Abdulkerim Abbas

Abdulkerim Abbas (also russified as Abbasov; 1921 – 27 August 1949) was a Uyghur revolutionary active in Xinjiang, China, during the 20th century. He was one of the leaders of the Ili Rebellion of 1944, which led to the founding of the Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR) in northern Xinjiang. Abbas, along with Ehmetjan Qasim, headed the Marxist faction within the ETR, which in 1946 set aside the rebellion's declaration of independence and joined the Chinese nationalists in forming a provincial coalition government.

Abbas and Qasim led the ETR faction which joined the Chinese communists toward the end of the Chinese Civil War. They and several other senior leaders of the ETR perished in August 1949 in a plane crash while traveling en route to Beiping (Beijing) where they were invited to participate in the Chinese communists' political consultative conference, which resulted in the founding of the People's Republic of China. Abbas is officially in hailed in the People's Republic of China as a revolutionary martyr.

Early life
Abdulkerim Abbas was born in 1921 in Przhevalsk, Soviet Union, now Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. His family was native to Artush (Artux) in far western Xinjiang and, in 1926, they moved to Ghulja (Yining). Abbas attended primary school in Uqturpan (Wushi) in southern Xinjiang and then enrolled in the Xinjiang Province No. 1 Middle School in the provincial capital, Dihua (now Ürümqi) in 1936. The school was one of the first modern multiethnic schools in the region. Abbas began to learn Chinese and joined an anti-imperialist society organized by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members. In 1937, he met Saifuddin Azizi, who had returned from exile in the Soviet Union and gave him books on Marxism–Leninism. In August 1938, Abbas enrolled in the High School of the Xinjiang Academy and studied under political science teacher, Lin Jilu, who was a Chinese communist. Liu tutored Abbas in Chinese and Mao Zedong's writings. Abbas also learned about the guerilla warfare tactics of the Chinese Red Army and the Long March. In 1939, he participated in the Xinjiang Academy Summer Tour Group to Ili, organized by the academy's president Du Chongyuan, and toured his home region with Chinese communists.

At that time, Sheng Shicai, the Soviet-friendly, Chinese warlord who ruled of Xinjiang, shifted his political allegiance to the Chinese Nationalist government, and launched a crackdown on communist and pro-Soviet activities. Abbas' father was arrested and Abbas was expelled from school and sent to teach at a primary school in Shawan County in the Dzungar Basin of northern Xinjiang. In Shawan, he translated Mao Zedong's essay On Protracted War into Uyghur. In 1942, he was permitted to return home to Ghulja where he initially taught at the Ili High School for Girls and then served as an interpreter for the local government.

Ili Rebellion
In April 1944, Abbas, along with the influential Ghulja imam Elihan Tore and Rahimjan Sabir Khoja, formed the 12-person Ghulja Liberation Organization to free the region of Chinese Nationalist rule. To evade government surveillance, Abbas relocated to Korgas where he received assistance and materiel from the Soviet Union. In September 1944, Sheng tried to seek the Soviets' favor again and was recalled from Xinjiang by the Chinese Nationalist government. Sheng's recall left a power vacuum and several rebellions sprang out in northern Xinjiang.

In October 1944, Abbas returned to Ghulja with a guerilla force and, on 7 November 1944, launched the Ili Rebellion. Abbas and Soviet advisor Peter Romanovich Alexandrov led 60 men in seizing the bridge over the Ili River. Chinese Nationalist troops sent to retake the bridge were ambushed and the city was effectively cut off from Chinese Nationalist reinforcements. Other rebel forces from Nilka fought their way into the city and quickly seized control. Nationalists strongholds were taken with the support of Soviet warplanes and artillery. After taking Ghulja, the revolutionaries massacred large numbers of Chinese Nationalist prisoners of war and Han Chinese residents.

The revolution drew support from Islamists, Pan-Turkic nationalists, and Marxists, and spread to Ili, Tarbaghatay (Tacheng) and Ashan (Altay). On 11 November 1944, the revolutionaries founded the Second East Turkestan Republic in Ghulja with Elihan Tore as its president. Abdulkerim Abbas was appointed its interior minister.

Unlike the Islamists and Turkic nationalists who wanted to create a pan-Turkic regime in Xinjiang, Abbas regarded the revolution as a struggle against Chinese Nationalist repression and capitalist exploitation of the working-class people of all ethnicities. He opposed a proposal to forcibly move all Han Chinese from Ghulja to internment camps in Künes County. He issued orders protecting Han Chinese residents in Ili and moved the families of Han friends and associates into his house for their protection. After fighting ceased in Ghulja, the ETR government, at his direction, created a Han Affairs Office to assist Han Chinese residents, published a Chinese-language newspaper, reopened the Han Chinese primary school, and founded an orphanage for Han Chinese children.

On 8 April 1945, the various guerilla and partisan units of the revolution were organized into the East Turkestan National Army (ETNA) and Abbas became its political director. The ETNA was a multiethnic army led by Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Russians, with Hui, Mongol and Xibe cavalry brigades, as well as some Han Chinese recruits. With the support of Soviet advisors and military personnel, the ETNA launched a series of offensives to expand ETR control beyond the Ili Valley.

In July, Abbas led the southern prong of the ETNA's breakout offensive toward Aksu. Abbas' forces captured the passes through the Tian Shan mountains that connect the Ili Valley with the Tarim Basin in August, and took Baicheng on 2 September and Wensu on 6 September.

After the Chinese Nationalist government and the Soviet Union concluded the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance on 14 August 1945, the Soviets ceased their support for the ETR and ETNA. To improve the ETR's political bargaining position, Elihan Tore ordered the ETNA to accelerate attacks in early September.

Abbas surrounded Aksu the on 7 September, but Chinese Nationalist defenders led by Zhao Hanqi fought back fiercely and broke the siege on 13 September. Abbas' brother, Siyiti Abbas, and other ETR political activists imprisoned inside Aksu, were executed by Chinese Nationalist authorities. In mid-September, Abbas resumed the siege with reinforcements from the Soviet advisor Nasyrov and Tore's son, but after weeks of desperate fighting, was forced to abandon the campaign on 6 October. Six days later, the ETR and the Chinese nationalists began peace talks in Dihua. In February 1946, they reached a peace accord.

Coalition government
In July 1946, after further negotiations between Zhang Zhizhong of the Chinese Nationalist government and Ehmetjan Qasim of the ETR, the two sides agreed to form a provincial coalition government with Zhang as chairman and Qasim as vice-chairman. Abdulkerim Abbas was appointed as deputy secretary-general. Abbas and Qasim agreed to set aside the ETR's assertions of independence. Elihan Tore was exiled from Xinjiang and forcibly moved to the Soviet Union. In December 1946, Abbas attended the Chinese National Assembly in Nanjing as a delegate from Xinjiang.

While in Nanjing, Abbas met secretly with Dong Biwu, a CCP delegate from Yan'an, and asked for CCP support. He explained that the Communist League of Xinjiang had 15,000 members and its leadership had sought to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but did not receive permission to do so. Dong immediately cabled Zhou Enlai, who replied that the CCP would welcome cooperation with the Communist League of Xinjiang and would agree in principle to CCP membership for leaders of the league. Abbas returned to Xinjiang with documents from the CCP's 7th National Congress, as well as radio equipment to contact the CCP with. The radio, however, was not sufficiently powerful to reach Yan'an from Xinjiang and the two communist groups could not establish regular communication. Back in Xinjiang, under Abbas' leadership, two Marxist organizations, the East Turkestan Revolutionary Party and the Communist League of Xinjiang merged to form the Democratic Revolutionary Party. Abbas became the chair of the DRP's central committee.

In 1947, after Zhang Zhizhong left the province, relations between the ETR and Chinese nationalists deteriorated under the chairmanship of Masud Sabri, whom the ETR leaders regarded as anti-Soviet. As full-scale civil war broke out between the Chinese nationalists and Chinese communists in China proper, and the Chinese nationalists persuaded Osman Batur, a Kazakh military leader, to defect from the ETR. Thereafter, Abbas and Qasim returned to Ghulja from Dihua and openly supported the Chinese communists. On 1 August 1947, they founded the League for the Defense of Peace and Democracy in Xinjiang (新疆保衛和平民主同盟), which incorporated the DRP and other leftist groups in Ghulja. Qasim was the chair of the group and Abbas served as a member of its central committee.

In February 1948, Abbas propagated Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army Proclamation and Disciplinary Code in Uyghur to the East Turkestan National Army. As the Chinese communists turned the tide of the civil war against the Chinese nationalists, Abbas moved the ETR government closer to the CCP. In May 1949, he reportedly announced: "We categorically assert that the success of the People's Liberation Army alone rendered possible the victory of our own movement... Only the victory of the national liberation struggle of the entire Chinese people can lead to the full freedom of the people of Xinjiang; only then will the correct solution of the national question in Xinjiang be reached."

In the late summer of 1949, after Liu Shaoqi visited Moscow in June and persuaded Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to facilitate the transfer of Xinjiang through political means to the CCP, Deng Liqun arrived in Ghulja on 17 August to establish contact with the ETR leadership. Deng met with Abbas and Qasim and conveyed Mao's invitation to the political consultative conference in Beiping (Beijing), which the ETR leaders accepted.

Death
According to Chinese state sources, Abbas and Qasim, along with Ishaq Beg Munonov, Dalelkhan Sugirbayev, and Luo Zhi departed Ghulja for Beiping on 22 August 1949. They traveled by car to Almaty and on 23 August 1949 flew to Novosibirsk, where they were delayed by reports of inclement weather. The delegation, not wishing to miss the conference in Beiping, reportedly insisted on continuing the journey and departed Novosibirsk on 25 August 1949. The plane crashed in poor weather in the Transbaikal region on 26 August 1949 and all aboard perished. Abdulkerim Abbas was 28 years old.

News of the crash reached Ghulja on 3 September 1949 and Saifuddin Azizi led another ETR government delegation to Beiping on 7 September 1949. This delegation flew from Ghulja to Chita and then reached Beiping on 15 September by train via Manzhouli and Shenyang.

Personal life
While Abbas was working at the Middle School for Girls in Ghulja, he fell in love with Yang Fengyi (楊鳳儀), a colleague, despite Uyghur tradition against relationships out of the Islamic faith and the disapproval of Yang's father, who was the head of the local Han merchants' association. During the Ili Rebellion, Abbas sheltered the Yang family at his home. When Abbas fell ill, Yang nursed him for 40 days back to health. In the spring of 1945, as fighting between the Chinese Nationalists and the ETNA intensified, Yang felt extreme familial and societal pressure. In April, Yang committed suicide using Abbas' pistol. In a parting letter, she explained that she was a person who observed no ethnic boundaries but could not tolerate the atrocities committed around her. She wrote that she had died for him, asked him to protect her family and urged him to live on "for me, for the revolution, and for the people of all nationalities in Xinjiang." Abbas was heartbroken by Yang's death and immediately ordered strict bans against the killings of civilians.

After Yang's death, Abbas married Lü Suxin (呂素新), a student of Yang's, in February 1946. The couple had two sons and one daughter.

Legacy
In the People's Republic of China, Abbas is remembered as a martyr and hero in the struggle against the Chinese Nationalist government. His remains were returned to China in April 1950 and later reburied in a martyrs' memorial cemetery in Ghulja. The cemetery has a stele with calligraphy by Mao Zedong, praising Abbas and his fellow martyrs for their contributions to the Chinese Communist Revolution and mourning their deaths en route to the inaugural Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beiping.