Fayzulla Hodjaev home museum

April 11, 2023

Day 7

Assalomu alaykum everyone 😍 ❤️

On our seventh day of practice, we went to the Fayzulla Hodjaev home museum. We studied the information with the group members and our mentor. Our group member is Samiya introduced us some information about museum.

This house-complex is located in Goziyon neighborhood, the old section of the city. The house belonged to Fayzulla Khojaev’s father Ubaydullokhoja, who was a rich merchant traded in karakul pelt in Russia, Germany and other countries. Fayzulla Khodjaev’s house is a wonderful example of the 19th – century residential architecture.

The total area of the building is three hectares. It consists of a household section and havli darun, inside, female area and havli berun, external, male area.

The balconies, reception and living rooms of the house demonstrate splendid examples of woodcarving and wall painting.

The house-museum has the following exhibitions: the ethnographic exhibition, featuring rich merchants’ life of the 19th- 20th centuries, exhibition devoted to the life of Fayzullo Khodjaev, the outstanding Bukharan statesman, and the “Kitchen of a Wealthy Merchant’s House” exhibition.

The exhibits of special interest are the crockery items (19th c.) made in the Gardner and Kuznetsov Russian factories, oriental musical instruments of the 19th century, the silk and velvet clothes of the Bukharans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the 19th -20th – century silver -and copperware of everyday use.

This is the natal home of Fayzulla Khodjaev (1896-1938), the scion of a wealthy family of karakul sheep traders whose short life spanned momentous changes in Bukhara. As a youth he was sent abroad to study in Russia from 1907 to 1913, returning home with a fondness for modern educational methods and European-style reforms. Rather than follow in his father's footsteps, he used his inheritance to organize the Young Bukharians, a secret society modeled on the Young Turks, which was dedicated to the modernization of Islam along jadidist principles. Fayzulla worked closely with Russia to bring about change and was, in return for support given to the Red Army in their 1920 invasion of Bukhara, rewarded with the leadership of the newly-create Bukharan People's Soviet Republic. Khodjaev continued to rise in rank over the coming years, eventually landing himself a seat on the USSR's central executive committee by 1925. However, his life was cut short in 1938 when he found himself on the wrong side of Stalin's wrath—convicted at the "Trial of the Twenty-One" in 1938 and executed shortly thereafter.

That the house has survived at all is something of a minor miracle, considering the readiness of Soviet authorities to demolish urban fabric in favor of new buildings with modern materials. Though it remains unclear, it is possible that Khodjaev's high position in the central government until 1938 might have protected the house until that point, but afterward it would have remained vulnerable. One clue is that after his death it may have been repurposed as an exhibit space—as it is now—though in a propaganda capacity, to showcase how the old lords of the pre-Soviet days lived lives of luxuries while the common people starved. One clue to this is that even now the house is locally described as the "Home of a wealthy merchant" rather than identifying it in Khodjaev's name. Yet here, too, there is ambiguity, as Khodjaev himself remains deeply controversial. He was, to his detractors, a "traitor" in the sense that he viewed a Russian takeover as an acceptable alternative to the despotic leadership of the Khans. To his apologists, even if his methods were harsh, his aim was ultimately good, as he strove for a better life for his city and his people. As evidence for this, they point to his willingness to spend his own inheritance in service of the cause, and his ultimate martyrdom at the hands of Stalin. Whatever the true verdict, he was ultimately a bridge between two worlds, and only the house stands today as a testament to a certain way of life that Soviet modernity would bring to an abrupt and enduring end.