Монография центр уйгуровед 13112019. indd

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payment of taxes), 
aldamchiliq
(fraud), 
oghirliq
(embezzlement), which 
targeted property holders. “Behind these campaigns was real terror,” – they 
said. As a result, local intelligentsia and business people ‘were liquidated 
step by step’.
Role of the Soviet propaganda in pushing people to leave is described 
as follows: 
(A) “We left all our property. There was the idea that when you moved 
to the Soviet Union, you would have everything you need ready and 
waiting.“ 
(B) “We left our great homeland and came to the Soviet Union with the 
hope of having a better life. We heard that the Soviet Union was the land 
of paradise.” 
(C) “I remember that they would exhibit new, just released, automobiles 
on the squares in Ghulja. They promised that if we moved to the Soviet 
Union, we would own such cars… I remember that on the day of our move, 
they [Soviets] provided separate and new buses for each family to make 
the people who were not moving envious. I remember that the drivers (they 
were Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Russians from the Soviet Union) 
were dressed very well (in white shirts and black ties). They all were 
praising the Soviet Union.”
(D) “I remember that there was a club where all the youth people would 
come to hang out. And everyone would just talk about the Soviet Union 
and praise it. They said things like: “Are you moving to the USSR? We 
are. We heard that the life there is a paradise. People say that there are no 
horse carts (at-harva), just motorcars, and you will have one too, when you 
move. “And of course, young people were interested in moving.” 
To encourage people to move, clubs showed Soviet movies, which 
romanticized heroes of the World War II and quality of life in the Soviet 
Union. Many people mentioned such movies as “Chapayev” (1934) (Vasily 
Ivanovich Chapayev was a Red Army commander during the Russian 
Civil War), “Kak zakalylas’ stal” (As the Steel Was Tempered, 1942), 
“Dva Boytsa” (Two Fighters, 1943) (film about the unbreakable friendship 
between two front-line Soviet soldiers during World War 2), “Arshin 
mal-alan” (The Cloth Peddler, 1945) (Azerbaijani comedy). Besides the 
movies, clubs also showed documentaries about life in the Soviet Union: 
new constructions, happy youth, Soviet schools, students, maternity 
hospitals, harvest machines, happy families, etc. One of the interviewees 

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mentioned a movie “Jan Enjan” (Dear Andijan) about the lives of Uyghurs 
in Uzbekistan during Soviet times: they worked for the labor brigade, 
drank beer. Everything was done my machines. People did not work. “We 
thought that the life in Soviet Union was good, and people did not work 
hard. We came here for a better life,” the interviewee said.
Propaganda tools also included books, textbooks, magazines, and 
newspapers in the Uyghur, Kazakh, and Russian languages published in 
Soviet Central Asia for use in Xinjiang. One of the interviewees said that, 
when they moved, his father had not taken any of his possessions, except 
for a large suitcase full of the Soviet books. However, he never read them. 
He was very disappointed when he discovered that the real conditions 
in the Soviet Union were not as depicted. Local people had just begun 
to recover from the war, so he had no time to read and needed to work 
extremely hard to feed his family.
In summer of 2017 I was lucky enough to meet a 93-year old Uyghur 
man who was engaged in persuading Uyghurs to move to the Soviet Union 
in the 1950s. When I asked him why would he lie to people about happy 
life in the Soviet Union, he said that the Soviets needed a larger labor 
force. “I felt sorry for Soviet women who were forced to work during the 
whole day and even during the nights because there were no men to work,” 
– he answered. After he returned to Kazakhstan, he was rewarded with 
money and the government gave him a good house and good job, because 
he brought a lot of people to Soviet Union. 
One of the interviewees recalled the primary motivation driving the 
Soviets to encourage this wave of migration: “In 1955 they (Soviets – G.N.) 
announced a movement to develop 
tselina
and started to recruit people to 
work on Virgin Land in Kazakhstan. It was for Soviet citizens at first. But 
anyone could register for it. My sister wanted to go to Urumchi and enroll 
in medical school, but our parents decided to move to the Soviet Union. 
I remember my sister was crying. She said “I do not know the language, 
what will I do there?” She did not want to move, but we, the kids, were 
happy and excited. At that time, I was studying at Stalin School in Ghulja. 
All of our teachers were from the Soviet Union and taught in Russian. I 
remember there was a large bust of Stalin in the school’s courtyard. On 
June 14, 1955 we came to Yarkent after crossing the Ili River by boat.”
The interviewees also mentioned that it was a hard time in the Soviet 
Union, not only for Uyghurs, but for everyone. The country was recovering 

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from the devastation of the war. Local people were nice to them. “First, 
they thought that we were gypsies. They felt sorry for us and shared food 
such as milk, eggs, and brought vegetables and fruits from their gardens.” 
At that time, it was usual to see people who had been expelled from their 
lands inside the Soviet Union (for example from the Caucasus, Crimea), 
but the local people could not imagined that the USSR was so powerful to 
make population of another country to move to the Soviet Union. 
Describing 1950s in Ghulja, one of the female interviewers recalled 
the Red songs they learned at school: “We used to sing songs about Stalin 
and Mao: Yasha Stalin, yasha Mavjushi /Mavzedung hem Stalin / helqning 
chin yeqin dosti /Kun chiqti, sherq yurti, / Jungo dahi Mavzedung chiqti. 
/ U xeliqke beht tileydu, / yasha dahiy, / u xeliqning nijat yultizi. (Long 
live Stalin and Mao-zhuxi…Stalin and Mao are truly close friends of the 
people. The sun rose, Eastern land, the leader of Junggo Mao came. He 
wishes happiness for people. Long lives the leader! He is a liberator). 
The same lady had another interesting point: “My father was a tailor. He 
sewed men’s clothing such as kostum-burulka…He would always ask his 
customers: “What kind of collar of the cloth you would like to have, like 
Stalin or Mao?” It was an honor to wear the same style as the two great 
leaders.”
Interviewees who moved in the 1960s said mentioned the situation 
became even worse after 1955. Many interviewers recalled political 
campaigns such as 

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