Mirsäyet Soltangäliev
Encyclopedia
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
who rose to prominence in the Russian Communist Party in the early 1920s. He was later executed for being an independent Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
leader as part of the purges
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
of former bolsheviks in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Biography
Sultan Galiev was the son of a teacher, born in the village of Elembet'evo, Ufa Guberniya, Bashkiria, then part of the Russian EmpireRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
on 13 July 1892. At base, he had a difficult and impoverished childhood: first, as a school teacher, his father made very little money (not nearly enough to support his wife and 12 children) and was frequently transferred from place to place; second, there was considerable, lasting tension between his parents, because they came from very different layers of Tatar society. Sultan Galiev later wrote, "My mother was the daughter of a princea noblewoman, while my father was a simple "Mishar," and this quite often stung the eyes of my father."
Though his parents could not afford to send him to a private school, Sultan Galiev was able to learn a great deal from his father and at the latter's maktab
Maktab
Maktab , also called kuttab , is an Arabic word meaning elementary schools...
, which followed the "New Method" of maktab teaching founded by Ismail Gasprinski (1851–1914). From a young age Sultan Galiev studied the Russian language and read many of the Russian classics from his father's library. At his father's school, he studied from age 8 to 15, learning Tatar and Arabic, history, geography, and mathematics, while also receiving a basic understanding of the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
and Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
. All this, especially his knowledge of Russian, greatly helped him to gain entrance to the Kazan Teachers College (see Tatar State University of Humanities and Education
Tatar State University of Humanities and Education
Tatar State University University of Humanities and Education is a university in Kazan, Russian Federation. It was formed in 2005 by a merger of institutions...
) in 1907.
Sultan Galiev was first drawn to revolutionary ideas during the abortive 1905 revolution. Following the revolution's defeat he moved to Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
, where he came to the attention of Nariman Narimanov
Nariman Narimanov
Narimanov Nariman Karbalayi Najaf oglu was an Azerbaijani revolutionary, writer, publicist, politician and statesman. In 1920, Narimanov headed the Soviet government of Azerbaijan, the Provisional Military-Revolutionary Committee , replacing Mirza Davud Huseynov, then he was the Chairman of the...
. He was further drawn to revolutionary ideas while studying to become a teacher at the Tatar Teachers College in Kazan
Kazan
Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...
. At this time, he also received his first lessons in socialism. The future bolshevik A. Nasybullin and the future Basmachi (see Basmachi Revolt
Basmachi Revolt
The Basmachi movement or Basmachi Revolt was an uprising against Russian Imperial and Soviet rule by the Muslim, largely Turkic peoples of Central Asia....
) A. Ishmurzin gave him books on the theory of socialism and conversed with him about the books.
Graduating from the Teacher's College in 1911, Sultan Galiev began his career as a "half-starved village school teacher and librarian." In 1912 he also started to publish articles in various newspapers in Russian and Tatar, initially under various pseudonyms, such as "Sukhoi [Dry one]," Syn naroda [Son of the People]," "Uchitel'-tatarin [Teacher-Tatar]," "Karamas-kalinets," and then from 1914 under his own name. Over the same period, he also "secretly distributed anti-government proclamations in the Muslim villages of Ufa province and spoke out against the installation of Russian or Christianized Tatar teachers in Muslim schools.
As with most people of his generation, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
played a large role in his personal transformation. With the war's outbreak, Sultan Galiev and his wife Rauza Chanysheva moved to Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
, where Sultan Galiev began to write for a variety of newspapers. He seems to have absorbed amongst the city's diverse population of Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Russians, Tatars, and Iranians, a deep and growing dissatisfaction with the tsarist autocracy
Tsarist autocracy
The Tsarist autocracy |transcr.]] tsarskoye samoderzhaviye) refers to a form of autocracy specific to the Grand Duchy of Muscovy . In a tsarist autocracy, all power and wealth is controlled by the tsar...
, its resistance to reform, and handling of the war effort. Baku's political climate in combination with the 1916 anti-conscription uprising of Muslims in Central Asia led him to break with the reform-minded Jadidism of his youth and move towards revolutionary socialism.
In May 1917 Sultan Galiev participated in the All-Russian Muslim Conference in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and was elected to the All-Russia Muslim Council created by it. In July that year he went to Kazan
Kazan
Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...
, where he met Mullanur Waxitov
Mullanur Waxitov
Mullanur Mullacan ulı Waxitov Mullanur Waxitov , also spelled Vakhitov was a Tatar revolutionary active in the Russian Revolution....
, with whom he helped set up the Muslim Socialist Committee
Muslim Socialist Committee of Kazan
Muslim Socialist Committee of Kazan was an organization which existed briefly in Kazan during the Russian Revolution.It was the best known of a number of Muslim Socialist Committees set up between February and April 1917...
(MSC), with a program close to that of the Bolsheviks. In November 1917 he joined the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...
. Following the establishment of Narkomnats
Narkomnats
People's Commissariat of Nationalities was the Government of the Soviet Union body set up to deal with non-Russian nationalities...
in June 1917, Sultan Galiev was asked to become head of the Muslim section. In January 1918 the Central Commissariat of Muslim affairs in Inner Russia and Siberia (Muskom
Muskom
Muskom was the Central Commissariat of Muslim affairs in Inner Russia and Siberia set up by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 as part of Narkomnats Mullanur Waxitov was appointed as chair, although he was not a member of the Communist Party. Mirsäyet Soltanğäliev served as the representative of the...
), was set up under the chairmanship of Waxitov, with Sultan Galiev as representative of the Russian Communist Party. He was appointed the chair of the Central Muslim Military Collegium when it was established in June 1918. He wrote for Zhizn' Natsional'nostei
Zhizn' Natsional'nostei
Zhizn' Natsional'nostei was a journal published in the Moscow, 1918-1924.Many senior figures in Narkomnats contributed to it....
(Life of the Nationalities). Mustafa Suphi
Mustafa Suphi
Mustafa Suphi was a Turkish communist leader .- Early Years :Suphi was educated in Jerusalem, Damascus and Erzurum before attending Galatasaray High School. He studied political science in Paris, where he was also a correspondent of the Turkish newspaper Tanin...
acted as his secretary.
He was an avid reader of the Russian Literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
. He translated works by Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
and Pushkin into the Tatar language
Tatar language
The Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...
. In 1913 he married Rauza Chanysheva, who became a leading figure in the women's movement. They separated after
personal problems in 1918.
In December 1917, in response to some Tatars' accusations that he was betraying his own people to the Bolsheviks, Sultan Galiev wrote a revealing explanation for his decision to join the Bolsheviks:
I now move to my cooperation with the Bolsheviks. I will say the following: I associate with them not from sycophancy. The love for my people, which lies inherently inside me, draws me to them. I go to them not with a goal to betray our nation, not in order to drink its blood. No! No! I go there because with my whole spirit I believe in the rightness of the Bolsheviks’ cause. I know this; it is my conviction. Thus, nothing will remove it from my soul. I realize that only some of the bolsheviks were able to implement what was promised at the beginning of the revolution. [But] only they stopped the war. Only they are striving to pass the nationalities’ fates into their own hands. Only they revealed who started the world war. What does not lead me to them? They also declared war on English imperialism, which oppresses India, Egypt, Afghanistan, Persia and Arabia. They are also the ones who raised arms against French imperialism, which enslaves Morocco, Algiers, and other Arab states of Africa. How could I not go to them? You see, they proclaimed the words, which have never been voiced since creation of the world in the history of the Russian state. Appealing to all muslims of Russia and the East, they announced that Istanbul must be in Muslims’ hands. They did this while English troops, seizing Jerusalem, appealed to Jews with the words: ‘Gather together quickly in Palestine, we will create for you a European state.’
During the Civil War he was active in organising the defence of Kazan against the Whites
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
in August 1918 and liquidating opposition after they had been driven out. He was also instrumental in ensuring that the Bashkir people, led by Zeki Velidi, joined the Bolshevik side which weakened the military potential of Kolchak's army. His knowledge of national movements in the East won him the trust of Stalin and other highly placed Party and government figures. Sultan-Galiev carried out many tasks on the personal orders of Stalin. In April 1919 he again was rushed to the eastern front to help shore up the moral of the Tatar 21st division at Malmysh after Kolchak's Spring offensive had forced the Red Army to abandon Ishevsk to the Whites
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
. In June 1919 he was sent to Kazan at request of the local Bolshevik administration to help resolve the national question among the Tatars, but he was soon recalled to Moscow by Lenin to work on the nationality issue in the Narkomnats until 1922.
Mirsaid wanted to give Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
an Islamic face. He argued that Tsarist Russians had oppressed Muslim society apart from a few big landowners and bourgeois. He was thought of by the Bolsheviks as being excessively tolerant of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, and in 1923 he was accused of nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, pan-Islamic
Pan-Islamism
Pan-Islamism is a political movement advocating the unity of Muslims under one Islamic state — often a Caliphate. As a form of religious nationalism, Pan-Islamism differentiates itself from other pan-nationalistic ideologies, for example Pan-Arabism, by excluding culture and ethnicity as primary...
and pan-Turkic
Pan-Turkism
Pan-Turkism is a nationalist movement that emerged in 1880s among the Turkic intellectuals of the Russian Empire, with the aim of cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples.-Name:...
deviations and he was arrested and expelled from the party. He was freed, but with Lenin's death in 1924, he lost his only protector, and remained a political outcast, constantly watched by state security. In these years he spent his time travelling for the Hunting Union and writing occasional reviews and translations. He was accompanied by his second wife Fatima Yerzina, whom he had married in 1918, and their two children. In 1928 he was arrested a second time and sentenced to be shot in July 1930. However, in January 1931 his sentence was commuted to ten years of hard labour for nationalism and anti-Soviet activity. In 1934 he was released and given permission to live in the Saratov Oblast. At the beginning of 1937 he was again arrested, and was forced to make a confession. In December 1939 he received the death sentence which was carried out on 28 January 1940 in Moscow.
Stalin was not sympathetic to Mirsaid's attempt to synthesise Islam, nationalism and communism for a revolution in the East in general and among Muslim areas there in particular. Stalin, therefore, had Sultan Galiev imprisoned and later executed (in Moscow on 28 January 1940) for being an independent ‘Muslim’ leader. He was killed by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
on the morning of 28 January 1940 at Lefort Prison by Stalin's order.
External links
- Sultan-Galiyev Mirsait
- Sultan Galiev - a Forgotten Precursor
- The Case of Sultan-Galiyev by the Marxist-Leninist Research Bureau, Report #3, 1995.