Since its founding in 1949, the Chinese Communist government in Beijing has long considered the northwestern region on its vast political map to be a major problem area for the regime and has systematically implemented various measures to ensure complete control over this important territory.

Of the four non-Chinese regions, the other three, i.e. Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet, have longer and more complex historical ties to China.

Officially called Xinjiang, or New Territory, East Turkestan is known for its local population, predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. It is the fourth non-Chinese region with the most flimsy and least internal historical, ethnic, cultural and religious ties to China, making it the most volatile and tense.

As a result, over the past seven decades, the area has seen a protracted campaign by the Beijing government of ethnic signification, mass forced relocation, and apparatus buildup. communist party and Chinese military and police presence, writes Miles Maochun Yu(Miles Maochun Yu), professor of history at the United States Maritime Academy in Annapolis, Maryland East Asia and military history.

However, it is only in the last fifteen years that this protracted war for control of Xinjiang has rapidly accelerated with a giant leap in its intensity and brutality, demonstrating the frantic urgency on the part of the Beijing government and the inexorable determination of the Chinese communist leadership to solve the "problems of Xinjiang" once and for all, he notes. .

The signs of such a hasty final settlement with the Uyghurs are unmistakable: growing "re-education" camps for the Uyghurs are rapidly being established in less than a year; mass arrests and detentions large number Uyghurs make up more than 20 percent of all arrests in China, an ethnic minority population of just 10 million, or 1.5 percent of China's 1.4 billion people; draconian high-tech, all-weather, 24-hour general electronic surveillance covering the entire Xinjiang region; the massive deployment of fully armed, reusable Chinese People's Armed Police units in addition to numerous corps of PLA regular troops;

the almost complete cutting off of Xinjiang from the international press and the Internet, as well as severe restrictions on the personal freedom of Uyghurs in travel, housing, study, religion and even courtship, as Uyghur men are prohibited from wearing long beards and women from wearing Uyghur ethnic clothing; the few lucky Muslim pilgrims who declare their allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party will be the first to wear a Beijing-issued electronic device for monitoring on the way to Mecca.

Why the urgency in Xinjiang?

Above all, the recent surge in suppression in Xinjiang is driven by the emergence in the last two decades of a new understanding of security in China, one that centers on a proposed global anti-China alliance led by the US, designed to encircle and contain a rising socialist China from China's entire periphery - from Mongolia, to South Korea, Japan, Guam and Taiwan in the north and east to Vietnam, India and Afghanistan in the southeast, southwest and west - all but one region, the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where US influence appears to be , is the weakest or non-existent.

Therefore, it is imperative for China to make the Xinjiang region its ultimate strategic home base to counter US-led “containment” coming from all sides. To this end, the “Uyghur problem” must first be solved, since for China’s survival, no unrest and trouble should be allowed in the deeply rooted new cold war, allegedly conducted and led by the United States against socialist China.

To achieve this goal, China's last three leaders Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and current Xi Jinping have embraced this new security agenda and are engaging in frenetic Xinjiang dinners and military build-up campaigns. Each of the three leaders had or has their own guideline in implementing this final solution on Xinjiang.

Under Jiang in 2001, it was the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that quickly led to an outpouring of China's strategic resources to secure Xinjiang against US "encirclement and containment" through an alliance with Russia and other former Soviet Central Asian republics such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan .

As Jiang's SCO project required the rapid militarization of Xinjiang, the Uyghurs faced a sudden surge of restrictions and oppression by the Chinese government, leading to violent ethnic clashes in Xinjiang in 2009 under the leadership of the next Supreme Leader, Hu Jintao. In 2009, the Uyghur incident and its brutal suppression served as a prelude to current Supreme Leader Xi Jinping's latest pronouncement to completely eliminate the "Uyghur problem" in Xinjiang.

Secondly, Supreme Leader Xi Jinping's gigantic Belt and Road Initiative, estimated at US$4-8 trillion, is creating another major impetus for the Beijing government to "appease" the Uyghur population as Xinjiang now serves as a logistics hub and links key components of the Belt and Road. Belt and Road projects are starting in this Uyghur region. The new Eurasian Land Bridge starts from Xinjiang, passes through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally reaches Germany. The China-Turkey corridor also starts from Xinjiang; This is what the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor looks like.

Third, China's growing strategic partnership with Russia in an attempt to form a united front against the US also requires Beijing to quick fix the problems of the Uyghurs as a prerequisite for a healthy and long-term Moscow-Beijing alliance.

Historically, Moscow has been the largest factor in supporting and fueling the Uyghur independence movement. In his fight against Kuomintang control of Xinjiang Soviet Union, as in Vladimir Lenin, and later when Joseph Stalin, supported the Uyghurs. In 1921, the Soviet Union officially defined the Uyghurs under Chinese rule as a "non-Chinese" people belonging to the Turkic ethnic group. In 1933, Stalin supported the creation of an independent Uyghur state in Kashgar, known as the First East Turkestan Republic[FTR]. After his death as a result of the military victory of the military commander Sheng Shikai over the ETTR, the Soviet Union created the Second East Turkestan Republic [ETTR] in 1944, which was based in Yili, Xinjiang.

In 1949, Stalin betrayed the Second East Turkestan Republic by agreeing to Mao Zedong's demand to subordinate the East Turkestan Republic to the newly created Moscow-backed People's Republic of China, and held peace negotiations between the leaders of the East Turkestan Republic and Mao Zedong in 1950. But on the way to Beijing, the entire VVTR leadership team died in a plane crash over the Soviet Union, thus relieving both Moscow and Beijing of concern from independence-oriented Uyghur elites for the following decades.

But in stormy Eastern relations between Beijing and Moscow after the death of Stalin, Soviet leaders, from Khrushchev before Brezhnev, used the East Turkestan independence movement and Soviet Turkish studies as weapons of "ideological warfare" against Chinese communist infidels, causing Beijing nightmares. In the post-Soviet era, Uyghur studies of the Russian intelligentsia and the publication of Turkish studies on the Uyghurs and their quest for independence have witnessed a revival.

Mindful of Moscow's past penchant for using the Uyghur issue as a wedge and a bargaining chip in the increasingly existential bilateral relationship between Beijing and Moscow, China's leaders are wasting no time in addressing the source of such a scenario, the recently revived Uyghur independence movement, but now with religious overtones. known as the East Turkestan Islamic Republic [ETIR].

Fourth, the current surge in “Uighur appeasement” in Xinjiang also coincides with a rapid surge in Chinese ultranationalist chauvinism. Since his emergence in late 2012, Xi Jinping has championed China's belief in expressing Han national pride and racial purity.

November 8, 2017 President Trump and his wife Melania visited the Forbidden City in Beijing. Xi Jinping explained to Mr. Trump how "Chinese personality" should be defined: chinese man, according to Xi, is "a descendant of a dragon with black hair and yellow skin." Such deep-rooted cultural prejudices are found throughout the country. At the same time, Uighurs who do not have black hair or yellow skin and who have unique non-Chinese facial features and can be easily identified are often denied hotel check-in, train or plane tickets. The Uyghurs cannot live as free people anywhere in the People's Republic, as has been prescribed by the government at all levels. In other words, the entire Uyghur ethnic group is willingly submitting to the watchful gaze of the dominant Chinese throughout the country.

How successful“ pacification“ UighursKitaeatin Xinjiang?

It is absolutely astonishing that China does not face a global outcry and outrage proportional to the scale and intensity of such “ethnic appeasement.” But this is not surprising when you consider the following:

First, the Chinese government took advantage of the US-led global war on terror after the 9/11 attacks and essentially led Washington to designate the feeble East Turkistan Independence Movement as a terrorist group. Out of political expediency, Washington reluctantly accepted China's demand, even as it called on Beijing for restraint and religious freedom in its pursuit of these "Uyghur terrorists" seeking independence. But Beijing ignored the call and censored US warnings. As a result, China never showed restraint as the leader of the free world was given an anti-terrorism excuse.

Second, the Uyghurs do not have a strong enough religious connection to provoke a pan-Islamic counterargument to Beijing's suppression. Predominantly Sunni Muslims, the Uyghurs do not share a symbiotic relationship with the Muslim world of the Middle East in the ongoing political and religious wars.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which has central political and religious authority in the Vatican, they do not have a central religious authority to voice the plight of the Uyghurs and provide support upon their request.

Third, China is cleverly using economic and financial packages to silence the Arab and Islamic world that supports the Uyghurs. Despite the crackdown, no Arab or Islamic government has dared to openly criticize China for its draconian measures in Xinjiang.

The desire to create large quantity"re-educational" concentration camps for the Uyghurs, the systematic screening and arrests of Uyghur intellectuals on college campuses and schoolyards, the detentions and arrests of lawyers, businessmen and other members of the Uyghur elite, the ominous proliferation of new crematoria in Xinjiang - all point to genocide or even a holocaust at work. The United Nations and virtually all international human rights organizations have issued a serious warning about this possibility in the People's Republic of China. Will the pogroms of the 20th century find their evil twin in the 21st century? Let's hope not.

The Uyghurs are quite an ancient people. They are the indigenous population of East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. They speak their own language, Uyghur, and their religion is Sunni Islam. Refers to Caucasians with minor Mongoloid admixture.

The Uyghurs are one of the oldest Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia with a centuries-old history and a rich, distinctive culture that played an important role in its historical destinies.

The ancestry of this people goes back centuries and millennia. The first mentions of the Uighurs are found in ancient Turkic inscriptions, in ancient Chinese chronicles long before our era under the names “Oykhords”, “Huns”, “Huigu”, “Gavgyuy” (BSEM, 1956, vol. 44, p. 59).

The ancestors of the Uighurs were the nomadic tribes of Eastern Turkestan, in the 3rd century. BC e. − III-IV centuries. n. e. played an important role in the tribal alliance of the Huns. The first mentions of the Uyghurs in written sources date back to the 3rd century AD.

Settlement in the modern world and numbers

The total number is now approximately 10 million people. Of these, more than 9 million live in East Turkestan/XUAR, as well as in major cities in eastern China. A small enclave of Uyghurs numbering about 7 thousand people also exists in Hunan province, in the southeast of China, where they have lived for several centuries.

The Uyghur community, abroad, with a total number of about 500 thousand, is represented in many countries, but the bulk lives in the republics of Central Asia, the number of the Central Asian community is approximately ~ 350 thousand. Of these, in the Republic of Kazakhstan ~ 250 thousand, in the Kyrgyz Republic ~ 60 thousand, in Uzbekistan ~ 50 thousand, in Turkmenistan ~ 3 thousand.

A large Uyghur diaspora exists in the Republic of Turkey numbering about 40 thousand, as well as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ~ 30 thousand. There are also Uyghur communities in Pakistan, the UAE, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada, the USA, Japan, Australia. Uyghur enclaves can be found in cities around the world such as Sydney, Beijing, Shanghai, Mecca, Almaty, Bishkek, Munich.

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Uyghur communities are characterized by traditional self-organization in the form of malls, headed by elected elders, zhigit-beshis. Typically, all communities are members of Uyghur public organizations, the unifying organization of which, in turn, is the World Uyghur Congress.

Story

In the III-IV centuries. The Uighurs were part of an association that in Chinese dynastic chronicles was called Gaogyu (lit. “high carts”). In the 5th century in Chinese sources a new name for this union appears - tele (tegreg “cart workers”). A significant group of Tele tribes migrated west to the steppes of Kazakhstan and Southeastern Europe. Those who remained in the Central Asian steppes were subjugated by the Turks and became part of their state.

The main lands of the body were then in Dzungaria and Semirechye. But in 605, after the treacherous beating of several hundred Tele leaders by the Western Turkic Churyn Kagan, the leader of the Uighurs took the tribes to the Khangai Mountains, where they created a separate group, called by Chinese historiographers “nine tribes” (Tokuz-Oguz).

Since 630, after the fall of the first Turkic Khaganate, the Tokuz-Oghuzs acted as a significant political force, the leadership within which was established by ten Uyghur tribes led by the Yaglakar clan. In the V-VIII centuries. The Uyghurs were part of the Rouran Khaganate and then the Turkic Khaganate.

The process of ethnic consolidation of the Uighurs ended in the 8th century. after the collapse of the Turkic Kaganate and the formation of the Uyghur early feudal state (Uyghur Kaganate) on the river. Orkhon. The Khaganate was headed by Khagans from the Uyghur clan Yaglakar (Chinese: Yao-luo-ko; 745-795). It was at this moment that Manichaeism was recognized as the official religion. In 795, the Ediz tribe (795-840) came to power, which also took the name Yaglakar.

Gumilev considers this episode to be the coming to power of the Manichaean theocracy: ... in 795, the adopted son of one of the nobles, Kutlug, was elevated to the throne, under the conditions of limiting power.

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“The nobles, officials and others reported: “You, heavenly king, sit carelessly on the precious throne, and you must receive an assistant who has the ability to control the measure of the sea and the mountain: ... laws and commands must be given: you must hope for heavenly mercy and favor.” . In other words, executive and judicial powers were taken away from the khan, and politics was taken under the control of heavenly mercy,” that is, the Manichaeans. The tribal union turned into a theocracy.

In 840, power in the Kaganate returned to the Yaglakar tribe for 7 years. In the 840s, due to complex internal political and economic reasons, as well as the external invasion of the ancient Kyrgyz, the Uyghur state collapsed.

Division of a previously unified

Some of the Uighurs moved to East Turkestan and the western part of Gansu, where three independent states were created - with centers in Gansu near the modern city of Zhangye, in the Turfan oasis and Kashgar.

The Karakhanid state in Kashgar and the Uyghur state of the Turfan Idykuts Kochov Turfan lasted more than 400 years.

Here the Uyghurs gradually assimilated the local, predominantly Iranian-Itocharian-speaking population, passing on their language and culture to them and, in turn, adopting the traditions of oasis agriculture and some types of crafts. During this period, Buddhism, then Christianity (Nestorianism), spread among the Uyghurs of Turfan and Komul, whose religion was Manichaeism and shamanism. During the same historical period, starting from the 10th century, Islam spread among the Uighurs of Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, and by the 16th century. supplanting other religions throughout East Turkestan.

With the adoption of Islam, Arabic script replaced the Old Uyghur script.

The formation of the modern Uyghur ethnic group with the New Uyghur language dates back to this time. Political-administrative disunity during the 15-16th centuries. as well as a number of other reasons led to the fact that the ethnonym “Uyghur” began to be used little, and was soon supplanted by religious self-awareness. The Uyghurs called themselves, first of all, “Muslims,” and also by region of origin - Kashkarlyk (Kashgarian), Khotanlyk (Khotanian), etc., or by occupation - Taranchi (farmer).

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In the XVII-XVIII centuries. in East Turkestan there was a Uyghur state, which was captured by the Manchu rulers of China in 1760. National oppression and brutal exploitation caused numerous uprisings of the Uyghurs against the Manchu-Qing, and later the Kuomintang enslavers. In 1921, at a congress of Uyghur representatives in Tashkent, the ancient self-name “Uyghur” was restored as a national one.

With the destruction of the last Uyghur statehood in 1949, and with the formation of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 1955, the PRC authorities pursued a deliberate policy to assimilate the Uyghurs, primarily through the mass resettlement of ethnic Han Chinese in the XUAR and artificially limiting the birth rate of the indigenous Uyghur population.

In general, achievements in the field of education and health care, and cultural development, are complicated by the demographic, ethnic and religious policies of the Chinese government. A big problem is the growth of Islamic extremism among the Uyghurs and the brutality of repression by the state. Not only in China are Uighurs disliked; in Kazakhstan, the indigenous population also does not like them.

Beijing promoted Islamism among the Uyghurs in preparation for a Soviet invasion; China faced massive resistance in the 1990s

On last week Alexey Volynets wrote about the history of Uyghur separatism until the end of World War II. Today he tells how the Uyghurs tried to gain subjectivity from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.

Uyghurs in socialist China.

Initially, after the Chinese communists came to power, the situation in Xinjiang developed according to Soviet patterns of building “national-cultural autonomy.” Even the Uyghur alphabet was officially translated from Arabic letters into Cyrillic according to the developments of USSR scientists. But Beijing soon corrected course and began resettling Chinese people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a policy that continues to this day.

The number of ethnic Han living in the XUAR grew from 4% in 1949 to 40% by the end of the 20th century.

Chinese colonization was primarily carried out by military-administrative methods. The divisions of the Chinese communists that entered Xinjiang, from the early 1950s, were reorganized into the so-called “Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps” (SPCC) numbering over 200 thousand people - 13 agricultural and 3 labor divisions began to develop virgin lands, build roads and other infrastructure. Soldiers combined work in the fields with combat training. Soon, by directive of the CPC Central Committee, corps soldiers were allowed to get married, establishing a flow of women from central regions China. By the 1970s, this “labor army” had increased to 700 thousand people, and it built over 20 thousand new Chinese settlements in Xinjiang.

All these decades of Chinese development of the XUAR were not without clashes between the Uyghurs and Han Chinese; most of these facts remain almost unknown due to the total closeness of Maoist China. We know about the 1962 unrest in the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Region of Xinjiang on the border with Soviet Kazakhstan. In Chinese official history, these events are called the “nationalist rebellion.” The vanguard of the action were oil workers, among whom were many veterans of the anti-Chinese uprising of the 1940s. During the suppression of the rebellion, over 5 thousand people were shot and imprisoned in camps, from 60 to 100 thousand Uyghurs and Kazakhs fled across the border into the USSR. At the same time, most of the Russian officers who served in the Chinese army left the XUAR and went to the Soviet Union.

Among the few facts of ethnic clashes in Xinjiang that have become known outside China is this: in 1967, in the city of Shihedzi, the second largest in the XUAR, Uyghurs killed over a hundred and wounded over a thousand Red Guards, who came here from China to deepen the “cultural revolution” .

In the 60-70s on the border of Xinjiang and Kazakh SSR There were several armed clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops. The most famous of them is the battles near Lake Zhalanashkol in August 1969. Since the late 60s, the Central Asian Military District of the USSR has been preparing to fight in Xinjiang, carefully studying potential opponents and allies in this territory.

Soviet soldiers during the battles near Lake Zhalanashkol, August 1969. Photo: armyman.info

In 1980, a closed directory for Soviet officers of the Central Asian District, quite in the spirit of “oriental” descriptions of the 19th century, gave the following description of the indigenous population:

“The Uighurs are one of the most ancient peoples of Central Asia, they have a rich and ancient culture... National traits are hospitality and politeness. However, the Uighurs are very flexible in dealing with people and not everyone who enters a Uighur’s house will find a warm welcome.

Uighurs are very superstitious. They believe in conspiracies, witchcraft, talismans, and in the existence of witches and brownies. Concentrated and serious in everyday life, the Uighurs become animated at the sound of music and song and enthusiastically indulge in fun. Among Uyghur men, despite the fact that it is prohibited by Muslim laws, smoking anasha is widespread..."

Military settlements

During the protracted Soviet-Chinese political confrontation, the Beijing authorities quite seriously considered the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan as preparation for the Soviet annexation of Xinjiang. As a result, the number of Chinese troops in the XUAR increased sharply, and by the beginning of the 80s, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps numbered over 2 million 250 thousand people, accounting for one sixth of the XUAR population. The corps produced a quarter of the autonomous region's total output, doing everything from mining to cotton growing. The corps included agricultural, civil engineering and even hydraulic divisions.

The Corps is a huge socio-economic corporation, including individual cities, rural areas, many industrial production and even two of their own universities. At the same time, the corps spread throughout Xinjiang remains almost entirely Chinese - among its military personnel, over 88% are Han Chinese and less than 7% are Uyghurs.

Among the entire population of the region, only 40% are Chinese and 45% are Uighurs, but in the capital of the XUAR, the city of Urumqi, the Chinese are 80%, and the Uyghurs are only 12%, and even those mostly live on the outskirts of their capital.

The most important nuclear facilities for China are also located on the territory of the XUAR - it is here, at the bottom of the dry salt lake Lop Nor near the Turfan Desert, that a test site is located where nuclear weapons are tested. In 1964, the first Chinese atomic bomb was detonated here. In 1996, China was the last world power to conduct a nuclear test here before joining a moratorium on them.

Modern Xinjiang is an important part of the PRC economy. More than 3,000 deposits of a wide variety of minerals are developed here - from coal and oil to gold and rare earth metals. Coal reserves in Xinjiang are estimated at two trillion tons, and estimated oil reserves are also impressive - 30 billion tons. Almost all types of polymetallic ores and almost the entire periodic table are found here. According to American economists, in the first half of the 21st century, Xinjiang will become one of the most attractive regions of Asia for global transnational companies. Fierce competition for the development of the richest deposits could unfold here. Naturally, Beijing cannot leave such a promising and problematic region without careful supervision.

Islamism from Beijing and the collapse of the USSR

The Chinese authorities, fearing the ethical and cultural closeness of the Uyghurs with the Turkic peoples of the USSR, not only tightly closed the previously porous border, but also transferred the Uyghur alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin (all Central Asian republics of the USSR then used exclusively Cyrillic), and then, in the early 80s , in general, the Arabic alphabet was officially returned. This was the third change in the alphabet of the Uyghur language in the XUAR in 30 years.

From the late 60s to the late 80s, China's entire policy was based on open military-political confrontation with the USSR. Deng Xiaoping, even after starting capitalist reforms, in relations with our country for a long time remained a champion of the toughest course of confrontation. Therefore, especially after the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, the PRC authorities quite seriously feared that Xinjiang would become the next battlefield. Official Beijing tried not only to protect the Uighurs from any Soviet influence, but also to find allies among them against Soviet expansion.

Islamists, of whom there have long been many among the Uyghurs, seemed like possible allies to Beijing. Therefore, since the beginning of the 80s, religious policy has been softened in the XUAR. Previously, especially during the years of the Maoist “cultural revolution,” any religion, including the dominant Islam in the XUAR, was considered a hostile phenomenon that had to be eradicated. While in 1982 there were fewer than three thousand active mosques and houses of worship in Xinjiang, by the end of the decade their number had more than quadrupled.

For the Chinese intelligence services, Xinjiang Islamists have become a link with the Afghan opposition fighting against the USSR. We know very little about this, but in reality, China supplied the Mujahideen with weapons much more actively and generously than the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Throughout the 1980s, official Beijing turned a blind eye to the fact that many Uyghurs who joined the CCP, including high-ranking XUAR functionaries, regularly visited mosques in violation of the Communist Party charter. In 1987, the CPC Central Committee allowed the opening of the Xinjiang Islamic Academy in the region. As a result, by the beginning of the 90s, an Islamic renaissance occurred among the Uyghurs of Xinjiang.

In the early 90s, the number of operating mosques in the XUAR doubled again. This religious revival coincided with the collapse of the USSR and the surge of Islamism and Turkic nationalism in the post-Soviet Central Asian republics. It is important to remember that these newly-founded states have long been home to a large Uyghur diaspora - over a quarter of a million in Kazakhstan alone.

The appearance on the world map of new Central Asian states, close to the Uighurs in culture and language, served not only as an infectious example of nationalism for the indigenous population of the XUAR. The collapse of the USSR opened up a huge Central Asian market for the Chinese economy. By the beginning of the 90s, Deng Xiaoping’s reforms had just yielded their first fruits, and the PRC’s business, which had just begun to rapidly develop, rushed to establish the flow of goods made in China to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. It was the Uighurs, due to linguistic and cultural proximity, who became the main intermediaries in trade. In just a few years, a wealthy layer of the national Uighur bourgeoisie appeared in Xinjiang, growing through mediation between Chinese industry and the markets of post-Soviet Central Asia.

The explosive mixture of Islamic revival, the triumph of similar nationalisms and the emergence of considerable, by local standards, Uyghur capital produced an unexpected result for official Beijing. By the mid-90s, the Uighurs quite en masse and clearly expressed their dissatisfaction with the Chinese.

"Dashing 90s" with Chinese characteristics

The beginning modern stage Uyghur separatism, speaking under Islamist slogans, was sparked by the events in the Kashgar region on April 5, 1990, where, as the official Chinese press wrote, an “armed counter-revolutionary uprising” broke out. For the first time since the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Chinese authorities were forced to resort to airlifting troops to quell unrest. Two “agrarian divisions” of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps also took part in the operation.

The rebellion was caused by the removal of a popular mullah, as well as by the actions of police officers monitoring birth control - for traditional Islamic families, even the official permission of three children (and not just one child, like the Chinese) was a strong irritant.

In subsequent years, there were repeated clashes with the police, attacks on police stations, and bombings of trains and buses. In 1995, authorities announced the discovery of a large cache of weapons. In the spring of 1996, the central newspaper of the Xinjiang Ribao wrote that since February there had been five serious social explosions in Xinjiang, as a result of the actions of the authorities, 2,773 people were arrested for involvement in terrorist activities, more than 2.7 tons of explosives and 31 000 units of ammunition. According to information from the Uighur oppositionists themselves, the actual number of those arrested exceeded 10 thousand people, more than a thousand were killed during clashes with police and troops.

The wreckage of one of the buses that was blown up in Beijing in 1997. Photo: Greg Baker/AP

One of the most high-profile clashes during this period lasted from February 2 to 8, 1996. The reason was the police arrest of a group of Uyghur youth in an illegal house of worship. The result of mass protests against these arrests was 120 killed by the police and over 2,500 arrested Uyghurs.

On February 12, 1996, the local press reported a train explosion. The government immediately announced that the attack was carried out by the Revolutionary United Front, an exile Uyghur organization then based in Kazakhstan. In May, a Uyghur terrorist attempted to assassinate the imam of the main mosque in Kashgar, who was collaborating with the Chinese authorities. The terrorist was shot dead by the police; further investigation revealed that the attacker was sent by his parents at the age of five to study at an underground madrasah, where the basics of Islamism and Pan-Turkism were instilled in Uighur children.

Until the end of 1996, terrorists shot and killed whole line high-ranking Uyghur officials accused of collaboration with China. Official data is classified, but it is believed that in 1996, about 500 police and security officials died in the XUAR.

In early 1997, Chinese authorities sentenced to death and executed several dozen Uyghurs who had been arrested a year earlier in separatism cases. Information about these executions caused unrest and pogroms of Chinese migrants in a number of cities in Xinjiang, the most violent in the city of Yining near the border with Kazakhstan. China was even forced to officially inform the Kazakh authorities about large-scale troop movements in the region. 30 thousand Chinese soldiers entered the city, supported by tanks and armored vehicles. According to Uighur activists, 90% of local families had between one and three people arrested.

Reds vs Greens

In response to the violence, the CPC Central Committee announced close ties between separatism and “illegal religious activities” and launched a campaign to reduce Islamic influence in the XUAR.

The Communist Party admitted that control over many grassroots party cells in the villages of Xinjiang has been lost. It turned out that Islamists had infiltrated the party: 25% of Communist Party members in Xinjiang professed Islam, and in the villages their number reached 40%.

To begin with, the authorities tightened legislation regulating religious activity. A third of all operating mosques in China were located in Xinjiang; over several years, the authorities reduced their number by 20%. Particular attention was paid to control over religious education - in 1997 alone, 105 illegal madrassas were closed in the XUAR.

In parallel, a complete reorganization of the grassroots CCP cells in Xinjiang was carried out. The Party leadership issued a special regulation for the Xinjiang Party Committee prohibiting the participation of CCP members in religious activities, as well as the distribution of books and other materials of a religious nature. If such facts are discovered, such CCP members should automatically be considered terrorist collaborators.

The Chinese authorities have very strictly limited the contacts of their Muslims with foreign co-religionists - they have reduced the number of those who are allowed to go on the Hajj to Mecca; now only elderly people can go there from China. At the same time, the party authorities of the XUAR officially offer to replace the pilgrimage with a free excursion to Beijing for a person who has received permission for the Hajj to Mecca.

The PRC authorities additionally transferred several army divisions to the XUAR and significantly increased the number of security agencies in the region, to the point that in some areas, during the aggravation of the situation, the number of security forces exceeded the local Uyghur population.

Over the course of several years, China's intelligence services have arrested, killed, or forced the most active separatist and Islamist leaders to flee abroad. According to Uyghur oppositionists operating outside of China, the PRC intelligence services have created an entire network of Uyghur underground under their control, provoking splits among the separatists and unfavorable actions for them.

Since 1999, the intensity of anti-Chinese protests by the Uyghurs, especially in their extreme forms, has begun to decline. At the end of 2005, the Chinese authorities noted with satisfaction that during that year not a single terrorist attack occurred on the territory of the XUAR.

Economic fight against separatism

The impressive growth of the Chinese economy, for all its costs, has had a beneficial effect on Xinjiang. By the beginning of the 21st century, XUAR was no longer considered an underdeveloped and poor region. In a list of 31 provinces and autonomous entities in China, the homeland of the Uyghurs ranks twelfth in terms of GDP per capita. Beijing actively contributes to the growth of prosperity in the XUAR - free economic zone and trade with the CIS countries turned Urumqi and other cities in the region into thriving centers of industry and commerce.

The growth of the economy and, accordingly, the international influence of China has also ensured the political isolation of the Uyghur separatists. In the 90s, various Uyghur political organizations operated unhindered and almost openly in the Asian republics of the former USSR. Diasporas and the weakness of local statehood gave the Uighur separatists a reliable and convenient base near the borders of the PRC. The Xinjiang underground managed to carry out a number of assassination attempts on Chinese diplomats and expropriations of Chinese businessmen. For example, in 2000, several Chinese officials and the leader of the Uighur community who collaborated with the Chinese authorities were killed in the capital of Kyrgyzstan. That same year, in the center of Almaty, Uyghurs from Xinjiang armed with machine guns successfully robbed banks and fought with the police and military of Kazakhstan. In 2002, in Bishkek, members of the underground “Organization for the Liberation of East Turkestan” shot and killed the Chinese consul.

But by the beginning of the 21st century, the situation had changed dramatically - the authorities of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan not only strengthened their police apparatus, but were also increasingly following Beijing’s lead. In addition, their interests and the goals of the PRC in the fight against the Islamist underground completely coincide. As a result, over the past decade, a lot has passed in all these republics. trials varying degrees of closeness against Uyghur organizations and activists. As a result, the Xinjiang oppositionists in post-Soviet Central Asia also found themselves deep underground.

Mutual deadlock

Despite the successes, the objectively existing ethnic tension between the Han Chinese and the Uyghurs cannot be reduced. The demographic pressure of the Chinese and the alienation of the two peoples constantly provoke ethnic explosions in Xinjiang.

The most famous mass clash outside China was the 2009 Urumqi riots. The reason was a skirmish that took place very far from Xinjiang - in southern China, in the rich and industrialized province of Guangdong. In the city of Shaoguan, the factory of Early Light International, the world's largest manufacturer of children's toys, introduced a quota for workers from Xinjiang. The event was held as part of a large program by the Chinese authorities, according to which, since 2008, 200 thousand young Uighurs have been recruited to work in the developed coastal provinces of China. So, among the 20 thousand Chinese at the factory, approximately 800 young Uyghurs appeared.

The conflict did not take long to arise. Due to the limited official information, several versions later appeared, differing depending on the ethnic sympathies of the source - either the Uyghurs committed gang rape in a factory dormitory, or there was only harassment of Chinese female workers. Or, according to the Uyghurs themselves, there was no violence on their part at all - just two Chinese girls from the hostel were frightened by the brutal dances and loud songs of the young Uyghurs.

All this resulted in a mass brawl, which required the intervention of 400 police officers to end the conflict. The fighting sides tried to finish off their opponents even in ambulances. According to official figures, two Uyghurs were killed and over a hundred were maimed.

Information, photos and video footage of the mass brawl, supplemented by various rumors, instantly spread on the Internet and social networks in China. Within a few days, protest demonstrations by outraged Uyghurs began in Xinjiang. On July 5, 2009, in the capital of the XUAR, Urumqi, the first clashes between Uyghurs and police and local Chinese occurred. A noticeable part of the fighters on both sides were students of the Kashgar Pedagogical Institute. According to the Chinese authorities, during the fights and pogroms, 197 people (less than fifty Uighurs, the rest Han) were killed and about two thousand were injured over two days.

The Uyghurs are China's most prominent minority outside its borders. Along with the Kurds and Tuaregs, they are one of the three largest nations that do not have their own state.

The Uyghurs are considered a minority only on the scale of a billion Chinese - over ten million citizens of Uyghur nationality now live in the PRC. For comparison, this is twice as many as all the Tatars living in Russia, the largest non-Slavic national minority.

The vast majority of China's Uyghurs - over eight million - inhabit their historical homeland, now officially called Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) China. Xinjiang, which means "new frontier" in Chinese, is a huge quadrangle in the far northwest of China, between Mongolia, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Tibet. Two thousand kilometers from east to west, a little less from north to south. Cut by high mountain ranges, there are arid plains and deserts with oases along which the famous “Silk Road” ran in ancient times.

The Uyghur ethnicity was largely generated by the Great Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean, the main economic artery of ancient Eurasia. Therefore, among the ancestors of modern Uyghurs there is a historical cocktail of disappeared Turkic and Mongol peoples, mixed with the ancient population of the Taklamakan oases, one of the largest sandy deserts in the world.

Modern Xinjiang is one-sixth the area of ​​the entire territory of China, which would fit three Frances. XUAR borders Kazakhstan (1,718 km), Kyrgyzstan (1,000 km), Tajikistan (450 km), Russia (55 km), Mongolia (1,400 km), as well as Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. The total length of the state border of the XUAR of the People's Republic of China is over 5,600 kilometers. Every third Chinese border guard serves here.

Xinjiang - this region is also called Dzungaria and East Turkestan - has long been inhabited by many tribes and nationalities, mainly Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, as well as other peoples professing Islam - Dungans (descendants of the Muslim Chinese), Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks.

Dzungaria was the last nomadic empire in the world, which was crushed by the Chinese Qing Empire in the 18th century in a bloody war that lasted decades. The troops of the Beijing emperor slaughtered almost 90% of the Dzungars (Western Mongols); those who were not slaughtered fled west to the Volga, where they became Russian Kalmyks. TO early XIX centuries, the borders of the Chinese Qing Empire covered both modern Xinjiang and modern Kyrgyzstan and southern part modern Kazakhstan to Lake Balkhash.

East Turkestan is already the Russian name for the homeland of the Uyghurs, which arose in the 19th century. It became eastern because there was Western Turkestan - a region of settlement of Turkic-speaking peoples, which fell into the sphere of influence of Russia. Now this includes the former Central Asian republics of the USSR.

Uyghurs invented by Russians

Amazing historical fact, But Russia gave the modern ethnic name to the Uighurs – in 1921, a congress (kurultai) of representatives of the Uyghur intelligentsia was held in Tashkent. There, at the suggestion of Sergei Efimovich Malov, a professor of oriental studies from Kazan, the ancient name “Uighur” was restored as an ethnonym-self-name of the settled Turkic-speaking population of East Turkestan. Before this, the inhabitants of the Uyghur oases called themselves according to their place of residence - “Kashgarians”, “Ilians”, “Turfans”, “Taranchians”. But to contrast the Chinese, they collectively called themselves “yarlik” - literally “countrymen” or “locals”.

The Chinese first captured the territory of modern XUAR two thousand years ago during the Han Empire, when the ancient Chinese tried to establish diplomatic contacts with the Roman emperor Titus Flavius. In the first century AD, Chinese garrisons and the first settlers appeared here to control the Great Silk Road. In fact, today the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China only continues the traditions of the Han Empire in this region - the coincidence is even more surprising if we remember that both the PRC and the Han Dynasty were founded by the leaders of the victorious peasant uprisings, Mao Zedong and Liu Bang.

The last two thousand years of the history of Xinjiang represent a continuous series of victories and defeats of local statehood in the fight against the claims of Chinese emperors - from the descendants of Liu Bang to the “descendants” of Mao.In the first millennium AD, there were three Uyghur Khaganates, large early feudal states. The so-called “Third Uyghur Khaganate,” a contemporary of the legendary Rurik, stretched from the steppes of Kazakhstan to Korea.The Uighurs then practiced Manichaeism, an unusual religion that grew out of a mixture of early Christianity and Zoroastrianism.

The convenient geographical location of the Uighurs contributed to both the development of high culture, where Chinese and Mediterranean influences were mixed, and the spread of new religions. The Uyghurs successively became Buddhists, Manichaeans, and in the first three to four centuries of the second millennium AD converted to Islam.

The Russians first became acquainted with the Uyghurs during the Mongol invasion - the orders of Batu and his heirs that came to Rus', yarlyki and paizi, were written in the “Uyghur script”. The Uyghur alphabet, by order of Genghis Khan, was officially adopted in the Mongol Empire from the first years of its emergence. In science, this Uyghur alphabet is now called “Old Uyghur” - it arose on the Great Silk Road at the beginning of the first millennium AD, taking as a basis the alphabet of ancient Sogdiana, which in turn, through the Aramaic letter, went back to the first Phoenician alphabet in the history of mankind...

War with China as national identity

After the Manchus crushed the Dzungar Khanate in the 18th century, almost destroying the Western Oirats who professed Buddhism, the province of Xinjiang, created on the remains of the deceased Khanate, remained one of the most restless in the Qing Empire. Here, uprisings and rebellions of local Muslims, i.e., broke out with regularity. Uighur population - in 1816, 1825, 1830, 1847 and 1857.

To pacify the rebellious province, the Beijing authorities kept Manchu and Chinese garrisons here and encouraged immigrants from the central provinces of China to move to Xinjiang. Special military settlements were created from the Sibo and Solon tribes related to the Manchus, whom the Qing authorities resettled from the Far East to Central Asia.

Despite all these activities, an anti-Beijing uprising of Uyghurs and Dungans (Muslim Chinese) broke out here in 1864. For more than ten years, almost the entire territory of Xinjiang was an independent Islamic state of Yettishar, separated from China, headed by Yakub Bek, who united several rebel khanates and sultanates. The new khan, who received the title “Defender of the Faith,” was a Tajik by nationality, a former military leader in the Kokand and Khiva khanates. This fact is clearly emphasized by loved ones family ties Uighurs from Central (Central) Asia.

Tajik Yakub Bek created in the anti-Chinese Xinjiang an army powerful enough to resist the troops of the Chinese emperor, relying on mountains and deserts. But another empire, advancing from the north, Russia, which in those years was conquering the Central Asian khanates and emirates, was not at all eager to have an aggressive Muslim state on its new Asian borders. After all, Yakub Bek, trying to find allies against China, openly focused on foreign policy against Turkey and the British Empire, which was then trying to gain a foothold in Afghanistan from the Indian colonies.

Within this " great game“Russia and Britain for Central Asia, in St. Petersburg they decided that for the peace of Western Turkestan, which had already become Russian, it was better to return East Turkestan under the nominal authority of distant and then relatively weak Beijing. The main problem for the Chinese armies in recapturing Xinjiang was communications, or rather supplying troops during a thousand-kilometer march in desert and mountainous terrain. Russia solved this problem for Beijing - the first governor of Russian Turkestan, the Russian German Kaufman, carried out an entire special operation to supply grain to the advancing troops of the Chinese general Zuo Zongtang. The Chinese bought this grain from the Russians at the most speculative prices, paying over 10 million rubles in silver for it.

Having thus solved the logistics problems, the troops of the Chinese emperor began to massacre the Uyghur and Dungan rebels along with their families. The remnants of the rebels fled to territory controlled by Russia. Here the accommodation and treatment of these refugees was carried out by Dr. Vasily Frunze, the father of Mikhail Frunze, the same one who, four decades later, during our civil war, would return all of Western Turkestan to Russia.

All Uyghur classical literature arose from this national liberation struggle with China. Thus, Nazim Bilal, a poet and writer, the most famous Uyghur literary classic, not only himself participated in the anti-Chinese uprisings, but also devoted most of his works to this very struggle. Almost all the heroes and heroines of Uyghur literature of that time fought against Chinese expansion.

Chronic victims of geopolitics

Already in the 20th century, Uyghur states that broke away from China would emerge twice in Xinjiang. During the anti-Chinese uprisings in 1932, the Khotan Emirate appeared, and the following year, the entire East Turkestan Islamic Republic, headed by the Uyghur Khoja Niyaz, who adopted the completely modern title of “president”. Before these events, President Niyaz managed to take part in the Russian civil war on the side of the Bolsheviks, being an activist of the Revolutionary Union of Kashgar-Dzungar Workers.

The Uyghur uprising began with the attempt of a Chinese officer of the local garrison to marry a Uyghur girl. A fact that clearly emphasizes the degree of hatred and alienation of politically active Uyghurs from China. The new independent state had a chance of success as long as the USSR remained hostile to the nationalists from the Kuomintang party ruling in China. But in the second half of the 30s, Soviet communists and Chinese nationalists had a common dangerous enemy - samurai Japan, which began active expansion on the Asian continent. Fearing its excessive strengthening, the USSR supported official China, including helping the Chinese regain control over Xinjiang.

Here Soviet troops, including aviation, have already directly participated in the battles to return the new Chinese governor Shen Shicai to Xinjiang. At the same time, the Soviet units were disguised as White Guards who had previously fled to Chinese territory - graduates border schools The NKVD were sent to Xinjiang, where, by order of the People's Commissar, they were required to wear pre-revolutionary shoulder straps and call each other “Your Honor.”

The new Chinese Governor-General of Xinjiang in the late 1930s focused more on the Stalinist USSR than on the central government of Kuomintang China. In 1939, he even secretly asked the Soviet consul to accept him as a member of the CPSU (b) - it is noteworthy that the party card was issued to the Chinese governor and secretly transferred to the capital of Xinjiang. By that time, the Soviet Union controlled key raw material extraction facilities on the territory of Eastern Turkestan, and it was then that Soviet specialists first discovered uranium deposits here.

But after the start of the war with Nazi Germany, General Sheng Shicai too hastily concluded that the days of the USSR were numbered. He fired Soviet advisers and began shooting Uyghur and Chinese communists. Among those executed was the younger brother of Mao Zedong, the future ruler of Red China.

In the summer of 1944, Governor Sheng finally realized that he had made the wrong choice and hastily fled his post to central China. By that time, the cessation of trade with the USSR had caused a real economic crisis in Xinjiang and fueled new Uyghur uprisings. In the fall of 1944, the East Turkestan Revolutionary Republic arose. It is interesting that this latest anti-Chinese uprising was led by a Uyghur, Kazakh, Kalmyk and Tatar(the Kazan Tatar diaspora has always played a key role in the vibrant Russia-USSR trade with Xinjiang).

The President of the East Turkestan Republic becomes the Uyghur Akhmedzhan Kasymov, a man with an illustrative biography - he graduated from school in Soviet Alma-Ata, received a pedagogical education at the Soviet University of Tashkent, and defended his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Uyghurs at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Languages ​​as a staff member of the Comintern. The commander-in-chief of the army of the new Uyghur republic was the Soviet NKVD Major General Ivan Polinov, and the former White Guard general who served in Dutov’s army, the Old Believer Cossack Varsonofy Mozharov, was appointed chief of staff.

In September 1945, under pressure from Soviet diplomats and the military successes of the Xinjiang rebels, the Chinese central government recognized the "autonomy" of the Uyghurs. In Moscow at this time, the Stalinist Politburo very seriously considered the proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR (a large Uyghur diaspora had long lived in Kazakhstan) to create a Communist Party in Xinjiang. As the Kazakh communists wrote, “in order to consolidate the political and economic gains of Muslims who rebelled against the Chinese in the northern districts of Xinjiang, and to further develop the national liberation movement of the non-Chinese masses in this province.”

But the factor of big Russian-Chinese politics again intervened in the fate of Uyghur statehood. In 1949, it became finally clear that the Chinese communists were winning the protracted civil war that had lasted in China virtually since 1911. And Moscow considered that an alliance with big red China was much more important than the complicated relationship with the Uyghurs.

As a result, the government of the East Turkestan Revolutionary Republic, flying from Xinjiang on a Soviet plane to Beijing for negotiations with Mao, did not fly anywhere. According to the official version, the plane crashed somewhere between Irkutsk and Chita. Created with the help of the USSR, the armed forces of the Uighur Republic officially became the 5th Corps of the communist People's Liberation Army of China. For many years, until Khrushchev’s quarrel with Mao Zedong, this corps was commanded by Chinese Lieutenant General Fotiy Ivanovich Leskin, a Russian Old Believers.

As we see, the Uighur separatists, who over the past two centuries had many chances of success in their anti-Chinese struggle, were simply chronically unlucky to find themselves victims of geopolitical combinations and compromises of large planetary players, primarily Moscow and Beijing. In other scenarios, we could see a very large Turkic Islamic state in the very center of the Asian continent, immediately north of Tibet.

From the outside, China may seem like a single and indivisible communist state, as if straight out of the pages of red propaganda. In fact, it is a very complex and diverse country. One of its most notable and unusual regions is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), with a significant Muslim population. The correspondent visited the largest province of China and looked at how Russians, radical Islamists and atheists manage to coexist there.

“This is a Chinese restaurant! It is haram for a Muslim to dine here! Let’s better find some decent place,” my guide Aziz says politely but adamantly. The “decent place” turned out to be a teahouse. There were no chairs in the establishment, and we sat on cushions near the dastarkhan, in the shade of spreading plane trees. Nearby there was a small pond covered with mud, from which there was a breath of coolness. Aziz did not deceive - it really was very cozy here.

He poured fragrant green tea and in broken but lively English he continued to develop his favorite topic. “Look at the grace around! We will never agree for the Chinese infidels to redo all this in their own way!” - deftly wielding Chinese chopsticks in the fragrant pilaf, my new acquaintance taught me.

I looked around. Immediately behind the ditch with gurgling water there was a lush oriental bazaar. Sellers and buyers in robes and skullcaps were conducting a leisurely oriental bargain. No, this is not Central Asia. I was in China.

Divided Region

About two centuries ago, the single ethnocultural region of Turkestan found itself divided - its eastern part went to China, the western part to Russia. However, the same Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Tajiks live on both sides of the border. The most numerous indigenous people of Xinjiang are the Uyghurs, who are very close in language and customs to the Uzbeks.

In ancient times, East Turkestan was a powerful state that had a huge influence not only on Central Asia, but also on China. In 1759, Chinese troops captured the region and named it Xinjiang ("New Frontier").

Since then, the Uyghurs have rebelled more than four hundred times. Terrorist acts are repeated even today. Some Uyghurs are fighting on the side in Syria. This year, they distributed a video on the Internet, threatening to return to their homeland and “shed rivers of blood.”

Girl with a rocker

“Spoon”, “fork”, “newspaper”, “car”, “steering wheel” - these Russian words are now used in everyday life by both the Xinjiang Uyghurs and other local indigenous peoples. And this is no coincidence: Russian influence in this region has a fairly long and rich history.

In 1871, Russian troops occupied the city of Ghulja and surrounding areas in Xinjiang. The territory was returned to China only ten years later, and together with the Russians, about 45 thousand Uyghurs left Gulja and settled in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

In 1944, with the help of Moscow, the Uyghurs took control of the western part of Xinjiang and proclaimed the East Turkestan Republic with its capital in the city of Ghulja. There were many Soviet soldiers here then, serving as advisers to the Uyghur army. However, after coming to power, the Kremlin decided not to irritate its ideological ally and promised to mediate in the reconciliation of the parties.

The entire Uighur government was invited to Almaty, from where it was supposed to fly to Beijing for negotiations. But the plane crashed, and with it the young republic collapsed. The Uighurs are confident that the plane crash was staged by Soviet security officers. “The Russians always use us as a bargaining chip,” one Uighur businessman complained to me.

There were not only Russian military personnel in East Turkestan. In the 19th century, thousands of families of Russian Old Believers fled to the north of the current autonomy, Chinese Altai, to escape persecution by the tsarist authorities. It was these bearded men who taught the Chinese Kazakhs and Tuvans to build wooden houses, use the bathhouse. And although there are no Russians left here anymore, their former presence is still felt today.

Externally, the villages of Chinese Altai (one of the districts of the XUAR) are very similar to typical settlements of southern Siberia. Sometimes it even seems that the “Russian spirit” has been preserved more strongly in northern Xinjiang than in Russia itself. So, for example, in Siberian villages I have never met girls with a yoke, but in the Chinese Altai this simple equipment is still held in high esteem.

Russians also emigrated to central Xinjiang. The first settlers arrived here at the end of the 19th century, during the Russian occupation of Gulja. A new wave of resettlement occurred in the 20s of the last century. These were mainly White Guards who fled from Central Asia. Then - starving people from Russia and Ukraine. Before the start of the Cultural Revolution, more than a hundred thousand Russians lived in Xinjiang. However, after a quarrel between Mao and Nikita Khrushchev, “purebred” Russians were persistently asked to emigrate, which most of them did.

Almost like in the USSR

Today, half of the region's population is Han Chinese, and the same number are representatives of Turkic-speaking peoples of the Muslim faith (42 percent of Uyghurs, 6 percent of Kazakhs, one percent each of Kyrgyz and Tajiks).

It is interesting that Beijing almost completely copies Soviet national policy. Thus, in Xinjiang there are Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik national autonomous regions. Each of them is headed by a representative of the titular nation, and the deputy is a Han Chinese.

Autonomous regions have television channels and newspapers in local languages. Schools with teaching in their native language have been created for all nationalities, and institutes have quotas for applicants “from nationalities.”

Even the Chinese Russians, about 11 thousand of whom are mostly half-breeds, have not been forgotten. The largest Russian community remains in the same Gulja, where several dozen “purebred” Slavs live. There is even a small Russian quarter in the city - several houses separated from the rest by the massive fence of the Orthodox cemetery.

Russian spirit

It feels like I found myself in pre-revolutionary Russia. Somewhere in Europe, Russian emigrants assimilated, but here they became mothballed.

It’s not just about old-fashioned turns of phrase (for example, they say “to survive from bread to kvass”), but also about some heightened sense of self-esteem - the empire that sent their ancestors here is long gone, but this feeling remains. Accordion - favorite musical instrument, to which folk songs already unknown to modern Russians are performed in the evenings. Homemade kvass and warm bread baked in our own oven are always served for lunch.

There is also a Russian school in Ghulja (the Chinese call it Yining), although most of the students are Han Chinese and Uyghurs. The authorities give Russians a day off for Easter and Christmas. The local administration even restored the Orthodox church.

True, Beijing will not tolerate local Russians communicating with them without permission from above. In 2003, priest Vianor Ivanov from the Kazakh city of Zharkent, bordering Xinjiang, got into trouble. Father, without the knowledge of the Chinese authorities, went to Gulja to baptize Russian children. As a result, not only did he not baptize anyone, but he himself found himself under house arrest in his hotel room.

“I was interrogated in terrible Russian for a whole week! Then they released me, but only on a promise not to perform any religious rituals in China without permission from the authorities,” he told me.

Apartheid in Uighur

But this long-standing incident is rather an exception. In general, local Russians have almost idyllic relations with the Chinese. Alas, the same cannot be said about the Uyghurs. In fact, there is an unspoken apartheid here: Uyghurs not only never dine in Chinese restaurants (the food there is non-halal), but also avoid shopping in stores of immigrants from the metropolis. National conflict can provoke even an innocent question “what time is it?” Local Chinese often live according to Beijing time (officially approved in the autonomy), and Uighurs live according to local time, which coincides with Almaty time.

“China's birth control law is an insult to our faith. A Muslim should not live under the rule of infidels. And if he agrees to this, then he is not a true believer, but a munafik (hypocrite),” an elderly Uyghur, who did not dare give his name, convinced me.

The Chinese authorities are well aware that the religiosity of the Uyghurs hinders their integration, and they act quite harshly. “Children under 18 and government officials are prohibited from visiting mosques,” read signs on almost all mosques in Xinjiang. The life of Muslims is completely controlled by state religious committees, which approve the candidacies of Islamic clerics.

“Every Friday, all imams go to a meeting in the religious committee, where, together with officials, the text of the Friday sermon is developed. We are also obliged to inform the authorities in detail about all planned Muslim rituals,” explains one of the imams in Kashgar.

Moreover, the pressure on believers increases from year to year. Until 2017, many married Uighur women, for example, wore burqas. But from April 1, the autonomy authorities banned such attire by a special decree. The explanation is very reminiscent of the arguments of our communists during the campaign against the burqa in Central Asia in the twenties of the last century. The authorities of the autonomy emphasized: the burqa indulges the husband’s possessive instincts, and by removing it, the woman gains freedom.

True, it is unclear how exactly the “extremists” will be punished, given that it will be very difficult to “liberate” Uighur women: in many regions of the XUAR (for example, in Kashgar and its environs) almost half of married women do this. Judging by the lack of reports of reprisals, it can be assumed that this decree is not being implemented too zealously.

It’s not easy not only for religious women, but also for civil servants and students. They can be fired or expelled just for going to the mosque and observing Muslim rituals.

“One day the dean’s office found out that I and some other Uyghur students were fasting during Ramadan and going to the mosque,” ​​one of the local students named Salim told me. “And then in the afternoon, during the holy month of Ramadan, we were invited to the dean’s office: there was a table set there, and there was alcohol. They explained to us that the teachers wanted to get to know the Uyghur students better. It is forbidden to eat during the day during Ramadan, and it is even more unacceptable for a Muslim to drink alcohol. But we had to sin. If we refused to eat and drink, our religiosity would become known and we would be expelled.”

Uighur officials also have their own tactics. They atone for their sins before the Almighty after retirement: instead of the prescribed five times a day, they pray ten or even fifteen times, making up for lost time.

Islam with a Buddhist touch

The authorities of the Celestial Empire seek to control not only classical Sunni Islam, but also the most exotic branches of this religion.

"A good man chooses a nice place and sits contemplating nature. After death, the soul of the righteous goes into Space, and the sinner’s soul moves into an animal,” explains Mullah Shakar Mamader from the city of Tashkurgan in the Chinese Pamirs.

The reasoning of a Muslim theologian may seem seditious from the point of view of classical Islam. The fact is that my interlocutor belongs to the Ismaili sect. The teachings of Ismailism are a bizarre mixture of Islam with Hinduism and the philosophy of Plato. Ismailis believe in both the transmigration of souls and cosmic intelligence. In their opinion, time in the universe is divided into cycles, and the worlds are sequentially created by the absolute God.

“We pay more attention to the essence of the teaching, rather than to rituals. Ismailis believe that it is enough to pray only twice a day, and not five, as Muslims do. We are also accused of not observing the Ramadan fast. Well, every person has the right to freedom of opinion, but in fact, we are real devout Muslims,” Mamader convinces me.

Externally, the villages of the Chinese and Tajik Pamirs are practically indistinguishable. As in the Tajik Pamirs, the Chinese Ismaili house is distinguished by a clearly defined, religiously legitimized layout. There are no windows in the walls; light enters through a narrow gap in the roof. The ceiling of the house must be supported by five columns (a sacred number among the Ismailis).

The Pamiris on both sides of the border are famous for their hospitality. The traveler will definitely be invited into the house and treated to strong tea with milk. True, if the Tajik mountaineers eat mainly lamb, the Chinese prefer yak.

The leader of the Ismailis, “vicar of God on earth” Aga Khan IV lives in Europe and is considered one of the richest people on the planet. This graduate dreams of uniting his fellow believers into a “single spiritual imamate.” He seems to be succeeding in the Tajik Pamirs. He not only opened a university here, but also, in the most literal sense of the word, feeds his fellow believers. Its humanitarian assistance is the basis of the local economy.

But the attempts of the “vicar of God” to include the Chinese Pamirs in the imamate failed. The Chinese authorities politely but firmly stated that they do not need humanitarian assistance. Beijing does not need foreign gurus.

Carrot and stick

In China they like to talk about the advantages of Chinese perestroika compared to the Soviet one: in Russia, carried away by the development of democracy, they completely forgot about the economy, which resulted in chaos and the collapse of the Union. In Beijing, they took a different path: the economy was reformed under the strict control of the Communist Party, and all attacks by the separatists were resolutely suppressed. Moreover, they are openly trying to buy supporters of independence. The national outskirts are now the main direction of assistance from the Center.

If in Soviet times Central Asia was a much more developed region than East Turkestan, today the situation has changed dramatically: the Central Asian republics are increasingly reminiscent of third world countries, and Muslim China is the developed states of the West.

The successes are truly amazing. So, back in the early 1990s, the cities of the autonomy were built up with dull five-story buildings, and you had to get around by cab - it was almost impossible to get a taxi. 10 years later, I found myself in a different world: shops shining with advertising, high-rise buildings, a continuous flow of cars on new roads. In terms of the number of technical problems in the lives of ordinary citizens, Xinjiang today is not inferior even to the United States.

The autonomy hasn’t forgotten about tourism either. Thanks to excellent roads, travelers can easily reach the most remote corners of the XUAR, where magnificent hotels and restaurants have been built for them. In Xinjiang, the tastes of foreign travelers are taken into account to the smallest detail - for example, in the Muslim region you can easily find cold beer. XUAR is now one of the popular tourist destinations: it is visited by tens of times more foreigners than Central Asia. Foreigners leave money here, and this cannot but please even the most stubborn Uyghur separatists.

This carrot-and-stick policy is bearing fruit: the number of supporters of independence is steadily declining. No, the Uighurs still do not like the Chinese, but the opportunity for a successful business, coupled with the fear of being arrested for separatism, overpowers the abstract ideals of freedom.

“Of course, every Uighur dreams of independence for their homeland. However, we have to admit that this is just an unattainable dream. It’s better to make money than to sit in prison,” says Khoja Nasreddin with an air of folk wisdom former underground worker, and now the owner of a thriving travel company, Ibrahim.