TADJIKISTAN

Grey River Argus, 2 May 1932, Page 8

TADJIKISTAN

A SOCIALIST REPUBLIC. (Millerton Correspondent). The following is one of a series written by the German writer, Egon Erwin Kisch, recording events and impressions during an extended visit to Soviet Central Asia. It goes to prove that the possibilities for rapid economic, social, and cultural development are inherent in all the so-colled backward peoples of the East. To those who say that the Indian workers and peasants could not emancipate themselves from their conditions of wretchedness and starvation, this article gives an answer:—

‘‘Look, there—and there! That building . . . this one . . !” These

were the gestures and exclamations with which the Stalinbad citizens drew our attention first to one thing and then another. That is the courthouse, and beyond the electric plant, and the tcchnicum for teachers. Away to the left was a tumble-down hut. Look—just look! All the houses of Stalinbad were like that in the old days. Formerly this was a village, called Djuschambe. On Monday there was a market day; on the other days, nothing. Sixteen versts away dwelt the Chan of. Gistar; the villagers had to pay him taxes and give him their young daughters. Over there, in the only stone and mortar building from the pre-revolu-tionary days, is the hospital. March 14, 1925, the autonomous republic of Tadjikistan was founded as a part of the Soviet Republic of Usbekistan with the village of Djuschambe as its capital. The members of the revolutionary committee arrived there by aeroplane. Building material had to be procured for the new capital. To bring it from Siberia and Archangel to the frontier of the new republic—several thousand miles distance —offered no difficulty; but from Termes to Dujschambe it was a problem. The only means of transport was by camel. Each camel carried two beams; one tied to the left flank and one to the right. They dragged them two hundred and fifty kilometres across the dusty, gritty plain, and when the caravan arrived at its journey’s end, each beam had lost 70 centimetres of its length! As for the workers hired in NijhniNovgorod and Riazan, it took them three times as long as a journey across America would have taken them to reach the capital of the new republic. In 1925 they built the post office at Djuschambe. Look, there to the left. That is the office building for the central committee of the party, and beside it an apartment house. They were both built in 1925, together with the school, and the two little buildings across the way. Many workers lost their lives for the “Bas mach” kept firing on them from ambush. These were bands of brigands, political and criminal, encouraged by the former Emir and other counter-revolutionary elements, and armed with foreign rifles. But the building went on within a ring of sentinals. Tn 1926, there was a two-storied mill, run by electricity, and a big dining hall. By that time Djuschambe owned an auto-truck. Tn 1927 came several bridges, the first peasant’s house, and the municipal baths, the commissariat of finance, the state house for the district committee, the printing plant, the G.P.U. building and five auto trucks. City building progressed. Work progressed quickly. The press building of reinforced concrete; the second house for peasants; the theatre and library; and <f Look! that is our Park!” A handsome park with Adam trees, Asiatic oaks, plane and fruit trees. Over there stands the trade commissariat, and beyond, three normal schools, Russian, Tadjik and Usbek; the Lenin monument and two houses for workers, the Red tea cottage, kindergartens, more schools, the power plant, and roads for automobiles. On May Ist, 1929, the first train reached Djuschambe, linked from then on with Moscow, Berlin and Paris. Many passenger airplanes are now parked in the flying field. In 1927-2 S the Government’s budget for construction was one and a half million roubles; in 1929, five million roubles; in 1930, thirty millions (18 millions for road building and twelve for general construction). Building was arbitrary at first, but is now proceeding according to plan. In July, 1929, a special session of the Amdshuman (the Congress of Soviets) voted that Tadjikistan should enter the U.S.S.R. as an independent republic. The nationality programme of the Soviet Union recognises “The right of all nations, whatever their racial affinities, to complete self-determina-tion, even to the point of separation”. The Tadjiks’ centuries-old dream of independence was realised. In 1926 at the Andshuman meeting a delegation of women attended, swathed in veils, and remained but a short time at the session. But the mere fact of them being there created a tremendous disturbance among the delegates. Several of the latter, outraged, rode posthaste back to their homes. At the 1929 congress, women delegates sat unveiled among the men, spoke from the platform, and no one wondered at their presence. To-day more than one thousaid women have been elected members of local assemblies. The <|ongress voted to change the name of Djuschambe to Stalinbad. “Do you see the cinema over there? That was where the Andshuman held its sessions.” Tadjikistan has taken centuries at a stride. Without having known capitalism, without having been exploited by machinery, the country has passed without transition from the yoke of

mediaeval feudalism to an era of Socialist construction; and tffrom a primitive to a collective economy. Only the aid of the great Union of Soviet Republics could work so sweeping a change. Amazing, the curve of its development. The airplane that brought the members of the government out of the sky to Duschambe was the first mechanical means of transport known to the land! It provoked great astonishment; but after all, birds fly—so why not men? And when long after the airplanes, the first waggon drawn, by horses reached the capital, it: aroused the greatest excitement andj

wonder. True it was was written in the Koran and the town dwellers had also heard that in Buehra and Samarkand litters drawn by horses, sped over the ground. And now the waggons were there. Groups gathered about each wooden shed, admiring this masterpiece of mechanical construction. The automobile by no means added to the universal astonishment. On the contrary its wheels were made of an unknown material. So natur-

ally, their manufacture is inconceivable. When an automobile came to town, the villagers brought it hay and water, quite as for ages they had brought fodder to the camel, the horse, or the ass of every newcomer. Ami they even shot at the lamps of the car, for they thought that once the eyes of the monster were shot out, it would be blind and could no longer run. In the meantime the Tadjiks learned to be chauffeurs; to drive through valleys cut by canals and along the dizzy edge of cliffs, over roads that no Berlin chauffeur could picture in his wildest dreams. And Tadjikistan counts 1,200 tractor drivers who never saw a metal ploughshare. (Even to-day the individual fields are still ploughed with the wooded “Amatch”). And the seasonal workers ride to their homes on the railroad. In short, all these marvels have become everyday affairs, accepted by everyone. But suddenly comes a new marvel, quite incomprehensible, the bicycle! Not four wheels, but two, one behind the other! The strange thing cannot stand alone; but when a man takes his seat between the wheels,! so high above them that his feet do not even touch the ground, it not only stands erect, but it runs; And the man does not fall down! “Sheitan Arba!” (the devil’s beast) they will bring it neither hay nor water! Let it hunger and thirst!” One evening we spoke to some former Basmach who had given themselves up of their own free will. They came from Afghanistan, and had sent for their families to join them. Their party leader was formerly their commanding officer—a slim man with upstanding moustache, wearing a white Russian blouse. Th? men said they had grown weary of fighting and were glad to be able to work in peace. “How much do you earn?” “Twelve roubles for every thousand bricks. Some of us only make 500 a day, but the majority 980 One of us turns out 1500. He is our best shoek-brigader! “Then you have shock brigades?” “Yes! and we are collecting money to offer a tractor to a Kolkhoz! We have already gathered together 200 roubles.” A new era in the la..d. T' - are

working at construction, making bricks for the new houses for the new capital of the new republic. “Do you see that new theatre over there? We finished the bricks. And the Bank? That, too, was our work. They pointed with outstretched arms; they bade us,look to right and left: they manifested the same joyful enthusiasm as the men who first met us in Stalingrad, an enthusiasm which at the time had seemed to us exaggerated!