‘Peoples of the USSR’ – Postage Stamp Collection (Central Asia)

In 1933, the Soviet Bank Note and Security Printer Goznak (Russian acronym for Государственный знак) issued a series of 21 postage stamps called ‘Peoples of the USSR’.

Four ‘peoples’ included in the series - Qazaqs, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Tajiiks – represented newly formed territorial administrative units across Central Asia. These formations were allegedly based on ethno-linguistic distinctions defined by the central Soviet authorities. A number of adjustments to territorial borders, to the names of the ethnic-political structures, and to administrative status were made throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The process of the mapping of ‘peoples’ of Soviet Central Asia would be largely completed by 1936. In 1933, however, all regions of the USSR were already under firm central control, and were partaking in the process of building socialism. The postage stamp series issued at that time articulated the state’s vision of its multi-national subjects in terms of their allocated roles in the Soviet economy, and it was a publicity piece for the all-Union labour mobilisation.

Five-year plans for the development of the national economy of the USSR launched at the end of the 1920s aimed to industrialize the country. In agriculture, individual peasant cultivation gave way to a new system of collective farming. The State Planning Commission Gosplan (Russian acronym for Государственный плановый комитет), which designed the nationwide plans, focused on economic expediency. It studied regional resources and proposed production figures and thus, production quotas of required commodities were imposed on the regions of Soviet Central Asia, and a vast social transformation accompanied the economic plan.

The year 1933, when the postage stamp series was released, was the time when the First Five-Year-Plan was completed. It lasted from 1 October 1928 to 31 December 1932, and its completion ahead of time (four years and three months) is indicative of the intensity of the socialist offensive. Whilst industrialization gains could be claimed as success, the re-organization and regimentation of farming practices were accompanied by wide-spread famine and the shortages of basic goods. Nevertheless, the Second Five-Year-Plan (1933-1937) was on the whole the continuation of the aims established by the initial plan and people were forced to labour to achieve the plan’s targets.

Qazaqs, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Tajiks depicted on the postage stamps (Figures 1-4) are engaged in this productive labour. The relics of nomadic encampments, slow camel caravans delivering goods, and the use of horses for transportation and agricultural work give way to mechanised labour, and to the fast-moving pace of life in the hinterlands of Central Asia. Smoke from the chimneys of the plants and factories, tools and machinery used by the labourers, loaded trucks and a moving train helped create the vision of the process of socialist construction, and the economic and social transformation of Central Asia.

Note: At the time Goznak issued the series of postage stamps, there were six Central Asian ‘national units’. The Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) and Karakalpak ASSR – both within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic since 1926 and 1932 respectively - are not featured in the Goznak series. With the First Five-Year Plan, the Kyrgyz ASSR and the Karakalpak ASSR were included in a newly formed economic region together with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The Qazaq ASSR was viewed as an economic region of its own. In 1936 the Karakalpak ASSR was joined to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR); Kyrgyz and Qazaq ASSR’s became Union-level republics, and the Russian pronunciation and spelling of the word казак [Qazaq] was changed to казах [Kazakh].

Figure 1. Казаки (Qazaqs)

The image of the moving train in the picture is an allusion to the flagship construction project for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, known as Turksib. The railroad was built from December of 1926 to January of 1931 and ethnic qazaqs were the most numerous labour force employed on the construction. Pastoral nomadism of Turkic tribes populating the areas along the Turksib route was becoming a historical past, as the boundaries between settled farmlands, nomadic encampments, empty steppes and deserts were erased, and large numbers of the indigenous population were recruited into a working class employed by the state industrial enterprise.

Figure 2. Узбеки (Uzbeks)

Mass agricultural collectivization in Uzbekistan began in 1929 in selected regions and, like elsewhere in Central Asian republics, proved to be a lengthy and challenging process. Individual land proprietors and free farmers who had a long tradition of small-scale, household-subsistence farming rejected communal forms of agriculture. The Soviet authorities had to rely on landless labourers to form various cooperative associations, such as artel or kolkhoz (kollektivnoe khoziajstvo), i.e. collective economy or farm. Land reform was undertaken to redistribute lands among the local landless communities. The newly-formed collectives received state support for the mechanisation and amelioration on allocated lands. These collectives were controlled by the state and had to deliver the assigned amount of produce as taxes and as specified deliveries at set prices, as well as payments for the use of agricultural machinery.

Figure 3. Туркмены (Turkmens)

The First and Second Five-Year Plans imposed high quotas of cotton production on all potential cotton-growing regions, and the Turkmen SSR was one of them. To meet the quotas of cotton production, government assistance was given to the smallholders on the condition that they enrol in the collectives and sow cotton on their allotments. This meant that the irrigated lands for wheat and rice were transformed into cotton-growing plantations and there was a growing dependence on imported grains from other areas. By 1933, the increase in cotton production in Central Asian republics allowed the Soviet State to substantially reduce cotton imports and to start exporting the surplus of its cotton abroad. These achievements came at a cost of sacrificing basic food provision for the region. 

Figure 4. Таджики (Tajiks)

Soviet campaigns for the unveiling of women, development of literacy and the organization of socialist production in Tajikistan were aided by the infrastructural development. Modern forms of communication and transportation were particularly important to the Soviet integration of the remote tribal populations of the mountainous areas of Tajikistan. The construction of the Osh-Khorog Pamir Highway, which was built between 1931-1934, was one of many grandiose projects of all-Union importance during the First and Second Five-Year Plans. The road connected the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe (Stalinabad 1929-1961), with the Pamirs. The construction was an impressive undertaking with the participation of a local labour force. Building the road required breaking through the rock face and building bridges. Regular traffic on the road established by the mid-1930s was accompanied by Soviet modernisation which altered the material and social fabric of the region.

Selected Bibliography
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Loring, B. (2014). “Colonizers with party cards”: Soviet internal colonialism in Central Asia, 1917–39. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 15:1, 77-102.
Payne, M. (2001) Viktor Turin's Turksib (1929) and Soviet Orientalism. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 21:1, 37-62.
Payne, M. (2001). Stalin’s Railroad: Turksib and the Building of Socialism. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Pianciola, N. (2017) Stalinist spatial hierarchies: placing the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Soviet economic regionalization. Central Asian Survey, 36:1, 73-92.
Reid, P. (2017) ‘Tajikistan’s Turksib’: infrastructure and improvisation in economic growth of the Vakhsh River valley. Central Asian Survey, 36. DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2016.1204533
Romm, M. (1936). The Ascent of Mount Stalin. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Rywkin, M. (1982). Moscow’s Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.
Shaw, C. (2011). ‘Friendship under lock and key: the Soviet Central Asian border, 1918–34’, Central Asian Survey 30, 331–48.
Teichmann, C. (2016). Wildscapes in Ballyhooland: shock construction, Soviet colonization, and Stalinist governance. Cahiers du monde russe 57:1, 221-246.
Teichmann, C. (2007). Canals, Cotton, and the Limits of De-Colonization in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1924–1941. Central Asian Survey 26:4, 499–519
Tucker, R. C. (1977). Stalinism as revolution from above. In Stalinism: Essays in historical interpretation, edited by R. Tucker, 77–108. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Olga Campbell-Thomson is an academic and translator based in Scotland, the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include the cultural and social history of the Soviet period. Her scholarship is further related to her own lived experiences in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Northern Cyprus. She has published on various aspects of cross-ethnic and cross-cultural encounters among Turkic-speaking communities.