NOTE TO L. B. KAMENEV 1
[August 22, 1919]
To L. B. Kamenev: It is necessary to submit this matter to the Politburo—or, if need be, to demand, without delay, that a report be presented to the Politburo by the members of the Presidium of the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee².
1 The note was drafted on a telegram from A. A. Kazakov, Chairman of the Turkestan Central Executive Committee, addressed to the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee and the Sovnarkom (with a copy sent to I. O. Tobolin, Plenipotentiary Representative of Turkestan in Moscow), requesting that a decree be issued establishing the Turkestan Soviet Socialist Republic and approving its constitution. On April 11, 1921, the Presidium of the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the Decree “On the Formation of the Turkestan Soviet Socialist Republic.”
2 On August 30, 1919, at a meeting of the Politburo, it was decided to establish, within the Council of People’s Commissars, a Consultative Committee on Turkestan, composed of V. P. Milyutin, G. V. Chicherin, S. I. Gusev, and N. N. Narimanov. This committee was instructed to work in close coordination with the representative office of the Council of People’s Commissars and the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee for Turkestan, which was located in Orenburg, and to involve representatives of the Turkestan Central Executive Committee in the committee’s deliberations.
At the Sovnarkom session on September 2, V. I. Lenin proposed convening a consultative meeting to discuss questions pertaining to Turkestan; the Council of People’s Commissars appointed a commission consisting of G. V. Chicherin, M. F. Vladimirsky, V. P. Milyutin, S. I. Gusev, and N. N. Narimanov, tasking it with submitting, by September 9, to the Sovnarkom a report on the “constitutionalization and progress of work” undertaken by the commission on Turkestan affairs.
The following day, in September, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) established its own commission, composed of G. V. Chicherin, N. N. Narimanov, F. I. Goloshchekin, Sh. Z. Eliava, M. M. Litvinov, M. F. Vladimirsky, and others—endowed with the same powers, but tasked with addressing party-related matters.
Questions concerning the composition and functioning of the commissions on Turkestan affairs were repeatedly brought before the Sovnarkom and the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). On October 8, Lenin signed the resolution of the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars appointing the commission on Turkestan affairs (see “Decrees of Soviet Power,” vol. VI, 1973, p. 457). On October 10, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) issued to the commission on Turkestan affairs (the Turkestan Commission) a mandate that vested it with the powers of a party organ.