Fayzulla Khodzhayev

Khodzhayev was born into an Uzbek family of wealthy traders in the City of Bukhara, Emirate of Bukhara in 1896. He was sent to Moscow by his father in 1907. There he realized the tremendous gap between contemporary European society and technology, and the ancient, tradition-bound ways of his homeland.

He joined the Pan-Turkist Jadid movement of like-minded reformers in 1916, and, with his father's fortune, established the Young Bukharan Party. Seeing the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an opportunity, the Young Bukharan Party invited the Bolsheviks of the Tashkent Soviet to seize Emirate of Bukhara by force in 1917. When this attempted invasion failed, Khodzhayev fled to Tashkent, and was only able to return after the Emir of Bukhara fled in September 1920 after the Red Army had overthrown his administration on 2 September 1920, bombed the city of Bukhara and occupied it.

After joining the Russian Communist Party about July–August 1920, Fayzullo Khodzhayev was appointed head of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic in September 1920. During his term, he barely escaped assassination by Basmachi Revolt leader Enver Pasha. With the reorganization of Soviet Central Asia into the new Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and after the purge of suspected Uzbek nationalists in 1923–1924, on 5 December 1924, Khodzhayev became Chair of the Revolutionary Committee of the Uzbek SSR – at which time he was recognized as the head of government – and then on 17 February 1925, he became Chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Then on 21 May 1925, he became one of the chairmen of the USSR Central Executive Committee once the Uzbek SSR was officially accepted into the USSR.

However, Khodzhayev opposed Joseph Stalin's heavy-handed control, particularly in the matter of cotton monoculture.

When the wave of political purges reached into the Uzbek SSR, the 7th Congress of the Uzbek Communist Party of Bolsheviks proclaimed Khodzhayev to be an enemy of the people. On 17 June 1937, he was dismissed from all offices – including Chair of the Council of People's Commissars – and was arrested by 9 July 1937, during the Great Purge on charges to which he confessed at the Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938 in Moscow as a "Trotskyite and a Rightist" and he was executed on 13 March 1938.[1]

Officially rehabilitated in 1966, he remains a controversial figure in modern Uzbekistan.

There are few monuments to him in modern Uzbekistan, and although his father's house in Bukhara is preserved as a monument, it is styled as "House of a Wealthy Local Merchant", with very little emphasis on Khodzhayev himself.

• World Statesmen – Uzbekistan
• Archontology – Fayzulla Khodzhayev