A leader demoted from Cotton Minister to Director of a Sovkhoz – why did Usmon Yusupov incur Khrushchev's wrath?
In 1966, USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev and Chairman of the Government Aleksey Kosygin arrived in Tashkent after the earthquake. After meetings in the capital, they set off for Mirzachul. At that time, Brezhnev and Kosygin passed by the yard of Usman Yusupov. However, they did not see fit to check on the man who had once worked alongside them and had led Uzbekistan for many years. Shortly thereafter, Usman Yusupov passed away.
The leader demoted from Ministry of Cotton to sovkhoz director — why did Usman Yusupov incur the wrath of Khrushchev?
Usman Yusupov, who led Uzbekistan from 1937 to 1950, was literally a "man of cotton." From childhood he labored in the fields, then from his teenage years worked at a cotton ginning factory, and his subsequent life was also linked to the "white gold."
Even in the 1950s, the Ministry of Cotton Growing of the USSR was established specifically for Usman Yusupov. However, after Stalin's death, the situation changed drastically. First, the ministry was liquidated. Then Usman Yusupov was dismissed from his high-ranking position in Tashkent and "exiled" to a sovkhoz in Bovut.
Usman Yusupov's life was not smooth sailing. Along with achievements, there were also perilous days. During the years he led Uzbekistan, Stalin's repressions reached their peak, and Usman Yusupov was a member of the "Troika," which decided the fate of arrested individuals without a trial.
Usman Yusupov was born in 1900 into a farmhand family in the Toshloq district of the Fergana region. In 1916, his family moved to the city of Yangiyo‘l in the Tashkent region. To help his parents, 16-year-old Usman began working at a local cotton factory. In 1923, he married Anastasia Bolshakova.
As history shows, those who married Russian or Ukrainian girls during those turbulent years rose quickly up the career ladder. This was also the case for Usman Yusupov, and he was soon appointed to a responsible position. In 1926, Usman Yusupov was entrusted with the chairmanship of the Tashkent Builders' Union. Later, he became the chairman of the Tashkent Okrug Council of Trade Unions. In 1928, he became the secretary of the Tashkent City Committee of the Communist Party.
Having previously divorced Anastasia, Usman Yusupov married a Ukrainian girl, Komsomol activist Yulia Stepanenko, in 1929. That same year, he began working as the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan. In 1936, Usman Yusupov became the Minister of Food Industry of the Uzbek SSR.
In the summer of 1937, a wave of repressions known as the "Great Terror" was launched by the Stalinist regime, and it also reached Uzbekistan. Tens of thousands of people working in various fields, including the leader of Uzbekistan Akmal Ikramov and the chairman of the government Fayzulla Khodjayev, were arrested.