#fall of bukhara

[aoawarfare]

Enter Mikhail Frunze and the Fall of the Last Emirs in Central Asia 1920-1921

From 1917 to 1919, Central Asia was cut off from Moscow and the Red Army. This allowed events in the Steppe and Turkestan to take their own course with a regionalized flavor. Beginning in 1919, that all ended with the defeat of the White Army in the Kazakh Steppe, the absorption of the Alash Orda by the Bolsheviks, and the arrival of the Turkestan Commission also known as the Turkkomissiia. After ensuring the Steppe would no longer be a problem, General Mikhail Frunze and the Red Army followed and upending existing relations between the Bolsheviks and the local peoples of Central Asia.

Mikhail Frunze: the Wrecking Ball

Frunze was born in Bishkek in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. At the age of eighteen, he was involved in the split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, siding with the Bolsheviks. He took part in the 1905 Revolution that led to the creation of the Duma, during the Revolution he was arrested and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to hard labor, and he spent ten years working in Siberia. In February 1917, he was in Minsk before traveling to Moscow to take part in the fight for the city.

In 1919, he was appointed the head of the Southern Army Group of the Red Army Eastern Front and fought against Admiral Alexander Kolchak’s White Army in the Steppe. He would defeat Kolchak at the end of 1919, bringing the Steppe under Bolshevik control and subsuming the Alash Orda into Bolshevik forces. In February 1920, he traveled to Tashkent to take part in the Turkkomissiia, a special commission sent to Turkestan to help establish a Bolshevik government in the region. One that would rely on the Red Army to ensure its edicts for the foreseeable future.

The Turkkomissiia attempted to work with local organizations until Frunze arrived in February 1920. Even though he would only remain in the region until September 1920, Frunze was a wrecking ball in a China shop, destroying former understandings among the Indigenous peoples and wiping out old enemies that had plagued the Bolsheviks in Central Asia since the Revolution.

Frunze arriving in Turkestan

[Image Description: A color gif of a short, old white woman with curly hair. She is wearing all white work out clothes and black and white sneakers. She is riding a black wrecking balln through grey walls.]

When Frunze arrived, he identified the following issues immediately:

The Musburo’s bid for autonomy jeopardizing the Bolshevik experiment in Central Asia.

Turkestan has three dangerous neighbors-Khiva, Bukhara, and Afghanistan-that Britain could use to undermine the Bolsheviks in Central Asia

“A fucking insurgency, guys? Really?”

Also, do you think maybe if people weren’t starving, they wouldn’t join the Basmachi?

During this episode we’ll discuss how Frunze took on the Musburo, Khiva, and Bukhara. In a future episode we’ll discuss how Frunze dealt with the Basmachi.

Frunze vs Musburo

When the Turkkomissiia arrived, Risqulov and the Musburo greeted them with joy, believing they would help the Musburo expand its authority throughout Turkestan. However, Frunze was distrustful of the Musburo, claiming that they weren’t communist enough and that their cause was nothing more than a “narrow, petty, bourgeois nationalism” (pg. 114, Making Uzbekistan). He also attacked the Communist Party of Turkestan (KPT), proposing, in April 1920, that they should disband the existing party and start over. Instead, the Turkkomissiia launched a purge, weeding out 42% of the party’s members. They purge the ranks again in 1922 by 30%, reducing the ranks to 15,000 members. It would grow to 24,000 in 1924.

Mikhail Frunze

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man with round cheeks in a grey military uniform. He has a thick mustache. He is wearing a pointy hat with a yellow star. The jacket has a collar. He is also wearing two medals and a leather belt that runs across his chest.]

Risqulov and other Muslims and Indigenous peoples fought back by lackadaisically carrying out Turkkomissiia orders and sent complains to Moscow about Russia’s high-handedness. G’ozi Yunus, a Jadid turned member of the Musburo, wrote the following about the Bolsheviks:

“[the party contained] a group of narrow nationalists having washed their hands with the blood of the people, put on the mask of Bolsheviks or Left SRs and cleansed the uezd of its Muslim… naturally given that the Soviet government established in 1918 was headed by narrow nationalist comrades, complaints about such behavior was ineffective.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 115

In May 1920, Risqulov would write:

“In Turkestan as in the entire colonial East, two dominant groups have existed and [continue to] exist in the social struggle: the oppressed, exploited colonial natives, and European capital.” Imperial powers sent “their best exploiters and functionaries” to the colonies, people who liked to think that “even a worker is a representative of a higher culture than the natives, a so-called “Kulturtrager.” - Adeeb Khalid, Central Asia, pg. 115

And in June 1920, Risqulov would argue:

“In Turkestan there was no October revolution. The Russians took power and that was the end of it; in the place of some governor sits a worker and that’s all.” “The October revolution in Turkestan should have been accomplished not only under the slogans of the overthrow of the existing bourgeois power, but also of the final destruction of all traces of the legacy of all possible colonialist efforts on the part of Tsarist officialdom and kulaks.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg.108-109

Frunze seems to have legitimately believed that the Muslims of Central Asia didn’t truly understand Communism and that the Musburo was a hybrid form of government that needed to be cleansed of nationalists. From a pragmatic perspective, the situation in Turkestan was chaotic and needed a firm hand to establish any form of government, let alone a communist government. Frunze, naturally, believed the best way to bring order was to simplify command and grant power to those he could rely on and were dedicated to the correct version of communism. The Musburo, KPT, and whatever remained of the Kokand Autonomy and the Tashkent Soviet had proven too weak to rule on their own and he had no need for their skills since he brought with him the Red Army full of officers and Bolsheviks agents, he knew he could rely on. As we’ll see, Frunze would allow Indigenous peoples of Central Asia to work in governmental positions, but he wanted to start fresh and establish a form of command he understood and knew.

It should also be noted that Frunze did not favor Russian settlers over the Muslim populations of Central Asia. He also banished local communist organizations of Russian railroad workers, the same men who led minor revolts like Osipov’s revolt of 1919. In fact, there were rumors that they were planning a similar revolt against the Turkkomissiia who they felt were too friendly with the non-Russian inhabitants of Central Asia. So, while there is certainly xenophobia and racism involved in Frunze’s decisions, there is also an element of pragmaticism going on, but also note that Russian racism and chauvinism really outdoes itself in Central Asia and deserves deep, scholarly investigation that is beyond this podcast.

Turar Risqulov

[Image Description: A black and white pciture of a man standing at an angle. He is looking at the camera. He has bushy black hair and a short mustache. He is wearing round, wire frame glasses. His hands are in his dark grey suit pants. he is wearing a white button down shirt, a grey tie, and a dark grey vest and suit jacket. A flag is pinned to his suit lapel.]

Risqulov and the Muslim Communists went around Frunze and the Turkkomissiia and traveled directly to Moscow to speak with Lenin. The Turkkomissiia also went to Moscow to present their case. Risqulov argued that the Turkkomissiia were undermining the Musburo’s efforts, that Turkestan was the key to spreading Communism throughout the east and that it should be its own republic with full autonomy to print its own money and conduct its own foreign policy. Lenin ignored Risqulov’s arguments and sided with Frunze.

On June 22nd, 1920, the Politburo passed a resolution that formerly brought Turkestan under Soviet control. It stripped Turkestan of control over external relations, external trade, and military affairs. Its economic and food-supply policies had to fit within the plans established by the central government of the Soviet Union. It claimed that.

“Recognizing the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Turk-mens as the Indigenous peoples of Turkestan the Turkestan Soviet Socialist Republic…as an autonomous part of the RSFSR” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg.115

They also transformed the Turkkomissiia into the Turkestan Bureau which then changed to the Central Asia Bureau (Sredazburo) were it served as a mechanism of Central Power. Risqulov and his party were defeated in a forced re-election with Risqulov sent to several desk jobs far from Turkestan. The Sredazburo also arrested several “nationalists” and deported nearly 2000 Europeans from the region.

While this effort put an end to the Musburo and the Communist Nationalist’s grip on power within Turkestan, it didn’t permanently end indigenous power. Instead, it set new parameters on who could exercise that power and how. Many of the Muslim actors affected by Frunze’s destruction of the Musburo (including Risqulov) would return to Central Asia and hold varying degrees of power. Frunze wasn’t against the Indigenous peoples of Turkestan holding power, in fact as he struggled to reassert Soviet control over the region, he realized he needed Indigenous actors to legitimize Bolshevik rule and Communist thought. But he also believed that they needed to follow the Communist Party’s ethos, edicts, and governmental framework.

After ending the “threat” of Muslim nationalism within Tashkent, Frunze followed the tradition of the Tashkent Soviet and first attack Khiva in February 1920 and Bukhara in August 1920.

Frunze vs. Khiva

What has Khiva been up to?

When last we left Khiva, Junaid Khan, a warlord, extorted Khiva’s Emir then had him assassinated and replaced him with his brother Sayid Abdullah as a puppet. Junaid consolidated his power by creating a government of local military commanders and raised taxes on the Uzbek population while demanding that the Turkmen arm themselves for compulsory military service. There were frequent disturbances throughout the spring and summer of 1918, but nothing truly threatened Junaid’s control. He established the city capital at Bedirkent, where he began the construction of a palace.

Junaid Attacks the Bolsheviks

After destroying any internal threats to his rule, Junaid decided to raid the nearby Russian outposts. He first attacked the city of Urgench on September 20th, 1918, stealing money and goods from Russian banks and firms. The Russians demanded the release of prisoners and Junaid complied but warned them against interfering in Khivan affairs.

Junaid regarded the Bolsheviks as enemies, not for any ideological reason, but because they threatened his own personal fiefdom. The Russian outpost at then Petro-Aleksandrovsk was an incursion in Khiva’s natural line of defense. Junaid attacked the outpost on November 25th, 1918, believing winter would make it impossible to assist the outpost. He laid siege for eleven days before being chased off by Russian reinforcements. Junaid spent the spring of 1919 attacking Russians garrisons, but his losses were greater than his victories so on April 9th, 1919, he signed the Treaty of Takhta with the Russian forces. This treaty ended hostilities immediately, reaffirmed Khiva’s independence, established normal diplomatic and trade relations, and amnesty for all Turkmen charged with anti-Bolshevik activities.

Junaid did not follow the treaty, rebuffing the Bolshevik diplomatic representative sent from Tashkent in July, refusing to extradite Russian criminals finding shelter in Khiva, and selling grain to Turkestan. He allowed the Russians to rebuild the telegraph line between Chardjui and Petro-Aleksandrovsk but would not guarantee its safety in the future.

Relations between Khiva and the Bolshevik forces in Turkestan fell to an all-time low in the summer of 1919, when Junaid supported a group of rebel Cossacks fighting against the Bolsheviks. This group of Ural Cossacks stationed themselves at Chimbai in the Amu-Darya region. By mid-August, the Cossacks, with aid from the Karakalpak people controlled the entire delta from the Aral Sea south to Nukus and across the river from Khodjeili. Russian naval commander Shaidakov returned to Petro-Aleksandrovsk on August 19th and took commander of the newly formed Khivan army group of the Transcaspian front. When he tried to suppress the Cossack uprising using steamboats to ferry his men to battle, he was fired upon by Junaid’s patrols. Junaid also cut the telegraph lines to Chardjui and was discussing a joint attack on Petro-Aleksandrovsk with the Cossacks. By September, Tashkent feared a Khivan invasion.

The Fall of Khiva

By the fall of 1919, military events turned in the Bolshevik’s favor. Frunze and the Red armies were defeating Kolchak’s and Dutov’s forces in the Steppe and were seeing success in their Transcaspian campaign. Additionally, the small faction of Jadids in Khiva, who now called themselves the Young Khivans, had gained recognition from the Turkestani government. The Young Khivans themselves claimed to have a militia of five hundred men and secret underground cell in the capital. Frunze declared that both Khiva and Bukhara needed to be liberated from the tyranny of the Khans. The only reason he overthrew Khiva’s khanate first was because Junaid had made too much of a nuisance of himself to ignore and because he was protecting the Cossacks at Amu-Darya.

Frunze ordered G. B. Skalov, the recently appointed representative for Khiva and the Amu-Darya Otdel, to liberate Khiva. The Russians would prepare for their assault while fending off multiple attacks from Junaid’s forces in November and December of 1919.

Skalov began his attack in January 1920. He had two columns of men at his command. The first column, station at Petro-Aleksandrovsk, consisted of 430 men. They would first approach from the northeast, targeting cities such as Khanki and Urgench, before turning and attacking Junaid’s headquarters in Bedirkent from the south. The second column consisted of four hundred men and was commanded by N. A. Shaidakov. They would approach the capital from the northwest. (Becker, 287). Skalov easily took the city of Khanki, but he was besieged for three weeks at Urgench. Shaidakov, however, easily defeated a group of Cossacks and Karakalpak rebels near Chimbai and captured two more cities on their way to the capital.

Skalov broke the siege at Urgench and approached Bedirkent from the south while Shaidakov approached from the north. They fought for two days with Junaid’s own commanders and allies turning against him. Bedirkent fell on January 23rd, 1920, with Junaid fleeing into the Kara-Kum Desert. From there he would form a new branch of the Basmachi and return to being a thorn in the Bolshevik’s side. The Bolsheviks forced the puppet khan to abdicate and replaced him with a revolutionary committee composed of two Young Khivans, and two Turkmen chieftains. With Junaid out of the way the Bolsheviks were able to concentrate on destroying the Cossack revolt in Amu-Darya.

On February 8th, the Young Khivans requested aid from the Bolsheviks in creating a workers’ and peasants’ government and a congress of Soviets arrived on April 1st to assist the Young Khivans. At the end of April, the khanate was formally abolished, and the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic took its place as the only legitimate government in Khiva. A Khorezmi Communist Party formed at the end of May, boosting six hundred members by the summer of 1920, although records suggest that most of these members were Russian or Turkestani Communists.

Frunze vs Bukhara

Catching up with Bukhara

When last we left Bukhara in March 1918, the Tashkent Soviet tried and failed to invade, signing a humiliating agreement that let the Emir live for another day which allowed him to hunt the Jadids, who renamed themselves the Young Bukharans. Many fled to Tashkent and reunited with the Jadids there and met with Communist officials.

Soviet historians have painted the Bukharan Emir as an inherently hostile foe, making deals with everyone from the Emir of Afghanistan to the white Army to the British, always ready to strike against the Russian forces. Their paranoia over Bukhara increased because of the growing threat in the Transcaspia, which is beyond the scope of this podcast, but was receiving heavy British support. Junaid never fully committed to the Transcaspia front but attacked the Russian’s communication lines and soldiers. If Emir Muhammad Alim Khan chose to support the forces in Transcaspia, then the Russians in Tashkent would be surrounded by enemies with British backing.

In reality, the Emir was a cautionary man, far more caution than Junaid in Khiva. He did not like or trust the Russians, but he wasn’t ready to start a war with them. It seems that he was waiting out the various wars and battles to determine who would be his true competitor or potential ally. He most certainly hoped to break from Russian influence, but that never seemed completely feasible. Even though the Russian forces were weak in Tashkent in 1918 and into 1919, they still controlled the railroad zone that cut through the heart of the khanate and Samarkand, the key to western Bukhara’s water supply. At some point I will have to do an episode or blog post on water rights in Central Asia, because it’s vital to understanding Russian colonialism in the region and still affects the states to this day. So, the Bukharan Emir chose neutrality.

The situation in Transcaspia grew worse for the Russians during the summer of 1918 when British support enabled Transcaspia to stall the Russian assault. The Emir opened a consulate at Merv, Iran, where the British General Malleson made his headquarters, but it was mostly for observation and a channel of communication and intelligence gathering. He had talks with the British about their intentions in Britain. Malleson sent a small collection of arms to Bukhara in February as a token of friendship, but also urged the Emir not to provoke Tashkent. This confirmed the Russian’s fear that Bukhara had allied with Britain and were receiving arms, training, and supplies. The evacuation of the British from Transcaspia in early 1919 did nothing to slow these rumors down.

Emir Muhammad Alim Khan had grown his army to thirty thousand men in preparation for war in Central Asia, but whatever shipments he may have received from Britain did nothing to substantially help Bukhara. Even if the Emir was not prepared for war himself, he kept his land open to members of the Basmachi and other anti-Communist forces. Turkestan asked Bukhara to extradite all fugitives per the treaty they signed in March 1918, but the Emir refused.

Emir Muhammad Alim Khan

[image Description: A color picture of a large man sitting on a chair. He is wearing a white turban, a blue robe embroidered with several kind of flowers, and black, leather books. He is resting a sword against his right thigh. He has a bushy, circular beard. Behind him are stone walls with two wooden doors.]

Relations hits a new low when the British evacuated Transcaspia and the resistant forces sent forces to the Bukharan city of Kerki to try and get behind the Russian’s rear before they could press their advantage. The Russians attacked, believing the Bukharan officials in the city were collaborators with the rebels. They took the town but were then blocked by the emir’s troops. A truce was arranged long enough for the Russians to expel the Transcaspian rebels in the rural areas of Kerki, but the blockade continued for another month. Bukharan forces even fired upon the Soviet embassy on their way to Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the British kept telling the Emir to remain neutral. Malleson wasn’t necessarily worried about Bukhara attacking the Bolsheviks as he was about Bukhara making an alliance with the Bolsheviks or Afghanistan. Meanwhile the Red Army continued defeating White forces in Transcaspia and in the Steppe and it became more prudent for Emir Muhammad Alim Khan to offer an olive branch to the Bolsheviks. However, the Bolsheviks made it clear that they would never find common cause with a country ruled by a bourgeois tyrant. Their propaganda made it clear that they considered Bukhara to be a bulwark of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces that the Kolesov campaign failed to crush. They encouraged the people of Bukhara to rise up and liberate themselves from British controlled enemies with Bolshevik help. They grew hopeful after the fall of Afghanistan cut Bukhara off from their British “supporters,” but it quickly became clear that the people would not revolt without Russian assistance.

The Young Bukharans Recover

While the Emir was navigating the tricky waters of the Russian Civil War, the Young Bukharans were struggling to survive their forced exile into Tashkent and other neighboring cities. At first, their number one priority was to avoid starvation and arguing with each other over the failed March coup. Some left politics, fled to Moscow, or joined the Communist organizations in Tashkent and Samarkand while reuniting and reconnecting with other Jadids. They tied their hopes for liberation of Bukhara with the Bolshevik cause, even though, as the Bolsheviks pointed out, many had land and wealth in Bukhara and thus greed and financial interest partially drove their concern. For their part, the Young Bukharans tried their best to tie their goals and message to Communism. A handful of Young Bukharans traveled to Moscow to represent the Bukharan state and argued that:

“only the Russian Socialist Revolution, the vanguard warrior with world imperialism, can liberate Bukhara from the slavery into which imperialists of all countries have led it, supporting Bukharan reaction in their own interests” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 121.

The Young Bukharans, encouraged by the Bolsheviks, argued that the Emir was a tyrant:

“All his thoughts are of living in luxury, and it is none of his business even if the poor and the peasants like us die of starvation. ‘His Highness’ is a man concerned only with eating the best pulov, wearing robes of the best brocade, drinking good wines, and having a good time with young- and good-looking boys and girls” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 122

However, the Young Bukharans ran into competition for Communist support when a group of Muslims living in the Russian enclaves of Bukhara organized the Bukharan Communist Party (BKP). The Bolsheviks in Tashkent were more sympathetic with the Bukharan Communist Party then they were with the Young Bukharans, and the BKP could use the Bolshevik language to heap complaints on the Young Bukharans. Meanwhile, the Young Bukharans considered the BKP to be interlopers who didn’t truly understand the needs of the Bukharan people. The Bolsheviks still needed the Young Bukharans for when they overthrew the Emir, so for the time being they tolerated them, but it was a painful and awkward relationship.

The Emir’s retaliation against the Young Bukharans/Bukharan Communists was swift and severe. He attacked anyone who had a western education and read western newspapers. The Emir government held tribunals and sentenced fifteen to twenty advocators for reform to death. Other, larger groups were killed without trial. Additionally, Bukhara’s economy was collapsing because the war prevented the re-establishment of the old economic relations with Russia or its neighbors. This led to higher taxation of the people leading to rioting and civilian anger. The Bolsheviks and the Young Bukharans saw it as a perfect opportunity to stoke that anger against the Emir. The Bolsheviks were doubtful about the Young Bukharan’s chances for success. One Bolshevik in Tashkent wrote that:

“The Decembrists of Asia, the Young Bukharans…have learnt nothing from history. They argued that the oppressed people of…Bukhara have to be “liberated’ from outside, with the force of the bayonets of the proletarian Red Army of Turkestan. That the ‘liberated’ exploited masses could, through their ignorance, see their liberators as foreign oppressors does not concern them.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 124.

Yet, Frunze planned to use the Young Bukharan’s rhetoric to justify his invasion of Bukhara.

The Fall of Bukhara

When Frunze arrived at Tashkent, he received reports that Emir Muhammad Alim Khan had raised an army of about 30,000 men with limited weapons and ammunition. Most of their officers were Ottoman and Austrian POWs, deserters from the British Indian Army, and anti-Russian officers and Cossacks. The Emir of Afghanistan sent support via two hundred troops and six elephants. After taking care of Junaid in Khiva, Bukhara was clearly the bigger threat.

Frunze’s army was spread across a territory of 2,000 kilometers and was involved in establishing a People’s Republic in the Steppe and Khiva, supporting the Turkkomissiia in Tashkent, and fighting the Basmachi in the Ferghana. He requested permission from Moscow to attack Bukhara and for reinforcements, but Moscow had no reinforcements to send. Frunze would have to rely on his own initiatives to justify and win an invasion.

Frunze did two things to prepare for his invasion. First, he increased his army by conscripting 25,000 Muslims and Indigenous peoples, organizing the units based on nationalities. Adding the 25,000 conscripts to his army of 6-7000 infantrymen, 2,300 cavalrymen, 35 light and 5 heavy guns, 8 armored cars, 5 armored trains, and 11 pieces of aircraft, he was confident he had enough men to win a fight with the Bukharan army. All statistics regarding the Bukharan invasion come from Robert F. Baumann’s book, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. He was definitely better prepared than Kolesov was in 1918. His conscription solved his manpower issue, but temporarily exasperated his Basmachi problem by driving 30,000 men into the arms of the Basmachi, but that’s a problem for a different podcast episode.

Second, he united the Young Bukharans and the Bukharan Communist Party into one party to streamline communications and power sharing and then used their grievances with Emir Muhammad Alim Khan to invade the khanate.

Fires in Bukhara under siege by Red Army troops, 1 September 1920

[Image Description: A sepia tone picture of an aerial view of a burning city. One can made out the city streets and taller buildings. Heavy white smoke issues from the center right of the building.]

Frunze’s assault consisted of four surprise and simultaneous strikes conducted by four independent operational groups. The Jadids contributed by sparking uprisings within the khanate. The attack would start with the Chardzhul uprising.

Operational Group Two consisted of a rifle regiment and battalion, and two detachments of cavalry. Group Two advanced from the southwest to provide support to the Chardzhul uprising and take the city Kara-Kul and the neighboring railroad line. Cavalry elements would take several crossings along the Amu River and cut the railroad line that connected Old Bukhara to Termez.

Operational Group One consisted of the 4th Cavalry regiment, the 1stEastern Muslim regiment, an armored car detachment, and militia from several garrisons. Once the uprising in Chardzhul started, Group One advanced on old Bukhara from the city of Kagan in the north. Their goal was to destroy the emir’s main force and deny him any chance of escape.

Operational Group Three, which consisted of a cavalry regiment and detachment of conscripted Muslim soldiers attacked from the east, taking four neighboring cities on the way. Operational Group Four which consisted of a rifle regiment, two cavalry detachments, and engineer company, advanced from Samarkand.

Frunze relied on the Amu flotilla to patrol the Afghan border and blocking the emir’s escape route. His ground forces were supported by the 25th, 26th, and 43rdAviation Reconnaissance Detachments as well.

Group Two seized Chardzhul on the night of August 28th and Group One marched north to Old Bukhara while securing the Amu River. By the night of August 29th, Group One was sitting outside the gates of Old Bukhara. The city itself consisted of 130 defensive towers and eleven gates and it’s estimated that the city walls were roughly ten meters high and five meters thick.

Frunze launched an aerial bombardment of the city on August 31st and September 1stbut were unable to damage the defensive walls. He pulled up his 122-mm and 152-mm artillery pieces, but they were ineffective because of inexperienced officers. Russian infantry followed the bombardment, but they failed to take the city. After hearing of the failure, Frunze bemoaned:

“If the operation will be conducted this unskillfully the city will never be taken” - Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, pg 111

On September 2nd, 1920, the Red Army blew a breach in the inner fortress wall. They followed the breach up with aerial and artillery bombardment and then the infantry charged. Both forces engaged in street-to-street fighting as the Emir’s forces broke and fled. The Emir himself watched the battle from outside the city and escaped along with five hundred mounted fighters, when the battle turned. A Russian aviation unit spotted the emir and a cavalry unit chased after him, but he evaded their forces and reached his fortress at Dushanbe. From there he would flee to Afghanistan and remain there until he died in 1944.

With the fall of Bukhara, Frunze had cleared most of the Communist’s enemies from Turkestan. The only ones who remained were the Basmachi. Frunze worked with the Indigenous people to proclaim the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic on October 8th, 1920, establishing the final people’s republic of Central Asia. It was now time to crush the Basmachi insurgency and establish a Communist form of government over the region.

Reference

Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid

Central Asia: a History by Adeeb Khalid

Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan by Robert F. Baumann,

Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva 1865-1924 by Seymour Becker

[secular-jew]

Colonialism is a disease

Imagine being an Arab Muslim and having the audacity to call someone else a colonizer. The illustration below is a snapshot of Islamic colonialism and occupation of other people's lands, from the 7th-9th centuries. Islam went on to attack, destroy, occupy and colonize vast swaths of Europe and southeast Asia, as well as what is now called Turkey.

The world has witnessed many colonial empires since the beginning of time. Most notably, the Mongols, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Egyptians, Islam/Ottomans, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish, British, and American. The only empire that didn't take land, even after winning world wars, were the Americans. They actually gave back the Philippines. But I digress.

All of these empires were in large part, created by bloody conquest, and built on the backs of the newly subjugated. The Hebrews were, famously, slaves in Egypt. No one seems to teach this in the west, focusing more on the Romans, but of all the colonialists, one of the most deadly brutal and expansionist empires were the Muslims aka the Islamists. The Islamic empire expanded by sheer, from Medina (where Muhammad massacred and enslaved the 50% majority Jewish population) all the way into western North Africa, much of Europe, and large populations of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, parts of India now called Pakistan, etc). As it expanded using violence and fear, Islam literally took 100 million slaves out of Africa, and was responsible for one of the greatest mass murders in history: killing 10 million (or more) on the forced march from their homelands to the Middle East.

Some examples of Islamic slavery include the Al-Andalus slave trade, the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Indian Ocean slave trade, the Comoros slave trade, the Zanzibar slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Ottoman slave trade, the Black Sea slave trade, the Bukhara (Uzbekistan) slave trade, and the Khivan slave trade from which Islam took millions of slaves out of Persia to the Islamic khanates. There are Arab/Islamic societies today (Libya, a well-known example) that still trade slaves.

Compare this to Israel. Israel/Judea was never colonial nor expansionist. The Hebrews (aka Jews) were often properties of and were subjugated by, colonial empires, including the Islamic colonial empire.

They Hebrews themselves, as noted above, were most famously slaves of the the colonial Egyptian empire, some 4,000 years ago, before being murdered and subjugated by Islam starting in the 7th century. Somehow able to escape Egyptian tyranny through their own efforts (some say, by the grace of Hashem), the Hebrews settled in their current indigenous homeland 3.600 years ago - a small area by global standards, smaller than Belize, Albania, or Montenegro. They were happy there, and even at their peak, did not attempt to force convert others or expand much beyond their lands.

As historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, Israel is “the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago.” Despite all the occupations and forced exiles, the Jews/Hebrews/Israelites have maintained a continuous presence in Judea/Israel/Samaria for some 3,600+ years. And even though Israel was granted modern statehood in 1948, it is one of the oldest continuously maintained countries in the world. The 'modern' state of Israel came to fruition post WWII, in 1948; the redefinition of borders and modern statehood after the fall of the big colonials was in no way unusual to Israel. Many country's modern borders came to be defined in the post colonial period (post WWI & WWII). While Israel and Lebanon and Iraq and Iran and Syria and Egypt were all ancient civilizations, dating back thousands of years, modern statehood came in the 20th century: For example, statehood was granted to Egypt in 1922; Saudi Arabia and Iraq in 1932; Lebanon in 1943; Indonesia, South Korea & Vietnam in 1945; Syria & Jordan in 1946; India & Pakistan in 1947; Israel, & Myanmar in 1948; Laos, Libya & Bhutan in 1951; Cambodia in 1953; Morocco, Sudan & Tunisia in 1956; Ghana & Malaysia in 1957; and so on.

The problem is, the tribalism and supremacy of Islam, can't stand that it's once-conquered land is now in the hands of the original owners. Islam believes that once it puts a flag in the sand somewhere, it's theirs.

Oh, and by the way, Andalusia (Spain) is next in Islam's sights.

[persianatpenn]

Tajikistan & Tajik Literature

Wall Of Tajik Writers

Tajikistan is a landlocked country in central Asia, bordered by Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, China, and Kyrgyzstan. It is the official home of the Tajiks, an Iranian ethnic group. Tajikistan was home to many well-known early civilizations including the ancient city of Sarazm, the Oxus civilization, Andronovo culture, and many others. The area was ruled by several dynasties including the ancient Achaemenid Empire and the subsequent Sasanian empire. This area experienced the rise and fall of many empires including the soviet empire in 1929. Within the years of the soviet occupation, Tajikistan was home to a literary explosion. The Tajik literary centers include Bukhara and Samarkand in what is now Uzbekistan where there is a large Tajik population. The literature that has survived from Tajikistan and other large Tajik populations is predominantly Socialist Realism, a genre expressed largely by writer, communist, and educator Sadriddin Aini. His work also includes novels and memoirs. Another writer is Abu’l Qasem Lahuti, who wrote “socialist realist” verse and lyrical poetry. Another writer is Mirzo Tursunzoda, he collected Tajik Oral Literature and wrote extensively on social change in Tajikistan. Tajikistan has a rich and varied body of poets, novelists, and intellectuals that were inspired by these writers.

-عبد المسیح

[thememeguyyy]

**The History of the Silk Road**

The Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes, played a crucial role in connecting the East and West for centuries. Spanning over 4,000 miles, it facilitated not only the exchange of goods but also the flow of culture, ideas, and technology between civilizations.

### Origins and Early Development

The origins of the Silk Road can be traced back to the Han Dynasty in China (206 BCE – 220 CE). The Chinese emperor Han Wudi sent an envoy, Zhang Qian, to explore lands to the west, seeking alliances and trade opportunities. This mission laid the groundwork for what would become the Silk Road. The route was named after the lucrative silk trade that was central to its commerce. Chinese silk was highly prized in the West, and its trade marked the beginning of extensive interactions between distant cultures.

### Expansion and Major Routes

The Silk Road was not a single path but a network of interconnected routes. It extended from the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an) through Central Asia, reaching as far as the Mediterranean. Key cities along the route included Samarkand, Bukhara, and Kashgar, which became bustling centers of trade and cultural exchange.

Merchants traveled with caravans, carrying goods such as silk, spices, precious metals, and gemstones. In return, they brought back wool, gold, silver, and glassware from the West. The exchange was not limited to tangible goods; it also included ideas, religions, and technologies. Buddhism, for instance, spread from India to China along the Silk Road, profoundly influencing Chinese culture and spirituality.

### Cultural and Technological Exchange

The Silk Road was a melting pot of cultures. It facilitated the spread of art, literature, and scientific knowledge. Chinese inventions like paper and gunpowder made their way to the West, while Western astronomical knowledge and medical practices traveled eastward. The route also saw the exchange of artistic styles, as evidenced by the blend of Greek, Persian, and Indian influences in the art and architecture found along the Silk Road.

One of the most significant impacts of the Silk Road was the spread of religions. Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and later Islam, all traveled along these routes, leaving a lasting legacy on the regions they touched. Monasteries and temples sprang up along the way, serving as places of worship and rest for travelers.

### Decline and Legacy

The decline of the Silk Road began in the 15th century with the rise of maritime trade routes. The discovery of sea routes to Asia by European explorers like Vasco da Gama reduced the reliance on overland trade. Additionally, the fall of the Mongol Empire, which had provided stability and security for the Silk Road, contributed to its decline.

Despite its decline, the legacy of the Silk Road endures. It laid the foundation for globalization by fostering connections between diverse cultures. The exchange of goods, ideas, and technologies along the Silk Road had a profound impact on the development of civilizations across Eurasia.

### Modern Revival

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the Silk Road. China's Belt and Road Initiative aims to revive and expand the ancient trade routes, promoting economic cooperation and cultural exchange across Asia, Europe, and Africa. This modern Silk Road seeks to build on the historical legacy of the ancient routes, fostering a new era of connectivity and collaboration.

*Copyright Bradley Lawrence 2020-2024*

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.16 (after 1920)

1920 – Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. Next day, Chapman will become the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game. 1920 – The congress of the Communist Party of Bukhara opens. The congress would call for armed revolution. 1920 – Polish–Soviet War: The Battle of Radzymin concludes; the Soviet Red Army is forced to turn away from Warsaw. 1923 – The United Kingdom gives the name "Ross Dependency" to part of its claimed Antarctic territory and makes the Governor-General of the Dominion of New Zealand its administrator. 1927 – The Dole Air Race begins from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, during which six out of the eight participating planes crash or disappear. 1929 – The 1929 Palestine riots break out in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed. 1930 – The first color sound cartoon, Fiddlesticks, is released by Ub Iwerks. 1930 – The first British Empire Games are opened in Hamilton, Ontario, by the Governor General of Canada, the Viscount Willingdon. 1933 – Christie Pits riot takes place in Toronto, Ontario. 1942 – World War II: US Navy L-class blimp L-8 drifts in from the Pacific and eventually crashes in Daly City, California. The two-man crew cannot be found. 1944 – First flight of a jet with forward-swept wings, the Junkers Ju 287. 1945 – The National Representatives' Congress, the precursor of the current National Assembly of Vietnam, convenes in Sơn Dương. 1946 – Mass riots in Kolkata begin; more than 4,000 people would be killed in 72 hours. 1946 – The All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress is founded in Secunderabad. 1954 – The first issue of Sports Illustrated is published. 1960 – Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1960 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico, United States, at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that held until 2012: High-altitude jump, free fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft. 1964 – Vietnam War: A coup d'état replaces Dương Văn Minh with General Nguyễn Khánh as President of South Vietnam. A new constitution is established with aid from the U.S. Embassy. 1966 – Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong. The committee intends to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 people are arrested. 1972 – In an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt, the Royal Moroccan Air Force fires upon Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat. 1975 – Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically hands over land to the Gurindji people after the eight-year Wave Hill walk-off, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 song by Paul Kelly and an annual celebration. 1987 – Northwest Airlines Flight 255, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes after takeoff in Detroit, Michigan, killing 154 of the 155 on board, plus two people on the ground. 1989 – A solar particle event affects computers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, forcing a halt to trading. 1991 – Indian Airlines Flight 257, a Boeing 737-200, crashes during approach to Imphal Airport, killing all 69 people on board. 2005 – West Caribbean Airways Flight 708, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes in Machiques, Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board. 2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level. 2013 – The ferry St. Thomas Aquinas collides with a cargo ship and sinks at Cebu, Philippines, killing 61 people with 59 others missing. 2020 – The August Complex fire in California burns more than one million acres of land.

[bossymarmalade]

the queens of queens

Versailles Palace of Rego Park, Queens ... the hub of Bukharian culture, a small but resilient community of Mizrahi Jews who immigrated to deep Queens after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Bukharians aren’t Russian. They come from the ancient city of Bukhara in Uzbekistan, a predominantly Muslim country. (There were also large Bukharian communities in the Uzbekistan cities of Samarkand and Tashkent.) In addition to speaking Russian, they have their own language, Bukhari, a Judeo-Tajik dialect of Tajik and Persian with some Hebrew.

These ladies are dressed to impress in ornate, perfectly tailored dresses, some of which are body skimming, while others—depending on the person—are more conservative. And then there’s the jewelry: an encrusted bracelet, a flashy watch, and killer earrings. No hair is out of place; no nail is left unlacquered. The heels are stacked and polished to a high shine.

[today-in-wwi]

The End of Today in World War I

November 11 2021, Arlington--Three years beyond the armistice seems a good enough place to finally bring my coverage of the post-war events to a close.  There are still plenty of loose (or, honestly, dropped) threads left over from the war that would continue more than three years past the armistice, and I would feel remiss if I just stopped here without providing at least some conclusion.

Russia:

The defeat of Wrangel in November 1920 ended the last major White threat to Soviet power in Russia, though localized threats on the periphery would continue for at least two more years.  Makhno’s Black Army of anarchists in Ukraine, after a brief alliance with the Reds against Wrangel, were forced into exile by August 1921.  The last Armenian resistance in the mountains southeast of Yerevan was crushed in July 1921.  Georgia saw continued small-scale guerilla fighting and a large rebellion in August 1924, though this failed to take Tblisi and was swiftly crushed.

The Soviets had thought they had largely secured control over Russia’s former holdings in Central Asia with the fall of Bukhara in September 1920.  However, guerilla resistance by the Basmachi movement continued.  In November 1921, former Ottoman leader Enver Pasha arrived to assist the Soviets, but soon defected to the Basmachi in a misguided continuation of his wartime plans for a grand pan-Turkish state.  Enver reinvigorated the Basmachis and they seized large portions of present-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  The Soviets, in return, made political concessions to the Muslims in the area while simultaneously bringing the full might of the Red Army to bear.  After suffering multiple defeats, Enver Pasha was killed in a foolhardy cavalry charge on August 4, 1922.  Local Basmachi resistance would continue for another year or two, and occasional cross-border raids from Afghanistan for a decade after that.

In the Far East, Japanese withdrawal towards Vladivostok allowed the Soviets to secure the crucial rail junction of Chita in October 1920.  Most of the remnants of Kolchak’s forces fell back with them (or left the country entirely), but General Ungern-Sternberg decided instead to invade Mongolia in an insane plan to restore the Mongolian Empire.  In February 1921, he captured Ulaanbaatar from the Chinese and returned Bogd Khan to power, but he was ousted by the Soviets and Red Mongolian forces in July, and was captured and executed later in the summer.  The Mongolian People’s Republic was established (with Bogd Khan kept as head of state until his death in 1924) and would remain until the end of the Cold War.

A brief White offensive took Khabarovsk, 500 miles north of in the winter of 1922, but they were repulsed by February.  Vladivostok only fell to the Reds after the Japanese evacuated in October 1922.  Some White resistance remained around Okhotsk until June 1923, and the Japanese did not fully withdraw from Kamchatka and northern Sakhalin until 1925.

On December 28 1922, with the Civil War all but over, the Soviet Union was officially created by the agreement of the Soviet governments in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Transcaucasia.

North Africa:

Despite his great victory at Annual, Abd el-Krim was not able to push onto Melilla and eject the Spanish from the eastern Rif.  A stalemate ensued, and a large faction in Spanish politics preferred abandoning Morocco entirely.  In September 1923, General Primo de Rivera seized power in a coup and planned to pull back from Morocco, but under coup threats from junior officers, instead fortified the remaining Spanish positions.  In 1925, Abd el-Krim’s forces invaded French Morocco, reaching as far as Fez.  The French responded with overwhelming force with a large army under Pétain, along with aircraft, artillery, and chemical weapons, and Abd el-Krim surrendered in May 1926.

Egypt had nominally been an Ottoman possession (albeit under British administration) until the outbreak of World War I, and the end of the war saw increased demands for Egyptian sovereignty, leading to mass strikes and protests in the spring of 1919.  These were crushed by the British, and the following negotiations with moderate Egyptian nationalists were inconclusive. Lloyd George wanted to maintain the protectorate, but in early February 1922 General Allenby, now British High Commissioner in Egypt, threatened to resign. On February 28 1922, the United Kingdom unilaterally declared the independence of the Kingdom of Egypt, but reserved power over Egypt’s defense, minority rights, “the protection of foreign interests in Egypt,” and Sudan.  These reserve clauses would remain in effect until Nasser seized power thirty years later.

Turkey and Greece:

In the summer of 1921, the Greeks launched a major new offensive towards Ankara, hoping to decisively defeat Kemal’s Turkish nationalist government.  However, the Greeks were largely alone in this effort; the French, Italians, and Soviets had all warmed to Kemal and conducted arms trades with (or, in the case of Soviets, gifted arms to) Turkey.  The British were still friendly to the Greeks, but less so after Venizelos’ election defeat and King Constantine’s restoration to the throne.  After fierce battles in August and September 1921 25 miles from Ankara, the overextended Greek forces were halted and forced to fall back.  In October, the French signed a treaty with Kemal’s government, largely settling the modern-day border between Syria and Turkey (excepting the area around Alexandretta [İskenderun], which remained under French control until 1937 before joining Turkey after a disputed referendum in 1939).

The Allies, realizing that the Treaty of Sèvres was dead, were willing to renegotiate, but Kemal, having the upper hand militarily in Anatolia, refused. On August 26 1922, Kemal broke through the still-overextended Greek lines and pushed towards Smyrna [İzmir], reaching the city on September 9.  A fire engulfed the Greek and Armenian parts of city in the following days.  Over 150,000 refugees were evacuated to Greece, while tens of thousands more perished in the fire or were deported to the Anatolian interior.  The stunning defeat led a revolution in Greece by the end of the month, returning pro-Venizelos forces to power and forcing King Constantine to abdicate for a second time, this time in favor of his first son, George; Constantine would die in exile a few months later.

With Smyrna secured, Kemal soon moved on towards the Straits and Constantinople.  Lloyd George, Churchill, and a small number of Conservatives in the coalition government called for defending the Straits against Kemal, even if it meant war with Turkey.  However, the other Conservatives, along with, in a notable change from 1914, Canadian PM Mackenzie King, were opposed to war.  On October 11, the Allies agreed to an armistice with Kemal at Mudanya, in which the Greeks agreed to evacuate what is now European Turkey up to the Maritsa river.  The wartime coalition in Britain broke apart, and Conservative Bonar Law became Prime Minister later in the month before winning an overall majority in elections the next month (which saw the Liberals, still split between Lloyd George and Asquith, relegated to third-party status behind Labour).

On November 1, the Turkish General Assembly dissolved the Ottoman Empire.  Final peace negotiations for a treaty to replace Sèvres dragged on for months, but a treaty was finally signed in Lausanne on July 24 1923.  Kemal’s government in Turkey was recognized by the Allies, with essentially its modern borders.  The fate of Mosul was to be left to the League of Nations, which eventually decided in favor of Iraq in 1926.  Civilian ships were allowed free passage through the Straits, and Turkey’s European border was to be demilitarized (on both sides). Related agreements between Turkey and Greece resulted in large-scale population transfers, with over 1.5 million Greeks from Turkey moved to Greece and 500,000 Muslims in Greece moved to Turkey.  This did not apply to the Greek population in Constantinople (and a few Turkish islands), whose rights were recognized explicitly in the Lausanne treaty.  

The Allies finally left Constantinople on October 4 1923, and Turkish forces entered the city two days later.

All efforts to prosecute those responsible for the Armenian genocide ended with Lausanne, though by this point the Armenian assassination campaign had killed many of the top leaders, culminating with the killing of Djemal Pasha in Tblisi in July 1922.

The Middle East:

Britain’s Hashemite allies, ejected from Syria by the French in July 1920, were given, effectively, consolation prizes in Britain’s new mandates in the Middle East.  Feisal was made King of Iraq in August 1921 (after the British had suppressed revolts there the previous year), and his elder brother Abdullah Emir of Transjordan in April 1921. Their father, Hussein, remained in power in the Hejaz, and even declared himself Caliph after Turkey dissolved the Caliphate in 1924.  However, his relations with the British deteriorated, as Hussein repeatedly refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.  With British support, the Saudi rulers of Nejd invaded Hejaz, taking Mecca without resistance in October 1924 and Medina and Jeddah fell in December 1925 and January 1926.  The Saudis soon established a protectorate over Asir (home of the Idrisids, who had by this point been ejected from Yemen by Imam Yahyah), though fighting in the area would continue until the early 1930s, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was officially declared and Yemen signed peace treaties with the Saudis and the British.

Japan and China:

The day after the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, an international conference on arms limitation convened in Washington.  After extensive negotiations (in which the Americans were aided by cryptologic successes against the Japanese), the UK, the US, and Japan agreed to a 5:5:3 ratio in battleships, and a limit in tonnage for battleships (both for individual ships and overall); France and Italy were limited to a 1.67 ratio.  This averted an expensive naval arms buildup that some blamed for the buildup of tensions before the First World War.  Japan agreed to give up its concession in Shandong (around Tsingtao), a huge win for China and the United States, though they remained economically dominant in the area.  The United States recognized Japan’s claim to the island of Yap, and the Anglo-Japanese alliance dating from 1902 was officially dissolved.  Further construction of fortifications in the western Pacific was forbidden.

The treaty had a mixed reaction in Japan; although the 5:3 ratio was much more favorable to Japan than the equivalent ratio of Japanese and US economic bases, it was still viewed as a snub in ultraconservative circles.

Eastern Europe:

A portion of western Hungary, including the city of Sopron, had been assigned to Austria by the Treaty of Trianon, and was due to be transferred in August 1921.  However, elements of the local Hungarian population in Sopron resisted Austrian entry, and organized a plebiscite in December in which Sopron’s population voted by a 2-1 margin to remain in Hungary.  This was ultimately recognized by the Allies, though the rest of the territory was transferred to Austria as planned.

On October 21 1921, the former Emperor Charles flew into Hungary in a monoplane, formed a provisional government in Sopron, and prepared to march on Budapest.  Horthy, who was ostensibly serving as Charles’ regent, quickly organized a resistance and soon outnumbered Charles’ forces, as Hungary’s neighbors prepared for yet another invasion of the country.  On November 1, Charles left for exile in Madeira, and within days parliament officially dethroned the Habsburgs (although Horthy remained as regent).  Charles died of pneumonia in April 1922.  His nine-year-old son, Otto, became the head of the Habsburgs in exile, and would remain so until his death in 2011.

Poland’s puppet Republic of Central Lithuania, based in Vilnius, held elections (boycotted by most of the non-Polish population) in January 1922; the resulting government asked to be annexed by Poland, which was granted in March.  Lithuania refused to recognize this, and still claimed Vilnius as its capital.  The Allies attempted to defuse the situation by offering the Lithuanians French-occupied Memel [Klaipėda] in exchange for recognizing Polish control of Vilnius.  The Lithuanians refused, and the Allies prepared to make Memel a free port like Danzig.  Instead, the Lithuanians staged a revolt in Memel (like the one the Poles had staged in Vilnius) in January 1923 and soon seized control of the city.  The Allies protested, but acknowledged the Lithuanian presence as a fait accompli.

Ireland

On December 6 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed.  Within a year, Ireland was to become the Irish Free State, a British Dominion in the same vein as Canada. Northern Ireland would have the option to withdaw (which it quickly exercised). King George V would remain as head of state, and members of the Dáil would have to swear an oath of loyalty to him. Britain would retain control of Berehaven, Queenstown [Cobh], and Lough Swilly, which would become known as the Treaty Ports. Ireland would assume an appropriate portion of the United Kingdom’s debt.

The Treaty provided for Irish independence, of a sort, but there was substantial opposition to the Treaty, lead by Eámon de Valera, who demanded nothing short of a fully republican Ireland.  In April, anti-Treaty forces seized the Four Courts in Dublin.  In June, the pro-Treaty forces won a convincing majority in the first Free State election. Four days later, Field Marshal Henry Wilson (formerly Chief of the Imperial General Staff), who was now a MP from Northern Ireland, was assassinated by the IRA in London.  The British threatened to attack the Four Courts in response, but the Free State government (led by Michael Collins) pre-empted this by attacking the building themselves.  After a week of fighting, the pro-Treaty forces were victorious; among the dead was anti-Treaty leader Cathal Brugha.

Although the Free State was securely in control of Dublin, a civil war broke out in the rest of the country, with anti-Treaty forces concentrated in the south and west.  With British support, the Free State was able to defeat most of the anti-Treaty forces by the end of 1922, although Michael Collins himself was killed in an ambush in August.  Guerilla fighting continued until a ceasefire in May 1923. De Valera ultimately took the oath and re-entered Free State politics in 1927.

Italy

The postwar period saw increased labor unrest and socialist activity.  Mussolini’s Fascists took advantage of disappointment around Italian gains in the war and anti-socialist sentiment to first win seats in parliament in 1921, while his Blackshirts actively helped suppress strikes. In October 1922, he became aware that D’Annunzio was planning a demonstration to mark the 4th anniversary of the victory over Austria-Hungary on November 4, and decided to pre-empt it by organizing a march on Rome from Naples (although he himself drove).  The King refused to take action against Mussolini, and instead made him Prime Minister.

Germany

The Germans signed the Treaty of Rapallo in April 1922 with the Soviets, normalizing their relations and beginning trade between the two countries.  It also began secret military cooperation between the two countries, explicitly violating the Treaty of Versailles.  Two months later, industrialist Walther Rathenau, who as Foreign Minster had arranged the treaty, was assassinated by the same offshoot of the Ehrhardt Brigade that had assassinated Erzberger the previous year.

On January 11 1923, in response to German defaulting on reparations payments in the midst of a hyperinflation crisis, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr, despite opposition from the United Kingdom and the United States.  On January 24 1923, the last American troops left the Rhineland.  In August 1924, the Dawes Plan (drawn up by an American member of the Reparations Commission) was agreed to; it reduced reparations payments, offered American loans to Germany, and arranged for the French departure from the Ruhr within a year.

The occupation increased support for the far right in Germany.  Taking inspiration from Mussolini’s success in Italy, Ludendorff and Hitler attempted their own version in Munich, the Beer Hall Putsch in October 1923, which failed within a day.  After the ensuing trials, Ludendorff was acquitted, and Hitler ultimately only served one year in prison.  

Hindenburg was elected President of Germany in 1925; Ludendorff, with whom he was once joined at the hip, was eliminated in the first round with barely 1% of the vote as the Nazi candidate.

In 1930, after the start of the Great Depression, German reparations were reduced yet again by the Young Plan, with additional financial backing provided by American banks.  With German reparations payments apparently secure, the French withdrew from the Rhineland on June 30, 1930.

This post is already incredibly long, so I’ll spin the second half into a new post.

[needcake]

whumptober2021, day 24: revenge

.

.

He sits on a fallen stone after it is all over, holds his musket across his knees and breathes in the dusty stale air.

What a mess, Kazakh thinks, surveying the ruins of the city, destroyed after the siege. The soldiers sit in circles on the dusty ground, sharing rolled cigarettes and warming their hands in their pockets, watching the vultures fly in circles above their heads.

He tries to ignore the smell of the dead outside the crumbled city walls; tries to remember what this place was before, the fertile flatlands around the Aral Sea, the plains of Transoxiana, the mountain ranges to the east, the oasis of fresh water where he and Mongolia used to let their horses rest after a long ride.

Russia approaches him slowly looking down, his uniform turned dusty yellow and his hands blackened with gunpowder.

“You can have all of this after we’re done,” he tells him as he sits on the rock next to his, his shoulders hunched over and body weary.

Kazakh observes as he pulls out a frail piece of paper and tobacco, rolls himself a cigarette.

“What if I don’t want it?” he asks, and Russia shrugs, pinches his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, uses the other three to protect the small flame against the wind.

“Then we’ll divide it up among the others,” he says, smoking and looking away. “Can’t let it fall into his hands.”

He looks at the dirt between his boots, at the musket on his lap. He misses being on a horse, the taste of mare milk after a long day, the comfort of a straw bed. Things had changed after Russia lost at Crimea. He looks at his hunched shoulders and his blackened hands, his bloodshot eyes turned firmly away from him.

“Whose hands?” he asks, “The Ottoman’s? England’s?”

Russia smokes and doesn’t turn to face him. Kazakh watches the hand he has over his knee, the black gunpowder smudges it leaves on the fabric of his pants.

“Haven’t you taken enough territories?”

“I’ll decide when it’s enough.”

He sighs and looks up, at the birds circling above them, waiting for them to die to come peck at their warm flesh. Kazakh closes his eyes and breathes the smell of the steppes, hidden under the decaying scent of the dead.

“You’re tired of this, aren’t you?” he asks quietly, and the fingers Russia has over his knee tighten. Kazakh sighs, “You used to be such a quiet kid. Whittling wood by the fire.”

Russia flicks his cigarette away, stands up with his eyes still hidden.

“We march south tomorrow morning. Be ready.”

Kazakh watches the tension on his back as he walks away, looks down at the dust beneath his boots, tries to ignore the stench of war in the air.

-

Notes:

After losing the Crimea War (1853-56) against the allied coalition of French, British and Ottoman forces, the Russian Empire, who had already been expanding into Central Asia, having taken control of the Kazakh Steppe, intensified these efforts in an attempt to restore national pride (and which would later put them in direct confrontation against the British over control of Afghanistan in what is called The Great Game). In 1868 they conquered the Emirate of Bukhara, which encompasses present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

However, anti-war sentiment in Russia strengthened after the Crimea War, calling for the end of serfdom (1861) and reforms in all political spheres, which would lay the groundwork for revolutionary ideas.

Vasily Vereshchagin covered the wars in Central Asia as a war painter, and in 1871 he dedicated one of his pieces, The Apotheosis of War, “to all conquerors, past, present and to come”.

[sabrerattler]

In the fall of 1966, USSR used nuclear explosive for the first time to control a well that had been burning for three years in Uzbekistan.

In December 1963, while drilling gas Well No. 11 in the Urta-Bulak gas field in Southern Uzbekistan about 80 km southeast of Bukhara, control of the well was lost at a depth of 2450 m. This resulted in the loss of more than 12 million m3 of gas per day through an 8-inch casing, enough gas to supply the needs of a large city.

Formation pressures were about 270-300 atmospheres. Over the next three years, many attempts were made using a variety of techniques to cap the well at the surface or to reduce the flow and extinguish the flames.

Finally, in the fall of 1966, a decision was made to attempt closing the well with the use of a nuclear explosive. It was believed that a nuclear explosion would squeeze close any hole located within 25-50 m of the explosion, depending on the yield.

Two 13 1/2 inches deviated wells were drilled simultaneously. They were aimed to come as close as possible to Hole No. 11 at a depth of about 1,500 m in a 200 meter-thick clay zone. This depth was considered sufficient to contain the 300-atmosphere pressure in the gas formation below.

The location for the explosive in the selected relief well was cooled to bring it down to a temperature the explosive could withstand.

A special 30-kt nuclear explosive developed by the Arzamas nuclear weapons laboratory for this event was ran in hole and stemmed. It was detonated on September 30, 1966.

Twenty-three seconds later the flame went out, and the well was sealed. A few months after the closure of the Urtabulak No. 11 hole, control was lost on another high-pressure well in a similar nearby field, the Pamuk gas field.

This time, a special explosive developed by the Chelyabinsk nuclear weapons laboratory was used.

It had been designed and tested to withstand the high pressures and temperatures in excess of 100°C expected in the emplacement hole. It also was designed to be only 24 cm in diameter and about 3 m long to facilitate its use in conventional gas and oil field holes.

The second success gave Soviet scientists great confidence in the use of this new technique for rapidly and effectively controlling gas and oil wells. In April 1972 a 14-kt nuclear bomb was detonated to seal a gas well in the Mayskii gas field about 30 km southeast of the city of Mary in Turkmenistan.

In July 1972, another runaway gas well in eastern Ukraine, 65 km southwest of Kharkiv, was sealed with a nuclear explosion.

The last attempt to use this application occurred in 1981 on a well in the Kumzhinskiy gas deposit in the northern coast of Western Siberia near the mouth of the Pechora River, 50 km north of the city of Nar’yan Mar.

Reports indicated that due to the wrong position of the relief well, the explosion failed to seal the blowout.

Of the Soviet attempts to extinguish runaway gas wells, the Ministry for Atomic Energy of Russia reports that all the explosions were completely contained, and no radioactivity above background levels was detected at the surface of the ground during post-shot surveys.

[green-ann]

From Margarita Legasova’ book “Academician Valery Alekseevich Legasov”

Travelling around the country

In one of the TV programs, someone imprudently called academician Valery Legasov a religious person. It’s not true.

Reflections on the meaning of intelligent life and on life in general, its origins, the tragedy of existence and death has always been a profound source of inspiration for creative people. Since the fall of 1987, Valery Alekseevich re-read the Bible. He was not baptized and did not give preference to any of the religions. In a primitive sense, he wasn’t a believer, did not fetishize religious rituals, symbols. On the other hand, to all the outward appearances of religiosity he showed great respect. He was never engaged in antithesis, although the environment brought him up as an atheist. In high, philosophical sense, he was interested in the ideas of the Cosmos.

Everything related to religion for him, a materialist scientist, has been a kind of historical and cultural heritage. Religious buildings, as well as other material values passing from one generation to another, in his perception only emphasized their spiritual continuity. One can say that he was curious about this aspect of human existence. For any manifestation of a high human spirit, Valery Alekseevich felt the deepest respect, bordering on admiration. He had a particular weakness for the East. During official trips to Bukhara, Samarkand, and Turkestan, he always visited historical and architectural monuments and mosques.

After the May holidays in 1983, Valery offered me to accompany him to Alma-Ata: from May 11 to May 13, there was a meeting of the Bureau Of the Commission on hydrogen energy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. After the end of the evening session, we were happy to see the exhibits of the archaeological Museum. Many things attracted our attention – samples of ceramics, pieces made of bronze, bone, stone, wood, jewelry made of iron, silver, bronze with chalcedony and carnelian, agates and turquoise, gold jewelry from the Issyk mound. In this Museum we first heard about the grave of Saint Khodj Ahmed Yassavi in Turkestan (formerly the city of Yasi). It is 900 kilometers from Alma-Ata, near Chimkent.

What we learned had sunk into our hearts, and in autumn, at the beginning of September, Valery invited me to accompany him to Chimkent for the scientific conference "Khimreaktor-9".

Three and a half hours after departure from Moscow, the plane landed in Chimkent, from where a little later we left for Turkestan.

The ancient city of Yasi was once destroyed by the troops of Genghis Khan. In 1934, having finally defeated the Golden Horde Khan Tokhtamysh, Emir Timur indicated the place where the future Shrine of Islam – the mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yassavi - was to be built.

This monument was built in honor of the ancient Turkic poet and Sufi preacher Ahmed Yassavi who lived in the XII century. The collection of his edifying poems "Hikmet", which means "wisdom", is widely known. We bowed to the jade tombstone.

Perhaps a close acquaintance with the history of religions, the spiritual heritage of our great predecessors on Earth strengthened Valery Alekseevich in the idea that any evil is punishable.

On October 29, 1986, my husband returned from Chernobyl once again, and on October 30 we flew to Dushanbe: Valery Alekseevich accepted an invitation to participate in the 21st Avicenna reading, to give a lecture "Chemical aspects of scientific and technological progress." On this trip, we were looked after by the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR, a philosopher, an interesting person, Muhammad Sayfitdinovich Asimov.

I remember that on this trip there were many excursions around the city and its surroundings. We visited all the monuments, honored the memory of Avicenna, visited the graves of ballerina Malika Sabirova, literary figures F. Mukhammadiev and Tursun-Zade. We visited the repository of ancient manuscripts. We saw the windswept Varzob gorge, the mighty Hissar ridges. The atmosphere of the whole trip was highly intellectual.

In my heart, I am grateful to all those who are more or less were involved in organizing excursions in the short hours that Valery Alekseevich could devote to rest - in Azebrajjan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, the far East and other places.

[aoawarfare]

The Creation of the Central Asian Soviet Republics

During the last few episodes, we’ve discussed the Russian Revolution, the fall of the emirs, the Basmachi insurgency, the destruction of the Kokand Autonomy and the neutering of the Musburo. Unsurprisingly, all of this upheaval was horrible for everyone in the region and made governing almost impossible. Frunze, who was responsible for a lot of the upheaval, left in the fall of 1920, and did not see the outcomes of his explosive decisions.

Instead, it was up to the Communist officials and the Indigenous actors to create a new Central Asia. Unfortunately, they could not agree on the methods they should use, the ideological foundations of their new creation, or even what that new creation would look like. They didn’t trust each other; the Bolsheviks believed the indigenous actors weren’t proper Communists and the indigenous actors were annoyed that the Bolsheviks thought they knew best and purposely ignored all of their proposed solutions.

Things were worse for the people of the region. The Jadids were never popular even before the wars and this distrust grew as they sided with the Bolsheviks and tried to create a new world for the region. And so, as a farmer or merchant or just regular person in Central Asia, you had three choices: side with the Basmachi and risk death or losing everything to their raiding bands, side with the Jadids and Bolsheviks and support something that seems incompatible with one’s culture and religion, or try to survive on your own and at the mercy of all different factions and sides.

The core struggle can be best described by this quote from Lenin.

[Image Description: A colored gif of three men sitting together in a bowling alley. Two men are facing the camera and the third man is between the two men with his back to the camera. The man on the left has long hair and a long, scraggy beard. He is wearing a green shirt with a beeper hanging from the color. The man on the right is a bigger white man with short hair and beard and mustache. He is wearing light brown sunglasses and a short sleeve purple stripped shirt. The man in the middle has shoulder length hair and is wearing a green t-shirt. The bowling alley is pink and has blue star decorations on the walls.]

In 1921, he wrote:

“It is devilishly important to conquer the trust of the natives; to conquer it three or four times to show that we are not imperialists, that we will not tolerate deviations in that direction” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, 165

Not sure if Lenin even noticed the stark contradiction between “conquering” someone’s trust and somehow proving you’re not an imperialist or conqueror. Maybe he meant well, but we’re already off to a rocky start.

Communist Paranoia

A big source of tension between the Bolsheviks and the indigenous actors of Central Asia was the difference in ideology and goals.

We’ve talked a lot about the Jadid’s ideology and their goals. The Jadids in Bukhara and Turkestan wanted to create a modern state built around the principles of nationalism. They wanted to create a state that enjoyed full sovereignty and membership amongst the world of nation-states. They wanted to develop their own economy but maintaining control over their own resources and they wanted to education their citizens to combat “ignorance” and “fanaticism.” They wanted to preserve Islam, but also modernize it by bringing Muslim institutions under control of the government.

The Communists, however, wanted to create a perfect Communist society which required loyal and ideologically pure cadre. The only way they could do this in Central Asia was to recruit the population into the party. They knew their best demographic were the youth, the women, and the landless and poor peasants. The children they recruited into their youth group known as Komsomol and the brought the women’s organization, Zhenotdel to Central Asia. They also created the Plowman union for the poor. They would use this union to implement the land and water reform of the 1927, but were disbanded after serving their purpose.

Political Cadre of Turkestan Front. Frunze is seated in second row, two from the left

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a large crowd of men and women sitting together outside. Behind them is a clear sky, a stone building, and trees. The people are wearing a combination of white shirts and dresses and grey shirts and dresses]

Yet, the Communists couldn’t see through their own racism and chauvinism when it came to accepting local actors to the Communist Party. The Communist Party was the key feature of public life. It was the center of all political activity and thus membership was highly coveted. However it required an impossible ideological purity requirement which made many Communists paranoid. Their inability to a pure Communist a hundred percent of the time, or even to define what that meant, made them reliant on frequent purges to ensure the party remained pure.

[Image Description: A colored gif of a bald, naked white man wearing nothing but white underwear, lying on the floor, and looking up at the camera, saying "I just want to be pure."]

One Communist official complained that he was dissatisfied after talking to a Turkmen member of the Merv Communist party in 1923. He wrote:

“We started asking [him] why he had entered the party, to which he answered that he himself did not know, and to the question whether he knew if a Communist is a good person or bad, he said that he knew nothing. And to the question of how he got into the party, he answered simply that a little while back a comrade came here who said, “You are a poor man, you need help, and you should join the party; for this will get you clothing and matches and kerosene.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 170

While the rank and file were often uneducated, the local leaders tended to be part of the modernizing elite who wanted to use Soviet institutions to bring about reforms, they often came from prosperous urban families, graduates of Russian-native schools, and had been active in Muslim politics in 1917. Some had been recruited by Risqulov before he was ousted, had caught the eye of various Russian Communist officials, or even fought against the Basmachi and earned the Soviet’s trust that way. By these leaders were hard to find and so from 1920-1927, the Soviets were forced to rely on “impure” and “nationalistic” local leaders while building a cadre of “pure” communists they would be able to rely on in the future.

Turar Risqulov

[Image Description: A black and white pciture of a man standing at an angle. He is looking at the camera. He has bushy black hair and a short mustache. He is wearing round, wire frame glasses. His hands are in his dark grey suit pants. he is wearing a white button down shirt, a grey tie, and a dark grey vest and suit jacket. A flag is pinned to his suit lapel.]

What made things worse was that the Soviets didn’t even treat the Central Asian as equals within the Communist framework. When the Bukharan Communist Party tried to join the Comintern, they were accepted as a “sympathetic organization” and then merged with the Russian Communist Party.

This desire for loyal cadre and the educational efforts pursued by the communists and local reformers, contributed to the creation of a group of men who called themselves “Young Communists.” They challenged the supremacy of the KPT, accusing them of compromise, patriarchy and careerism. The Young Communists claimed they were the most “Marxistically educated” of the Muslim Communists and demanded the “total emancipation of the party from the past [which] had not yet been accomplished and that KPT be cleansed of all members who were “factional-careerist” and “patriarchal-conservative.” In 1924, they launched a campaign to ban the heavy cloth and horsehair veil customarily worn by women. They were equally frustrated by the Russian Communists, claiming:

“Historically speaking, the last conquerors of Turkestan were the Slavs, and Turkestan was liberated from their oppression only after the great social revolution. But this liberation is only formal. Because the proletariat is from the ruling nation, the disease of colonialism has damaged its brain. This fact has had a great impact on the revolution in Turkestan” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 175

The Soviets were wary of the Young Communists, but would recruit them into the governments of the different Central Asian States after they were created in 1924.

Crafting a Governing Body

In order to make the region more manageable, the Soviets broke the region into several different Soviet republics. The Bukharan Soviet People’s Republic managed the territory that once belonged to the Bukhara Emirate. Similarly, the Kazakh Steppe became the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Khivan Emirate became the Khorezm Soviet People’s Republic and Turkestan became the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. These republics were governed by chairmen.

Map of Central Asian Republics in 1922

[Image Description: A colored and simplified map of the different Soviet Republics. Russia itself and the surround countries are pale peach. The Kirgizistan A.S.S.R. is a flesh color. The Aral and Caspian Sea and Lake Balkhash are bright blue The Bukharan P.S.R. is red. The Khorezm P.S.R. is light green. The Turkestan A. S. S. R. is a dark peach.]

For the rest of this episode, we’re going to discuss the many difficulties and opportunities facing the Bolsheviks and the local, indigenous actors in the Bukhara Soviet People’s Republic and the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The reason we’re discussing those two republics specifically is because their development is unique while also being representative of the many issues faced by the local actors and Bolsheviks of the region.

Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR)

While the indigenous actors were grabbing real power in Bukhara, the indigenous actors of Turkestan were recovering from the ouster of Risqulov and the dismantling of the Musburo. Instead, the Soviets purged the Turkestani Communist Party, transformed the Turkkomissiia into the Central Asian Bureau with an expanded authority over the Bukharan, Turkestan, and Khorezm republics. They also created the Central Asian Economic Council whose responsibility was to merge the economies of the three republics, leaving them open to control from the Central Committee in Russia.

The biggest challenge facing the Turkestani Republic was the tension between the Bolsheviks and the indigenous actors. Like their Bukharan counterparts, the indigenous leaders of the Turkestani Republic learned to speak the Communist language, but their goals were very different. However, they didn’t have the limited freedom that the leaders of Bukhara had, and this created deep tensions not only between the Communist leaders and indigenous leaders, but also between the Russian settlers and the Communists and the local people of Turkestan with the Jadids.

Bukharan Soviet People’s Republic (BNSR)

The Bukharan Soviet People’s Republic was a Muslim republic filled with Jadids who used it to champion their reforms with reluctant support from their Bolshevik counterparts -- and, sometimes, even without it. Unlike their Tashkent counterparts who never had a chance to gain equal power with their Russian counterparts, the Bukharans had placed themselves in the perfect position to be slotted into power by the Bolsheviks. This meant they actually had more power than indigenous actors in their neighboring republics. Even though this only lasted until 1923, the BNSR attempted a lot during its short lifetime.

When the Bolsheviks took over Bukhara, they created the Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) that included Russians, Young Bukharans, Communists from Bukhara and Tashkent. The committee assigned Mirzo Abduqodir Muhiddinov as head of state and Fayzulla Xo’jayev as the Chairman of the council. These ministers would send reports and negotiate with their Communist counterparts using Communist language and ideas, but internally they focused on their nationalistic, Islamic, and reformist ways.

While the Bolsheviks forced the Young Bukharans to merge with the Bukharan Communist Party and the Young Khivans to do likewise, this did little to actually bridge the gaps between the two approaches to governance. Instead, it gave the former Young Bukharans/Khivans/Jadids a chance to learn the Bolshevik language so they could placate their Communist counterparts while still pursuing their own goals.

One of the first things Revkom did was to create a regularized and centralized form of government. They divided the territory into provinces, then districts, and then towns and appointed a soviet apparatus at each level. They also created several ministries led by several “people’s ministers” (Abdurauf Fitrat would be a minister for several of these ministries). Revkom and later its successor, the Central Executive Committee, would regulate the workings of the Qazi courts, placed the maktabs and madrasas under the oversight of the Minister of Education, and placed mosques and their waqf property under the control of the Waqf Administration.

They also created a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and established consular representatives in neighboring countries. The representatives to Kabul and Moscow were ambassadors while the representatives to Petrograd, Tashkent, Baku, and Tbilisi were consuls. They also hoped they would enter the Comintern as an independent party instead of a satellite of the Russian Communist Party.

Creating different administrative centers and functions was one thing, but exercising that power was a different task. First, the Young Bukharans had to settle scores with several enemies while also denying them the ability to challenge their right to power. They forced those who sided against them in 1917 to clean toilets and sweep the streets for several days before having them executed. They took property from the ulama who resisted their efforts at modernization and restored property to supporters in exile. Those they didn’t kill or exile, they assimilated into their new government.

As we mentioned before, the Bukharan government took over the collection of waqf revenues and put it towards cultural and educational purposes. This gave them the ability to control the hiring and firing of instructors and the reformation of the curricula. However, they ran into a problem with trying to implement control over the property, because the bureaucracy of distributing the lands was handled by middlemen. Many who fled the violence of the civil war, so there were many pieces of property that slip through their fingers. In 1923, when the Soviets were reinforcing control over the region, the Waqf administration came under the most suspicion. The Soviets actually raided the Waqf offices and took all of their papers to review as they laid strict guidelines on how the collected funds could be used.

Internal Divisions

If trying to create a government in a region that had endured a civil war, the ouster of an emir, a famine, and an ongoing battle against an insurgency wasn’t enough, the Young Bukharans had to contend with internal divisions. There was the well-known divide between the ideologically corrupt Young Bukharans and the Bukharan Communists, but there was also a bitter rivalry between Fayzulla Xo’jayev, the chairman of the Bukharan Soviet People’s Republic, and a fellow minister, Abduqodir Muhiddinov. Their rivalry had more to do with personal grudges and a long history of economic competition between their families.

In April 1921, the Cheka found out that Muhiddinov’s brother Isomiddin held a secret meeting to plot against Xo’jaev and his supporters including assassinations and the planting of incriminating evidence. In August 1921, a pamphlet with the name of “Committee for Truth and Justice” proclaiming that the Bukharan Republic was being governed by “a company of thieves and traitors” who were addicted to prostitutes and alcohol. This culminated into a putsch attempted by people loyal to Muhiddinov that briefly placed members of Xo’jayev’s administration under arrest. Xo’jayev had to flee to Kagan and the Soviets sent in armored cars to crush the rebellion and the rebels fled to Samarkand.

Fayzulla Xo'jayev

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man with thick black hair. He is wearing a black collared, button down shirt, a black tie, and a black suit coat]

People loyal to Xo’jayev wanted to oust Muhiddinov from the presidency of the Revkom, but the Soviets convinced them not to. The Soviets found Fayzulla more favorable because of his local support, his businesslike attitude, and he was a Russophile, while Muhiddinov was considered to be politically weak, more difficult to deal with, a nationalist, pan-Islamist, and Russophobe. It seems they kept him around so they could take advantage of the rivalry between Muhiddinov and Xo’jayev.

While Xo’jayev was reliant on the Soviets for power, he consistently tried to maximize his independence and the independence of his government. He argued in 1921 that

“while it is impossible, of course, to deny that the work of our organization has many defects, we should not be judged too harshly for them. Soviet Russia, having far greater forces at its command, is also not in a position to organize everything all at once…We know very well that any obstinacy on our part or coercive measures on yours [to force the pace of change in Bukhara] will be fraught with pernicious consequences.”

He threatened the revolution in the East and argued that the reason for the weakness of his government was because the people didn’t have their own sovereignty. He argues that

“In order to strengthen a sense among the masses of the independence and the complete liberation of Bukhara it is necessary for the Russian Government to broadly demonstrate its attitude in Bukhara, proclaiming publicly Bukhara’s complete independence and the inviolability of its sovereign rights.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 141

After Enver Pasha died and the Basmachi were broken, the Soviets turned their attention and ire on the Central Asian Republics. They were interested in bringing the republics to heel and integrating with the Soviet Union. They saw Bukhara’s need for independence as evidence of remaining bourgeois nationalism sentiments.

In 1923, the Soviets felt powerful enough in Central Asia, to purge the Bukharan government of several administrators such as Abdurauf Fitrat, Atovulla Xo’jayev, Sattor-xo’ja, Muinjon Aminov. Other Central Asians picked up the need to attack these leaders and expanded their attacks to include Fayzulla Xo’jayev “for having assimilated itself to nationalism” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 156). The Soviets weren’t ready to get rid of Xo’jayev, but the purge threw ice water on the Bukharan desire for independence and taught them their place.

Economics

All of this social and political change was occurring during economic devastation. The war ruined cotton cultivation and destroyed the irrigation networks, and whole districts were now ghost towns. It didn’t help that Russia was also in the midst of its own economic devastation and famine and needed Central Asia’s resources to survive. This created a tension between the Communist’s ideals of redistribution and liberation and their need to exploit and extract as many resources as possible. Turkestan also had to deal with the tension between the settlers and the indigenous people. Again, Communist ideals of decolonization and anti-imperialism took a backseat to Russia’s need for resources and enforcing a communist mindset on the region.

BNSR Economic Interests

Economically, the Bukharan Soviet People’s Republic focused on the importance of collecting taxes properly and effectively. They argued that:

“The incorrect policies of the emir had left our state among the most backward in the world in terms of science and technology, industry, agriculture, or commerce. As a result, today two percent of our people can read and write, and the remaining 98 percent cannot, and as a result are completely ignorant of the world. Because our commerce was based on old principles, there is no real commerce in our state. Instead, our merchants have become middlemen between Russian merchants and our peasants, i.e., our commerce sells the wealth of the peasant to other countries…[and] all the profits from the commerce go to other countries…It is well known that a state that is unable to find the proper path of commerce cannot have industry either.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 130

The Young Bukharans were not interested in class warfare or redistributing wealth from the rich. The most they did was expropriate the property of the emir and those who went into exile with him and grab control over the waqf property, but that was all.

In 1923, the Sredazburo tried to harmonize the economies and currencies of the three republics, Xo’jaev resisted it. He believed that the unification of the economies of the three republics would rob the republics of their own sovereignty. He wrote

“We are against one principle ­­­— that of the unification of the Central Asian republics. If you take that off the table we will go along with your proposition” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 142

He fought hard for Bukhara to retain its own currency and complained when Soviet officials who managed Bukhara’s border with Afghanistan arrested one of Bukhara’s customs officials. None of his efforts achieve much, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

Cotton Is King

One of the Soviets’ goals was to reinvigorate the cotton industry. As of 1920, the cotton industry had collapsed on itself because of war, famine, ruined irrigation, the disappearance of buyers, and the Tashkent Soviet’s decision to nationalize cotton. The Soviets used a labor tax to repair the irrigation system, replaced requisitioning with a cash tax, and implemented Lenin’s New Economic Plan in Central Asia. In 1921, the Soviets created the Main Cotton Committee which was charged with buying up the entire cotton harvest in the Ussr, supply it to textile mills (which were mostly in Russia), organize credits for growers, and maintain the irrigation system. It also got involved in the grain industry, since grain is how they paid the farmers to grow cotton. The Main Cotton Committee’s myopic focus on cotton angered many of the local leaders and even caused tension with the Central Asian Bureau who were trying to implement a policy of Korenizatsiia — providing that Soviet rule was different from Tzarist rule by bringing the people into the system. However, this was an expensive policy as it required educating the local population not only in Communist thought, but teaching them the basic skills they would need to work in different administrative capacities as well as teaching Non-Central Asian communists the local languages in order to communicate with their Central Asian counterparts. Additionally, there was already a skilled Russian minority living in Central Asia who felt they should be given these opportunities instead of the locals. In 1927, a group of unemployed Russians shouted at the Korenizatsiia commission:

“Russians fought and won freedom for you devils, and now you say Uzbeks are the masters in Uzbekistan. There will come a time when we will show you. We’ll beat the hell out of all of you.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 187

In 1925, the Central Asian Bureau was forced to create an economic plan that accounted for shipping grain into Central Asia so the people of Central Asia could focus on producing cotton. Additionally, the Main Cotton Committee indexed the price of cotton to the price of grain so that one pood of cotton bought 2.5 poods of grain, but Risqulov argued that it barely covered the costs of production. Instead, the Soviets should pay Central Asia world prices for its cotton.

Local leaders, like Fayzulla Xo’jayev, wanted to bring industry to the region. In 1925, he announced that

“our current policy…is we will establish new factories only in places that produce raw material for the industry i.e. we want to avoid the economic awkwardness of sending cotton thousands of miles away at great expense to have it processed in Moscow, and then to have the finished product brought back here” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 160

This went against Soviet interests who wanted each region to have their specialties that could by brought together by the center and so Central Asia remained an agricultural focused economy, one the Soviets could exploit as they wished.

In the end, economic considerations and the ability to “trust” fellow Europeans versus Central Asians would always come first, exasperating existing tensions between the non-Central Asian Communists and the Local leaders. This led to great disenchantment with many Central Asian communists and local leaders.

Resistance

Secret Society Milliy Ittihod

Between the destruction of the city of Bukhara and Xo’jayev’s failed attempts to win some autonomy from the Soviets, several Young Bukharans began to search for another way to govern beyond the Soviet’s control. This discontentment with the overall situation turned into an explosive situation when Bashkir nationalist, Zeki Togan Velidi arrived in Bukhara and created his own secret society.

Bashkir Nationalist: Zeki Togan Velidi

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man with a short hair cut and mustache. He is wearing round wire frame glasses and a grey military frock.]

Zeki spent most of his young academic life in Kazan and Ufa and during the revolution he became the president of the former Bashkir Republic. He sided first with the Whites and then switched sides but grew fed up with the Bolsheviks because of their controlling nature. He even sent a letter to Stalin and Lenin complaining about their “colonial” policy to the East and demanded that they stop persecuting national intellectuals, consider locals as candidates for Soviet positions, and allow greater local involvement in the organization of Soviet power and party in the Bukharan republic. Stalin and Lenin ignore the letter and Velidi broke from the Bolsheviks.

He traveled to Bukhara and, in April 1921, he and several members of the Bukharan government created the Union of National Popular Muslim Organizations of Central Asia also known as Milliy Ittihod. This secret society's goal was to secure the “independence” of Turkestan (which consisted of Turkestan, Bukhara, Khiva, the Kazakh Republic, and areas of Bashkir) and place its destiny in the hand of “Turkestanis” with freedom of religion and the separation of state and religion. They wanted Turkestan to have its own economy and army and direct access to European education without going through Russia.

There seems to have been another version of the goal crafted by the members who still believed in Communism, but still wanted greater autonomy. Their demands were similar, but the main difference was that they wanted full autonomy of the Eastern soviet republics united as a federation while remaining within the Communist framework. They wanted broad national rights, the withdrawal of all Russian troops except for the borders of the federation, their own national army, and a new government led by Milliy Ittihod.

This differences between goals illustrate that some people wanted to maximize their independence from Soviet control while others wanted to create a pan-Central Asian platform.

Milliy Ittihod was led by a Central Committee and held period congresses to tackle big questions. The Soviets feared this secret society and would later used its existence to send many Central Asians to their death during Stalin’s purge.

In terms of what Milliy Ittihod actually achieved, it doesn't seem to be much. However, the Cheka were able to intercept several letters to other governments asking for money and support against the Russians. But since the secret society wasn’t able to infiltrate the army and their reach into government was stifled, their usefulness was limited. They existed more as a nightmare in the imaginations of the Cheka then any real threat.

Usmon-xo’ja

Fayzulla's cousin, Usmon-xo’ja took a completely different approach.

He was elected head of the Central Executive Committee of the republic in September 1921, but he defected three months later and joined an assault on the Soviet garrison at Dushanbe. During the assault, several high-level Soviet commanders were taken hostage. He called for a general war against Russia and recruited people for his army. The Soviets broke the siege, but Usmon-xo’ja escaped, fought with Enver Pasha, and after Enver died, he fled to Afghanistan before permanently immigrating to Turkey and becoming center of the Central Asian émigré community.

Economic Resistance

When physical resistance was impossible or undesirable, people resisted through the marketplaces. Many Bukharan and Turkestan markets refused Russian currency and preferred trading with Afghanistan and India. The Soviets tried to disrupt these markets because they wanted access to Central Asian goods without having to pay world market prices or compete with other buyers.

The Soviet proposed Central Asia send grain and cotton to Russia either in payment for all the money the USSR was already funneling into Central Asia or through a barter system. This was potentially life or death for Russia, because in 1921, they were in the death grip of famine, and they desperately needed the food from Central Asia. Nevermind that Central Asia was also in the middle of a famine and the Soviets didn't seem to care.

For some fucking reason, the Soviets thought the republics would gladly subordinate its economic policies to the interest of the Soviet federation. Instead, Bukhara refused to put all of its supplies up for barter with the Soviets. A Soviet official wrote:

“During my stay in Bukhara I found a completely unexpected situation. I had expected that they will speak to me in a Communist manner, from the commonality of the interests of the two republics, but that there is not much in common is clear from the fact that the Bukharan republic has “declared private property sacred’" - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 152

Another Soviet official complained

“As before, [Bukharan leaders] continue to sabotage us with bread and to beg for money. The more one finds out about the political lines of the various ‘Communist’ groups here, the worse it gets. They try to outdo each other in their Russophobia. They make a very good use of their own position and godlessly swindle us both politically and economically.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 152

By 1923, the Basmachi were neutralized as a threat, the Soviets had been in Central Asian long enough to get a better sense of its needs and how to speak to its people, and they were seeing the sprouts of a loyal Communist cadre. They were feeling powerful enough to teach the region, especially troublesome Bukhara, it's place.

In 1923, the Soviets forced Fayzulla to purge his own government of four ministers, including the tireless Abdurauf Fitrat. Once they were ousted, other Central Asians realized the best way to earn Soviet favors and prove they could be trusted running their own government was to attack these "disgraced" ministers and soon expanded their attacks to include Fayzulla Xo’jayev for being a nationalist. The Soviets weren’t ready to get rid of Xo’jayev or the other "nationalist" chairmen of the republics, but the purge threw ice water on the Bukharan desire for independence and taught the rest of the region the limits of their power as Communist republics.

References

Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid

[vaguewindnoises]

Petition for Hazel and Agnes to go back in time and kidnap/adopt the Hargreeeves siblings

Benefits include:

They can literally just move to a different time period and Reginald will never find them

The world doesn’t end

Everyone calms tf down and becomes birdwatchers or something

Instead of being raised in an absuive mansion with illustrated lessons on how to kill people on the walls, they probably grow up on like a farm with cows and chickens and a goat and no Spikey Murder Dungeon in the basement, like seriously what the everlovin’ crap Reginald

Luther finally shuts up about the moon because he has no absuive billionaire of a father to send him there

Vanya gets to have like, emotions, which contributes to her not ending the world

The entire family goes to every last one of Vanya’s violin recitals

They wear matching T-shirts

Endless love and support for Klaus

His mom teaches him how to make vegan donuts and paper cranes rather than locking him up in a mausoleum

The world doesn’t end

Instead of, you know, death, Ben gets his own bookshelf and a garden and a cat named The Good Doctor Snugglebunches, Esquire.

Hazel and Agnes have to explain why/how they adopted seven children who were all born to different families on the exact same day all at once

Also why they named one of them Five

This is more of a problem than a benefit but it’s fantastic for anyone who gets to watch

The absolute hilarity of Hazel accidentally fangirling about Five’s Murder Escapades to a Five who was never recruited by a shadowy time travel agency

Hazel: “wow, it’s such an honor, your work in bukhara was absolutely legendary, I can’t believe—”

Little bebe Five, who has never been to Bukhara: “???????”

Five gets to break the laws of space-time as much as his little nerd heart desires without getting stuck in the literal apocalypse

Five: “I want to time travel”

Hazel, already pulling out his Time Travelin’ Briefcase: “okay, but I’m following along behind you just in case you get stuck sixteen years in the future, discover the world’s ended, and fall in love with a mannequin”

Five: “?????????????????????”

Agnes’s Vegan Donut Shop becomes a family business

They never have to deal with bad customers

Customer: *slightly raises their voice at Agnes*

Diego: *already pulling out his knives*

Allison becomes a Hollywood Starlet in any cinematic era she desires because time travel

Their interests are supported and encouraged by their parents regardless of what they are

Klaus: “I want to learn how to do makeup and wear skirts and also can I borrow your heels”

Agnes, who was unfazed by the whole Time Traveling Assassin thing and certainly doesn’t care about this: *gets out her car keys* “lets go shopping”

Diego, age six: “I want knives”

Hazel, a literal assassin who is fuzzy at best about the whole “raising children” thing and whose murder idol turned out to be a thirteen year old boy: “here’s a butterfly knife now try not to stab your brother”

(He stabs his brother)

The world doesn’t end

Hazel slides Vanya a donut every time someone tries to make her eat oatmeal. It causes a fight about properly balanced diets and good nutritional habits but no one dies

Allison never rumors her daughter because she was raised to respect others’ boundaries and to not abuse her powers

If anyone tries to pull the same “I’m the only one who has ever loved you, you can’t trust your family” crap on Vanya again, her five brothers, Scarily Competent Sister, Literal Assassin Father, and Rolling Pin Wielding Mother time travel to the moment before he says it and beat the living daylights out of him

The Commission isn’t a problem because the second someone touches a hair on Agnes’s head, her overprotective superchildren steal their dad’s briefcase, show up on the Commission’s doorstep, and utterly destroy them.

Vanya flattens them with a violin solo but not before Diego stabs everyone in sight and Five becomes newly confused as to why everyone here pisses themselves when he looks their way

The Handler, Dot, Gloria, the entire office pool, everyone caught in the Ol’ Grenade Incident of ‘19: “crap it’s number five, someone hide the bazookas”

Five, pausing in his quest to beat a man into unconsciousness with nothing but a stapler: “???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????”

They go caroling every Christmas as a family, not because they like it, but because everyone secretly derives pleasure from the pure unadulterated despair that they see in the neighbors’ eyes when the Rofa Family shows up on their doorstep and starts screeching Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer at the tops of their lungs

Yes, they all take Agnes’s last name

The world doesn’t end

[twoflipstwotwists]

Oksana Chusovitina stayed in gymnastics partly for her little boy, so it seems fitting that her son Alisher, now 20, is the one who has finally convinced her to step back.

Chusovitina, 44, is the doyenne of world gymnastics, a woman whose longevity has surpassed expectations, confounded statistics and delighted a legion of adult gymnasts. At her eighth Olympic Games this summer, Chusovitina will break her own record for most Olympics attended by a single gymnast. That she’s done it in an era where the sport has gotten progressively harder and globally more competitive only adds to her legend.

After three decades, five national teams and some tens of thousands of vaults, the end of the odyssey is in sight. Chusovitina has let it be known that Tokyo will be her final Olympics, though she has said the same before at past Games and then casually shown up at the next World Cup event. Others have focused on her age, on the fact that she’ll be the oldest gymnast in 100 years to walk the floor in Tokyo; Chusovitina herself generally shies away from such things, preferring to let her skills speak for themselves.

To Agence France Presse this week, however, she conceded that Alisher’s influence, namely his concern that she could injure herself, proved the deciding factor in the retirement that she always put off. “He worries about me a lot, that I might get a bad injury or fall,” Chusovitina said. She stayed in for the sake of her son; for his sake she will finally bow out.

It was for Alisher that Chusovitina continued at an age when most international competitors conclude their careers. When her then-two-year-old was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002, Chusovitina was 27, already ancient by elite gymnastics standards, and representing Uzbekistan, in whose ancient city Bukhara she was born in 1975. As one of the few mothers to return to high level international competition, Chusovitina was already an anomaly; the situation she found herself in made her even more so.

The lack of medical treatment available for Alisher’s illness in Uzbekistan pushed Chusovitina and her husband, Olympic wrestler Bakhodir Kurbanov, to look abroad for solutions. A friend connected them with a hospital in Germany, which agreed to treat Alisher for free.

The hand of fate so generously extended by the Germans floored Chusovitina, who could only express her gratitude in gymnastics. Instead of retiring, she took German nationality and repped the country at the 2008 and 2012 Games, offering Olympic silver in place of euros. Won on vault in Beijing in 2008, it was unified Germany’s first Olympic medal in women’s gymnastics since 1936, but the real prize was bestowed after the Games, when upon her return to Koln Alisher’s doctors announced that he was cured. “I think, as a mother, that is news you cannot compare any medal to,” she said.

Why retire when there was no need, especially when Chusovitina’s capability on vault, has kept her competitive? Rather than fading away quietly, she is as luminous as ever. For Tokyo, she has indicated that she may compete the uber difficult Produnova vault, something only three women (including her) have attempted at the Olympic Games. One day she will indeed retire — but she will not go quietly.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.16 (after 1900)

1900 – The Battle of Elands River during the Second Boer War ends after a 13-day siege is lifted by the British. The battle had begun when a force of between 2,000 and 3,000 Boers had surrounded a force of 500 Australians, Rhodesians, Canadians and British soldiers at a supply dump at Brakfontein Drift. 1906 – The 8.2 Mw Valparaíso earthquake hits central Chile, killing 3,882 people. 1913 – Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tohoku University) becomes the first university in Japan to admit female students. 1913 – Completion of the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary. 1916 – The Migratory Bird Treaty between Canada and the United States is signed. 1918 – The Battle of Lake Baikal was fought between the Czechoslovak Legion and the Red Army. 1920 – The congress of the Communist Party of Bukhara opens. The congress would call for armed revolution. 1920 – Polish–Soviet War: The Battle of Radzymin concludes; the Soviet Red Army is forced to turn away from Warsaw. 1923 – The United Kingdom gives the name "Ross Dependency" to part of its claimed Antarctic territory and makes the Governor-General of the Dominion of New Zealand its administrator. 1927 – The Dole Air Race begins from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, during which six out of the eight participating planes crash or disappear. 1929 – The 1929 Palestine riots break out in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed. 1930 – The first color sound cartoon, Fiddlesticks, is released by Ub Iwerks. 1930 – The first British Empire Games are opened in Hamilton, Ontario, by the Governor General of Canada, the Viscount Willingdon. 1933 – Christie Pits riot takes place in Toronto, Ontario. 1942 – World War II: US Navy L-class blimp L-8 drifts in from the Pacific and eventually crashes in Daly City, California. The two-man crew cannot be found. 1944 – First flight of a jet with forward-swept wings, the Junkers Ju 287. 1945 – The National Representatives' Congress, the precursor of the current National Assembly of Vietnam, convenes in Sơn Dương. 1946 – Mass riots in Kolkata begin; more than 4,000 people would be killed in 72 hours. 1946 – The All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress is founded in Secunderabad. 1954 – The first issue of Sports Illustrated is published. 1960 – Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1960 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico, United States, at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that held until 2012: High-altitude jump, free fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft. 1964 – Vietnam War: A coup d'état replaces Dương Văn Minh with General Nguyễn Khánh as President of South Vietnam. A new constitution is established with aid from the U.S. Embassy. 1972 – In an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt, the Royal Moroccan Air Force fires upon Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat. 1975 – Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically hands over land to the Gurindji people after the eight-year Wave Hill walk-off, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 song by Paul Kelly and an annual celebration. 1987 – Northwest Airlines Flight 255, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes after takeoff in Detroit, Michigan, killing 154 of the 155 on board, plus two people on the ground. 1989 – A solar particle event affects computers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, forcing a halt to trading. 2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level. 2010 – AIRES Flight 8250 crashes at Gustavo Rojas Pinilla International Airport in San Andrés, San Andrés y Providencia, Colombia, killing two people. 2012 – South African police fatally shoot 34 miners and wound 78 more during an industrial dispute at Marikana near Rustenburg. 2020 – The August Complex fire in California burns more than one million acres of land.

[maritimesilkroad3]

Exploring the Silk Road

21st Century Maritime Silk Road

The actual Silk Road is one associated with China's most popular tourist destinations. There are actually already heaps of travel agents as well as tour companies offering excursions in 2010. So where is it and also why is it so popular?

21st Century Maritime Silk Road

Traditionally the actual Silk Road extends via Xian in central China and taiwan to either the Middle Far east or Europe. In fact there are several routes, some to Moscow in the north and those straight into India and Pakistan in the south. The same as travellers in the time regarding Marco Polo - the particular thirteenth century - typically the ancient trade routes remain although the type of goods available and the method of transport get changed. The reason why the Cotton Road starts/ends in Xian is that it was the ancient investment of China and dimensions trade routes, in many cases across the Yangtze and Yellow Estuaries and rivers, were already established for you to distribute goods within Cina.

Nowadays, many tourists start off their Silk Road trip in Beijing. The Poderoso City, the Great Wall involving China the many places connected with historic interest will make the 3-5 day stay useful. Add to it a little store shopping and time to experience n . Chinese cuisine and you are positioned for your Silk Road encounter.

Getting there. Most intercontinental airlines fly into Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. You will find a lesser choice of flights to help and from western Tiongkok and most of these are structured out of the capital of Xinjiang Province, Urumqi.

China offers rail connections north in order to Mongolia, Hong Kong, Tibet along with west to Moscow. To the even more adventurous there are multiple track links into Vietnam.

Instructor access from/to Pakistan is offered along the Karakorum Highway, in addition to November though April, introduced closed. Delays and distress can be part of this path so be prepared. Travel throughout Pakistan needs serious thought. We spent 12 great days travelling there at the end of 2007 but with the climb of the Taliban the risk intended for westerners has increased dramatically.

Integralinis are required for all access take into account China and I recommend that all these be obtained well in advance.

Driving around Train travel is famous in China although it is equipped with an extensive coach network. Naturally you could fly but that might really defeat the main intent behind visiting China - in order to meet the people. Train travel is usually reliable, fast and affordable. "Soft" sleeping compartments because of four or on a few routes for two persons are offered or if you want to join often the locals try the "hard" class, but unless you need treatment on a tight budget, it's not encouraged. You will need assistance buying the railroad tickets as few stop staff speak English. The particular timetables and options might be complex. Ask a travel company with China experience to help you.

Many companies offer tours over the Silk Road. Most of these work with a combination of coach and also. International companies include DISTANCE, Peregrine, World Expeditions, Vacation Indo-China. You can find these applying Google. Some tours will include a lour leader and guideline. Standards of accommodation in addition to comfort are reflected from the pricing.

Another option is to work with a guide through Chinese firms like Xinjiang Silk Path Adventures in Urumqi. Community guides can be provided with a per day basis or all round for a tour, at inexpensive prices. Tour guides are required to always be licensed in China.

When is it best to Go China is a huge country covering eight timezones. Its climate varies noticeably. Summers can be hot as well as sticky and the winters really cold so the best several weeks are in Spring and Fall months. Consult a good guide reserve for the temperatures that you can knowledge at the time of your planned vacation so that you can dress appropriately.

Egypt Road Highlights To get the best of a Silk Road quest it should not be rushed. Let a minimum of 14 days in addition to just about any stay in Beijing. If you are such as Uzbekistan add another eight days:

The major attractions are generally:

o Xian the Clay Army and other historic web sites o The Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous region to The Fort and Wonderful Wall of China Adult ed at Jiayuguan o Dunhuang for riding the two humped Bactrian camels in the great sand dunes. Nearby are definitely the Buddhist Mogao Caves fixed into a desert backdrop from the Flaming mountains. o Urumqi has an excellent Xinjiang Comarcal Museum. Two hours apart is the spectacular lake section of China, the Beautiful Lake. Here you'll find Kazakh people living in yurts and also grazing their herds associated with horses, sheep and goats. If you have the time, stay right away and experience the food and food of the locals. o Turpan is famous for its grapes, along with nearby are the ancient urban centers of Gaochang and Jiaohe, the Bezeklik thousand Juggernaut Tombs and the underground normal water systems called karez in which link Turpan to much essential snow melt from the far away Tian Shan mountains. a Kashgar, a trade option city for thousands of years. Visit the outdated city before it's destroyed and attend the famous On the animal market which though dusty is a great spectacle. e Those with extra time may find the actual southern Silk Road remanso towns of Yarkand in addition to Khotan of interest. This area is much less visited but does have several interesting side trips which includes camel safaris and journeys into the Taklamakan desert. This kind of predominantly Uyghur area provides much of interest for those that are seeking something a little different. i A short train journey or maybe flight will take you across the european Chinese border and then up on Tashkent the capital of Uzbekistan. Here the real gems in the Silk Road are to be within the ancient cities regarding Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. Coach travel in Uzbekistan is comfortable and reasonably priced, although the rail line western world offers an alternative.

If you are looking for a getaway with a difference and you are a small adventurous, then travelling the particular Silk Road should be on the side your list. It is harmless and affordable. And it is any hugely rewarding experience. Sure, it will have its challenges but you may be asking yourself what a story you can tell if you get home, not to mention your excellent digital photographs of the best parts of this scenic journey.

[today-in-wwi]

Soviets Take Bukhara

(top) A true color photo of the Emir of Bukhara, taken in 1911.  (bottom) An aerial photograph taken of Bukhara on September 1.

September 2 1920, Bukhara--After the fall of Krasnovodsk in February, the last major center of resistance to Soviet rule in Central Asia was the Emirate of Bukhara. An attempt to take the city in March failed, but in late August Soviet forces under Mikhail Frunze, in coordination with reformist elements in Bukhara, launched another assault with substantial artillery and air support.  The Ark of Bukhara, the ancient fortress in the city dating back to at least the 5th century, was heavily damaged in the assault.

The Soviets entered the city on September 2; the Emir fled to Dushanbe and eventually went into exile in Afghanistan.  Local Muslim resistance to Soviet rule in the form of the Basmachi movement would continue for several years, however.