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Komiljan Djurabekov was born in 1928 in the village of Bazar Korgan, near Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan. He lived there until he left for the army. Later, he studied in a “political school” in Tashkent and then worked for the KGB. Abdurahman Aripov interviewed him in Bishkek on March 22, 2009.

Nomadic people never had a government. They never stayed in one place, because they were nomadic. They moved from place to place, finding grass for their livestock. Nomadic people didn’t have nationalities, either – they were identified by where they were from and only after that, by their names. Chingis Khan didn’t have a government, because he was nomadic, too. And that’s why, after the October Revolution, the goal was to establish a government in Central Asia. The goal was to make people live somewhere and divide them up, to make it easier to control them.

After the revolution, people were divided into ethnic groups, and that’s why the Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, and Kazakh SSRs [Soviet Socialist Republics] were created. It was called “delimitation of nationality.” And all that was done in order to make it easier to exercise power over the people of Central Asia. When all nationalities are the same nationality, it is difficult to control them. And people can just refuse to obey the government. When people are broken up into small countries, it is easier to control them.

Just like the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks established this kind of government. All orders came from Moscow. With the construction of railroads, schools, and hospitals, they began transmitting their culture to Central Asia. But Central Asian culture was a Muslim culture. And it was a Christian culture that came here. That’s why Lenin was always saying that the “suburbs” of Russia should be better supplied than the central regions: in order to raise some interest there; in order to convince them that, “We are supporting them, so they should respect us.”

And, like this, a country was created. And that’s why many nationalists were killed in 1937 – so that they wouldn’t think about making their own governments. At that time, Akram Ikramov and Fayzulla Hodjaev, people involved in the Uzbek revolution, were killed as nationalists.

All the laws and rules were made in Moscow and were sent to the other republics. And there the laws were copied. And that’s how the Soviet Empire was established. The Soviet Union was an empire, too – a huge empire. Because of the richness of its lands, it became very strong. It never adopted capitalism and wasn’t ruled by capitalists. The USSR, independently provided food for itself and also exported food to other countries, to draw them closer.

The worst system that has ever been created is government. Governmental institutions work only for themselves. They transmit their ideas through television. For older people, they have serials [multi-part movies]. For youth, they made up different shows and concerts. They don’t think about the essentials. They forget about them. And they create, instead, an illusion – a circus.

World War II had a very bad effect on us. It was the most bloody war that has ever been fought. And a lot of money and goods were spent on it. It was a destructive war. This war was begun by financial magnates, not by Hitler. Hitler was just told that German people should live better and that’s why he needed to conquer other countries. And Hitler was told that, for a better life, he needed more land.

It was rooted in the fact that politicians were afraid of the USSR, because the political and economic structure of the USSR wasn’t convenient for the capitalists. So they began to conquer the USSR. I don’t know how many people from Kyrgyzstan died, but I can say a lot of people died. Maybe, out of all the people who were mobilized, only 10 percent came back and the other 90 percent died. And we suffered after the war. We didn’t recover for a long time.

The most punishable crime in USSR was the killing of innocent people; the second was corruption and taking bribes; the third one was “speculation” [running a private business]. And people dealing in gold were punished severely, too. They were all sentenced to being shot.

I worked here [in Bishkek] when a struggle against illegal trading began. Those who were doing business were punished severely. This was in a Bishkek factory – a knitting factory. Near that [government] factory, another one was illegally built, which wasn’t on the government’s books. It produced all the same products that were produced in the legal factory. And they were sent to stores and shops all over. The profits were divided among the people who created the illegal business. A lot of this money was also given to people in high positions. They knew about this illegal business but didn’t take any action against it.

All that happened in 1959. It was called “The Knitting Factory Incident.” It was a famous court trial in the USSR. Several prosecutors were imprisoned, several lawyers, two people from the obmin [state government], and several people from the central committee of the Kyrgyz SSR. Razzakov [1] was forced to leave his post. Seven people were sentenced to death. Two of them died in prison because of heart disease and the rest were shot. Many others were imprisoned or sent to different “colonies.” Most of them didn’t come back

Although there wasn’t much immigration here, some Jewish and Caucasian people did come to live here. Some Chechen people who were enemies of the Soviet Union also came. [2] During the war they all worked here and, after the war, they were allowed to go back. They lived and worked here and no one had anything against them. They were treated like equal citizens of the country. The local people did not discriminate against them. After the war, the Jewish people left fast. But the Chechen people left slowly. The last Chechen person probably left Bazar Korgan in 1955 or 1956.

During World War II, there was a [ration] card system. Cards were given to everyone. Everybody got about a half a kilogram of bread everyday. We got the bread from stores by showing our cards. Almost no one died from hunger during World War II. But during the famine in 1933, many people had died because of a lack of food. At that time, all over the world, there was dry weather and a lack of water. In 1933, almost everything that grew dried up and died. Everything stopped growing. There was almost no food. And people ate everything they could find. We ate dogs and dead animals. At that time, many migrants came to our region from Kazakhstan. A lot of Kazakhs came to our region on their camels. And the camel would be standing there alive, but the owner of the camel would be falling down and almost dying of hunger. I don’t know why they didn’t eat their camels.

My father had land before collectivization. I was a little kid at that time and my father was given a hectare of land. We planted cotton there; others planted vegetables and other kinds of plants on their land. We gave all the cotton we grew to the Pakhta Abat cotton factory and the factory gave us money for it.

Collectivization began in Bazar Korgan during the hunger years – in about 1933. Theoretically, it collectivization was right and it was good that the harvest went to the government and the government paid the farmers. But collectivization is not a productive way of doing something. Everyone works differently: some work pretty well others do a poor job.

Religion was mostly prohibited in the USSR, because religion just distracts you from your job. Besides, believing in God won’t make you any money. And if you pray to God and ask him to give you money, he will not give it to you. You have to work to earn your money.

Before, all the mullahs and imams were rich. They got part of the income of each farms and each stockbreeder. So the USSR prohibited mass religious meetings and closed all the madrassas and mosques. They didn’t want people to go and pray five times a day. It takes a lot of time to pray. And also they say that a mosque is God’s house, but everybody knows that in the Koran and in the Bible it is said that God has no home. He wasn’t born by anyone and he never gave birth to anyone.

Then why do people go to mosques? In order to ask for help or for something they need from God. God doesn’t need our prayers. Let’s take as an example: We hold a memorial ceremony 40 days after someone’s death and then, again, one year after the death. Who needs these memorials? Does God or the dead person need them? No. They are held in order to show other people that we honor the dead, to show them that we remember those who are close to us. And here a person honors his close people by sacrificing a sheep or a cow. And that is all done for appearances.

Here is a story: There was one Kyrgyz person who was walking and he met another Kyrgyz person. The first one says, “Hey Umurzak, have you heard that someone died?” And the other asks, “What did they sacrifice?” And the first one answers: “A cow.” And Umurzak says, “Well then I won’t go – he was that kind of person.” But if a horse was sacrificed [which would be considered more delicious], then that Kyrgyz person would go and eat horse meat and say good stuff about the dead person.

When I was a child, we read and wrote in the Latin alphabet. In 1935-1936, when I went to first grade, there was only one teacher. He taught us everything – math, algebra, and foreign languages. It was only later that we got many teachers and each of them taught one subject. When the war began, all the teachers were sent to war immediately. Real school and real education only began again after the war.

As for me, I finished only four years of school because of the war. I have only four years of education. After the war, I went to serve in the army – in the army, you also get educated – and it was there that I studied. Studying depends on the person himself: if you want to get an education, you can do it even without a teacher.

After I came back from the army, I was given a leadership position. I had four years of education and I became the director of a dormitory. It was because I came back from the army as a Party member. After a year, I was chosen as a member of the district committee. Also, I worked as a Party worker and as vice president of the department. Then I graduated from a Party school that was a branch of a party school in Moscow.

My native language is Uzbek. It is my language from my mother’s side because my mom kept me inside herself for about nine months and then gave a birth to me. She also raised me. There are families where the father comes home and sees his child only once a month and all the rest of the time, my mother educated me and raised me. But still, your father is the closest person to you. Why, you ask? Because he was the person from which the seed came.

I know many Turkic languages, because they are all similar. I also know Russian, because, in the army, people spoke Russian and I learned Russian. The Party school was also in Russian.

Electrification began in our region probably during the war or maybe at the beginning of the war. There is a small village not far from Bazar Korgan. It is called Sovietskaya. And there on the river the first small hydroelectric station was built. People accepted electricity as a gift from God.

Everything is moved by energy. And the cheapest energy comes from hydroelectric plants. Thermoelectric power stations are not very profitable. They require gas and coal.