This book focuses on the documents relating to the Uyghur classes that were organised in Moscow between 1925 and 1935, and the presentation of the University of the Workers of the East (KUTV). The book poses and answers three key questions relating to this: why was it deemed necessary to educate classes of Oriental workers, who was in charge of it and how was the pedagogical project developed? By studying the formation and circulation of elites, political elites of a revolution in the making, this book deems the project a failure.

In the second part, reconstructed biographies of the KUTV students are presented, covering their living conditions, their ups and downs, their level of education, and their moral and physical conditions. After considering the causes and reasons for the failure of this Comintern enterprise, the book posits that it could have been brilliant if it had succeeded in setting itself up against both Chinese and Soviet control.