34 Facts About Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev's views were seen as a direct threat to the policies of the Comintern; he was imprisoned briefly in 1923 and expelled from the Communist Party.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was rearrested in 1928 and imprisoned for six years.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was then arrested again in 1937 and executed in 1940 during the Stalin period.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, the son of a teacher, was born on July 13,1892, in the village of Elembet'evo, Ufa Guberniya, Bashkiria, then part of the Russian Empire.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev's father made very little money as a school teacher, not nearly enough to support his wife and 12 children, and was frequently transferred from place to place.

From a young age Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev studied the Russian language and read many of the Russian classics from his father's library.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was first drawn to revolutionary ideas during the abortive 1905 Revolution.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was further drawn to revolutionary ideas while studying to become a teacher at the Tatar Teachers College in Kazan.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev seems to have absorbed amongst the city's diverse population of Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Russians, Tatars, and Iranians, a deep and growing dissatisfaction with the tsarist autocracy, its resistance to reform, and handling of the war effort.

In May 1917, Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev participated in the All-Russian Muslim Conference in Moscow and was elected to the All-Russia Muslim Council created by it.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was appointed the chair of the Central Muslim Military Collegium when it was established in June 1918.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev wrote for Zhizn' Natsional'nostei.

In December 1917, in response to some Tatars' accusations that he was betraying his own people to the Bolsheviks, Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev wrote a revealing explanation for his decision to join the Bolsheviks:.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was instrumental in ensuring that the Bashkir people, led by Zeki Velidi Togan, joined the Bolshevik side which weakened the military potential of Kolchak's army.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev carried out many tasks on the personal orders of Stalin.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was a proponent of what is today seen as part of the economic and political school revolving around dependency theory.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev further believed that within an empire, those regions which have been conquered or colonised ought to be prioritised or worked alongside during a revolution, instead of there merely being a revolution restricted to core countries.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev gave the examples of the failure of the Spartacist Uprising and the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev further argued that by the start of the 20th Century, the world had been divided into two camps: the imperialist and exploiting half of the world and the exploited half.

For instance, Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev highlighted how the majority of industry and its methods of circulation and methods of communication had been monopolised by the Metropolitans so that these essential goods and services were exclusively enjoyed by mainly the population of Metropolitan countries.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev argued that the basis for this did not end with Monopoly Capitalism and imperialism, but its root was not in the cultures or races of the Metropols.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev explained that the process of having to resort to the aid of monopoly capital consisted of the following elements.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev cited the development of production technology which took place through the exploitation of the industrial workers of the metropolitan countries and similar practices in the colonies.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev argued that this exploitation was not only carried out through slavery or military might.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev ordered these deviations by examining firstly, the exploitation of resources, especially in colonies in terms of the general interests of humanity.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev thereby argued that it would be more moral to transform raw materials into necessary consumer goods in their country of origin.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev took special notice of an arms race between colonial powers and wrote that such a race was not just against colonies, but against other Metropolitan countries.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev noted that human energy was spent in a massive and inefficient way in order to maintain the status quo and the existing structures of production in an orderly manner.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev argued for the importance of the effects of imperialist war and its consequences through subsequent "revolutionary earthquakes" and their effects in the politics of Metropolitan nations.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev believed in what he called "Energetic Materialism" as a means of enabling Socialist revolution in colonised and exploited nations in the formation of a "Colonial International".

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev wanted to give Marxism argued that the Russian Empire had oppressed Muslim society apart from a few big landowners and bourgeois.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was, despite this attempt at synthesis, thought of by the Bolsheviks as being excessively tolerant of nationalism and religion and, in 1923, he was accused of nationalist, pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic deviations and he was arrested and expelled from the party.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was freed, but with Lenin's death in 1924, he lost his only protector, and remained a political outcast, constantly watched by state security.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev was accompanied by his second wife Fatima Yerzina, whom he had married in 1918, and their two children.