As black becomes white: anti-Russian hysteria or simply the error?

The process of giving of a “goody-goody” kind to rather doubtful persons for the sake of an ideological reshoeing of the population was well seen on the presentation-viewing of a documentary film “The roads by Mustafa Shokay” of Kasymkhan Begmanov presented by Ust-Kamenogorsk akimat.

It was possible to judge the importance of event, having looked at the participants of the viewing which the dense numbers made the teacher of high schools, representatives of committees of local government, and also the number of leading employees of regional and city akimats. It allows to suppose the very serious approach in ideological education of the population in a context of the proceeding of de-Sovietization. So what characters from the past were mobilized by today's ideology for more discredit of the previous power to please the present one? As it was told, such help was the activity of “the prominent public figure, the Kazakh political refugee Mustafa Shokay who has given the life for the sake of freedom of the Turkic people”. The film was devoted to him, which as it was announced in the message of akimat press-service, “it is doubtless, it will bring the contribution to education of young generation, won't leave indifferent all those, who take care of the destiny of the people”. As about indifference, so it is truly noticed, but everyone has made the own truth conclusions from the film viewing and they have appeared far from an author's position. We will try to “sound” the importance of the given film from the opposite opinions which has been shooted in a genre of historical research. So, we will go “on the roads of Mustafa Shokay” together with authors of a film.

Oh, the roads, a dust and a fog …

The film is shot according to a plain, narrative plot. Here is the initial film shots: the South Kazakhstan landscapes, railroad tracks, cable columns. The announcer read to memoirs of young Mustafa: “we whipped these columns laid by Russian immigrants by lashes, fondly hoping that the Russian tsar will be reached by a pain for the sufferings of my people caused by the Russian colonizer expansion”.

So, the fatal prologue of all life of the ardent fighter for independence, at the same time and a film, was defined right at the beginning - in a direction of struggle against the Russian colonizer policy and its consequences.

It is quite explainable. He is a native of a well-founded family where his grandfather was in charge of office work at Kokand Khan and the father was the judge. Mustafa has got used to feel the own exclusive position in the society since the childhood which has got stuck in a feudal-slaveholding formation and should understand that the former uncontrolled power over the people for the ruling top people of khanate will be gradually narrowed with joining of edge to Russia. That is why, young Mustafa solves farsighted as then it seemed to him, to be integrated into the Russian government that, already with its help to keep own privileges and then the time will show, the empires aren't too eternal. But to receive a necessary post and to continue a fatherly dynasty, it was necessary to receive the Russian juridical education. Mustafa goes to St. Petersburg to study at the department of law in the university where he was on one course with the future prime minister of provisional government Alexander Kerensky. Both of them have entered the party of Socialists-Revolutionaries in these uneasy times of the beginning of the last century.

After the autocracy falling, the old university companion who has got into prime minister appoints him as the representative of Turkestan region. However, the young ambitious lawyer had own, nationalist feelings. With the help of the colleagues of socialist revolutionary study group, he carries on propaganda for creation of the independent Muslim state with a goal of full secession from Russia. The newspaper “Birlik tyu”, published by him, takes up his case also. After the power falling of “interim”, Shokay participates in congress which has based the organization “Independent Kokand” where he became its head. However, the history gave only three months to “Independent Kokand” which was scattered under the pressure of triumphal procession of the Soviet power.
Further the infinite run has gone. Ironically, the further scenes of a film reminded a fragment from legendary before the war, the first sound Soviet film “Start in life” where the homeless thief, also by name of Mustafa, answered all questions of the inspector with a terse phrase: “Have ran”. The same dialogue quite could take place in a modern film about other Mustafa. Let’s imagine …

1945. Thrown down Germany. Filtration camp for prisoners of war and helpers of fascism. The member of Smersh interrogate of the elderly mister of the Asian appearance. The question: “Where have you got from Ufa in 1918?”. The answer: “I ran to Omsk, then to Tashkent, Baku Tiflis, Batum, Istanbul and at last to Paris, the den of emigrants of all colors”.

- By what you were guided all this time?

- Hatred and revenge to the Soviet power! It has deprived total of me: privileges, authority, money, power, therefore I always and everywhere as soon as could, tried to harm it in all ways accessible to me. I cooperated with all anti-Soviet forces, coalitions, regimes, from the Musavatists of Azerbaijan and the Mensheviks of Georgia, to English “Intelligence service”.

- How have you appeared in Berlin in 1941?

- After the arrest in Paris as the English spy, I have been sent to Germany where soon realized, what magnificent chance, already the second under the account in life, gave the destiny in the name of fascist Germany, namely the creation of Muslim state in the territory of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, certainly, by means of Hitlerite Germany.

- With what has begun your cooperation with Nazis?

- From the letter addressed to the imperial head of national and socialist party concerning the ideology and foreign policy, the minister of affairs of “Eastern territories”, the general of SS-army Alfred Rosenberg. He, also as well as I am, was born and has grown within the Russian empire, in the Baltic States. He is from a family of the Baltic rich landowners. Then the study in Riga, Moscow … The Bolsheviks came and have deprived of Alfred of his comfortable existence. Here then Alfred, as well as I am, have got to know what is hatred. He broke into a run too, firstly to Ukraine, then to Paris where joined the intelligence service, but true, not the English as I am but the French in order not to go begging. Then there was Munich, acquaintance with still young Hitler and fast career take-off after his coming to power. Having knowing the similarity of our destinies, I have been assured that my reference to Rosenberg, doesn't remain indifferent.

- What has been written in the letter?

- Having described the life course in detail, I have specified the possibility of creation of allied Germany of the Muslim state. In order to reach this purpose, it is necessary to organize the special army from the Muslems, the Soviet prisoners of war. Its goal would be the overthrow of the Soviet power in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. He, Mustafa Shokay, is ready to head this noble movement in case of consent.

- Have you guessed what the people of the USSR would be expected at a possible establishment of the Nazi “new order” in its territory?

- Certainly in general, but it was supposed that extreme measures of an occupational regime will be extended first of all to the territories of Urals and reach Central Asia not in such rigid regime, at least for any time …

- Here is such interrogation could take place in 1945 but hasn't taken place on the score of the death of unaccomplished governor-gauleiter of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Mustafa Shokay has died on December 27, 1941 in Berlin, in three weeks after the beginning of counteroffensive of Red Army near Moscow. Probably, this fact has accelerated the death. Such shock and stress …

- Naturally, such plot wasn't looked through a film. The matter was exclusively of the merits, struggle for freedom of the Native land from Bolshevist enslavement, care of fellow countrymen and coreligionists appeared in a captivity etc. And no words about notorious “Turkestan legion”, one of the ideological heads of which was Mustafa Shokay with convincing proof of this fact.

Epilogue and resume

The authors of a film try to be covered with solid opinion of much more quantity of experts of Shokay throughout all tape. The homebred historians, journalists, relatives, descendants of the Russian White-Guard emigres and even such representative of anti-Sovietism, who had luck to participate in funeral of the USSR as Edward Shevarnadze, come into the spectators’ view. However, there weren’t the present, qualitative public relations because of absence of really authoritative and influential characters and experts in it. Well, what is the historian-Shokay of the Georgian singer and actor Vakhtang Kikabidze?

At the same time, there was no any interview with veterans-front-line soldiers in a film, concerning their opinion of this theme. However, they weren’t in a hall of Ust-Kamenogorsk akimat during the film viewing. It is become clear that the film has been intended not for them. And for whom? Certainly the calculation became on unsophisticated public in historical subtleties and first of all the youth who owing to the credulity and noncritical trust to propaganda materials, can be quite satisfied by shown and told on the screen. The calculation was made by the modern ideologists on this effect. So the consciousness of young generation includes the deformed history of own people, at times to absolute not logicality. In the beginning the doubtful material is started up, it is publicized up to the Nobel Prize (for example, A.Saharov's article, the book of A.Solzhenitsin), then all this enters into the curriculums and there is the young generation believing that for example, such historical persons as admiral Kolchak and ataman Krasnov, general Vlasov and the OUN Bandera were the fighters and sufferers for national matter, contrary to vampires-Bolsheviks. So the history gradually rewritten…

There is a following fragment in the conclusion of a picture. There is a film-making expedition on a well-groomed, marble tomb of Mustafa Shokay in Berlin (by whom it was established? Really by fascists?). Akim of Ust- Kamenogorsk, Islam Abishev who probably was a part of expedition, looks at a tomb with a mournful kind and sets a wreath straight. The spectators feel that the grief in aspect is mixed with the feeling of the executed debt on restoration of an image of the fighter for the national independence by all means which is necessary at present. The theme of Mustafa Shokay, has probably, seriously sunk down in the soul of city akim. “I think that schools of the regional center will be provided by this documentary film”, has told Islam Abishev on presentation. And, certainly, it will be made so that everyone “has been provided”.

And then the next celebratory May, 9th will come and Islam Almakhanovich will sit in celebratory presidiums together with other executives, will eulogize and congratulate the remained veterans-front-line soldiers and to assure that the power won't admit history copying, especially the Great Patriotic War history. And after all it already goes for a long time and at full speed.