The First Political Émigré of Central Asia

Mustafa Shokai (Chokai, Chokayev, Chokai-ogly) is one of the most prominent figures in Russia and his homeland, Kazakhstan, and the leader of the short-lived Turkestan Autonomy. Hailing from a Kazakh aristocratic family, Mustafa Shokai could not accept the new regime in 1918 and emigrated to France, settling there from 1921 until 1941. During the Soviet period, in the 1930s and early 1940s, he was accused of having ties and cooperating with the Nazi regime in Germany.

In recent years, however, historians conducting research in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have been proving that Mustafa Shokai’s name is free from the accusations and blame levelled against him. The monuments erected in his honour in Kazakhstan and France are a just conclusion and a high assessment of the life and service of a citizen worthy of subsequent generations’ reverence.

Exemplary Pages of a Life

M. Shokai, a statesman and public figure of Kazakhstan between 1917 and 1921, and the future leader of the Turkestan National Council, was born on December 25, 1890, in the village of Auliye-Tarangyl on the Syr Darya River, in the territory of what is now the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan, into an enlightened aristocratic family. Having received his primary education in a Russian school, Mustafa continued his studies at the Tashkent Gymnasium at the age of 12, graduating with a gold medal. In 1910, he entered the Faculty of Law at the Imperial University of St. Petersburg.

After receiving his university diploma, Mustafa Shokai served for 2 years as the Secretary of the Muslim faction of the Russian State Duma. The young politician’s most important achievement was his participation in the work of the State Duma Commission in Tashkent. As a result of this work, the head of the Commission, Alexander Kerensky (future head of the Provisional Government), presented a report on the situation of the Turkestan people and the causes of public discontent, which raised a major question in Tsarist Russia. The young lawyer Mustafa Shokai also contributed to the preparation of this document.

In 1917, a revolution broke out in the Russian Empire and changes began. After the Bolsheviks seized power, Mustafa Shokai moved to Kokand, where the Turkestan Autonomy was established. There, he first held the position of head of the foreign affairs department, and later led the autonomy. Although he initially supported the Turkestan Autonomy’s inclusion in Soviet Russia, Mustafa Shokai refused to cooperate with the Bolshevik regime after the bloody massacre organized by the “Reds” began, and he went into hiding in Tashkent. It was there that he met his future wife, Maria Gorina, an aristocrat from St. Petersburg.

Hiding from Bolshevik persecution, Mustafa Shokai lived in Tiflis (Tbilisi) from the spring of 1919 until February 1921, engaging in publicistic activity. However, after the Bolsheviks overthrew the democratic republics of Transcaucasia, it became clear that emigration was the right decision for the politician.

A Noble Citizen Cannot Be Slandered

The twenty years Mustafa Shokai spent in emigration in France were so remarkable that those who sought to tarnish his image in the media distorted many of the events and activities he participated in. They particularly tried to completely transform and misrepresent Mustafa Shokai’s actions in the late 30s and early 40s. False researchers even attributed to him the idea of forming and practically implementing the Turkestan Legion within the Wehrmacht forces.

However, the attacks by those hostile to the political émigré can be easily refuted by relying on the following documents: Hitler issued the order to create the Turkestan Legion on December 22, 1941, while Mustafa Shokai, who refused to cooperate with the fascists, died on December 27, 1941 (according to some sources, he was poisoned).

The rumours about Shokai collaborating with the Nazis and forming the Turkestan Legion were refuted in the early 2000s by Colonel Amirkhan Bakirov of the USSR State Security Committee, who headed the special commission on rehabilitation issues of the Kyzylorda Regional Department of the National Security Committee.

He noted the following in the “AiF-Kazakhstan” publication on April 28, 2004: “In addition to all the material about Mustafa Shokai in the open press, I also analyzed the 40-volume criminal case in the archive of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which accuses him of ‘treason against the Motherland and aiding the fascists.’ This charge is based on the organization of the Turkestan Legion. In my opinion, he did not establish the tragically recognized Turkestan National Committee and the Turkestan Legion, nor did he send them to fight the Red Army. Whatever is said about him, Shokai had no connection with the Turkestan Legion and Committee in 1941-1944.”

Mustafa Shokai and the Russian Federation

The life and work of Shokai, as narrated by Soviet-era historians, resembled the actions of those who attempted to specially commission the blackening of a great figure. The widespread false information seems to have been processed by several “authors” according to all the rules of defamation, meaning they took one piece of archival data, distorted the truth, and skillfully embellished it with lies.

Shokai never, in any archival document, called for the defeat of the Soviet Union by the fascists. Mustafa Shokai, who was educated in St. Petersburg and spoke Russian and several European languages fluently, linked the future of Kazakhstan with the neighbouring Russian state.

As historians of independent Kazakhstan who have studied Mustafa Shokai’s activities in recent years have established, in his speech at the IV Extraordinary Congress of Regional Muslims in Kokand, where the Turkestan Autonomy was declared on November 27, 1917, Mustafa Shokai said: “In the current situation, it is not easy to create a full-fledged state. There are no qualified personnel, no experience, and no armed forces to protect the future autonomy. Although Russia is currently weak, it is much stronger than us. We must live in friendship and peace with Russia. The geographical location itself compels this.”

As subsequent years showed, including the period after the collapse of the USSR, Kazakhstan’s alliance and friendship with Russia remained unshakably strong.

In Conclusion

It is known that in October 2020, a republican working group was established in Uzbekistan to study the lives and circumstances of the victims of Soviet-era repression and to immortalize their names. The commission’s work lasted more than half a year, and at the end of August 2021, the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan announced its decision, in an open session, to rehabilitate Qurbashi Ibrahim Bek, the leader of the Basmachi movement in Central Asia. Prior to this decision by the Supreme Court of independent Uzbekistan, the name of the leader of the Basmachi movement in the territory of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan during the Soviet era was equated with the enemies of the Soviet government.

“The complex and contradictory history of the peoples of Central Asia is reflected in the fate of this figure. In Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, Ibrahim Bek is for some a hated bandit, a cruel and uneducated villain. While others speak of him with great pride, extolling his name as a national hero,” wrote historian Kamoluddin Abdulloev.

The process of rehabilitating victims of political repression is currently underway in Kazakhstan as well. As Kamoluddin Abdulloev concluded, the leader of the national liberation movement of Kazakhstan, Mustafa Shokai, can be called the first political émigré of Central Asia. There is no doubt that future history textbooks published in independent Kazakhstan will refer to him precisely in this way.

Andrey ZAKHVATOV, Political Scientist, Publicist (Russia)