A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

212 A history of Inner Asia
Central Asia.This authority was to be expressed by the local government,
the Turkestan Council of People’s Commissars (Turkestanskiy
Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, usually shortened as Turksovnarkom).
Concurrently with this congress, the Third Congress of Central Asian
Muslims was meeting in Tashkent.Some of the participants demanded
autonomy, but Shir Ali Lapin, who had presided over the conference,
proposed to the Soviets that a Russian–Turkestanian coalition government
be formed.These demands and proposals were rejected, and F.I.
Kolesov, the chairman of the Turksovnarkom, issued the following
statement:
At the present time we cannot permit the admission of Muslims into the higher
organs of the regional revolutionary authority, because the attitude of the
native population toward the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’
Deputies is quite uncertain, and because the indigenous population lacks proletarian
organizations which the [Bolshevik] faction could welcome into the
organs of the higher government.
These events preceded by a few days the proclamation of the central
government in Petrograd to the Muslims of Russia.Subsequent developments
proved that it would be the spirit of the Tashkent statement,
not that of the Petrograd proclamation, which would always determine
the Soviet government’s treatment of the Muslims of Russia.It is true,
however, that the contradiction between the two attitudes was glossed
over by a wording in the Petrograd proclamation that had far-reaching
consequences: the appeal was addressed to all the workers (trudyashchiesya,
perhaps more accurately translated as toilers) of the Muslim
world, thus to its proletariat in Marxist terminology.Although it reiterated
the right of nations to self-determination, its implicit exclusion of
the bourgeoisie gave the Soviet regime a tactical advantage which it subsequently
used to perfection: for in Central Asia – just as in other Muslim
countries of the time – there was no native industrial working class, and
most indigenous leaders came from the bourgeoisie or from the religious
establishment.
Another significant feature of the Petrograd proclamation was its universality:
it addressed itself to all Muslims, not just to those under
Russian rule.It revealed how totally subordinated Central Asia was to
the concept of a world revolution, and how automatic was the assumption
that the men who now held power in Russia should be accepted as
the unquestioned leaders of that revolution.To them, Turkestan was
more a stepping stone than an area whose problems and wishes might
be met for their own sake.Its role as an important pawn in a gigantic