Mutton Affair

The Mutton Affair (Iradi: Koy ishi, "the sheep case"; Russian: myasnoye delo) was a Soviet corruption investigation of 1983–1988 into the padding of wool and mutton deliveries by the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic, comparable to the Uzbek cotton affair. It ended the 22-year rule of First Secretary Yakup Kemelbekov and removed most ethnic Iradi cadres from the republic's leadership.^[1]

Investigation

After Brezhnev's death, investigators of the USSR Prosecutor's Office sent under Andropov found that the republic's wool and mutton deliveries to the all-Union fund had been padded for a decade. State farms kept "paper flocks", sheep were counted twice as they moved between the steppe and the Chatkal pastures, and bonuses and Orders were paid on the difference.^[1][2]

Purge

Kemelbekov retired "on health grounds" in December 1983, was expelled from the party in 1986 and was never tried. About 2,000 party and farm officials were dismissed and about 140 convicted. Moscow sent Arkady Kornilov, a Russian from the Central Committee apparatus, as First Secretary (1983–1986), and the purge left the republican leadership largely Russian by the mid-1980s. Vasily Chernov, the Central Committee's secretary for industry since 1981, was untouched by the affair and succeeded Kornilov in November 1986, during Gorbachev's replacement of regional leaders.^[1]

Legacy

Talas read the purge as Moscow punishing Iradis for the habits of the whole Union, and the resentment fed the glasnost movement there (see Communist Party of Irad). The investigators' reports are held in the State Archives in Talas, in Fond 85.^[2]

References

1. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2019). 'Oil, Antimony and Empire: The Industrialization of Soviet Iradistan.' Vol. 26, Iss. 3, pp. 41–67.
2. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 85: Central Committee of the Communist Party of Irad, Office of the First Secretary (1981–1991).