THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALITIES 141
to that adopted for Georgia. A special treatment of these
groups would simply amount to repetition. I will therefore
confine myself to a few words about the present hard lot of the
Turco-Tartars in particular the real mainstay of the great
Turco-Mahommedan movement towards union and solidarity
which has now gripped the many millions of Mahommedans
in the east of European Russia and all over Central Asia. If
before the war there was not the slightest degree of solidarity
between the individual Tartar groups^ or between the Turkish-
Mahommedan groups in general^ it is quite different now. The
Turco-Mahommedan union movement is without doubt one
of the most important phenomena of the post-war era, and is
likely, in the near future, to have a decisive influence on the
whole situation in the east.
The two autonomous federal territories inhabited by Tartars
—the Bashkir and Tartar Republics—are the principal centre
of this movement in the east of Europe, The domination of
Moscow's emissaries is even more pronounced in these regions
than in all the other parts of the Soviet Union. Almost the
whole administrative machinery is, as elsewhere in Russian
Central Asia, in the hands of non-Mahommedan elements, and
a deep antipathy has sprung up between the population and the
intruders—an antipathy which often finds expression even in
the columns of the local Soviet press.
Here, too, in the economic field, it is clear that the inhabitants
are sacrificed in the interests of Moscow. For example, the
people of the Caucasian republic of Azerbaijan were com-
pelled by Moscow to plant cotton instead of the grain they
needed to keep themselves alive. In Azerbaijan, as the Soviet
press reports, there have again and again been rebellions,
bloodily suppressed.1
1 The BaMnski RabotcU of May 26, 1935, reports tbat sabotage and
•passive resistance on the part of the population are everyday occurrences.
By a resolution passed by the Council of People's Commissaries for the
region on May 8, such work as weeding and cutting was supposed to have
been completed by May 25. By May 20, however, no more than 2-5 per