The full story
Fayzulla Xo'jayev
Political leader of the Young Bukharans
1896 – 1938
Fayzulla Xo'jayev was born in Bukhara in 1896 into a wealthy merchant family. He studied in Moscow as a teenager and came home committed to reform, becoming a leading figure among the Young Bukharans and using his family's money to fund schools and political work. After the Emirate fell in 1920 he headed the government of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic, and from 1925 to 1937 chaired the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek SSR. He was arrested in 1937, tried in the Moscow show trial of 1938, and executed.
A merchant's son against an Emir
Xo'jayev's position was unusual among the Jadids: most argued for reform from poverty, he financed it from a fortune. His father was among Bukhara's richest traders, which bought him a Moscow education and, later, the means to bankroll schools, newspapers and eventually a political movement. The Young Bukharans wanted a constitutional emirate; when the Emir answered with executions, they wanted no emirate at all. In 1920, with Red Army support, the Emirate fell and Xo'jayev — twenty-four years old — found himself running a state.
Twelve years, then a show trial
As head of the Uzbek SSR's government from 1925, Xo'jayev spent a decade trying to steer Soviet policy toward local conditions — arguing over cotton quotas, irrigation and the pace of collectivisation. That was survivable until it was not. In 1937 he was arrested, and in March 1938 he appeared in the last great Moscow show trial alongside Bukharin and Rykov, charged with belonging to an anti-Soviet bloc. He was executed the same month. Rehabilitated in 1965, he is now read in Uzbekistan as both a builder of the republic and one of its most prominent victims.
Key achievements
- Led the Young Bukharans and helped bring down the Emirate of Bukhara in 1920
- Headed the government of the Uzbek SSR for twelve years, from 1925 to 1937
- Funded new-method schools and reformist publishing from his family's fortune
Further reading
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