THE NATIONAL QUESTION IN UZBEKISTAN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY

Abstract

This article highlights that party autocracy in Turkestan was accompanied by a lack of agreement with political parties and a narrow understanding of tolerance on the national issue. Also, despite the fact that the Bolshevik Party theoretically approved the policy of «national self-government» and «equality of nations», in practice, during the period of Soviet rule in the USSR, the national issue was resolved unilaterally, and the rights of various nationalities, in particular, the Turkic peoples living in Central Asia, were infringed. Although official policy proclaims «the equality of nations and the independent determination of their own destiny», archival data show that in fact the opposite was true in life. Despite the fact that the declarative laws contained relevant articles stating that every people in Soviet society has the right to live freely and independently, to create their own independent state, those who put forward such views were condemned as «nationalists» and subjected to repression. These rights have a de jure status, and examples are given of how de facto indicates the opposite.