The Shadow of the Legionaries - CAUCAZ.

COM

The Shadow of the Legionaries

Article published in 16/07/2009 Issue

By Bruno DE CORDIER, Conflict Research Group in Gent

Released in late 2008, Satibaldy Narymbetov’s film ‘Mustafa

Chokai’ recounts the eventful life of the namesake Kazakh
nationalist lawyer and journalist, based on the memoirs or
Chokai’s widow. The film sparked controversy in Kazakhstan on
whether or not to rehabilitate Chokai, who during Soviet times was
considered a foreign-backed nationalist who betrayed the Soviet
Union by collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World
War. Some argue now that he was an idealist who sought to do
the right thing but was overtaken by the reality of the war. The
film explores what Kazakh journalist Serik Maleyev calls ‘the other
history’: those parts of history that were and are ideologically
taboo.

Born in 1890 near Aqmeçet in southern Kazakhstan, Chokai (who is also known
as Chokayev or Chokai-oðlu) was one of the leading figures in the so-called
Kokand Autonomy. This provisional government was established in 1917 and
1918 following the collapse of Russian imperial and colonial power in Central
Asia. The goal of the provisional government was to create an autonomous
Turkestan in a democratic and federal Russia and abolish the colonial and
feudal systems. Chokai and other autonomists were adherents to Jadidism, a
Muslim reformist movement with a dedicated following among Turkestani and
Tatar intellectuals. The Kokand movement was bloodily suppressed by the
Tashkent Soviet, which did not tolerate competing movements and saw Kokand
as a centre of foreign-backed anti-Communist agitation in Turkestan.

Taken in the storm

In the aftermath of the Kokand debacle, Chokai managed to flee to Paris after
a stay in the Caucasus and Turkey. He became active in the Turkestan
movement in exile and wrote for The Times. Upon the outbreak of the Second
World War and the fall of France he was briefly arrested by the Germans and
following the invasion of the USSR, he was asked to recruit war prisoners for
what was to become the Turkestan Legion, a Central Asian unit in the
Wehrmacht. In the film, Chokai is portrayed as reluctant to do so, but he
finally consented in hopes of improving the dire conditions of his war prisoner
compatriots.

Although the Turkestan Legion was formed three months after his late-1941

http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/breve_contenu_imprim.php?id=358 (1 of 4) [1/21/2010 12:35:46 PM]

The Shadow of the Legionaries - CAUCAZ.COM

death and was led by Veli Kayum, an émigré agronomist from Tashkent,
Chokai has long been associated with the legion and Nazi ideology in post-war
Soviet propaganda. “In the Soviet Union, Chokai was known as a national
democrat,” Kazakh historian Bakyt Sadykova writes in a recent book about the
Turkestan Legion. “Therefore he and his thoughts had to be thoroughly stained
at all costs.”

The film’s merit lies in its attempt to confront audiences with little-known
aspects of Eurasian history. However, it raises the question of how widespread
collaboration among Soviet Muslims actually was. Depending on the source,
there are stark differences between facts and figures, which may be explained
by the chaotic circumstances on the front, the frequent re-organizations and
the ideological bias of those who wrote on the subject. Between one and 1.5
million Soviet or former Soviet citizens collaborated with the Third Reich, either
in various labor and auxiliary units or as volunteers in one of the so-called
Ostlegionen (eastern legions) of the Wehrmacht and the SS.

The majority of Soviet collaborators were not Muslim. According to Russian

military historian Oleg Romanko, whose book on Muslim military collaboration
with the Third Reich has a detailed statistical annex, more than 190,000 men
from the Baltic states, a 250,000 Ukrainians, 310,000 Russians, about 70,000
Cossacks and some 38,000 Christian Caucasians actively collaborated with the
Nazis during the war and occupation.

No lesser evil, after all

During the war with the USSR, German and Axis forces never reached
Tatarstan or Turkestan but they did occupy several Muslim-majority areas
including the Crimea and the Caucasian piedmont. The largest group of
Muslims to come under Axis control, however, were those among the 5.7
millions Soviet prisoners of war. Depending on the source, the number of
Soviet Muslims who were eventually involved in some form of collaboration
varies from 150,000 to 300,000.

Of these, between 70,000 and 180,000 are believed to have served in the
Turkestan Legion or one of its spin-off units in the Wehrmacht. The Turkestan
Legion grouped together not only Turkic soldiers from Central Asia but Tajiks
as well. Some 8,000 Soviet Muslims also served in the Osttürkische Waffen-
Verband and Neu-Türkistan, two Pan-Turkic SS units formed in late 1944.

Most of the officers and cadres of the Turkestan and other Ostlegionen were
Germans. Due to the unfolding of war events, the Turkestan Legion and other
Soviet Muslim formations rarely fought in their respective homelands. Instead,
they were deployed to a range of combat zones from Stalingrad and the Kuban
front to Belarus, Yugoslavia and even Normandy. They often served as guards

http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/breve_contenu_imprim.php?id=358 (2 of 4) [1/21/2010 12:35:46 PM]

The Shadow of the Legionaries - CAUCAZ.COM

and in counter-insurgency operations against Communist partisans. According

to military memoirs, several units fought remarkably well despite being poorly
equipped. Certain divisions created plans for sabotage while others carried out
intelligence operations behind enemy lines. Additionally, attempts were made
to plant small units in Baku, Tashkent and the Caspian port of Guryev (what
we now know as Atyrau).

What were the causes for and against Soviet Muslims collaborating?
Resentment of the devastation caused by Stalin’s purges and collectivization
was more widespread than some like to believe, not only among Soviet
Muslims but among other minorities and Russians as well. Volunteering for
German military units was a way to escape the rough treatment to which
Soviet prisoners of war were subject.

Initially, Muslims and other non-Europeans were specifically targeted because

those with more Mediterranean features were often mistaken for Jews. In Nazi
ideology, Mongol peoples, including many Soviet Muslims, were also considered
to be ‘instigators of Communism’. As a result, the death rate among Soviet
Muslim captives was particularly high. Logically, this should have led to virulent
anti-German hatred rather than a willingness to collaborate. In part it did; yet
many blamed Stalin and his disastrous military policies for bringing this
situation upon them and dragging them into a war that was not theirs.

Heavy German losses on the Eastern Front and attempts to draw Turkey to the
Axis side also compelled the Nazi hierarchy and military command to soften
their behavior towards Soviet Muslim prisoners. Certain Wehrmacht officers
and diplomats as well as academics from the Ostministerium − the ministry in
charge of the conquered Eastern territories − promoted a more pragmatic
approach that turned away from virulent racism. Instead, the Germans wanted
to leverage ethnic aspirations and anti-Communist sentiments among Soviet
minorities in the war effort.

The Nazi Ostpolitik for the conquered Soviet territories also had a scenario
wherein the Reich would establish a number of ethnic buffer states on its
eastern frontier after victory. Some anti-Communist and Turkic nationalist
leaders in European exile saw an opportunity to eliminate Stalinism and the
Soviet yoke and bygone autonomous states in the new post-war order.

Children of the frontline

Contrary to what some propose, the Turkestan Legion was not an Islamist or a
‘Jihadi’ outfit. Its leadership and political wing did use Islamic symbols and had
chaplain imams, but they were secular Turkic nationalists rather than religious
zealots. The blueprint for a ‘liberated Turkestan’, for which the legion was to
form the core of the armed forces after the USSR’s dissolution, foresaw a

http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/breve_contenu_imprim.php?id=358 (3 of 4) [1/21/2010 12:35:46 PM]

The Shadow of the Legionaries - CAUCAZ.COM

republican and secular system, not a religious regime or emirate.

In the final months of the war, some Soviet Muslim units turned against their
German commanders. Others surrendered to the Anglo-Americans who were
seen as more lenient. The Yalta agreements, however, stipulated that all
Soviet citizens found or caught in Europe were to be sent back to the Soviet
Union. Upon return, most wound up before firing squads or in labor camps,
which was often a death sentence of its own.

Some managed to escape to Turkey and join the Turkestani emigré community
there, while others including the legion’s political leader Veli Kayum, benefited
from the new Cold War paradigm and managed to stay and live in Europe. How
should one look back on all of this? The Turkestan legionaries were pawns in a
total war of destruction between two well-matched monsters, the Third Reich
and Stalin’s USSR. As such, they reflect a wider reality in Central Asia in the
sense that the region’s history is most often marked by others or shaped by
others’ interests. Are there similarities to today? To compare the Turkestan
Legion with what is called al-Qaeda is complete nonsense. But somehow, those
Uzbeks and Uighurs who ended up with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan failing other
means to fight rapacious oppressors at home, went through a similar process.
They too are fighting wars that are not their own.

© CAUCAZ.COM | Article published in 16/07/2009 Issue | By Bruno DE

CORDIER, Conflict Research Group

Copyright © 2010 Caucaz.com All rights reserved

http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/breve_contenu_imprim.php?id=358 (4 of 4) [1/21/2010 12:35:46 PM]