total national income of Uzbekistan and Russia proper (the RSFSR) both grow by 30 per cent over a given period, the increase per head in the RSFSR is con­ siderably the greater of the two, because of the much slower in­ crease of the number of heads. This point is documented further in Chapter 5 (pp. 90–92). However, all this is not intended to detract from the indisput­ able fact that the economies of the republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia have grown and are growing at impressive rates. According to the Soviet statistical annual for 1963, the per capita national income of the USSR in 1963 came to $836 at the official ex­ change rate, or $930 if relative rouble/dollar prices are taken into consideration. These figures are on the Soviet definition of national income, i.e. exclusive of so-called unproductive services. The com­ parable figure for the United States is stated to be $1,825. Using the lower of the two figures for the USSR and applying the propor­ tions derived from the table above, it would appear that the Central Asian republics would average around $500 per capita, while the Transcaucasians would be about $600. This could be compared with the figures cited for Turkey ($149), Spain ($276) or Greece ($292), all on the Soviet definition. The figures should be used with caution, since they do seem to overstate somewhat the relative position of the USSR. None the less they underline the fact that these republics compare very favourably with most countries in Asia and even with southern Europe. It is also a fact that they are relatively far behind Russia proper. It is interesting to note that the gap between the per capita incomes of Russia proper and Tajikistan (2:1) is about equal to the ratio as between West Germany and Italy, but is much smaller than that between, say, West Germany and Portugal or Greece. A cross-check on all the above is provided by an unusual and valuable calculation made by Charles K. Wilbur of the American University, which appeared in Soviet Studies (Vol. XVII, April 1966, p. 408). He devised 'non-monetary' indices of economic development, based on a combination of such indicators as steel and textile production, fuel consumption, degree of urbanization, per­ centage of literate adults, infant mortality and newspaper circula­ tion. By such criteria Soviet Central Asia in 1926–8 appears at a level somewhat below the present position of India and Pakistan. His figures for 1960–2 show Soviet Central Asia as lying between

44

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Italy and Japan. It is probably not a coincidence that the national in­ come figures cited above also place this area between Italy and Japan. So we have rapid progress in percentage terms, but most of the republics are still relatively under-developed. This is hardly sur­ prising and it is not to anyone's discredit. Not only was there a relatively very low starting point, but there was in much of this area little in the way of a material base for industry, nor indeed was the human situation particularly promising. (b) Natural resources

Any process of industrialization involves the application of invest­ ment resources and human skill to Nature. The availability of natural resources sometimes makes the process of growth relatively smooth, and this must affect one's assessment of the 'performance' of an industrializing Government. It is also a relevant factor if one judges between the 'development potential' of nationalized in­ dustry and private enterprise. To take an extreme case, the percent­ age increase of the industrial output of Kuwait is among the high­ est in the world, but no one would seriously consider this to be proof of the wisdom of the Government of that country or the desirability or otherwise of relying on private overseas investment. Equally, within a large territory such as the USSR, the rational location of industry is bound to be deeply influenced by the loca­ tion of natural resources and by the difficulty or ease of communica­ tions. Oil was developed in Baku, and cotton was grown in Uzbeki­ stan, not because of nationalities policy but because these were rather obvious ways of using the resource endowments of the areas concerned. This is not, let it be said at once, a criticism, any more than it would be a reproach to the United States to have oilwells in Texas or cotton in South Carolina. Inflamed nationalism in multi­ national States is always ready to see a plot by some other nation­ ality in quite rational economic arrangements, and we must be­ ware of generalizations, such as that some factory or mine was 'not for the benefit of the people of that territory, but for the Russians'. One hears this very thing from Croat nationalists: if a factory is built in Croatia, it is 'for the Serbs', and if it is not built in Croatia this fact is evidence of anti-Croat discrimination. However, though not a cause for criticism, such 'rational' investments in a national area, the building of a factory or the sinking of a mine or oilwell in the place where it is cheaper to do this, are not, of them­ selves, a reason for praising those who thereby do the obvious

INDUSTRIALIZATION

45

thing in their own material interest. It is not necessarily a virtue of the US Government that there is oil in Texas, or of the Soviet Government that cotton is a good crop in Uzbekistan. With all this in mind, let us turn to the resource endowment of the eight republics here analysed. One sees at once that they are modest, with two important exceptions, Azerbaijan (oil) and Kazakhstan (coal at Karaganda, plus considerable resources of iron ore, the Soviet Union's principal deposits of non-ferrous metals and some other minerals). To this must be added, in the most recent years, a major natural gas find in the region of Bukhara (Uzbeki­ stan), which is being piped to the Urals. There have also been hope­ ful strikes of oil in Western Kazakhstan; again, a very high propor­ tion of the output is destined for export to the Urals and beyond. In Georgia there is a little coal of modest quality. Communications in Central Asia and Kazakhstan are overland, distances are vast. Hundreds of miles of desert lie between the Karaganda coalfield and the republics to the south of it, and until the Bukhara natural gas was discovered and developed the power situation in Central Asia was not good. Navigable rivers in this whole area are few and tend to flow the wrong way, e.g. into the inland Aral Sea. The entire area is very remote indeed from the main centres of popula­ tion of the USSR, with a long haul, once again, by rail. Paris is nearer to Moscow by train than are Tashkent or Alma Ata. Given that capital was relatively very scarce, given also the much richer untapped resources in Siberia and parts of European Russia and the Ukraine, it followed that, if economic rationality alone were adopted as a guide, there would be very little industry in these republics. In a free-enterprise setting, in a huge free trade area within the USSR's present borders, it is very doubtful if there would be rapid industrial growth in these regions. They have benefited, therefore, not only from being part of a much larger whole, but also, or even particularly, from the fact that the Government of the USSR had an industrializing ideology, equated social progress with industry, and paid special attention to the development in formerly backward areas. A similar policy may be seen in, for instance, Yugoslavia, where investment is deliberately directed to Macedonia and Montenegro, though there would be a higher rate of return if it went to the more developed parts of the country. In a quite different political setting, the Irish Government artificially encourages economic activity in Irish-speaking areas, to preserve the spirit of the Gaeltacht, Such

46

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

policies have an economic cost. Thus the large steelworks at Rustavi, Georgia, though operationally quite efficient, produces expensive steel, because of its remoteness from raw materials and suitable fuel, and similar examples can be cited from other coun­ tries in which industrial location policies are influenced by national or other non-economic considerations. However, the point in the present context is that this determination to develop 'backward' national regions has been of great importance in the process of industrializing much of the area we are here analysing. Given the distribution of natural resources, the location of markets and altern­ ative uses for capital within the USSR there is little doubt that more resources have been devoted to industrialization in the seven republics than would be warranted by any economic calculation, capitalist or socialist. Once again, this is in itself neither a matter of criticism nor of praise. Some economists would consider this to be evidence of resource misallocation, but there are legitimate goals other than maximizing the rate of return on capital, and the effect on the development of the formerly most under-developed areas of the USSR was on balance, clearly positive. A wide-awake critic might object that especially since the war, industrial growth in several of these republics was below the average of the USSR as a whole. (See Table A, above.) While this is true, this in no way invalidates the thesis advanced here. Obviously, the Novosibirsk or Irkutsk areas of Siberia, say, are very greatly superior in develop­ ment potential to Kirgizia and Turkmenistan, and on economic grounds the disproportion between the rates of industrial growth should and would have been much larger. (c) Pattern of industrial development before the war

The forward move in these republics (other than Azerbaijan) dates essentially from the first five-year plan, i.e. follows 1928. At that date, the industrial output of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kirgizia were all below 1913 levels, according to the official statistics, while that of Uzbekistan and Armenia had only just reached this level. Recovery had been held back by the shortage of materials for the few consumer goods industries that there were. Progress thereafter was rapid, and particularly so where mineral deposits were to be found. In particular, coal and non-ferrous metals were in urgent demand as the programme of industrialization was proceeding rapidly forward. By 1940, the Karaganda coalfield in Kazakhstan was producing 7 million tons of coal, and a railway was built to

INDUSTRIALIZATION

47

move it to Magnitogorsk. This and other associated developments in the northern half of Kazakhstan did not greatly affect the Kazakhs, who were still in process of abandoning nomadic life and had had their numbers reduced by the appalling ravages of collect­ ivization. The already existing non-Asian majority in these areas were reinforced by deportations from European Russia and also the Ukraine. Some coal and non-ferrous metals were also mined in Kirgizia. Great efforts were made to expand oil production at Baku, even though, already in the 'thirties, there were opportuni­ ties to develop rich and low-cost oilfields in the Urals-Volga area. After the war this led to the relative and absolute decline of Baku as an oil-producing centre. The city was developed as an important producer of oil equipment and of miscellaneous machinery. Ships were also built for the Caspian, and textile and footwear produc­ tion in factories increased. A large and modern cotton textile mill was opened in Tashkent in 1934, with native labour extensively used initially in unskilled tasks, but with the passing of the years in progressively more skilled and responsible posts. An agricultural machinery works and food processing plant were also based in Tashkent. Footwear and wine were among the most developed industries of Georgia, together with small beginnings of machinetool production and some hydroelectricity in the mountains, plus the mining of low-quality local coal, but even these comparatively modest activities multiplied industrial output. One need hardly again emphasize the low starting point which explains the high rates of growth which may be found in Table A (p. 40). In so far as there was a pattern of development, one could say that the ex­ tractive industries benefited most with textiles, food processing and footwear prominent in those republics in which there was nothing to mine. There is ample evidence in contemporary dis­ cussions of a consciousness of the need to pay special attention to the industrialization of formerly backward territories. (d) The war and since

At the beginning of the German invasion in 1941 Soviet resistance crumbled so swiftly that immediate steps had to be taken lest the whole of the industrial potential of the Ukraine and the Moscow and Leningrad regions might fall into the hands of the invaders and thus leave the Soviet State defenceless. Much of the equipment was destroyed to prevent it from falling into enemy hands; but it was found possible to evacuate many of the plants to the east. Here the

48

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

basic choice was between taking them up to and beyond the Urals, where the new metallurgical industries of the 'thirties would in any case have been expanded in order to meet the requirements of the situation, or to carry them even further along what was, on the grandest scale of Soviet geography, a branch line into the depths of Central Asia, where industry was still relatively immature and where the supplies of skilled manpower were far scarcer. Moreover, the essential supplies of steel and coal were already being exploited along the main axis of the Trans-Siberian Railway between the Urals and the Kuzbas; in Central Asia, coal was available from the Karaganda field, but metals would have to be brought in from the Altai and even further. It is therefore not surprising that the majority of evacuated plants of first importance were transferred to the general vicinity of the main Trans-Siberian axis. There were, however, some major plants engaged in wartime in tank produc­ tion which could be transferred quickly to sites in Central Asia on which small factories of the same type already existed. There was, for example, a small agricultural machinery plant at Frunze (Kirgizia) which had been built in 1931 in connection with the plan for mechanizing the newly collectivized agriculture of the region; soon after the outbreak of the war in 1941 this factory was sup­ plemented by machinery brought from Berdyansk/Osipenko in the Ukraine, an old industrial enterprise which seems to have been originally built before the Revolution and subsequently modern­ ized and extended. Again, the electro-chemical works at Chirchik (Uzbekistan) which had been built during the later 'thirties, and which was already in production by 1940, was supplemented at the end of 1941 by a chemical equipment plant evacuated from Sumy in the Ukraine, which was re-erected on land at Chirchik which had been earmarked for repair workshops. Much of the evacuated plant, however, was installed in great haste on sites which had not previously been used for similar purposes. The locomotive works from Lugansk transferred to Alma Ata at the very end of 1941 and the textile machinery plant at Tashkent, which became the wartime host of the Rostov tractor works and the Engels engineering works from Leningrad, are examples of this. In these last two cases, the contribution made by their transfer to the development of local industry was short-lived; the output of such plants was of such importance to the economy, in both wartime and peacetime, that they were returned to thenoriginal sites as soon as it was safe to do so.

INDUSTRIALIZATION

49

A good deal of the plant hastily evacuated in the early days of the war did remain, however, particularly plant connected with tex­ tiles and analogous industries; an important knitwear factory from near Moscow was installed at Alma Ata, a hosiery factory from Rostov came to Tashkent, and at a somewhat later date a factory from Kiev producing roofing materials was installed at Kuvasay (Uzbekistan). Another plant with peacetime potential was the cinema equipment works evacuated from Leningrad to Samarkand in 1942. In a number of cases, textile plants which had been oper­ ating in Central Asia for some years were enabled to increase their scale of operations by acquiring equipment from the west of the Union—the plants at Margelan and Fergana (both in Uzbekistan) for example. Another well-established concern operating in the area and extended as a result of wartime evacuation was the Lenin glassworks at Ashkhabad (Turkmenistan), which had been one of the first enterprises set up in the area under the Soviet regime (it dated from 1921) and was now much expanded with equipment from plants at Kiev and Kherson. But concurrently with this expansion at the expense of the devastated western areas, the expansion of local plant foreshadowed in pre-war plans continued. The Chirchik plant for chemicals con­ tinued to expand and its second section was opened in 1944; an­ other major chemical plant at Aktyubinsk in Kazakhstan, which had been built in the early 'thirties, producing sulphuric acid and other heavy chemicals, began the production of boric acid in 1942, and in the same town a plant built from 1940 on for the processing of non-ferrous metals produced its first ferro-chrome alloys in 1943. Much of the development work on metallurgical plants in the region was, of course, carried out in the strictest secrecy, and the Soviet authorities continue to maintain the same silence on the details of post-war expansion; it is known, however, that the non­ ferrous metals plant at Balkhash (Kazakhstan) was transferred there in 1942 from the Ivanovo district, at that time threatened by the Germans at the gates of Moscow. The dislocation of plants by the war meant that the intended expansion was much delayed in spite of the needs of the Army, so that both the Temir-tau (near Karaganda) metallurgical works and the steel works at Begovat (Uzbekistan)—the first in Central Asia—came too late to be of much help in defeating the Germans. The contribution which they were to make lay in the future. After the war, while these areas continued to benefit from the D

50

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

wartime shift eastwards, it is broadly true to say that most of the republics we are analysing received relatively less attention than had been the case before. One reason no doubt was the concentra­ tion of resources on the reconstruction of the badly damaged areas of European Russia and the Ukraine. Industrial growth continued, and in particular there was a spectacular increase in production in the Karaganda coalfield, production already in 1955 being four times greater than in 1940. There was a large increase also in non­ ferrous metals, electricity generation and chemicals in Kazakhstan which was rapidly becoming a major industrial centre. However, as already indicated, it is difficult to treat the northern part of Kazakhstan as a native national republic, when it is so over­ whelmingly Russian. None the less, a gradual increase in the number of Kazakhs engaged in industry has been taking place. In Uzbeki­ stan there was a further increase in output of cotton goods and also in the production of textile equipment and agricultural machinery, as well as electricity generation. However, as Table A clearly shows, industrial growth in that republic was far below the allUnion average. Developments in Georgia were dominated by the erection of a large steelworks at Rustavi, but there was also signific­ ant growth in the output of machine tools, bricks, textiles, tea and wine. Coal production reached over three million tons in 1958 but has since been allowed to decline because of its high cost and poor quality. Output in these republics too grew at less than the national average. The highest rate of growth of any of the eight republics on a 1940 base was in fact recorded by Armenia, which achieved im­ pressive results in the production of machine tools and electrical and other equipment. The growth of output in Azerbaijan was once again the lowest in the entire Union, largely because of the decline in oil production which has been below its 1940 level in every year since the war and which is increasing only very slowly, and this for excellent reasons, as cheaper oil is available elsewhere. By contrast, output of natural gas had advanced spectacularly, multiplying five-fold in the ten years 1952–62. The relatively modest growth of output in the Turkmen Republic would be even more modest had there not been an impressive rise in oil produc­ tion there. However, it is in the nature of averages that some must be above and others below them. The post-war growth of output in the republics has been impressive, and there are sound and rational reasons why it has been greater in some of them than others.

51

INDUSTRIALIZATION

Thus, the largely desolate and remote Turkmenistan would hardly be a rational location for any industrial development calling for transport outside the bounds of that sparsely populated republic. The Rustavi steelworks in Georgia is often quoted as an example of irrational location, as its output is at very high cost. It is probable that with increasing emphasis on economic calculation as a basis for investment decisions, there will be less and less inclination to develop high cost industries for political reasons. However, there are good economic grounds for expecting spectacular increases in industrial output in Kazakhstan, which is to be made into a major metallurgical base with the opening up of important iron-ore deposits . The republic also contains a number of minerals which are bound to be used in the course of the planned rapid growth of the chemical industry. Uzbekistan is already rapidly increasing its production of natural gas. While at present much of it is piped to the Urals, it is likely to serve as a most useful source of fuel in an area previously short of it, and on this basis Uzbek manufacturing is bound to move ahead rapidly. There have been repeated com­ plaints that not enough has been done to process local textile materials, the bulk of which are sent to European Russia, and there have also been remarks in the Soviet Press concerning the very feeble development of the production of metal goods of many kinds in Central Asia. It is probable that production of metals for their own needs will shortly expand. The seven-year plan, covering the years 1 959--65 , envisaged a rate of growth for the industrial output of the eight republics which compared very favourably with that for the Soviet Union as a whole. However, the table below shows there is some consider­ able gap on occasion between plan and performance:

zg6s

Plan Armenia 220 190 Azerbaijan Georgia I75 Kazakhstan 270 220 Kirgizia Tajikistan I SO Turkmenistan 195 I SO Uzbekistan U S S R Total I SO

zg6s

Actual I 95 I6I I 57 213 205 I S3 I5I I79 I S4

It is evident from the above figures that the seven-year plan goals were very far from reached, and that in only two of the eight

52

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

republics could the figures be called satisfactory. There must have been severe, though unpublicized, downward revisions in the plans. These were probably due to a decision to concentrate efforts on completing priority heavy industrial projects in the al­ ready developed areas of the Soviet Union. Such a decision may well be explained by the strains to which the investment programme was subjected in the last years of the plan period. Pressure to achieve maximum results at minimum cost naturally led to a con­ centration of resources away from less viable and less developed areas. With few exceptions (thus the cement target for Uzbeki­ stan was significantly overfulfilled) the goals for particular com­ modities announced in the early part of the plan period were not reached by 1965. A new five-year plan has been announced covering the years 1 966-70. A full translation of the draft plans for each of the eight republics appears in an Appendix below. Once again the intention, as expressed in the plan document, is to ensure a rate of growth in these republics which compares favourably with that of the Soviet Union as a whole. This may be seen by the following figures: Industrial Output in I970 (1965 =100) 1 80 Armenia 160 Azerbaijan 1 6o Georgia 1 70 Kazakhstan 1 6o Kirgizia Tajikistan 1 80 1 6o Turkmenistan 1 60 Uzbekistan I 6o U S S R Total

These growth rates represent a considerable scaling down of the original 1 970 targets announced by Krushchev in his speech to the twenty-first party congress in 1 96 1 . None the less, these growth rates would certainly be satisfactory, if they could be achieved. Paradoxically the drive to maximize economy of resources and efficiency in investment, financed increasingly by credits granted to existing enterprises, may benefit already established areas. None the less, it is intended to build many new factories in the areas in question, as may be seen from the appendix, and these will doubt­ less be financed from central funds. But, of course, in the end much will depend on the decisions of the leadership in Moscow. The location of industry is, in part, a

INDUSTRIALIZATION

53

political issue, and not only in the USSR—as may be seen in contro­ versies over new investments in Scotland, for instance. Each plan document contains a section devoted to the republics. Each re­ public puts forward its own development plan. Naturally, the sum total of these plans exceeds the resources available, and so the central planners must make cuts and eliminate duplication. Thus, in the context of a planned expansion of textiles and synthetic fibres, there are arguments as to whether the new factories should be in Central Asia or in the traditional textile regions of Russia or even in the Baltic States, where there may be more skilled labour available. It is the duty of political authority to weigh up the econ­ omic pros and cons and to take location and nationality policy into account. As already indicated above, the weight of the more purely economic arguments has been increasing of late, and, were it not for the spectacular advance of the chemical industry, there might be grounds for expecting a marked slow-down in growth rates, except perhaps in Kazakhstan. A factor which calls for special mention in this context is the problem of water supply. The Central Asian region is dependent on the major rivers for its very life; it seems improbable that sub­ terranean supplies can add more than a minute fraction. During the Soviet period the ancient canal systems have been supple­ mented by works constructed in the earlier years by the abundant labour of the peasantry, and in more recent years by a smaller labour force using machinery. Current economic policy calls for a substantial expansion of the irrigated area (with the concomitant advantage of hydro-electric power), and this is clearly feasible in Central Asia proper (e.g. central Uzbekistan and the southern edge of Kazakhstan). Whether the age-old dream of harnessing the waters of the northward-flowing rivers which rise in Kazakhstan (the Irtysh system) will be realized in the foreseeable future is another matter altogether. The growth of the republics required heavy investments, and the complex question of how development was financed will be dealt with in a separate chapter. Relatively backward and ill-edu­ ated native peoples had to be trained, and this whole question too requires separate examination. Part of the process was the respons­ ibility of Russians, not merely in the sense that the policies were determined in Moscow or that many of the experts were Russian, but in some republics at least many of the industrial workers were Russians too. This was the traditional pattern in, for example,

54

THE SoviET MIDDLE EAsT

Tashkent, in the days of the Tsars. The Communists have con­ scientiously endeavoured to train local cadres and to draw local inhabitants into industry and into the expanding towns. However, with the sole exception of the Armenians, 1 all the nationalities with which we are concerned are still predominantly rural. To say this is not a reproach, it is simply a fact. The following table, derived from the 1959 census returns, demonstrates this clearly enough. (Note that the figures relate to the nationalities wherever they live, e.g. they include Uzbeks resident in any other republic and not only in Uzbekistan):

T A B L E c. Nationalities in villages and towns, 1959 (all figures in thousands) Urban Rural Uzbeks 1 ,3 1 2 4 ,707 Kazakhs 2,750 872 Georgians 972 1,720 Azerbaijanis 1,042 1,9 1 5 105 864 Kirgizians 1,109 Tajiks 288 1 ,210 Armenians 1 ,576 254 Turkmens 747 65,8 1 2 (Russians) 48,302

Some of the Russians in the table live in the eight republics, as has already been shown (pp. 2 1 , 22, 30 above). Except in Georgia and Armenia, the big towns tend to be very largely Russian. There are few Russian peasants in these republics, except in Kazakhstan. Consequently industrialization has been made possible both by training the native population and by using Russians who were already in these territories and who migrated there (as well as some Ukrainians and also Jews who were evacuated eastwards during the war). But the whole question of the role of Russians and other 'outsiders' will also be given separate attention. 1 45 per cent of all the Armenians in the these others are predominantly urban.

u s s R live

other than in Armenia, and

Chapter 4

AGRICULTURE

The territories we are considering, with the exception of the northern half of Kazakhstan, have the characteristic of being in large part semi-tropical. Much of the land, it is true, is not suitable for cultivation. Thus much of what is now Kazakhstan was used for rough sheep grazing by nomadic tribesmen, and in Trans­ caucasia there are considerable tracts of mountains, with little rain, which support cattle which to this day show the lowest yield of any in the USSR. Yet, where cultivation is possible, either through irrigation or a favourable conjunction of soil and climate, the land can produce crops which would not grow in other parts of the Russian Empire or the USSR. It was therefore in the interests of all concerned that these areas specialize in the crops of high scarcity value. The Tsarist and Communist authorities did their best to encourage cotton-growing in Central Asia, to save foreign cur­ rency and also to make the country independent of overseas sup­ plies in the event of emergencies. In the Soviet period, imports of citrus fruits, tobacco, tea, rice, wine, were severely restricted, or eliminated altogether, and this compelled an even greater reliance on the areas where these things could be grown or made. However, specialization is advantageous for the peasants only if two conditions are fulfilled: prices must be favourable, and the goods which the peasants must buy—especially the staple food­ stuffs 'displaced' by specialization—must be available. It is wrong and pointless to denounce Russian efforts to encourage cottongrowing as if the fact that the cotton goes to the Russian textile industry is proof of colonial exploitation. What requires to be examined are the terms of trade. During the First World War, the need for cotton was great, the ability to deliver bread grains and manufactures to pay for this cotton was adversely affected by the war. Efforts to compel more cotton to be grown in such circumstances was one of the causes of

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

56

the vast rebellion in what was then called Turkestan, which erupted in 1916. In the chaotic years that followed, it was natural that more of the limited supply of land was used for subsistence crops, but the cotton acreage recovered after the end of the civil war—which continued in parts of Central Asia long after order had been estab­ lished in European Russia. The general scope of agriculture in the republics with which we are concerned is indicated in the Appendix (pp. 138, 139). So far as livestock is concerned, the Muslim areas are conspicu­ ous to this day for having hardly any pigs. Cattle do not do well in large parts of these areas, owing to shortage of good pasture and the arid climate. Sheep-raising, on the other hand, is widespread. It was dealt a shattering blow by the consequences of collectiviza­ tion, from which it has only recently recovered. As the figures below demonstrate, Kazakhstan had not returned to its pre-collectivization sheep population by 1954. (Subsequent progress is re­ lated to the virgin lands campaign.) 1928 Sheep and goats

19-2

1935 1940 1954 {Millions of head) 2-6 7-0 18-4

Sources: Narodnoe khozyaistvo Kaz. SSSR,

1957, p. 141, and

1961 28-7

N. Kh. SSSR,

i960, p. 455.

Collectivization hit all the republics hard, but Kazakhstan suffered most of all, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Kazakhs were still wholly or partly nomadic, and were socially the most backward, the least likely to respond to any 'collective' appeal which contradicted the traditional attachment to family and clan. The Soviet policies nominally took all this into account, and there were many warnings about proceeding with care and caution in dealing with such problems. However, once the collectivization campaign got under way, these warnings were ignored, and nomads who had yet even to understand the virtues of settled agriculture were herded into collectives. The clan or family heads were treated as Kulaks and arrested or deported. The most appalling chaos followed. Some Kazakhs escaped across the border into Chinese Sinkiang—whence their sons and grandsons fled back into Soviet territory in 1962-3 to escape the equally disagreeable rural policies of the Chinese Communists. Others must have starved. Their livelihood was the flocks of sheep, and, as the figures cited above show so dramatically, by 1935 the flocks had almost vanished.

AGRICULTURE

57

Recently, Soviet scholars have examined the period and have had to admit a long catalogue of mistakes, distortions, crudities, some of which plainly were instigated by Stalin. However, they have yet to admit openly that the whole collectivization campaign was an error, or even that it was essentially an act of coercion. The pre­ tence has to be maintained, though contrary evidence is often cited in the same works, that most of the peasants were in favour of the change. Otherwise, one supposes that it would be awkward to maintain collectivization today. In any event, the rural population in Kazakhstan declined sharply from the 1926 census figure of 5.6 million to 4.4 million in 1939; the overall population of the republic increased by only about 0.1 million in this period. The spectacular increase in the population of the towns, from about 0.5 million to over 1.7 million, was principally due to immigration, voluntary or other­ wise, from other parts of the USSR. The remarkable drop in the recorded number of Kazakhs—from 4 million in 1926 to barely 3 million in 1939—contrasts dramatically with the increase in the numbers of other Central Asian groups (ranging from 6 per cent in the case of the Turkmens to 27 per cent for the Kara-Kalpaks). Some small amount of assimilation there may have been—a Kazakh who ceases to follow the traditional Kazakh way of life might call himself by the name of some other nationality; but the census figures seem to point inescapably to an actual excess of deaths over births for the Kazakhs between 1926 and 1939. In Georgia, too, according to recent Soviet admissions, the col­ lectivization campaign was carried out with total disregard for peasants' opinions and local conditions: 'crudest distortion, ad­ ministrative pressures, the forcible inclusion of all peasants in a number of districts in kolkhozy and communes', thus Voprosy Istorii KPSS for August 1964 (p. 117). But here, too, such ad­ missions are confined to the period down to 1932. Then 'the errors were corrected by the party'. In practice, collectivization was en­ forced regardless of the views of the victims. But in Georgia, possibly because of Stalin's association with the place, or perhaps because Beria wanted support for his own political schemes,1 private property among peasants was allowed freer range than else­ where. To take one example, while in Russia proper the private ownership of horses was almost eliminated already in the middle 'thirties, 65 per cent of horses in Georgia were privately owned in 1

This last explanation is advanced in the above-cited article.

58

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

1941.1 Valuable tea plantations, vines and fruit trees were, to some extent still are, in private hands, and Georgian peasants could journey even to Moscow to sell fruit at inflated prices in the free market. Even as late as 1962, when restrictions on private activities were severe, two-thirds of the grapes, almost half of citrus fruit and over three-quarters of 'other fruits and berries' were privately owned and produced in Georgia. All this, however, was con­ ditional upon the peasants having land on which these valuable crops could be grown. In mountainous areas collectivization did unrelieved harm, and the bitter mountain tribes (e.g. in Ossetia) welcomed the German advance in 1942 and were afterwards punished by Stalin with deportation. The same pattern of coercion was repeated in all the other republics too, but resistance and losses were generally somewhat less, particularly in the cotton-growing areas, where the necessities of joint use of water had accustomed the peasants to co-operation of some kind, even though the kolkhoz form was certainly not popular. The chief conflict in the period 1929–34 in the Central Asia cotton belt was over the maintenance and increase of the area under cotton, in the face of grave food supply difficulties. The effect of collectivization in the grain growing areas of Russia and the Ukraine was to reduce harvests, at a time when exports were being increased to pay for imports of capital equipment. The result was that many peasants starved, since the State virtually removed bread-grains from the villages. The Central Asian peasants did not starve, but supplies of food became inadequate and irregular, not only because of shortage in the producing regions but also owing to the disorganization of transport occasioned by the excessive speed of the Soviet industrial 'great leap forward'. Furthermore, State buying prices were held at relatively low levels. This seri­ ously affected peasant incomes, in so far as the State was the only buyer; the peasants could not sell cotton at high free-market prices, as could be done with surpluses of foodstuffs. In its endeavours to ensure an increase in the (import-saving) cotton crops, the State not only issued orders to raise the acreage under cotton, but also introduced a complex scheme for supplying grain to cottongrowing farms at low prices (the so-called otovarivanie zernom). Meanwhile, retail prices rose rapidly. Thus, already by 1932, prices of kerosene and cotton cloth, to give but two examples, were 21/2 1

Nar Khoz Gruz SSR v. 1962 g.

AGRICULTURE

59

times above 1928 levels. At this period many consumers' goods were available only in so-called State commercial stores, at ex­ tremely high prices, though some rationed commodities could sometimes be obtained more cheaply. The net effect was widespread dissatisfaction and friction, with the peasants. When in 1934–5 bread and other prices were unified and rationing ended, it was decided to raise greatly the procure­ ment price for cotton, while doing away with the scheme for supplying grain to the cotton-growers at low prices. The average price paid by the State for a quintal (100 kilograms) of raw cotton was 3,051 roubles in 1931–2. It rose to 11,500 roubles in 1935.1 The same happened to tobacco, another crop of interest to the southern republics. Prices for tea and fruit also moved favourably. However, the retail price of bread in 1935 was ten times greater than in 1928. The incomplete evidence available suggests that peasants in Central Asia had to buy more food grains and bread than did peasants in Central Russia, since payments in kind were more important in the latter region. None the less, it is still possible to conclude that the purchasing power of the peasantry, and the financial situation of collective farms, was relatively much less unfavourable in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, in the period 1935–53, than they were elsewhere in the Soviet Union. State buying prices of staple food crops and of livestock products were held at very low levels until after Stalin's death. Soviet agriculture suffered heavily as a consequence of this. These unfavourable prices also affected anyone in any republic who had the misfortune to produce, or to have to deliver to the State, items for which prices were very low. Many such producers were located in the eight republics with which we are concerned. Thus the northern half of Kazakhstan was predominantly a grain and sheep-raising area, in so far as it was agricultural. The uplands of Transcaucasia were principally livestock areas. In these and other districts, the price policy did as much harm as in other parts of the USSR, and was as bitterly unpopular. On balance, there is no evidence that the price policies were deliberately differentiated by republic or by nation­ ality; they were differentiated by product. Thus any grower of cotton, fruit, or grapes, or tobacco, benefited from high prices, whether in the Crimea, the Krasnodar krai of the RSFSR, Georgia, 1 A. Malafeyev: Istoriya tseno-obrazovaniya v SSSR, 1917–63 (Moscow 1964, p. 396).

60

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

or Uzbekistan. Attempts were made to grow cotton in the Ukraine, with little success, despite the prices. It just so happened that the eight republics were largely responsible for growing scarce and import-saving crops. For the same reason, a quite disproportionate share of the scarce mineral fertilizer was allocated to these crops, and therefore to the republics in which the crops grew. This, naturally, increased yields and still further benefited farm and peasant incomes, at a time when the food crops in Russia and the Ukraine received practically no mineral fertilizer whatsoever. The relationship between peasant incomes in the eight republics and rest of the USSR is a matter dealt with in another chapter. Suffice it to say that, especially in the period down to 1953, the comparison is strongly to the disfavour of peasants in the RSFSR, Belorussia and the Ukraine, even when all allowances are made for the relatively greater importance of consumption in kind (off their private plots, or distributed by the farms) in the staple-food­ growing areas. The crop pattern was disrupted severely by the war. With the German occupation, in 1941–4, of much of the food-surplus areas of the USSR-in-Europe, it was impossible to supply food to cottongrowing and other industrial crop areas, and there was a marked in­ crease in subsistence farming, especially in the sowing of grain. In consequence, the production of cotton fell by 1943 to only 32 per cent of pre-war, although the Germans had occupied hardly any of the land formerly sown by cotton. The war approached Trans­ caucasia but all eight republics escaped enemy occupation and the resultant damage. Though all contributed a sizeable number of men to the Army and suffered losses, these were considerably smaller than those of the Russians. After the war, the cotton acreage returned to, and in 1950 passed, the 1940 level. Irrigation works were, however, not substantially expanded, and there was a good deal of criticism of neglect, which led to excessive salinity in the soil, so that part of the land classed as 'irrigated' was in fact un­ usable. None the less, yields per acre rose as much as 50 per cent over pre-war levels, due partly to improved strains, and partly to increased quantities of fertilizer. The greatest post-war development was in Kazakhstan, which was the centre of the so-called 'virgin lands campaign', launched in 1954 and pressed energetically forward in the three following years. Part of the campaign concerned the RSFSR (Siberia, South­

AGRICULTURE

61

east Volga, etc.), but in Kazakhstan the cultivated area rose as follows (in thousand hectares): Total of which: wheat

ig 53 9,717 4,638

1956 27,883 18,318

1959 27,996 18,036

This enormous drive involved the immigration into the northern provinces of Kazakhstan of large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians. Partly for this reason, the proportion of Kazakhs in the population of Kazakhstan diminished significantly; from 38 per cent in 1939 to only 30 per cent in 1959. It is true that part of the area affected by the campaign was already largely Russian, but the effect was certainly to alter the balance of population, though there is no evidence to suggest that the purpose was anything other than agricultural. Any impact on nationalities policy was entirely incidental. The ploughing up of land which was on the margin of cultiva­ tion—short growing season, inadequate precipitation, soils liable to erosion—involved risk, and it was obvious that there would be very great year-by-year variations in yields. Strong pressure, under Khrushchev's leadership, to increase sown areas, and to reduce fallowing led to the continuous cultivation of land unsuitable for such a purpose, and, even worse, to the prevalence of monoculture (spring wheat). Poor living conditions caused many Russian immi­ grants to go back home, causing acute shortage of skilled mech­ anics and labour generally. This would only be partially corrected by a seasonal inflow of volunteers (or 'volunteers') and machines to help with the harvest. While in the short run the cultivation of these vast territories helped to relieve the grain shortage, there seems little doubt that it will now be necessary substantially to re­ duce the sown area in Kazakhstan. A gradual increase in the irri­ gated area will doubtless be achieved, but there is insufficient water in most of the republic. Grandiose schemes to 'alter nature' by turning the northward flowing rivers of Siberia southwards into Kazakhstan and into the inland Aral Sea are still, and will for long remain, mere projects. Perhaps, with vastly changed techniques, these plans will one day be translated into reality, but for the present they are far too expensive to be seriously considered. The very substantial investments required in the virgin lands must have seriously limited the amounts available for other agri­ cultural purposes. Not surprisingly, there were a great many com-

62

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

plaints about inadequate mechanization in cotton-growing, where yields per acre are good, and considerably exceed American (unirrigated) cotton yields. However, scattered and inadequate evidence of productivity per head strongly suggests that these high yields per acre are achieved by a very lavish use of manpower in the farms. Since the pay of collectivized peasants in Central Asia has been relatively high, it is hardly surprising that cotton prices are high also, though relatively speaking cotton has lost ground in respect of prices after 1953. Before analysing price changes, a few words are necessary about the role of Russian settlement in agricultural development. Apart from northern Kazakhstan, there have been no large movements of Russian peasants into the national republics since the Revolution. Russian villages do exist in several areas. For example, fruit and vegetables have been grown by Russians in the Alma Ata region since the turn of the century, and one of the authors of this study has visited wholly Russian kolkhozy in this district. There are also old-established Russian settlers in the Kirgiz republic. But elsewhere, as a rule, the peasants are overwhelmingly of Central Asian and Transcaucasian nationality, and the Russians, Ukrainians and Jews are very largely urban. Present trends suggest that this situation will not change, the more so as the birth rate in most of these republics, and with it the rate of population increase, substantially exceeds the average for the USSR as a whole. The relative price advantage of'tropical' products declined substantially after 1953, because of a long overdue rise in the State buying prices for 'temperate' foodstuffs. The following table illustrates, but also overstates, the change which has occurred: Index of average prices for purchases from collective farms and peasants by the State (1952 = 100) 1953 1956 1960 All grain 236 634 717 of which: rice (146) (887) (967)* Beef 338 508 1,228 Milk 202 334 405 Cotton 1O5 114 107 Hemp 108 146 121* Tobacco 96 151 162* Grapes 110 167 132* * 1959. Source: Malafeyev, op. cit., pp. 412-13.

AGRICULTURE

63

In 1962–3, meat prices were raised on average by 35 per cent, cotton prices by 12 per cent to 20 per cent, and some other in­ creases occurred. There were further all-round increases in 1965. On the face of it, here was discrimination against the Central Asian and Transcaucasian producers. However, in the first place this has in large part been a correction of unequal treatment in the past. Secondly, the gain to the peasants of Russia has not been as great as the above figures suggest; thus, the incomes derived from free market sales have fallen significantly since 1953, and in the most recent years so have payments in kind, owing to a more vigorous insistence on deliveries to the State. Thirdly, especially since 1958, the farms have had to bear much heavier burdens, owing to the sale to them of machinery formerly owned and operated by State Machine-Tractor-Stations (MTS). None the less, it is certainly true that the relative advantage—in net income, in peasant living standards, in the share of fertilizer— of the previously favoured areas has substantially diminished. This can be seen from evidence in Chapter 7. What about the income trend in these republics since 1953? There is lack of hard evidence, especially for the most recent years. In the period 1957–61, and possibly through 1964, peasant in­ comes in the USSR as a whole appear to have fallen. One reason for supposing that this is so is the cessation of statistical publications on peasant incomes. The same reason prevents one from giving firm statistical evidence: there is very little evidence, though what there is points firmly to the above conclusions. There are several well documented cases where incomes actually fell: in Tajikistan,1 Uzbekistan and Georgia.2 It is quite possible that in the last few years the peasants of all these republics suffered also from interference with the private sector, i.e. with the rights of peasants to grow and market their own produce, to raise and feed their own livestock. It has been reported that the Georgian Govern­ ment forbade their peasants from taking private produce to sell outside the borders of the republic, thereby eliminating a lucrative line of business. (One wonders if such rules can be, or were, effectively enforced.) One read of cases of virtually forcible sales of cows to collectives, the ban on livestock in suburban areas, the stiffening of penalties and taxes, cuts in the size of private allot­ 1

Venzher: Voprosy ispol'zovaniya zakona stoimosti v kolkhozakh (Moscow,

1960, 2

p. 221).

V. Khlebnikov: Vop. ekon. 1962, No. 7, pp. 50–8.

64

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

ments. None of these measures were specifically directed at any particular area or republic; they seemed to have been centrally in­ spired, apparently by Khrushchev, since his successors speedily promised to repeal legislation (much of it unpublished) which limited or interfered with private rights. Just as they benefited from the relaxations or restrictions on the private plots which occurred in 1953, and the tax reductives of that year, the citizens of the eight republics suffered from the reimposition of restrictions after 1958. Perhaps they are now, jointly with other Soviet peasants, glad of the 'softer' policy of Brezhnev and Kosygin, though pre­ sumably wondering how long it, and they, will last.

Chapter 5

SOCIAL SERVICES

While the general well-being of the citizen will be affected by the development of the economy as a whole, he will be particularly closely touched by the social services available to him, and it is to these that we now turn. The progress of education in the eight republics has been rapid, and it will be discussed in detail below, since local conditions, and in particular the historical traditions of the various national groupings, have played a large part in deter­ mining the progress that could be made in a limited time. Simi­ larly, the medical services in the narrow sense tend to differ in quality and in approach according to the specific local problems (for example, the prevalence of tropical diseases as of social customs which hamper the practice of modern public health). (a) Pensions and benefits

The sector of the social services that consists basically of transfer payments (pensions, family allowances and so on) is much less affected by local conditions, and here we have a general Soviet pattern, which is in essence followed in all areas. The system of family allowances (monthly payments to the mother for each child born, starting with the third and increasing for each subsequent child; lump sum payments for the fourth child again increasing for each subsequent child) was introduced to promote a high birth­ rate just before the war, and has been maintained until now, al­ though the sums paid were reduced after 1947. These benefits are paid to all mothers, married or otherwise, and are non-contri­ butory. In areas where the birthrate is significantly higher than in the country as a whole, they supplement family incomes to a useful extent. In addition to cash payments, mothers of large families are publicly honoured by the conferment of decorations ('Heroine Mothers' for ten children, and lesser titles for smaller numbers). These payments and decorations are not limited to E

66

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

State employees or to trade-union members, but can be and are given predominantly to kolkhoz members (since rural families tend to be larger than urban ones). The pension and insurance payments were, however, confined to employees of the State sector; full benefits go only to trade-union members, but these form such an overwhelming majority of the State-employed popu­ lation that the few (mostly casual) workers who are not members can be disregarded here. No contributions are paid by the em­ ployees; the employing organization pays a capitation fee into the State budget, and the State budget in its turn pays the benefits to the worker, the administrative agent for the scheme being the trade unions. Old age pensions (at 60 for men, at 55 for women) are paid at sliding-scale rates according to the wage earned im­ mediately before retirement and to the number of years for which the person has worked; the limits in practice are, at the bottom, the official minimum wage (35 roubles) and at the top, 120 roubles per month. Disability pensions, pensions for dependants and sickness benefit are paid according to the same criteria. Women are entitled to 16 weeks maternity leave (8 weeks before, 8 after the birth). Collectivized peasants, however, receive no such benefits as of right, though a pensions scheme was introduced in 1964. The republics which we are considering receive less in such benefits per head of total population than the USSR as a whole, but simply because they are still predominantly rural and less industri­ alized—the same is true of wages and salaries, as we shall see below. Demographic factors will however in some respects tend to iron out the differences; for example, the extraordinary longevity of Caucasian mountain-dwellers (most of whom will of course be peasants, perhaps fortunately for the Soviet Exchequer), and the relatively high birth-rate and (because of the age-structure) low death rates of urbanized natives.1 The essential point, however, is that the relatively backward areas share, in terms of formal equality, in the social service benefits of the USSR as a whole, and, as a later section will show, the financial burden appears to fall dis­ proportionately on the more 'advanced' Russians, Ukrainians, etc. 1 Low standards of health in the past, now much improved, mean that in, say, Uzbekistan, the proportion of the very old is low and that of persons in early middle age is high; the old die more readily than the young; hence the overall death rate has fallen rapidly. The shift to the towns has not yet affected the native population of the developing areas to such an extent that their family size has declined to that standard in more mature urban societies.

SOCIAL SERVICES

67

We turn now to the main subject of this chapter, the develop­ ment and special characteristics of education in our region. (b) Schools: Central Asia and Kazakhstan The Russian conquest of Turkestan in the mid-nineteenth century found a system of education in being which had much in common with that prevailing in Western Europe during the Middle Ages; the ancient cities which were the centres of political government and of trade and handicraft manufacture were also religious centres in which the clergy and Cvil Service—the only two major groups for which a degree of formal education was required—were trained; and there is a remarkable similarity between, say, Bukhara in the nineteenth century and Oxford or Paris in the thirteenth, with only the substitution of scholastic Islam for scholastic Christianity. At the top of the educational pyramid, the theological colleges (medreseh) housed a large number of students and teachers of very diverse social background, living for the most part on the charity of long-dead founders. These theologians formed a most influential social group devoted to the maintenance of the existing order of things. In the villages of the settled population, this same class provided the clergy and the schoolmasters. A substantial part of the population (boys and to some extent girls also) passed through the village schools, whose curriculum was, however, limited to the learning of the formularies of the Islamic religion by rote and in a foreign language, so that the bulk of the population never became literate (in the sense of being able to read and write their native tongue). During the nineteenth century, and more particularly in the early decades of the twentieth, the growth of trade and industry, largely sponsored by Muslims from outside the area, led to the development of a more modernized school system, which was, however, still embryonic at the time of the Revolution. The growth of nationalism among Muslim peoples outside Russia stimulated similar movements within the Tsarist empire, particularly in the Crimea, on the Volga (the Kazan Tartars), and in Azerbaijan, and by 1900 Turkestan was beginning to be affected by the ideas that all Muslims and/or that all persons speaking a Turkish dialect should move towards some form of unity. At this time the various Turkish dialects began to be used for the purposes of literary communication; since the Arabic script was used for them all, and the Arabic and Persian languages provided an inexhaustible fund from which loan-words could be drawn to represent modern

68

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

political and social concepts, intercommunication was not impos­ sible. The founders of the new Muslim schools with a partly Westernized curriculum met with violent opposition from the religious conservatives, to whom all tampering with the traditional forms of the faith were anathema, and were not enthusiastically welcomed by the Russian authorities, who had founded schools in Turkestan on the same lines as those existing in European Russia for the children of settlers, particularly of the official class; schools which were firmly based on the concepts of orthodoxy and auto­ cracy. A relatively small number of the native population were drawn into these Government schools, but they were generally regarded as a heathen imposition; cases are recorded in which members of the local nobility would pay for the education of poor local children in these Government schools as a kind of ransom to protect them from exposing their own sons to this contamination. On the collapse of the autocracy, the ambiguous position of the Muslim modernizers became apparent. On the one hand, they stood against the reactionary conservatism founded in the existing social order which the new Soviet Government was anxious to eradicate; on the other, their devotion to local particularisms and also to Islam as a unifying force transcending tribal loyalties led them into conflict with official Government policies. It was easy for the Soviet Government to decree the separation of Church and State and to confiscate the endowments on which the traditional system depended; it was less easy to persuade the native population to attend the new infidel schools, even when they became the only tolerated schools available to the people and when they seemed to offer opportunities of formal training which the poorer natives had not previously been able to obtain. Nevertheless, Government pressure combined with some support from the 'progressive' elements of the clergy to produce a relatively large school enrol­ ment (85,000 pupils in 1921 in Turkestan, out of a potential school enrolment of 773,000). It did not last; shortages of all kinds, and particularly of funds, forced the Government to restore the Muslim endowments in order to keep some kind of school system in being, and although the pressure was maintained (by land re­ form and other measures which had the effect of undermining the financial basis of the Muslim educational system) it was not until the early 'thirties that the last Muslim school was replaced by a secular one. The towns, with their predominantly European popul­ ation, took the lion's share of educational resources during this

SOCIAL SERVICES

69

period; it was estimated in 1923 that 35 . 3 per cent of the European population could read or write, while only about 2 per cent of the natives could do so; and the local administrators were naturally reluctant to damage an existing system which provided tolerably well for the needs of the European minority in order to expand facilities for the natives. Native teachers could be found only with great difficulty; most of the trained native personnel preferred to take party or Government posts rather than serve as ill-paid teachers in potentially hostile native areas. The situation by 1928 can be summed up in the following figures: in the urban areas of Kazakhstan and Central Asia (Kazakhstan plus the four Central Asian republics) 10 . 6 per cent of the population were attending school—i.e. about four age-groups of one year each; in the rural areas, only 3.2 per cent—allowing for the higher rural birth-rate, about one age-group. The number of teachers in urban areas was 4.1 per thousand of population; in rural areas, 0.9 per thousand. The average urban school had about seven teachers, the rural school, typically one or two: in urban areas the load was about twenty-five pupils per teacher; in rural areas, about thirty-six pupils per teacher. Clearly, at this stage the rural areas had a long way to go—but had come quite a long way in a decade of Soviet Government. As the economy of the area recovered from the dislocation caused by the Civil War and the first beginnings of industrialization appeared, it became obvious that the principal obstacle to rapid development lay in the abysmally low level of general education among the adult population; in an effort to overcome this—and at the same time to bring the Soviet message to the village—con­ siderable resources were devoted to the organization of the cam­ paign for the abolition of illiteracy in the countryside. This cam­ paign reached its climax in Kazakhstan and Central Asia in the early 'thirties, when collectivization became a live issue; again the acute shortage of trained staff manifested itself, and the work had to begin by the training of sufficient party staff and other helpers in hasty courses; the existing staff of schools were quite inadequate to cope with this additional task. Again, the mobile units engaged in this work met with stiff opposition from local conservatism, the more so since the traditional status of women was now being questioned; as indicated above, the idea that a small girl should receive some elementary instruction was not entirely alien to Islamic ideas, and even in 1927 about one-fifth of the rural school

70

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

pupils were girls, but for an adult woman to learn to read, to ex­ press her opinion on politics and perhaps to disagree with her husband was naturally quite unthinkable. Nevertheless, the con­ tinuing pressure of the authorities and the gradual shift of social attitudes slowly began to take effect, and by I939 at least two­ thirds of the native women had achieved some degree ofliteracy, while in the schools girls and boys had nearly achieved parity, although girls still tended to drift away into early marriage. A crude but nevertheless graphic measure of the progress achieved prior to World War II in Kazakhstan and Central Asia is given by the I939 census data (much of which has only recently been released). At that date, the following proportions of the popu­ lation had achieved at least a secondary education (i.e. had had at least seven years' schooling): ussR

Total Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan

Percentage 8·3 6·5 4'2 3 '4 2'9 4'9

Percentage (Kazakhs only: (Uzbeks only: (Kirgiz only: (Tajiks only: (Turkmens only:

2 · 2) I · 5) o 9) I · 2) I · 4) ·

One is entitled to infer from these I939 data, first, that the non­ native population of the area (mostly town-dwellers) were not very different from the all-Union average in terms of educational attainment, but that the rural secondary schools had not yet had time enough to embrace a very large portion of the native popula­ tion; and, secondly, that extremely few native women had yet attended a secondary school (the actual figures for native women, in the countryside at this date, range from o · I to o · 3 per cent). At the same time, very nearly the whole of the skilled man- and woman-power required to build up the economy of these areas still had to come from outside. In I94I, the total number of degree­ holding specialists employed in the area amounted to 47,500; while the total number of natives with these qualifications was 5,3oo­ about I I per cent of the whole. The war brought a fresh crop of difficulties at a time when the temporary loss of the Western areas had forced the Soviet Govern­ ment to shift a number of industrial plants to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Teachers were conscripted; school buildings were requisitioned as hospitals, stores and offices; paper and printing facilities were scarce, and there was a great pressure on senior

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pupils to leave early and take jobs in the new factories. The number of school pupils in Kazakhstan and Central Asia dropped from 3 · 28 million in 1940 to 2 · 35 million in the first post-war year, although the number of teachers was maintained at nearly the pre­ war level. From then on, the pre-war level of numbers of pupils was rapidly attained and surpassed: (the area did not share the general Soviet experience of a reduction in the total school popula­ tion in the 'fifties, as we shall discuss below): Classes VIII-X I-IV V-VII 132 1 940 2,1 88 933 86 53 1 1 945 1 ,737 144 949 1 950 2,373 563 1,13 1 1955 1,745 ages 7 to 10 primary (classes I-IV I I to 13 junior secondary V-VII 1 4 to 16 senior secondary) VIII-X

Total (K/CA) 3,253 2,354 3>466 3,439

USSR

Total 34,510 26,009 33,198 28, 101

The high birth-rate of this area stands in sharp contrast to that of the Soviet population as a whole, particularly in the war and early post-war years, and although there was a fall in the number of children entering primary school in the early 'fifties, it was not nearly so extreme, and was in part offset by immigration·. For the schools of Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a whole it was offset by a great growth in secondary facilities, particularly in the country­ side; one may in fact say that the effective introduction of the countryside-that is to say of the native population-to the seven­ and ten-year schools began after the war. In Uzbekistan, for in­ stance, the rural primary schools in 1940 had 717,000 pupils: given a total rural population of about 5 million, this implies that cover­ age was virtually complete for the four-year course. The junior secondary course, however, had only 23 1,000 pupils, or about one­ half of the possible attendance, while the higher secondary contin­ gent numbered only 16,000. By 1955, the rural primary pupils number 446,ooo; those in the junior secondary classes, 339,ooo; and in the senior secondary classes, 156,ooo. Coverage was com­ plete, or nearly so, for the first seven years, and something like one­ half of the pupils were staying on for the complete course. This astonishing improvement in education standards has not been achieved without constant pressure on the part of the authorities. It was only in 1953 that the Uzbek authorities concerned them­ selves very actively with the enforcement of the law which pre-

72

THE SoviET MIDDLE EAsT

scribed a compulsory seven-year school course, and it was found that substantial numbers of children left before the statutory time, particularly girls of the native nationalities; the proportion varied according to the backwardness of the area-for example, it was about 5 per cent of all pupils in the remote Kara-Kalpak autonom­ ous republic. This problem of 'leakage' is of course not confined to the Muslim areas of the u s s R; it is a relatively easy problem to pro­ vide a network of elementary schools dense enough to catch all the pupils living in a scattered area, and this type of one-teacher school, with perhaps a couple of dozen pupils, is still common throughout the rural areas of the u s s R (in 1 955 half the rural primary schools in the U S S R had thirty pupils or fewer, and 93 per cent of them had only one or two teachers). Efficient secondary schools can, how­ ever, only operate if they have a reasonable range of qualified staff, and this implies that they must ·be concentrated in areas with a sufficient 'hinterland' of prospective pupils. In rural areas, there­ fore, the children must either travel long distances to school or be concentrated in boarding-schools, hostels or lodgings; the solution of this · problem by the erection of boarding-schools has been officially adopted by the Soviet authorities and is being slowly im­ plemented in spite of the immense cost involved. The relative suc­ cess of current educational policy can be demonstrated by the data of the 1959 census on the proportion of the population with second­ ary education (cf. the analogous data for 1 939 cited above). In 1 959, 28 · I per cent of the total Soviet population had received at least seven years' schooling. The proportions for Kazakhstan and Cen­ tral Asia are: Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan

Percentage 25 ' 0 24 ' 7 24 ' 0 22 ' 4 26 · 9

(Kazakhs only: (Uzbeks only: (Kirgiz only: (Tajiks only: (Turkmens only:

Percentage 1 8 · 2) 20 · 8) 19 ' 9) 20 · 1) 24 ' 2)

Allowing for the large number of children among the Muslim nationalities, and for the relative backwardness of rural schools which still persists, these nationalities are well on the way to reach­ ing the general level of the whole Soviet population-and all this in the space of a couple of decades. On the foundations of this great advance in secondary education, a fund of highly skilled specialist manpower is being built up; by 1960, there were I I2,ooo degree­ holding specialists of the native nationalities employed in the

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economy (a 21-fold increase since 1941). There is still scope for a great increase in their numbers: the natives represent only about one-third of the graduates at work in their own republics; and one obvious way in which progress is possible is by increasing the number of women graduates. More than one-half of all Soviet graduates are women (52 . 6 per cent in 1960); but among the Muslim nationalities of Kazakhstan and Central Asia the propor­ tion is far lower (24 per cent at the same date). Even here there is some tendency to converge; in the USSR as a whole the percentage of female students is 43 per cent; among the Muslim nationalities, 26 per cent. The great difference of cultural level and traditional background has not prevented the Soviet authorities from decreeing a uniform educational system throughout the Union, and in spite of the theor­ etical autonomy of the Union republics in the field of education the basic difference in curriculum amounts to little more than the choice of the language of instruction. One may note here that the traditional Arabic alphabet, which was used for the writing of Turkish dialects until the late 'twenties, was first replaced by the Latin script and later by the Cyrillic script (about 1939). Con­ comitant with these changes, the languages have been enriched or polluted (it depends on one's point of view) by the introduction of a very large number of Russian terms, in many cases inevitably (kolkhoz), in others in substitution for a previously borrowed Arabic or Persian term which had become contaminated by its association with nationalist polemics. Official policy as to the co­ ordination or isolation of the various dialects has oscillated, but has usually inclined to emphasize the individual nationality and its language, where possible in connection with its past history. The one non-Turkish language of the region, Tajik, is a case of this: Tajik is a dialect of the Iranian group and differs relatively little from standard Persian; all Persian writers of the past, particularly those who can be represented as 'progressive', are regarded as part of Tajik literature. Similarly, medieval writers in Chagatai, a Turkish dialect formerly used for literary purposes in Turkestan, are regarded as part of the Uzbek literary tradition. Those peoples who had little or no written literature before 1850 (e.g. the Kirgiz) begin their literary history with the epics of uncertain age and have little else before the Soviet period. The approach to the native language and literature has in the past led to difficulties with the Soviet authorities' slogan of 'national in form, socialist in content';

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it was complained in 1952, for example, that the course on Uzbek literature in schools where the language of instruction was Uzbek was excessively biased in favour of the medieval period—with possible nationalistic implications—and that both Uzbek writers of the Soviet period and Russian writers were rather neglected. The national-language school is in fact under a severe handicap when compared with the Russian-language school (and in theory every parent has the right to choose which language of instruction should be used for his child). The basic school syllabus throughout the USSR was prior to the reform of 1958 essentially an academic­ ally biased one pointing forward to higher education, even though the vast majority of pupils would in fact leave without proceeding to further education (even now, this is still substantially true, since the introduction of practical training courses has left the rest of the syllabus much as it was). In the Union republics, higher education in all subjects is in theory available in the principal local language as well as in Russian, but there are many practical difficulties (terminology and trained personnel are only two) facing the teach­ ing of, say, higher mathematics in Kirgiz. Consequently, all children in non-Russian schools have to devote a substantial number of school-hours to the study of Russian, and must also study their native tongue. In the secondary school, a European foreign language is also compulsory (English, French, German). All prospects of advancement depend on an adequate command of Russian, and a large part of the time is therefore devoted to this subject. For the child whose native tongue is Russian, however, the local language enjoys much less prestige; a smattering may be useful for social purposes, but a full command of the language is hardly necessary. The syllabus reflects this difference: to quote from the 1960 syllabus for schools in Uzbekistan, in Russianlanguage schools, the eleven-year course contains 2,860 hours for Russian language and literature, 652 hours for Uzbek language and literature, and 726 for the foreign language. In the Uzbek-language schools, the corresponding times are: 2,471 Russian, 1,796 Uzbek, 620 foreign language. The Uzbek child spends nearly three times as many hours on Uzbek as the Russian child does, and at the same time has to devote nearly as many hours to Russian and the foreign language. In compensation, he has rather fewer hours in some peripheral school subjects, but the net result is that he has 480 more school hours (5 per cent on the whole) than his Russian counterpart. Syllabuses for other republics show an even greater

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bias in favour of the Russian-language schools. It is therefore hardly surprising that, in 1955, 40 per cent of pupils in our region were attending Russian-language schools, although the Russian share of the population could hardly have been more than 25 per cent (it was 27 per cent in 1959, after four more years of expansion in Kazakhstan). Schools (at the elementary level, at least) also existed for the multifarious minority groups; but unless a Korean child— say—lived in an area with a substantial Korean population, he would normally receive his secondary education in either Russian or the prevailing local vernacular. It does not appear possible to assess the relative quality or quali­ fications in the Russian and native-language schools of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, but data are available from which this region as a whole can be compared with the situation in the USSR as a whole. The picture gives the result which one might expect in an area where secondary education has been expanded ventre à terre; the proportion of teachers in elementary classes (age 7 to 10) with higher education (degree equivalent) is rather higher in Kazakh­ stan and Central Asia than in the whole USSR (8.1 per cent as against 4.3 per cent); but on the other hand the proportion of teachers in this region with higher education is lower for the senior classes—63 per cent as against 71 per cent for classes V to VII, and 94 per cent as against 96 per cent for classes VIII to X. At every level, the proportion of teachers lacking even full secondary education, though small, is higher in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. These data refer to the school year 1955-6 and the proportion of students in teacher training colleges has been increasing in recent years faster here than in the whole USSR. It is perhaps worth noting that whereas the occupation of teaching (particularly at the junior levels) is in general one for women in the USSR, the share of women in this profession is much lower among the Central Asian Muslims (the same is true of doctors). This is partly due to the small number of women coming forward for training in the past, and partly because the appalling war-time losses of the European areas of the country have obliged women to take up employment on a far more extensive scale than is the case in those areas where the Germans at no time penetrated. (c) Schools: Transcaucasia

While the peoples of Russian Central Asia were slow to develop their interest in the outside world, the nationalities of Trans­

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THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

caucasia were in the forefront of the national minorities within the Tsarist Empire which developed separatist tendencies towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Azerbaijanis (outside the cosmopolitan industrial centre of Baku) and the great mass of the peasantry of Armenia carried on as they always lived, but in Baku itself the Muslim intelligentsia shared in the wave of enthusiasm for modernization which had as one of its main pillars the reform of traditional practices in the field of education. In Armenia, too, the towns were affected by Western and Westernizing ideas; while Georgia, where a sophisticated and forward-looking intelligentsia developed rapidly in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the pressure for equal treatment, if not absolute separation from the Russian Empire took the form of a concentration on the elements most characteristic of the Georgian people, and in particular a cultivation of the venerable Georgian language. Already by the end of the century there were many Armenians and Georgians outside the confines of their own areas; members of the Georgian nobility had entered the service of the Tsar on equal terms with the Russian nobility; many had travelled abroad, particularly in France, and French was widely known in Georgia, The Armenians were known all over Russia and in much of the outside world as merchants and traders, and differences of dialect in the Armenian diaspora did not prevent the formation of a sense of national pride. The very fact that within Transcaucasia the three groups lived closely intermingled, and that in consequence savage hostility, especially between the Muslim Azeris and the Christian Armen­ ians and Georgians, was constantly liable to flare up into bloodshed helped rather than hindered the growth of a sense of national community. In particular, the consolidation of the Armenians into a conscious national group was accelerated by the pogroms of Armenians initiated by the Turks in their territory immediately adjacent to Russian Armenia. By 1914 the national movements of the three future republics had made considerable progress in encouraging education, partic­ ularly in Georgia, where 6 per cent of the population were under­ going some form of education (the figure for the whole Russian Empire was 5.8 per cent). The short-lived republics which emerged from the collapse of the empire were dominated by parties which although broadly socialist in tendency stood far to the right of the Bolsheviks, and their work for education collapsed with their pass­ ing. Many of the intellectuals left the country to continue the

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struggle for independence in exile; others remained, and began to collaborate in the reconstruction of the shattered system. During the 'twenties the growth of education forged ahead extraordinarily rapidly, although the constant conflict between the essentially centralizing policy of the Government in Moscow and the nation­ alism of the men on the spot led to purge after purge. By 1 928 both Georgia and Armenia had higher proportions of school attendance than the u s s R as a whole, and Azerbaijan was not far behind:

USSR

Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia

Percentage of population attending school Total Urban Rural 8·2 12 · 8 7"2 8·7 14 ' 5 g·8 6·6 12 · 6 8·2 I6 · I II·O g·6

Not only was school attendance much higher than in Central Asia; the schools were larger, and a substantial start had been made in developing secondary education, even in the countryside. In Georgia in 1928, for example, 21 per cent of school pupils were in secondary classes (as against 9 per cent in Uzbekistan). The educa­ tion of women in Georgia was not subject to the restrictions of Mu5lim society; in 1926, 45 per cent of Georgian women were literate; but progress along these lines was slower in Armenia and Azerbaijan (where the correspon ding figures were 23 per cent and 19 per cent, against an all-Union average of 46 per cent). As the 'thirties wore on, the increasing superiority of the Georgians became even more evident; by 1939 the proportions of the population with a secondary education were as follows: Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan

Percentage 12"4 8·7 8·o

(Georgians only: (Armenians only: (Azeris only:

Percentage 13 ' 7) I I · 3) 4 ' 9)

Georgia was well above the all-Union percentage of 8 3: and it is noteworthy that both the Georgians and the Armenians seem to be better educated than the strangers in their Inidst. At this date, the proportion of urban Georgians with secondary education was twice that of the Soviet urban population at large (35 · I per cent as against 17 · 8 per cent). The education of women in Georgia was also impressive; the percentage of Georgian women who were literate in 1939 was actually higher than the u s s R average, although ·

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THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Armenia and Azerbaijan lagged behind, at least in the countryside. The coverage of the countryside with secondary schools in Transcaucasia was, however, already much in advance of Central Asia; in 1938 there were as many pupils in rural senior secondary schools (classes VIII-X) as in the whole of Kazakhstan and Central Asia put together; and the relative populations stood roughly in the ratio of one to five. As in other fields, the post-war period has been one in which the educationally more backward areas of the USSR have tended to advance more rapidly, and the more developed areas to advance more slowly; thus we find that approximately 69 per cent of the Georgians who entered primary schools during the 'thirties and were still alive in 1959 had received a secondary education (total attendance of seven years or more), as compared with about 46 per cent in the total Soviet population, the proportion of those who entered school in the first years after the war and then went on to receive a full secondary education was 78 per cent for Georgians and 73 per cent for the whole of the USSR; the superiority still exists, but the extent of it is diminishing. The Georgians in fact— and to a rather lesser extent, the Armenians—form a group whose high standard of education in the past gave them a scarcity value which is now passing, as formerly backward groups develop, and their relative importance in the Soviet economy as a whole may well be tending to decline. (d) Higher education

The history of the development of Soviet higher education is yet another illustration of the process which has appeared over and over again in this study: in the earlier phase of the Soviet Government's rule (until about 1940) all available resources were concentrated on those regions which had the best potential for rapid growth; and it is only since the war that attention has been concentrated on the formerly very backward areas of the East. This comes out very clearly when we examine the figures for the number of student places in higher education: 1927

Total 168-5 Transcaucasia 16-6 Kazakhstan and Central Asia 4-0

USSR

1933 1940

4583 29-4

16-8

(Thousands) 1950

1935

1960

I54'9

228-9

811-7 1,247-4 15867-0 2,395-5 54-2 78-7 92-1 112-5 37-9

95'7

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Higher education in Transcaucasia got away to a good start, the Universities of Tiflis and Baku being founded during the short­ lived independence of Georgia and Azerbaijan; Erivan University followed in 1920. By 1927, Transcaucasia, with 4 per cent of the Soviet population, had 10 per cent of the students in higher educa­ tion; while apart from the early foundation of the University of Tashkent (S A G U) in 1920 Central Asia and Kazakhstan had hardly begun to expand their facilities for higher education. By 1940, Soviet higher education had emerged from the troubles of the 'thirties, when successive political purges had destroyed the old educational system and gradually replaced it by one based strongly on the needs of technology, and although expansion in Transcauc­ asia continued, the relative weight of the area had considerably declined; in round numbers, the u s s R had had in 1927 about one student per thousand of population, while Transcaucasia had three; by I940 the u s s R had four students per thousand, and Transcaucasia had seven. At the same time, KazakhstanfCentral Asia had increased its proportion of students from o · 3 per thousand to 2 · 3 per thousand. In the post-war period the tendency towards equalization went much further-in later years the proportions were approximately: USSR

Transcaucasia Kazakhstan and Central Asia

Students per thousand population I960 I9 50 I955 II 9 7 10

st

rot 1t

II

91

It is, of course, true that the areas with which this study is con­ cerned have in general a much higher proportion of persons of normal student age than the u s s R as a whole-since the students of today are the children of the war and early post-war years, when the birth rate fell catastrophically and infant mortality was terribly high in the Western areas which bore the brunt of the fighting; but even so, the strong tendency towards equalization is apparent. When we consider, however, that the Soviet educational system at all levels is firmly tied into the general planning of manpower for the whole economy, we should expect to find that the type of study undertaken in relatively backward areas differs to a considerable extent from that of the more advanced areas, and we shall now show that this is in fact the case. The latest available breakdown of students by subject is that of 1960; this is given on the next table. The most striking difference between the pattern for our areas and

So

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

that of the u s s R as a whole is that 57-68 per cent of student places in our area are taken by future doctors, teachers, and the like (as against 40 per cent in the U S S R as a whole), so that the number of future engineers, etc., is relatively low. The status of Soviet universities needs some clarification: they account for only about Students in higher education r96o (Thousands) TransUSSR caucasia 2,395 ' 5 ! 12 • 5

Kaz. & C. Asia 228 · 9

Total of which: Industry and building Transport and commerce Agriculture Economics and law Medicine, physical education and sport Education Including universities Art and cinema

872 • 6 146 • 7 246 ' 4 161 · 9 ! 88 · 9 759 · 6 249 ' 0 19 ' 4

Total Industry, etc. Transport, etc. Agriculture Economics, etc. Medicine, etc. Education-total -Universities Art, etc.

Percentages Trans- Kaz. & USSR caucasia C. Asia 100 100 100 II 36 24 6 nil 4 10 14 17 7 nil 3 12 8 8 49 56 32 10 21 17 I I 2

(Totals do not add to

roo

27 • 0 nil

19 · 6 0•3 8·9 54 ' 7 23 ' 4 2· I

25 · 8 8·2 31 ' 5 7'4 27 • 6 127 ' 1 37 ' 9 1 '3

due to rounding)

10 per cent of all Soviet students in higher education, and are broadly concerned with the training of the next generation of research workers in the arts and in pure science; the great majority of students attend institutions which specialize in particular vocational courses (although the curriculum includes general academic studies). For example, there were in the city of Tashkent in 1957 the following higher educational institutions: the Central Asian State University; the Polytechnical Institute (geology, mining, mechanical engineering, chemistry, building); the Textile Institute; the Railway Engineering Transport Institute; the

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Electro-technical Communications Institute; the Agricultural Institute; the Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Institute; the Finance and Economics Institute; the State Conservatoire; the Theatrical Arts Institute; the Medical Institute; the Pharmaceuti­ cal Institute; the Uzbek State Institute for Physical Culture; three Pedagogical Institutes (one full time, training teachers in Russian, Uzbek and Kazakh; one evening only, primarily for Russian teachers; one specializing in West European language teaching). Altogether, there were some 64,000 students in Tashkent, of whom only about 6,000 were attending the university. Tashkent is in fact the intellectual capital of the Soviet East. It appears that some ten years ago the practice of setting up institutes in rather small towns was discontinued, and in more recent years there has been a strong tendency to amalgamate the smaller ones and move them to republican capitals (this is particularly true of teacher training institutes). The relative bias against technological studies may be considered in connection with the representation of members of the indigenous nationalities among the student body. First, as to Transcaucasia; the proportion of Russians in the total population of the three republics (about 10 per cent) is very close to the proportion of Russian students; but in each republic, the proportion of students of the basic nationality (e.g. Georgians in Georgia) is substantially higher than the proportion of this group in the population; thus, 77 per cent of the students in Georgia are Georgians; but only 64 per cent of the population of Georgia are Georgians. The 'resident aliens' of minor nationality status tend to be depressed; and this illustrates a very important feature of Soviet nationalities policy in recent years. In spite of the reported existence of an enormous number of national groups in the USSR (over 100 listed in the 1959 census), there is strong pressure on local minorities to attach them­ selves to the local majority. An important element in this pressure is the school system. Whereas in 1939 school instruction was carried out in more than 100 languages (in most cases, small groups tended to be rural and to have only primary schools, so that only elementary instruction could be given in their own tongue), the number of languages in which full instruction is now available (at both primary and secondary level) has been reduced to about thirty—the official majority languages of the fifteen republics, plus those of some autonomous republics. A child whose mother tongue is, say, Turkmen, and who lives in Uzbekistan, will be able F

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to cover a complete school (and even university) course in Uzbek or Russian; but if he attends a Turkmen-language primary school, he will have to switch to Uzbek or Russian at the secondary stage. When we examine the nationality of students in Kazakhstan and Central Asia we find a difference from the Transcaucasian pattern, in that here the Russian element among the students is much stronger than their share in the whole population; in Kazakhstan and Kirgizia, there are proportionately more Kazakh and Kirgiz students than Kazakhs and Kirgiz in the population (with local minority groups much under-represented). In the other Central Asian republics, however, the main local nationalities are badly under-represented. Two comments may be made on this situation: first, that the student population is drawn to a major extent from the urban population, since the system of schools leading up to entry into higher education is more developed in the towns than in the countryside, and the native population is dominantly rural. When this factor alone is taken into account, the bias against the local population tends to disappear. The second point is that the rapid expansion of Soviet higher education in recent years has been brought about by a great extension of evening classes and corres­ pondence courses, particularly for technological studies and to a much smaller extent for education and medicine; and we find that in these republics the proportion of Russian students in full-time day courses is significantly lower than the proportion of natives. We are probably entitled to infer from this that Russian students have a bias towards technology, while native students tend towards those fields of study where contact with people is important (education, medicine) and where knowledge of the local language and customs is imperative. One final point on the student population of our area: partly due to the post-war shortage of manpower, the number of women stud­ ents in the USSR has in recent years been almost equal to that of men (it is now tending to fall slightly). Among the national groups with which we are dealing only the Georgians and Armenians show this tendency (45 per cent and 40 per cent of women students in 1960). The Muslim groups have resisted strongly, and among them, only 26 per cent of the students are women. When we come to examine the composition of the existing pro­ fessional labour force in our area (again using the latest available data, for 1960) we find the characteristics which appeared in the student body. One interesting point is the surprisingly large

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number of graduates in Georgia who were not at work—presumably married women or retired men (whereas in the USSR in January 1959 there were 3,778,000 persons who possessed full higher education, and at the end of 1960 there were 3,542,000 such persons at work; in Georgia the corresponding figures are 153,000 and 107,000). Some additional indications of the national pattern emerge, however; if we calculate (a) the percentage of experts of each relevant nationality who are working in their own republic (e.g. Georgians in Georgia) and (b) the proportion of this group to all the experts working in the given republic, we find three basic types: Per cent of experts of Experts of given given nationality, who nationality, as per work in given cent of all experts in republic given republic Type A: Armenia 51 92 Type B: Georgia 95 79 Azerbaijan 91 60 Type C: Turkmenistan 96 44 Uzbekistan 86 24 Tajikistan 73 34 Kirgizia 95 30 Kazakhstan 86 24

The first type consists of the single case of Armenia, which is the only republic with a large export surplus of experts; half the Armenians work outside their own republic; nevertheless, the Armenians are virtually independent of foreign experts for the running of their economy. The second type—Georgia and Azerbaijan —have the overwhelming majority of their experts working in thenown republics, but need a substantial number of foreign experts. The third type covers all the Asiatic republics; only the Tajiks show a largish proportion of their experts working outside their own republic, and all are heavily dependent on outside assistance. It is noteworthy that about one-half of the Armenians working outside Armenia are in adjacent republics (Azerbaijan or Georgia), while virtually the Tajiks work in other Central Asian republics or Kazakhstan. In this last case, one may note that it is a matter of some difficulty to distinguish between Tajiks and Uzbeks in parts of Uzbekistan, e.g. Bukhara, where the population is bilingual. The financing of education, as of other social services, is divided between the central (ail-Union) budget and those of the individual republics; in recent years, the total cost has been of the order of one-

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84

seventh of the sums covered by the combined budgets; e.g. in 1955, the total central budget showed an expenditure of 539-5 milliard roubles, the item for prosveshcheniye (education and other services, as defined below) being 68-9 milliard roubles. Not all of this sum was devoted to education in the narrow sense, the principal items being: M illiards {old roubles)

Schools Higher education, including technical training Scientific research, centrally financed Libraries, press, broadcasting

33-5 23-3 8-3 3-8

To complete the picture, one should note that a large part of the cost of scientific research and of staff training was separately financed by individual enterprises (at a cost of another 12 milliard roubles). Within this sum of 68-9 milliards, the central authorities were responsible for the disbursement of about one-third (24-6 mil­ liards), the republican authorities and their subsidiaries (cities, provinces, etc.) the remainder (44-3 milliards). In general, the local authorites are responsible for schools of all types (including pre-school institutions and special schools for handicapped children and orphanages) and for those local services which can be regarded as adult education (e.g. public libraries, the Press, radio, television), with a minor share in the financing of higher education proper; the central budget controls research and the rest of higher education. Data are lacking on the territorial distribution of funds in this latter category, which must, however, correlate with the known numbers of students in the various regions. As for the locallycontrolled funds, the following picture of development over the period since 1940 emerges: Annual expenditure per head o f population (from republic budget3in old roubles) USSR

Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Georgia Azerbaijan Armenia

1940 89 98 101 108 142 154 147 131 175

1946 133 128 147 160 189 199 216 193 277

1950 179

214 218

235 262 265 292 259 365

^955 224 225 225 258 284 292 288 265

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Throughout the period the per capita expenditure in each of these republics is above the general Soviet level, but in later years the extent of the discrepancy tends to decline (by 1955 the decline is quite sharp; the average annual expenditure of the group of republics was 35 per cent above the USSR average in 1940, and had declined to 13 per cent above by 1955). Although this reflects in part demographic factors—the decline in fertility due to urbaniza­ tion in formerly rural areas leading to a reduction in the potential school population—the improvement in school attendance in the backward areas would largely offset these factors, and we are entitled to conclude that by the middle 'fifties the levelling off pro­ cess was well developed. It is noteworthy, however, that this ap­ plies principally to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kirgizia; in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as well as in all the Transcaucasian republics, the average expenditure on schooling remains 20–50 per cent above the USSR average even in 1955. The reason is not far to seek; the great bulk of expenditure on school education consists of teachers' salaries (about 75 per cent of the total); our group of republics, with 15 per cent of the USSR's population in 1955, had 17 . 7 per cent of the schoolchildren, and 17.8 per cent of the teachers—a relative excess of 20 per cent. Class sizes were, in fact, marginally smaller, and teachers' average salaries significantly smaller in Transcaucasia and Kazakhstan/Central Asia; both due to the relative abundance in these areas of small (often one-teacher) primary schools, for which the salary scales were—and still are— decidedly meagre. The supply of teachers in areas like those of Georgia and Armenia, where even in the late nineteenth century the local in­ telligentsia were at least as sophisticated as those of the big Russian cities, presented little difficulty from the beginning of the Soviet period; indeed, the proportion of teachers per head of population was higher in 1926 in these two republics than in the USSR as a whole; but for the more backward areas of Central Asia the pro­ blem was one which could not be solved without a very consider­ able expenditure of scarce resources. The existing school system with its strong concentration on the religious values of Islam had produced a relatively small upper crust of intellectuals, many of whom were fully aware of trends in the outside world, and indeed in the years before the Revolution many small schools had sprung up, with the support of the growing local middle class, to provide a more modern secularized education, but the vast mass of the

86

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

population-and virtually all the women-remained either totally illiterate or at least only acquainted with the tenets of their faith in a half-understood foreign tongue. The first training colleges for teachers therefore had to accept candidates who were obliged to pack into a few months of hasty training enough material to enable them to carry on unaided at the primary level, while the senior classes frequently had to be taught by Russian speakers with the assistance of a local interpreter. By 1 927, it was found possible to open a full teacher-training college at Tashkent, with fifty-five students of Central Asian origin, and in the following years the trickle of local students into higher education got under way, with a strong bias towards the training of further teachers . Throughout the Central Asian republics, however, the majority of teachers are still men, even at the primary level-in opposition to the typical Soviet pattern; in Uzbekistan, for example, 56 per cent of the teachers in 1 959 were men; in the u s s R as a whole, only 27 per cent. The current situation may be indicated by the following figures (for 1 96o-1):

Number of teachers in Uzbekistan (Thousands) Total Women Men Uzbeks 17 50 33 non-Uzbeks 21 14 35 85 Total 38 47 The areas i n which iminigration o f Europeans has been heavy show a tendency towards the pattern of European Russia; in Kazakhstan, for example, about two-thirds of the teachers are now women; but in the relatively undisturbed Tajikistan, only two­ fifths .

(e) Medical services The development of the Soviet medical service has been extra­ ordinarily rapid; although Russian medicine before the Revolution had its world-famous names (Botkin, Pirogov), the overall level of medical treatment was inadequate even in the cities, while in the vast areas of the countryside, the often ill-trained medical auxili­ aries of the local authority service had to struggle with a situation which was far beyond their technical and financial resources. With this situation in the country as a whole, it was inevitable that in the colonial areas of Kazakhstan and Central Asia the medical services were very rudimentary indeed and in those areas which were

87

S o cial S ervices

formerly independent, medical services hardly existed at all. It would, however, be fair to note that the picture of pre-Revolutionary backwardness painted by Soviet writers— though basically sound by present-day standards— owes much to Tsarist propa­ gandists such as Logofet, who were anxious to persuade public opinion that the Government had a moral duty to bring enlighten­ ment to these poor savages. The total number of medical workers in 1913 was as follows:

( Thousands) Doctors

Total (Russian Empire) 23-2 Kazakhstan and Central Asia 0 4 Transcaucasia 0-7

Inhabitants Auxiliary per medical staff worker*

46-0

2,300

0-9 1*3

10,000 3,000

* Doctors (medically qualified) plus trained nurses, mid-wives, etc.

The Transcaucasian area, although inferior to the Russian lands, was much better off than Central Asia; but a great proportion of the available services were concentrated in the big cities, while con­ ditions in the mountain valleys remained primitive. The data quoted above (like all data in this section) refer to medical provi­ sion for the civilian population only; and in Central Asia and Trans­ caucasia the military establishment, which was of considerable size, had its own medical facilities, which were not normally avail­ able to the civilian population. Such developments as had taken place in the second half of the nineteenth century in Central Asia had been primarily intended for the immigrant population, al­ though in a few cases clinics for the local inhabitants had been set up by charitable organizations. The plight of the rural populations was serious, with malaria, trachoma, typhus and numerous deficiency diseases, but mortality in the old cities (e.g. Old Bukhara) where modern sanitary tech­ niques were quite unknown must have been appalling. Infant mortality in pre-revolutionary Turkestan seems to have been sub­ stantially higher than in the Russian Empire as a whole (where the 1913 figure was 27-3 per cent). In the early Soviet years an attempt was made in Turkestan to bring under control the most prevalent semi-tropical diseases

88

THE

SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

(malaria and other parasite-borne diseases) as well as syphilis and tuberculosis, and to set up a propaganda campaign in the interests of public health, but a serious handicap was the shortage of doctors of local origin, familiar with the language and customs of the area. A medical faculty was founded at Tashkent University, and this began teaching local students in 1 93 1 . Five years later, an institute for training local nurses was opened at Nukus (Kara-Kalpak A S S R). Similar steps were taken in the other republics . The situation in Transcaucasia was much more favourable. The development of education in this region included the rapid ex­ pansion of medical training, so that the Transcaucasian republics (and especially Georgia) soon far outstripped the rest of the u s s R in the quantity and quality of their medical services. Already by the Census of 1 926 the differ ence between Transcaucasia and Turkestan shows up clearly; both areas had extremely high birth rates, even by contemporary Soviet standards, but the lower death rates in Transcaucasia were leading to a very rapid expansion of the population (tending to double every thirty years or so), while the peoples of Central Asia were still subjected to high infant mortality and poor conditions of adult health. There is, indeed, a strong resemblance between the pattern of the development of education and that of the public health services; in both cases. Transcaucasia moved ahead rapidly in the 'twenties and 'thirties, and has continued to advance at a slower pace since 1 945 while Central Asia started more slowly and has begun to develop much more rapidly in recent years. The following data, on the number of civilian doctors in practice at various dates, demon­ strate the point:

USSR

Transcaucasia Kazakhstan and Central Asia

I9IJ

I940

23 • 2 0•7

1 41 · 8 8•7

0•4

7•3

(Thousantl) Increase

I9IJ-40

I960

II8· 6 8·o

401 · 6 26 · 4

6·9

31 . 4

Increase

I940/6o 259 · 8 17 • 7 24 · I

In the earlier period ( 1 9 1 3-40), Transcaucasia took 7 per cent of the increase in the number of doctors (with about 5-6 per cent of the population), while Kazakhstan and Central Asia took only 6 per cent (with about 9 per cent of the population). In the latter period (1 94o-6o), Transcaucasia took 7 per cent of the increase again (with a slightly lower fraction of the population) while

SOCIAL SERVICES

89

Kazakhstan and Central Asia now took 9 per cent of the increase (with a larger fraction of the population). If we add to this that in neither period has Transcaucasia been subjected to a large-scale immigration of Russians, while the Asiatic region has received many millions of immigrants, especially in the period since 1940, the relative advantage which Transcaucasia maintains is clear enough. Nevertheless, the progress of even the most backward part of Central Asia is remarkable; by 1961, even Tajikistan had one doctor per 850 inhabitants, with three or four auxiliaries supple­ menting each doctor, and one hospital bed for every 140 inhabit­ ants. This is a state of things which neighbouring States, and even some European States, may well envy; and we must stress that the term 'doctor', as used here, means persons who have completed a standard course of medical training (a six-year course), although much criticism has been directed at Soviet medical training, as lacking adequate attention to pre-clinical subjects (e.g. bio­ chemistry) and also to practical experience at the student level. The medical auxiliary is in a quite different category, comprising mid­ wives, nurses, various technical grades, and the peculiarly Russian grade of Feldsher (assistant physician). Two special characteristics of the Soviet medical services,which apply throughout the Union, deserve mention here: salaries in medicine, like those in teaching, are by Western standards decid­ edly low; even after the recent reforms, the average salary of a Soviet general practitioner will be of the same order of magnitude as that of a highly skilled manual worker (say £700 per annum, at the official rate of exchange); and secondly, again as in teaching, the great majority of Soviet doctors are women, even in the Asiatic areas of the country. These two factors have undoubtedly been of assistance to the authorities in the immense task of constructing a reasonable medical service within one generation. The service is almost wholly financed from general taxation (all treatment is free, but the patient has to pay for the drugs, etc., which the doctor prescribes),1 about 15 per cent of the cost coming from the USSR Budget, the rest from that of the Union republics in which the given service operates. The total cost, about 20–25 roubles per head of the population (say £8–£10), is about one-half of that of the education service. As with other sections of the financial system, it is impossible to state with any precision what part of the ex­ 1 Private practice is permitted by Soviet law, and is fairly common in the big cities.

90

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

penditure in any given district is derived from the taxes levied in that district, but a comparison of the level of expenditure in various places suggests that to a considerable extent the principle of re­ distribution (and in the case of the backward areas, subsidy) applies in the field of medicine also. In 1 959 the expenditure per head1 of some Union republics on medical services was:

R S F SR

Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Georgia Armenia Estonia

(New Roubles) (2 · 52 roubles=£!) 18 · 9 14 · 1 x6 · s 17 • 7 17 "4 25 " 3

The relatively narrow range of these expenditures-correspond­ ing rather closely to the quantity of available staff and services­ seems to imply some degree of transfer between republics. The general progress of the medical service in the republics with which we are dealing has been very great; but many problems remain, particularly in the field of tropical medicine where, al­ though the main scourges have been brought under control, pockets of infection remain which may be hard to eradicate. The high birthrate of the Asiatic republics continues to impose a strain on the medical resources of those areas, but there appears to be little difficulty in recruiting local students to train for a pro­ fession where the pay may be low, but the prestige is high. It would seem fitting at this point to comment on the popula­ tion explosion which is already developing in 'our' area. The u s s R as a whole is tending to develop along the lines which we have learnt to regard as typical of Western societies over the past century; as industrialization and urbanization proceed, families tend to shrink in size, and this is reinforced by an improvement in medical services which make it unnecessary to maintain a high birth rate; infant mortality drops to a very low level and the elderly live longer. Birth control practices and the employment of women in qualified work reinforce this drop in the birth rate. In the u s s R these factors operate, and in addition the enormous casualties of the war have led to a situation in which the birth rate is already falling, and will fall further. 1 Via the Union republic budgets in each case; the contribution of the Union Budget amounted to a further 3 · 3 roubles per head.

SOCIAL SERVICES

91

In contrast, the Asiatic regions of the USSR, which were not directly affected by the war (soldiers died at the front, and there was severe hardship at home, but the effects were not in any way comparable with what happened in, say, parts of the Ukraine), begin from a less sophisticated level, in which the large rural population continue to have relatively large families, while the im­ provement of medical and sanitary services have had an immense effect in cutting down infant and child mortality and in prolonging the lives of adults. The urban population, too, which consists largely of relatively young immigrants from the western regions of the country, has a high birth rate. We are therefore entitled to expect that the population of 'our' region will expand rapidly in the next decades, even if the immi­ gration which was characteristic of the later 'fifties and early 'sixties ultimately dries up altogether (some tendency in this direction already seems to be appearing). In 1959, the population of the area was 32 . 5 million; in the following five years natural in­ crease added about 4.7 million—a growth rate of about 23/4 per cent, per annum; while immigration added another 1.5 million. This compares with a growth rate for the USSR as a whole of less than 11/2 per cent, per annum, over all, with a tendency to decline. Some decline in fertility in the Asiatic republics is almost certain as the years go by; but even if this is taken into account, the rate of increase will still be much greater than that of the USSR as a whole, since the age-structure of the population is so much more favourable—with a very large number of children born in recent years, who will be the parents of the 'seventies. The estimated population of the eight republics comprised in this study at the end of the 'seventies is 50 million (at the beginning of 1980), out of a total Soviet population of 260–70 million. Two consequences may be mentioned at this point: first, that unless special steps are taken by the Soviet authorities to concen­ trate resources in this region, it will be difficult to maintain a growth rate on a per capita basis which will be high enough to overcome the backwardness of the region, or even to maintain their present relative position. It has already been calculated by a Soviet author that the rate of growth of national income per head of the population in Uzbekistan between 1955 and 1963 was less than two-thirds of the national average, although the overall growth rate was higher.1 1

K. N. Popadyuk, in Obshchestvenniye nauki v Uzbekistane, 1964, No. 10,

92

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

The second point may well have far-reaching political conse­ quences in the life of the USSR. The shortage of manpower in the European part of the country is likely to become aggravated as time goes on, while it will be more plentiful in the East. It may well be that the present dependence of the latter on Europeans for technical supervision will disappear quite rapidly as specialists of local origin or second-generation immigrants with local sym­ pathies become available. Greater scope for local initiative could lead to a weakening of central control; but this is mere speculation. pp. 27–34, states that, in 1955, the national income of Uzbekistan per head of the population stood at 87 per cent of the USSR average, and that it had fallen by 1963 to only 62 per cent. This last figure is not consistent with other data in his article, which suggest that the true figure for 1963 was of the order of 75 per cent; but the existence of a fall is unquestionable.

Chapter 6

FINANCE

It is clear from the preceding chapters that there was a substantial development of industry, education and other social services in the republics we are here studying. It is clear also that such things in­ volve a cost. Who paid for it, and how? In detail and with precision, this is an extremely difficult question to answer. Yet much depends on the answer. Did these republics pull themselves up with their own bootstraps? Or did the Russians do the pulling? Did they derive special benefit from being, so to speak, minor appendages of a great Power? It must be recalled that the total population of all eight republics considered here amounted in 1962 to 361/2 million, or roughly 16 per cent of the population of the Soviet Union as a whole. If this is the explana­ tion, then the relevance of their experience in, say, Pakistan or Peru, is in this respect limited; one of the 'costs' of independence is that one has to stand on one's own feet, with only such aid as some Power or Powers can be persuaded to grant. This whole question also has relevance to the controversial issue of 'colonialism'. Did Russia exploit the outlying republics, or did she finance their development at her expense? To seek an answer, one has first to examine the Soviet financial system. The all-Union Budget is published and passed by the Supreme Soviet inclusive of republican and even local budgets. (Of course, republics do have some control over sub-items within their own expenditure, which is approved by main categories by the central authorities.) Budgetary revenue is derived principally from the sources shown overleaf (with figures for two years given as examples). The first way in which we can estimate the relative position of the eight republics is by considering their contribution to revenues. In the Stalin period, a large, perhaps predominant, part of turn­ over tax revenue arose from compulsory deliveries of farm produce at low prices. The duty of making such deliveries fell upon col­

94

THE SOVIET MIDDLE

EAST

lective farms, and also on peasant members of such farms, in respect of their authorized 'private' production of potatoes, vege­ tables, milk, meat, etc. This represented a form of disguised tax in kind; the prices paid for most foodstuffs so delivered were so low (until 1953) as to be more or less confiscatory. The State resold the produce so obtained to its own processing plants or to the consumer at much higher prices, the difference forming part of turnover tax revenue. The latter also included the proceeds of excise duty on vodka and a wide range of indirect taxes on most consumers' goods made by industry. Electricity, oil and gas are also subject to this tax. Budgetary Revenue (Milliards of 'old' roubles)1 Turnover tax Profits tax Direct taxation (i.e. of persons) Loans Local insurance Other

I940

I958

106 22 9

305 135 52

9 23

33 1 36

I SO

672

II

II

In their capacity as payers of turnover tax other than that origi­ nating in agricultural deliveries, Central Asia, Georgia and the rest were in no better and no worse situation than other parts of the Soviet Union. Their contribution to the Budget was roughly proportionate to their consumption of taxed commodities. How­ ever, the history of agricultural prices was such that they operated very unequally between regions. It so happened that compulsory deliveries at very low prices applied first and foremost to staple foodstuffs: all grains, potatoes, meat, milk, eggs. There was also a very unfavourable price for flax. These are typically Russian (and Ukrainian, Belorussian, Baltic) crops, and so it is the peasants of the temperate zone which suffered most from this form of taxation. In so far as they grew or produced the above items, the peasants of Uzbekistan or Georgia also suffered losses. But all the republics share one characteristic: they are southern, semi-tropical, as has already been pointed out. 1 In 1 958, the 'tourist' rate of 25 old roubles to £1 more or less represented a fair basis for comparing wholesale prices, though at this exchange rate con­ sumers' goods were dear.

FINANCE

95

Many of their specialized products thus had and have a scarcity value in the USSR. Partly for this reason, already in the early 'thirties, the State began to pay a much more favourable price for such products as cotton, tea, citrus fruits, grapes. Perhaps it was also considered desirable to have more prosperous peasants as a 'bait' for their Asian neighbours. Be this as it may, the peasants were better paid in consequence than their Russian 'brothers', especially in cash received, but also if cash and kind distributions are considered together. For the relevant figures, readers are re­ ferred to pages 102–3. Therefore, in this respect at least, the peasants of the republics in question (except Kazakhstan, which was mainly livestock and grain country) contributed less to State revenue than did the Russians proper. This price advantage has greatly diminished since 1953 as a result of a large rise in purchase prices for staple pro­ ducts. It is no longer true that, for instance, cotton prices are much more favourable than those at which the State purchases wheat or cabbages. But if we are analysing the period of in­ dustrialization, this falls in the main into the pre-1953 'Stalin' era, and at this period the Central Asian republics and Georgia were relatively favoured. Profits tax, the second largest revenue item, is represented by the State's share in the profits of its enterprises; over two-thirds of total profits go to the Budget. Here the relatively weak industries of the republics contributed little, until they became established. For example, even as recently as 1961, the total profits of State enterprises in Uzbekistan were less than 2 per cent of total profits in the USSR or less than half the all-Union average per capita. An exception was Azerbaijan, whose oil was very important in the 'thirties as a source of both fuel and revenue (the latter by way of both turnover and profits tax). It is true that the prices of certain basic industrial materials, notably non-ferrous metals, may have been relatively unfavourable to the producers, in which case this represented a contribution to the costs of Soviet industrialization (the question of royalties might be relevant here). However, the evidence on this point is inconclusive. So we must conclude that, at any rate before 1953, the re­ publics with which we are concerned contributed rather less than their share in revenue, though the available statistics do not permit any kind of precise proof of this assertion. At the same time, atten­ tion must be drawn to the chapter on Agriculture, where it is

96

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

pointed out how unfavourable was the situation in the period 1930–4, even for cotton, and in which due attention is given to the 'collectivization' disasters, notably in Kazakhstan. What about expenditure? Here we face further complications. There are statistics of the budget expenditure of each of the re­ publics, but increases in such spending are not in themselves a useful guide to the amount actually spent on their territories, be­ cause any allocation for an economic purpose (for example, in­ vestment) is financed by the centre if the Central Government directly administers the activity which is so financed. At various dates, the share of such centrally administered projects or enter­ prises varied. For example, after 1955,a much larger proportion of economic expenditure, though still controlled by the centre, was financed through the republics' own budgets, so their size grew rapidly. For example, the Uzbek budget grew as follows: Expenditure (millions of old roubles)

1950 3,343 1955 3,930 1958 8,460 However, this tells us nothing about the growth of the amount actually spent in Uzbekistan. Part of the explanation for the in­ crease was simply that some enterprises, or building projects, formerly financed by the Union, were now being paid for out of Uzbek republican funds. (The re-creation of many all-Union industrial ministries may well have the result, after 1965, of reversing this trend.) Nor does this mean that there was necessarily any additional burden placed upon the Uzbek taxpayers. Republican (and local) expenditures are mainly financed by the retention of all or part of certain items of locally-raised revenue. Thus a large proportion of profit tax and of agricultural tax, and half of income tax, goes into republican budgets. But much of the revenue consists of the re­ tention of a share in the turnover tax raised on the territory of the republics. This share is varied by the central authority according to the level of anticipated (and authorized) expenditures. It is as if, to take a British parallel, the Government were to finance Scottish development by directing to a Scottish development department a share in the excise duty collected in Scotland, while retaining for the central Government all the whisky duty raised in the Midlands and the south-east. Scattered information shows that, over a long

FINANCE

97

period, the republics here analysed have retained a more-than­ average proportion of turnover tax revenues. Here, for example, is the provision of the Budget Law for 1962, taken from Pravda, December 9, 1961: 'Article 9: To confirm for 1962 the following deductions from all-Union taxes and revenues for the budgets of Union republics: (a) From turnover tax revenues: Russian republic 32 . 2 per cent, Ukraine 29 . 5 per cent, Belorussia 55 . 2 per cent, Uzbekistan 70 . 8 per cent, Kazakhstan 100 per cent, Georgia 81 . 2 per cent, Azerbaijan 65 . 5 per cent, Lithuania 76 . 1 per cent, Moldavia 33 . 0 per cent, Latvia 17 . 2 per cent, Kirgizia 94 . 7 per cent, Tajikistan 95 . 4 per cent, Armenia 95 . 0 per cent, Turkmenistan 100 per cent, Estonia 56 . 5 per cent.' (Relevant republics in italics). Obviously, this table shows that they are favoured in this respect. In addition, in some years some republics received the whole of the income tax revenue raised on their territories (in the 1962 Budget this applied to Kirgizia and Tajikistan), and a special budgetary subsidy is also announced on occasion (to Turkmenistan in the 1962 Budget, to Kazakhstan, Armenia and Turkmenistan in the 1964 Budget, and so on). The available evidence therefore strongly supports the following propositions: (1) By and large, with the possible exception of Azerbaijan, the republics contributed a less than average amount, per capita, to the revenue of the Soviet Union. (2) By and large, they were permitted to retain a more than average proportion of ail-Union revenues raised in their territories, to finance economic and social development. This was a conse­ quence of the fact that investment, educational and health ex­ penditure in these areas were greater, relatively to local resources, than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. In addition, especially before 1955, much industrial investment in these areas was financed directly out of the Union Budget. (3) One may feel, with justice, that the pattern of expenditure was decided in Moscow, and that the direction of industrial and agricultural development related to the interests of the USSR as a whole. However, it follows from the financial evidence that the Russian connection, membership of a large and more developed polity, greatly facilitated such social and economic progress as was achieved in these areas.

G

Chapter 7

INCOMES

In view of the reluctance of the Soviet authorities to publish com­ prehensive statistics of personal incomes—the last detailed volume of wage statistics was published in the mid-'thirties—it is not pos­ sible to deal in any great precision with the question of how incomes differ from one part of the country to another, or how they have varied over time. We can state, however, that some conclusions can validly be drawn from the basic principles which are known to govern Soviet incomes policies; the first of these is that for the same work there is equal pay for men and women (although in practice, as in most other countries, women tend to be found in the less skilled jobs, in those which do not require a great exertion of strength, and in those which carry less responsibility; the con­ sequence being that if it were possible to draw up an average figure for the wages of men and women separately, that for women would be found to be lower than that for men). Secondly—with a few exceptions—the same basic rate is paid for the same job in all parts of the country. The principal categories of exception are (a) the differential in favour of workers in the most remote and un­ pleasant parts of the USSR (for example the Far North and the Far East, where wage rates are in some cases at least double the stan­ dard and retirement pensions are paid five years or more before the standard age); this consideration does not, however, affect the re­ gions with which this study is concerned to any great extent— some small variations in the wages of State-employed agricultural workers in Kazakhstan and Central Asia are noted below (b) for professional workers (teachers, doctors, etc.) there is a standard differential in salary between urban staffs and those working in the countryside; urban teachers receive 10 per cent more pay than their rural colleagues, for example. It should be noted that this type of differential is now being abolished as part of the revision of the salary structure for non-manual workers outlined by Mr Khrush­ chev shortly before his eclipse. The average income per employed

INCOMES

99

worker, however, in the areas which we are considering is reasonably supposed to be lower than that for the whole u s s R, due to the general structure of employment. According to the 1959 census, the labour force in the u s s R as a whole, and in the republics with which we are concerned, was as follows: Total 682 Armenia 1,485 Azerbaijan 1,8o8 Georgia 3,5 90 Kazakhstan 814 Kirgizia 812 Tajikistan 591 Turmenistan 3,198 Uzbekistan Total of these 12,980 95,867 USSR Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia Kazakhstan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Total of these USSR

100 100 100 100 100 100 100

100 100 100

Industry etc. * 215 405 462 1 ,259 208 I 56 160 687 3,552 36,575 31 • 5 27 " 3 25 · 6 35 " 1 25 · 6 19 • 2 27 • 1 21 • 5 27 " 4 38 · 2

(Thousands) of which : Services, Agrietc.t culture kolkhoz other 43 146 278 321 705 321 54 759 864 404 942 78 875 690 766 1 ,456 170 352 84 436 143 464 49 513 138 262 293 31 588 465 1 ,923 1 ,458 1 ,494 2,785 5,149 6,643 6,703 20,866 38,426 3 1,723 (Percentages) 40 · 8 47 " 1 51 · 1 47 " 5 52 • 1 47 • 8 40 · 6 21"3 53 · 6 43 " 2 57 " 1 63 · 2 49 · 6 44 " 3 6o · 1 45 · 6 51 • 2 39 " 7 40 · I 33 " 1

6·3 3·6 4•3 19 • 3 10 • 4 6·1 5"3 14 " 5 u ·5 7•0

21 • 4 21 · 6 22 • 5 24 • 3 20 · 8 17 " 5 23 3 18 · 4 21 • 4 21 • 7 "

* Industry, building, transport, communications. t Trade, State procurements and all other services.

In each of our eight republics, the proportion of persons em­ ployed in industry, etc., is lower, and the proportion engaged in agriculture higher, than in the u s s R as a whole. The proportion in the services sector is relatively stable, implying a relatively even diffusion of the facilities provided by this sector throughout the u s sR. Kazakhstan is the only republic which comes anywhere near the national average in respect of the relative shares of industry and agriculture, while the most backward of the republics, Tajikistan, resembles in this respect the situation in the whole U S S R some thirty years ago. But, for our present purpose, a better comparison may well be between the fully-monetized sector of the economy (in which the worker is paid in cash, and only in cash) and the partially-

100

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

monetized sector (in which part at least of his income is paid in goods). The former is represented by all State employees, in­ cluding those working in State farms; the latter by the kolkhoz peasantry. For the u s s R as a whole, about one-third of the gain­ fully occupied population come within this latter category; in Kazakhstan, where the development of agriculture in the last decade has depended basically on the establishment of State farms, the proportion is as low as one-fifth; but for all the other republics with which we are concerned, the proportion ranges between two­ fifths and three-fifths . Although all collective farms are under the same obligation to deliver specified quantities of produce to State purchasing organs at specified prices, there is a meaningful dis­ tinction between two broad categories: those in which the produce consists of foodstuffs, where the residual, if any, after the demands

of the State have been met, may be distributed among the members for their own consumption; and those farms where the product is required for industrial uses, and where there is little or no distribu­ tion to the members. In the latter case a much greater proportion of the peasant's income will be in monetary form (quite irrespective of the price relationships between the various commodities). The latter case is typical over most of the area which we are considering and its effects will be considered after we have examined the occup­ ational structure within the fully monetized sector. Because of their now relatively even distribution over the whole country, little need be said about the employees of the service sector (education, trade, medicine, etc.), except that there is a strong tendency in the non-Russian republics for professional jobs which have become the preserve of women in Russian areas to remain dominantly men's jobs. This can be seen when we compare the u s s R as a whole with the Europeanized Kazakhstan and the more conservative republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia:

Percentage of women in specified occupations (I959 census) Medicine Education * Culturet Trade 61 69 67 89 USSR 52 63 6o 89 Kazakhstan 31 56 78 Azerbaijan 48 26 61 83 71 Georgia 61 29 78 Uzbekistan 45 26 26 38 81 Tajikistan *

Including science

t Librarians, etc.

Since in these republics the idea that a wife should go out to work

INCOMES

101

still meets with more resistance than in the Russian areas (both from tradition and because these areas were spared much of the manpower losses of the war years), we may suppose that the in­ comes of families in this social group tend to be lower than those of their Russian counterparts; and, in any case, salaries in this type of occupation tend to be low even by Soviet standards (the average pay of a teacher was until the recent reforms less than that of an average skilled worker in, say, engineering) . To some extent this may be offset by considerations of non-monetary character: in the eyes of a conservative Muslim community, it is not an entirely un­ acceptable substitution if a boy becomes, not now a mullah, but a teacher or a doctor, for learning is a thing to be prized and re­ spected, even the heathen learning of these degenerate days. As indicated in other places in this study, only in Kazakhstan has heavy industry been developed to any marked extent: and this, too, will have its effect on the level of personal incomes in our area. The priorities given to the development of a strong industrial economy in the

ussR

have led to a considerable differentiation

between the wages paid in those branches of industry which were regarded as of the greatest urgency (mining, metallurgy, heavy engineering) and those which were relatively neglected (light in­ dustry, textiles, foodstuffs); the average earnings of a worker in the former group may well be 25-50 per cent higher than those of one in the latter group, more particularly as in the past the sliding-scale bonuses payable for high output on piece-work in the former have been much more attractive than in the latter. If we make a rough division of the industrial labour force into two groups we find the following proportions (as at 1959) for various republics: Heavy industry: mining, metallurgy, chemicals, building materials, ceramics, glass, timber, wood, paper, engineering. Light industry: textiles, clothing, leather, footwear, food.

Percentage of workers in Group Heavy Light USSR 20 · 6 79 ' 4 Armenia 59 ' 5 40 • 5 Azerbaijan 72 ' 7 27 ' 3 Georgia 65 · 5 34 · 5 Kazakhstan 8o · 6 19 · 4 Kirgizia 72 • 6 27 ' 4 Tajikistan 63 · 5 36 · 5 Turkmenistan 69 • 7 30 ' 3 Uzbekistan 66 · 4 33 · 6

102

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Further, since a large proportion of these light industry plants are producing for a limited local market, their size may well be small, and the managerial staff may well have rather lower average salaries. The conclusion drawn from all this is that average incomes may well be lower in these relatively backward areas compared with the more advanced areas of European Russia; but it must be stressed that this does not mean that Kamal Aliyev is paid less than Ivan Petrov on principle; if they work in the same factory and do the same work, they will be paid the same amount. We must now examine the situation in agriculture. For the employee of State farms, detailed wage-scales are avail­ able for every conceivable operation; and in many cases differential rates are paid according to the location of the farm. The only part of our area which is affected to any noticeable extent is the Virgin Lands region of Northern Kazakhstan, where bonuses of the order of 10–121/2 per cent are paid as an incentive. Central Asia and Trans­ caucasia profit hardly at all from bonuses of this kind (although some of the more inaccessible mountain regions might, if any State farms exist there). In this sector, at least, the general level of wages must be close to the all-Union average. As has already been mentioned, Central Asian and Georgian peasants did considerably better than their Russian 'brothers' in the years before 1953. However, this relative advantage is now smaller. The peasantry of the collective farms have been subjected to a double squeeze in recent years; in the first place, the relative advantage of the areas which grow semi-tropical crops has been diminished by the price policy of the Government and at the same time a great many collective farms have been converted into State farms. What is less clear is the effect which these policies have had on peasant incomes as a whole. The advantage which the Asiatic and Transcaucasian peasants enjoyed over those of European Russia is demonstrated by the table opposite, covering distributions (a) in cash only, (b) in cash and kind. It is true that there have been, in the past, enormous differences between the incomes of peasants fortunate enough to work on the most fertile cotton land and those who had to exert more effort in the cultivation of inferior land, and that the very existence of the ultra-high incentives for plan over-fulfilment led to the concentra­

103

INCOMES

USSR

Russian Republic Ukraine Belorussia 'West' * Kazakhstan Central Asiat Transcaucasiat *

I950

I958

(cash only) 100 40 83 235

(cash only) 100 8o 104 63

470 310

225 1 56

I958 (cash and kind) 100 88 n.a. n.a.

82 137 170 1 64

Belorussia and Baltic States.

t Weighted average of data for individual republics. Sources : V. Venzher: Voprosy ispolzovaniya zakona stoimosti v kolkhoznom proizvodstve M. 1960 and Novy mir I0/59·

tion of manpower on the best land, thus increasing the number of the fortunate, and forcing up the average level of remuneration. It was thus possible for the highest paid kolkhoznik to have an income substantially higher than that of the average industrial worker, while many of his brethren, who were so situated as to have diffi­ culty in fulfilling the plan requirements, were living at a much lower level. Again, a quite substantial part of the agricultural labour force would be engaged in food production (for human and animal consumption) or caring for livestock, at rates of pay similar to the Soviet average for these occupations. Nor did the existence of private plots, on which exotic produce might be grown, assist the peasant by supplementing his income to the extent which would have been possible if the transport system had been able to cope; fruit grown in Georgia or Uzbekistan might command a fantastic price in Moscow; but the stories published in the Press of peasants chartering aircraft to transport their produce over thousands of · miles, and still making a fat profit, can hardly be typical enough to affect the average level of peasant incomes to any marked extent. Such produce would be much more likely to be sold in the market of the local town, where it would fetch a fair price as a standard commodity. It is of great advantage to a kolkhoz to be situated near a main road; but this is a phenomenon not limited to the area which we are considering in this study. Nevertheless, the average level of peasant incomes remains significantly higher than those in the west of European Russia, where, for nearly a century, the steady attraction of the towns has been sucking out the young men and women of initiative and has left a society of grinding poverty

104

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

which almost seems beyond repair and renewal; in the warmer climate of the south and east, society remains intact, families are large, the pressure for women to toil in the fields is not so intense, and life is undoubtedly better than it used to be.

Chapter 8

COMPARISONS

WITH NEIGHBOURS

How do the eight Soviet republics compare with Turkey and Iran, their southern neighbours? The point is of obvious importance and interest. Azerbaijan is divided between Iran and the Soviet Union. The peoples of this and all but one of the Central Asian republics speak Turkic languages and have affinities with Turkish culture. The Tajiks speak a dialect of Persian. The Armenians have (extremely bitter) memories of Turkish rule. There are also many Turkmens in Iran, some Uzbeks live in Afghanistan, and Kazakhs in China. All these areas were largely under-developed until relatively recently. Thus, they could be said to have had a common starting point. Turkey and Iran were independent and antisocialist. The Soviet republics were part of a larger political unit, and the Soviet economic and political system operated within their borders. It is not surprising that comparisons are made, and the Soviet authorities are understandably eager to take delegations of Asian peoples round Tashkent and Baku and to point the contrast, which is in certain respects very much in their favour. What do the statistics tell us? From the foregoing chapters it will have become very apparent that in many fields copious Soviet information is available, and that in some others we are left almost entirely in the dark. But, compared with the well-organized Soviet statistical system, those of Turkey and Iran are primitive in the extreme, and we are largely dependent on sample surveys carried out in recent years as a preliminary step towards determining what needs to be done. Let us begin with a comparison of the populations involved. According to the latest censuses, Turkey had a population of 27 . 81 million in 1960; Iran had 18.95 million in 1956. The five Soviet republics in Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) totalled 22 . 98 million in 1959. Each of these three areas is growing rather rapidly, and we may estimate the

THE

I06

SOVIET

MIDDLE

EAST

population in 1965 as approximately 3 1 million for Turkey, 23 million for Iran, and 29 million for the Soviet republics-assum­ ing that there is no net immigration into Turkey and Iran, while about one-third of the Soviet increase is due to immigration. The three areas are, therefore, of the same general order of size. In the case of Turkey and Iran, it seems to be no exaggeration to say that the reported birth and death rates are extremely unreliable, since reporting appears to be quite erratic; the Soviet data are certainly superior in this respect, due both to the more efficient registration system and to the inducement (in the case of births) of maternity grants and family allowances. For Iran, we have a series of crude birth rates for the period 1948 to 1957, averaging about 35 per thousand; for Turkey, the average in the later 'fifties seems to have been between 40 and 35 per thous­ and. Recent trends in the Soviet republics with which this study is concerned are shown by the following data.

USSR

Kazakhstan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia

Crude bi'rth rates per thousand I950 I960 I963 I9 55 26 • 7 24 ' 9 25 ' 7 21 • 2 36 • 7 37 • 6 37 ' 4 30 ' 4 32 ' 4 36 · 8 33 ' 0 33 ' 5 35 ' 1 30 ' 4 33 · 8 33 · 8 38 · 2 39 ' 5 42 ' 4 40 ' 7 30 ' 9 36 · 2 34 ' 4 40 ' 0 32 ' 1 33 ' 1 38 · 0 40 ' 3 31 ' 2 37 ' 8 42 • 6 40 · 6 23 ' 5 24 ' 7 24 ' 1 22 ' 9

At the 1956 census in Iran, women aged between 1 5 and 44 formed a little over one-fifth of the total population (20 · 37 per cent); the position in Turkey was about the same (21 · r per cent in a 10 per cent sample survey, 1955); while, in the five Soviet re­ publics, women in this age range numbered 22 2 per cent of the total population. The general level of fertility may therefore be assumed to be broadly similar in the three cases, of a type rather characteristic of under-developed countries, although with the first signs of entering the period of transition. When we tum to the question of death rates, the similarity dis­ appears. The 1959 crude death rate in Turkey was 12 9 per thousand-for towns only, about one-third of the population. There can be little doubt that the rate for the villages was much higher. The crude death rate for Iran is not known with any pre·

·

COMPARISONS WITH NEIGHBOURS

107

cision, but it can reasonably be assumed to be of the same order of magnitude. The Soviet data are: USSR

Kazakhstan Kirgizia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia

Crude death rates per thousand I955 I960 I950 I963 8·2 7' 1 9'7 7'2 II · 7 6·5 9·2 5 ·9 8·5 6·1 6·2 7·8 8·2 8·9 5 ·2 5·7 10 · 2 10 · 4 6·5 6·3 8·8 6·2 6·o 5·7 8·5 8·8 6·8 5·9 6·7 9·6 7·6 7·0 6·5 6·7 6·8 7·6

The Turkish and (probably the Iranian) data may well be three times as high as the Soviet data if one includes rural areas. The age-structure of the population in each case is rather similar, so that the difference does not lie here. It may indeed be noted that there is some evidence to suggest that regional differences in Soviet crude death rates are now (the early 'sixties) due principally to differences in age-structure rather than to sanitary or medical con­ ditions (i.e. that the differences between the crude death-rates of the Baltic States-Io to 12 per thousand-and those of Central Asia-about 6 per thousand-are due primarily to the extremely high proportion of elderly people in the former). The high Turkish and Iranian death rates can be explained by a combination of two factors: appalling infant mortality and inferior sanitary conditions during the rest of life. In Turkey, deaths in the o-4 age group account for nearly 43 per cent of all deaths; this figure refers to the urban population only. An indication of the situation in the villages, and of some of the causes, can be found in the following material from a sample survey: Per thousand Infant mortality rate, * overall !66 In small villages (under r,ooo population) 193 I l9 In large villages (over x,ooo population) 253 In villages with no teacher In villages with I to 7 teachers 125 In villages without pure water supply 1 75 I I3 In villages with pure water supply Mother illiterate 172 Mother's education elementary or better 139 * Deaths under one year. Source : CENTO Conference on Teaching of Preventive Medicine, Shiraz, Iran, May 196 1 .

108

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Education and water play, as can be seen, a decisive role in the survival of babies. Evidence has been adduced above on the subject of Soviet education in the most backward areas of the country; it is not easy to provide similar information on the quality of the water, but frequent reference to success in the elimination of water-borne diseases would in themselves indicate enormous progress in this matter. The situation in Iran differs little from that in Turkey, both the large cities and the villages displaying extremely high infant and child mortality. The desperate need for medical services in Turkey and Iran, as compared with the Soviet republics, is apparent enough. Let us now compare the existing supply of doctors and ancillary medical personnel. In 1959, there were 12,069 doctors in Turkey; in 1960, 5,264 in Iran. The Soviet figures: (as at 1959) Kazakhstan, 12,490; Kirgizia, 2,842; Tajikistan, 2,279; Turkmenistan, 2,631; Uzbeki­ stan, 10,618; total, 30,860. The Soviet supply of doctors was thus at least three times as good as that of Turkey, and about six times that of Iran. But two points which tend to amplify the effect of this disproportion may be made here: first, that whereas in Turkey and Iran the majority of doctors are in private (fee-paying) practice for the greater part of their time, only a tiny fraction of the medical work done in the USSR is carried out by private practice; and second, that in consequence the Turkish or Iranian doctor tends to work in the capital or some other large town, whether he be a fulltime private practitioner or a part-time public employee. For ex­ ample, it appears that one-third of Iranian doctors work in Tehran, and another third in about half a dozen provincial cities; similarly a third of Turkish doctors work in the Istanbul area, while rural local authorities appeal in vain for staff. Similar, or indeed even greater, concentrations of staff are to be found in Soviet Asia (e.g. 45 per cent of Uzbekistan's doctors in the city of Tashkent), but since the total quantity of medical staff is so much greater, less strain is imposed on the rural areas. But if the Soviet advantage in terms of fully-trained medical staff is great, the situation in terms of auxiliary personnel—who are especially necessary in the early stages of developing and maintain­ ing an adequate health service in backward areas—is even more favourable to the USSR. If we take the worst possible case, Tajiki­ stan had over 4,000 trained nurses in 1959 (for 2 million popula­ tion) as against Turkey's 1,800 (for 28 million) and Iran's 1,500

COMPARISONS WITH NEIGHBOURS

1 09

(for 20 million) . Even let us suppose that the Soviet standard of training was lower, which is not necessarily the case; the provision of nurses was far better. As a measure of the capacity of the service, we can examine the figures for hospital beds . The Turkish health service had about 23,000 beds for 24 · 6 million inhabitants (ex­ cluding the Ankara and Istanbul districts) . The health service in Uzbekistan had 42,500 beds for 7 · 3 million people (excluding Tashkent city) . There are private hospitals in Turkey, but the number of beds outside the omitted districts must be quite small, and we should be justified in suggesting that the Uzbek provision is at about the ratio of six to one. The total number of beds in Iranian hospitals, outside Tehran, was less than I I,ooo in

1 959 for at least 17 million people, a ratio worse than that for Turkey. The essential point is that the Soviet Union has a medical ser­ vice which covers rural areas, and this general service has been extended to all parts ofthe Union, including, of course, the national republics which we have been analysing. A trained nurse and/or a midwife is in principle available in any large village, and provision exists for the transportation of serious cases to hospital. It is this which is lacking in such countries as Turkey and Iran. In this connection it is worth mentioning that the sample survey for Turkish rural areas quoted above does not even mention the existence of medical attention as one of the factors affecting infant mortality, presumably because it is assumed not to exist. It is not suggested that the average intelligence and training of a rural mid­ wife in the U S S R are on a particularly high level, and there have been many complaints about lack of necessary equipment or drugs, but experience clearly proves that even quite elementary medical attention can greatly reduce infant mortality and greatly improve health statistics. The improvement of this situation depends essentially on the development of the higher education system, to which we now tum. The number of students receiving higher education in 1 959 was 1 8,085 in Iran and 52,o6o in Turkey, according to the UN statistical yearbook, and their numbers are increasing. Let us generously assume that, per ten thousand of the population, this would repre­ sent respectively 9 and 1 5 . The Soviet figures, omitting external (correspondence) students, work out as follows for the relevant nationalities (for the 1 962/3 educational year):

THE

I IO

SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Uzbeks Kazakhs Georgians Azeris Kirgizians Tajiks Armenians Turkntens

Per Io,ooo of Numbers given (thousands) nationality 68 40 · 8 31 •2 87 28 · 3 105 22 • 0 79 8·1 82 8·1 58 26 · 2 94 7'7 77

USSR

1,661 · O

So

Source : Nar. khoz SSSR, 1962.

A number (roughly a quarter) of the above totals consist of even­ ing students. Even so, educational opportunities are evidently rather greater, even in the most backward nationality, than in Turkey. Of course, the above figures are for nationalities and not for republics, because, otherwise, the better-educated European immigrants would distort the comparison for our present purpose. Literacy statistics are also highly deficient. No data on Iran could be found in any UN reference book. A rough estimate for Turkey gave 69 · 5 per cent illiteracy at age 10 and over, but this was for as long ago as 1 945, and the present total must be much lower. Finally, economic growth data are likewise deficient. While figures for a few industrial items go back many years, no industrial output index is available in acceptable form for either country. No doubt Turkish and Iranian, especially Turkish, industrial growth has been quite impressive. There are some national income figures for recent years. Thus Turkey's per capita income was 1 80 u s dollars in 1 96 1 . The figure for the whole Soviet Union is obviously much higher, something of the order of 8oo dollars, but this tells us nothing of the level of the republics in which we are interested, and national income aggregates do not correctly reflect relative in­ comes. But when all is said and done, the standards of the eight republics can be said to compare very favourably with their neigh­ bours, even if statistical deficiencies do not enable us to be pre­ cise about it (see above, pp. 42-4) . Another indirect indication of relative development is the generation of electrical energy. Here the figures are precise and are as follows:

COMPARISONS WITH NEIGHBOURS (United Kingdom) USSR

Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Georgia Azerbaijan Kirgizia Tajikistan Armenia Turkmenistan Turkey Iran *

III

(Kwh per capita I 9 62) (3,006) 1 ,668 807 1,214 914 1,995 637 513 1,337 598 121 32 *

1960.

Of course, evidence of this kind cannot be used as

if it

were

proof of superiority of this or that system. The United States is, by all reasonable standards of measurement, much more productive and efficient than the United Kingdom, and France is far superior to, let us say, India. But this does not show the superiority of any particular form of government or of society, still less that any con­ ceivable policy could have removed the disparity. Social problems, the human material, natural resources, all affect the end-result of economic activity. None the less, the low starting point especially of the Central Asian republics, as well as their relative lack of natural resources, suggests that an important difference was made by their associa­ tion with (and subordination to) a much larger and richer Russia, a point to which we will return. Iranian agriculture in particular has been held back by a landlord-and-sharecropper system which greatly discouraged effort, and which is only now in process of being dismantled. The very considerable oil resources of the country led to the creation of a developed enclave, under foreign control, within a largely inert economy. In recent years, with much greater Iranian participation in operations and in revenue, efforts have been made to use oil royalties to finance development. Turkey, under Kemal Ataturk, undertook a painful modernization process, which included social coercion (e.g. against traditional clothes) and anti-religious activities, which should remind us that such things happen also in non-Communist developing countries . More re­ cently, under

Menderes, Turkey attempted to industrialize

rapidly, while at the same time subsidizing her agriculture, an attempt which, despite American aid, led to acute financial

112

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

difficulties (and eventually to Menderes' downfall and execution). In the midst of the above-mentioned difficulties, one of the authors of this paper happened to be in Turkey with a group of economists, of whom several were from the Soviet Union. One of them said, in conversation: 'We had, of course, read about the problems of developing countries, but I never thought it would be quite as bad as this. . . .' In all the circumstances, it is not surprising that the impact of the experience of Soviet Central Asia on some of its southern neighbours is positive from the standpoint of Soviet propaganda. Furthermore, the areas immediately adjacent to the Soviet borders are rather poor and neglected, even by Iranian and Turkish standards and the inhabitants tend to belong to ethnic groups which are both alien to the official majority and also strongly represented on the Soviet side of the border (e.g. in Iran, the Azeris and Turkmens). It is therefore helpful to the West that in both Iran and Turkey the Russians are regarded with grave suspicion as a traditionally aggressive power, which, under the Tsars, had annexed much territory formerly within the Ottoman and Persian Empires, and much more recently Stalin had inter­ vened in northern Persia and laid claim to Turkish-held land (Kars). Thus the USSR is not regarded in these two countries as anti-imperialist power either by Government or by the masses.1 None the less, the very considerable contrast between the economic and cultural standards north and south of the Soviet border can have long-term political significance, to which it would be point­ less to shut one's eyes—even though Turks and Persians may well prefer this greater poverty and ignorance to the 'advantages' of being ruled from a foreign capital, especially if this is accompanied by the influx of large numbers of alien immigrants. 1 This is also true, for the same sort of reasons, of public opinion in Poland and Rumania, for instance.

Chapter 9

ASSESSMENT

In assessing the progress of the eastern and southern national republics of the U S S R , the fact that the Russian contribution has been very considerable may be taken as proved. But many pertin­ ent questions remain. Has the Soviet Union, or Russia, acted as a colonialist Power, in the pre-1947 sense of the term? Or as a neo­ colonialist Power, in the sense of ruling through 'tame' local appointees? Or is there any valid comparison with the French 'assimilationist' approach? Does the Soviet experience have any relevance to the problem of agriculture, of land reform and its relationship with economic development? Could such concepts as foreign aid, or technical assistance, be usefully applied to the re­ cent economic history of the eight republics? We will try to answer such questions, concentrating particularly on the 'colonialism' issue, which is not only of great interest and importance, but also bears directly on any interpretation of the economic and social progress that has been achieved. We will end with some tent­ ative views concerning relations between the nationalities in­ volved. (a) Colonies? The case against

Let us imagine a debate in which the first speaker is seeking to dis­ prove the validity of the charge of colonialism. It is a characteristic of colonial status (so he would argue) that the dominant Power uses the economy of the colony for its own benefit, keeping it industrially relatively under-developed, extract­ ing profit from investments, underpaying colonial labour, neglect­ ing education and so on. None of these features of traditional colonialism can be discerned in an impartial analysis of Soviet policy in the republics. Far from there being any economic exploitation, it is reasonable on the evidence to assert that in­ dustrialization, especially in Central Asia, has been financed with H

114

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

money raised in Russia proper. In other words, capital has tended to move to those outlying under-developed areas and there has been virtually no counterbalancing move of remittances of profit or interest, because in the Soviet Union capital grants are not repay­ able and do not bear interest. It is true that a part of the profits of enterprises located in these republics can find its way to the allUnion Budget, but the sums are small, since the major part of profits taxes are retained for republican use. This may be con­ trasted with the very substantial remittances of profits to capitalist companies from Latin-America. No reasonable person can doubt that industrial growth would have been less rapid without Russian capital and Russian skills. One of the main ways in which capital was accumulated in the Soviet Union was through the imposition on the peasants of com­ pulsory deliveries at low prices. The areas which have been ana­ lysed here have suffered least from these impositions. Already, in 1935, prices paid for raw cotton were relatively high, and this ap­ plied broadly to most of the products in which these republics specialize. Consequently the average income of peasants in these republics has tended to be significantly above that, for instance, of Central Russia. It does not matter for our purpose whether the reason for this was political (to build up these countries as show places to impress the Asians) or economic. The economic reason would be connected with the scarcity value of semi-tropical pro­ ducts in the Soviet Union with the consequent tendency, even under Stalin, to pay higher prices to stimulate production. It could also be that Stalin had a personal soft spot for Georgia, which had the effect of benefiting other republics which produced the kind of things which Georgia produces. Anyhow, whatever the reasons, it cannot possibly be said that sacrifices imposed on the peasants in the republics which we are considering match those borne by the Russians or the Ukrainians. The workers in these republics benefited from wage scales de­ signed for the USSR as a whole, i.e. from a level of wages related primarily to the more developed parts of the Soviet Union. There­ fore any Central Asian native who became an industrial worker received pay equal to a Russian. He is entitled to the same social welfare payments. There is certainly no evidence of wage discrim­ ination, and if the average wages received by Uzbeks were probably lower than those of Russians, the explanation could only be that relatively fewer Uzbeks were skilled workers. In the case of the

.

ASSESSMENT

115

much more advanced Georgians and Armenians, in all probability the average was higher than in Russia. So far as educational policies are concerned, there has been a pro­ longed effort to bring forward to responsible positions a native in­ telligentsia in these republics where educational levels had been very low. No one who is not blinded by prejudice could fail to be impressed by the statistics quoted here concerning educational advance. The more highly developed republics, i.e. once again Georgia and Armenia, are far ahead of the Russians in the numbers of graduates relative to their population. While it is true that many Russians hold high positions in Central Asia, this is explicable pri­ marily by the continued relative shortage of native cadres and should not be regarded as a form of deliberate Russian penetration. This can be seen from the extremely small percentage of such Russians in Georgia and Armenia. Cultural development, and in some cases a consciousness of the very existence of a national culture, should also be placed to the credit of the Soviet regime. There have been notorious instances of cultural oppression, but it can be claimed that the Russians as a people suffered at least as much as anybody else, and the tyranny of the Georgian dictator does not seem relevant to the issue of colonialism. The spectacular improvements in health, proportionately greatest in rural areas, speak for themselves. Some critics have made much of the destruction of the tradi­ tional Muslim way of life. Such a destruction has indeed occurred, but it is at least arguable that this is part of the price one has to pay, inside and outside Soviet borders, for modernization and develop­ ment. One has only to examine the policy of Ataturk. It is surely important not to confuse such policies with specifically Soviet methods. Finally, it is not a mere verbal quibble that multi-racial States, even when one of the races is predominant, do not fit into the 'colonial' category. There are several States in Eurasia where this can be observed. If the Azerbaijanis in the Soviet Union are sub­ ject to 'colonial' rule, does this apply also to the Azerbaijanis in Iran? Are the Albanians and Macedonians in Yugoslavia victims of colonial oppression? What is the position of the Chinese minorities in South-east Asia? Or Bengalis in India? And what about Scot­ land? Obviously one must be careful about the use of such words as colonialism.

116

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

(b) Colonies? The case for

A case for the other side could be made as follows: Undeniably there are certain special features in the Soviet situation. It would certainly be wrong to regard all the non-Russian nationalities with­ in the Soviet borders as being under 'Russian colonial rule'. Some of the nationalities, for instance the Belorussians, do not seem to feel this way at all, and oppression, including colonial oppression, is partly a matter of what people think about their own position. In some other cases, as, for example, the smaller nationalities in Siberia, it is futile to argue as if they could conceivably be inde­ pendent States. However, when one is dealing with a relatively compact and self-conscious nationality, perhaps the most relevant factor of all is control, i.e. who decides how these people should live. The Soviet constitution itself asserts the right of the federal republics to run their own affairs, and even to secede from the Soviet Union. Yet, in practice, decisions on virtually every subject of importance are taken in Moscow. The first secretaries of the Communist Parties of these republics are almost always natives, but they can be and have been dismissed on the instructions of the all-Union party leadership. The second secretaries and 'cadres' secretaries are usually Russians. The Communist Party is a highly centralized organization, which takes all significant decisions on economic, cultural, political and organizational matters. It so happens that the central organs of the Communist Party have be­ come increasingly more Russian. While Stalin was in power, several Georgians had great influence, and it is still true that Armenians play a disproportionately large role in Soviet life. How­ ever, since the fall of Mukhitdinov, there has been no citizen of any of the Central Asian republics at the highest level of the Com­ munist Party or the Central Government, although the first secretaries of Uzbekistan and Georgia (Rashidov and Mzhavan­ adze) are at present candidate members of the Praesidium of the CPSU. A dramatic example of the power of Moscow over the very existence of the republics was the creation, in March 1963, of the Central Asian bureau of the Communist Party and of a Central Asian economic council, which greatly reduced the status of each of the separate republics. This was undone after Krushchev's fall, as already noted. No doubt some of the Moscow decisions have been wise, but they have been taken in Moscow and often for reasons which have nothing to do with the specifically local situa­ tion.

ASSESSMENT

117

Examples of central interference in comparatively minor matters include orders about the methods which should be used in cotton picking, and, in a vigorous speech by Krushchev, the breed of sheep on which the Uzbeks should specialize (the First Secretary maintained that sheep bred for wool ought to be preferred, al­ though the meat would be of lower quality; he claimed to have learned from his female forebears that what matters is the quality of the cook). Control over foreign trade by Moscow, and the exclusion of almost all imports of consumers' goods for long periods, made of the eight republics a captive market for Russian textiles, and vehicles, refrigerators, etc. This fact must be set against the relatively favourable 'terms of trade' at which raw cotton and other semi-tropical products exchanged for manufactures. In recent years a range of imports of consumers' goods from Czechoslovakia, North Korea, etc., have been available, but the citizens of the eight republics are not able to buy such goods from 'capitalist' countries. True, they are in no worse position in this respect than any other Soviet republics, but they are given no choice in the matter, since foreign trade is controlled very strictly by the centre. It would not matter so much that orders come from Moscow if the Soviet Union were truly a multi-racial State. However, Soviet Communism has become increasingly associated with Russian nationalism. This tendency was most highly developed under Stalin's rule, despite the fact that Stalin himself was a Georgian. One recalls Lenin's warning that the worst Russian chauvinists were sometimes non-Russians (as Napoleon was not French). Since Stalin's death there has been some reduction in russification pressures, but it remains true that, in literature and historiography alike, the glorification of the historical past of Russia is encouraged, while any similar tendency in respect of other nationalities would be characterized as bourgeois nationalism. Therefore, especially as so few central Asians are in a position to influence the decisions of Moscow, there is an important sense in which they are subject to alien rule. It is this which constitutes the principal argument in favour of relevance of the word 'colonialism'. The situation would be different if there were a tendency towards assimilation, through inter-marriage. This is still rare, especially in Central Asia. There is still the tendency for Russians to congregate in a few cities, or in compact Russian villages, while the bulk of the rural area is in­ habited by the natives. The flow of Russian immigrants may be ex­

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plained by the lack of special skills on the part of the native popula­ tion, and for the same reason many Russians in Central Asia hold positions of manager or foreman. But, whatever the reason, the fact remains that in several Central Asian republics there is a de facto Russian dominance while the subordinate positions are held by the natives. It would be surprising if there were not some resentment of this state of affairs, especially as the Russians have not as a rule shown much sympathy and understanding for the local way of life. It is certainly true, however, that some of the republics we have been analysing are in a very different situation. Any generalization which deals with Kirgizia is unlikely to apply also to Georgia, but both these republics have one thing in common; decisions con­ cerning any and every aspect of the life of their peoples are fre­ quently taken in Moscow, and such autonomy as they possess is a matter which is also decided by Moscow and can change in either direction for reasons totally unconnected with the situation, needs and wishes of the republics concerned. (c) Colonies? Yes and no

It may indeed be argued that the Soviet regime, unlike its Tsarist predecessor—for reasons which we shall examine in outline—has imposed a form of ideology which has led to the suppression of social developments which were not necessarily incompatible with membership of the USSR or at least of a poly centric socialist com­ munity of nations. We must distinguish between the relatively sophisticated nationalism of Transcaucasia and the part-panIslamic, part pan-Turkistic, part-'pure' nationalisms of Central Asia (as at, say, 1912). It was to some extent a historical accident that permitted the Baltic States to dissociate themselves from the first two decades of Soviet development, while Transcaucasia and Turkestan were rapidly incorporated in the USSR with virtually the same frontiers as the Tsarist Empire. The provocation of revolu­ tion in Bukhara and Khiva in the early 'twenties was a logical con­ tinuation of Tsarist policy (as was, at a different point of the fron­ tier, the ultimate absorption of Tuva), and the motivation of the Soviet Government in rounding off its frontiers in Central Asia and Transcaucasia was a combination of three principal factors—the vital necessity of procuring raw materials, the equally vital neces­ sity of eliminating potential bridgeheads for an enemy attack com­ bined with a desire (so noticeable in the behaviour of Chinese Communists today) to restore the traditional imperial border

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wherever possible. One may criticize these actions of the infant Soviet Government on moral grounds, but this is the way in which governments do in fact behave. Further, having imposed political control for reasons of its own security, the Soviet Government was faced with the task of promoting the rapid economic development of the two regions, and given the necessary condition of speed, the Government had to employ these resources of manpower, both local and immigrant, which were available at the time. As indicated elsewhere in this study, the existence of political groups at the local level which were prepared to accept modernization as an ideal was a considerable asset to the Soviet authorities in this early phase; the conflict arose over the speed of modernization—the rate at which society was to be transformed, and the ideas and institu­ tions which were to be jettisoned—rather than the direction in which society was to be moved. In one sense, therefore the transformation of Transcaucasian and Central Asian society is only a special case of the transformation of society throughout the Union. In each case, elements of the old outlook and the old society have survived—after all, the Revolu­ tion took place only forty-nine years ago—which continue to affect the new synthetic society which is being built today. The authori­ ties are, of course, reluctant to permit any revivals which may tend to undermine the synthesis, so that a continuous process of guid­ ance is required. Those natives who accepted the need for a trans­ formation of society under Communist leadership were often those who played a leading part in coercing their less enlightened fellowcitizens. From this point of view, the central control of the develop­ ment of society, permitting only limited expression of local peculiarities, may be regarded as a constraint which denies to groups of the Soviet population a right to which they are inherently entitled. Had the development of Soviet history as a whole pro­ ceeded along more liberal lines, the balance between central con­ trol and local traditionalism might well have been different, but we must take history as we find it, and it is difficult to maintain that the kind of pressures exerted at the periphery were essentially different from those exerted in the heart of Russia proper. Turning to the question of centralization of economic decisionmaking in Moscow, it could be said that economic controls in any large area tend to be centralized also under capitalism. For example, monopolists and giant firms control great numbers of enterprises from a central office, thus affecting the lives of many people within

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and also outside the borders of a given country. There are clear advantages in the case of modern industry in organizing planning over a wide area. The key problem is—so it could be argued—'For whose benefit is the economy run?' It may also be said that repub­ lican political organs, including the republican Communist Party leadership, do exercise informal influence over decision-making at the centre, apart from the constitutional functions of the Soviet of Nationalities and its committees. However, on the evidence, we must surely conclude that each of the republics has very little political power and that this is par­ ticularly significant in a country in which politicians claim the right to decide far more than is considered 'political' in a Western country. For example, the boundaries between republics (as indeed between administrative areas in purely Slavonic districts of the USSR) are subject to constant flux, and although the local people may in practice have some voice in such decisions, the ultimate right remains in the centre, and local politicians who are too vocal in their objections to the arbitrary transfer of land to other re­ publics (e.g. parts of southern Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan) are liable to be dismissed for carrying their legitimate nationalism too far. Therefore the republics are to a great extent ruled from the outside. Yet we still face some genuine difficulty. It is perfectly true that power was exercised in such a way that the republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia registered some notable economic and social gains and that these gains were partly paid for by the Rus­ sians. If one's picture of colonialism is associated with exploitation, with grinding the faces of the poor, then clearly the word does not fit the circumstances of the case. It must also be admitted that some of the accusations which are sometimes levelled against Soviet policy in these areas are wide of the mark. Living standards do com­ pare favourably not only with neighbouring Asian countries but also with Russia itself. The use of the Russian language in schools and universities is in some respects a mere convenience rather than a means of russification. It is easier for Uzbek students to learn physics and other sciences from Russian textbooks and it helps them in their subsequent career to know Russian. It is quite likely that this feeling is shared by the Uzbeks (it is noteworthy that the worship of the ancient Irish tongue by English-speaking Irish nationalists is hardly ever shared by those who actually speak Irish!). Some of the critics do seem to adopt an attitude which

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could be characterized as: 'Whatever they do must be wrong be­ cause they do it.' Thus, if a large deposit of valuable minerals was discovered in an under-developed region of a national republic, the critics would accuse Moscow as follows. If the mines are not worked, the object is to keep the region under-developed, an agricultural appendage of Great Russia. If the mines were worked with native labour, the object would be to disrupt the traditional way of life of the given nationality. If the mines were worked with imported Russian labour, then this would be colonialist settlement designed to swamp the local nationality. We should certainly not adopt criteria of this kind. Yet, experience in other parts of the world suggests that an essential factor in the situation is the attitude of people to their neighbours and to their own national status. One has but to contrast the relationship between England and Ire­ land on the one hand and England and Scotland on the other. Until 1921 they shared common membership of a constitutional multi­ national State, the United Kingdom. The differences did not lie in institutions but essentially in history and national and religious consciousness. In the Soviet case, it is generally admitted that in Georgia one finds widespread and deeply-felt anti-Russian nationalism. This is so despite the fact that from the standpoint of material and cultural advances they might seem to have little to com­ plain about. The Georgians happen to be particularly open in telling foreign visitors just what they think about Russia and Muscovite rule. It is rarer to hear such things from the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Since the police system is much the same throughout the Soviet Union and since the Georgians appear to have no special difficulty in conveying their views to others, the fact that one hears much less of anti-Russian nationalism in Central Asia cannot be attributed merely to fear. It may be a matter of communication. Quite possibly, as a local intellectual once did say to a visiting foreigner, 'we still need the Russians', i.e. the local intellectuals are aware that they are still culturally far behind and that the Russians provide a still essential degree of assistance in bringing them forward to the twentieth century. For example, every Uzbek scientist must know that he would not have the chance of working in advanced and modern laboratories unless these were provided by the Russians. It may therefore be that Central Asian nationalism is still in a somewhat dormant state, but that it will manifest itself in future years, especially if the Russians are tactless or oppressive.

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The economic development of these areas, which are in the main lacking in industrial raw materials, have plainly benefited from the Russian connection. The Soviet ideological commitment to creat­ ing a native proletariat and combating backwardness in the national republics caused a diversion of capital to those areas which, on strictly economic grounds, would have provided a higher return elsewhere. To that extent it could be argued with justice that development in these republics was more rapid than would have been the case in a Russian Empire run on the principles of the free market. However, we would have called such an empire a colonial­ ist Power, not because of the way it used its material resources but because a bureaucracy, based on a Russian monarchy, in a Russian city, ran the affairs of other nationalities. In this respect the USSR shares certain characteristics with its imperial predecessors, though it can claim that the territories inhabited by its nationalities were acquired by the Tsars. Is this colonialism? The conception of a multi-national union of Soviet republics is plainly designed to ex­ clude colonial relationships. Yet the centralizing practice of the Soviet Government, and the dominant role of Russian nationalism suggests that there is a large gap between theory and practice. Therefore, if we do not call the present relationship colonialism, we ought to invent a new name to describe something which repre­ sents subordination and yet is genuinely different from the im­ perialism of the past. (d) Industrialization, agriculture and

land reform

In many developing countries the problem of the relationship between agriculture, the peasants and industrialization causes much difficulty and perplexity. It is interesting, therefore, to look at the experience of the eight republics from this standpoint. In this respect too their dependent status, the fact that they were part of a much larger whole, was of very great significance. As already pointed out, these territories were an irreplaceable source of semi­ tropical products, and on balance they imported staple foodstuffs from the rest of the USSR. The Soviet Government therefore ex­ erted pressure and provided inducements designed to encourage the production of these scarce items (cotton, tobacco, tea, etc.). There was no direct connection between this policy and the indus­ trial development of the republics themselves. The same pressure would have been exerted if industries were only built in Central Russia. It was in fact exerted in just this direction under the Tsars,

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but, of course, Russian industrial development was then at a much lower level. The Soviet policy did ensure a considerable increase in the volume of agricultural surpluses (i.e. production over and above village needs) in the eight republics as well as in the Soviet Union as a whole, and this contributed to the economic develop­ ment of the Soviet Union. As has already been shown at some length, farm prices in Central Asia and Transcaucasia were relat­ ively more favourable than in Russia proper during the Stalin period, and so this process of commercialization was not accom­ panied by harsh exploitation of the peasant producers for the financing of industrial investment. Partly as a matter of deliberate policy and partly to meet the requirements of the Soviet economy, investment resources were directed towards the economic and cultural development of the areas in question, to an extent which was probably greater than would have happened if economic rationality and profitability, or the national interest of the Russians, were the decisive determinants of resource allocation. It is there­ fore difficult to derive from this situation any clear model which has a bearing on the problems of an independent developing country, which has to develop its agriculture, save perhaps that association with a virtually limitless Russian market simplifies the task of find­ ing purchasers for agricultural surpluses. Thus, whereas Uzbeki­ stan could specialize on cash crops and sell its cotton to Russian territories, such a country as Colombia faces the gravest difficulties in finding export markets and this is one of the factors which obstruct her economic growth. How about land reform? This is an issue very frequently dis­ cussed in developing countries. In this respect the experience of the eight republics is only partially relevant. The landlords were driven out in the period 1917–20, and until collectivization the bulk of the land was farmed by individual peasants in these repub­ lics as well as in the rest of the Soviet Union. It might well have been possible to base commercialized agriculture on individual peasants in a large part of the semi-tropical area. In the irrigated lands of Central Asia the necessities of water supply made for some degree of natural peasant co-operation, while tea, tobacco and grape plantations are still very largely cultivated by hand and there seem no advantages of scale. The imposition of Russian-style collectivization seems to be more a consequence of the circum­ stances ruling in the rest of the Soviet Union than to anything specifically Central Asian or Transcaucasian. It could be argued

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that collectivization provided an essential source of capital, by compelling the peasantry to deliver the goods to the State at low prices. However, as has already been pointed out, most of the pro­ ducts of seven of the republics commanded reasonably high prices. In the eighth republic, Kazakhstan, collectivization was an un­ mitigated disaster, save in the extreme south. (e) Colonialism à la française? How far has Russian policy been 'assimilationist', in the French sense of the word? How can Russian methods be compared with French cultural methods in Africa and South-east Asia? Certainly every effort has been made to further Russian culture, but the language and culture of the republics have been fostered to a much greater extent than the French ever thought of doing. The French gave opportunities to their 'colonial' intellectuals to advance through the adoption of French culture, often being educated in France. Under the Tsars, many members of non-Russian nation­ alities rose high in the civil and military services, provided they joined the dominant 'establishment' and were largely russified. The Soviets provided educational ladders within the republic's own territories, while not excluding them from Russian universities. An Uzbek can rise high without leaving Uzbekistan, even though he will have to use the Russian language in some of his courses in the University of Tashkent. Of course, as the case of Stalin proved, a non-Russian could rise rather high in Moscow under the Soviet regime. As for citizenship and status, there is an important differ­ ence between treating an Algerian or a Dahomeyian as a Frenchman and the Soviet practice of regarding him as a citizen of a multi­ national State, in which Russians are only one nationality. Even the Tsars distinguished between 'Russki' (Russian) and 'Rossiyski' (which could be translated as all-Russian or pan-Russian), the latter term, which included non-Russian nationalities, being the title of the Empire. The Soviets very deliberately omitted the national label from the name of the USSR (while retaining 'Rossiy­ ski' to describe the Russian republic—the RSFSR—which contains many minor non-Russian national republics). It is interesting to compare Uzbekistan or Georgia with the status of Algeria before independence. Algeria was governed as part of France. Economically it could benefit from membership of a larger and much more developed community, and French capital and French immigrants were responsible for much modernizing

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activity. However, a large proportion of the people were untouched by this activity, which they felt to be benefiting the 'colons', and the French Government did not follow a policy of directing in­ dustry into North Africa, so that there was a considerable emigra­ tion of would-be industrial workers into France. Because Algeria, unlike the Soviet republics, had no political hierarchy of its own, politically ambitious Algerians had little alternative to turning to subversive forms of nationalism. (f) Capital import and technical assistance

Most developing countries find themselves in the position of having to import capital and also to draw on technical aid from the more advanced countries. How, if at all, can the experience of the eight republics be interpreted in relation to these questions? Being relatively backward, the republics relied heavily on im­ ports of almost all capital goods from other parts of the Soviet Union. As has already been pointed out, the financial structure of Soviet investment has been such that machinery, as well as con­ struction, costs are paid in the main by outright grants from the State budget. As was shown in the earlier section on finance, it seems reasonable to conclude that this capital flow, coming in the main from Russia proper, represented a net gain to the republics, after making all allowances for offsetting factors. However, it is clear that the fact that the republics are part of a larger political and economic unit makes it impossible to substantiate such gener­ alizations with precise statistics. One way of looking at the move­ ment of capital is to regard the entire Soviet Union as one gigantic firm and its investments in particular republics as analogous to those of a firm building factories in some particular area. In this sense, Rootes exported capital to Scotland when they built a car factory at Linwood. They also supplied the necessary technical training and no doubt sent to Scotland some managerial and speci­ alist staff. In the same way industrial developments in the eight republics sometimes involved the transfer of Russian personnel as well as schemes to train local labour. It is also possible to regard the very great effort put into education in this whole area as a form of technical as well as cultural assistance, since part of the financial burden falls upon the Soviet Union as a whole, and therefore on Russia. Our entire judgement of all these matters must be affected by the importance which we attach to the national question.Obviously,

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within any large single political entity, the distribution of in­ vestments and the allocation of universities and technical in­ stitutes are matters of regional development. One does not think of the creation of the University of East Anglia as a form of technical aid rendered by London, even though it is highly probable that there is a net financial movement out of London into East Anglia. One does think of the need to encourage industry in north-east England and this certainly represents a local political issue as well as a national economic problem, but no one analyses it in terms of economic aid by one part of the country to another. It therefore follows that there may seem little parallel which can be drawn between an independent developing country and any of the re­ publics, so far as either economic aid or technical assistance are concerned. Both conceptually and statistically these are rather distinct cases. Yet, allowing for all this, it does seem proper to en­ visage the process of development of the more backward republics as due to the deliberate efforts of the more developed parts of the Soviet Union, just as in the case of Yugoslavia one can say that the beneficiaries of the federal Government's regional policies are the more backward republics of Macedonia and Montenegro. The difference between these territories and the Soviet republics is, however, that the former are exceedingly poor and provide very little indeed in exchange for what they are given, whereas the cotton, tobacco, tea and wine which flows into Central Russia does go some way towards compensating the rest of the Soviet Union by the provision of import-saving items. The provision of technical assistance has undoubtedly been associated with some immigration into these areas and also with the spread of Russian cultural influences. Here again our judge­ ment of this phenomenon must depend on our view of the national question, just as the feelings on this subject of the native popula­ tions depend equally on what they think of Russian influence and Russian immigration. Thus the tourist industry in the Scottish Highlands has led to a considerable influx of English hotel keepers and Austrian ski instructors. As far as is known the local Scots have not raised any organized protest. This point is made in no flippant sense. It is intended to illustrate the proposition that human reactions to given situations are often the determinants of whether they do or do not present a difficult political problem. It is to this question of human attitudes that we will now turn.

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(g) Relation between nationalities

The question of the relationships that exist between the indigenous populations of our region and the immigrants, most of whom may be taken to be Russians, is one on which it is virtually impossible to procure adequate information. From a formal legal point of view, there is no problem—all Soviet citizens are equal, but the situation in practice is much more complex. In the first place, it is by no means clear that a simple two-nation model will meet the case; in no republic, Union or autonomous, is the population neatly divided into the two categories of Russian immigrant and 'titular' native (e.g. Tajiks in Tajikistan, Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, etc.). Among the immigrants—some of whom by now may be third or fourth generation—Russians almost always form a majority, but in a detailed analysis one would have to take note of the local Ukrainian, Belorussian, Polish, German, Jewish and other communities. Similarly, among the native population, no republic is free from large communities of secondary nationalities, sometimes due to the impossibility of drawing adequate boundaries to separate them (as, e.g. in Transcaucasia, where Armenians, Azeris and Georgians are found in all three republics), and sometimes to spontaneous or organized migration (e.g. Koreans and Chinese Muslims in the Central Asian republics). An important aspect of current Soviet nationalities' policy may be noted here. In the 'twenties, it was the declared policy of the Government that any group, however small, which felt that it formed a nationality (common language, customs, social tradition) was encouraged to develop this sense of cohesion; schools were opened, newspapers published and so on. Particularly in the post­ war period a reverse tendency has set in, and it now seems to be the policy of the Soviet Government to sponsor the national develop­ ment only of those major units which are large enough to merit an organized State structure. This in practice means those groups which form Union or autonomous republics (smaller administrat­ ive units still exist, but the titular native population of these is numerically nearly insignificant). In Uzbekistan, for example, it is possible for a child whose native tongue is Uzbek to secure an educ­ ation up to and including university level in Uzbek; the local Korean population, however, will have to attend schools at which Uzbek or Russian is used. In each of the Union republics there is an abundance of literature, periodical and otherwise, in the principal vernacular and a daily or bi-weekly newspaper is often published in

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the language of a neighbouring republic, if the number of readers is sufficient. For example, in Tajikistan the local daily is published in Tajik, Russian and Uzbek editions; there are about half a million Uzbeks in the republic. But the publication of books and magazines in the Uzbek language is concentrated in Tashkent. The more typical case is for the publication of a newspaper in a local minority language to take place at the raion (county) level, typically in an issue of one or two thousand copies. One result of this policy is that there is a strong tendency for local indigenous minorities to trans­ fer to the nationality of the local majority, except in those few cases where the minority has a stronger external cultural connection. An example from outside our region is the recent tendency of Bashkirs to become Tartarized, since the adjacent Tartar republic (Kazan) has a powerful cultural tradition which the more backward Bash­ kirs lack. Other examples are the gradual disappearance of the Pamir mountain nationalities into the main local majority of the Tajiks and the absorption of the speakers of Iranian dialects (Tat and Talysh) into the Turkish-speaking Azerbaijanis. The minori­ ties in question are normally rural (often in rather inaccessible regions) and culturally backward; with steadily improving trans­ port facilities their final disappearance is only a matter of time. To some extent, however, that may be an illusory phenomenon due to the propensity of officials of the predominant local nation­ ality to emphasize the extent to which their own group has become consolidated; in Central Asian villages, indeed, and particularly among the elderly, there is some evidence to suggest that people regard themselves not as members of a given nationality, but simply as 'Muslims'. Indeed, the division in this area—for histori­ cal reasons—is still to a major extent one between the settled rural or urban population on the one hand, and the still semi-nomadic population on the other. This distinction is in some cases stronger than that between settled speakers of one language and of another; e.g. the Tajiks of the Zerafshan Valley (including Samarkand and Bukhara) speak an Iranian dialect akin to Persian; the Uzbeks, who are their neighbours, speak a Turkish dialect, but in practice most people are bilingual, and in some areas a hybrid dialect is found. The breach between town and countryside, strong enough in all conscience throughout the Russian lands, is of even greater import­ ance in the relatively backward areas. If we except Armenia as a region where virtually the whole population belongs to the domin­ ant local nationality, and the regions of northern Kazakhstan

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where very large numbers of farm workers have been brought in from all over the USSR in the last ten years, the inhabitants of the countryside are overwhelmingly of local origin, while a substantial fraction—and in the larger cities usually a great majority—of the people who live in the towns are of immigrant origin. In the regions which are undergoing the most rapid development, the proportion of immigrants is particularly high. A variant on this pattern is found in those cities of Central Asia (e.g. Tashkent) which were important centres before the Russian occupation; the 'old' city of Tashkent—which has remained relatively constant in size during the past century—is still virtually 100 per cent Asiatic, in spite of the extensive rebuilding of recent years; while the 'new' city built by the Russians in the second half of the nineteenth century has a strong majority of settlers or their descendants. Since the war, and particularly in the last ten years, industrial expansion has led to the creation of a third section and here a much greater degree of inter­ mingling is taking place (overspill from cleared sections of the old city, new settlers from all parts of the USSR, as well as native immi­ grants from the countryside).1 Complete integration is, however, a long way off; intermarriage even between linguistically kindred Asiatics is not very common, and between Asiatics and Europeans is still quite rare. A rather similar pattern is found in other cities of the region. There is, of course, a city soviet which takes decisions on matters affecting the city as a whole. It is none the less probable that many thousands of the native population never come into contact with a Russian; the local officials will be native, both at the village level and that of the county (raion); and even at the province (oblast) level virtually all those officials who come into contact with the general public will be natives. The same will be true of the staff of the social services (teachers, doctors, shop staff and so on). Russian will be taught in the schools, often by teachers whose qualifications are not above reproach, but it will hardly be used as a medium of communication for ordinary purposes. In the towns, however, the situation will be radically different. Where the town is large enough to sustain a cultural life, there will be cinemas, theatres, concert halls, and so on, with programmes to the European taste; there will also be a vernacular cultural life of 1

The above was written before the earthquakes of 1966, which (in spite of the reticence of the Soviet press) have evidently caused immense damage to the 'old' Asiatic part of the city and probably to the settler districts as well. The newest parts seem to have suffered least. I

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the same kind, but—for obvious reasons—generally at a less sophisticated level. Newspapers, magazines and books will be pub­ lished both in Russian and in the local vernacular, the quantity and quality of the latter again depending on the degree of sophistica­ tion attained. The cultural patterns (e.g. in literature) are exceed­ ingly complex; but if one may venture on a generalization, in those areas which were relatively sophisticated before the Russians came, cultural centres—often of great antiquity—already existed, and these have tended to retain their prestige even though the political structure on which they were founded has passed into history. This is a field in which it would be dangerous to ignore the development of the Tsarist period; Soviet sources tend, naturally enough, to emphasize the very real progress of the last forty or fifty years at the expense of the cultural developments of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The heritage of Islam as a world outlook, which included such matters as literary and musical forms, was supplemented in that period by European influences applied with­ out undue pressure, and these elements have been accepted into the vernacular tradition; it would indeed be an unwarranted exag­ geration to speak of a parallel—and thus distinct—cultural society still in full existence; but the modifications of the Soviet period— applied with much greater pressure—have not yet entirely dis­ placed the ancient cultural values. The abandonment of the traditional Arabic alphabet and its ultimate replacement by the Russian one have had a profound effect; at the present time, the older creative artist is still able to draw on the resources of the past, and still able to find a critical and appreciative audience; while the younger man, educated in the modern Soviet school, has moved towards a position in which the local colour of his work may seem only too often to be a mere decoration of an 'all-Soviet' work; and he is conscious of this. The structure of the Government and of the organization of the local Communist Party naturally varies from one republic to an­ other, but the following general rules broadly apply (except per­ haps in Georgia and Armenia): 1. The official head of State and most of the ministers with executive responsibility are natives. 2. In those departments where the functions transcend the frontiers of the republic, Russians commonly hold the senior posts, and in many departments of local importance only, the native head is assisted by a Russian deputy.

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3. Departments requiring technical expertise tend to be man­ aged by non-natives. 4. At the local level, the responsible officials are almost always natives, except in those areas where Russian settlers predominate. Much of this is clearly inevitable in a situation where sufficient time has not yet elapsed to permit the emergence of sufficient ex­ perienced natives; and, as far as it is possible to judge from frag­ mentary evidence, the proportion of natives holding responsible posts is continually increasing. A similar pattern can be distinguished in the management of in­ dustry. Here, the senior managerial posts in large enterprises, and technical posts down to a relatively low level, tend to be held by immigrants (not necessarily Russians; a substantial role is played in Central Asia by Armenians and Georgians). At the manual worker level, and perhaps now at the foreman level, immigrant skilled workers tend to predominate at least in modern industrial plants; in the smaller factories (food and textile industries, for example) it seems to be common in Central Asia for virtually all the staff, up to top management, to be natives. In view of the journalistic nature of much of the Soviet fiction-writing, it may be significant that a good many stories have been written in recent years in which the plot describes the arrival of a native lad from his village, his employ­ ment as an unskilled manual labourer, his acquisition of skill with the friendly aid of Russian colleagues, and his ultimate graduation to a highly skilled and well-paid post. This pattern of development seems natural enough in a situation where the economy is expand­ ing at a great rate, and the demand for skill far outruns the supply of European immigrants. In some respects, one may suggest a kind of looking-glass image of the nineteenth-century United States: in the one case, an immigrant minority of persons accustomed to European standards are engaged in organizing and developing a territory where the inhabitants are only now awakening, and the indigenous labour force inevitably fills the low-skilled and less responsible posts at first, gradually being assimilated into the incomer's way of life, and gradually establishing a claim to be con­ sidered for responsibility; in the American case, the immigrants entered a rapidly developing economy with an insatiable appetite for manual labourers, and being generally unskilled they had to establish themselves, become assimilated, and rise. It is clear that in the Soviet case, promotion for the native of a backward area involves assimilation to the standard values and attitudes of the

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T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

USSR as a whole, even though these values

do not exclude a limited attachment to those elements of native culture which do not clash with the interests of the Union as a whole. It appears reasonable to speculate on a kind of inverted assimilation in this case; just as immigrants to the United States in the second or third generation retain their tenuous links with the culture from which they sprang so it may be that in another half-century the natives of Soviet Central Asia will have become externally assimilated but retain a tinge of the old Islamic culture. If one may distinguish degrees in this process, the originally less developed groups may be the earliest to yield; those whose strong national consciousness has been fortified in the recent past by the important role they have played (as individuals, not specifically as a national group) in the affairs of the country at large may resist longer. If, in the next generation or so, opinion throughout the world polarizes along lines of colour, with the Whites against the Rest— which will also mean the rich nations against the poor, the advanced against the primitive, the peripheral minorities of the USSR seem more likely to take their stand on the side of the North and West— which includes for this purpose the advanced regions of the USSR— than on the side of the East and South. However, this is un­ avoidably an interpretation which may well be wide of the mark. Certainly it is hard to discern any tendency to pro-Chinese senti­ ments in Central Asia, especially after Kazakhs resident in Sinkiang have fled into the Soviet Union with stories of Chinese oppression. None the less, the local intelligentsia may turn strongly antiRussian, unless the Soviet leadership is tactful and skilful in hand­ ling the tensions which must arise as the increasingly well qualified natives lay claim to more positions of responsibility and question the right of Moscow to issue orders to the republics. The less educated, especially the peasants, cling to the old ways, and their resentment at modernizing reforms extend impartially to both native and Russian Communists. Already now, as is clear from travellers' reports, some natives deeply resent the existing situation and are willing to say so. The problem, as already pointed out in the section on 'colonialism', is how to assess public opinion in the absence of reliable information, and how to distinguish grumbles and grievances from real disloyalty. It is therefore right to end with a question mark, and with the assurance that a clear and un­ ambiguous answer to so complex and varied a set of problems is bound to be wrong.

APP E NDI X

In this appendix we summarize the main results of the Seven-year Plan (1 959-65), indicate the main provisions of the Five-year Plan (1966-70), and outline the discussion which took place at the Twenty-third Communist Party Congress (March-April 1 966) .

(a) THE SEVEN-YEAR P LAN

The Seven-year Plan initiated b y Mr Krushchev for the period 1 959 to 1 965 has recently been completed, and brief reference has been made above (p. 5 1 ) to the principal results as affecting the areas with which this study is concerned. In terms of industrial

production, we may conclude that whereas for the u s s R as a whole

the target of So per cent overall industrial growth was met (the re­ ported percentage increase was in fact 84 per cent), the less developed republics fared rather badly; only Tajikistan is recorded as exceeding the plan, Uzbekistan came within one percentage point of fulfilment, while the remainder have failed to fulfil the plan, more or less badly. In descending order of merit, the position is as follows :

Actual percentage of increase in

industrial production, as percentage o

(U S S R Tajikistan Uzbekistan Kirgizia Armenia Georgia Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Turkmenistan

f planned increase 105) 104 99 88 79 76 68 66 54

Only a small handful of the original plan target figures for in­ dividual republics were published at the time, so that it is not pos­ sible to analyse in great detail the reasons for these inadequate results; but we may note that a relatively large share of the in­ dustrial output of these republics consists of the industrial pro­ cessing of local agricultural produce, and it is notorious that the original plan provided for a rise in agricultural production far in

I34

THE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

excess of the actual achievements of these seven years. As an example of the effects of this we may cite the target and actual figures for meat production, I965 :

(Thousand tons) Target

Armenia 27 Azerbaijan 59 Georgia 49 438 Kazakhstan 109 Kirgizia 36 Tajikistan Turkmenistan 34 Uzbekistan n.a.

Actual 20 30 27 413 64 25 13

n.a.

Per cent of plan fulfilment 74 51 55 94 59 69 38

n.a.

These figures reflect the calamitous harvest of I 963-a circum­ stance over which the local butchers and meat packers obviously had no control. The responsibility here must be divided between the climate and the lack of adequate planning and management, primarily at the centre. The extractive group of industries form the next largest share in the industrial output of the republics. In general, performance in 1 965, although showing a considerable increase over 1 958, fell short of the plan targets . This was particularly the case in Azer­ baijan, where the output of natural gas, originally planned at I I 6 milliard cubic metres, was in fact only 6 · 2 milliards; while the out­ put of oil, planned at 2I · 9 million tons, nearly reached this level (actual production, 2 1 · 5 million tons) in the face of great diffi­ culties . Uzbek gas also fell somewhat short of expectations. The ·

one bright spot in this picture is the success of the oilmen of Turkmenistan, who produced 9 · 6 million tons in 1 965, as against the planned target of 7 5 million tons. The planned increase of oil production in Kirgizia, however, from o · 5 million tons in 1 958 to ·

I · 5 million tons in

1 965 was a failure; year by year throughout the

period output actually fell, reaching the lowest point in 1 965 with only 305,000 tons. Manufacturing industry remains a relatively small sector in the republics with which we are concerned; very few plan targets for 1 965 are known, but in respect of these, performances were in general rather indifferent. Some examples:

APPENDIX Mineral fertilizers Georgia Uzbekistan " " Cement

"

Cotton textiles

"

"

Leather footwear

Tajikistan Uzbekistan Azerbaijan Tajikistan Tajikistan

13 5

'ooo tons

"

" " min linear .

metres min linear metres min pairs .

.

Plan

506 2,000 or more 900 2,100 158 101 5 '3

Actual 435 2,145 940 2,465 135 approx.

So approx. 3·6

In sum, then, the Seven-year Plan for these republics can hardly be described as outstandingly successful; the original targets had been drawn up so as to provide a faster rate of increase than in the u s s R as a whole, thus lessening the disparity between them and the more highly developed areas and providing for their relatively rapid growth of population. Local pressures for more industry, particularly modern industry with a high growth potential, con­ tinue to be strong, as we shall see when we consider the debate on the new Five-year Plan at the recent Party Congress, and it is clear from the foregoing-as well as from the discussion in the main body of this work-that a strong case can be made out in favour of this course of action. The following table summarizes the available data for industrial production in 1 95 8 and 1 9 65, and is followed by a table which assesses the general weight of the eight republics in the Soviet economy as a whole.

I9S8 I96S I9S8 1965 I958 1965 I958 1965

Paper

th. tons

th. tons

th. tons

Steel

Rolled metal Mineral fertilizers (a)

million

million sheets

Bricks

Roofing sheets (shijer) Cotton thread Raw silk

tons

th. tons

th. tons

Cement

th. tons 1 oo per cent content (th. tons) th. tons

m3

xnn .

Natural gas Pig iron

1958 1 965 1958 1965

-

th. tons

Oil

-

-

352

33

-

117

-

10

-

-

-

47 68

-

71

-

745 I ,274 92

I

87

-

443 8II 293 604

-

-

I 6,497 2 1,500 4,446 6,200

334 620 6

-

194 103 21

5

0

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

th. tons

Coal

-

s ,6o4 I0,400

2,543 2,835

I 95 8 1965 I958 1965 I 958 I 965 I 958 1965 I958 1965 1958 1965 1958 1965 1958 1965 1965

Electricity mn. kWh

Azerbaijan

Armenia

Date

Item

Quantity

-

374

-

-

37 52

-

30 35 1,070 1,375 330

67I 819 977 1,363 688 995 230 435

-

-

-

2,963 5>993 3,014 z,6zo 35

Georgia

-

-

-

59 -

235

-

830 4,037 909 I,S25

-

-

1,625 268 1,123 273 391 475 776

Kazakhstan 8,546 19,400 31,533 45,700 I,5 I I 2,022 42 29 0

-

90

so -

II

-

2I so8 294 410

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

757 2,300 3>373 3,700 490 305 I I 85

Kirg1."zia

Industrial Output 1958 and 1965

-

141 195 284

49 940 174 277 25 53

-

I25 I SO 176 272

-

-

70 340 240 224

-

93 5

95 8 1 ,273 803

9 17 534 2,465 989 I,I23 109 159

-

2,I99

1,460

2,236 3,400 33,308 72,400 28,689 34,000 2,407 4,200

USSR Tajikistan Turkmeni- Uzbekistan stau 235,350 4,666 593 86o 507,000 u, s oo I,205 496, I I 2 3,529 787 578,000 4>530 901 I I3,2I 6 I ,297 4,154 I8 243,000 I ,8oo 9,636 z8,o8s 224 126 129,000 I 6, s oo 52 39,6o0 66,200 54,920 25 I 9 I,ooo 368 43, I I 7 I 59 70,900 255 12,420 1,005 3 1,300 2,145 7>400 48

-

27 27 I •7 0•9 6

-

-

33 30 3 •9 8·I 23 24

-

8·3 18 2•5 5 IO · O II 22

9•4 12 · 6 0•4 I ·2 6·s 8·1

20 • 0 36 · 6 I·5 4• I 4•6 7•3 12 33 I6 20 3•4 2•3 8

20 (20)

4•6 (5)

48 (47)

7 (Io)

I·8 (6 · 6)

97 (IOI)

7 (7)

3·6 433 I I,OOO 3>372 9,6oo 659 I,I84 I A65 2,700

844 (796)

303 (466)

21 (34)

5>789 (5.504)

220 (I 98)

0 (o)

o·5 (o · 6)

22 (20)

.

.

(b) Textile production in 1958 is given in linear metres; in I 965, in square metres. Approximate conversion factors are: cotton, average width 75 em wool, I27 em silk, 82 em . Silk includes both natural silk and rayon.

(a) Fertilizer production in 1958 and for some republics also in 1965 is given in terms of conventional units; e.g. potash fefti!.!zers in terms of 4I · 6 per cent K10 content, phosphates in terms of I 8 · 7 per cent P 20 5 content, and so on. The 1965 data for Azerbru.}an and Turkmenistan are given in terms of Ioo per cent active content only; those for Armenia and the USSR in both.

The data for I958 are taken from Narodrwye khozyaistvo SSSR v. 1961 g. Those for 1965 are taken from the annual economic reports for the USSR (Pravda February 3, 1966) and for the individual republics (local press, various dates between February 5 and 8, I966). Blanks in the data for I958 imply no production (or negligible amounts); blanks for 1 965 imply production not stated in republic report.

Cotton mn. lin. m. 1958 textiles mn. m. 2 I965 (b) Wool mn.lin. m. I958 textiles mn. m.2 1 965 (b) Silk mn . .in. m. I958 textiles mn. m.• 1965 (b) Knitted mn. pieces I958 underwear 1965 Knitted mn. pieces I958 outerwear 1965 Leather mn. pairs 1958 footwear 1965 Sugar th. tons 1 958 1965 Meat th. tons 1958 1965 Animal th. tons 1958 fats 1965 Vegetable th. tons 1958 fats 1965

138

THE

SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

The contribution of Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia to the Soviet economy as a whole (in this Table the value for the U S S R as a whole is taken as r,ooo) Total area Total population Urban population Rural population Persons in non-agricultural employment Persons in industrial employment Persons employed in agriculture Children at school Students in higher education Production of: electricity coal oil natural gas steel iron ore mineral fertilizers sulphuric acid machine tools tractors cement bricks cotton textiles wool textiles silk textiles leather footwear sugar * meat fish animal fats vegetable fats and oils tinned and bottled foods wine Sown area: total grain crops industrial crops potatoes and vegetables fodder crops

I 86 1 75 1 43 210 1 22 87 1 72 1 90 1 46 107 95 1 49 1 48 36 100 1 42 181 95 46 1 55 I I2 95 61 I I5 1 30 46 149 41 8o 228 151 1 74t 1 85 21 4 1 93 56 1 34

• All foodstuffs are industrial production only, and exclude domestic pro­ duction for home use. t Classified by place of final processing, e.g. excludes wine produced in Georgia but bottled in Moscow.

APPENDIX

139

Crops, total (State purchases in brackets): I 85 (245) grain I,ooo (I,ooo) cotton (43) 42 sugar beet IO (I I) s unflower (28) 28 potatoes I08 (I38) vegetables Livestock holdings: I 67 cattle, total I48 cows 58 pigs sheep and goats 454 Livestock products, total (State purchases in brackets): I SO (I6S) meat (79) 94 milk 92 (86) eggs (452) 432 wool Length of railways I 63 Volume of goods traffic 128 Length of surfaced roads 215 Volume of goods road traffic 2IO I 64 Value oftotal investment Number of doctors I 55 Number ofbooks printed 71 Newspaper circulation 100

The data in this table refer to the year 1964 (production data) or to January I , 1965 (population, etc.). Source : Narodnoye khozyaistvo SSSR v 1964 g.

(b) T H E F I V E -YEAR P LAN F O R 1 9 6 6- 7 0 The draft of the Five-year Plan for 1966-70, which was published in the Soviet Press on February 20, 1966, contains a section on the individual republics. The text of this section; for those republics with which this study is concerned, is as follows: Armenia Further development of non-ferrous metallurgy, the chemical industry, precision engineering, light industry, food industry. The total volume of industrial production is to be increased by approximately 8o per cent; production of electricity by 130 per cent; mineral fertilizers by 270 per cent; automation equipment by 70 per cent; silk textiles by 8o per cent; knitwear by 8Q-90 per cent; wine products by 100 per cent; tinned and bottled fruit and vege­ tables by 100 per cent. The power stations at Erevan (thermal) and Tate (hydro-electric) are to be completed; capacity at the Razdan thermal power station

140

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

to be brought into operation; construction of an atomic power station to be put in hand. Non-ferrous metallurgical plants to be expanded. The Razdan heavy chemical combine is to be brought to virtual completion. Increased production of grapes, fruit, vegetables, aromatic plants and tobacco. Irrigation to be expanded. Azerbaijan Further development of the oil, gas and chemical industries; and also of engineering and the light and food industries. The total volume of industrial production is to be increased by approximately 60 per cent; electricity by 40 per cent; mineral fertilizers by 110–130 per cent; knitwear by 120–140 per cent; leather footwear by 50–60 per cent; tinned goods by 220 per cent and wine products by 90 per cent. Oil production to increase to 23 . 5 million tons; gas to 8 milliard cubic metres. Off-shore oil-bearing areas to be developed further. The Kirovabad aluminium plant, the power-station at AliBayramli, a cotton-spinning and a cotton-spinning and weaving plant are to be completed. Capacity is to be brought into operation at the Sumgait chemical works. Construction to be put in hand of a new thermal power station, of the hydro-electric power stations at Shamkor and Terter, the polymetallic plant at Filizchay, a cement works, and a cotton mill. Factories are to be built for engineers' tools, knitted underwear (two), artificial leather, food preservation (five) and tobacco processing (four), as well as plants for primary wine production. Increased production of cotton, tobacco, grapes and fruit; the foundations are to be laid for a large-scale development in the pro­ duction of early vegetables. Soil improvements in the Kura-Araks valley and the Mugan steppe; desalination works to be carried out over an area of approximately 200,000 hectares. New irrigated land (60,000 hectares) to be brought into cultivation. Georgia

Development to be concentrated on electricity, engineering and the chemical industry, and also on the further growth of the food and light industries. The total volume of industrial production is to be increased by approximately 60 per cent; electricity by 90 per cent; goods road vehicles by 100 per cent; mineral fertilizers by 100–120 per cent;

APPENDIX

141

silk textiles by 40 per cent; knitwear by 60–70 per cent; wine pro­ ducts by 50 per cent; tinned goods by 160 per cent. The first sections of the following hydro-electric power stations are to be brought into operation: Ingure, Vartsikhe and Nama­ khvan; the Tbilisi power station to be expanded up to 960,000 kW. Coal mines at Tkibuli and Tkvarcheli to be completed; Stage II of the Rustavi nitrogenous fertilizer plant to be completed. New con­ structions: the Madneuli copper concentration plant; a factory for industrial control computers; two knitwear factories; nine plants for the primary processing of tea. Increased production of tea, grapes, citrus fruits, tobacco (prin­ cipally by increasing yields). Irrigated land (60,000 hectares) to be brought into cultivation. Drainage, etc., works to 90,000 hectares in the Kolkhid valley. Further development of holiday resorts and associated foodgrowing areas. Kazakhstan Accelerated development of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, coal, oil, chemicals, and the light and food industries. The total volume of industrial production is to increase by approximately 70 per cent; electricity by 100 per cent; refined copper by 90 per cent; lead 40 per cent; zinc 90 per cent. Coal out­ put to reach 68–9 million tons including up to 32 million tons open-cast); oil up to 15 million tons; iron ore to 26 million tons; pig iron to 4–4 . 5 million tons; steel 3.5 to 4.6 million tons; mineral fertilizers to 2–2.2 million tons; cement to 6–6.3 million tons; meat to 505 million tons; textiles to 130–43 million square metres; leather footwear to 25–6 million pairs; knitwear to 95–101 million pieces. Completion of the construction of the mining and metallurgical combine at Jezkazgan and the zinc works at Leninogorsk. The Tishino lead/zinc mine and the Sayaki copper mine are to be brought into operation, as are the first sections of the Nikolayevski and Orlovski concentration plants and the second section of the Pavlodar aluminium works. Construction work is to begin at the east Kazakhstan electrolytic copper works. The construction of the Karaganda metallurgical works is to be completed in principle; capacity at the Ermak ferrous alloys plant is to be brought into operation; as is the first stage of the Lisakovski concentration plant. The capacity of the Sokolovsko-Sarbai con­

142

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

centration plant is to be raised to 30 million tons of ore per annum, with an increase in the production of iron ore briquettes. Construction of the Kachar concentration plant is to be put in hand. New capacity for coal production in the Ekibastuz field is to be brought into service; a start is to be made with the construction of power stations using this coal to supply northern and central Kazakhstan with electricity and also for the transmission of elec­ tricity to European Russia and the Urals. The first sections of the following power stations to be brought into service: Ermak, Jambul, Kapchagai (hydro-electric). The development of a new large-scale gas and oil production region in the Mangyshlak peninsula is to be accelerated, and the Guryev oil refinery is to be expanded. The construction and in­ troduction of the first stages of the Pavlodar and Chimkent oil refineries is envisaged. A large complex of chemical industry enterprises is to be constructed, based on the phosphorite deposits of Karatau. Capacity at the Pavlodar chemical works is to be brought into service. The Kustanay artificial fibre factory is to be completed, and a rubber factory to be put in hand. Construction of the Jetigara asbestos works is to be completed. Rapid development of branches of industry concerned with the processing of agricultural raw materials and the production of con­ sumer goods is envisaged. To be completed: the Alma Ata cotton combine; the Jambul leather footwear factory; the Kustanay plant for the production of dress materials from staple fibre. To be con­ structed: seven clothing factories, five for knitwear, two for foot­ wear, nine meat-processing plants, three for confectionery. Con­ struction is to begin of a cloth mill (kamvolno-sukonny kombinat) and of a number of other light and food industry plants. Grain production of 21–22 million tons is to be assured; steps are to be taken to combat drought and wind erosion. Potato and vege­ table production to increase. Irrigated land (380,000 hectares) to be brought into cultivation. Production of cotton, sugar beet, tobacco, fruit and grapes are to be increased in south Kazakhstan. Live­ stock farming for meat is to be expanded, with a considerable increase in the production of mutton, wool and karakul and sheep­ skins. Water is to be supplied to 38 million hectares of pastureland, and the equipment for supplying water to existing watered pastureland is to be constructed over an area of approximately 32 million hec­

APPENDIX

143

tares. Installations on the Irtysh-Karaganda Canal are to be com­ pleted, and the construction of other major hydraulic works in northern Kazakhstan is to continue. Kirgizia Further development of non-ferrous metallurgy and the electrical equipment, light and food industries. The total volume of industrial production is to increase by approximately 60 per cent; electricity by 70 per cent; cement by 80 per cent; granulated sugar from sugar beet by 30 per cent; textiles by 190–210 per cent. New capacity to be brought into service at the thermal power station in the city of Frunze; construction of the hydro-electric station at Toktogul will continue. A factory for electric lamps will be built at Maylisay; also to be built: a factory for window glass, a cotton combine at Osh, a factory for knitted outer­ wear. The building of a factory to produce cellulose from cotton is to be put in hand. Further development of sheep breeding (fine-staple and semi­ fine-staple varieties). Increased production of sugar beet, cotton, tobacco, meat, wool, milk, fruit. The construction of the Kirov reservoir is to be completed and work is to be carried out in regul­ ating the flow of the Alamedin and Isfara rivers. An irrigation net­ work is to be constructed covering 60,000 hectares, and 200,000 hectares of pasture are to be provided with water. Tajikistan A rapid development of electricity supply is envisaged, and also of those branches of the chemical industry and non-ferrous metallurgy which consume large quantities of energy; also food and light in­ dustry. The total volume of industrial production is to increase by approximately 80 per cent; electricity by 210 per cent; domestic refrigerators by 800 per cent; textiles by 60 per cent; knitwear by 190–210 per cent; tinned goods by 100 per cent. The first sections of the Nurek hydro-electric station are to be brought into service, as well as the Vakhsh nitrogenous fertilizer plant and the first stage of an aluminium factory and the Jizhikrut mining and metallurgical combine. The construction of an electro­ chemical combine is to be expanded; a railway is to be built from Termez to Yavan via Kurgan-tyube. Constructions to be com­ pleted: a cotton combine, factories for knitted outerwear, and a

144

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

plant for producing wine. Factories are to be built for tinned food, clothing and footwear. Further increases in the production of cotton, grapes, fruit, and silkworm cocoons, with further developments in horticulture and sheep-breeding for meat and fats. The work of irrigating and bringing under cultivation of the new lands in the Yavan-Obikiyik valley is to be completed. An irrigation network is to be con­ structed, covering 90,000 hectares. Turkmenistan Further development of oil, gas, chemicals, and light industry. The total volume of industrial production is to increase by approximately 60 per cent; production of electricity by 40 per cent; cement by 150 per cent; textiles by nearly 100 per cent. The output of oil is to be raised to 15 million tons and of gas to 12 . 6–15 . 5 milliard cubic metres. New deposits of gas and oil are to be brought into service, with the supply of gas to the central regions of the USSR. A gas pipeline is to be built from Bayram-Ali to Bezmein via Ashkhabad. Con­ struction of an oil refinery and a plastics factory are to be put in hand. The reconstruction and expansion of plants in the heavy chemicals industry is to be completed. Stage I of a hydro-electric power station in the vicinity of Merv is to be brought into opera­ tion. To be built: a textile mill, an oil and fats plant, factories for footwear and clothing, and a meat processing plant. Considerable expansion of cotton is envisaged, particularly of fine-staple varieties. Karakul raising is to be further developed. New irrigated land (120,000 hectares) is to be brought into cultiva­ tion, the condition of existing irrigated land is to be improved, and 5.1 million hectares of pastureland is to be supplied with water. Land in the region of Stages I and II of the Karakum Canal is to be brought under complete cultivation and the construction of this canal is to continue. Uzbekistan Further emphasis is to be laid on cotton growing, bearing in mind that Uzbekistan has been and will remain the basic cotton growing area of the USSR. Industries to be developed: non-ferrous metal­ lurgy, gas, chemicals, light and food industries. The total volume of industrial production is to increase by approximately 60 per cent; gas by 130 per cent; electricity by 120

APPENDIX

145

per cent; mineral fertilizers by 100 per cent; refined copper by 180 per cent; silk textiles by 180 to 100 per cent; vegetable oil by 30 per cent; tinned goods by 60 per cent. There is to be a considerable increase in the production of machinery for irrigation and cotton cultivation. The nitrogenous fertilizer and artificial fibre factories at Fergana are to be completed. The lead-zinc and copper works at AltynTopkan are to be expanded, and concentrated mineral fertilizers are to be produced there. The Ingichka tungsten mine is also to be expanded. Capacity is to be brought into operation at the Uzbek refractory metals combine and at the chemical works at Navoi. A gold-mining industry is to be set up. The equipping of the power stations at Tashkent and Navoi and the Charvak hydro­ electric station is to be completed, and the first section of the Bekabad power station is to be brought into service. The supply of gas to the Urals is to increase. A gas pipeline is to be constructed from the Bukhara gas-producing region to Alma Ata via Tashkent and Frunze. A domestic refrigerator factory is to be built. Construction of the Namangan plant for the production of silk fabrics from staple fibre is to be completed. Also to be built: a cotton combine, cottonspinning, footwear and knitwear plants, two vegetable oil-extrac­ tion plants, two tinned food factories, and a plant for wine making. The production of fine-staple varieties of cotton is to expand. New irrigated land (500,000 hectares) is to be brought into cultiva­ tion. The work of irrigating and cultivating the Hungry Steppe, the Karshi Steppe and the Surkhan-Shirabad valley is to continue. Operations for the drainage and desalination of irrigated land are to be extended, and the capacity of small-scale irrigation systems is to be augmented. Water is to be supplied to 3.5 million hectares of pasture land. In the lower reaches of the Amu-Darya river, a large area is to be devoted to the cultivation of rice. Off-farm sales of vegetables, berries, fruits and grape are to be increased. Karakul and mutton sheep rearing are to be expanded. (c) T H E D I S C U S S I O N O F T H E D R A F T P L A N A T T H E

TWENTY-THIRD PARTY CONGRESS

The draft plan for the economic development of the USSR during the next five years (1966 to 1970) was one of the principal topics discussed at the Twenty-third Congress of the Communist Party, held in Moscow between March 29 and April 8, 1966. The main K

146

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

speech on this theme was that of the Prime Minister, Mr Kosygin, but most of the delegates referred to those parts of the Plan which concerned the areas which they themselves represented, and a number of points were made which go beyond the text of the draft itself. Kosygin's speech (April 5) was devoted to a general survey of the provisions of the Plan, and he made little reference to the proposals specifically concerned with those republics with which this study has been concerned; but in dealing with the development of agriculture he referred to the need for research and action in dealing with the consequences of excessive misuse of the Virgin Lands area (weed infestation, erosion); with the prospects for ex­ tending the area of irrigated land in the republics of the south, and with the proposal to erect a major new agricultural machinery plant at Pavlodar, in northern Kazakhstan. All these points were taken up in greater detail by other speakers. Kosygin also stated that new railways would be constructed from Kungrad (in the Amu-Darya delta, at the southern end of the Aral Sea) to Makat (about 70 miles north-east of Guryev) and from Guryev to Astrakhan. These new lines would complete the fourth route between European Russia and Central Asia (the three existing ones being Orenburg–Tashkent, to the north of the Aral Sea; Petropavlovsk–Karaganda–Central Asia; and the old line from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian through Ashkhabad to Tash­ kent). The length of these new lines is stated by Kosygin to be about 1,600 kilometres; since the direct distance between Kungrad and Makat is only about 700 kilometres, and between Guryev and Astrakhan about 400 kilometres, we may suppose that Kosygin's 1,600 kilometres include a line from the oilfields of the Mangyshlak Peninsula to the new Kungrad–Makat Line, which would be (at the shortest) at least 500 kilometres long. He did in fact explicitly state that the purpose of these lines was to improve communica­ tions between Mangyshlak and European Russia. The same network of railways was discussed by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Kazakhstan, Mr Beysebayev (April 6): In order to bring into service new regions for industry and agriculture which are at present uninhabited, it is essential that we should construct and improve the capacity of a number of railways which are vital to our republic (i.e. Kazakhstan). For the fully satisfactory transportation of oil and other goods of

APPENDIX

147

importance to the national economy in the Mangyshlak Penin­ sula district it is imperative that within the next two years we should increase the capacity of the lines from Mangyshlak to Makat and from Guryev to Kandagach, and that we should erect there housing and other buildings of a cultural and amenity nature. We should also consider building within the next five years railway lines from Makat to Aleksandrov Gay and from Jezkazgan to the Aral Sea, which will be of considerable econ­ omic benefit to the country as a whole. This is to some extent an example of the familiar practice of using the proposals of the Plan to ask for still more investment in one's own area; the one line from Guryev to the outside world has existed for a long time, but has probably not carried a great deal of traffic; the Mangyshlak-Makat line is new (if indeed it is yet complete and open to traffic). The new sections suggested seem to be in a differ­ ent category; if the route Mangyshlak-Makat-Guryev-Astrakhan becomes fully operational in the near future, the often-contem­ plated Line from Aleksandrov Gay (south-east of Saratov, on the Volga) to Makat would seem to duplicate it. Both routes would run through uninhabited desert for the greater part of their length. The proposed western extension of the Line from Karaganda which feeds the Jezkazgan-Karsakpai-Baykonur area would again run through uninhabited desert (it includes the 'cosmodrome' from which satellites are launched), but would form part of yet another system running parallel to the main Trans-Siberian Line. The Mangyshlak region was only one of the areas which might be expected to expand very rapidly, Mr Beysebayev continued; the next five years will see a population increase in Kazakhstan of at least 21/2 million (a faster rate of growth than in the past seven years), and most of the increase would go to the newly developing regions, Mangyshlak among them. Other sites include the north shore of Lake Balkhash (copper and iron ore) and the iron ore deposits near Turkestan. We may suppose that about one million of this increase would come from the natural increase of the existing population, where the birthrate is high both among settlers and the native population. Agricultural expansion is also expected of Kazakhstan during the next five years; the decision was taken two years ago to develop sheep-farming on the vast expanses of semi-desert which cannot be brought under the plough; little has been done as yet, said Mr

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T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Beysebayev, but here also the demand for housing will be great. In general the targets for Kazakh agriculture in the next five years are high, but not excessively grandiose: an expansion of grain produc­ tion by 50 per cent compared with the average of 1961–5—i.e. an average production equal to that of the bumper year 1958—and hence the need for care in the application of cultivation techniques in the damaged Virgin Lands areas; and corresponding increases in livestock. One may perhaps detect some difference of approach between this speech of the representative of Kazakhstan and that of the central Minister for Ferrous Metallurgy, Mr Kazanets (April 6). He stressed the importance of securing the maximum return from existing plants; two-thirds of new investment in the industry for which he was responsible would go to the expansion and recon­ struction of ten major enterprises, of which the steel works at Karaganda was one. He was, he said, somewhat worried at the slow rate of completion of newly planned enterprises, and the organiza­ tion of the building industry would have to be improved. This problem was mentioned also by a number of speakers from Central Asian republics, in connection with the construction of water-control and hydro-electric schemes on which their expan­ sion of irrigation depends. This, of course, did not prevent them from pressing for still more such schemes; both the represent­ atives of Turkmenistan (Mr Ovezov—April 2nd) and of Uzbeki­ stan (Mr Kurbanov—April 7th) emphasized the importance of building a water control system on the lower Amu-Darya (the Takhiyatash scheme), which would permit the extension of cottongrowing in this region from the present 3005,000 hectares to 500,000. This scheme, with its ancillary works, would safeguard the water supply of the lower Amu-Darya: for the upper reaches, the hydro-electric station in Tajikistan (the Nurek scheme), which has already been put in hand will help to provide a similar measure of control. It is clear that at the present stage of development only these extremely costly measures can suffice to permit the projected expansion both of agriculture and of industry. While stressing the contribution which Uzbekistan still had to make in the expansion of cotton and other irrigated crops, Mr Kurbanov drew attention to a number of industrial resources of his republic which are of particular interest. Most interesting among these is the newly re­ ported strike of gold at Muruntau, in the Kyzylkum to the north­ east of Bukhara. This is stated to be the richest deposit in the

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149

whole of the USSR, and according to Pravda (April 7, 1966) ex­ traction has already begun. Until more details are released, it is impossible to evaluate the economic effect of this discovery, and it would obviously be premature to speculate on its ultimate effect on the international position of the USSR. To some extent, a develop­ ment of this kind may have less influence on the development of Uzbekistan as such than the gas fields in the same general area, which, although a large fraction of the output is exported to other regions of the USSR, provide a valuable supplement to the rather scanty deposits of mineral fuel on which Uzbekistan would other­ wise have to rely. Of these, the Angren coalfield is the most signific­ ant, and Mr Kurbanov drew attention to the presence of large deposits of kaolin in association with this coal. This material he suggested could be used in the cement industry—and the invest­ ment programme calls for a large expansion in the building in­ dustry in Uzbekistan—instead of being dumped as waste, as has been done over the last twenty years. Indeed, Mr Kurbanov indicated that the attitude of the central authorities in allowing Uzbekistan to remain primarily a cottonproducing region, while the exported raw material was processed in other areas and then brought back to Uzbekistan as piece goods or clothing ought to be reconsidered; Uzbekistan, he said, has plenty of manpower (could this be a hint of present or potential urban unemployment?) and could become a major centre for the produc­ tion of textiles and clothing. Instead of this, per capita production of textiles has actually declined in recent years. In addition, Uzbekistan should have more science-based industries: electronics, radio, specialized machinery (e.g. agricultural machinery, chemical equipment, irrigation machinery). Two points arising out of the declared policy of the Communist Party, to raise the standard of living of the rural population and to bring them more into line with the urban population in terms of amenities, were taken up by the representative of Tajikistan (Mr Rasulov, April 1st). One of the principal difficulties facing the Tajik authorities, he said, in trying to bring about these desirable ends, is that so many of the mountain villages are small and isolated. It is, therefore, necessary to consolidate these villages into larger settlements which will be designed in conformity with local tastes and climatic conditions. The central authorities, however, send out draft plans for model villages which entirely fail to meet these re­ quirements and in any case the allocation of investments fund for

150

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

this purpose are too small. Would it not be possible for more attention to be paid at central level to the special requirements of such special areas as Tajikistan? A further point then arises: al­ though the Tajik peasant is producing an abundance of good fruit and vegetables, it has not been found possible to utilize his produce to the best advantage. Could not permission be given for the erection of small and simple plants for preserving these surpluses; the cost would be light, and the advantage to the consumer at large would be great. This is, of course, another attempt to nibble at the fringe of a major issue of Soviet policy vis-à-vis the collective farms, which have always so far been sternly discouraged from 'going into business' in just this way. The economic rationality of this kind of activity is patent; and now that relaxations on the agricultural front seem to be the order of the day, we may now see something of this kind developing more widely, particularly in the light of Mr Brezhnev's remarks on the subject of kolkhoz co-operation and rural processing plants. According to Mr Ovezov (Turkmenistan, April 2nd) the re­ sources of Turkmenistan in oil and gas are immense, and new deposits are being found all the time. The most promising region for rapid expansion is along the coast of the Caspian Sea and under its waters, and he was anxious that more equipment for underwater drilling should be made available (the same request came from Azerbaijan). In addition, like the speaker from Kazakhstan, Mr Ovezov stressed the need for improved transport facilities. A small extension of the railway was proposed: a branch line from Cheleken on the Caspian to Nebit-Dag on the Krasnovodsk-Ashkhabad line (about 60 miles) to join two major oil-producing centres of western Turkmenistan; roads across the Kara-Kum desert from Ashkhabad in the south to Tashauz near the mouth of the AmuDarya, and from Bayram-Ali in the Merv oasis to Urgench near Tashauz. These would facilitate the exception of this region for oil and gas. The final stage of the great Kara-Kum Canal should be constructed to bring water along the southern edge of the desert to the Caspian at Krasnovodsk. This, like the other major irriga­ tion works proposed in the Plan, would rapidly repay the cost of its construction. Communications and water supply, then, remain the main sub­ jects on which the representatives of Central Asia concentrate their attention. It so happened that all the representatives from Transcaucasia

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151

(Mr Mzhavanadze of Georgia, Mr Kochiniyan of Armenia, and Mr Akhundov of Azerbaijan) delivered their speeches at the Con­ gress after the report by Mr Brezhnev—which was primarily con­ cerned with the political and ideological aspects of the work of the Communist Party and before that of Mr Kosygin—which was con­ cerned with the Plan. They therefore concentrated their attention on political problems of concern to the country as a whole rather than on the economic affairs of their own areas. Mr Akhundov's speech was to some extent an exception; the progress of Azerbaijan during the past seven years had not, he admitted, been as successful as might have been desired; and indeed the prospects for the prin­ cipal industrial sector in his republic—oil—were not entirely such as to justify great optimism (we may note in passing that oil pro­ duction in Azerbaijan reached its peak in the early 'forties, and that in spite of the considerable investments that have been made since the war, the 1940 level of production has not been surpassed in any post-war year). He stated that oil deposits are known at great depths on the mainland and also under the Caspian Sea, but that their exploitation would require very large quantities of new specialized equipment. This problem of maintaining a traditional extractive industry when the reserves of the raw material have become extremely difficult to reach is one with which we are, of course, familiar in Britain (coalfields, for example); the solution in the case of Baku has been in part to diversify the economy of the region by building up such secondary industries as synthetic rubber (at Sumgait) and a wide range of mining machinery, electrical and chemical indus­ tries and so on; but the time cannot be far distant when the Soviet authorities will have to consider the position of the Baku area in comparison with the areas producing low-cost oil and gas in Siberia and elsewhere. Mr Akhundov then proceeded to another issue altogether: one which has been examined in this study at some length; namely, the question of the relations between national groups in the USSR. The matter had been mentioned in his opening speech by Mr Brezhnev, but in general terms only; the fact that the issues involved were aired in this way on such an important occasion—for the Party Congress is about the most prominent occasion in the life of the USSR—suggests that Mr Akhundov's speech may be taken as politically significant, and we therefore quote his remarks in extenso:

152

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Comrades! The friendship existing among the peoples of our country, of which Comrade Brezhnev spoke with such excellent warmth of feeling in his report, is the solid basis for the life of our State in all its manifestations. Indeed, this friendship be­ tween peoples has been a mighty instrument in the construction of socialism; and it was our shield and the weapon of our mighty victory in the struggle with our enemies. The friendship which exists among the Soviet peoples pro­ vokes the hostility of our foes; so that it is no coincidence that it is against the nationalities policy of our party—against the friendship of our peoples—that bourgeois propaganda directs its shafts. It is in this field that the remnants of the bourgeois nationalists display a particular fervour—these people who are the faithful servants of those who pay them best to slander the Soviet people, including the people of Azerbaijan. Sometimes this propaganda is carried out under the banner of'sympathy' or of 'understanding' some difficulty or other, of readiness to 'assist' in overcoming these difficulties. These gentlemen en­ thusiastically depict the 'paradise of peace between nations' which, they allege, the Revolution disrupted. When one looks at the crocodile tears of these Pharisee gentle­ men lamenting the loss of this 'Paradise', one cannot but call to mind an ancient story, which is still current among the people. The story tells how three men met one day at a crossroads and walked along together under the scorching rays of the sun, parched with thirst. They walked along for some time, but could not communicate with each other, as they could not understand each other's language. Each of them turned to his neighbours and named in his own tongue the thing which he was searching for (the three men were a Georgian, an Armenian, and an Azer­ baijani). The Georgian said: 'Tskhali'; the Armenian: 'Chur'; and the Azerbaijani: 'Su'. They began to quarrel; and we cannot say what the end of it would have been, had they not met a man who understood all three languages. He listened to them, and then led them to a cliff, where he showed them a mountain spring, from which there welled out a stream of ice-cold water, purer than tears. All three quenched their thirst and offered their thanks to this man who had resolved their dispute. He replied: 'All three of you sought the same thing; pure water, the water of happiness; but you could not find the source, for you could not understand one another.'

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Thus it was, in the past, comrades, before the Revolution, when the nations were artificially kept apart, and they were en­ couraged to attack one another—and this was a source of profit to these gentlemen who are now crying out about this so-called loss of national independence. There is truth in the popular pro­ verb which says: 'He lies in the mire and calls out: Don't splash me.' That is very true. Mr Akhandov went on to expound his parable: the helpful guide and interpreter is, of course, Lenin, under whose inspiration the Revolution brought brotherhood, etc. etc. It is clear from this that the activities of anti-Soviet emigre nationalist groups are sufficiently well known and resented by the authorities to merit castigation at the very highest and most public level; and we may perhaps be entitled to assume that there are some within the USSR itself who, without necessarily sharing the extreme views attributed by Mr Akhundov to his pharisaic croco­ diles, feel that the Soviet system does not provide enough scope for the development and expression of local views and interests. As this study has indicated, the whole of Soviet history—perhaps most of all in Transcaucasia—has been occupied with the problem of reconciling local interests with those of the centre, and the over­ riding authority of the centre has always tended to prevail. Readers of this study may perhaps be inclined to agree with the authors that neither of the extreme views is fully compatible with reality, and that the truth—which tends to be more interesting than schematic fiction—lies somewhere in between.

BRIEF SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY R. Pipes: The formation of the Soviet Union (Harvard, 1954). A. G. Park: Bolshevism in Turkestan, 1917–27 (New York, 1957). F. Kazemzadeh: The struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917–21 (New York, 1915). G. Wheeler: Racial problems in Soviet Muslim Asia, 2nd edition (Oxford, 1962). Economic Commission for Europe:Economic Bulletin for Europe,Vol. 9, No. 3, (1957): 'Regional policy in the Soviet Union: the case of Central Asia'. D. M. Lang: A modern history of Georgia (London, 1962). O. Caroe: Soviet Empire (London, 1954). W. Kolarz: Russia and her colonies (London, 1953). P. Alampiev: Likvidatsiya fakticheskovo neravenstva narodov sovetskovo vostoka ('Liquidation of the actual inequality of the peoples of the Soviet east') (Moscow, 1958). Y. Vorobyov: Vyravnivanie urovnei ekonomicheskovo razvitiya soyuznykh respublik ('Equalization of the levels of economic development of the union republics') (Moscow, 1965). Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR ('National economy of the USSR'). Statistical annual published since 1956. Statistical volumes for each republic. Statistical volumes on culture, education, health.

The heart of Soviet Central Asia: The Tashkent-Fergana Valley area

The Transcaucasian republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

INDEX

Abkhaz ASSR, 21, 32

Adjar ASSR, 21, 32

Adrianople (treaty), 20

Adyge, 21

agricultural incomes, 102–3 — prices, 58 seq., 94 seq., 122 seq. — specialization, 54

Akhundov, 151

Aktyubinsk, 49

Alamedin (R.), 143

Aleksandrov Gay, 147

Algeria, 124

Ali-Bayramli (Azerb.), 140

Alma Ata, 25, 48, 49, 142, 145

'altering nature', 61

Altyn-Topkan (Uzb.), 145

Amu-Darya (R.), 23, 145, 146, 148, 150

Angren (Uzb.), 26, 149

Ankara, 109

appointments by Party, 35

Arabic script, 67, 73

Araks (R.), 18, 140

Aral Sea, 45, 146, 147

Ashkhabad, 49, 144, 146, 150

ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist

Republic), 32

Astrakhan, 17, 146, 147

Ataturk, Kemal, in

Baku, 17, 18, 39, 47, 79, 151

Balkhash (Kazakhstan), city, 49

Balkhash, Lake, 25, 147

Bashkirs, 128

basmachi, 29

Baykonur (Kaz.), 147

Batumi, 18, 21

Bayram-Ali (Turkm.), 144, 150

Begovat (Uzb.), 49

Bekabad (Uzb.), 145

Berdyansk (Ukraine), 48

Beria, 57

Beysebayev, 146–8

Bezmein (Turkm.), 144

birth rates, 106

Botkin, 86

budgetary system, 93

Bukhara, 28, 29, 45, 67, 83, 87, 118,

128, 145, 146

capital, import of, 125

caravan trade, 27

Caspian Sea, 22

Caucasus Mountains, 17

Lesser Caucasus, 17

cement, 52

Central Asia (term), 22

Central Committee, 34

centralization, 119

Chagatai, 73

Charvak (Uzb.), 145

chauvinism, 117

chemical industry, 18, 26, 49

Chiaturi (Geo.), 17, 19

Chimkent (Kaz.), 24, 142

Chirchik (Uzb.), 48, 49

Christianity, 19

Chu (city), 25

Chu (R.), 23

citrus fruit, 18

coal, 18, 25, 26, 46

collectivization, 56, 123

Colombia, 123

colonialism, relevance of concept,

113 seq.

Communist Party, 33–5, 116 seq.

compulsory deliveries, 93, 94, 114

copper, 26

cotton, 18, 24, 26, 28, 54, 58 seq.

Dashnaktsutiun, 20

death rates, 107

decision making, 36

democratic centralism, 34

deportations, 47

doctors, 88, 89, 98, 101

dual subordination, 36

earnings, 42

economic growth, comparison with

neighbours, no seq.

education, 67 seq., 108, 115

— financing of, 83 seq.

Ekibastuz (Kaz.), 25, 142

Elbruz, Mount, 17

electricity, 41, 49

Emba (R.), 23

— oilfield, 25

158

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

employment statistics, 99

engineering, 26

Erevan (formerly Erivan), 19, 79, 139

Ermak (Kaz.), 141, 142

evacuation (wartime), 48–9

family allowances, 65

Fergana (Uzb.), 49, 145

Fergana Valley, 30

Filizchay (Azer.), 140

Five-year Plan (1966–70), Appendix

food prices, 59

French colonial policy, 124

Frunze (Kirg.), 27, 48, 143, 145

gas, natural, 26, 45, 50

Gazli (Uzb.), 26

Germans, 20

Gosstroi, 37

growth rates, 39 seq., 51, 52

Gulistan (treaty of), 20

Guryev (Kaz.), 31, 142, 146, 147

handicrafts, 39

Heroine Mothers, 65

higher education, 78 seq., 109 seq.

Hungry Steppe, 145

hydroelectricity, 19, 26, 53

immigration, 61, 126

industrial output, 40, 41

industrial workers, 41

Ingichka (Uzb.), 145

Ingure (Geo.), 141

Iran (Persia), 105–12

Ireland, 45

iron, 26, 51

irrigation, 53, 60

Irtysh (R.), 53

Irtysh-Karaganda canal, 142

Isfara (R.), 143

Islam, 19

Istanbul, 109

Ivanovo, 27, 49

Jambul (Kaz.), 142

Jetigara (Kaz.), 142

Jezkazgan (Kaz.), 26, 141, 147

Jizhikrut (Taj.), 143

Kachar (Kaz.), 142

Kandagach (Kaz.), 147

Kapchagai (Kaz.), 142

Karabakh: Mountain K. autonomous

oblast, 21

Karaganda (Kaz.), 25, 46, 49, 141, 146,

148

Kara-kalpak ASSR, 30, 32

Kara-Kirgiz AO, 30

Karakum canal, 144, 150

— desert, 150

Karatau (Kaz.), 142

Kars, 112

Karsakpai (Kaz.), 147

Karshi Steppe, 145

Kazan Tartars, 67, 128

Kazanets, 148

Kherson, 49

Khiva, 28, 29, 118

Kiev, 49

Kirov reservoir, 143

Kirovabad (Az.), 140

Kochinyan, 151

Kokand, 29

Kolkhid valley, 141

Kozlov, 34

Krasnovodsk (Turkm.), 25, 146, 150

Krushchev, 34, 38, 117

kulaks, 56

Kungrad (Uzb.), 146

Kura (R.), 18, 140

Kurbanov, 148, 149

Kurgan-tyube (Taj.), 143

Kustanay (Kaz.), 142

Kuvasay (Uzb.), 49

Kuwait, 44

Kuzbas, 25, 48

Kyzylkum, 148

Kzylorda, 31

land reform, 123

language and nationalism, 67

Leningrad, 48

Leninogorsk (Kaz.), 141

Lenkoran, 18

Lisakovski concentration plant, 141

livestock, 56, 59

location of industry, 53

Logofet, 87

Lugansk, 48

machinery industries, 47–50

Madneuli (Geo.), 141

Magnitogorsk, 47

Makat (Kaz.), 146, 147

malaria, 88

manganese, 17, 19, 20

Mangyshlak peninsula, 26, 142, 146,

147

Margelan (Uzb.), 49

INDEX maternity leave, 66

Maylisay (Kirg.), 143

medical services, 86, 108–9

— — financing of, 89

Menderes, 111, 112

mercury, 27

Merv, 25, 144, 150

Mikoyan, 39

ministries, economic, 33, 37, 38

minorities, 115

Mongols, 19

MTS (machine-tractor stations), 63

Mugan Steppe, 148

Mukhitdinov, 116

Muruntau (Uzb.), 148

Mussavat, 20

Mzhavanadze, 116, 151

Nakhichevan ASSR, 21, 32

Namakhvan (Geo.), 141

Namangan (Uzb.), 145

Naryn (R.), 23

national income, 42–4, 91

nationalism, 68, 76, 118, 121

— (and investment policy), 44

natural resources, 44

Navoi (Uzb.), 145

Nebit-Dag (Turkm.), 150

Nikolayevski concentration plant, 141

non-ferrous metals, 26, 46, 47, 49, 50,

Appendix passim Nukus (Uzb.), 88

Nurek (Taj.), 143, 148

oblast, 32

oil, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 39, 47, 50,

Appendix passim Orenburg, 146

Orlovski concentration plant, 141

Osh (Kirg.), 143

Ossetia, 21

otovarivanie zemom, 58

Ovezov, 148, 150

Pamir (Mts.), 23

Pavlodar (Kaz.), 141, 142

peasantry, 55 seq.

pensions, 65

Petropavlovsk (Kaz.), 25, 146

pigs, 56

Pirogov, 86

Podgorny, 33

population explosion, 90–1

population statistics, 21, 22, 30, 31, 41,

54, 57

159

presidium (of Supreme Soviet), 32

— (of Central Committee of CP), 34

private agriculture, 58, 63, 64, 103

Rashidov, 116

Rasulov, 149

Razdan (Arm.), 139, 140

relationship (native/immigrant), 127

religious conservatism, 67–8

Revolution: 1905—20, 28; 1917—20,

29

Rioni (R.), 18

Rostov on Don, 48, 49

Russian dominance, 116–18

Rustavi (Geo.), 46, 50, 51, 141

SAGU, 79

Samarkand, 28, 128

Saratov, 147

Sayaki (Kaz.), 141

scholasticism, 67

Scotland, 115, 125, 126

Semipalatinsk (Kaz.), 25

Sevan (Lake), 19

Seven-year Plan, 51, Appendix

Shamkhor (Azer.), 140

sheep, 24, 56

Siberia, 46

silk, 18

Sinkiang, 56, 132

Sokolovsko-Sarbai concentration

plant, 141

Soviet of Nationalities, 32

Soviet of the Union, 32

sovnarkhozy, 33, 37

Sredazbyuro, 38

Stalin, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 116, 117

State Production Committees, 37

steel, 41, 46, 49, Appendix

Sukhumi, 21

Sumgait (Azer.), 140, 151

Sumy (Ukraine), 48

Supreme Soviet (of USSR), 32

— —(of republics), 33

Surkhan-Shirabad valley (Uzb.), 145

syllabus of schools, 74

Syr-Darya (R.), 23

Takhiyatash water scheme, 148

Talysh, 128

Tashauz, 150

Tashkent, 25–8, 47–9, 54, 79–81, 86,

88, 108, 109, 128, 129, 145, 146

Tate (Arm.), 139

160

T HE SOVIET MIDDLE EAST

Tats (group in Azer.), 128

Tbilisi (formerly Tiflis), 39, 79, 141

tea, 18

teachers, 69, 75, 85, 98, 101

technical assistance, 125

Tehran, 108, 109

Temir-tau, 49

Termez (Taj.), 143

Terter (Azer.), 140

textile industry, 27, 47, 48, 49, 51,

Appendix

Tien Shan (Mts.), 23

Tishino (Kaz.), 141

Tkibuli (Geo.), 18, 141

Tkvarcheli (Geo.), 18, 141

tobacco, 18, Appendix

Toktogul (Kirg.), 143

transport, 17, 25

Trans-Siberian Railway, 25, 48, 147

Turkestan (city. Kaz.), 147

Turkestan Republic, 29

Turkey, 43, 105–12

Turkmanchai (treaty), 20

Turksib, 25

Turnover tax, 94–7

XXIII Party Congress, 145 seq.

Union Republics, 32

United States, 44

Ural (Mts.), 22

Ural (R.), 23

Urgench (Uzb.), 150

Ust-Kamenogorsk (Kaz.), 26

Vakhsh (Taj.), 143

Vartsikhe (Geo.), 141

Virgin Lands, 24, 60, 61, 148

Volga (R.), 147

wages, 98 seq., 114

water supply, 53

Wilbur, C. K., 43

women, status of, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75,

77, 82, 100

wool, 24

Yavan (Taj.), 143

Yavan-Obikiyik valley (Taj.), 144

Yugoslavia, 45, 115, 126

Zerafshan valley, 128

ZSFSR, 21