Seid-Akhmet's Life Story

   Seid-Akhmet was born in Uzuk Tur in 1886. A small village outside of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. He was lucky enough to go to a school run by the Russian imperial government. There he got educated, and most importantly, he got to learn Russian. Learning Russian helped him make a living for himself and his family as a translator for local courts. He pursued this career, got an education in law, and became a lawyer who protected locals in court when they could not protect themselves from the Russian government. Later on, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government, and Seid-Akhmet had a decision to make: would he side with the Russian government, risk losing his job, or would he hope that the Bolsheviks come out on top and join the Communist party. He decided that getting a jump start would help boost his career and became one of the founders of the Kyrgyz communist party.
   The communist government had just gained power, and they had little time to make lots of changes to the way the Russian government was organizing things. In their attempts to quickly cobble a government together, they decided to turn all of Central Asia into one country — Tashkent. As one of the early backers of the Communist Party, Seid-Akhmet was unhappy with how the Soviets were treating his country and teamed up with Abdykerim Sadykov, his brother-in-law, to create the Alash Orda, the Kyrgyz party for independence.

   In Kyrgyz culture, the family was critical, important enough that even in-laws and distant relatives were a considerable part of one's day-to-day life. Sadykov was the husband of Sied-Akhmet's sister, Zeynep Sadykova. Given that he was such a close friend, Seid-Akhmet likely met with Sadykov many times a week and often worked with him. Sadykov worked in a similar field to Seid-Akhmet and even helped Seid-Akhmet create the Kyrgyz Communist Party and was a fellow founder. Since they had already worked together to create the Communist party, they decided to gain independence as a country.
   Again, unfortunately for them, it seemed like their gamble did not pay off as the Russian empire regained control for a brief period and had destroyed the Alash Orda party. However, soon after that, the Bolsheviks regained control for good and chose to overlook the event with the Alash Orda party. Seid-Akhmet continued to work for the communist party throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
   In 1931 things changed for the worse. The government arrested Sadykov for having "incorrect political opinions," most likely because he signed Alash Orda's declaration of independence and his continued fight for independence after that. The communists sent him to jail, and life went on as if nothing happened until 1937 when Seid-Akhmet got arrested. A troika arrested him for being an "enemy of the people," most likely because of his close relation to Sadykov and him also participating in the Alash Orda party.
   In 1931 and 1937, Sadykov and Seid-Akhmet were arrested and sent to jail, but the communist government did not have enough authority to do anything more. In 1938, after the Great Trials began, it all changed for the worse. Stalin's government now had the power to do anything they wanted, using the Trials as a reason to punish people for crimes they had not committed. We first saw the effects of these trials when Sadykov had suddenly disappeared in 1938. We now know that he, and everyone else who signed the declaration of independence, had been taken to an NKVD sanatorium and executed in a mass shooting. Due to the secrecy of the NKVD, nobody found out this happened until 1991 when the daughter of one of the guards of the sanatorium thought it was safe to share the events of the executions after the Soviet Union fell apart.  
   At that point, Seid-Akhmet was still in jail, waiting on what would happen to him. On April 17th of 1940, the government sent him to a labor camp in Kemerovo, Russia, and he spent a little less than a year before dying on September 16th of 1941. Fifteen years later, in 1956, after Stalin had died and Khruschev had begun reparations for Stalin's great terror, Seid-Akhmet was deemed not guilty of being an "enemy of the state."
This act may seem useless, but it helped families know what happened to their family members and cleared them of "anti-soviet marks," which could tarnish their reputations or even inhibit them from getting a job or even getting services from the government.