Not only Ukraine: in 1931-1933 every second Kazakh died of hunger

And now - new documents about the tragedy of an entire people.

Sergey Baimukhametov, publicist

All evidence is invaluable. But here we will refer to a source from the higher spheres of power - we will cite fragments of a report that was presented to Stalin on March 9, 1933 by the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RFSR. Copies - to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Molotov, the head of the agricultural department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Kaganovich, chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee Kuibyshev, secretary of the USSR Central Executive Committee Yenukidze.

This is a complete analysis of the state of affairs in Kazakhstan. Starting, first of all, with agriculture and ending with social and cultural policy. The report contains 20 pages, 65 thousand characters with spaces. Figures and facts. As a result - the merciless truth about what the communist government has led to.

Of course, a ritual reference is made to Stalin's article "Dizzy with Success", 1929: they say that the comrades in the localities and in the republican leadership did not follow the instructions of Comrade Stalin and the party. Of course, with ritual digressions and reservations: “When the whole country has achieved the greatest successes in the field of socialist construction and unprecedented cultural growth in all republics and regions... it is impossible to continue to maintain the situation that has developed in Kazakstan in relation to the majority of the indigenous Cossack population. The Soviet Union has become so strong that it is able to provide assistance and overcome this phenomenon in the shortest possible time. It is necessary. With a deployed front to take up measures to eliminate the root causes of this phenomenon. What are these reasons?"

But when the author of the report begins to analyze the reasons and give facts, a picture emerges that cannot be obscured by any spells. We emphasize - the official report of the official representative of the highest power, the deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.

(It must first be clarified that in the text Kazakhs are called Cossacks, Kazakhs are called Cossacks, and Kazakhstan - Kazakstan. This was accepted until 1936, and this is how it was in the Kazakh (Kazak) language: there is no letter and sound "x" in this word , but there was and is “k-stunned”, close to “x.” Since 1936, the Cossacks have been officially called the Kazakhs, so as not to be confused with the Russian Cossacks. For Russian transcription and phonetics of Kazakhs and Kazakhs - a very successful and natural metathesis, a rearrangement of sounds)

The main reasons for the catastrophic situation, as follows from the memorandum, are two.

First: the seizure of land, and hence pastures for state farms - state, "Soviet farms". Note: collective farms were created for common, collective farming. But the Kazakhs historically were not farmers, they were just becoming them. That is why there were few collective farms in Kazakhstan: in the mid-1960s, for example, 80% of the grain was produced in state farms.

From the report:

“A significant part of the area of all state farms is 30 million [lyons | more than hectares falls on the Cossack regions, where the best lands were taken from the Cossacks for these state farms ... In the area "Aksai" (Ili district), the collective farms "Straight Path" and "10 Years of Kazakstan" do not have a certain land, and the former arable land was withdrawn under the state farm Kraysoyuz".

The second main reason is the removal of livestock.

From the report:

“According to the data of the all-Union census of livestock, in February 1932, from 40 million head of livestock in 1928-29, by the time of the census, 5397 tons [thousands] of head of livestock remained in Kazakstan, that is, a reduction of 85.5% ... By the time of the census, 80% of the livestock was socialized, and in the USSR, 33% of the cattle were socialized during the same time. Of the remaining 5397 t [thousand] heads of cattle belonged to state farms - 37.6% (in the USSR, state farms owned 9% of cattle)...

The well-being of the majority of the Cossack population was based on cattle breeding... 90% of the indigenous population is engaged in animal husbandry, as this is largely a national issue.

Since the Cossack population had less than 6% of the cattle that it had in 1929, the results of such an undermining of the Cossack economy are understandable. (Highlighted by me. - S. B.)

There is no other region or republic such a situation that has now emerged in Kazakstan in relation to a certain part of the Cossack population".

Let's repeat: Kazakhs did not know agriculture. Moreover, according to their beliefs, it was considered a sacrilege to invade the womb of the earth. For centuries, they raised only livestock and traded meat, milk, cheese, wool for bread and manufactured goods.

If in those terrible years a Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Tajik grew at least something edible in his yard in the spring, then Kazakhs, left without livestock, began to die out in millions.

From the report:

In many cities (Aulie-Ata, Chimkent, Semipalatinsk, Kyzyl-Orda, etc.), corpses of dead Cossacks are daily taken out to the railway stations... The hungry eat garbage, eat the roots of wild plants and small rodents. Dogs and cats by this group are completely eaten and the heaps of garbage around their huts are full of boiled bones of dogs, cats and small rodents... They report cases of corpse-eating...

According to the testimony of the chairman of the Kyzyl-Ordynsky district executive committee, 15-30% of the population remained in this region in most village councils. In the Balkhash region (according to the local OGPU) there was a population of 60 thousand people, 12 thousand people [sheep] migrated, 36 thousand died and 12 thousand people remained] Cossacks... In Karkaralinsky region in May 1932 there were 50400 people [sheep], and by November 15900 people [sheep] remained...

The decline is especially significant among the child population... Masses of street children are accumulating in the cities and railway stations in Kazakstan. Cossacks bring and abandon children in front of institutions and houses... Here is an excerpt from the report of the same Aktobe Red Cross detachment about Cossack children in Turgai:

“The child population under the age of 4 has died out completely, if it is left without parents... The child population is threatened with complete extinction... From one station of Ayaguz, 300 children were gathered in January and there the Cossack woman threw her two children under the train, and in Semipalatinsk, a Cossack woman also threw two children into the ice-hole".

The report ends with a call for urgent action, etc.

The result is known: according to the calculations of Kazakhstani historians, in 1931-1933, 1,750,000 ethnic Kazakhs died of hunger - 42% of the indigenous population of the republic, almost every second Kazakh . (Abylkhozhin Zh.B., Kozybaev M.K., Tatimov MB Kazakhstan tragedy // Questions of history. 1989. No. 7. P. 65-67).

But these calculations cannot be called absolutely accurate. The 1926 census, according to which the comparison is made, could not cover everyone - due to the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the aborigines. That is, initially there were more Kazakhs. And therefore, the losses from the Holodomor can be expressed like this: at least every second Kazakh died because of hunger.

A general idea can be obtained by comparing the two numbers. In the 1920s, Kazakhs were the most numerous Turkic-speaking ethnic group in the USSR. According to the 1926 census, there were 3,713,394 Kazakhs in Kazakhstan.

The number of Kazakhs to the level of 1926 recovered only after 40-45 years, by 1970.

Finally, it's time to name the author of the report. This is Turar Ryskulov (1894-1938), an ethnic Kazakh, a graduate of the Pishpek Agricultural School and the Tashkent Pedagogical Institute, a revolutionary from a young age, deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR in 1926-1937.

However, there is no information that his arrest is connected with this memorandum. If it were, Ryskulov would have been destroyed back in 1933. Especially considering his feuds with Stalin in the 1920s. No, the report has nothing to do with it. Everything that was said in it, albeit not to such a full extent, was known to the leadership of the USSR. Information came from all sides, from local authorities to reports from the OGPU - the successor to the Cheka and the predecessor of the NKVD.

Turar Ryskulov fell under the general skating rink of repressions, sharply intensified in 1937. He was a delegate to the tragically famous XVII Congress of the CPSU (b), 1934. Of the 1966 participants, 1108 were arrested on charges of "counter-revolutionary crimes", sent to camps or shot.