One of the historical achievements of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the 60th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year by our country and all progressive humanity, was the national and social liberation of the peoples of Russia. In Central Asia, the working Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, Kirghizs, Tajiks, Turkmens, and Uzbeks, with the help of the Russian working class, took power for the first time in history. This victory did not come easily to the masses of the people - the deposed exploiters put up a fierce resistance to them. All the forces and strata of the old society united against the young Soviet government. The feudal and tribal elite, the reactionary part of the Muslim clergy, the national bourgeoisie that was emerging in Central Asia, in close alliance with the all-Russian counter-revolution, and with the active support of international imperialism, launched a stubborn struggle against the new system. In Central Asia, one of the main forms of this struggle, and also the most fierce, was Basmachism - the armed actions of numerous gangs that ravaged the local population, committed pogroms and murders, violence and looting, and established undisguised brutal terror. The Basmachian leaders openly spoke out with counter-revolutionary, anti-Soviet, reactionary-nationalist slogans. They incited hostility to everything Russian, sowed discord between the peoples of Central Asia. Their goals were to restore and perpetuate the rule of exploiters in Central Asia, and to preserve the obsolete ones. page 159 the destruction of feudal, tribal, clerical, commercial and usurious, bourgeois remnants, the despotism of the ruling classes, the backwardness and darkness of the masses of the people, led to the separation of this region from Soviet Russia, turning it into a colony of Western imperialists. The struggle against Basmachism was difficult and lengthy, and required considerable effort and sacrifice on the part of the Soviet people. It ended with the comple ... Читать далее