RED STAR IN SAMARKAND
BY ANNA LOUISE STRONG

Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970) was a radical American journalist who travelled extensively in the USSR in the 1920s, writing sympathetically about socialist reform there. Following a visit to lands which had been part of the Emirate of Bokhara but had recently become the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, she wrote about the changes there in Red Star in Samarkand, published by Coward-McCann in New York in 1929. Presented here is all she reported of Greek love interest, all of it concerned with the last Emir of Bokhara, Muhammad Alim Khan.^[1]

Chapter VI. The Profane Invasion of Holy Bokhara

The late and unlamented Emir of Bokhara, who still lives, it is said, as a wholesale caracul merchant in Kabul, was one of the last of the theocratic despots who once ruled all of Central Asia. Since godliness in the East is unrelated not only to cleanliness but even to mere morality, the Emir maintained not only his regular harem of a hundred wives more or less coming and going, but a more favored harem of comely boys. Both harems were filled by presents of sons and daughters from persons anxious for his Highness’ favor and applicants for office. […]

The tale of the Emir’s fall and flight and of the Holy War thereafter has passed into legend, cunningly embroidered by all the Eastern tellers of tales. My version comes from the Emir’s adjutant via an Armenian journalist, and I do not guarantee anything except its picturesqueness. It may quite well be true; it carries the flavor of ancient Asia and contradicts no facts elsewhere reported.

In 1920, when the revolutionists set fire to the castle, said my informant, Emir Said-Alim-Bakhadur-Khan fled away to the hills of Eastern Bokhara, now the Republic of the Tadjiks. He left his wives to the number of a hundred, but took a few of his best loved boys, who could travel faster and pleased him better. [pp. 136-7]

Chapter VIII. Elections and Land Confiscation

On the public hearings undertaken in the Uzbek Republic in 1928-9 with a view to nationalising the lands of landlords and the old regime and thus helping to establish Bolshevik power:

It is appalling to think of the chances for personal revenge offered in such public hearings. The class war cut through families in these revelations. For instance, Mullah Karimov, owner of a not-so-large plot of ground, was accused of being a former tax-gatherer under the Emir. As such his lands were forfeit. He denied the charge, claiming that he was a poor priest and a teacher. When asked for what services he had received the Emir’s gold medal, he replied, “for educational services to the family of a high official.” On this his brother-in-law arose in the meeting and said:

“It is not well to lie before the face of the people. The Emir gave you that medal when you gave your own son as a present to his harem. It is not seemly to hide what all here know.” What family tragedy lay behind this revelation against Karimov can only be surmised. One guesses at the protests long ago, timid and suppressed, of the mother; at the anger of her brothers, the uncles of the young boy thus presented. Or perhaps it was less laudable family jealousy at the preferment attained by Karimov. Now, a dozen years after, came their chance to retaliate; they brought the family scandal into open court to deprive their brother-in-law of his land. [pp. 194-5]

 

^[1] Strong’s account appears to have been the first published of several accounts by foreign travellers (well informed by locals) of the pederastic antics of Muhammad Alim Khan. See also The Diary of a Slave by Rustam Khan-Urf (1936) and two later books by Fitzroy Maclean.