Latest / The Story of Uzbekistan: Silk Road Kingdoms and Soviet Legacy — Fexingo History / The Jadid Movement: Uzbekistan's Forgotten Reformers
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Uzbekistan's conquest by Russia and the Soviet era that followed. But there's a thread that runs through both periods that we haven't really pulled on yet — and that's the Jadid movement. Luna: Jadid — that means 'new' in Arabic, right? Lucas: Exactly. Jadid comes from the Arabic for 'new', and the movement was all about 'usul-i jadid' — the new method. It started in the late 1800s among Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire, especially in Crimea and the Volga region, and then spread to Central Asia. These were people who believed that Muslim societies had to modernize, had to embrace education, science, and political reform, or they'd be left behind by the West. Lucas: The key figure in the early spread was Ismail Gasprinsky, a Crimean Tatar who founded the newspaper 'Tarjimon' — The Interpreter — in 1883. He argued that Muslims needed a common modern language and a modern education system. His ideas reached Central Asia quite quickly, and local intellectuals began to take them up. Luna: So who were the Jadids in Uzbekistan specifically? Lucas: Well, the most famous is Mahmud Khoja Behbudi. He was born in 1875 near Samarkand, into a family of religious scholars, and he studied in Bukhara, Istanbul, and even traveled to Egypt and Arabia. He came back convinced that the traditional madrasa system wasn't enough. In 1893, he opened one of the first Jadid schools in Samarkand, where kids learned not just the Quran and Arabic, but also math, geography, history, and Russian. Luna: That must have been controversial. Lucas: Hugely. The conservative ulama — the traditional religious scholars — saw it as a threat. They accused the Jadids of undermining Islam, of being agents of the Russians. But Behbudi and others kept going. He also wrote plays and essays, and in 1913 he published a newspaper called 'Sadoi Turkiston' — Voice of Turkestan — in Tashkent. Lucas: Another major figure was Abdulla Avloni. He was from Tashkent, born in 1878, and he was a poet, playwright, and educator. He wrote textbooks for the new method schools — one of his most famous is called 'Turkiy Guliston yahud Axloq' — 'The Turkish Rose Garden, or Morality' — which taught ethics and modern citizenship in Chagatai, the old literary Turkic language. Luna: Chagatai — that's the language Alisher Navoi wrote in, right? Lucas: Exactly. So the Jadids were also deeply involved in language reform. They wanted to create a modern Uzbek language that could be used for journalism, science, and literature. They simplified the Arabic script, added new letters for sounds that Uzbek had, and published newspapers and books that ordinary people could read. Lucas: The movement really took off after the 1905 Russian Revolution, when Tsar Nicholas II allowed more press freedoms. Jadid newspapers popped up all over Central Asia — in Tashkent, Kokand, Samarkand, Bukhara. They debated everything: women's education, economic development, the role of Islam in modern life, how to deal with Russian colonialism. Luna: So how did the Tsarist authorities react? Lucas: Ambivalent at first. On one hand, some Russian administrators saw the Jadids as useful allies — they were promoting education and Russian language, which fit the empire's civilizing mission. But on the other hand, the Jadids were also advocating for political rights and national awakening, which scared the authorities. By 1910 or so, the tsarist police began to crack down, closing schools and confiscating newspapers. Lucas: Then came World War I and the 1916 revolt in Central Asia, then the Russian Revolution. For a brief moment, the Jadids had a chance. In 1917, they set up a provisional government in Kokand, the Kokand Autonomy, which tried to create a democratic Muslim state. But the Bolsheviks crushed it in early 1918, massacring thousands. Luna: And that was basically the end of the Jadids' political hopes. Lucas: Not immediately. Some Jadids decided to cooperate with the Soviet regime, thinking they could work within the system to modernize society. Others joined the Basmachi revolt, fighting the Reds. But by the late 1920s, Stalin's regime turned on all of them. During the purges of the 1930s, almost every major Jadid figure was arrested, shot, or sent to the Gulag. Behbudi was actually executed earlier — in 1919, by the Bolsheviks in Kagan, near Bukhara. Luna: So the Soviets wiped out the very people who had wanted to modernize Central Asia. Lucas: That's the tragedy. The Jadids were the intellectuals who could have built a bridge between tradition and modernity, between Islam and secularism, between Central Asia and the wider world. But the Soviets saw them as nationalists and potential rivals. They replaced the Jadids' schools with Soviet ones, their alphabet with Cyrillic, their newspapers with Pravda Vostoka. Luna: And their legacy — was it completely erased? Lucas: Not entirely. After Uzbekistan became independent in 1991, the Jadids were rehabilitated. Their books were republished, streets were renamed after them, and they're now celebrated as national heroes. But the real question is whether their vision of a modern, educated, open society has truly been realized. That's still an open debate. Luna: It's interesting how these ideas keep resurfacing. And speaking of keeping ideas alive — we should mention that this show is completely ad-free, and that's only possible because of listeners who support us directly. Lucas: Yeah, we deliberately don't run ads. If you want to support that choice and help us keep exploring stories like this, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It really does make a difference. Luna: Anyway, back to the Jadids — one thing I find fascinating is how they used theater. Behbudi wrote a play called 'Padarkush' — The Patricide — about a son who kills his father over a dispute about education. Lucas: Right, it was a metaphor for the clash between old and new. And it was performed in Tashkent and Samarkand, drawing huge crowds. That's how ideas spread — not just through newspapers, but through stories that people could see and feel.