Karasar, Hasan Ali. "Chicherin on the delimitation of Turkestan: Native Bolsheviks versus Soviet foreign policy. Seven letters from the Russian archives on razmezhevanie". Central Asian Survey, Vol.21, No.2 (2002): 199-209.

Karasar, Hasan Ali. "Chicherin on the delimitation of Turkestan: Native Bolsheviks versus Soviet foreign policy. Seven letters from the Russian archives on razmezhevanie". Central Asian Survey, Vol.21, No.2 (2002): 199-209.

• This article is a collection of seven letter written to various Soviet officials in the 1920s by Georgiy Chicherin, the Soviet Comissar for Foreign Affairs between 1923 and 1930. The letters were written about Turkestan during the time of basmatchi resistance and when the Turkestani elite were undecided about whether to support or oppose national delimination (199).
• The letters are as follows:
• 1) To Joseph Stalin, dated 5 April 1924. In this letter, Chicherin warned against the redistribution of territories belonging to Xiva and Buxoro and said that such a plan would likely result in protests from the Muslims and the Western states (200).
• 2) To the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party, dated 16 May 1924. Chicherin again warned about the negative impacts that dissolving Buxoro would have on the USSR's relations with Muslim states, particularly Turkey and Afghanistan. He cautioned that British influence in Afghanistan was liable to increase if the Soviets dissolved Buxoro (200).
• 3) To Stalin, dated 22 May 1924. Chicherin warned that the national delimination of Soviet Turkestan had been done hastily and that the project contained errors. He said that even one of its major supporters, Fayzulla Xo‘jayev, believed the project had been rushed (200).
• 4) To the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party, dated 28 May 1924. Chicherin warned that the Uzbek commercial bourgeois were behind some of the plans for delimination and planed to make themselves rich by including all of the cotton producing areas of Turkestan in a new Uzbekistan and put all the poor areas into other SSRs. He noted that this plan was opposed by the Kyrgyz and by the Xorezm Communists because they would be left with only the poorest areas and that the Turkmens supported the plan because they would get some rich areas (200-201).
• 5) To Grigoriy Zinovev, dated 28 May 1924. He reiterated previous points about the delimination project being supported by the Buxoro commercial bourgeois and warned against about the destruction of an independent Buxoro and Xiva being bad for Soviet relations with the Muslim world (201).
• 6) To Stalin, dated 6 July 1924. Again, repeates that the delimination of Soviet Central Asia would have a negative impact on relations with the Muslim world, including Turkey, and claims that even Fayzulla Xo'jayev had doubts about the stability of the new SSRs (201).
• 7) To Stalin and other senior Communist leaders, dated 30 October 1924. This letter was written after the delimination of Soviet Central Asia had been carried out. Chicherin complained about the attemps by Turkmen Communists to incorporate Turkmen areas of Iran into the USSR and asked Stalin to use his influence among the Turkmen leadership to get them to stop (201).
• In this series of letters, Chicherin makes five arguments in opposition to national delimination in Soviet Turkestan:
• The delimination, by ending the indpenedence of Buxoro and Xiva, would have a negative impact on the USSR's relations with the Muslim world, in particular Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran. The creation of Turkmenistan would cause apprehension in Iran and Afghanistan would be offended that the Soviets violated an earlier treaty guaranteeing Buxoro's independence. All countries would be drawn more into the British sphere (201).
• The changes in possession of land and wealth among different national elites would upset the balance in the region and cause ethnic strife that would have the largest impact on the masses (201-202)
• Bolshevik leaders were being manipulated in the delimination by Uzbek commercial bourgeois who wanted to create a signal zone of cotton wealth that they would control (202).
• Even the local Communists, like Fayzulla Xo'jayev, who supported national delimination, believed that there was a potential for revolt among some Uzbek classes because of the end to Buxoro's sovereignty (202).
• The project was poorly planned, lacked detail, had an unrealistic timeline, and needed more thought and research before being carried out (202).
• These letter may unset the conventional view that national delimination in Soviet Central Asia was a project from the Center and imposed on the region. According to Chicherin's account, the main supporters of delimination were local Central Asian Communists who believed that delimination would grant them more power and influence (202).