Fayzulla Xoʻjayev
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Fayzulla Ubaydullayevich Khodzhayev (Uzbek: Fayzulla Ubaydulloyevich Xo‘jayev; Russian: Файзулла Убайдуллаевич Ходжаев; Persian: فیضالله خواجه; b. 1896 Bukhara – March 1938, Moscow) was a Bukharan politician.
Early years
Khodzhayev was born into an Uzbek (He cannot be regarded as Uzbek, as Uzbekistan come to existence after 1925) family of wealthy traders in the City of Bukhara, Khanate of Bukhara in 1896. He was sent to Moscow by his father in 1907. There he realized the tremendous gap between contemporary European society and technology, and the ancient, tradition-bound ways of his homeland.[citation needed]
He joined the Pan-Turkist Jadid movement of like-minded reformers in 1916, and, with his father's fortune, established the Young Bukharan Party. Seeing the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an opportunity, the Young Bukharan Party invited the Bolsheviks of the Tashkent Soviet to seize Emirate of Bukhara by force in 1917. When this attempted invasion failed, Khodzhayev fled to Tashkent, and was only able to return after the Emir of Bukhara fled in September 1920 after the Red Army had overthrown his administration on September 2, 1920, bombed the city of Bukhara and occupied it.
The government years
After joining the Russian Communist Party about July–August, 1920, Fayzullo Khodzhayev was appointed head of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic in September 1920. During his term, he barely escaped assassination by Basmachi Revolt leader Enver Pasha. With the reorganization of Soviet Central Asia into the new Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and after the purge of suspected Uzbek nationalists in 1923–1924, on December 5, 1924, Khodzhayev became Chair of the Revolutionary Committee of the Uzbek SSR - at which time he was recognized as the head of government - and then on February 17, 1925, he became Chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Then on May 21, 1925, he became one of the chairmen of the USSR Central Executive Committee once the Uzbek SSR was officially accepted into the USSR.
However, Khodzhayev opposed Joseph Stalin's heavy-handed control, particularly in the matter of cotton monoculture.
The final years
When the wave of political purges reached into the Uzbek SSR, the 7th Congress of the Uzbek Communist Party of Bolsheviks proclaimed Khodzhayev to be an enemy of the people. On June 17, 1937, he was dismissed from all offices - including Chair of the Council of People's Commissars - and was arrested by July 9, 1937, during the Great Purge on charges to which he confessed at the Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938 in Moscow as a "Trotskyite and a Rightist" and he was executed on March 13, 1938.[1]
Legacy
Officially rehabilitated in 1966, he remains a controversial figure in modern Uzbekistan. On the one hand, he was [by whom?] a traitor who sold his country and people into Soviet servitude. On the other hand, he was [by whom?] an idealist, who sought modernization and independence for Turkestan, but was caught up in forces beyond his control.
There are few monuments to him in modern Uzbekistan, and although his father's house in Bukhara is preserved as a monument, it is styled as "House of a Wealthy Local Merchant", with very little emphasis on Khodzhayev himself.
References
- ^ “Lined With Despair”, TIME Magazine, March 14, 1938
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