Straw Hat Revolution
The Straw Hat Revolution of November 1932 in Daytanistan overthrew the theocratic government of the Islamic Republic of Daytanistan and eventually led to the establishment of the modern Communist state. It is called the Straw Hat Revolution because revolutionaries and their supporters eschewed the clothing mandated by the Muslim government, which included turbans for university students and academics, many of whom visibly demonstrated their dissent by wearing inexpensive and easy to make straw hats. As the mood for change spread throughout the country, many followed their lead and wore straw hats to demonstrate their solidarity. When women began to remove their headscarves and replace them with straw hats, the shock of seeing women both uncovered and taking part in an act of political defiance of the religious authorities was profound enough to give the name of the headwear to the entire revolution. The events of the Straw Hat Revolution have been mythologised to such an extent by the Daytan Communist Workers Party that there is a significant disparity between what actually happened and what most of Daytanistan's people believe happened.
Contents
Origins
The 1892 Revolution
In 1892, Sheikh Ali Madi, the Mufti of Daytanistan, and a large group of followers captured the palace of Mamood Amad Sha in Yerbel, and forced him to abdicate, in response to what they perceived to be a policy of dangerous liberalisation and westernisation. The Sheikh and his supporters declared the Islamic Republic of Daytanistan, and over the next decade extended their authority out from the capital over the rest of the country. An extremely strict version of Islam was imposed on the Daytan people, which was especially unpopular amongst the Daytar and Ashoon tribes. Zirkshe tribes generally supported the regime, however, and indeed the Sheikh and most of his supporters were drawn from this shoobdiman.
In the Islamic Republic, women were forced into purdah throughout the country. While most Daytan women had worn headscarves for centuries, the new dress codes were strict and specific, and the improvised and unobstrusive headscarves (which usually didn't include veils) to which Daytan women were accustomed did not meet these codes. Students, academics, and other men holding certain positions of social or religious distinction were required to wear turbans. Universities were forbidden to teach non-religious subject matter (such as the liberal arts and sciences). Tribal chiefs, who had previously enjoyed significant legal authority over their tribes, had much of their power stripped from them, especially their power to police and judge their own tribes where no other tribe or non-tribesman was involved. This power was vested in regional judges created by Ali Madi predominantly to ensure that the regime's new laws were enforced, as the Sheikh did not believe that tribal chiefs could be trusted to universally implement the new state's laws.
By the 1920s, this left Daytanistan in a profoundly transformed condition from when Ali Madi had come to power. The power of tribal chiefs had largely been broken in most meaningful senses, eroding the tribe as the basic building block of Daytan society. This left many traditional tribal Daytans alienated by the new regime. The extremist form of Islam imposed provoked an anti-religious reaction in many sectors of society, and provoked resentment in most Daytar and Ashoon Muslims, who had never been as strict in their religious observances as their Zirkshe countrymen. The universities had been particularly antagonised, which would prove very significant in the Straw Hat Revolution.
City Migration
For the latter part of the nineteenth century, a slow but steady migration from rural areas to Daytanistans cities and large towns had been underway. Whereas before the cities and towns had been dominated, like the villages, by a single shoobdiman, in these newly larger cities shoobdimans mixed more freely than anywhere else in Daytanistan, leading to the development of class consciousnesses which transgressed ethnic boundaries. Additionally, while the vast majority of the population of Daytanistan then, like now, still lived in rural areas, the drain of workers to the cities exacerbated the difficulties many farmers faced through a shortage in labour, which led to an increase in grain prices. Throughout the cities, including the capital itself, bread riots were not infrequent from the 1880s right up until the Straw Hat Revolution. This instability contributed to the political dynamism of the cities and the preparedness of city-dwellers to express dissatisfaction with their lot with acts of defiance and even violence.
University Radicals
In the 1920s and early 1930s, Daytanistan's universities became breeding grounds for radical political movements - liberals, anarchists, socialists, fascists, atheists, and many others. The Islamic Republic's antagonistic relationship with the universities greatly contributed to the development of these political groups. These groups spread their ideas to the broader community through public meetings, and when the government banned public meetings, they gave public lectures on university campuses, which the government couldn't ban without also banning public Koranic lectures (since in theory, all public lectures given at university were about Islam).
Trade Unions
In the late 19th and early 20th Century, factories had begun to appear in Daytanistan's cities, and organised labour was not far behind, especially after the overthrow of the Shah. The process of unionisation was accelerated in the 1920s by the appearance of university-based political groups which supported organised labour. Although only a small part of Daytanistan's overall population worked in factories, almost all of its factory workers were unionised by 1932.
The Revolution
Opening
On 6 November 1932 a public stoning in Yerbel was stopped before it began by a radical student action group from Yerbel Theological University. The students outnumbered by far those who had come to actually throw stones at the condemned, and rather than stone the condemned to death, the presiding judge was put in the prisoner's place and stoned to death by the students. According to the official history, this student action group was the Yerbel Theological University Student Action Group of the Daytan Communist Workers Party, and it was led by a lecturer who had been dismissed from the university by the Islamic Republic in 1911 but who had never actually left his offices on the campus, Khemal Nugat. It cannot be known, however, whether this detail was fabricated and inserted later for propaganda purposes.
Declaration of the Democratic Republic of Daytanistan
News quickly spread that a revolution was underway and had already taken Yerbel. At this early stage, there was certainly no significant organisation or method to the revolution, and it was as haphazard as it was spontaneous. Individual radical groups of students and workers which had been plotting acts of violent revolution for years began to follow through with their plots, most disastrously but some successfully. Few towns and cities fell to internal revolutions as easily as Yerbel had done, but their attempts captured the imagination of the Daytan public, and many ordinary people began to demonstrate their support for the revolutionaries at this point by adopting the straw hats for which the revolution is named. Despite a surge in popular sentiment that the Islamic Republic should be done away with, only four large towns fell into the hands of revolutionary groups through internal uprisings over the two months following the events in Yerbel.
In the countryside, however, the story was different. To many tribal chiefs, the Sheikh fleeing the capital indicated an abdication of national leadership, just as it had done throughout Daytanistan's history whenever a Shah had fled his capital. To these chiefs, his authority as the national ruler depended on his having a political seat. Yerbel being in the hands of revolutionaries then vested these revolutionaries with some legitimacy in the eyes of many tribal chiefs, just as one Khan or another taking the capital of a khanate had always symbolised a transfer of authority over the khanate from the conquered to the conqueror. Added to the general ambivalence felt by many tribal chiefs to the Sheikh's regime, many chiefs openly declared support for the revolutionaries. Straw hats became even more prevalent in tribes where the chiefs still held significant sway than they were in the cities, because a chief was able to speak for all of his tribe, and some whole tribes could be found wearing straw hats.
On the government's side, many military commanders refused to take orders from the Sheikh, choosing instead to wait and see who would prove triumphant in the struggle which had suddenly materialised. The Sheikh was left only with religious warriors and the few tribes which had offered to support him with which to retake the capital. Nevertheless, the other cities and most of the large towns remained firmly in the hands of his regime, and the Sheikh's loss of the capital looked like only a temporary one until, on 21 January 1933, the revolutionary groups which had expelled him from Yerbel declared that the Islamic Republic had been overthrown and replaced with the Democratic Republic of Daytanistan. The announcement of a provisional government was all the convincing many tribal chiefs needed to decide that a transition of legitimate power had indeed taken place, from the Sheikh to this revolutionary government, and many tribes took up arms to support the new government.
Provisional Government
The provisional government of the Democratic Republic of Daytanistan consisted of a council of twelve members, the Provisional Daytan People's Council, which included representatives from a variety of different revolutionary groups which comprised Yerbel's radicals. Meant only to be a temporary structure, a sort of unity government of a diverse group of revolutionaries, it survives to this day in the form of the Supreme Daytan People's Council. The council was supposed to oversee the consolidation of the revolutionary state, and the fight against Sheikh Mamood Mamood and his supporters. When these tasks were complete, the council was to create a constitution and hold free elections to establish a permanent government. Amongst its members, representing the Daytan Communist Workers Party and its associated communist revolutionary groups, was Khemal Nugat. According to the Communist Party's propaganda, Nugat's obvious leadership qualities won over the majority of the councillors to the socialist cause, and his opponents, recognising that the Communists would inevitably lead the permanent government as a result of their popular support, gradually began to conspire with the Islamic Republic's forces against the revolution. This is likely an attempt to provide justification for the subsequent Communist takeover of the entire revolution, of which they were originally only one part.
Civil War
A brief civil war ensued between the Provisional Daytan People's Council, various armed revolutionary groups, and the tribes supporting the new government and the Sheikh, loyal city garrisons, and tribes supporting the Islamic Republic. The Daytan military, such as it was, remained essentially neutral, only becoming involved when fighters of either side attempted to take military bases. The provisional government had significant numerical superiority, but its initial lack of organisation saw bloody defeats where sweeping victories could have been expected, especially in Jalaalalaal province, where eight hundred revolutionary fighters were ambushed and slaughtered by a much smaller formation of the Sheikh's troops on 14 June 1933 (see below).
The Daytan Communist Workers Party's revolutionary fighters emerged as the first organised force to fight on the provisional government's side - sometime in August 1933 Communist fighters had been organised into a formation called the Daytan People's Army, with a traditional military hierarchy, rudimentary uniforms, and definite chain of command under Khemal Nugat. Many non-Communist revolutionary fighters would begin to join the Daytan People's Army after it captured the city of Gaooun in November 1933, the first major revolutionary success of the civil war. Even though most of these new recruits were not Communists, they had effectively placed themselves at the Communist Workers Party's service.
Sheikh Mamood Mamood and his inner circle were captured on 6 December 1933 after the Daytan People's Army defeated the last field army of the Islamic Republic in Parshea province. They were executed the same day, and their bodies were left hanging from the branches of the fig trees from which they had been hung until they rotted away. The loyal garrison commanders quickly began to surrender to the new regime, eagerly accepting offers of clemency in exchange for ending hostilities. The military, seeing that the civil war was as good as over, declared itself for the Democratic Republic. The country was firmly in the grip of the Provisional Daytan People's Council.
14 June Massacre
The 14 June 1933 Massacre was particularly significant as it marks the first time at which non-communist revolutionary leaders on the council disappeared. According to the official history, three People's Councillors were with the troops in Jalaalalaal who were captured and slaughtered by the Sheikh's forces. It seems likely, however, that at least one of these councillors disappeared later, as a letter apparently written by him to an academic at a foreign university dated 8 August has been discovered in the foreign university's archives. It may be that the Communists murdered this councillor or even all three and then after the event claimed that they had perished in the 14 June Massacre.
Communist Takeover
After the initial celebrations had passed, Khemal Nugat produced a written confession allegedly given by Sheikh Mamood Mamood after his capture but before his execution to the troops of the Daytan People's Army who had taken him prisoner. In the confession, amongst other things, Mamood Mamood named two anti-communist People's Councillors as his collaborators, who had corresponded with him and informed him, amongst other things, of troop movements and council decisions. Nugat alleged that this information had allowed the Sheikh's forces to lay the ambush which led to the 14 June Massacre, amongst other defeats. On the grounds of the evidence in the confession, he had the Daytan People's Army arrest the two councillors in question and their supporters. They were tried, plead guilty (likely as a result of torture), and executed on 28 March 1934.
The remaining non-communists on the Provisional Daytan People's Council, fearing that the same would happen to them, offered Nugat an arrangement whereby the Daytan Communist Workers Party would have the authority to appoint replacements for the two alleged traitors and the three councillors killed in the 14 June Massacre, which would give the Communists an outright majority on the council. Nugat agreed, and the remaining non-communist councillors would henceforth be independent in name only, supporting Nugat as enthusiastically as his own party comrades.
Abolition of Tribes
Having been so dependent, especially in the early civil war, on assistance from tribal chiefs, the revolutionary government was quick to undermine the tribe as the basic building block of Daytan society outside the cities. The remaining legal authority of tribal chiefs and indeed the tribe itself as a legal entity were both abolished. Many of the tribes who had fought on the revolution's side in the civil war objected and took up arms against the new government, but the Daytan People's Army and the regular military of Daytanistan were both used to put down tribal revolts. Tribal Daytans were required to sign a document which renounced their tribal allegiance and the chiefs were required to sign one abdicating their authority to the state. Since most people, especially tribal Daytans, were illiterate, many signed these documents without necessarily understanding them, only to have it explained to them later. Chiefs who refused to sign were arrested and many disappeared without ever being heard from again.
The Communists understood, however, that the tribe was especially important to agrarian tribesmen because it provided them with a community which supported their agricultural efforts, provided for those whose crops had failed, and generally provided a social and economic safety net to individual farmers. Eager to fill the vaccuum created by the abolition of the tribes, the government created farming collectives, which generally broke up large tribes or amalgamated small tribes into a new farming community, which provided the same safety net as tribes had done previously. Instead of being headed by a tribal chief, decision making was handled by a local soviet, a system of grassroots democracy whereby the collective's farmers and workers would come together as a council and vote on decisions which confronted the collective. In effect, farmers had traded a tribe for a collective, and a chief for a soviet in whose decisions they could participate. The abolition of tribes in farming communities was, therefore, less controversial than might have been imagined.
Nomadic tribes, on the other hand, were far more fiercely independent, and it was much more difficult for the revolutionary government to compel them to give up their traditional tribal loyalties. Mention of these tribes ceases to appear in official histories post-1936, but it is likely that they continued on beyond that date, after which party propaganda generally refers to them as counter-revolutionaries.
Aftermath
Having been put in power by the Straw Hat Revolution, the Daytan Communist Workers Party was keen to make its hegemony permanent. In the following years it would make the Provisional Daytan People's Council the permanent executive government of Daytanistan in the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Daytanistan, and created legislatures to which only communists could be elected (such as the national legislature, the Supreme Soviet of Daytan People's Deputies). In one sense, Daytanistan returned to a dynastic style of government, as it had been before the 1892 Revolution. Khemal Nugat's son, Mamood Nugat, was the first Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Daytan People's Deputies, and succeeded him as General Secretary of the Central Administrative Committee of the Daytan Communist Workers Party upon his death in 1957. Mamood Nugat was in turn succeeded in that position by his son, Farrokh Nugat, the present General Secretary.
