Кеңес Қырғызстанындағы "Интерхелпо" еңбекшілер мен шаруалар кооперативі

Cooperative of workers and farmers in Soviet Kyrgyzstan

Interhelpo (international laboristal helpo) was an industrial cooperative of workers and farmers (Esperantists and Idists) between 1923 and 1943, established for the special purpose of helping to build up socialism in Soviet Kyrgyzstan. The legal framework for the migration of working forces from the West to the Soviet Union was established through a resolution on “Proletarian help for Soviet Russia” (proletarskaya pomoshch’ sovetskoy Rossii) adopted by the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International (1922). On May 1, 1923, Interhelpo — an acronym of the Ido compound international laboristal helpo — was founded in Žilina, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) on the initiative of the Czechoslovak Bolshevik Rudolf Pavlovič Mareček, who had actively participated in fights against Basmachis in Semirechye and was editor of the newspaper Zarya Svobody ("The Dawn of Freedom") in neighboring Verniy. Other Czechoslovak agricultural cooperatives founded with the aim of building socialism in the USSR were the Kladno Commune (Armavir, Krasnodar Krai), the Slovak Commune (Stalingrad Guberniya), Reflector (Ershovsk, Saratov Oblast), Pflug (“plow”), Solidarita, and Čechocentr. From 1925 onwards, trains from the railway station in Žilina transported 1078 people (including mainly Czechs and Slovaks, but also Hungarians, Ruthenians and other nationalities, and including both direct members and their families) to Kyrgyzstan.

Today the cooperative's residential buildings on Intergel'po Street (former site of the cooperative) are in a desolate state and are inhabited mostly by marginalized segments of society (such as e. g. internal working migrants from Southern Kyrgyzstan): "In the accounts of most residents, the builders of the districts where either unknown, or misrepresented as “Czech prisoners of war” or “Czech war refugees,” who had ended up in Central Asia in the aftermath of World War II. Today, almost a hundred years later, little reminds today’s residents of the achievements of the cooperative. Only Nazdar, a small Czechoslovak association, tries to preserve its historical heritage with financially limited funds. "In 2008, Czech National Television released the documentary Interhelpo. Historie jedné iluze (“Interhelpo – The History of an Illusion”) which portrays the historical experience of the cooperative largely in negative terms, highlighting human losses and the ultimate failure of the cooperative.