Монография центр уйгуровед 13112019. indd

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Ghulja offered Soviet passports to those people who had moved to 
Xinjiang from the Soviet Union earlier, at the beginning of the XX century 
after Bolsheviks came to power. Then, they started distributing passports 
to everyone who wished. 
At first, people were told that the Soviets would provide a passport 
valid only for their immediate family; later they could add some relatives’ 
families as well, and then they were told that they could simply add as 
many people as they wanted to the document. One of the interviewees told: 
“They [China and the Soviets] “spoke the same language” at that time. The 
Chinese Communist Party was interested in getting rid of the Uyghurs, 
and the Soviets needed to fix their demographic problem. In World War II 
many people (especially men) had died and the Soviets desperately needed 
to replenish the labor force.” This same man observed on arrival in the 
Soviet Union that “there were almost no men there, and from time to time 
you would see some men with missing limbs or handicaps.”
Many interviewees said that they would have probably stayed in their 
homeland, and like many others would have faced whatever was written in 
their destiny (uyg. peshanimizgha kelginini korettuq) if there had not been 
strong Soviet agitation. “The Soviet propaganda,” – said an interviewee, 
“played a significant role in encouraging us to leave our homeland for 
the USSR.” One of the interviewees recalled: “We were told that in this 
country [in the Soviet Union] all the roads are like mirrors, they glisten in a 
way that you can see your reflection”, “in each house there is a TV, so there 
is no need to go anywhere [i.e. to the cinema] to watch a movie.” People 
related fairy tale lines like “the rivers [of the Soviet Union] flow not with 
water, but with honey and milk.” 
However, it turned out to be very different from what they had 
imagined. “We left our homeland and soon discovered that our homeland 
had been a heaven compared to where we were brought. My mother 
refused to leave the freight car when we arrived at the destination. She was 
extremely disappointed with the place we came to. It looked very shabby 
in comparison to the place we had come from. My mother was yelling at 
my father: ‘Where did you bring us? I do not want to live here! Take me 
back home!’ and wept,” – he said.
Analysis of the interviews shows that many of the people who moved 
to the Soviet Union in 1955 were members of the local elite, rather than 
ordinary people. That is to say, most of them were well educated and had 

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been cadres in the Ili region. They were involved in political issues and, 
moreover, some of them had spent several years in prison. Some had been 
under the threat of another arrest and were afraid of being sentenced to 
death. They felt they had no other choice but to leave the region.
Based on interviews one can distinguish two main reasons of the 
migration of Uyghurs in the 1950-1960s: a) harsh Chinese oppression 
and b) strong Soviet propaganda. Situation is described as flows: “In the 
1950s Ghulja was the main place where the politically active people were 
concentrated. Every day we would hear things like ‘someone was killed, 
someone was taken to prison, someone disappeared.’ We all were scared. 
On the city square, they (the Chinese) had public trials and executions 
of ‘enemies of the people.’ These were terrible days.” “Our property was 
confiscated. All the educated and rich people (

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