God Save the USSR by Jeff Eden

Author:Jeff Eden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The requested permissions were granted, and CARC officials monitored the celebrations and kept track of the promised donations, which totaled 6,225 rubles. As it turned out, local officials failed—perhaps deliberately—to submit these donations to the Gosbank, prompting a chiding from the CARC regional office.10 In any case, the sum gathered during Ramadan was just a fraction of the total sum that had been donated to the Red Army by Pavlodar’s Muslim community. These donations would be at the heart of Kulmagambetov’s next request, which he and two colleagues submitted to Pavlodar’s oblispolkom (executive committee) on December 19, 1944:11

We, the Muslim believers of the city of Pavlodar, who number 3,000 people, together with all the people of our Homeland (Rodina), rejoice in the valiant successes of the Red Army on the frontlines of the Great Patriotic War. We support these successes with our donations to the defense fund, and we ask God that, alongside our comrades’ armies, He should accomplish the work of smashing German-fascist Germany [sic] as promptly as possible. We (that is, the Muslims of Pavlodar) have already collected and delivered 115,000 rubles to Gosbank, for which we received a congratulatory telegram from Comrade Stalin, reinforcing our commitment to strengthening the Red Army with any aid possible in the effort to deliver a crushing blow against the enemy.

Fundraising among believers continues. But to this day, we do not have a mosque in the city, such that we are not given a chance to conduct services according to our religion. For that reason, we ask you to give us the ability to perform namaz for our victory in the struggle with fascist Germany; to open a mosque; and to register our Muslim community. The most appropriate “housing stock” (zhilfond) in the city for the location of the mosque—1st of May Street, No. 76—is the old Kazakh Mosque with an area of 300 square meters; it would fully accommodate us.

At the same time, we ask that Rakhmetolla Kulmagambetov be registered as imam at the opening of the Pavlodar mosque. We sincerely request that our application not be denied.

[All this was resolved at] a meeting of the believers of Pavlodar, at which 45 believers were present.

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