Xinjiang: Revolution, Modernity, and Identity
When the Manchu Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, the peoples of Xinjiang endured decades of political and social upheaval. Civil war, warlord dictatorships, and foreign invasions destroyed many lives, as well as the economy. The peoples of Xinjiang additionally found themselves buffeted by the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, which sent Russian armies and waves of refugees into the region. Turkic nationalism, fueled to a significant extent by Han Chinese abuses, developed during this chaotic period. After Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party declared the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1948, they implemented nationality policies based on the principle of unity rather than Soviet-style federalism. This laid the groundwork for the tensions that we see in Xinjiang today.
Naming the nation
The very idea that there are such things as nations, and that nations by definition deserve political and cultural freedom, originated among Europeans and was spread by Europeans to the rest of the world. One result of this origin is that key events or symbols in anti-colonial history often owed their existence to the very people that nationalist rebels were trying to overthrow. In the case of Xinjiang, the name “Uyghur” had not been in use for 500 years, until Imperial Russian scholars decided that the eastern Turks must be descended from the 9th-century kaghanate, and therefore should be called “Uyghurs.” In the 1910s and 1920s the small group of Jadid-influenced intellectuals in the region adopted the name Uyghur, but it only came into widespread use during the rule of Sheng Shicai (1930–1944), one of many Chinese military officers who found themselves in charge of bits of a broken China in the 1930s. Sheng, who was based in Urumchi in eastern Xinjiang, was unusually sympathetic to the grievances of Turks against Han abuses. He made a point of employing non-Han in his government and promoted the study of Turkic and Mongol languages. Sheng was closely allied with the Soviets, and he borrowed Soviet nationality policies to recognize fourteen ethnic groups in Xinjiang, including the Uyghur, Taranchi (Turkic settled people in northern parts of the province), Kazak, Kyrgyz, and Hui/Dungan. By creating a bureaucratic category that came with real political and economic benefits, Sheng did as much as any intellectual group to solidify a Uyghur identity [Millward, pp. 206–209; Rudelson, pp. 4–6, 149].
Warlords
The natural and man-made disasters that befell northwest China* in the 1920s and 1930s were almost unfathomably complex. What government that functioned in the region was dominated by Han Chinese warlords, some of whom were affiliated with the Guomingdang Chinese Nationalists, but in reality were independent actors. Some of these Han warlords imposed heavy taxes on Hui, Turkic, and Mongol communities, took land from them, and in general instituted an ethnically-based oppression that the Qing had been wise enough to avoid. This led to armed resistance and the rise of a few Turkic and Hui warlords who seized their own fiefdoms. Alliances among fighting factions were made according to convenience rather than ethnic ties: individual Uyghur generals took support from Chinese, Soviet, Hui, Kazak, and Kyrgyz forces, but switched sides as political and economic conditions shifted. Anti-Soviet White Russian armies contributed to whatever group paid the best. In the ever-changing pattern of alliances, internal fighting among Turkic and Han groups was also common. If all this were not bad enough, the northwest also experienced earthquakes, drought, and famine [Millward, pp. 178–201].
The two republics of Eastern Turkestan
In 1933–34 and again in 1944–49, Turkic nationalists set up independent republics, based respectively in the town of Kashghar in the far west and the town of Ghulja in the Yili River valley in the north. Although very short-lived, these governments were crucial for the development of Uyghur nationalism. They have also sparked ferocious debate over their nature and significance. The brief existence of the republics and the contradictions in the documents they left behind make it difficult to ascertain clear and consistent political principles. The 1933 republic called itself both the “Eastern Turkestan Republic” (ETR) and “The Eastern Turkestan Islamic Republic,” and struck coins labeled “Republic of Uyghuristan.” Some historians refer to a “Turkish Islamic Republic of East Turkestan.” Each variant emphasizes a different aspect of identity, whether regional, religious, or ethnic. The symbolic language of the republic suggests that its leaders were mostly concerned with creating a European-style national identity: they designed a flag, a constitution, and a national anthem about “the homeland of our Turk people.” Politicians paid their respects to God and spoke in mosques, but did not say anything about restoring the traditional rule of the khojas. Japanese historian Shinmen Yasushi points out that many of the leaders of the First ETR were from merchant and clerical families who had been active in bringing Jadid education to Xinjiang. Since Jadidism was a modernizing school of thought, it is not so surprising that the ETR was based more on Western national models than on pre-Qing political traditions [Millward, pp. 201–206; Rudelson, p. 6].
The 1944 government also called itself the “Eastern Turkestan Republic,” although only one of its founders had a direct connection with the 1933 ETR. The circumstance surrounding the establishment of the second ETR are extremely murky: Millward nicely summarizes the problem when he says “Historical accounts of the second ETR have a Rashomon-like quality,” [Millward, p. 225]. The current scholarly consensus is that, in the fall of 1944, a rebellion local to the Ili river valley, led mostly by Kazaks, broke out against the GMD government. The Kazak rebels were rapidly joined by Uyghurs, Mongols, White Russians, and others, who drove out GMD forces by November. The defeated Chinese tried to blame Soviet backing for the rebels’ success, but there is little primary documentation to support this view. It is also true, however, that the rebel coalition of mostly Turk nationalists founded a government and an army, complete with uniforms, with astonishing speed. This suggests that they may have had financial and logistical help from the USSR. On the other hand, the 1944 government gave a more prominent political role to Islam than had the 1933 ETR, which undermines the argument that it was a puppet of the militantly atheist Soviets. The leaders of the second ETR could not sustain their early success. As of July 1946 they entered into a coalition government with the Guomindang, which lasted one year before breaking apart due to increasing Han-Turk violence. Despite continued oppression, the second ETR could not maintain a united Turk coalition against the Han. By the spring of 1947 the republic had lost the loyalty of several Kazak leaders, the most prominent of whom was Osman Batur, who allied his army with the GMD [Benson, 1990, pp. 122–125; Millward, 221]. Neither Turk identity nor Islamic identity provided a coherent enough unifying force to withstand the pressures of the Chinese civil war. In September 1949 the last fighters from the second ETR surrendered to Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party.
Both ETRs were nationalist in that they supported local, Turkic independence from the Han. However, neither was Uyghur nationalist, and neither could be characterized as Islamist. The Turkic political elite in the region did not agree among themselves on exactly whose independence they were fighting for. While people certainly recognized differences in language and lifeways between Kazak nomads and Uyghur oasis dwellers, that did not necessarily mean that they interpreted these differences as permanent, much less biological, barriers. Some Turks who were allied with the GMD believed that all Turks were one people and should be governed as such. Others, such as Kazak chief Osman Batur, fought against all outside authority, whether Chinese or Turkic. Ironically, a critical building block for founding the modern Uyghur national identity was provided, not by the ETRs or other Turk leaders, but by one of the loathed Han Chinese warlords.