From the Ashes by Akbar Tursunov Translated by |  "
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My eyes dried today, for crying over yesterday, -Akhavan Sales | |
From the Ashes by Akbar Tursunov Translated by | "
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My eyes dried today, for crying over yesterday, -Akhavan Sales | |
The twentieth century has witnessed its share of bloody social revolutions in Europe and Asia. Each time, revolutionaries declared war on the ancient institutions that, they claimed, had fostered the poverty, and they promised to lay the foundation for a palace of happiness. But although the majority of revolutions have succeeded, none has achieved its goal: The ancient institutions have been turned into ashes, but no palaces of hope or monuments to happiness appear on the horizon. At best, some bleak, ephemeral buildings remain.
Each time, intellectuals furthered the call to revolution and heralded its advance; each time, ironically, they themselves became the first sacrifices at the altar of revolution--see the workings of time and tide! Ream after ream, the cherished writings of those innocent souls were turned to ashes, along with their bodies and dreams. It is, it seems, an element of human nature to gather any pieces that may have survived and mastermind yet another revolution.
Perhaps the most pretentious of world revolutions was the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. Espousing an all-knowing and all-embracing ideology, the Bolsheviks aspired to place themselves at the forefront of world communism. What followed was an intense barrage of Communist propaganda that persuaded people, even the educated and civilized, that the new union was the epitome of human social progress. This notion of social progress gave rise to Stalin's "Progressive Socialism," and that in turn underlay Brezhnev's "Ideal Future Society." The world was expected to view this progress with envy and imitate it with a longing heart. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that the Soviet people themselves believed in the system. They believed that the "Soviet Order" was just, trustworthy, wise, pure, and sincere. Otherwise, why would generations have endeavored to destroy the foundations of tyrannical capitalism to establish communism? Why would generations have destined themselves for doom?
Then change occurred and altered our ways. Six years of Mikhail Gorbachev's program of perestroika and glasnost' (1985-1991) opened our eyes not only to see our past but to be ashamed of it. So much for a "shining future"!
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Mirza Sirraj, one of the wise and learned sons of Tajikistan, traveled to Europe. Upon his return, this enlightened and patriotic man published an interesting travelogue. Strolling along the clean and beautiful avenues of Paris and recalling his impoverished country and ignorant compatriots, the Tajik traveler and thinker pondered, "Observe to what heights science and wealth have elevated the Europeans and to what depths our illiteracy and laziness have reduced us, the people of Asia. Observe their expansive horizons in life and our limitations and servility! When the prophet spoke of cleanliness as an article of faith, whom did he have in mind? We, too, are human beings . . . We, too, have desire . . . for prosperous cities with beautiful buildings. Pity us ... Pity ..."
Reading these lines from Tuhaf-i Ahl-i Bukhara, I am filled with sorrow. The tomorrow that our intellectuals anticipated with such zeal at the beginning of the century has not yet dawned by the close of the century. What has made the difference?
During their long history, the Tajiks have experienced a number of assaults on their national identity, so much so that European historians have wondered at the resiliency of their ancestors. "How have these people," they marvel, "survived the triple calamity of the Mongols (thirteenth century), Tamerlane (fourteenth century), and Shiban Khan and his descendants (sixteenth century on)?" Compared to those attacks, the tsarist Russian takeover of the fifteenth century was the least dangerous; but in the process of colonialization, the Russian tsar killed so many that scales cannot measure their loss. The heir to the tsarist regime, the Soviet Union, lasted for just a lifetime. But during those seventy years it committed atrocities the likes of which the Tajiks' seven-hundred-year history had not previously witnessed. In seventy years, our language all but vanished, and our culture was severed from its roots. The Russians altered everything from the alphabet--which was changed from Arabic to Cyrillic--to the calendar. We were separated from neighbors who shared our Russian language and culture, Iran and the Tajik minority in Afghanistan, as if by the Great Wall of China. Our country was transformed into merely a source of raw materials, our diverse agriculture was reduced to cotton and tobacco monocultures, our land was destroyed, and our environment poisoned. The damage to our rural areas cannot be recompensed.
However, let us not be thankless. The Tajiks did not stagnate for seventy years. They did try to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Unfortunately, when the future of the former Soviet republics was being decided, their luck ran out. At that moment, those who lacked all gained all, and the Tajiks, who had everything, lost everything.
That statement may sound like a riddle, but it is really quite simple. I am referring to the fact that in 1924, Moscow established the national-administrative divisions that determined the territorial rights of the peoples of Soviet Central Asia.
It began with Stalin's politically motivated decision to divide and thus weaken the region of Turkistan. Moscow recognized Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan as republics. Tajikistan, however, was initially classified as an autonomous republic under the auspices of Uzbekistan and only later as an independent republic. The national-administrative divisions of 1924 reduced Tajik territory, reassigning much of Tajikistan's most valuable land to Uzbekistan. As a result, 93 percent of the new republic, "Red Tajikistan," was mountainous, and 75 percent of its inhabitants were farmers. The new divisions allowed the Uzbeks to keep the cities of Samarqand and Bukhara, Tajikistan's ancient cultural centers, leaving the Tajiks stripped of their historic centers of cosmopolitan trade, intellectual life, and civilization.
The Tajiks were further isolated by Moscow-approved programs meant to impose Turkic and Uzbek--as opposed to Iranian--culture. Further, the Moscow-led policy of Sovietization severed Tajiks from their culture and their sources of spiritual inspiration. At the core of Sovietization was the elimination of traditional moral and intellectual values. Tajiks were prevented from maintaining cultural ties with the neighboring Iranians and Afghan Tajiks and thus were denied access to their ancient Iranian roots. Instead a semi-European culture, filtered though Soviet culture, was imposed. Over the years, without the benefit of their intellectuals, teachers, economists, and politicians--most of whom had been forced by economic necessity and Soviet policy to remain in Samarqand and Bukhara--the Tajiks failed at nation building. They fell prey to economic, social, and educational decline. Their very worldview was affected.
Whether by accident or by divine decree, the stagnant Soviet society was shaken by Gorbachev's perestroika or, shall we say, catastrophka. The slow but steady change in the Union eventually reached our quiet corner and awakened its inner forces. What happened thereafter was not only beyond Gorbachev's control but beyond the imagination of the Soviet Union's most ardent enemies. The inevitably declining Soviet superpower allowed its constituent republics to thumb their noses at the KGB and the Communist Party and dare to break away and, one by one, declare political independence. For many, the joy of independence was soon to be marred, however, because they did not know the first word about independence. Tajikistan is a case in point; any Tajik intellectual will tell you that there can be no political independence without economic freedom.
Today, all the former republics are in dire straits; and among the Muslim republics the situation in Tajikistan borders on desperation. Seven decades of Russian centralized control over the economy devastated it to the point that, short of large infusions of foreign aid, it will not recover. Long-term Russian control over science, technology, and education drained the republic of its independent scientific and technological talent. There are no textbooks written by Tajiks; the current instructional materials are all translated from Russian and reflect none of the experiences of the Iranian peoples or of Muslims in general. Discussions of those peoples' advances in the economic, social, scientific, and educational spheres are routinely ignored. Actors, artists, authors, and educators alike lack studios and schools. In the shattered economy, denied the employment of their God-given talents for the elevation of their condition, Tajiks walk the streets of Dushanbe, Khujand, and Kulab aimlessly. Some have joined the new business world, but their lack of capital, experience, and expertise prevents them performing their business honestly. People openly shirk their responsibility and refuse to discharge their duty. A kind of demoralization has set in that is neither spiritual nor psychological. The question to be asked is this: How did all this come about? What is the history of this demoralization and degeneration?
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union endeavored to create a melting pot consisting of nationalities, cultures, and languages that had little or nothing in common. Out of this experiment was to emerge the "new Soviet man," an individual endowed with the highest ideals of the Communist hierarchy. Had the experiment worked, the new Soviet man would have encompassed the best of humanity's ethical and spiritual values, been at one with his society and endowed with the ethical purity that the ancient Iranians expected of their best. But the "Soviet man" that emerged was insensitive to and extremely inconsiderate of the pain and suffering of society. He was socially and politically active, but his energies were directed to only one end--that of his personal elevation. Rather than promoting ethics, he made traditional values, ethics included, subservient to his own whims.
In Tajikistan the result of the imposition of this new Soviet culture was the appearance of a bevy of pretender scholars and opportunistic politicians whose hunger for respect, wealth, and power could not be sated. (After the collapse of the USSR, the greed of these self-identified "intellectuals," their grab for power, and their lack of savvy in the workings of democracy combined to promote neo-communism, chaos, and, ultimately, civil war: It was their slogans and their barbarous and murderous acts that incited the ordinary Tajik to take up arms against his fellow citizen.)
There were also upright and brave individuals, true intellectuals, individuals whose moral compass was not influenced by ephemeral political considerations. I personally know a number of scholars who bore the brunt of Stalin's wrath but did not change their philosophical ideas. I know poets and writers who, despite the directives of the Communist regime, refused to lend their pen to empty praise of the system. They preferred to maintain the eternal integrity of their thousand-year-old cultural heritage. But they are in the minority. What can be said about the majority of the intellectuals of the Soviet period is that they chose to go along with the tyrannical regime not because of a weakness of personality but because of the tragic situation in which they found themselves; they mortgaged their souls to the devil to find respite for their bodies. They had to make sure that they followed Communist ideology according to the guidelines established by political overseers, for seventy years the sole authorities on science and culture.
With the downfall of the USSR, the oppressive state structures gradually became obsolete. And even though, chameleon-like, many citizens superficially changed color to deal with the realities of a market economy, it is no surprise that at the deepest level they had not changed. After all, Communism, Bolshevism, Fascism, and the like promote particular deeply held worldviews. Does not each of those -isms bring about a culture of its own, a culture that smacks of Manichaean pessimism, violence, and bigotry?
For seventy years, Bolshevism was imposed on Soviet society. It has deep roots not only in our spiritual world but in our very psyche. Just as an image is etched in granite, so the rules of Soviet political behavior were indelibly engraved in the conscious and subconscious of every heir to the Soviet legacy. Communism as a superpower has left the scene, but its belligerent ideology, like a radioactive dump, continues to poison our environment.
In the last few years this post-Soviet culture, soaked in partisan politics, has dragged Tajikistan into turmoil. Political parties and movements with democratic platforms have sprung into existence at the drop of a hat and have disappeared as suddenly. The reason is that they all sprang from the same old Russian mold and were ready to commit the same crimes, even murder, if such actions brought them closer to the achievement of their political goals. Recent events in Tajikistan testify to the fact that the real aim of these parties and movements has been to destroy the republic's constitutional government. Using diverse political dodges, upstart groups in Tajikistan attempted to impose themselves on the populace and failed. Their individual failure gave rise to the formation of an alliance, the United Opposition. The clash between the Opposition and the government developed in three phases and led to civil war.
Phase I. On November 20, 1991, presidential elections were held and Rahman Nabiyev was elected president. But from January until May, 1992, the Opposition pressured and derailed the elected government. A coalition government, known as the government of national reconciliation, was formed, with Opposition leaders having a share of power. The Opposition declared its cooperation with President Nabiyev.
Phase II. Despite its promises to contribute to the strength of the nation and government, between June and September the Opposition followed its own hidden agenda. It intended to rule at all costs. The Opposition leadership undermined the President. Before long, Nabiyev's rule became crippled, domestically and internationally. His economic, social, and political programs remained unrealized. The Opposition tried to cajole Nabiyev into resigning voluntarily. He refused. The President was forced to resign at gunpoint.
Phase III. Over the course of the next three months, the impending calamity finally struck. Armed members of the Opposition, supported by the Dushanbe mafia, assumed control of the capital city, Dushanbe, the region of GornoBadakhshan, and the Gharategin Valley. Two other major regions, Kulab in the south and Leninabad in the north, refused to recognize this government. They formed a Popular Front and began to resist militarily the brutal attacks of the new government in the south with the ultimate goal of overthrowing that government. This gave rise to civil war. In the end the Opposition was defeated by the Popular Front.
But while some intellectuals grabbed for power after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, others, myself included, joined together to plan for the modernization of Tajikistan. This group of enlightened progressives is dedicated to bringing Tajikistan into the twentieth century where it can stand shoulder to shoulder with other nations. Rather than simply imitating the models at hand, we seek to forge a new model that synthesizes the best of foreign ideas with Tajik national traditions and culture. Our contribution to the creation of the coalition government, our efforts to make that government work, and our efforts to negotiate an end to the civil war were all focused on the realization of that sublime goal. There were, however, forces in society that could not be overcome. We were overwhelmed by a public that lacked political awareness and was inexperienced in the formation of democratic institutions. Most of all, we were defeated by religious bigotry and infighting between different regions of Tajikistan. We failed because we could not muster the knowledge required to run an independent state in the late twentieth century. And in that sense we, the intellectuals, are to blame for the onslaught.
Today, the majority of the ruling elite is former Communists and members of the militia who are still devoted to the defunct ideology of the past. They are not well disposed to science and culture and are not likely to promote them. All the professors, poets, authors, and journalists of note who cooperated with the Opposition left the republic, along with their leaders, after the current government seized power. Most of the intellectuals who chose to stay or who had no alternative but to stay were arrested or deprived of their livelihood. They are constantly harassed by the government-run media as to where they were and what they were doing during those fateful days.
The future is dim, even dark. The new rulers may not state their claim openly; but they, too, patronize the few remaining scientists, authors, and poets only in order to promote themselves. This dim prognosis leaves me no alternative but to foresee a stalemate in our scientific and cultural affairs for many years to come. Now that Soviet dominance has been lifted, we will ultimately confront the same reality that our Iranian brothers confronted in the 1970s--we will have to struggle to bring about an independent nation that is no longer under the sway of a dominant foreign culture, in this case, Communism. And we will have to pull ourselves out. But note this difference: The Iranian intellectuals whose concerted effort liberated their country from foreign dominance were graduates of American and European institutions. They could easily travel abroad. Can we do the same with only Russian?