Written: Written June 22, 1920
Published:
First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI.
Printed from the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
2nd English Printing,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
page 198b.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2003).
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The theses and draft to be endorsed as a whole, but both to be amended in the direction of
(1) equalising land tenure of Russians and newcomers with that of local people;
(2) overcoming, ousting and subordinating Russian kulaks in the most energetic manner;
(3) not giving the Turkestan Commission[2] the right to alter decrees without obtaining the consent of the Turkestan Central Executive Committee and the Turkestan Council of People’s Commissars and without consulting the centre;
(4) systematically considering, preparing and carrying out the transfer of power-gradually but steadily-to the local Soviets of working people, under the control of reliable Communists;
(5) the question of dividing the Republic into 3 parts not to be decided beforehand;
(6) the general task to be, not communism, but the overthrow of feudalism.
[1] Lenin’s draft was adopted with slight amendments at a meeting of the Politbureau of the C.C. on June 22, 1920, at which the theses and draft resolution on the Turkestan Republic drawn up by a special commission were discussed. For this commission’s draft with Lenin’s remarks see Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. 41, Fifth Russian Edition, pp. 433-36.
[2] The Turkestan Commission of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the R.S.F,S.R, was set up on October 8, 1919. Its members were G. I. Boky, F. I. Goloshchokin, V. V. Kuibyshev, Y. E. Rud-zutak, M. V. Frunze and S. Z. Eliava. The commission was vested with the powers of a Government and Party body and was sent to Turkestan to give all possible aid to the local Commu-nists and the working people of Turkestan in overcoming that country’s political, economic and cultural backwardness, eonsolidating Soviet power and strengthening the union between the peoples of Turkestan and Soviet Russia. One o the commis-sion’s tasks was to correct mistakes made during the implemen-tation of the national policy in Turkestan.
The Turkestan Commission carried out a number of measures for strengthening the local Party organisations and combating dominant-nation chauvinism and local nationalism. Important issues were those concerning the principles of Turkestan auto- nomy, relations with the federal bodies, and the forms and methods of Party organisation.
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