A Fiery Publicist

Destiny did not deprive the leaders of the Alash national liberation movement of either outstanding organisational talent or powerful creative ability. Like two sides of the same coin, these qualities were fully embodied in Mustafa Shokay as well. They appeared particularly vividly in journalism – a genre that by its very nature demands inner fire and civic passion. His articles, which brought him international recognition, were distinguished by his unfailing sense of and accurate reflection of the social atmosphere of the Soviet era, by the depth and richness of their content, and by the exceptional boldness and sharpness of his judgments.

After the Soviet authorities liquidated the Turkestan autonomy and forced its leader, Mustafa Shokay, to leave his homeland, he spent about two years in Georgia between 1919 and 1920. When the Bolsheviks seized power there as well, he was forced to move to Turkey and finally, in May 1921, reached France. Having settled in Paris, he began to look for a new arena of struggle for the freedom and independence of, first of all, Turkestan, and then of the entire Turkic world. From that moment on, his main weapon became the pen; he turned journalism into his principal political instrument.

Back in Tashkent, he had been one of the founders and the first editor of the newspaper Birlik tuı (“Banner of Unity”), which began publication in June 1917 and was shut down in mid-April 1918. In addition, on the initiative of the National Centre of the Muslims of the Turkestan region, another newspaper, Uluğ Türkistan (“Great Turkestan”), began to appear in April 1917; he joined its editorial board and took an active part in its work. All this became the first clear steps revealing the organisational and journalistic talents of Mustafa Shokay.

On the pages of these publications, many of his articles were printed on the unity of the Turkic peoples, on the national policy of the newly established Soviet government, on the land question, freedom and the rights of the indigenous population. Thus, in the issue of Birlik tuı dated 4 July 1917, he summed up his impressions of the All-Russian Muslim Congress held from 1 to 12 May 1917. And in issue No. 14 of 8 November 1917, together with Mirzhakyp Dulatuly, he published an article entitled “Алаш ұранды қазаққа!” (“To the Kazakhs under the banner of Alash!”), where he focused on the tragic situation of Kazakh and Kyrgyz refugees in Turkestan, describing their mass death, their transformation into exiles and the fact that entire groups of people were forced to migrate to China.

This initial experience grew significantly in 1919–1920, when Mustafa Shokay was in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. He actively cooperated with several local publications at once and personally took part in producing newspapers and journals. Around 60 of his articles were published in that period.

In the early years of his life in exile in Paris (1921–1922), Mustafa Shokay, remaining a staunch fighter and fiery publicist, contributed to such periodicals as Volya Rossii (“Will of Russia”), Slovo (“The Word”), Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (“Socialist Herald”), Le Temps, Orient et Occident, as well as to the press organs associated with the former leaders of the Russian Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky and P.N. Milyukov, whom he had known well since his Petersburg days. His articles attracted the attention of a wide readership, standing out for their vivid imagery, expressive style and striking characterisations, both positive and sharply critical.

His first article, “Famine in Kirghizia”, was published on 26 November 1921 in P.N. Milyukov’s newspaper Poslednie novosti (“The Latest News”). However, an analysis of the material shows that misunderstandings with the Russian democratic leaders began quite early. In an editorial in Poslednie novosti dated 26 December 1922, a false report was printed claiming that on 22 December, in Lausanne (Switzerland), Mustafa Shokay allegedly met and consulted with Ismet Pasha and supposedly spoke about the desirability of Turkish troops moving into Transcaucasia bypassing Georgia and covering Armenia.

Only the third letter from Mustafa Shokay to the editor-in-chief in connection with this slander was published. In it he stressed that no such consultations with Ismet Pasha had taken place, and that if a conversation had happened, he would have advised him to steer well clear of Transcaucasia [1, p. 357].

Regular cooperation with the newspapers of A.F. Kerensky and P.N. Milyukov mainly fell on the period from April 1923 to late 1924. Over these 19 months around 50 articles were published. A couple of examples may illustrate this. In issue No. 1287 of Poslednie novosti, dated 5 July 1924, his article “In the Laboratory of the National Question (from the Turkestani experience)” appeared. In it, Mustafa Shokay pointed out that the Bolsheviks called Turkestan “the laboratory of the national question” within the RSFSR, but in reality the situation was entirely different: unemployment and famine reigned everywhere, and he provided concrete facts to prove this [1, pp. 533–538].

The article “Linking Up with the Poor of Turkestan”, published in the same paper on 28 January 1925, written in a strongly journalistic style, described the life of village settlements (kishlaks) in the early years of Soviet power. Relying on materials from the local press, the author presented concrete data on population numbers, tax burdens and so on. He showed the “care” of the authorities and the “Leninist attention to the countryside” by describing how Muslims who could not pay their meat tax were forced by officials to catch and slaughter wild pigs in the reed beds. Having painted the situation in this way, the author ended the article with a rhetorical question: can one, in the face of all this, seriously speak of the “benefits of the Great October Revolution” for Turkestan? [2, p. 39].

Naturally, the content of these historical-journalistic works, in which Mustafa Shokay ruthlessly criticised Bolshevik policy throughout the Soviet space, could not fail to reach Moscow. In a letter dated 29 May 1925 to members of the Bureau of the Kyrgyz (Kazakh) Regional Committee of the RCP(b), the head of the Soviet state, J. Stalin, referring to the “not unknown in the White Guard press” Mustafa Shokay, wrote:

“We did not take power in order to entrust government and the political and ideological education of youth to non-party bourgeois intellectuals. This struggle must be resolved completely and without residue in favour of the communists. Otherwise, there is every possibility that in Kyrgyzstan (Kazakhstan — author) the Shokayists will gain the upper hand. And that would be tantamount to the ideological and political collapse of communism in Kyrgyzstan (Kazakhstan).” [3, pp. 606–607].

After this, Soviet ideologists began furiously branding Mustafa Shokay as a “traitor”, “renegade”, “counter-revolutionary”, “genuine pan-Turkist” and “pan-Islamist”. His compatriots were strictly forbidden not only to study his activities and his works, but even to mention his name.

Despite a whole series of contradictions and difficulties, around 150 of his articles appeared in the aforementioned newspapers between 1921 and 1927. Mustafa Shokay had two main reasons for taking this path. The first was the need to earn a living; the second was the absence of any other platform for political struggle.

However, over time he realised that Russian democracy could not become a reliable ally of the national movement of Turkestan. This conclusion was especially shaped by the negative attitude of A.F. Kerensky towards the peoples of Turkestan. Understanding that the interests of Turkestan could be properly reflected only in an independent organ of the press, Mustafa Shokay came to the idea of creating a publication of the Turkestan National Union (TNU). Here he was helped by the “Prometheus” movement, which arose in 1926 out of concepts put forward by Polish leader J. Piłsudski and ceased to exist at the beginning of the Second World War.

This is clearly visible in his correspondence with representatives of the Polish state, including Tadeusz Ludwik Hołówko, who headed the Eastern Department of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1927–1930. In the first letters, dated 1926, questions of salary, the new publication, its financing, goals, place of publication, organisational difficulties and so on were discussed in detail.

As a result, by decision of the TNU, the journal Yeni Türkistan (“New Turkestan”) was launched. It was published in Istanbul from June 1927 to September 1931 [4, p. 262]. Mustafa Shokay exerted all his efforts and used his personal connections and acquaintances to bring this journal into being. In the article “Yeni Türkistan”, he wrote:

“We are reviving the word ‘Turkestan’ as a symbol of national unity, of national-state unity, as a common house for Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Bashkirs, Turkmens, Tajiks — for all those whom they have now artificially divided by national-state borders — as a cultural centre for all of them.” [2, p. 294].

The journal aimed to strengthen linguistic and spiritual unity between the peoples of Turkestan and Turkey. Its main task was to acquaint readers with the life of the Turkestani émigrés, their aims and aspirations, and to inform the émigrés themselves about the national liberation struggle in Turkestan, its socio-economic and political situation, and about Turkic culture.

Articles such as “The Ideological and Practical Aspects of Bolshevik National Policy in Turkestan”, “The Policy of Famine of the Soviets in Turkestan”, “Famine Is Approaching Turkestan”, “On the National Question”, “On the State of Turan” and others played an important role in spreading the idea of national liberation in Turkestan and of Turkism, in promoting the spiritual unity of the Turkic peoples, and were valuable in that they exposed the true face of Soviet ideology.

A special chapter in Mustafa Shokay’s émigré activity was his brilliant command of the French language, the official language of France. In French he wrote more than 130 articles. Naturally, their central theme was a harsh critique of Soviet policy throughout the USSR.

In an article entitled “Soviet Policy in the East and the National Question in Russia”, published in issue No. 4 of Orient et Occident in 1922, Mustafa Shokay pointed out that Soviet policy in the East had several concrete aims: to secure the support of Eastern countries in order to use them in the struggle against the West; to sovietise them for the sake of a world social revolution; and by all means to hinder the rapprochement between East and West.

He noted that even the mere fact that the Turkish press had stopped publishing harsh attacks on France and England was seen by the Bolsheviks as a serious threat. The East was of interest to the Soviet government only as a tool for destroying world capitalism [1, pp. 341–352].

In a report-document entitled “The Aims and Direction of the National Movement in Turkestan”, preserved in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mustafa Shokay analysed Russian policy and the nature of the national movement in Turkestan.

Turkestan proclaimed itself an autonomy in November 1917, while formally maintaining state ties with Russia. At a time when neighbouring countries, sharing borders, language and religion with Russia, were breaking away completely, the preservation of these ties by Turkestan was explained by two reasons.

Firstly, the weakness of Turkestan itself and the very real possibility that Russian armed forces, in which long-standing hostility towards Muslims was strong, could easily conquer it at any moment. Secondly, the desire to prevent democratic nationalism from being transformed into pseudo-Islamic chauvinism under the influence of pan-Islamists.

Trying to protect themselves from the pan-Islamists, the nationalists of Turkestan fell into the trap of the Bolsheviks. The latter turned Turkestan into a springboard for military and ideological propaganda to the East. This severely undermined the region’s socio-economic position. In response, the national movement strengthened: its representatives more insistently demanded freedom and independence for Turkestan, and they were supported by the bulk of the population, including even some Muslim communists. The goal of the nationalists was to prevent the Soviets from using Turkestan as their main weapon and “showcase” for influencing the East [1, pp. 358–361].

The main goal of all Mustafa Shokay’s political and creative work was the idea of unity and integrity of the Turkic peoples. Without this, he firmly believed, genuine freedom and independence were impossible.

In the article “Bolshevism and the Turkic People”, published in issue No. 28 of the journal Prometey in 1929, he analysed how Buddhism and Islam had come into the lives of the Turkic peoples and how the new calamity — Bolshevism — followed them. He wrote that in earlier times the Turks often raided China, keeping the “Celestial Empire” in fear, and that the Chinese, tired of these constant threats, sent Buddhist missionaries to preach among the Turks.

The appearance of Buddhism in Central Asia greatly influenced social life and weakened the Turkic tribes, which China took advantage of. Several centuries spent under the influence of Buddhism led the Turks into deep decline; only by abandoning this religion and returning to their old faith could they once again grow strong.

Yet this period of flourishing did not last long: the Turks were conquered by the Arabs, who brought Islam. The Arabs were unable to impose their language and culture fully upon the Turks, but Islam spread widely and once again changed the worldview of the Turkic peoples. Then came an even more terrible trial — Bolshevism.

For ten years the Russians had been carrying out various reforms that served only their own interests and brought no benefit to the Turkic population. They reinterpreted Marxism in their own way and turned it into Bolshevism. Having seized the land and language of the Turks, the Bolsheviks now set about destroying the nations themselves. At the same time, the original Marxist doctrine on which they claimed to base themselves did not contain any idea of “abolishing nations” as such [5, pp. 70–74].

In exile, Mustafa Shokay also published five or six pieces in English. His interest in this language seems to have grown after his six or seven trips to Great Britain between 1924 and 1933.

For example, in 1928 his article “The Basmachi Movement in Turkestan” appeared in The Asiatic Review. In the editorial foreword “The Inner East” the journal wrote:

“In Western Europe, there is still very little information on the crucial aspects of the protracted struggle of the Muslim populations of the former Russian Empire against the rule of the Soviet Union. …In this issue we have the privilege of including the report of Mr. Shokai, President of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Turkestan, elected by the Extraordinary Congress of Muslims of Turkestan in November 1917. Mr. Shokai’s special knowledge and authority enable him to write with exceptional competence, and his survey of the events that have taken place in Turkestan over the last ten years is both well-documented and objective.” [2, p. 417].

The transfer of the work of the Turkestan National Union to Europe required, alongside Yeni Türkistan, the creation of a new publication. Mustafa Shokay prepared for this very seriously. In a letter dated 2 November 1926 to an unknown addressee (judging by its content, probably Hołówko), he wrote about the future journal:

“If this project can be realised, its publication will require my full commitment. I attach great importance to this… We are only beginning to search for practical paths of national struggle. We do not expect immediate results and do not promise any. But from the standpoint of long-term state interests, our work is already useful.” [6, pp. 40–41].

As a result of this strenuous effort, the first issue of the journal Yash Turkistan (“Young Turkestan”) appeared in Berlin in December 1929. It was published in a Turkic-Chagatai language using Arabic script and financed by the Prometheus Fund. The volume of each issue was about 40 pages.

Already in the very first issue, one could see how carefully its content and structure had been thought out. In the section “Siyasat” (“Politics”) were printed the programmatic articles of editor Mustafa Shokay — “Bizding jol” (“Our Path”) and “From the Editorial Board of Yash Turkistan”. In the “Literature” section, poems by Magzhan Zhumabaev appeared. In the “News” section, messages from Turkestan were published.

Although the journal was relatively small in volume, up to August 1939 — always raising high the banner of freedom and independence of the Turkic peoples — Yash Turkistan became the central work of Mustafa Shokay’s life and gave his creativity a special strength and depth.

Realising that Turkestan could not count on “direct assistance” from European states, he wrote:

“If we succeed, without distorting its essence and without weakening its force, in putting forward on the pages of Yash Turkistan the demands of our people for national independence, then we shall at least partially fulfil that sacred and extremely heavy duty which rests upon all of us.” [7, p. 21].

Further in the article he not only raises high the ideal of freedom and independence, but also clearly formulates the paths to achieving them, along with concrete political goals and tasks.

Analysing the Bolshevik formula that “the Turkestan republics are national in form and proletarian in content”, he stressed:

“Our ideal is to achieve in Turkestan such a state structure that will be national both in form and in content. Only then will our people become the true master of their land.” [7, p. 22].

In Yash Turkistan more than 220 articles by Mustafa Shokay were published. In them he subjected to comprehensive and severe exposure the colonial policy of the Russian government, the problems arising from this policy, the national liberation uprising of 1916, the February and October revolutions of 1917, the Alash movement, the Turkestan autonomy, the basmachi movement, and the crude blunders of the Bolsheviks in the national regions.

In the article “From the History of National Movements in Russian-Enslaved Turkestan. Unconquerable Nationalism”, as well as in other works such as “Turkestanis — Those Who Have Not Bowed Their Heads”, “On the National Question” and so forth, he emphasised that although there were many colonies in the world, history had not yet seen such a brutal national policy as the one to which Turkestan was subjected by tsarist Russia and the Bolshevik regime.

The aspiration of Turkestan to secede from Russia and live independently had been crushed by many years of bloody wars, while the Bolsheviks presented their actions as “liberation of non-Russian peoples” and the “humane mission” of the Russian nation under the guidance of the “prophet Lenin”. The article concludes by asserting that all the cultural and spiritual achievements of the people are the result of the national movement, that “it is precisely nationalism that is the soul and heart of our people” [7, p. 49].

On this background, his ideas sound especially relevant for the present day as well.

Over thirty years of independence, Kazakhstan has, unfortunately, still not given a truly positive meaning to the concept of “nationalism”, while processes of denationalisation and erosion of traditional values persist. We see every day how our age-old customs and moral norms are changing and being eroded.

It is enough to recall that of nearly 7,000 schools in the country only about 54 percent are with Kazakh as the language of instruction, and in the capital, out of 91 schools only 34 are Kazakh schools, while the number of “mixed” schools remains high. Life shows that children who receive all their education only in Russian schools often become distant from their own parents in spirit.

In this context it is worth recalling Mustafa Shokay’s remark that “the non-Russian intellectuals who went through the Russian school and Russian culture were unable to use their knowledge in the interests of their own people; instead, they replenished the ranks of the Russian intelligentsia and served to strengthen the Russian statehood” [8, p. 243].

In his article “Reply to the Leninists of Turkestan”, published in issues No. 5 and 6 of Yash Turkistan in 1930, Mustafa Shokay wrote that the national movement in Turkestan had two causes. First, that the people of Turkestan are a nation different from the Russians; second, that the interests of the national economy of Turkestan objectively contradict those of Russia.

He noted that the movement was gaining strength, while the Bolsheviks, in response, were intensifying their slanderous attacks on national revolutionaries. From that time on, everyone who fought for the independence of Turkestan was labelled “Shokayists” by Soviet propaganda. For example, in Nabi Kadyruly’s book The Importance and Tasks of the Press there are harsh passages about “Shokayists”, and the “achievements” of Bolshevik power in the economy and culture of Turkestan are presented in a purely propagandistic light [7, pp. 62–70].

In the article “Turkestanis — Those Who Have Not Bowed Their Heads”, dated 18 February 1930, Mustafa Shokay analysed the impressions of American journalist Lindsay Hobson from his trip to Turkestan, as presented in a short note entitled “The Soviets Have Surrounded Turkestan with a Red Wall”, published in the Paris newspaper Paris-Midi.

This was, essentially, the only Western journalist of that era who gave a comparatively objective picture of what was happening in Turkestan. Already the title of the article seemed like a revelation. According to Mustafa Shokay, the author looked at Turkestan not through “coloured glasses” but with his own eyes. He wrote about how the Russians had conquered Turkestan at the end of the previous century, how, together with them, Bolshevik power had come and sought to destroy the national traditions of the local population, and about the resistance this provoked.

Mustafa Shokay highly valued just a few lines of that note, believing that they were often more valuable than long multi-page descriptions. He emphasised: “Turkestan never voluntarily put on the Russian yoke”; “Turkestanis live under communist oppression but do not bow their heads.”

Concluding the article, he wrote: “Merely knowing one’s rights is, of course, not enough. One must know how to fight for them. And we must always be ready, when necessary, to defend our rights through struggle” [7, pp. 271–274].

In the article “On the Question of Inter-Ethnic Relations in Turkestan (from Soviet Materials)”, initially published in Prometey and later translated into Russian and printed in issues No. 2–3 of the journal Gortsy Kavkaza (“Highlanders of the Caucasus”) for 1929 (pp. 22–35), Mustafa Shokay wrote in a letter to the editors that he wished once again to return to the problem of inter-ethnic relations in Turkestan, as he was increasingly confronted with facts that forced him to rethink national egoism and national peculiarities of the Russians.

“Our former leaders sincerely believed in the absence of national egoism among the Russian people and passed this belief on to us, and we — to the broad masses. February was replaced by October. The people did not notice the departure of the Provisional Government, but they also do not show trust in Soviet power.

The reason is that the driving force of the revolution in Turkestan were the soldiers — the main support of the old colonial monarchy. Under the tsarist regime, they did whatever they wanted with the local population; in the revolutionary years their power became even more boundless. Russian workers, compared with the indigenous population, also held a privileged position under tsarism and were infected with the imperialist colonial spirit. Russian peasant settlers considered the kishlaks and auls their own domain.”

Against this background, Mustafa Shokay characterises all three “revolutionary forces” in Turkestan. He notes that in the period of so-called “war communism” every Soviet institution destroyed everything that stood in the way of its “revolutionary construction”, and the central authorities did not bear responsibility for this.

Twenty years after the revolution, at a time when Soviet power was loudly propagating “friendship of the peoples”, real life in Turkestan looked quite different, which he convincingly demonstrated, drawing on materials from Soviet newspapers themselves [5, pp. 63–69].

Mustafa Shokay had a keen sense of the problems posed by his time and an exceptional ability to raise them in the press promptly and accurately. He was one of the first to discern the cult of Stalin’s personality. His articles “The Basic Law of the Soviets” and “Around the New Basic Law of the USSR” provide ample evidence of this.

The first article, which begins with a remark by Bismarck, “Where the administration has lost its conscience, the law is of no use”, shows how the slogan “Long live Comrade Stalin!” gradually turns into a political instrument. The second shows how the Communist Party transforms the “personality of Stalin” into an object of worship and a means of ideological pressure.

History shows that in any country the cult of one man’s power leads to the degradation of society. The Soviet empire, which sought to build socialism across the globe, ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.

Such, in general terms, are the main features of Mustafa Shokay’s journalistic legacy — rooted in reliable documents and facts, imbued with philosophical depth, written in a vivid and expressive language.

It is therefore not surprising that, summing up the results of the five years of Yash Turkistan (in 1934), the author wrote:

“Today, there is not a single centre of Turkestani emigration where Yash Turkistan is not read. The letters we receive from Arab countries, from Turkey, Persia, India, Afghanistan, China, the Far East and other regions serve as clear evidence of the journal’s wide circulation and high prestige” [9, p. 44].

Materials on subscribers indicate that more than twenty public organisations and private individuals in various countries received the journal; in total, 885 copies were distributed to 19 states, as well as to Moscow, Tiflis, Baku and Turkestan [10, pp. 169–171].

To summarise, we can say that the last major project most fully revealing the journalistic, editorial and organisational talent of Mustafa Shokay was the journal Yash Turkistan.

It is symbolic that all the publications he helped to initiate — from Uluğ Türkistan to Yeni Türkistan, Yash Turkistan and Türkistan — are united by a single name. This is no coincidence, but rather a reflection of his encyclopaedic knowledge, political foresight and Turkist spirit, entirely devoted to serving the independence of the Turkic peoples.

Highlighting these remarkable examples of émigré journalism, I would like to underline several points.

First, all the mentioned publications were largely created on the initiative of Mustafa Shokay himself, as confirmed by his correspondence with Polish representatives.

Second, although they were financed by foreign states, these journals did not become their mouthpieces: they expressed the pains and hopes primarily of the peoples of Turkestan and of the Turkic world as a whole.

Third, they consistently defended the idea of a common state structure for the Turkic peoples, their unity and integrity, and fought to strengthen national spirit and to shape political and social consciousness.

Fourth, despite the difficulties associated with being published abroad and the enormous challenges of obtaining reliable information from the USSR, the authors managed to show in a profound and sharp way the colonial essence of Soviet policy towards non-Russian peoples.

Even within the limited space of a single article, only briefly touching upon all this, I, too, would like to join those who consider Mustafa Shokay a founder of Kazakh émigré journalism. His rich creative legacy provides compelling evidence for this.

Äbdizhälel BÄKIR
Doctor of Political Science,
Professor at Korkyt Ata Kyzylorda University,
Scientific Director of the Mustafa Shokay Research Centre