Eastern Approaches (16 page)

Perhaps even in Stalin’s imagination. That was the most terrifying thought of all. How did the Supreme Puppet Master view the proceedings? With the complete detachment of a
metteur en scène?
Or with the acutely personal interest of a man who finds that his medical attendants are murderers and the arrangements for his personal safety are in the hands of a bitter and unscrupulous enemy? Was the ruler of the Soviet Union a cold and calculating schemer, deliberately eliminating, after first carefully blackening their names, all those who might embarrass him? Or was he a sufferer from persecution mania whose weakness was exploited for their own ends by a gang of unscrupulous police spies?

Of his interest in the proceedings we had direct proof, for at one stage of the trial a clumsily directed arc-light dramatically revealed to attentive members of the audience the familiar features and heavy
drooping moustache peering out from behind the black glass of a small window, high up under the ceiling of the court-room.

It was long after midnight. Still talking, we walked back through the dark, frozen, empty streets to the court-house. The judges had still not concluded their deliberations. In the court-room a little group of foreign correspondents were wearily awaiting their return. They were listening to Cholerton of the
Daily Telegraph
who had been in Moscow for twelve years and knew more than any of us. He was talking about the trial.

‘What do you make of it, Cholerton?’ we asked.

He tugged at his beard, and his eyes twinkled.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I believe everything. Everything except the facts.’

It was four in the morning when the judges returned. For the last time the doors were flung open and Ulrich sidled in. Under the ghastly glare of a battery of arc-lights and to the accompaniment of whirring cinema cameras, the prisoners filed into the dock.

In a level voice Ulrich read out the verdict, while all remained standing. The prisoners were found guilty of all the crimes with which they were charged. Once again they were recapitulated: murder, wrecking, espionage, treason. For twenty-five minutes he droned on. At last he reached the last page and, turning it, read out a list of names:

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich
, it began,

Rykov, Aleksei Ivanovich
,

Yagoda, Genrikh Grigoryevich
,

Krestinski, Nikolai Nikolayevich
…

Fourteen other names followed. Then, amidst complete silence, he read out the sentence:
TO BE SHOT
.

Then, scarcely noticed, followed the names of the three prisoners who had been sentenced to terms of imprisonment: Bessonov, Rakovski and one of the doctors, Pletnev. When we looked we saw they were no longer there.

The proceedings were at an end. The door in the middle was flung open, and Ulrich marched out. For the last time, the little door at the
side was opened and the guards closed in round the eighteen condemned men. They had heard the sentence impassively, and now, impassively, they filed out to their death. The last to go was Yagoda. As he reached the door, he stopped for an instant and looked back. Then he also turned and went out, and the door shut after him.

T
HE
snows melted. The ice broke and came thundering and crashing down the river past my windows. With the return of warmer weather, my thoughts once again turned to travel. But this time my itinerary, as things turned out, was chosen for me.

After my return from Central Asia in the autumn I had, largely in order to justify my prolonged absence from my desk in the Chancery, tried my hand at writing up my experiences. As it was a long time since any first-hand information had been received from Russian Turkestan, my report attracted more attention in London than it would otherwise have done, and on the strength of it I acquired a largely spurious reputation as a Central Asian expert. Meanwhile, events in another part of Central Asia were causing concern to the Foreign Office and feelings verging on alarm to that more sensitive Department of State, the India Office.

Few inhabited areas of the world are more remote and, to the ordinary traveller, more inaccessible, than Sinkiang, or, as it is also called, Chinese Turkestan. On the maps Sinkiang is simply shown as an ordinary province of China, but, though much can be learnt from maps, they do not always tell the whole story.

Geographically Sinkiang is separated from China by the formidable expanse of the Gobi Desert while its inhabitants are for the most part not Chinese but Turkis, akin in race and language and religion to the inhabitants of Russian Turkestan. Since it first became part of the Chinese Empire half way through the eighteenth century the history of Sinkiang (its name means the New Dominion) has been one of sustained turbulence. Both the Provincial Government and the population have rebelled, sometimes together and sometimes separately, against the hegemony of the Chinese Central Government. Matters were further complicated when, in the nineteenth century, both Great Britain and Russia began to take an interest in this rich,
semi-independent province. But Russia had one great advantage. The journey across the Himalayas from British India took six weeks on foot. The natural gate to Sinkiang was from the newly conquered Russian territories in Central Asia. Russian goods gradually squeezed out British competition in the bazaars and the Russian Consul-General’s armed escort of Cossacks behaved with increasing arrogance, driving all before them as they galloped through the bazaars.

With the Revolution, Russia temporarily set aside all thought of expansion and withdrew from Sinkiang. Cossacks, Consul-General and traders disappeared from the two main towns, Kashgar and Urumchi. The Chinese Central Government reasserted its authority with that long-suffering perseverance so characteristic of the Chinese, and British Indian trade and traders once again reappeared in the bazaars.

But, in the nineteen-thirties, the Soviet Government once more took up, in Sinkiang as in other parts of the world, the threads of Tsarist policy. Once again Russian Consuls arrived at Kashgar and Urumchi; Russian goods made their appearance once again in the bazaars.

There followed a period of the kind of confusion in which Sinkiang has long specialized. The Tungans or Chinese Mohammedans revolted against the Provincial Government. The Provincial Government appealed for help, not to the Chinese Central Government, who in any case had their hands full elsewhere, but to Moscow. Moscow intervened rapidly and effectively and Soviet troops and aircraft soon accounted for the Tungans. When the Russians returned home, they left behind them considerable numbers of technical and other advisers, who continued to help the Provincial Government. History repeated itself. Russian influence increased, the position of the British community became more and more precarious. The Indian traders in the bazaars found themselves boycotted. Even the British Consul-General at Kashgar was practically a prisoner in his Consulate. He was moreover largely out of touch with the Provincial Governor, or Tupan, who resided at Urumchi, several weeks’ journey away, and who in any case was generally believed to be no more than a Soviet puppet.

In 1937 the Tungan revolt had finally collapsed. By the beginning of 1938 Soviet influence seemed firmly established and the position of
the few remaining British Indian traders was extremely precarious. Economically they were slowly but surely being squeezed out and, what was worse, were liable to sudden arrest and ill-treatment. The protests of H.M. Consul-General, when he could find anybody to protest to, remained unheeded.

It was at this stage that the scheme was evolved of sending me on a mission to Urumchi to contact the Tupan and plead with him for better treatment for the Indian traders and also for H.M. Consul-General. It was felt, so the telegrams said, that the fact that I came from H.M. Embassy at Moscow would lend weight to what I had to say.

It seemed to me highly improbable that I should meet with any success, but I was delighted at the prospect of another visit to Central Asia, and at once I started looking out my rucksack.

But I soon discovered that this time my travelling arrangements were not to be quite so simple as on previous occasions. The authorities at home insisted (quite properly, I suppose) that I should not set out without having first applied for and obtained through official channels everything that was needed in the way of passes and visas. Furthermore they suggested that the Embassy should inform the Soviet Government of the project and invite them to use their influence with the Sinkiang authorities to facilitate my journey. This, it seemed to me, finally disposed of any chance of success I might ever have had. But I went ahead with my arrangements nevertheless.

First I visited a friend of mine at the Chinese Embassy. He seemed slightly embarrassed when I mentioned Sinkiang, but nevertheless promised to ask his Government by telegram for authority to grant me a visa. I next called at the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to see the head of the Third Western Department, Comrade Weinberg. Having reluctantly agreed to receive me, he listened sardonically while I told him of my plans and expressed, in strict accordance with my instructions, the hope that the Soviet Government would use their influence with the Sinkiang authorities to facilitate my journey. The mention of Soviet influence in Sinkiang gave him his cue. He could not, he said, imagine what made the British Government think that the Soviet Government had any special influence in the province of
China I had mentioned. It was not the practice of the Soviet Government to interfere in the internal affairs of China or of any other country. If I wanted facilities for travel to China I should apply to the Chinese Government. He, for his part, would be delighted to grant a Soviet exit visa if and when I required one. As a special favour he would even give me a letter of introduction to the Soviet Consul-General at Urumchi, who was a friend of his.

Feeling that I had been scored off heavily, but not decisively, I went back to the Chinese Embassy. Permission to grant me a visa had duly arrived from the Central Government and my passport was handed back to me covered with impressive-looking hieroglyphics. Had the Central Government informed the local authorities of my impending arrival? I inquired. They had. What had been the reply? There had not yet been a reply. The local authorities in Sinkiang were sometimes a little slow in answering.

At any rate I had a visa of some sort, which I supposed was better than no visa at all. I asked my Chinese colleague what he advised me to take with me in the way of equipment. ‘Visiting cards,’ he replied without hesitation, ‘plenty of Chinese visiting cards.’ Then, seeing my dismay, ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I will make you some,’ and seizing a quill pen and some Indian ink, proceeded to reproduce again and again the three Chinese characters which represent my name: Ma-Keling, which he explained meant ‘The horse that corrupts the morals’. ‘I hope,’ he added gleefully, ‘that they will not think you are anything to do with General Ma, the notorious Mohammedan rebel leader.’ I said that I, too, hoped they would not.

I left Moscow on June 6th on the five days’ journey by train to Alma Ata, the capital of the Kazakh S.S.R. It was the same route that I had followed on my way back from Tashkent in the autumn. The first two days were taken up with the journey through European Russia. We crossed the Volga near Samara. On the third day we reached Orenburg, the base of the Imperial Russian forces in their campaign against the rulers of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bokhara during the second half of the last century. Soon after Orenburg the barren steppe begins. On the fourth day we reached the Sea of Aral and thereafter roughly followed the course of the Syr Darya. In the
appearance of the countryside there was little to show that we were near so great a river. On either side of the railway track the steppe stretched away as far as the eye could reach and cultivated patches were few and far between. It was blazing hot. An enthusiastic Kazakh in the train told me that just out of sight of the railway there roamed vast herds of cattle; and this may well have been so, for Kazakhstan is reputed to be the chief cattle-raising district of the Union.

On the journey I talked to many Kazakhs. Like the Kirghiz, from whom, to anyone but an expert, they are all but indistinguishable, they are — or were until recently — simple, friendly nomads and mountaineers of a far lower standard of culture than the neighbouring Uzbeks, who have behind them the traditions of Samarkand and Bokhara. Although it is admittedly hard to judge from isolated cases, the impression I gained was that they have proved much more malleable material from the point of view of administration and propaganda than the other culturally more developed races of Russian Central Asia. For one thing, they have fewer religious and cultural traditions to break down. Racially, too, they are different, being for the most part of a definitely Mongol type, while the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkomans resemble rather Persians or Afghans.

The Kazakhs I met were mostly officials on their way to Party Conferences and the like. All were obviously proud of their Republic (recently promoted to federal status) and filled with a sense of their own personal importance. In conversation they referred quite casually to those of their colleagues who had been ‘unmasked’
¹
during the recent purge of Kazakhstan which had culminated in the trial and execution of practically all the leading Government and Party officials. The possibility that they themselves might be the next to go did not seem to occur to them, or, if it did, was outweighed by the wireless sets, motor tractors, cheap scent, opportunities for making speeches, and other manifestations of culture which the Soviet regime has brought in its train.

On the fifth day we sighted the snow-clad mountains of Kirghizia which form the western extremity of the Tien Shan range. At the same time there was an abrupt change in the nature of the country
through which we were passing. We had left the Hungry Steppe and were in fertile, well-irrigated and cultivated country. Instead of the scattered groups of
yurts
(the round skin tents of the Kazakhs and Kirghiz), which were the only form of human habitation we had seen for the past few days, we now passed through Arys, Chimkent, Mankent and other pleasant country towns standing in groves of poplars. From Chimkent onwards we travelled more or less due east skirting the Tien Shan range which rises like a wall to the south, until we came in sight of the snow-clad Ala Tau, the spur of the Tien Shan which rises behind Alma Ata. The first stage of my journey was completed.

My next object was to get myself to Ayaguz, the station on the Turksib Railway which is the starting-point of the main road linking Urumchi with the Soviet Union. At Alma Ata, however, the higher station officials were nowhere to be found and the subordinates unwilling to take any responsibility, so that there seemed to be little hope of getting a place, whether ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, on one of the crowded northward-bound trains passing through Alma Ata on their way from Tashkent to Novosibirsk.

Finally in the early hours of the morning I came upon the assistant stationmaster sitting in somebody else’s office with her uniform in considerable disarray, suckling her new-born baby. The station-master was lying unconscious face downwards on the floor, where he remained throughout the interview. Asleep? Drunk? Dead? It was impossible to say. But the assistant stationmaster, like so many Russian women, proved helpful and moderately efficient and in the end I was duly provided with a reserved seat as far as Ayaguz on a train leaving early next morning.

The journey of four hundred miles northwards through the eastern fringe of the Hungry Steppe from Alma Ata to Ayaguz took no less than twenty-four hours, the train never going at more than thirty miles an hour and stopping frequently while the passengers got out and picked flowers. The stops were further enlivened by an enthusiastic sailor of the Red Navy who at every stop insisted upon trying to ride the camels which were grazing near the line and at every stop was kicked off. The Hungry Steppe fully justifies its sinister name but the
ice-blue peaks of the Tien Shan, which remained in sight for most of the way, served as a comforting reminder that the whole of Central Asia is not a flat waste of scorching sand.

Ayaguz, where we arrived shortly before sunrise, has sprung into existence since the building of the Turksib Railway eight years ago. It is laid out in American fashion, the streets of square white plaster or wooden houses all running at right angles to each other. It boasts a school, a club and a municipal building, as well as the inevitable statue of Lenin and Park of Rest and Culture, consisting of a few bushes with a paling round them. The population, as far as I could make out, was composed entirely of employees of the Turksib Railway and of the State Trading Organization of Sovsintorg, with a detachment of Frontier Guards and the usual quota of police spies, two of whom devoted their attention to me throughout my stay, padding along the dusty village street twenty yards behind me. At one end of Ayaguz was a small native bazaar to which the Kazakhs from the neighbouring
auls
ride in to sell their produce. Beyond, the desert stretched away bleakly.

The only definite information which I had been able to obtain in Moscow regarding travelling facilities between Ayaguz and Urumchi was derived from an official publication several years old. From this it appeared that the two towns were connected by a road, along which there was at certain times ‘regular motor traffic’. Knowing Soviet methods, I was glad that I had the whole day before me in which to explore the possibilities of pursuing my journey to Urumchi.