One hundred years ago, more than a thousand Czechs and Slovaks set out to build communism in the distant Central Asian Kyrgyzstan. As part of the Interhelpo cooperative, they heard the Soviet government’s call for help in creating a new, better world. Including the parents of then three-year-old Alexander Dubček.
Some returned home, some ended up in labor camps, or even on the gallows. The paranoia and repression of the Stalinist era also affected them, the definitive end of Interhelp came in 1943.
An expedition of the Czech association Gulag.cz set out this year to map the traces of these settlers to Kyrgyzstan and meet their descendants. “We were interested in what was preserved there. Physical memory such as buildings, but also what today’s residents of Kyrgyzstan know about it. We were interested in the documentation of the remains of repression. We got to a former uranium mine where gulag prisoners worked. We found a mass grave from the time of the Great terror. We were interested in how these repressions affected the Czechs and Slovaks who came there as part of Interhelp,” explains Gulag.cz director Štěpán Černoušek in an interview for Aktuálně.cz.
Are there people living in Kyrgyzstan who know they are descendants of Czechoslovak settlers from Interhelp?
Several dozen. They have an expatriate association Nazdar in Bishkek in the building of the Ministry of Culture, which was built by Czechoslovaks from Interhelp in the 1930s. They built that building, but then it was used by the Soviet NKVD in the late 1930s. In the underground there were cells in which she executed prisoners, and among them, unfortunately, some of the Czechoslovak Interhelp settlers.
A bit outside of Bishkek is the Ata-Beit mound, which commemorates the victims of totalitarian regimes in Kyrgyzstan. It stands on the site of a mass grave from the period of Stalinist terror, where 137 bodies rested. Among them Czech Josef Skalický and Slovak Ondrej Pálinkáš, both from Interhelp. They died in the NKVD building, where the expatriate association Nazdar is today, and then the remains were taken to this mass grave. They created it from a brickyard with a furnace, which was also built by Czechoslovaks.
Several dozen people of Czech and Slovak origin live in Bishkek in and around Interhelpo Street. There is a preserved house where the then three-year-old Alexander Dubček lived with his parents. Paradoxically, only one from the twenties is in its original condition.
The house in which Alexander Dubček lived with his parents after moving to Kyrgyzstan. | Photo: Gulag.cz
Did Stalin suspect Czechs and Slovaks from Interhelp that they were foreign agents?
Especially at the time of the Great Terror in 1937 or 1938, a different nationality, mentioned in the documents, was enough for someone to be suspected of espionage. Those Czechs and Slovaks who stayed there until the 1930s mostly already had Soviet citizenship, but their documents indicated Czech or Slovak nationality. Some of them were arrested by the NKVD only in 1941 after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, which was apparently related to the suspicion or rather paranoia that the Czechs might be on the side of Germany. But there were also rumors between neighbors and fellows from Interhelp. It must be said that many Czechoslovak citizens of German or Hungarian nationality also arrived as part of Interhelp. Some Czechs and Slovaks joined the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, which was formed in the Soviet Union by Ludvík Svoboda from 1942.
Are the Czechs and Slovaks, who at that time undertook that journey deep into Central Asia, labeled settlers?
Actually yes. They came to places that were complete and uncivilized exoticism. Kyrgyz lived in yurts, only a few brick houses stood in Bishkek. There was no electricity there, only Czechoslovaks from Interhelp installed it there. There were no factories there, the railway ended in Bishkek and there was only bare barren steppe all around, the settlers helped build everything there. Basically, they established industry there and also spread communist ideals there, because the vast majority really were such ardent communist idealists.
But weren’t there also those who just wanted to disappear from Czechoslovakia?
There may have been some like that, but the vast majority were idealists, believers in communism and the Soviet Union. Some of them lost their jobs in Czechoslovakia and thought they would start a new, better life there. But all those who decided to travel to Kyrgyzstan at that time had to sell all their possessions – including houses – and put the money into a joint cooperative.
They went halfway around the world to places that almost nothing was known about. The only information they had was from the agitator Rudolf Mareček, who traveled around the republic looking for people who would join the cooperative and go to Kyrgyzstan. He persuaded them to leave to help build the Soviet Union and also lured them to the beautiful nature of Kyrgyzstan, for example to Lake Issyk-kul, where he already founded a commune in 1918.
Kyrgyzstan. | Photo: gulag.cz
What were the other fates of this agitator Rudolf Mareček?
He went to Russia for the first time sometime in 1910, before the First World War. He was an adventurer who loved to travel and spoke many languages. During the First World War, he basically fled with his family to Russia, his two small children died on the way. Then he moved in Central Asia, in the territory of today’s Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He founded a communist newspaper, he was an ardent communist idealist, an active supporter of the Bolsheviks. And he had a big influence. He personally contributed to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz returned home from China in 1918 after the Bolshevik coup, where they had fled two years earlier before being recruited into the army by the previous Tsarist Russian government. He walked over mountain passes to China and persuaded the Kyrgyz to return.
There are many indications that he worked for the Soviet secret service, although there is no clear evidence of this. Later he walked the mountains, his son Bořivoj was born, and both of them were at the birth of Soviet alpinism in Kyrgyzstan and are known there as its pioneers and founders. Mountain peaks near Bishkek are named after them. They both lived there until the end of their lives, son Bořivoj died in Kyrgyzstan in 2001. During the Second World War, he taught Soviet soldiers to fight in a high mountain environment.
I visited the granddaughter of Rudolf Mareček in Bishkek. He does not speak Czech, even though he has Czech books at home.
Elvíra Marečková, granddaughter of the organizer of the resettlement of Czechoslovaks within the Interhelpo program Rudolf Mareček. | Photo: gulag.cz
Is there nostalgia for the Soviet Union in contemporary Kyrgyzstan?
Most in Central Asia. Definitely more than in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. There are practically no communist monuments and memorials in these two countries, Uzbekistan looks similar to Turkey. Statues of Lenin, red stars and other reminders of the Soviet Union remained in Kyrgyzstan. In the city of Osh, there is the largest statue of Lenin in Central Asia. The transition from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan is a big turning point, even in the car park. In Uzbekistan there are almost no Russian or Soviet cars, in Kyrgyzstan there are many.
Kyrgyz and Kazakhs are related peoples, something like Czechs and Slovaks, but they are quite different in their view of the Soviet past. However, the Kyrgyz parliament recently approved a law on making the archives of the NKVD and KGB available, which would allow us to substantially supplement the information about the fate of Czechoslovak settlers from Interhelp. But the president has not yet signed it and instead returned it with many comments for redrafting.
Gulag.cz expedition in Kyrgyzstan
The Gulag.cz team filmed material for a documentary film on an expedition in Kyrgyzstan. To complete it, the researchers are now collecting funds on the Donio portal – https://donio.cz/pomozte-reveal-Czech-traces-in-the-dark-Soviet past. You too can help preserve the memory of Soviet repression in Kyrgyzstan and its Czech footprint. As a reward, you can get a ticket to the premiere, expedition merch or genuine Kyrgyz hats or handbags.