File 1341/1921 Pt 1 'Khorassan Intelligence Summaries 1921-1922' [‎519v] (686/1080)

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Excavations are being made in every mosque in Samarkand. The reason is
unknown.
Jizak. July 13th. —Jizak has been practically denuded of troops.
A searchlight and wireless station have been erected but were not in working %
order up to the above date.
Some five hundred famine refugees are in Jizak in a miserable condition,
They say that people in Kazan are eating their young children.
Two Jewesses and two Tatar women have started female education.
There are signs of unrest among the railway workmen. They talk of a
universal strike throughout the Kussian .systems.
Khojent. July 15th. —Food is scarce. Troops are getting one pound of
bread a day and fruit. Others get a weekly ration of flour.
All the yield from this year’s crops is being collected from the farmers.
Representatives from Ferghana were invited to attend an inter-Khanate con
ference at Bokhara where representatives from Khiva and Bokhara would meet
them to discuss the question of autonomy.
People are being impressed for labour in the coal mines where the total
employed is 4,000 and the daily output 25 wagon loads.
Of the refugees allotted to Khojent, half are said to have come from Moscow
where there is said to be famine.
The governor of the town is Saadulla Khwaja.^ The military Komissar is
Peroshin. Chief of the Special Departmeiltis Sharafbai. —
Kokend. July 12th. —Food is scarce and troops and railway hands are on
reduced rations. The troops have got their summer uniform, others have to be
content with 4 yards of cloth and a pair of rope shoes.
The civil administration is nominally in the hands of the Farghana Republic
but the military control is retained by the Bolsheviks. Trade was declared free
a month ago but there is nothing to trade with.
Representatives from Ferghana were summoned to Moscow. Forty were
collected and sent off from Kokand on the 5th July.
Men of 18 to 35 have been collected and sent to Tashkent for instruction
in technics similarly to those mentioned under other districts.
Thirty-three per cent, of all live-stock has been commandeered by the
Bolsheviks from the surrounding country.
Samara. July 5th to 11th. —The munitions factory An East India Company trading post. is still in operation night
and day. It is popularly credited with manufacturing the munitions of war thoiign
it would not be unreasonable to suppose that it is now devoted to the making an
repair of more peaceful instruments like agricultural implements and macmnery,
of which the people are in such crying need and whose presence in insumcien
numbers is so frequently deplored by the Bolsheviks.
The town is lighted by electricity. There are six hospitals, three of which
are military.
Severe famine prevails and the populace is suffering greatly from hunger
and Bolshevik tyranny.
Nothing is definitely known of the Japanese situation by the people who talk
vaguely of Kolchak still. The Bolsheviks had a meeting in which they said tna
they had defeated the capitalists of the world but that some feeble opposition wa
being put up in Siberia by “ Kolchak ” and the Japanese, and in k-
Sher Muhammad Kor. All this would soon be overcome. The Amir of Alg an
tan is a friend and a future of prosperity awaits the Soviet Government.
Samara is protected all round by wire and trenches.