M. Suphi - Mustafa Kibarzade

Suphi with Comrades Azerbaijan

Archive : State Treasury Institution of the Kaluga Region "State Archive of the Kaluga Region"

Name : Krasin V. M. Mustafa Subkhi and Mustafa Nizametdin Bin Dervish Kibarzade: political emigrants from the Ottoman Empire in the Kaluga province during the First World War.

Group name : Publications of employees of the State Archives of the Kaluga Region in collections of materials of scientific conferences, scientific journals, newspapers

Text :

// Army, society, people in the First World War: materials of the All-Russian scientific and practical conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Brusilov breakthrough. - Kursk, 2016. S. 13-18.

Krasin V. M.

Chief archivist of the department of organizational and methodological work of the State Institution of the Republic of Kazakhstan “State Archive of the Kaluga Region”

The entry of the Ottoman Empire into the First World War created new political risks for Russia, some of which were associated with the traditionally strong Turkish influence among the Muslims of the Caucasus and the Volga region. In order to reduce the existing risks in the immediate rear of the Russian troops in the Caucasus, Turkish subjects were massively removed from the region during this period.

In the documents they were referred to as prisoners of war, although, in terms of meaning, their status reflects the term “interned” more accurately. Already on October 27, 1914 (according to the old style), a party of Turkish subjects consisting of 67 people was sent to Kaluga from Batumi. On November 10, 1914, another 140 Turkish subjects were sent to Kaluga from Tuapse. Such groups of internees were sent to the Kaluga province and later [3, l. 1, 3, 4, 26, 64].

In November 1914, a large batch of Turkish subjects of 780 people was distributed among the districts of the Kaluga province, another 250 people were left in Kaluga [1, p. one].

On September 13, 1915, the governor of Kaluga, referring to a telegram from Comrade Minister of the Interior Prince Volkonsky, ordered that all Turkish subjects living in the Kaluga province be deported to Uralsk. The list of surnames of 741 Turkish citizens who were expelled from Kaluga to Uralsk on September 16, 1915, has been preserved [3, p. 171, 183-199].

However, a number of interned Turkish subjects remained in the Kaluga province after September 1915. So, 32 people, according to March 31, 1916, worked in the Zaverin bakery as bakers and were characterized by the bailiff of the first part of Kaluga as “politically reliable” [5, l. 37-38].

Among those who were sent from Kaluga to Uralsk was Mustafa Nizametdin Bin Dervish Kibarzade. This man turned out to be an outstanding personality and stood out from among the other internees already by the fact that he knew how to sign with his own hand in Russian in an even, beautiful handwriting. It is possible that he wrote the appeals to various officials on his own [6, l. 6, 6(rev.)].

The presence of the ending "Kibarzade" in the name may indicate the noble origin of this political figure, although it does not fully prove anything.

In his petition addressed to the Ural Regional Commissioner dated September 25, 1917, he describes in detail the circumstances of his expulsion. According to Mustafa Kibarzade, he was “the secretary of the police department of the internal ministry in the city of Constantinople” (probably the Ministry of Internal Affairs - K.V.) and was a member of the “Liberal Party”. In January 1913, the Young Turks (“Unity and Progress Party”) killed the Minister of War, General Nazim Pasha, the Cabinet of Ministers was occupied by their supporters, and representatives of the “Liberal Party”, including Mustafa Nizametdin Bin Dervish Kibarzade, were removed from power [6, l. 7].

After the assassination of Nazim Pasha, General Mahmud Shevket Pasha, a participant in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, becomes Grand Vizier. However, on May 29, 1913 (according to the old style), he was killed in his car on the way to the government residence, which allowed the Young Turks to ban all political parties and arrest some activists, effectively establishing a military dictatorship [7, p. 84].

Mustafa Kibarzade was also among those subjected to persecution in Turkey: “... therefore, about 650 people were gathered from the Liberal Party and were deported, without any trial or interrogation, to the island of Sinop. September 1913, my second comrades Mahmud Nimet Sin Taufek Bey, and the former commissar of the city of Constantinople Muzaforitdin Bey, fled from the island of Sinop, inside Russia arrived in the city of Batum in the same month, came to the Batumi former police chief Mr. Puchenyants explained our circumstance in the escape, which was reported about us to Mr. Batumi Military Governor, by order of the Governor, we must temporarily be in the mountains. Batum, pending the clarification of our personalities, making inquiries about us to the Russian Consul who was on the island of Sinop, the inquiries were confirmed about us by the Russian Consul from the island of Sinop that we are as political emigrants, on this issue we were allowed to live inside Russia without any charity. My indicated comrades left for [Europe] with the permission of the authorities, and in this number, I received a certificate from the former police chief of the mountains. Batum for the right to live inside Russia, I dropped out in the county mountains. Artvin of the Batumi region where I was born” [6, p. 7(rev.)]. 

Mustafa Nizametdin Bin Dervish Kibarzade was in Kaluga as an internee for a little over six months. Documents confirming his status as a political emigrant, according to his information, were located “in the third precinct in the mountains. Kaluga and in the office of the former chief of police,” however, in Kaluga or Uralsk they were lost. Mustafa Kibarzade wrote to the Kaluga provincial commissar on September 25, 1917: “At this time, I am in the Ural regional prison as a hostage of a Turkish citizen liable for military service. The Provisional Government explained that political emigrants are not included in the military service and should not be repressive” [6, l . 12].

The archive file contains official confirmation of the autobiographical information indicated by Mustafa Kibarzade: “Mustafa Nizametdin Bin Dervish Kibar Zade, with his comrades really arrived from Turkey in Batum in 1913, who were allowed to live in Russia, the petitioner Mustafa Kibar Zade with the permission of the former Military Governor of Batumi region, was placed in the city of Artvin, which, upon declaring war with Turkey in 1914, was placed by the local administration as a conscript in the inner provinces of Russia. Whether any documents were taken from him, I have no information. October 25, 1917, No. 3773. Police chief captain [signature]” [6, l. 9].

The authorities of the Provisional Government did not have time to solve the problem of Mustafa Kibarzade, and it was "inherited" by the new Soviet government. Correspondence continued at least until January 1918, the outcome of the case and the further biography of this political emigrant are unknown.

The fate of Mustafa Kibarzade is reminiscent of the fate of one of the founders of the Communist Party of Turkey, Mustafa Subhi, who also ended up in Kaluga at the beginning of the First World War. Moreover, with a high degree of probability, it can be assumed that in the period 1913-1918 they might have known each other.

The personality of Mustafa Subhi has repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers. One of his first biographers in the 1960s and 70s was the famous Kaluga historian KM Yarkho who studied, among other things, the documents of the State Archives of the Kaluga Region [12]. In the magazine "Asia and Africa Today" in 1970 and 1983. EI Patlazhan [10] and Yu. Rozaliev [11] articles dedicated to Mustafa Subhi were published. These works as a whole made it possible to restore the most important stages of the life of the Turkish communist. However, they, unfortunately, lack references to sources.

In 2000, a short article about Mustafa Subhi was published in the Kaluga Encyclopedia [8, p. 557-558]. In 2009, Kaluga researcher A. V. Tikhonov paid attention to him in the third chapter of the collective monograph “Peoples of the East and the Kaluga Territory. Muslims exiled and prisoners of war in Kaluga province in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries ”, having provided his work with proper references, including to archival sources [9, p. 152-168].

Mustafa Subhi Bey Mevlevi (Mavlevi) Zade was born in Giresun (Trabzon governorate) into the family of a high-ranking official. He received his primary education in Syria, then graduated from a law school in Istanbul. Later he left for Paris, where he stayed for two years, improving his knowledge at the Sorbonne University at the Faculty of Social Sciences. In 1906 he became a member of one of the illegal student organizations. By the time of the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908, he directed the activities of the Association of Ottoman Students in Paris, collaborated with the newspaper "Tanin", where he sent articles devoted mainly related to the situation of French workers. M. Subhi establishes contacts with the International Socialist Bureau (Executive Committee of the Second International). After defending a dissertation on the development of agricultural credit in the Ottoman Empire, M. Subhi returned to Turkey in 1910. He held the post of professor of political economy and law at the Higher School of Trade and the Teachers' Institute, in addition, he collaborates with periodicals, and was actively involved in political activities [11, p. 21].

After the murder of the great vizier Mahmud Shevket Pasha, Mustafa Subhi, like Mustafa Kibarzade, was sent to the Sinop fortress, from where he fled with a group of comrades in March 1914. Initially, M. Subhi finds himself in the Crimea, then moves to Batumi, from where, after the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, he was exiled as a Turkish subject liable for military service [8, p. 557].

Mustafa Subhi Bey Mevlevi (Mavlevi) Zadeh, detained in the Fortress District of the Mikhailovskaya Fortress, arrived in Kaluga as an internee on November 2, 1914 [4, p. 17]

M. Subhi was settled in a simple inn "Orlovskoe Podvorie" on Stary Torg, receiving 20 kopecks a day as an allowance. By the spring of 1915, he managed to move to a private apartment in Gorbunov's house on Blagoveshchenskaya Street and rent there for 15 rubles. a room with furniture and heating. He was engaged in tutoring, giving French lessons. Private lessons brought him some income, but the allowance was removed from him [12, p. 63-64].

M. Subhi, like M. Kibarzadeh, together with the bulk of Turkish prisoners of war, was expelled from Kaluga to the Urals in the fall of 1915.

While working at the Ural factories, he established contact with the Bolshevik underground workers. At the beginning of 1918, M. Subhi arrived in Moscow, where he established the publication of the first Bolshevik newspaper in Turkish, Yeni Dunya (New World). In the fall of 1918, M. Subhi headed the Extraordinary Commission for the restoration of the Muslim revolutionary organizations of the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia, which suffered during the White Guard occupation. He also leads the Kazan Scientific Collegium, which united representatives of the Tatar and Bashkir intelligentsia. The first all-Russian conference of Turkologists was held, at which the issue of reforming the graphics of the Tatar language was discussed. In March 1919 M. Subhi took part in the 1st Congress of the Communist International. After the end of the congress, Subhi went to Crimea, then to Odessa, to Tashkent, participating in the fight against the White Guards. On September 10, 1920, the 1st Congress of Turkish Communist Organizations opened in Baku, at which the Communist Party of Turkey was created, and Mustafa Subhi was elected its chairman. Returning to Turkey, he planned to continue his political activities, but on the night of January 28-29, 1921, M. Subhi was killed along with fourteen comrades [11, p. 22-23].

The life paths of Mustafa Subhi and Mustafa Kibarzade, two well-educated Turkish politicians, on the eve of and during the First World War are very similar. Attention is drawn to the fact that officials of various levels in the Russian Empire, knowing about the presence on their territory of political emigrants from the territory of a state at war with Russia, moreover, receiving petitions from them, which emphasized their status and attitude towards the official government of the Ottoman empires did not attach any political significance to this.

In any case, the documents do not contain any mention of attempts to use M. Subhi or M. Kibarzade for propaganda among Turkish prisoners of war, Turkish military personnel at the front, the population of the Ottoman Empire; there is also no mention of attempts to prepare them for political activity in Turkey after the war in order to create political groupings loyal to Russia. Of course, taking into account the political sympathies of M. Kibarzade and, in particular, M. Subhi, they might not have agreed to direct cooperation with the tsarist government, although the forms of such cooperation could be very different. In addition, it should be borne in mind that the decisive rapprochement of M. Subhi with the RSDLP (b) took place, most likely, already in the Urals, during the Kaluga period of his life there could be options for dialogue.

Judging by the documents, the Turkish political emigrants M. Kibarzade and M. Subhi were only an inevitable burden for the officials of the Russian Empire, like hundreds of ordinary prisoners of war and internees of Turkish subjects. The more contrasting is the cooperation of the young Soviet government with M. Subhi, including when working in regions with a Turkic-speaking population.

The biography of Mustafa Subhi in historiography is presented quite fully, today there is only a certain need for a certain generalizing scientific work with a full set of references to sources. This will make it possible to double-check the available information and evaluate the activities of this politician already without the ideological pressure that to some extent took place in the 1960s - 1980s.

As for Mustafa Kibarzadeh, his life path has not been studied in sufficient detail, although from the point of view of the availability of archival sources, there are prospects for this.

In general, the study of the life of Turkish political emigrants in the Russian Empire on the eve and during the First World War may be of significant interest for orientalists, specialists in the history of Russia, military historians and political scientists.

Sources and Literature

1. State Archives of the Kaluga Region (hereinafter - SACO). F. 783. Kaluga city police chief. Op. 1.D.

435.2. GACO. F. 783. Kaluga city police chief. Op. 1.D. 1089.

3. GAKO. F. 783. Kaluga city police chief. Op. 1.D. 1090.

4. GAKO. F. 783. Kaluga city police chief. Op. 1.D. 1091.

5. GACO. F. 783. Kaluga city police chief. Op. 1.D. 1243.

6. GAKO. F. P-109. Kaluga city police. Op. 2. D. 8.

7. Kireev NG History of Turkey XX century. M., 2007.

8. Kaluga encyclopedia / ed. V. Ya. Filimonova. Kaluga. 2000.S. 557-558.

9. Peoples of the East and Kaluga Territory. Muslims exiled and prisoners of war in Kaluga province in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. / otv. ed. V.V. Kurkov. Kaluga, 2009.

10. Patlazhan EI From the biography of Mustafa Subhi. // Asia and Africa today. 1970. No. 11. S. 53.

11. Rozaliev Yu. Mustafa Subhi - revolutionary, internationalist. // Asia and Africa today. 1983. No. 4. S.21-23.

12. Yarkho KM Mustafa Subhi in Kaluga. // The third (anniversary) conference of the Kaluga region. Kaluga-Obninsk, 1971, pp. 62-65.