Migration Factor in Soviet National Policy: Uyghurs and National-Territorial Delimitation in the Turkestan Region

The article examines one of the little-studied pages in the history of the national-territorial demarcation in Central Asia in the 1920s, related to the Soviet policy towards the Uнghur population of Semirech’ye and the Ferghana Valley, consisting of sub-ethnic groups of Kashgarians and Taranchis. The study reveals significant influence of the national-territorial demarcation policy on the formation of Uyghur national identity, the main stages of which are studied in the article based on the analysis of archival documents, materials of Uyghur literature and periodicals, articles and memoirs of leaders of the Uyghur movement in Russian Turkestan. Granting territorial autonomy to the non-Russian peoples of Russia, at the same time, by a decision of the Politburo, the Russian Communist Party in June 1921, has blocked the issue of territorial autonomy for the population from Altyshar (Kashgaria) and Dzungaria, two regions of the neighboring Chinese province of Xinjiang (East Turkestan). In return, the Soviet government offered the Uyghurs favorable conditions for development of education and culture in the Kazakh Semirechye. The Uyghur identity was supported and developed in the historical homeland of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which fell under the influence of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.