#queer historian | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Episode 50 – After the Russian Civil War: The Fall of the Alash Orda and the Jadids 1925-1938

For the European Soviets, the creation of the five Central Asian states was a “second revolution,” one that strengthened their presence and power within the region. Gone were the days when they’d have to compromise on the cultural and religious fronts. Instead, they could take advantage of the centralization of government to implement true Communist reforms and initiatives. Its biggest threat was the cadre of nationally-minded intelligentsia. By 1926, a war had been declared against the Alash Orda and the Jadids. It was initiated by the OGPU and spearheaded by indigenous actors, some who had been Jadids themselves or were educated by them, who wanted to prove their Communist credentials. However, the OGPU and European Soviets didn’t trust these new attack dogs, finding an ever increasingly large number of local actors who were guilty of nationalism. And thus, a fake conspiracy was created that grew so large everyone lost control of it until it finally ate itself to a painful and bloody death.

The First Arrests

It all started in January 1925, when the OGPU created the Commission for Working Out Questions on Attracting the Party’s Attention to the Work of the OGPU in the Struggle with Bourgeois-Nationalist Groups and with Counter-Revolutionary Ideology. This commission’s goal was to root out a nationalist and counter-revolutionary conspiracy and reported it to the higher ups as proof that the local actors could not be trusted. As Lev Nikolaevich Bel’skii an OGPU officer in Central Asia, explained:

“it was no secret to anyone” that those who “fought us for five years…have not been beaten either physically, economically, or spiritually and that their influence on the masses is still enormous” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319

This predicament worsened by the “petit bourgeois governments” of the Central Asian states, who, “wanted to insure themselves against Soviet influence and the attraction of the model of Soviet rule in Central Asia” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319). He further explained that the OGPU’s task was

“a harsh struggle with the malicious national intelligentsia by way of revealing [to the masses] their pan-Islamic and their sell-out-anglophile essence” Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319

Of course, they made their jobs easier and harder by defining nationalism incredibly broadly. They claimed that nationalism could cover everything from outright condemnation of the Soviet order to expressions of discontent with the pace the Soviet polices were being implemented. They viewed korenizatsiia (which was supposed to integrate local actors into the Soviet system) as a “manifestation of the contemporary tactic of the anti-Soviet struggle of Uzbek nationalists: the infiltration of the Soviet apparat and the party, the preparation of youth, etc.” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 319,)

What is really interesting about that last quote is the fear of infiltration or impurity. We even see the ever-popular argument that the indigenous actors were “corrupting the youth” and turning them against Communism. It’s an interesting saying the quiet part out loud moment: the OGPU were afraid of being contaminated by the local actors and that any apparatus that relied on Central Asians could never truly be communist.

In his book, the Veiled Empire, Douglas Northrop argues that by 1926 the Soviets were identifying themselves in opposition to their Central Asian counterparts. I’ve talked a bit about this in Episode 48, but there was this nagging feeling that as Europeans and as vanguards of the Communist revolution they had to be better than their Central Asian counterparts and if Communism wasn’t really working out in Central Asia it’s because the heart of the Communist apparatus had been infected by the local actors. And thus, the OGPU could prove itself as a true Communist bureau by finding this secret conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy Communism from the inside out.

In spring 1926, the OGPU arrested several people who had been members of the Kokand Autonomy, but didn’t join the Soviet apparatuses of power. The OGPU claimed that they were “former leaders of armed struggle against Soviet power” (pg. 320, Making Uzbekistan) but several members of the Samaqand intellectuals recognized these arrests as an “ill-fated colonial policy of Soviet power, its tendency to cleave the national intelligentsia for colonial goals” (pg. 340, Making Uzbekistan)

A Society Turns on Itself

The OGPU arrests triggered a new series of attacks against the Jadids. Akmal Ikromov (Fayzulla Xo’jayev’s rival) and his Young Communists publicly attacked the Jadids for failing to align their previous reforms and activists to Communist principles (which would have been impossible because class hadn’t meant anything in pre-1920 Central Asia and there was no tradition of political organization along socialist lines at the time). Ikromov also called the Jadids the mouthpieces of national bourgeoisie who had resisted Soviet for so long by using the ideology of Turanism, Turkism, and Islamism, and had gone as far as calling for help from the Basmachi and English imperialists.

Several articles attacked the Jadids, proclaiming that there were two groups of intellectuals: those who developed before the revolution and were thus “nationalists and representatives of mercantile capital” and those who developed during Soviet rule and were thus servants of the workers and the peasants. The Jadids were denounced for being involved with members the Soviets deemed as reactionary, counter-revolutionary, and dangerous.

A few indigenous Soviets argued that the Jadids could still be of some use. Abdulhay Tojiyev, Secretary of the Tashkent obkom of the party and a Young Communists wrote:

“Of course, [the party] does not want to cast them aside or to have no dealings with them. It would be wrong to do so. Of course, we have to use those old intellectuals who can be used, to work those who can be worked” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 322

Rahimjon Ino’gamov, the Young Communist commissar for education, wrote:

“Our task should be to turn intellectuals who are close to the ideals of the Soviets into true servants of the Soviet order” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 322

This sentiment however, earned Rahimjon the wrath of Ikromov and other Young Communists and he was marked as a nationalist who provided “support to the nationalist intelligentsia” He was demoted to a low-level position in a rural village and was persecuted throughout his life. Soon there was no one to defend the Jadids except for the Jadids themselves.

Fayzulla Xo'jayev

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a men with black hair, a sharp nose, and a grey suit.]

Fayzulla took the lead in trying to defend his Jadid comrades. He shielded Fitrat from Ikromov’s attacks, claiming that Fitrat’s books should continue to be published because “Fitrat’s books are the property of our culture and do not contradict our policy” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 324). He argued that the Jadids were not a bourgeois movement but a semi proletarian group. It wasn’t a homogeneous entity that could be painted with one brush. Some Jadids turned their backs on communism, but others embraced communism. His arguments didn’t go far and instead opened him up to attacks by Ikromov and the historian P. G. Galuzo who accused him of not using Marxist categories in his analysis and for turning the Young Bukharans into revolutionaries and Communists. Xo’jayev was forced to amend his analysis, but he remained in power – for now. It’s unclear if he ever realized how fragile his hold on power was.

The attacks against the Jadids reached fever pitch during the Second Uzbekistan Conference of Culture Workers in October 1927. Ikromov attacked Vadud Mahmud (the jerk who was like Tajiks don’t exist) for being a nationalist. He riled the crowd up until they shouted:

“Enough! Away with such people! Vadud get lost!” until Vadud left. Botu, a Young Communist wrote, “Red cultural workers of Uzbekistan shamed an opponent of proletarian ideology and kicked him out of their midst” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 326

By 1927, the European Communists had a stranglehold on the local press, and they used their reporters to spread communism and be the front-line soldiers in their battle against the Jadids. These correspondents were often beaten, threatened, and sometimes killed for their work, but the Soviets did their best to protect them (even making it illegal to reveal the identity of these correspondents).

The Central Asian Bureau purged books they deemed harmful and discussed finally close the maktabs and madrassas for good. They placed their own handpick workers into the position of editors in several newspapers and slowly exerted control over what was and wasn’t published. Using their control over the press, the European Soviets steamrolled their own understanding of their own history on the Central Asians.

Any desire to talk about Central Asia’s unique position, needs, and development were overwritten was a “universal” (and Russian centric) version of the October Revolution. The true revolution arrived in Central Asia when the Tashkent Soviet took over Tashkent (never mind the disaster they were) and thus people could be persecuted for not lacking proletarian credentials in a society without proletariats. Any attempt to center the work of the local actors was decreed as nationalist. Instead, one had to only acknowledge the good work of the Russians who brought communism and salvation with them.

On the literary front, there was a new crop of writers who spoke Communist better than their own counterparts. Like the Young Communists, they saw themselves as the true guardians of Communism. Some like G’afur G’ulom, Oybek, and Hamid Olimjon would become the fathers of Soviet Union Literature in Central Asia. Others such as Botu and Ziyo Said were purged but remembered while others such as Qamchinbek, Anqaboy, or Amala-xonim, the first woman prose writer in Uzbek, have been almost forgotten. Some of these new Soviet writers had been taught by Jadids and may have been on friendly terms with them before the Soviet Union made it clear that to prove oneself a communist one had to destroy the nationalists.

Botu in particular, had a very violent break from the Jadids attacking Cho’lpon in publicly, proclaiming:

“You are a slave to yourself, I am my own force I visit your thoughts, your dreams in nonexistence. Your plan against light, your cause is hollow My cause commands fighting your cause.” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 333)

He argued that the Jadids were confined to the limits of “madrasa literature” and after the revolution “continued to fill the minds of schoolchildren with the poison of homeland and nation” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 333)

People loved to attack Cho’lpon actually. If it wasn’t Fitrat, it was Cho’lpon (poor Cho’lpon). Olim Sharafiddinov, a member of the new literary class, once wrote: Who is Cho’lpon? Whose poet is he? Cho’lpon is a poet of the nationalist, patriotic, pessimist, intelligentsia. His ideology is the ideology of this group” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 334). He argued that Cho’lpon saw all Russians as colonizers and blamed them for “all wretchedness afflicting Uzbekistan” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 334).

Usmonxon Eshonxo’jayev, a childhood friend of Cho’lpon, piled on adding:

“The defect and harmfulness of Cho’lpon’s poetic lies in its ideology…which from the point of view of our time is reactionary…the Poet is an idealist and an individualist, and therefore sees every political and social event not from the side of the masses but from his own personal point of view” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 335

The Alash Orda weren’t faring any better in Kazakhstan. Uraz Isaev, a European Communist argued that the Alash Orda were a really the beginnings of a bourgeois class in Kazakhstan and attacked them for siding with the White Army, “the most inveterate enemies of the revolution.” (Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences, pg. 139). He further argued that:

“We should not think that former Alash-Ordists represent a stiff and indivisible whole. There are some incorrigible political hunchbacks who will only be reformed by the grave. But there is also a certain segment of young people who were not especially active in Alash-Orda in the past, who under the influence of our positive work have noticeably changed their convictions. Such people must be more closely drawn into Soviet work and be given the opportunity to more actively cooperate with us.” - Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences, pg. 139-140

While the goal was to try and rehabilitate those who had fallen from the Communist ideals, it was far more important to root out those who were using Communism to advance their own goals. He wrote:

“Such elements entered our Party either because they have the wrong address, or because they want to use the Party in their own interest. […] Such elements should be decisively removed from the Party ranks.” - Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences, pg. 139-140

Two of these elements were Alikhan Bukeikhanov and Akhmet Baitursynov. Alikhan was banished to Moscow in 1923, but he was able to travel back and forth from 1923-1924, participating in scientific conferences, expeditions, and research. Despite his best efforts, he never managed to earn a permanent position within Kazakhstan. He was arrested several times between 1923 and the time of his death, July 1937.

Alikhan Bukeikhanov

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man with black hair and a black mustache and goatee in a black suit and white shirt]

Akhmet Baitursynov would serve in several academic positions mostly in Kazakhstan and Siberia, before being arrested for the first time on June 2nd, 1929. He was held in Butyrskiy prison until E. Peshkova, Maxim Gorky’s wife, intervened and petitioned for his release. He would be arrested again in 1937 and executed along with several other Jadids and Alash Orda members.

Tactics to Survive the Onslaught

For the poor Jadids there weren’t many options to escape these attacks. Some retreated in scholarly work, others tried to recreate themselves in order to continue doing public work, and others made public statements of repentance and loyalty. Fitrat wrote a play in support of the land reform being carried out and Cho’lpon wrote a letter to the Second Congress of Culture Workers admitting he had had nationalist feelings in the past and promised to rectify his mistakes. Qodiriy retreated to fiction writing that was published despite being acknowledged as not Soviet enough while others tried to write Soviet only novels.

Poor Elbek was arrested by the OGPU in 1927 and was asked to write testimony about non-Soviet actors Jadids and Nationalists in Uzbekistan. Munavvar qori, who the Soviets hated, spoke at a conference of cultural workers in 1927, admitting his mistakes, and argued that many people who held power in the party were taught by the Jadids. He said:

“Over the course of thirty years, we could not carry out land reform and unveiling. The Bolshevik party has accomplished these in ten years…We are ready to support the revolution…One or two Jadids have sinned, but it is not good to tar all of them with the same brush” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 338

His plea was met with mockery, and he never made a public appearance again.

Others adopted a strategy of learned helplessness. In her book, Despite Cultures, Kassymbekova argues that when the Soviets complained about Central Asian “backwardness” or inability to implement and support Soviet goals, they were identifying a coping mechanism many people utilized to survive the upheaval that followed the Russian Revolution. If the Soviets could complain that Central Asians simply didn’t understand Communism or were purposely trying to impede progress, the Central Asian could claim that the Soviets had failed to teach them properly.

One time an Iranian Communist who was sent to Tajikistan to help with the Soviet program, apologized for his missteps, claiming, “I think that I have many defects, a lot of mistakes, a lot of misunderstanding, which need to be reeducated.” A Tajik Communist reportedly replied, “Too many defects will not do. A little bit is ok” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 2).

Living Within a Soviet Society

Kassymbekova makes a fascinating argument in her book, Despite Cultures, that the only way the Soviets could unite all their republics was to create the language of bureaucracy. This, however, was a stupefying, alienating language that many people simply couldn’t understand and thus it became a tool to obfuscate and condemn.

Kassymbekova argues that early communism depended on individual party members who were dedicated to communist principles. These individuals needed to embody these principles a hundred percent with the utmost purity. They had to have a complete understanding of communism and the politburo’s goals, and be able to identify the true roots of inequality. They were not bound by law or language because those were the tools of capitalism and thus it was ok to tell a lie if it furthered the Communist project. It was ok to work with class traitors for a while because it helped communism. It was action that proved truth. If a lie saved communism, then it was a pure act. If a lie hurt communism then it was punished.

The reliance on individual cadres allowed Soviets to claim they were anti-colonial and anti-capitalist which relied on institutions. This strategy was cheaper than building institutions from the ground up, it enabled mass-scale campaigns since communism depended on all individuals coming together for the greater good and if an individual resisted he was identified as a threat and treated accordingly. It allowed deputized individuals to spread throughout the wide terrain and bring communism to the most remote of villages. However, it also made communism dependent on the local leaders on the ground. A leader could get away with a lot as long as they kept up with agricultural and industrial demands. This also meant that communism wasn’t implemented consistently and left a wide range of experiences within the communist system.

The soviet leaders were idealized and had tremendous power but were constantly hounded and spied on to ensure they remained pure. This taught local leaders to speak “Bolshevik” to upper party leaders while pursuing whatever policies they wanted on the ground. For many people in Central Asia this meant learning the language while utilizing the Bolshevik’s assumption of backwardness to their favor.

This meant that words were no longer used as means of communication, violence was. If they didn’t like something, they violently punished the perpetrators. But that also meant guessing which crime someone was killed for, so no one was ever sure what Moscow really wanted and what it really detested.

Disgruntlement with the Soviet Order

Of course, attacking nationalism right after a nation had been created was counter-productive and the Soviets couldn’t ignore the persistence of colonial inequalities and ethnic division in the region. The lack of a local proletariat and the increase of fascination with having a nation led the OGPU to become obsessed with the rise of “pan-Uzbekism” and “chauvinism.”

Europeans continued to stream into Central Asia looking for work, many of the economic sectors were dominated by Europeans, and the Soviets with power and trust of the OGPU were the Europeans. This led to quiet disgruntlement with the failing of the new order. Some of the complaints the OGPU recorded were as follows:

“The Russians are conducting a chauvinist policy. In Tashkent, all factories are packed with Russians if an Uzbek ends up there, he is fired right away.” “Ferghana’s peasantry is in a very difficult situation: colonists command everything. The situation is so catastrophic that one may expecting an uprising. The line of the CC in regard to the intelligentsia is incorrect, [and the struggle] with kolonizatorstvo is conducted indecisively” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 339-340

Worse of all were the whispers that because of the forced production of cotton, Uzbekistan had become nothing more than a red colony, like India or Egypt under British rule. A teacher in Tashkent told his students that Uzbekistan was “in fact, a colony that exports cotton as a raw material” (pg. 340, Making Uzbekistan). One student asked, “What is the difference between the English colony of India and the administration of Kazakhstan by Goloshchekin?” (Adeeb Khalid Making Uzbekistan, pg. 340).

A Kyrgyz official once called the Bolsheviks “Colonizers with Party Cards” (what a burn) because they never understood the local needs. They only pushed what they thought the region needed.

Sobir Qodirov, an accused member of a nationalist counter-revolutionary organization, wrote:

“The national policy of Soviet power in Uzbekistan we regard as colonial policy, as a continuation of the great power policies of Tsarism. Such a policy, in reality, provides for the well-being exclusively of the Russian nation at the expense of the exploitation of the indigenous population. Thus, for example, Europeans living in Uzbekistan find themselves in the most favorable situations, when the Uzbek part of the population is doomed to the most pitiable, beggarly existence.

…We consider that Uzbekistan has enough natural wealth and commodity production for it to be an independent economic unit, and consequently to have its own industry, both light and heavy.

We consider that Soviet power wittingly does not allow the development of independent industry in Uzbekistan exclusively because it seeks to keep Uzbekistan as a base for raw materials in order to extort its riches. In other words, Uzbekistan is a colony of inner Russia, supplying raw material for its industry.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 378

In 1929, Yodgor Sodiqov, a party member from Khujand, wrote to Stalin directly

“Peasants and artisans endure deprivation; they cannot complain, for they are afraid of arrest by the OGPU. But the cup of the peasantry’s patience is full to the brim. Waiting until it flows over is harmful. If the leadership of the party does not change and the people continue to be despised, then, without regard to my twelve years of work and the loss of my health in this work, I will consider myself to have left the party” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 378

Things were similar dire in Tajikistan, who had to deal with a weak infrastructure and government apparatus and constant Basmachi incursions. Their government was made out of Communists who were either in Tajikistan as a form of punishment or who had nowhere else to go. The Basmachi and questionable Communists drew a large number of OGPU into the region. Many officials actually wanted to leave Tajikistan, but the Soviets made it impossible to resettle. When that failed, the presence of the OGPU was enough to keep people in line. The OGPU was above the local government’s power, and this upset many officials. Two Soviet members in Tajikistan complained that:

“We have no authority! Our secret communication is being opened by the [O]GPU, our telegrams are not being sent. There is war against the Revolutionary Committee. You should either help us or remove us from Tajikistan” Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 49

The OGPU acted like cops always do. One time they kept an eyewitness prisoner for seven months. Another time a party member received several complaints about an OGPU member who:

“Pushed peasants off the road; they were half-dressed and half-shod with donkeys stuck in the mud up to their ears i.e., you surely know what kind of roads are here in winter. Moreover, he stopped at the mosque and raped a woman who was heading to a first-aid post. The peasants saw this and were shocked, and I have an eyewitness – the chief investigator. Does this not discredit the authority of the party and branches of the [O] GPU?” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 49

It is hard to tell how widespread this dissatisfaction was, but it made the Soviets paranoid, leading a massive purge in 1929.

Destroying Islam

For years, the Soviets uncomfortably tolerated Islam because they were afraid of sparking a mass exodus to the Basmachi ranks, but 1926 they launched a new initiative untie society and culture from Islam. In 1927, the Soviets officially closed all maktabs in the Central Asian states. However, the Soviet schools were not increased to handle the 35,000+ new students and so many kids simply went without an education. After dealing with the maktabs, they went after the madrasas, finalizing the nationalization of waqf land and cannibalizing the buildings for other purposes. Those they could not repurpose, they closed by 1928.

The Soviets also turned on the “progressive” ulama who they had relied on in early 1920s to help spread support of the Soviet reign. The OGPU worried that, to quote a report from the Kazakhstan central committee:

“Today’s clergy is not the clergy of five or ten years ago. It is a clergy that understands the moment of the struggle of labor with capital, of socialism with capitalism, going on in the country where socialism is being built, and adapts all its tactics to the current movement” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 346)

Basically, by educating the ulama about communism, they actually made them more powerful and dangerous. To counter their dangerous influence, the Soviets abolished the qazi courts and shariat administration in 1927. They increased rhetoric that placed all of the blame for the violence of the civil war on the ulama (even the reformist or progressive ulama) and the Basmachi. The Soviets argued that the Basmachi and ulama were united against the people of Central Asia (and absolving all Soviets and Europeans of violence they definitely committed).

Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziy

[Image Description: A black and white picture of a bald man with a black mustache. He is wearing a tubeteika and a striped robe]

While the committees and executive were concerned with the maktabs and madrasas, lower-level Communists turned their attention to the mosques and shrines. This movement gathered considerable support amongst the local Soviets, forcing the central committees to support them or be called counter-revolutionary. The secretary of the Bukhara party committee wrote:

“Mosques were closed by decisions of party cells, by decisions of Komsomol cells, by decisions of rural soviets, of meetings of the poor or simply without any decision at all. Such an abominable situation continued from the beginning of 1927 to the end of 1928…the closing of mosques took on the character of a competition.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan,. pg. 353

Because this was led from the ground up, the closures were not as sudden or as effective as the closures of the maktabs or madrasas. When the Soviets couldn’t destroy a mosque, they repurposed them into clubs, Red Reading rooms, warehouses, schools, or stables for OGPU horses. The mosques closed in spurts between 1927 and 1929 and it picked up in the 30s as it became part of the collectivization efforts.

Shohimardon

Great violence could occur when the Soviets tried to destroy the mosques and shrines. One of the most famous examples was in March 1929 in the mountain village of Shohimardon in the Ferghana Valley. Jadid playwright, Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziy was overseeing the destruction of the mazor attributed to Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law. The caretakers of the mazor were dozens of families of sheikhs and xo’jas. Hamza wanted to convert the mazor into a resort for the poor peasants. Hamza argued that the site was corrupt, claiming:

“The Xo’jas in the hamlet of Shohimardon have turned the fake grave of Ali into a resource and they rob the people with it. The sheikhs claim to have the key to paradise in their hands because of their descent from Hasan and Husain. They send those who do the proper sacrifice [and pay the sheikhs] to “paradise,” and those who don’t to “hell.” These sheikhs of Shohimnardon have to this day never worked, never labored, but, dressed in the garb of cunning, they have adopted the principles of Satan and, turning their rosaries, have fattened like the pigs of the Shohimardon steppe…They have poisoned the minds of workers with superstition and [now] feed off their possessions.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 351

Hamza brought with him several peasants to march on the mazor, place a red flag on its cupola, and padlock the door. He also established a Red Teahouse and kiln, hiring thirty-five families to run the site and to crowd out the xo’jas. He threatened to call the red army unless the sheikhs publicly announced that they were indeed corrupt and feeding off the people and their misplaced faith. The standoff lasted throughout the winter of 1928, until in early March, on the evening of the end of Ramadan, Soviet police entered the mosque, took off the wall hangings, and arrested the muezzin. On March 17th, the demolition began. A crowd of three hundred people defended the shrine, disarmed the police, destroyed the red teahouse, and stoned Hamza to death.

The OGPU arrested 54 people and put them on public trial in June. 9 were executed, 16 sentenced to prison, 25 exiled to other parts of the Soviet Union, and 4 were acquitted.

Despite the fact that the Soviets were anti-clerical and anti-religions, the OGPU, of all people, noticed that the closing of mosques was causing too much disruption. They asked the central committees to try and quelch the closing of mosques. Even Akmal Ikromov said

“As it is, nowhere does the population trust Soviet power…if someone wants there be an uprising in Uzbekistan, then a few more such abominable facts will be enough.” Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 353

Like the hujum, the unveiling of women, the closing of mosques was constructed without taking the local population in consideration, it quickly spiraled out of control because it was left to the lower ranks of the Soviet apparatus, and once it spiraled out of control it created flash points for people who were already upset with the Soviet regime, to violently vent their frustration and anger.

Collectivization

While the Soviets were trying to slowdown the hujum and closing of mosques, in 1929 they implemented maybe the most disruptive policy: collectivization. This policy was designed to establish Soviet control over the countryside and break all resistance. It would produce great violence and mass starvation. This same collectivization effort would create the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1930 and while Ukraine suffered the most in terms of the number of dead, the suffering in Kazakhstan, specifically, shouldn’t be underestimated. To give you a sense of perspective, the conservative estimate is that 3.9 million people died in Holodomor and the conservative estimate for the Kazakh famine is 1.5 to 2 million people. It’s estimated 30-40% of all Kazakhs died.. The Holodomor and the starvation of the Kazakhs were genocides.

The goal of collectivization was to collect individually owned farmlands and livestock into collective holdings controlled by the state. The idea was that the state would most effectively decide how the food should be distributed and you wouldn’t have pesky price gouging or shortages because the state (i.e., Stalin) was all knowing and never got anything wrong.

Turning Central Asia into an agricultural dispensary came out of the pain of the Russian empire collapsing and Moscow losing access to food in Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. It was also a matter of self-sufficiency. If they could grow their own cotton, they wouldn’t have to import so much (cotton made up 1/3 of the values of all imports in 1924) and enable them to export more textiles (creating jobs in Russia proper as well). Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan, accounted for 75% of the Soviet Union’s domestic cotton supply, but it could never hope to meet the Soviet Union’s need. The Soviets imported 45% of their cotton fiber, meaning it made up 15% of all imports between 1924-1928. The world prices for cotton fluctuated widely, inspiring Stalin’s desire of “cotton independence.”

To increase cotton production, the Soviets fixed the purchase price of cotton to 2.5 and then 3.0 times the market price of grain from 1922 to 1926. Many Central Asian farmers and peasants took advantage of the lucrative prices, increasing cotton acreage from 171,255 acres in 1922 to 1,412,915 acres in 1926. The Soviets further encouraged cotton growth by offering various forms of aid such as agricultural credits, subsidies, farming implements, draft animals, and land-improvement aid. In 1928, the Komsomol even went as far as to create cotton holidays, declaring cotton as a key component of Uzbek honor, and cotton became the symbol of Uzbekistan.

In Tajikistan, cotton was identified as its pride and glory, “the happiness and hope of the Soviet Union” and “the measure of the republic’s achievement and successes” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 72). A Soviet official described Tajikistan’s role in growing cotton as:

“The Tajik SSR is a wonderful illustration of the Comintern thesis about the possibility of noncapitalist development in the world’s most backward countries under the leadership of the proletariat. Who does not understand that the Central Asian republics, including Tajikistan, already became inseparable parts of one whole economic system of the Soviet Union and that they have particular functions in the industrialization of the USSR? The cotton program in this regard is a program of Union industrialization and socialist kishlak (village) rebuilding. The Union’s industry does not only receive cotton from Tajikistan; it also gives powerful support to the development of industrial capacity, increases material support, and raises cultural awareness for the sprawling masses of working dekhkans [peasants]. There is obviously a dual relation. Those who did not understand the duality of the relationship understood nothing. They devolve from our national policy either as great imperial chauvinists or local nationalist.” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures pg. 73

Cotton was the ultimate status of achieving Sovietization, of having a culture, of being part of a bigger whole, and avoiding conquest by other European powers who would abuse the Tajiks – unlike the Soviets of course.

Despite the desperate need for cotton, the Soviet’s policies were costly because it required the Soviet Union to ship enough grain in Central Asia to make up for the grain the region wasn’t producing. This meant that the Soviet Union was diverting grain from exporting it to world markets to feed its own people internally, increasing their trade deficit. However, many found the quality of grain and wheat to be terrible. They bought locally grown grain instead which prevented the government from recouping some of its losses and took land away from growing cotton. The cherry on the miserable sundae was that despite all of these benefits and aid, cotton growth itself didn’t improve. It never met their yield before the revolution, falling below the 80% goal.

Predictably the focus on cotton created mass food shortages in the cotton producing districts, which culminated in the terrible famine of the 1930s. Areas that had formally been able to feed themselves faced starvation as prices skyrocketed and grain shortages increased. For example, in January 1928, a year before collectivization was even put in place, Uzbekistan was supposed to receive 3.8 million poods of grain from Russia. They only received 40%. These shortages would grow to include most household items by 1930. To make up for the lack of grain, the Soviets implemented the policy of “import substitution” in 1927. The idea was to look for ways to import food from regions within Central Asia where it was impossible to grow cotton. This included transporting livestock from non-cotton regions to cotton regions, leaving the people who lived in non-cotton regions at an even greater risk of starvation. It was these regions, not the cotton producing regions, which suffered the worst during the 1930s famine.

Peasants of all strata came together to demand the reversal of new obligations and taxes, the release of those who had been arrested while protesting, the end of the cotton program, and permission to “live according to the Shariat.” When that didn’t work, they turned to the Basmachi, briefly resurrecting the failing guerilla movement (which we talked about in the last episode.) Other armed resistance movements cropped up in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and even local Communists resisted collectivization. In 1925, thirty Kyrgyz officials signed a letter protesting their exclusion from making any decisions regarding their own state. In 1927, Makhmud Tumailov, a Turkmen official, publicly attacked the Economic Council for robbing the national republics of their economic autonomy. 44 prominent Kazakh intellectuals were arrested in 1928 for opposing Filipp Goloshchekin, the European Party Secretary of Kazakhstan, plan to forcibly settle nomadic Kazakhs in order to promote grain cultivation. Goloshchekins also expelled Smagul Sadvokasov, a prominent Kazakh Communist and educator, for questioning if Bolshevik style communism was applicable to the nomadic Kazakh lifestyle.

When resistance failed, people simply left, fleeing to Afghanistan, Iran, and Xinjiang as long as the borders were open. However, Soviet (and in Xinjiang’s case, Chinese) pressure forced those states to close their borders and then there was no escape.

Collectivization was not a success because farmers didn’t understand it. It artificially cut their prices in half, they preferred to eat their cattle and sell what remained. The Moscow administration didn’t offer any clear idea what a collective farm should look like or how it should operate and so the peasants panicked, wanting to save as much of their property as possible. Tajikistan in particular was already hard hit by the confiscations that were meant to starve the Basmachi. Collectivization seemed to guarantee that everyone else would starve as well. The Soviets turned to violence, especially as the local party leaders failed to meet five-year goals and they were being accused of not being loyal communists by higher ups.

In 1929-1930, the Tajikistan’s Central Executive Committee planned to collectivize 16,000 households. By April 1930, a party newspaper reported that 98% of the collectivization plans were fulfilled. Yet, members in the know reported that Tajikistan had only fulfilled 40% of the plan because of Basmachi disturbances. The Tajik Executive Committee decided in 1930 to change plans and created Tozes, the joint cultivation of land, not the cultivation of cattle and tools (like in kolkhozes). In 1931 20-25% of all grain and 50% of cotton sowing lands were turned into Tozes. By 1932 this increased to 41.9% and by 1937, 98.3 % of all land was reported as collectivized.

Collectivization a Test for European Communists

Collectivization not only tamed the indigenous actors, but it also tested the European Communist leaders, allowing them to prove themselves as true Communists or as counterrevolutionaries. For Central Asia, this put Suren Shadunts and Karl Bauman, the leaders of the Central Asian Bureau, and Davud Guseinov, the Secretary for Tajikistan, in a tough place.

Shadunts was in charge of supervising the cotton cultivation of 1929-1930 and was responsible for the anti-Basmachi campaign that led to the capture of Ibrahim Bek. Guseinov would eventually be recalled from Tajikistan for his “failure” and Shadunts would replace him after the Central Asian Bureau was eliminated. While Shadunts was in charge of the cotton industry in Central Asia, Bauman was in charge of collectivization. Both of these men had questionable histories of nationalism which was why Stalin sent them to Tajikistan. It was an easy way to get them to “prove” themselves to him.

However, the pressure of meeting impossible goals while being hounded by OGPU members broke many Soviet officials as this conversation between Shadunts and Guseinov reveals:

“I just arrived from Kurgan-Tiube and I feel terrible. I could hardly drag myself to the telegraph…According to information of [May] 25 on the basis of the last directive from Bauman, 6,000 metric tons [of grain] must be delivered by July 15. We [now] have 2,900 metric hundredweights…I am sure we will fulfill the plan. Undivided attention is paid to Garm. There we will send our camels and take further measures. [Tajik OGPU chief] Dorofeev is in Garm one Central Committee brigade…Five [O]GPU people are also heading there; according to their information, we already collected 2,200 metric hundredweights of grain…We are thinking of bringing all our cars there from Stalinabad (modern day Dushanbe) …What’s new? What’s going on in Moscow? How is your health? Koba, Sergo? I have to inform you that there is no way I can leave Stalinabad and come to Tashkent. I need, frankly speaking, a holiday. I just physically cannot move. I insistently ask you to delay my report [in Tashkent] for at least two to three days, better, seven days. I repeated that I am unable to move from this place” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 86

As we can see from the quote. Guseinov was not a strongman in control of the situation in Tajikistan. He was a tired and sick man surrounded by the OGPU who were as interested in forcing local peasants to give up their food as they were in turning on failing Communists.

For an ideology that is supposed to put the community first, the application of collectivization was a very individualized affair. The local leaders were held personally responsible for failures, even in places like Tajikistan which was never going to meet its grain requirements because of its landscape and raids from the Basmachi. Yet, when Bauman reported the failure of the 1931 Central Asian Cotton campaign to Stalin, he knew he would be held personally responsible. He wrote:

“I want to warn you and the Central Committee that we will not be able to fulfill the plan and I do not want to appear before you as someone whitewashing the situation…Unconditionally, there are masses of failures and mistakes in our work. But I firmly declare that I took up the struggle to the best of my abilities and I lost on the front with a clear conscience…Please let me continue my work in Central Asia for a couple more years, and I think I will justify your trust and help the Party in its struggle for cotton.” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 87

The five-year plan was completely disconnected from reality, making it hard for local leaders to meet their goals. The peasants often asked the Soviets where they were supposed to plant their grain as they had no arable land and the Soviets would reply, “Sow anywhere you want, even in your huts!” and “You have no soil on your breast, but your hair is thick enough. You can sow the seeds there, just fulfill the plan.” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 87)

The forced stealing of food left many people, including Soviet officials starving and unable to work (even though they were forced to by the secret police). The Soviet police often went months without pay and when that happened they joined the wandering bands of guerillas and warlords, leaving Soviet officials unprotected. The peasants lead revolts when they could and sometimes managed to kill local Soviet officials.

These miserable conditions led to severe alcoholism and abuse on part of the European Soviets. Rape was frequent and even though the Soviets found people to scapegoat for the most excessive acts of violence, it was part of the plan. What the peasants wouldn’t give up willingly would be taken by force.

The Murder of the Central Asian Intelligentsia

1929 was a year of great change in Central Asia. Tajikistan was elevated to a full republic; Stalin proclaimed the year as the “year of the Great Breakthrough” and the attacks against the old intelligentsia in Central Asia intensified to new heights. From 1929-1931, the Soviet apparatus would purge the indigenous ranks, leaving no other alternative to Soviet power.

The OGPU Craft a Conspiracy

With collectivization came resistance and failures, meaning that the Soviets needed scapegoats to explain why Stalin’s “great” five-year plan and genocides weren’t achieving the results he expected. For the OGPU in Central Asia, the obvious solution was to uncover a nationalistic, counter-revolutionary conspiracy amongst the Central Asian intellectuals. People like Fitrat, Xo’jayev, and Bukeikhanov, only pretended to convert to communism so they could use Soviet resources to create a bourgeoisie, nationalist state they would then betray to the English, for some reason…As one OGPU agent wrote:

“Materials in our possession indicate that 1929, especially it second half, was characterized not just by the general growth by anti-Soviet manifestations of the bais in the countryside, but also the growth in the activity of nationalist counterrevolutionary forces [including] a significant rearrangement of forces also among the national intelligentsia” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 373

The conspiracy began with an article titled “The Bark of the Chained Dogs of the Khan of Kokand” by El-Registan, the future writer of the Soviet national anthem of 1943. He attacked the Uzbek State Publishing House for financial irregularities and for publishing chauvinistic, nationalist, anti-Soviet works. The Uzbek State Publishing House was directed by Hadi Fayzi, who had been a member of the Soviet bogeyman, the Kokand Autonomy. When the article wasn’t attacking Fayzi, it attacked Cho’lpon. El-Registan called Cho’lpon “a prostitute of the pen and a stoker of chauvinism” whose anti-Soviet songs were sung “in chorus by Basmachis taken prisoners.”

Cho'lpon

A color picture of a man with brown hair, a small mustache, and circular wire framed glasses. He is wearing a tubeteika and a tan shirt]

Cho’lpon defended himself by claiming, “It is an old matter, for which I was abused plenty then. Now it’s necessary to abuse [me] for new misdeeds, if there are any.” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 372). Others attacked El-Registan for being a chauvinist and in the pocket of other ultranationalists such as Ramziy, Botu, and Fitrat. The Jadids weren’t the only “snakes in the grass.” The Soviets in Kazakhstan attacked the Alash Orda just as viciously, claiming:

“The Alash party set itself the task of collectively joining the Party, thus hiding behind their Party cards in order to defend their work. They joined the Soviets only so that they could use legal forms to fracture the Soviet apparatus and use it for their own goals as bais.” - Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1917-1953, Pg 112

On November 6th, 1929, the OGPU arrested several alleged members of the Committee of National Independence. One of the people arrested was Munavvar qori, a Jadid who had been under surveillance for a long time because of his association with Zeki Velidi Togan and his “mismanagement” of the Waqf office. Munavvar was accused of

“Having preserved an irreconcilable enmity to Soviet power. [He] continued to group around himself the counterrevolutionary element of the bourgeois intelligentsia, conducted systematic anti-Soviet propaganda, in particular among the student youth, [and having] conducted espionage work on the instructions of Afghan diplomats” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 374,

The OGPU expanded their arrests from Tashkent to Namangan where they arrested several other people, including the staff of New Ferghana, where Hamza had been a contributor before being stoned to death. Based on the “activities” of the new Ferghana staff, the OGPU created another secret counterrevolutionary org called the Botir Gapchilar which consisted of thirteen formal members. The OGPU claimed:

“During this short three-month period, it had strengthened organizationally, worked out programmatic and tactical arrangements, [and] determined its most immediate goals” Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 374

Not bad for an organization that didn’t exist.

In February 1930, the OGPU expanded their reach once more and arrested Sa’dulla Qosimov, the head of the chief court of Uzbekistan, and placed him on trial for corruption and using “Soviet institutions and his position in the interests of the enemy class” (pg. 374, Making Uzbekistan). During the trial, it “became clear” that Qosimov was part of a carefully planned nationalist plot. He was involved with bais, ulama, anda pan-Turkist organization in Tashkent led by none other than Munavvar qori (all the love in the world for poor Munavvar, but given his mental state after being hounded by the OGPU since his first arrest, I don’t think he was capable of organizing anything in 1929). Qosimov was charged with planting the organization’s agents in every Soviet institution and wrecking it from the inside.

Poor Qosimov was executed in June, but the chief witness for the prosecution, Obid Saidov fell ill during dinner and died on June 23, 1930. The OGPU investigated his death and discovered he was poisoned (I had a Russian babushka who used to tutted with grave disappointment that the Russian state “always use poison” to kill its victims). The OGPU took this as evidence of a grand plot and arrested Obid’s brother, Nosir, who confessed he was in on the plot that had been ordered by Botu. The OGPU “discovered” that Botu was part of the Milliy Istiqlol, Veldi’s old pan-Turkic organization. Botu supposedly claimed that the goal of the organization was:

“The achievement of the independence of Uzbekistan in the form of a separate bourgeois-democratic republic” He supposedly claimed that “it is necessary to think not only of the present, but also of the future” He told Nosir Saidov that “our Uzbek petty bourgeois youth is in a very straitened condition…excluded from schools and the Soviet apparatus. In our thinking about education, we pay very little attention to the preservation in [the youth] of national feeling. Meanwhile, in the future [i.e., upon Uzbekistan’s secession from the USSR] we will need cadres of nationalist youth. It is necessary to strengthen the nationalist reworking of the youth through the school and literature” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 376

Botu was arrested on July 23, 1930.

More arrests followed and the OGPU made up another counterrevolutionary organization: G’ayratlilar Uyushmasi (Union of Enthusiasts). This group had infiltrated the Uzbekistan Narkompros, proving there was a conspiracy to destroy the Soviet Union from the inside out.

None of the people arrested were given show trials. Instead, they were shipped to Moscow to be interrogated in Butyrka prison. In total, 87 people were accused and 15 were sentenced to death on April 23, 1931. Munavvar qori was executed immediately but others had their sentenced changed to death at a labor camp instead. Botu would spend 1931-1933 being shipped from prison to prison until he was formally sentenced to ten years in a labor camp on Solovetsky Islands in the Artic. He would spend five years there before being recalled and shot during the Great Terror.

Over the decade, the OGPU (later turned into the NKVD) found similar secret societies in Tajikistan (Union of the East-Ittihodi Sharq) and in Turkmenistan (Turkmen Independence – Turmen Azatlygy).

While this first wave of arrests spared many Jadids, the verbal assaults increased in their ferocity. Jalil Boybo’latov, a Chekist who had been tracking Fitrat since the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic wrote a detailed attack on Fitrat’s entire catalogue, claiming he was a chauvinist and nationalist and attacked Chaghatayism as being a nationalist ideology. Fitrat defended himself (it was the last time he’d be published in a newspaper), but the die was cast. No longer were indigenous actors able to debate the future of their forming nations in the newspapers. They were officially iced out and only communist approved thought could appear in the papers.

It's not a hundred percent clear why Fitrat, Cho’lpon, and Qodiriy survived the arrests of 1929-1930. Adeeb Khalid postulates that it may have been because of Fayzulla Xo’jayev’s protection, although there isn’t any real documentary proof that that was the case (and there may not be). It could have been because they were easy lightning rods and scapegoats that others could trip over themselves attacking to prove their own communist credentials and so the OGPU didn’t yet see a reason to get rid of them. Better to use them to turn the indigenous intellectuals against each other, fundamentally break all bonds of social and cultural ties before killing everyone – a favorite Soviet game.

Scapegoats in Tajikistan

By 1933, the Soviet machine needed scapegoats to explain the failure of collectivization and cotton growing in Tajikistan. After a year of interrogations, recrimination, investigation, and paranoia, the OGPU selected Nusratullo Maksum of the Central Executive Committee and Abdurakhim Khodzhibaev of the Council of People’s Commissars to be the sacrificial lambs. They were accused of being part of counterrevolutionary organizations aiming to eliminate Soviet rule in Tajikistan. The OGPU arrested 600 people for being connected to the Maksum and Khozhibaev plot – many of whom had been Jadids transplanted from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan. One such Jadid was Abdulkadyr Mukhitdinov who became the Tajik Fitrat or Munavvar qori.

He was attacked for being a Jadid, for distrusting the five-year plan, for being a wealthy merchant who had made money from cotton in the past. Mukhitdinov was in charge of collectivization and his letters fell into OGPU hands. In one letter he asked Karl Baumann to confiscate only cotton, not cattle, so the people would not starve. Another local party member said Mukhitdinov asked him not to press grain collection and to keep as much grain for the people. He claimed that Mukhitidnov said,

“We made the revolution, but we destroyed ourselves. We Muslims, are not united. We tried to eat each other and destroy ourselves. Russians are united, but we report on each other and hence destroyed the Bukharan People’s Socialist Republic” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 117

Mukhitdinov was purged from the party and executed in 1934.

At first Bauman and Guseinov tried to protect Maksum and Khodzhibaev but by December 1933 they turned their backs on the pair and demanded their purge.

Publicly Maksum and Khodzhibaev were accused of being counterrevolutionaries, but the OGPU records revealed conflicting accusations depending on who they spoke with. Either Maksum and Khodzhibaev were too extreme in fulfilling the Soviet plan or they did too much to help the peasants resist collectivization. There is also an intriguing claim that Maksum and Khodzhibaev attacked the OGPU for driving people into the arms of the Basmachi and for getting in the way of collectivization. Frustrated with the OGPU and the situation in Tajikistan one of them warned another Soviet member “you worked for Soviet rule, you got medals, but now you can throw them away; you will not be thanked for your work, you will be arrested” (Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 119)

Surprisingly neither were executed. Instead, they were transferred to different positions and then Moscow.

Guseinov was also dismissed from his post. Between 1933-1934 the Central Asian Bureau sent 105 new workers to Tajikistan and then dozens of new secret police agents

Abdullo Rakhimbaev replaced Khodzhibaev. He actually was involved in the delimitation between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and actually argued against the creation of Tajikistan. Grigory Broido replaced Guseinov. Broido was involved in the sovietzation of Central Asia back in 1917 and played a key role in the formation of the Bukharan and Khivan communist parties and led a Khivan military campaign. Urnbai Ashurov was sent to support Broido. Shirinsho Shohtemur, who had worked with Maksum and Khodzhibaev, was in charge of the purges of Tajikistan. With the exception of Shohtemur, all of these new leaders were outsiders brought in because they needed a chance to prove their communist principles and because they owed Stalin their lives and this new chance.

From 1933-1936, the Soviet apparatus attacked indigenous actors on charges of being nationalism and counterrevolutionaries and they attacked European actors of chauvinism and incompetence. Any time anyone tried to challenge the OGPU for being lawless and violent, they were caught within the OGPU’s web.

Shadunts eventually replaced Broido as leader of the Party. He was promoted during a period of recovery for Tajikistan. People were recovering from the first and second five-year plans and productivity was increasing.

Yet, 1935 was the same year for another purge. In total 476 party members lost their party card because they were “bureaucrats’ “corrupt officials” and class enemies. This was a precursor to the great purge of 1936-1938. The party members who were purged in 1935 were restored and the hunt for those who falsely accused the “good” communists began. Shohtemur proceeded cautiously, basically asking how it was possible for the NKVD to arrest clearly good Communists. However, he also knew that a restoration could be taken away as quickly and then he would be blamed for restoring a bad communist. His caution didn’t save him and he would be executed in spring 1938.

His sudden fall shocked the Communists of Tajikistan and the only way Rakhimbaev could explain it was:

“For almost two years Shadunts led the Party and suddenly he was removed from his post. What happened? This happened, because comrades, comrade Shadunts turned out to be a bad political leader. He turned out to be a liberal…He could not combine economic work with political soberness, with Party work. He failed in Bolshevik instinct to unmask the enemy in a timely manner, this is why he had to go…The Central Committee was fully right to dismiss Shadunts.” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dispute Cultures, pg. 186

Rakhimbaev and Broido shortly joined Shadunts along with an entire generation of indigenous and European intellectuals and leaders who were unlucky enough to be targeted by the NKVD.

The Great Terror

The Great Terror arrived in Central Asia in 1937 with the arrest of Fayzulla and Akmal Ikromov. They were both arrested in July 1937 and were charged with several different counter-revolutionary activities. They were simultaneously part of:

A “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” who wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union

Milliy Ittihod, whose goal was to either to engage in “wrecking, diversionist, and terrorist activities, undermining the military power of the USSR, provoking a military attack…on the USSR, dismembering the USSR”

Organizations that wanted to separate Uzbekistan from the Soviet Union and join a British protectorate.

Both men were executed on March 15, 1938.

Cho’lpon was arrested on July 13, 1937, Fitrat was arrested on July 22nd, and Qodiriy was arrested on December 31st, 1937. They were joined by hundreds of others, including many who attacked them so vehemently to prove they were in fact real Communists. The charges brought against them were ludicrous. They were the clear design of paranoid and bored minds who needed people to blame for the failures of Soviet policies and because the hounds of nationalism had been unleashed and could not be recalled.

Fitrat “confessed” to being a leader of Milliy Ittihod, recruited by Fayzulla (who was the Chairman of the Bukharan Soviet Republic at the time, so clearly had a lot of time on his hands for secret societies and counter-revolutionary acts). Fitrat, Xo’jayev, and Munavvar qori among others had organized the Basmachi to destroy the Soviet Union. Qodiriy was accused of being a Trotskyite and being associated with the terrible nationalists Xo’jayev and Ikromov.

Their records are said to survive but are sealed except to a select few. They paint a depressingly familiar picture of torture, false confessions, deep betrayals, and shattering of desperate humans. The hallmark of not only the Soviet Union, but any government that wants to break its people, not support them.

Over 383 lists (with almost 44,000 names) of accused nationalists and counter-revolutionaries were sent to the Politburo and then Stalin for his signature. A vast majority of them were executed. Some of the names included Evgeniia Zel’kind, Ikromov’s wife, Hadi Fayzi, and Rahimjon Inog’amov. Others who were not on the list were still arrested and executed such as Botu, and Turar Risqulov while others, like Laziz Azizzoda were arrested and went from camp to camp before being released. And then there was Sadriddin Ayni, who somehow managed to avoid arrest and died in his bed in 1954 at the age of 76.

In the biggest farce of this entire madness was the Supreme Military Court of the USSR. It held a session in Tashkent on October 5th, 1938, to sentence the guilty counterrevolutionaries. However, everyone had already been executed the night before, on October 4th. It was shameful window dressing of a massacre based on paranoia, colonialism, and a love for power.

References

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

“Colonizers With Party Cards” by Benjamin Loring

Despite Cultures by Botakoz Kassymbekova

“The Role of Alash Orda on the Formation of Kazakh SSR” by Yunus Emre Gurbuz

“Challenging Colonial Power: Kazakh Cadres and Native Strategies” by Gulnar Kendirbai

“Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan 1917-1953” by Maria Blackwood

1 note · View note

castielsarmpit · 2 years ago

Text

I’m one second away from doing a full analysis paper for fun regarding the ways in which the show supernatural perpetuates AIDS epidemic rhetoric surrounding plague ideology and queerness. Would anyone even read that?

#queer historian #media analysis #aids epidemic rhetoric #queer history #spn #cas in super hell #i’m gonna do it #destiel

6 notes · View notes

jonesposting · 2 years ago

Text

There’s only two types of people interested in inter war history: crypto-fascists and queer folk, and for the absolute opposite reasons

#queer history #queer historian

8 notes · View notes

house-of-slayterr · 2 years ago

Text

So I was today years old when I found out Issac Newton was gay and had several boyfriends…

At least that’s the speculation. People think he was either gay or asexual. He’s who I chose my middle name after 🥰

#science nerd #Issac Newton #lgbt #lgbt history #queer historian #asexual #mlm #name sake

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Episode 49th – After the Russian Civil War: The Last Days of the Basmachi

Recovering from Enver Pasha: the 1923-1926 Campaign

When we last left the Basmachi, Enver Pasha was being Enver Pasha and led his followers into a disastrous series of frontal assaults that shattered their forces. He was then hunted down and killed by Red Army forces. Three Basmachi commanders survived Enver Pasha: Salim Pasha, Enver’s successor, Junaid Khan in the Kara-Kum Desert in Turkmenistan, and Ibrahim Bek in Tajikistan.

Salim Pasha and Ibrahim continued fighting for the Bukharan Emir, who was now in Afghanistan, and many Basmachi fighters survived by retreating into the mountainous rural terrain, like Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, or ride to and fro from Afghanistan. Salim Pasha, in 1922, rode to Afghanistan and received the Emir’s blessing for a large scale attack against Eastern Bukhara. He united several smaller Basmachi units into an army of 5,000 and targeted not only Soviet garrisons but Revkom members and local party workers. However, like Enver Pasha, Salim Pasha thought in a scale larger than his forces could manage and was surprised by the Soviet’s improved tactics and abilities.

Enver Pasha

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man standing at an angle, looking into the camera. he has a thick mustache that is twisted upwards. He is wearing a dark fex and a dark military tunic with gold epaulettes. His arms are folded across his chest]

His unified force survived from December 1922 to March 1923, when the Soviets shattered his units. He fled to Afghanistan and was later killed far from Central Asia by Kemalist secret police. While Haji Sami and Ibrahim Bek recovered from Enver Pasha’s death, Junaid Khan in Turkmenistan took the city of Khiva.

In October 1923, the Khorezm Soviet Republic made a huge mistake and declared the separation of church and state. They deprived the clergies of their responsibilities, and called for the nationalization of waqf land. The Khivans merchants and cleric begged Junaid Khan to rescue them and defend Islam. He and his Basmachi took control of the city of Khiva for a month. The Soviet’s sent a garrison to retake the city and drove his forces back into the Kara-Kum desert where Junaid Khan would remain until he fled to Iran in 1927.

Soviet Military Response

The Soviets took advantage of their victory by launching their own campaign in March. This campaign was led by Red Army commander and a hero of the Russian Civil War, Pavel Andreevich Pavlov. Pavlov had three objectives which proved devastating to the Basmachi:

Focus all attacks on the Basmachi base of operations instead of chasing them around the region. These three bases were: the mountainous stronghold of Matcha, the Lokai and Gissar Valleys in the south, and mountainous Garm in the east. These three areas would be attacked simultaneously so the Basmachi couldn’t flee into each other’s territories either for safety or to assist each other.

Increase his forces until they are strong enough to meet the task. Moscow granted his request for more support and by 1923 he had 5,832 men with 222 machine-guns and artillery pieces in Eastern Bukhara.

Severe the cord tying the cavalry to the infantry. Normally cavalry was used to protect the infantry and ride forward just enough to find the Basmachi or lead them into an ambush. Pavlov freed the cavalry so they could operate again as an independent force, allowing them greater independence and freedom of movement.

Pavlov’s methods proved successful in March 1923 when they took Matcha, a previously impossible objective for the Soviets. He succeeded because he ensured that all supplies were available when needed. His machine guns and artillery were assigned to pack trains and supplies were stockpiled on the Samarkand-Pendzhikent line in advance, far away enough to be protected, by close enough for supplies to be sent where they were needed. He also utilized local volunteers to serve as scouts, interpreters, and engineer labor.

Garm fell shortly afterwards on July 29th after a twelve-hour battle. Fuzail Maksum, the Basmachi in charge of the forces around Garm, fled to Afghanistan with a slight wound on August 12th.

The Gissar-Lokai valley continued to prove difficult to subdue, but as long as Salim Pasha remained in the region, the Soviets were able to exploit the rivalry between him and Ibrahim Bek, to the detriment of both of their forces.

The Soviet Political, Economic, and Social Response

By 1923, the Soviets realized they couldn’t break the Basmachi with military might alone. They needed to respond on the political, economic, and social front as well. To that end, the Soviets flooded the rural areas with Cheka or OGPU agents to flush out collaborators and convert supporters of the Basmachi to their cause. These conversions or alliances were heavily publicized affairs and often took place in open air demonstrations where Soviets and local actors alike gave big speeches in front of a large gathering, publicly professing their new alliance and friendship with one another. These speeches can’t be taken at face value and even one Soviet claimed:

“Of course, one could not trust the sincerity of the bais who welcomed the Soviet power and land reform. Still, their speeches showed that bais realized their powerlessness.” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 21

One particularly painful conversion was of Ibrahim Bek’s own people the Lokai in December 1923. To add more salt to the wound, the Soviets also recruited a 60-man cavalry detachment of Lokai people to hunt Ibrahim.

The assimilation of local leaders also extended to the Basmachi leaders themselves. A perfect example of this behavior is Ishniiaz Iunusov. Iunusov fought against the Red Army as a Basmachi leader but was later hired as the head of Soviet Muslim voluntary detachment to fight against the Basmachi. During the Basmachi campaigns he won two Red Banner medals and eventually became a member of the Communist party. He was then named head of the Administration Department and commander of the Voluntary Detachment. A Soviet report about his abilities read:

“His authority was based on his Soviet position and his Soviet distinctions. As the head of the Administration Department and Voluntary Detachment, he thought of himself as the absolute master. He formed his detachment as he wished, from his close people and from 30 members of his detachment; six of them were bais and kulaks… “Not a single arrest of a disenfranchised or bai in the region evaded him. In all cases he took the arrested out on bail and tried to help him. He even participated in illegal searches, arrests, and extrajudicial shootings” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 31-33

Economically, the Soviets implemented the food for cotton plan, which forbade farmers from planting anything but cotton in exchange for food. This meant that the Basmachi could no longer raid fields and had to extort food from their own supporters. Tajikistan was already experiencing mass starvation and hoarding food was seen as anti-Soviet behavior. Soviets, fearful that if food was being reserved it was for the Basmachi, often confiscated desperately needed food, leaving the locals at the mercy of their neighbors and whatever social programs the Tajik government was able to implement. While people feared the Basmachi, they also blamed the Soviets for the lack of food. One Tajik citizen complained:

“The government knows that Ura-Tiube region is full of Basmachi and that we suffer [first] from their treatment of us; second, we suffer from high prices; third, from expense for the Red Army soldiers who are defending us from Basmachi…People run away to the mountains when they see the Red Army soldiers. If grain costs five rubles on the market, the Red Army pays only 1 ruble 40 kopeks. There are many deficiencies here; if some commissions would come and investigate things thoroughly, they would find a lot of material “- Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 35

The lack of food not only put a strain on the Basmachi’s relationship with the locals, but also put pressure on Basmachi commanders to prevent their soldiers from deserting because of starvation and dwindling prospects of success. The Soviets took advance of this tension by issuing promises of amnesty.

On March 15th, 1925, the Tajikistan government promised to free all sentenced people who were imprisoned for under two years or had already completed at least half of their sentence. They also promised to shorten current incarceration periods by 1/3. They offer full amnesty and immunity to existing fighters if they surrendered between March 15th and June 15th, 1925. They proclaimed:

“On this great day for Tajikistan…the Revolutionary Committee aims to return to peaceful work those workers and peasants who committed crimes due to their darkness and ignorance, under the influence of emir and tsarist officials. We wish to give them a chance to redeem their guilt before the rule of workers and peasants." - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 23

Of course, the Basmachi had to surrender their arms, rat out their collaborators, and publicly denounce their crimes. While the Soviets believed that if the state pardoned you, you wouldn’t forget it and would feel beholden to the state, there were more practical reasons to grant mass amnesty. The Soviet state wasn’t strong enough in Tajikistan to hold everyone in prisons. Some prisons were already holding 300% percent over their mass capacity. They didn’t have enough guards or food to feed the prison population.

Despite their promises the first few years of Tajikistan’s existence were filled with more executions of Basmachis than amnesties. Again, this is because of limited state capacity in Tajikistan. The high court didn’t exist outside of a couple of tables, which traveled with the judge, revolutionary committee members, and political police under red army guard.

Because they didn’t have the resources, manpower, or institutional support, many judges realized that the best way to handle the Basmachi was with quick show trials and executions. It also worked as a semi-military strategy in the Soviet’s battle over the territory. One judge wrote:

“Basmachi resistance demanded quick show trials and strict justice…delay of an execution, not to mention the revision of capital punishment, would undermine all our efforts in the fight against the Basmachi…During this month we heard 70 cases, 45 of whose defendants were sentenced to death.” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 25

Not all Basmachi were lucky enough to have a show trial. Many were killed in gunfights or extrajudicial killings. Between 1925 and 1926 the OGPU shot 208 Basmachi supporters. From March 1925 to September 1925, the Red Army killed 48 Basmachi leaders and 1,423 Basmachi soldiers.

However, the Soviet’s ability to kill its enemies depended on cooperation from local leaders and this wasn’t always forth coming. Many officials prevented trials or executions by not supplying translators, juries, or public defenders. However, this came at great risk to the people who delayed the trials. Many were executed as well.

The violence alienated people and the amnesties lost their appeal when it became clear that those who surrendered were left hungry, homeless, and destitute. Add clan disputes and personal rivalries and there were many reasons for Basmachi to switch sides. Abdukarim explained why he collaborated with the Soviets and then abandoned them as follows:

“At the beginning I was a Basmachi, and from your side many good words were said, so we surrendered and gave up our guns and sat calmly in our houses. But all your talk turned out to be a lie since we did not know what your rule was about, [your rule] actually made us Basmachi. The reason is that among us there are many bad people and each of us has many enemies, and so these bastards give you information that one or another person has weapons. You arrest these people only on the basis of their words without asking people themselves. This is the only reason we became Basmachi again” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 34

He complained to a Soviet commander that:

“Mirza Abul Khan worked for your rule so hard, but he did not receive any salary for eleven months. But today, Imam Ali Mukhat, the messenger who is unrighteous – does not accept Shariat—informed us that he has two three-line rifles, two sabers, one Berdan rifle, and one revolver.” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 35

He wrote:

“If [Soviet rule was just] in reality, it would not intervene in every person’s business for the past two or three years; I mean Basmachi resistance would have ceased to exist in the past two or three years…We have nothing but Allah and the Prophet. We have no guns, no finances, no soldiers to wage war, but because of fear for our lives, we run around without having any relation to your workers nor to your business… I swear by Allah and his Prophet that your rule made us Basmachi” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 37

If the Soviets thought it was impossible to find loyal cadre in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Tajikistan made them want to tear their hair out. Il’iutko, a Soviet representative in Tajikistan, wrote:

“The Shurabad Revolutionary Committee was formed from the following people: the chair – Abdul Rashid, a bai from the tribe Isan Hoja; his deputy was Abdul Kaim, a bai from the Badra Ogly tribe; kazis [judges] from Isan Hoja; one representative from the Badra Ogly tribe; and a representative from the Red Army. Abdul Rashid bai was appointed as chair with the following reasoning; the leading organs of East Bukhara thought this appointment would appeal to Abdul Rashid’s self-esteem, as he had fought against Ibrahim Bek for a long time and would encourage him to fight against Basmachi with full energy and responsibility. But our hopes were not borne out; he supported the Basmachi” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 29

The Soviets ran into issues trying to punish the leaders they were collaborating with. Many times, Tajik citizens would try to defend their local leaders one Soviet commander wrote:

“If a leader was arrested, people went to great lengths to get him out of jail, certifying their work against the Basmachi” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 31

Yet not all local leaders supported the Basmachi. Many found a way to fit within the Soviet order. Maksum Abdullaev, a Soviet Muslim, wrote:

“When in 1924 Ibragim Bek wrote me that if I joined him he would make me bek of Kuliab, I answered that Soviet rule had already made me a bek. Soviet rule is strong, but you are an outlaw” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 41

Ibrahim Bek’s Counter-Offensive

By September 1923, Ibrahim Bek was the last Basmachi commander standing in Eastern Bukhara, and he retained enough strength to launch a counter-attack. Ibrahim Bek attacked a garrison at Naryn at the moment of Soviet recruitment turnover – assuming this meant that the number of inexperience soldiers would be high. However, the recruits held until reinforcements could arrive and they drove Ibrahim Bek back, Soviets claiming they killed 117 Basmachi commanders and 1565 soldiers.

Ibrahim Bek

[Image Description: A dark skinned man with a scraggy beard. He is wearing a grey turban and a black and white long shirt. A black robe with embroidered flowers rests on his shoulders.]

The Soviets sent forces to occupy the land of Urta-Tugai on the Soviet-Afghan border making it harder for the Basmachi to slip to and fro. Pavlov worked hard to rip the roots of support out from underneath the Basmachi, effectively hurting their supplies and support.

In 1926, the Soviets achieved what they thought was the final victory against the Basmachi. In March 1926, Red Army commander Semen Mikhailovich Budenny led an all-out assault against Ibrahim’s remaining forces. Relying on Frunze’s tactics of flying columns and implementation of garrisons in key locations to cut Basmachi forces off from their supports, Budenny planned to beat Ibrahim Bek into submission. Because of Budenny’s tactics, Ibrahim Bek’s forces faced the choice of starving to death in the mountains while being hunted down by the Soviet flying columns or die making a last stand against the Red Army within the Gissar and Lokai valleys. An interesting development was the introduction of heliograph stations and a permanent mobile field staff in the region. Radio wasn’t available in 1926, but by using strategically placed heliograph stations, Soviet forces to warn units of approaching Basmachi, robbing the guerrilla soldiers of the element of surprise.

Ibrahim Bek held on until the Soviets took 1,500 sheep belonging to Ibrahim. Without this desperately needed food source, Ibrahim was forced to flee into Afghanistan, ending the Basmachi threaten in Eastern Bukhara.

Political Turmoil in Afghanistan and Tajikistan

One of the reasons the Soviets were able to defeat the Basmachi was the ability to win over the support of the local peoples via increased access to food and land, alleviating any fears that Communism would sweep away long held traditions and Islam, and forcing the Basmachi to hurt their own supporters while looking for supplies. However, by 1927, the Soviets had shot themselves in the foot by implementing increasingly unpopular measures such as the hujum, the unveiling and liberation of women, the ending of the Islamic courts, the further reduction of waqf lands, and the increased secularization of education (much of which was facilitated by the creation of nation-states, which we discussed last episode). Worse, maybe, was the forced collectivization and the forced settlement of the nomadic populations. The campaign started in 1929 and inspired a new wave of anti-religious fervor amongst the Soviets. When the Soviets weren’t forcing nomadic people to settle, they were closing mosques and madrasas and arresting clerics. Collectivization nationalized all land and forcefully resettled nomadic and semi-nomadic and rural populations as the Soviets saw fit. It would have tragic consequences in Kazakhstan and in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan it provided the spark for one last hurrah for the Basmachi.

After pushing the Basmachi into Afghanistan, the Soviets had a hard time keeping them in Afghanistan. In 1927, one OGPU officer wrote:

“The border is not secured; we have no guns or people to guard it; the militia is drunken and amoral. It is impossible to guard the border; it is impossible to stop Basmachi groups [and] to prevent damage to agricultural campaigns” - Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, pg. 55

It is easy to overstate the threat Bukharan Emir Muhammad Alim Khan presented to the Soviet Union. He had been staying in Afghanistan since his ouster in 1921 and so much had happened in the region since he fled. Even if people wanted him to return at one point, that desire had disappeared a while ago except for the most diehard of emirists. Still, he was able to provide some support to Ibrahim Bek and the Basmachi who fled to Afghanistan. Ibrahim used the time in Afghanistan to extort money from the Bukharan refugees who had settled in Afghanistan and to restructure his command. He centralized his command granting him a better understanding of what his supplies looked like and how many men he actually had. He also improved communications between his men in the field and himself and himself and the emir.

Despite signing a treaty of neutrality and non-aggression in 1921, the Afghan government had always tolerated the Basmachi. This became a problem in 1924 when northern Afghanistan underwent a power struggle. Ibrahim took advantage and made camp in Urta-Tugai island. The Soviets were so freaked out, they invaded Afghan territory in 1925. Now Urta-Tugai had an Afghan garrison that had mostly turned a blind eye to the Basmachi. When the Soviets invaded, they actually disarmed and occupied the Afghan garrison.

This scared the Afghan government, prompting them to sign another treaty of neutrality and non-aggression. A year later a popular uprising would make the treaty void and end any attempts to push the Basmachi out of northern Afghanistan.

The Basmachi would take advantage of the political turmoil in Afghanistan and in spring 1929, the Bukharan Emir called together the remaining Basmachi to him. He issued a decree placing leadership of the remaining forces under Ibrahim Bek’s command with the intention of invading Tajikistan and reclaiming it from the Soviets.

The Resurrection: the 1929 Campaign

In spring 1929, the Basmachi tested the units stationed on the Soviet-Afghan border and in April, Fuzail Maksum of Garm slipped across the border with fifteen men to connect with supporters in Eastern Tajikistan. His purpose was to raise local support and recruit and prepare for the arrival of Ibrahim Bek with the main Basmachi force. Maksum raised two hundred men and led several attacks against Garm, achieving several minor victories.

The overall Soviet Commander in Central Asia, General P. E. Dybenko, issued several emergency measures to address the growing threat. He ordered the raising of local self-defense units in Eastern Tajikistan and increased the local political work. He even tried to manipulate the local antagonisms within the population to defeat the movement, believing that the many cattle-breeders of the region would hate the Basmachi for their requisitioning efforts. Despite these efforts to engage with the local actors, the main Soviet strategy was still military in nature. The Russians countered Basmachi hit-and-run tactics by establishing militarized zones and used artillery and air raids to destroy villages suspected of collaborating with the Basmachi. The Cheka arrested and deported 270,000 Turkestanis suspected of collaborating with the Basmachi. During the Red Army’s occupation, they burnt Dushanbe, Andijan, and Namangan to the ground and damaged several other villages. In total 1200 villages were burnt to the ground.

Fuzail Maksum’s force of now 800 men led an attack against the city of Garm and then the neighboring airfield. The Soviets defended the airfield with 16 men waiting for reinforcements that would arrive by air and a seventy-five men cavalry regiment. Five airplanes arrived at 6:00 am on April 23rd, 1929, unloading 40 men, carrying machine-guns and ammunition. Fuzail Maksum’s forces fled, abandoning Garm. On May 3rd, badly wounded Maksum returned to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Problem

The Soviet’s retaliated against the Garm region hard and fast. They set up special OGPU campaigns to ferret out the people who supported Maksum, holding special tribunals and several people were executed. Despite these setbacks, Ibrahim Bek’s forces were able to cross the Afghan-Soviet border with ease.

The Soviets grew so concerned over these incursions that they seriously considered an invasion of Afghanistan to place a puppet government on the throne. They even sent a force of 800-1200 Red Army soldiers dressed as Afghans in support of one of the Afghans vying for leadership, but had to retreat when they were stopped by the Afghan army and their candidate abdicated. The situation in Afghanistan stabilized and the new government under Nadir Khan left the Basmachi alone. However, the Soviets gave up on diplomacy and started to chase the Basmachi across Afghanistan’s border, sometimes crossing 40 miles into the country before withdrawing. Nadir Khan was forced to act, and he dispatched Sardar Shah Mahmud the Afghan army’s commander-in-chief to deal with the Basmachi problem. He also started negotiations with the Soviets to renew the 1926 treaty of neutrality and non-aggression.

General Mahmud demanded the Basmachi disband, and Ibrahim Bek replied by saying he was going to unite with the Uzbeks and Tajiks in northern Afghanistan and create a nationalistic Uzbek-Tajik government independent of Afghan Control. In December 1930, Mahmud entered the northern territory. Through the spring of 1931, he led a large-scale campaign against Ibrahim Bek and reclaimed several major cities but could never capture Ibrahim Bek himself. Instead, on March 1931, they offered Ibrahim Bek to incorporate his forces into the Afghan army. He refused and in April 1931, he led 800 men into Tajikistan for a final invasion. In total, he had a command of 2000 men.

He swept into Tajikistan armed with reliable intelligence and the momentum of a sudden invasion. He executed pro-Soviet officials and locals, blew up several warehouses, state farms, and railway lines. The people of Tajikistan initially supported his uprising but grew disenchanted with his discounted political and ideological ideas. Trying to rally people around an Emir that had been deposed for about a decade and the return of feudalism held little appeal to most people. Too much had changed to go back to the old ways and Ibrahim Bek had been too disconnected from his people to fully understand what they wanted.

Anyone who tried to join him from Afghanistan ran into Soviet patrols and suffered severe losses. The Soviets created a special unit of OGPU, local volunteers, and Komsomol members to hunt Ibrahim Bek down. In May, the Red Army offered amnesty to any Basmachi members who surrendered causing 12 leaders and 653 men to abandon the Basmachi ranks. Ibrahim Bek was left with only fifteen men in the foothills of Baba-Tag avoiding assassination attempts and betrayals. On June 23, 1931, while attempting to cross the Kafirnigan river, he was betrayed by locals, and captured by Soviet forces. He was sent to Tashkent and executed, officially ending the Basmachi guerilla movement.

References

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

Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan by Botakoz Kassymbekova

“Frunze and the development of Soviet counter-insurgency in Central Asia” by Alexander Marshall in Central Asia: Aspects of Transition by Tom Everett-Heath

“The Final Phase of Liquidation of the Anti-Soviet Resistance in Tadzhikistan: Ibrahim Bek and the Basmachi, 1924-1931” by William S. Ritter

“The Basmachi or Freeman’s Revolt in Turkestan 1918-1924” by Martha B. Olcott

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

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #queer podcaster #central asian history #spotify #basmachi #ibrahim bek #guerilla warfare #afghanistan #soviet union #russian colonialism #soviet empire #Spotify

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Episode 48: After the Russian Civil War: Transforming Central Asian Republics into Nation-States

The Balance of Power in Central Asia by end of 1923

By 1923, the Basmachi had been neutered and while they still caused problems in the Ferghana and Turkmenistan regions, they were no longer seen as an existential threat. The roads to Central Asia were safer now that the Soviets had defeated the White Armies in Siberia which allowed the Bolsheviks to slowly build a cadre of European Bolsheviks within Central Asia and they were creating a pseudo-Communist indigenous cadre through the creation of the Soviet Republics. Men like Xo’jaev, Fitrat, Ayni, etc. were not true Communists, but they were willing allies in the reformation of Central Asia. All of these factors allowed for a stronger Soviet presence in the region, enabling the Bolsheviks to ensure that Communist principles were being implemented in the republics.

There is a big debate amongst historians whether the Soviet Union should be considered a colonial power or not and it’s particular contentious in Central Asian studies. People argue the Soviets can’t be colonists because they integrated local actors into various levels of government, actually worked with them to address problems, and supported the local actors’ efforts at reforms and nationalization. Both the Soviets and the local reformers believed the emirs were harmful, believed that a government that included all peoples of Central Asia was possible, fought against the Basmachi and the conservative ulama and merchants, wanted to reform Islam and lead several campaigns against the ulama and tradition centers of Islamic thought and belief, and believed that the role of women had to be rethought. And I don’t think this is true only on a superficial level. I think for a period, there was a true dialogue happening between the Bolsheviks and the local actors, a dialogue full of misunderstandings, mistakes, and some deception as both sides pursued their own goals, but it was a dialogue.

However, one can’t ignore that the Soviets could be very heavy handed when it suited them. We can’t ignore that Frunze dismantled the Musburo simply because they weren’t created by the Soviets and he threatened to recreate the Turkestan Communist Party because, again, it wasn’t communist enough. We can’t ignore that every attempt the republics made at having autonomy outside of the cultural and internal life was denied. They couldn’t be independent economically, they had to serve the Soviet economy first and foremost, their control over their own foreign affairs was limited, and even though both sides agreed women needed liberation, the approach adopted by the Soviets was heavy handed and ignored local feelings and needs. I, personally, think the Soviets were a colonial power because, even while allowing some local independence, Central Asia was still subjected to the needs of the center, at the detriment of their own ecology, culture, and people.

Douglas Northrop makes an interesting argument in his book Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia that by trying to define Central Asia, the Soviets ended up defining themselves and that’s where a lot of problems arise. The Soviets started to define themselves based on how they differed from Central Asians, allowing this narrative of everything European (or Russian) did was good because it was different from what the Central Asians did, which allowed them to continue to think of Central Asians as inferior, except this time with an ideological spin. It wasn’t racist to believe that Central Asians weren’t educated in Communist thought and thus they weren’t pure Communists and couldn’t be trusted with their own destinies. It was a fact. But they could one day be true Communists. They just needed to be re-educated and guided by the European Communists, the true vanguards of Communism. Traditional colonialism would never have believed that the local peoples could ever be more than colonized peoples, but Soviet Communism held out this promise that someday local actors to be real Communists, as long as they learned from their Communist betters, which is a racist and colonial.

Basically, the Soviets in Central Asia between 1920 and 1925ish are the perfect example of the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The Rise of Nationalism in Central Asia

In our last episode, we talked about how the creation of the republics coincided with and encouraged local efforts at crafting a nationalist narrative – even if the Soviets didn’t fully realize it or understand it at the time.

Fayzulla Xo'jayev

[Image Description: A black and white picture of a man with eraserhead like hair and a sharp aquiline nose. He is wearing a black button down shirt with a black tie and a black suit jacket.]

We’ve talked a lot about how Abdurauf Fitrat helped create an Uzbek identity of Turkicness with deep connects to Temur and Turkic culture, which is different from the Turkic culture you’d find in Türkiye. For many Jadids who supported this identity, Turkestan was a land of Turks which left many other peoples out.

For example, the Kazakhs had a completely different nationalist story with different heroes, even though they claimed some of the same lands as the Uzbek Jadids. The Kazakhs didn’t really care about Turkestan as a whole, but they wanted to unite the former Steppe krai which included the Semirech’e and Syr Darya provinces. As we’ve discussed in other episodes, scholars and activists in the steppe had already made considerable progress in crafting Kazakh as its own language with its own distinct orthography and they wanted to establish a solid literature community. They also had dug into their own history and their environmental activism and had a strong identity. Many of the Kazakh elite had gone to Russian schools for education and thus were more comfortable conversing in Russian than in Chagatai or the new Uzbek language Fitrat was crafting. If we remember correctly, the Alash Orda had contributed to the Kokand Autonomy, but actually broke away from it and created their own government in the steppe that co-existed with the Kokand Autonomy.

In 1922, Nazir Torequlov, a Ferghana born bilingual Kazakh explained the growing difference between the two ethnic groups as:

“A lot has happened in the past ten or fifteen years. Turkestanis have grown a great deal in this period. Everyone has recognized himself and his companions. The Uzbek has found Amir Navoiy and the Kazakh has caught hold of Abay” - Adeeb Khalid, making Uzbekistan, pg. 267

Tensions between the Kazakh republic and Turkestan increased as they butt heads over issues ranging from food supply to trade to population migration. The Turkestan officials blamed the Kazakh officials for not implementing land reform which allowed European settlers to continue to oppress the Kazakhs who then fled to Turkestan and exasperated their many issues. The Kazakhs blamed Turkestan for no longer carrying food for the Kazakh republic on its trains and for searching the citizens of Kazakh republic as they traveled through Turkestan. The bitterness grew so bad, Moscow had to create a special commission to resolve disputes between the two republics. The Soviets were confounded by the tension. The head of the Central Asian Bureau wrote in 1924 that:

“National relations here are extraordinarily sharp for the simple reason that there is a constant struggle between Uzbeks and Kazakhs [in the party] for the right to be the ruling nation [in Turkestan]….Conflicts take place constantly between Kazakhs and Uzbeks in the struggle to acquire a dominant position in the state.” - Adeeb Khalid, making Uzbekistan, 267

The Kazakhs weren’t the only ones who clashed with the Uzbek Jadids. The Tajiks would have a big problem with Fitrat’s formulation of Turkic identity and the Kyrgyz and Karakalpak would fight to differentiate themselves from both the Uzbeks and Kazakhs. In fact, as early as 1922, the Kyrgyz Communists organized a conference that passed a resolution seeking the formation of an autonomous mountain oblast for the Kyrgyz people. The Turkmen in Bukhara organized to demand their own party and state. However, because the story of Turkmenistan is so connected to the Transcaspian campaign during WWI and the Russian Civil War, I’ve decided to discuss the formation of their state my upcoming season about the Transcaspian Campaign. There is so much that happened, and I want to do it justice and this season we’ve really focused on develops within what is now Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. To shoehorn Turkmenistan’s complex history doesn’t feel right, but I promise we’ll discuss their history in depth throughout an entire season.

State Creation

It is common to claim that the process of creating nation states in Central Asia was a Soviet invention forced onto the people of Central Asia. However, as we’ve seen, many Central Asians fought tooth and nail to be involved in crafting a political entity in Central Asia. When the Soviets organized the region into Soviet Republics, the indigenous actors acted fast to take advantage of the power that brought them. Similarly, the creation of nation states was a merging of Central Asian reformist and Soviet desires and needs.

From the Bolshevik perspective, the creation of Central Asian states was all about integrating republic economies and suppressing movement towards republic autonomy. They believed that if they redrew the republic borders, transforming them into Soviet states with Soviet bureaucracy, it would squash any remaining economic and administrative divides that were inherited from the Tsarist and Emirate rule, and replace them with Communist goals and principles. At first, the Central Committee was against drawing borders based on nationalist principles because they considered the region “too mixed.” However, because of the Russian’s lack of useful information on the region’s ethnic and racial identities, the indigenous actors were able to use the state creation to finish their reform efforts and create their own nationalistic states. So, really, the creation of the Central Asian states was an initiative discussed within the Central Committee but driven by the indigenous actors themselves. And honestly, this was what Fayzulla had been angling for when he wanted the Bukharan Republic to have control over their own economy and foreign affairs. This was the culmination of local actor efforts as much as it was out of Soviet desire.

The Delimitation Process

The delimitation process started in January 1924. The Central Committee sent Janis Rudzutaks on a tour of Turkestan to

“organize a meeting of responsible workers of Bukhara, Khorezm (if possible) and Turkestan in order to initiate a preliminary discussion of the possibility and expediency of the delimitation of Kazakh, Uzbek, and Turkmen oblasts according to the national principle” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 272

The three Central Asian central committees eagerly took up the task and discussed the issue in February and March. They presented their basic positions to the Central Asian Bureau in April. The Bureau sent it to the Politburo and the Politburo issued its own decree in June 1924. The Central Asian Bureau created a Territorial Commission to determine the boundaries of the future states which they finished by November 1924. On November 18th, 1924, the three central committees of the republics dissolved themselves and create the new republics for the new states.

This all happened very quickly and without any references to expert knowledge. The Russians never properly documented or understand the ethnic makeup of Central Asia. Instead, the Central Asian Bureau relied on claims and counterclaims, which could lead to ridiculous claims such as the Kazakh republic claiming 360,000 Kazakhs lived in the Bukharan Republic and the Bukharan Republic claiming it was only 36,000.

A map of Turkestan

[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.]

These fights over nationhood and ethnic identity affected how the borders of the republics were drawn. For example, after the Kazakh republic was created, they petitioned for the Kazakh dominated Manghishlaq Peninsula to be transferred from the Turkestan republic to the Kazakh republic. They also wanted the Semirech’e and Syr Darya oblasts since “the Kazakh people in both the republics are of one blood, one culture, one language, and at the same stage of economic development.” However, the Syr Darya oblast included Tashkent which was a big fucking no for the Uzbeks. The Kazakhs continued their petition, claiming that 93% of the population of the two oblasts were Kazakhs and uniting all the Kazakhs together would make “connecting Soviet principles to Kazakh reality” easier (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 269)

One consideration that drove Soviet decision making was the need for the states to have economic centers for their hinterlands (although that didn’t apply to all states, like poor Tajikistan who didn’t get an economic center until after the state was already created). For other rural republics, such as Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, it was expected that cities would be the source of nationalization for its vast rural territory. Thus, even though certain cities like Osh, Dasoguz, and Jalalabat had large Uzbek populations and were desired by Uzbek leaders, they went to other republics to serve as a centralized location for economic and government needs.

As we can see, even though the process was very quick, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t complicated. I want to discuss the process from the perspective of the Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz; however, these weren’t the only people affected by the delimitation. We’ve already mentioned the Turkmen, but there were also Tatars, Uyghur, Jews, Karakalpak, and others who called Central Asia home and who weren’t granted states or even oblasts of their own. I had to simplify the perspectives and the debates for this podcast, but want to acknowledge what I’m not covering, mostly because I don’t yet feel comfortable enough in my research to present those perspectives. I still want to acknowledge that those perspectives exist and are vital parts of the different state identities and I am planning to come back once I feel more comfortable about my knowledge base.

The Uzbek Perspective

I want to start with the Uzbek Perspective because their decisions greatly impacted the borders of what is now Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

The Uzbek cause was championed by Fayzulla Xo’jayev, the chairman of the Bukharan Republic. Rudzutaks visited the region to discuss delimitation in January 1924, Fayzulla had a proposal ready by February 1924. It may seem odd that Fayzulla, who fought so hard for increased independence for his own republic, would be excited about the creation of a state that would subsume the Bukharan Republic. But he saw Bukhara as the center of Uzbekistan, with its tendrils expanding into Ferghana, the Syr Darya, the Samarkand, and Khorezm provinces i.e., all of the territories that contained a majority sedentary population and all of Central Asia’s historic cities. He continued to explain:

“The Uzbek people, earlier united in the state of Temur and his successors, disintegrated in recent centuries into various parts. Over the course of centuries, this disintegration was characterized by the weakening of economic forces and of political structures, the final stage of which is the economic decomposition, the loss of state unity, and the physical destruction of the people under the domination of khanates, emirates, and Tsarism…[this disunity meant] the Turkic population could not historically resist its gradual disintegration or defend the unity of the people, the integrity and continuity of its culture…[the] Uzbek people and its various states (Bukhara, Khiva)…were thrown off the basic historical path and became the object of struggle.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, 273-274

We can see the Chagatai influence at work here. He is placing Temur as the ultimate unifier with Central Asia blossoming under Turkic influence and control. When the state fragmented and lost its connection to its past, it left itself open to ill fortune and exploitation. He claimed that the Russian Revolution placed the Uzbek people on the path of historical development and economic growth, but it was vital to reject the “the old divisions imposed by force on Central Asia by conquerors” and give:

“All peoples bearing a single name – on a national basis, according to the specificities of their way of life and economic habits – their own Soviet political units” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 274

He further claimed that:

“The Uzbek Republic should include in it Tajiks and those peoples of Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khorezm who speak Uzbek and consider themselves related to the Uzbeks i.e., Uzbeks, Qurama, Kashgaris, Turks, Karakalpaks” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 274

Fayzulla was willing to sacrifice the Bukharan republic for a united, Uzbek nation and Uzbek nationalism (which Bukhara as a major player within internal affairs). It may also be fair to read this as Fayzulla understanding the Bukharan Republic was going to be disbanded no matter what (the Soviets forced him to expel four of his own ministers in 1923 after all) and it was better to destroy the republic on his terms and potentially gain something worthwhile. I think it’s also fair to say that there is an element of ruthlessness in his willingness to trade a republic for a state, especially a state that would be primarily Turkic but still wanted claim over peoples such as Tajiks, Karakalpaks, Qipchaqs etc. mostly because they “spoke Uzbek” and because he wanted the land they called home.

The Kazakhs, predictably, had a lot of problems with Fayzulla’s proposal, including a dual claim over Tashkent which was going to cause a lot of problems, but not as many problems as the Uzbek claim over Tajik lands.

The Tajik Perspective

When you build an entire identity on a handful of principles that are exclusionary, you are going to leave people out purposely and inadvertently in the cold. While the Chagatai project was meant to connect with Central Asia’s past, it was a very specific, Turkic past that either ignored or wrote off the Persianate past as foreign and the modern usages of Persian as inconsequential when it came to determined one’s nationality.

Before the Russian Revolution, language was a tool and a skill in Central Asia. It wasn’t tied to a national or state identity and many people were multi-lingual. Two popular languages, especially in the sedentary places, was Turkic and Persian, with Persian being associated with the madrasas, literature, and the Emir Court while Turkic associated with the marketplaces and everyday encounters. The usage of the Turkic languages increased in the 1900s and the usage of Persian decreased. One key reason was that when people left the region to learn they went to Russian and Turkic schools, not Persian schools. A member of the Tajikistan Communist Party claimed that an “enormous majority of educated Tajiks, having received their education in Uzbek, speak it better than Tajik, and many of them even call themselves Uzbek” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 297)

The Jadids, themselves, went to Türkiye, not Persia, to further their education and some, like Fitrat, were so inspired by the Young Turks, they stopped writing in Persian all together and wrote and spoke only in Turkic. This created an impulse amongst the Uzbek Jadids to downplay the existence of the Tajiks. Vadud Mahmud, a writer and friend of Fitrat’s amongst other Jadids, wrote, “that in Samarqand “there are no [Tajiks] there except for a few ‘sayyids’ and ‘aghas’ from Iran who preside over the current of Tajikness and who for a while published journals in Persian” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 297)

They also argued that given the lingual fluidity in the region, speaking Persian didn’t mean you were Tajik. Mahmud argued that:

“We know of many other peoples in the world who speak two languages, whose home language is different from their language of culture. These bilingual nations’ cultural life and literature is conducted in this official literary language… “Language is not simply a matter of acquiring literacy or reading the alphabet…Language must be understood as the instrument of civilization. A language should have a literature and it should provide all the necessities of today’s social life…For [establishing such] a civilized life, the Tajik language or the Persian language of Iran do not suffice. To implement these languages is to prevent [us] from entering life, because both circumstance and history prohibit it. Second, to accept this language is to accept a useless, superfluous language. True, we love Persian for being an old literary language. It is a delicate, playful literary language. We benefit from “classical Persian literature.” In this regard, Persian is a good language. But there is a difference between “good” and “useful” and we need the “useful” more than the “good.” Precisely for this reason, we do not need a separate language for the Tajiks of the cities and their environs, but rather, the most rapid and direct introduction of Uzbek [among them]” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 297-298

What made comments like this especially horrible and cutting was that many Jadids spoke and wrote in Persian. Many of them could have just as easily claimed a Tajik identity over a Turkic one, or, better yet, could have created a space for both identities. Instead, they chose to ignore and overwrite an existing identity and language in favor of their own. And so, we must ask why?

A popular argument is that a bunch of people who should have identified as Tajik betrayed their own people and supported the Turkic identity and that the existing Tajik identifying reformers were too weak and cowardly to fight for their own country. While I understand the emotions behind that argument, I think it underestimates the fluidity of language and identity, especially within the Tashkent and Bukhara Jadids, before the need for firm identifiers. Fitrat spoke and wrote in Persian. Not only did he speak and write Persian, but he would also return to Persian after he was removed from Fayzulla’s government and sent to Moscow on probation. Fayzulla spoke and work in Persian. Ayni wrote and spoke in Persian and would become a champion for the Tajik people. It’s true that during the 1920s Fitrat and others embraced the Turkic identity wholeheartedly, but to expect an equally dedicated group of scholars to also develop a strong Persianate identity at the same time and make the same kind of advancement is asking a lot.

Adeeb Khalid argues in his book Making Uzbekistan that the reason that the creation of Tajikistan was so helter-shelter is because Tajik identity wasn’t fully developed by the time the states were created. There wasn’t a strong coalition of Tajik activists to champion the Tajik cause because the Tajik identity was still being crafted. Khalid goes really far and say that the creation of the Tajik state necessitated the creation of a Tajik identity, which can be misread as the Tajiks didn’t exist until the Uzbeks and the Soviets made them, but I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. The Tajiks have always existed, but they didn’t have the tools or organization to form an identity until after the borders were already formed because the process of forming the borders forced everyone to jump to warp space when it came to defining identities. There were people like the Kazakhs who had been fighting for their identity against the Russian settlers for ages, there were the Uzbeks who coalesced around the Chagatai project, and then you had the peoples like the Tajiks, the Kyrgyz, and the Karakalpak people who always existed and always had their own stories and languages, but were now forced to create an identity that was strong enough to separate themselves from their larger neighbors.

The other aspect that needs to be considered is the financial and this is when Fayzulla’s desire for all major cities and sedentary lands becomes even more ruthless. Why would the Soviets support a state that couldn’t support itself? So not only did you need to create a culture that was distant and stood on its own and had a large cadre of champions who could explain themselves to the Russians, you also needed land or a resource that would contribute to the Soviet economy and would justify creating a new ruling entity to manage.

For the Uzbek Jadids, acknowledging that there was a large Persian speaking population that may identity as Tajik in major cities they wanted, especially in the Zarafshon Valley which bordered Samarkand and connections Dushanbe and Khujand, could jeopardize their claims. They were already having issues with the Kazakhs trying to take Tashkent from them because of a “majority Kazakh population.” They couldn’t lose their other cities and so they downplayed how many Tajiks were in Uzbek claimed lands and focused on the large Tajik population in rural Eastern Bukhara.

Eastern Bukhara was the only self-contained Persian speaking population. It was a mountainous, rural, poor area that was still controlled mostly by the Basmachi, and was almost impossible for any governmental entity to establish control over. The region didn’t have any major cities, which would later force the Soviets to transform Dushanbe into the economic and governmental center of Uzbekistan. Even though the leaders of Uzbekistan wanted to enforce a Turkic language only education, they acknowledged that that would be impossible in Eastern Bukhara because there were no Turkic speakers. Because it was so poor and there were no Turkic speakers and it was still struggling with the Basmachi, this was the perfect unwanted land to turn into a state for the Tajiks.

No one representing the Tajik people was involved in the delimitation process. When a subcommittee to discuss the Tajik people was established, it was fielded by two Uzbeks and neither objected to Fayzulla’s proposal to create the Tajik oblast in Eastern Bukhara and assimilate the Zarafshon Valley into Uzbekistan. This is how they justified the proposal:

“The allocation of autonomy to the oblast has especially great significance, for no other people in the world has undergone such prolonged and heavy oppression as the mountain Tajiks. Driven by their Turkic conquerors into high and inaccessible mountainous ravines, they were obliged to lead a half-hungry existence, to suffer from a shortage of land and to perpetually fight the sever mountainous landscape. Scattered into small and isolated groups, they were constantly subjugated to the despotic authority of petty khans of alien origin. Although belonging to one of the most cultured nationalities of Asia, with a centuries-old culture and rich illiterate, they themselves were exclusively ignorant. Literate men among them are a rarity or a lucky coincidence, while the women are almost universally illiterate.” - Adeeb Khalid making Uzbekistan, pg. 302

In October 1924, Tajikistan was elevated from an oblast to a republic and was handed the Pamir district. It was a small, rural, desperately poor republic without any cities, its capital a small village. It was ruled by a plenipotentiary until 1926, when the first congress of soviets was held in Dushanbe. Tajik was frequently referred to as a backwater place and became a dumping grown for those unwanted in Uzbekistan. I mean this with all the love in the world: it was basically a Central Asian Australia.

The Kazakh Perspective

While the Uzbek desire was to unify the sedentary lands of Turkestan under one government while retaining the cultural economic centers of Central Asia, the Kazakh desire was to unite all Kazakh majority locations while seeking redress from the harms inflicted by Tsarist Russia. The Kazakh people had been wrestling with the Russian settlers over control of the Steppe since the first settler and not a lot had changed with the revolution.

Unlike Turkestan, where the Jadids were brought into the governmental fold, the Alash Orda was excluded from government in 1922, with Alikhan Bukeikhanov arrested and sent to Moscow under armed guard. I guess the Bolsheviks never truly forgave Alikhan Bukeikhanov for supporting the White Army over the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. The Alash Orda returned to their initial passion: education and scholarship. Bukeikhanov would continue to have a strong influence on Kazakh thought and literature, receiving many visitors and officials even while under house arrest in Moscow. The Soviets increased anti-Alash Orda sentiments in the newspapers, revealing how they failed to support Communist principles in the past and the OGPU (precursor to the KGB) turned their focus from actually important issues to track and harass former Alash Orda members.

If the Bolsheviks were using Alash Orda as an excuse to get rid of Kazakhs they didn’t like or trust, the leaders of the Kazakh republic used the word “colonizer” to rid themselves of troublesome Europeans. One Kazakh Communist complained in 1923:

“Squabbles are arising between Russians and Kazakhs on the basis of settling personal accounts. Russians report on Kazakhs as nationalists, and Kazakhs report on Russians as colonialists.” - Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan 1917-1953, Pg 175

As nationalist feelings increased amongst the Kazakh people, they used the term “colonizer” to defend their national interests. For example, during the dispute over the Siberian-Kazakh borders, the Kazakh government accused the Siberian Revolutionary Committee of being made up of colonialists. He claimed that they were sending settlers and colonizers into Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk regions to artificially inflate the European population so they could claim it for themselves.

When others claimed that the Kazakhs were too nationalistic, the chairmen of the Kazakh republic wrote:

“As to the so-called ‘nationalism’ within the Communist Party in Kazakhstan, I must say that this is an invention of the colonialists. There are no nationalists among the Kazakh Communists. If we posit that ‘nationalism’ is sometimes displayed among the indigenous Communists, this is primarily a result of the manifestation of kolonizsatorstvo on the part of Russian Communists. In the end we became Communists [sdelalis’ kommunistami][…] not in order to watch indifferently as the Kazakh nation dies. We are not interested in being such ‘Communists.’ No party, much less the Communist party, teaches its members to hate their nation. There is no Marxist literature that states that it is over the corpses of oppressed nations that the working class of civilized nations will achieve the kingdom of Communism.” - Maria Blackwood, Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan 1917-1953, Pg 176-177

This was the mindset of the Kazakhs as they entered negotiations over their borders with their Central Asian brethren. The Kazakh Commission that was supposed to work with the Uzbeks and others, was led by Sultanbek Qojanov. Sultanbek had been involved in the Alash Orda and establishing a Kazakh language. Initially he had favored a Central Asian Federation, like the one championed by Risqulov, but when that died, he committed himself to consolidating all Kazakhs into one political unit – including the Kazakhs in Turkestan. They argued that Tashkent, in particular, had a large Kazakh population and thus should be given to Kazakh in order to create a “continuous space where the Kazakh population or cultural-national groups related to it [i.e., those] of the Karakalpaks, Kyrgyz, Qurama [and] Qipchaqs form the absolute majority or plurality” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 274)

This claim ignored the Kyrgyz and Karakalpak desires for their own autonomous states. The fighting between the Kazakhs and Uzbeks reached the point where Stalin had to personally intercede. He gave the Syr Darya province to Kazakhstan but gave Tashkent to Uzbekistan. The Karakalpak and Kyrgyz people were given autonomous oblasts, but they remained within Kazakhstan’s control.

The Kyrgyz and Karakalpak Perspective

The Kyrgyz people never wanted to be an oblast. They wanted their own state. Their petition for autonomy was led by Jusup Abdrakmanov, Abdukerim Sydykov, and Ishenaly Arabayev. They argued that argued that scattered Kyrgyz communities were struggling as minorities within other national units, as a result leading many to slip back into tribal feuds and bourgeois influence. They were separate from the Kazakh and Karakalpak people and would never have their needs met except through a Kyrgyz government.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkestan proposed the creation of a Kyrgyz mountain oblast in 1922. This oblast would include the Chui, Talas, Issyk Kul and the Naryn provinces and the Kyrgyz-settled pockets within the Ferghana valley. The Kazakh’s strenuously resisted this proposal, but so did many Kyrgyz who wanted to remain within the Kazakh region. They were led by Rakhmankul Hudaikulov. While the bid for an independent state failed, the Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created on October 14th, 1924.

Abdrakmanov would continue his fight for an independent Kyrgyzstan, arguing that the Kyrgyz people would be able to development cultural and economically if they had their own government. He argued that national recognition would accelerate the spread of Communism in the region, since it would prove that the Soviets actually cared for the Kyrgyz people and their needs. He also believed that they had a higher chance of developing politically and economically if they were their own state then if they were an oblast within a bigger, non-Kyrgyz state. Abdrakmanov’s petitioning would pay off with the creation of Kyrgyzstan in 1926.

By November 8th, 1924, the following republics existed: The Turkmenistan Republic including control over Khiva and Ashgabat. Uzbekistan, which was considerably smaller than it would become, but still controlled Samarqand, Tashkent, Bukhara, and Kokand. Kazakhstan which included the Semirech’e and Syr Darya oblasts as well as the Karakalpak and Kyrgyz autonomous oblasts. Tajikistan went from being an oblast in Uzbekistan to becoming an independent state at the last minute.

Further changes were made in 1926. Uzbekistan gained control over the Karakalpak oblast (which now included lands originally belonging to Turkmenistan) and Kyrgyz was elevated to a union republic, solidifying today’s modern borders.

Now What?

The Soviets saw the creation of the Central Asian states as a chance to unite the more controlled and “developed” regions of Turkestan and the Steppe with the troublesome rural lands or lands formerly controlled by the emirs. They saw it as a merging of the “advanced” and “backward” regions and every time they implemented a new policy, they implemented it first in the “advanced” regions, which were more likely to be “open” to Communist thought and values, before expanding it into the “backward” regions. Which, to be fair to the Russians, is a common mindset found all over the world, even if it’s a bigoted and idiotic mindset.

In Uzbekistan, it allowed the Soviets to recreate governmental structures and minimize the power of various troublemakers. The Communist Party of Uzbekistan was composed of the Turkestan Communist Party (KPT), the Bukharan Communist Part (BKP), and the Communist Party of Khorezm, as well as the Young Communists (who we mentioned in the last episode). The Young Communists heavily disagreed with men like Fayzulla, Fitrat, and Ikromov because they weren’t Communist enough and many Soviets felt they could turn the Young Communists into a cadre of reliable and faithful Communists. They ensured that several Young Communists held leadership positions while marginalizing members of the old Communist parties. However, the Soviets weren’t strong enough yet to stop relying on the reformers turned Communists completely and thus Fayzulla became KPUz’s Prime Minister, his rival Akmal Ikromov became its first secretary, and Yo’ldosh Oxunboboyev held the ceremonial position of Head of the Central Executive Committee of the Uzbekistan state. His role may have been to manage both Ikromov and Xo’jayev, and if it was, he did a terrible job. They would continuously butt heads until their executions in 1937.

While the intellectuals were excited by the creation of Uzbekistan, there is little evidence that the local people even identified as Uzbek. The government sent out questionnaires to determine how people identified and what language they spoke, but the results were all over the place. This meant that a nationalist narrative (which was started by Fitrat and other Jadids) was needed.

The Soviets helped craft this narrative by providing mechanisms in which the locals could debate their own identity. They helped create the Committee for the Study of Uzbeks, the Uzbek Committee for Museums and the Preservation of Ancient Monuments and a Commissariat for Education. They continued integrating local actors into the party and state governing apparatus but did little to counter Russian influence.

In fact, Fayzulla claimed that the Russians were equal to Uzbeks in all respect in the republic, so instead of pushing Russians out of government, integration turned into targeting minorities who found themselves in a state called Uzbekistan and making sure they assimilated correctly. Of course, this would only increase Tajik, Kazakh, and Karakalpak nationalism both within Uzbekistan and in neighboring states.

In Kazakhstan, this meant further eroding the local governmental actor’s control. In 1925, Filip Goloshchekin, an ardent Stalinist, was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party in Kazakhstan and was appalled by what he saw. He believed the region was in need of a “Little October” to help it align with Communist principles. In 1927, he implemented a campaign of expropriation and collectivization that would communicate in the Kazakh Famine of the 1930s. The famine began in 1930, a year before the Holodomor in Ukraine and would kill a total of 1.5 million people in Kazakhstan, with 1.3 million being Kazakh. That means about 38% to 42% of all Kazakhs died during the famine.

In Tajikistan, this meant creating a governmental and economic center from scratch, while reclaiming the Tajik identity. When Tajikistan was created in 1924, the Tajik Communist Party was practically non-existent. The first Tajik Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) was led by Nusratulla Makhsum, one of the few Communists native to the region. However, he had spent most of his childhood in Kokand before joining the Bukharan Communist Party and only returned to Tajikistan because he had to. Many of his cabinet members were similarly banished to Tajikistan, including Fayzulla’s own rival, Abduqodir Muhiddinov. The same Mudiddinov whose brother tried to lead a coup against Fayzulla’s government in the Bukharan Soviet Republic. Many Europeans who went to Tajikistan went with a mission for Communism, but were quickly disappointed with what they saw and soon begged to be sent anywhere else.

The land of Tajikistan was pitiful. Only 7% were suitable for cultivation. The rest was impoverished, underdeveloped, and divided by the world’s highest and impenetrable mountain range which covered 90% of the land. Tajikistan was dependent on their fellow republics for infrastructure and economic development. The mountains were so impenetrable, the main road and railway linking the northern half and southern half had to cross into Uzbekistan. Tajikistan was further divided into the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous District which contained 3% of the population (mostly the Pamir Ismailis), but 45% of the land that wasn’t mountain.

Leadership within Tajik was very regional, since the land was broken up by a mountain range and inarable land. Dushanbe was the capital, but powerful clan networks from the Khujand region in the north held the real power. The population was subject to relocation either to the capital to help turn it from a village into a modern capital or into the areas where they needed more labor. The fact that power was held by clannish networks meant that losing one’s position or power not only threaten oneself and one’s immediate family, but an entire chain of people. This basically replicated the power structure of the ancient courts, where patronage and favors were the great currency of the land.

Given the mountainous terrain, Tajikistan was the best place for Basmachi leader, Ibrahim Bek, to lead the last of the Basmachi, something we’ve talk about more in our final episode of this season. Ibrahim Bek could never hope to overthrow the Bolshevik government or the Tajikistan government on his own, but he could make it impossible to govern an already formidable location and people.

As the Tajik identity and government took shape, members of that government realize that the division of the land had not been in Tajikistan’s favor. Shirinshoh Shohtemur, a member of the Tajik Revkom, brought Tajikistan’s complaints to the Soviets and argued that Samarkand should be given to Tajikistan because of its Persianate history. They argued that the Uzbeks were acting in pan-Islamic, pan-Turkic, and chauvinistic manner when denying Tajik claims.

Shohtemur was born in the Pamirs, came from an Ismaili family, had been orphaned as child and adopted by a Russian officer who took him to Tashkent to attend a Russian school. He worked with the Soviets in Turkestan before being assigned to the Pamirs in 1922 to help establish Soviet power. While he was neither Persian speaking nor Sunni, he had never been a Jadid either. His arguments were backed by Muhiddinov, who used the criticism to attack the Uzbek government, especially his rival Fayzulla Xo’jayev. While the Soviets would not grant any further land concessions to the Tajiks, their claims of Uzbek chauvinism worked in the favor of the OGPU, who were conducting an ongoing investigation into “Uzbekism and the rise of Chauvinism.”

While Makhsum and the others tried to create a government, Sadriddin Ayni took on the task of reclaiming Tajik literature and identity. Ayni was the first person to coin the name for the Tajik language and wrote several poems, stories, and novels to create a literary corpus. He is considered to be a major Tajik intellectual and writer even though he lived in Samarkand for most of his life and only moved to Dushanbe a few months before he died.

Ayni can be thought of as the Abdurauf Fitrat of the Tajiks. He worked long and hard to create a Tajik identity through literature and to merge the mountain Tajiks and the urban Tajiks into one identity. In the introduction to an anthology of Tajik literature, Ayni wrote:

“From the first events recorded by history today, a great nation called Tajik to Tazik has lived in the lands of Transoxiana and Turkestan. In the same manner, its language and literature have also developed. The development of the Tajik language has not been dependent on the ages or occupation of the throne. Thus, we see how highly Tajik literature developed in this land in the age of the Samanids, who were racially Persian speaking, it developed the same way in the times of Chinggisids, Temurids, Shaybanids, Astrakhanids, and Manghits, who were racially Mongol, Turk, and Uzbek. Thus, it is clear that the development of Tajik language and literature in these places did not take place simply because of the dominion of the Samanids or the immigration of the Iranians. Its real cause is the presence in these places of a large nation by the name of Tajik of the Aryan race” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 308)

For Ayni, Tajikistan did not conquer others, it survived through its culture, which was often adopted by it conquers. He wrote “great conqueror Temur, despite the fact that he was a Turk, wrote his autobiography in Tajik.” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 309) While the Tajik language was birthed out of Persianate influences, it existed out of Iran. Ayni highlighted Tajikistan’s Aryan roots, crafting an identity of being indigenous to the region and thus breaking away from a language identification only (which would have tied them to Iran and the idea of being the “other,” which was what the Chagataists were arguing).

Sadriddin Ayni

[Image Description: A black and white picture of a bald, elderly man with a short white beard. He is wearing a tubeteika and a grey button up shirt in the soviet style]

The creation of the new republics simplified ethnic diversity of the region (many identities were either turned into minorities or overwritten and suppressed), simplified the language, and centralized the government over large swarths of territories that had been unreceptive to Communism and central control for a long time. It also solidified the idea that homogenization was a key ingredient to nationalism. Diversity, many argue, makes a nation almost impossible to form. Unity in purpose and identity is the only way to ensure a nation survives. And so, people begin to identify themselves in opposition to each other, not in interrelation with each other and what could have been a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic federation or state turns into a handful of limitedly defined nation states.

While we can’t blame the Soviets for injecting an unknown strain of nationalism into Central Asia because it would rob the local people of their own autonomy, we also can’t blame the local actors solely for this development. This is a common path most nationalist movements take when trying to create their own nation. All Western European states had gone through this process leading up to WWI and would repeat the process after WWII. While Central Asia was remaking itself, their brethren in Eastern Europe were following a similar path during the interwar period, and we’re currently seeing this behavior in the United States today. It is easy to adopt a “us vs them” mentality during times of great turmoil and need, especially when the most popular model of governmental development is the idea of a nation state.

The next episode will be the final episode of this season. We’ll discuss the last days of the Basmachi and the arrests and executions of the Jadids and the Alash Orda.

References

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

“Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan 1917-1953” by Maria Blackwood

“The History of the Alash Movement in the Context of the “Empire of Positive Action”” by Khazretali Tursun, Nasuh Gumus, Kanat Bazarbayev, Gulzhamal Zhorayeva, Samat Kurmanalin

Central Asia: A New History by Adeeb Khalid

Soviet and National Kyrgyzstan: Local Agency and State-Building in Central Asia 1918-1940 by Zhanara Almazbekova

Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan by Botakoz Kassymbekova

Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan by Ali Igmen

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #sadriddin ayni #fazyulla xo'jayev #abdurauf fitrat #Spotify

1 note · View note

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Cho’lpon and Abdulla Qodiriy

If you didn’t listen to our podcast episode on Abdurauf Fitrat, you may be wondering why a podcast about asymmetrical warfare is talking about two writers. There’s the personal reason and the “academic” reason.

On the personal side: Abdurauf Fitrat, Cho’lpon, and Abdulla Qodiriy are why I became interested in Central Asian history, particular during the Russian Civil War and the Sovietization of the Central Asian States. So, this episode is a chance for me to highlight fascinating people who inspired this podcast.

Academically, Cho’lpon, Qodiriy, and Fitrat were key members of the Jadid movement who shaped the cultural landscape of Turkestan during the civil war. They are representative of the people the Soviets found threatening as they tried to solidify their hold on the region. So, even if they weren’t physically fighting, they were building a cultural and social framework that fundamentally threatened the Soviet dream projects for the region.

Cho’lpon

Cho’lpon, also known as Abdulhamid Sulaymon ogli Yunusov is considered to be one of the great Uzbek poets of the 20th century. He fundamentally reshaped poetry while also working as a playwright, novelist, translator, and political activist. He was born in Andijan to a wealthy merchant in the 1890s and started his education in a Russian school. His father wanted him to attend a madrasa and he ran away to Tashkent, where he tried to make it as a writer. While in Tashkent, he became involved in editing and writing for Jadid journals and in their intellectual and literary circles. He was close to both Mahmud Xo’ja Behbudiy (who was murdered by the Bukharan Emir during the Russian/Central Asian Civil Wars) and Abdurauf Fitrat, who became his mentor, pushed him to focus on poetry, and gave him his penname: Cho’lpon which translates to morning star.

Russian Civil War

When the Russian Revolution occurred, there were mixed reactions within the Jadids. Fitrat would write that this was just one more calamity to afflict the Russians, but Chol’pon wrote a poem called the Red Banner, celebrating the Revolution. This excerpt translated by Christopher Fort gives you a sense of how that poem went:

“Red banner! There, look how it waves in the wind, As if the qibla wind is greeting it! It is not glad to see the poor in this state, For the poor man has the right because it is his. Has the red blood of the poor not flown like rivers To take the banner from the darkness into the light? Are there no workers left in Siberian exile To take the banner to the oppressed and weak people? You, bourgeoisie, conceited upper classes, don’t approach the red banner! Were you not its bloodsucking enemy? Now the black will not approach those white rays of light, Now those black forces’ time has pass!” - Cho’lpon, Night, pg. 8-9

Cho’lpon was involved in the creation of the Kokand Autonomy and even wrote a poem to celebrate its creation and mourned its destruction by the Tashkent Soviet. When the Bolsheviks entered the region, the Jadids welcomed them because they had no one else to support their work. The Jadids had always been a minority in the region and remained powerless and isolated as Turkestan succumbed to civil war. Working with the Bolsheviks, the Jadids helped overthrow the emirs, the Russian settlers, and the Basmachi.

For his part, Cho’lpon lived a wandering life after the fall of the Kokand Autonomy, apparently working at a theater briefly, but he still mourned the devastation the wars imparted on Turkestan, publishing a poem “To the Despoiled Land.” The excerpt I read is from Adeeb Khalid’s Book Making Uzbekistan

“O mighty land whose mountains salute the sky, Why are there dark clouds over your head? “Your beautiful green pastures have been trampled, They have no cattle, no horses. Which gallows have the shepherds been hanged from? Why, instead of neighing and bleating, There are only mournful cries? Why is this? Where are the beautiful girls, the youthful brides? Is there no answer from heaven or earth? Or from the despoiled land?! Why is the poisoned arrow Of the plundered, heavy crown still in your breast? Why don’t you have the iron revenge That once destroyed your enemies? O, free land that has never put up with slavery, Why does a shadow lie throttling you?” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 217

As we can tell from this poem, Cho’lpon was deeply affected by the destruction that was unleashed to the region. I don’t think anyone can blame him for, as we have mentioned many times in this podcast, the destruction was devastating and afflicted the indigenous populations the hardest. However, the Soviets would use these poems and this “anti-Bolshevik” sentiment against Cho’lpon in the 30s when Stalin’s Purge sought to break the Central Asian intelligentsia.

Crafting a Literary and Cultural Legacy

Cho’lpon returned to Bukhara in 1920 after Fitrat offered him a job to work at Axbori Buxoro the main newspaper of the People’s Soviet Republic of Bukhara

Cho'lpon

[Image Description: A color photo of a man wearing a skull cap, round wire frame glasses, and a tan shirt. He has short brown hair and a short, closely clipped mustache, and goatee. Behind him are out of focus trees]

Cho’lpon, like Fitrat, was heavily involved in crafting a Turkic specific identity for Turkestan, no longer writing in Persian, but in a Turkic language crafted by Fitrat, Cho’lpon introduced the Turkic meter to local poetry. He was a main contributor to the anthology Young Uzbek Poets and produced three collections of poems. He also translated several works in Persian and Russian, and introduced many Uzbeks to Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Gogol. He was a big supporter of rejuvenating the theater scene in Tashkent and wrote many plays. As the horrors of the war passed and the region entered a new decade, Cho’lpon and many Jadids saw the 1920s as a chance to rebuild. Cho’lpon believed that the revolution and civil war had created the conditions needed for the Uzbek state to take its place in the world. He would write in 1922:

“The famous Pobedonostsev, champion of the Christianizing policies of Il’minskii – who (himself) was a Rustam in the matter of Christianizing the Muslims of inner Russia and the teacher of our own Ostroumov to’ra – once wrote, “Among the natives, the people most useful, or at any rate the most harmless, for us are those who can speak Russian with some embarrassment and write it with many mistakes, and who are therefore afraid not just of our governors but of any functionary sitting behind a desk” Now we are earning the right to answer back not just in Russian, but in the languages of the civilized nations of Europe…I the free young men of the Uzbek [nation] and even its unfree young girls begin a revolt against the legacy of Il’minskii,…then we too can win our right to join the community of peoples without being beaten and humiliated” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 179

Cho’lpon was also involved in the “liberation” of women – although the Jadid’s definition of women’s liberation was different from the Bolshevik’s definition. The Bolsheviks pushed the unveiling of women and wanted to “Europeanify” Muslim women. This was partially a result of their own efforts to end gender standards, but it was also a direct assault on Islam. The Jadids support women’s rights and many unveiled their own wives. Cho’lpon wrote a play about the veil and his book Night is about the cruel fate of a girl forced to marry an official who already has three other wives and how the justice system fails its people, especially women. He was also against the practice to seclude women, believing it contributed to their lack of education and “backwardness.” Like other Jadids, Cho’lpon found it hard to align liberation in the theoretical realm and how it was implemented in the real world, especially when there was this undercurrent of “attacking” Islam. Many people in the rural areas and women did unveil were murdered by angry mobs. Cho’lpon would have several wives and it seems he struggled with maintaining relationships with women. I think it’s also fair to say that he had considerable trauma from the civil wars and the destruction he witnessed, and it most likely affected his relationship with those closest to him.

The Fall

The Jadids exercised considerable local power free in the early 1920s and were in the process of creating their own nationalistic Islamic, modern government. The Bolsheviks distrusted this government because it didn’t match Communist principles. In 1923, they struck fast and hard, forcing the Xojaev’ government to oust four of its own members, including Abdurauf Fitrat who was discussed last episode. Fitrat went into exile in Moscow in 1923. In 1924, Cho’lpon traveled to Moscow to study at the Uzbek Drama studio. At this point, he was still tolerated in Central Asia and the Soviets weren’t yet attacking him outright.

By 1927, several Russian writers and Central Asia leaders who wanted to establish their pro-Communist credentials were attacking Fitrat, Cho’lpon, Qodiriy, among others. One indigenous Communist would complain in 1927 that

“the Uzbek literary language of today is doubtless Cho’lpon’s language. Who is Cho’lpon? Whose poet is he? Cho’lpon…is a poet of the nationalist, patriotic, pessimist, intelligentsia. His ideology is the ideology of this group” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 334

He was also

“an idealist and an individualist, and therefore sees every political and social event not from the side of the masses but of his own personal point of view” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 334

In 1927, people were still brave enough to defend Cho’lpon. An indigenous writer, Oybek, wrote that Cho’lpon was like “Pushkin” who the young generation loved because of “his simple language, his delicious style, his technique” he was like Pushkin who “remained Pushkin even after the revolution because his works created the immortal richness of Russian literature” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 335). As the decade came to a close, Fitrat and Cho’lpon were used as a litmus test for whether someone was truly communist or not. If you defended Cho’lpon, you were lacking in your communist understanding and credentials. If you attacked him, you were safe from Stalin’s purge…for a time.

Pravda Vostoka, the Russian-language paper of the Central Committee of Communist Party of Uzbekistan published a news article titled “The Bark of the Chained Dogs of the Khan of Kokand.” It was one of the vilest attacks against Cho’lpon and other members of the Uzbek intelligentsia. The attack was written by El’ Registan, the future author of the Soviet national anthem of 1943. He claimed that Cho’lpon was a “prostitute of the pen…a stoker of chauvinism” whose anti-Soviet works were recited “in chorus by Basmachis taken prisoner and could now be heard all across Uzbekistan in any teahouse” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 372). The article went on to attack other writers, including Qodiriy and Fitrat, and was the first nail in Cho’lpon’s coffin.

For his part, Cho’lpon wrote that El’ Registan’s criticism was “an old matter, for which I was abused plenty then. Now it’s necessary to abuse me for new misdeeds, if there are any” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 372)

Why attack Cho’lpon? He was only a poet and playwright. What made him so threatening to the Soviet project? The answer may lie in his poem, Autumn in which he wrote:

“O you who come from cold places, clothed in ice May that grating voice of yours be lost in the snow. O you who pick the fruits of my garden, May your dark heads be buried in the earth.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 217

Cho’lpon’s poems, while simple, were gut-wrenching and easy to understand and read. He was able to capture complex thoughts and translate them into the simplest of imagery and feelings for people to latch onto. Cho’lpon had a visceral reaction to the destruction of the civil war and channeled it into his writing and the Bolsheviks knew he wasn’t the only one upset about what had happened to the region. While the Basmachis contributed to the death and violence, it was also easy to blame the Russians for bringing the horrors with them, as they had done in the 1800s, with their colonial projects. Additionally, Cho’lpon was a Jadid, many of whom made up the current government of the Soviet republics. The reforms he and other Jadids fought for not only conflicted with Communist reforms, it was another option. Historically, the Communists have never tolerated dissent or other governmental options and so the Jadids had to go.

Cho’lpon’s greatest power though, may have been his own sarcasm. I mean this with all the love in the word but Cho’lpon was a sarcastic little bitch. In 1937, he was called before the Writer’s Union to answer charges of nationalism leveled against him and he replied,

“I have many mistakes, but I will correct them with your help. But what training have you given me in these years?”

and when they published his book without an explanatory preface he pointed it out, saying

“Abuse was required here, for the youth should not be allowed to read Cho’lpon’s work without an intermediary…Why did the work of this nationalist appear without a preface?” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 382

He seemingly didn’t take the criticism seriously and so had the potential to undermine the power of the various organizations put in place to keep writers and intellectuals in control.

Finally, and most damningly, Cho’lpon was a member of the old guard. He was part of a world that could not exist comfortably alongside Communism. He thought about government and the world with the bias and frameworks of a world that no longer existed. The Bolsheviks didn’t care if he could change his way of thinking or if he even wanted to. All that mattered was that he represented an old world and a potential new world that didn’t rely on Communist principles. That, in itself, was enough to murder him.

Arrest and Execution

Cho’lpon returned from Moscow in 1927 to stage plays around Uzbekistan, but returned to Moscow in 1932 when he could no longer tolerate being the Bolshevik’s favorite punching bag. While in Moscow he focused on translating European writers in Uzbek. He returned to Central Asia in 1934 and wrote his first and only novel Night. Whether he wrote it to earn the Bolshevik’s good graces, to write a final, scathing indictment of Communism, or just to play with the novel structure, is still up for debate. It is a challenging, but beautifully written and engaging book (I like it better than O’tkan Kunlar, but don’t tell anyone). It is supposedly the first book in a duology (Christopher Fort writes a great paragraph in his introduction to Night that this missing second book may have never even existed in any written format, but more of a thought in Cho’lpon’s head). It is about the horrors of a young woman faces when forced to marry an older man in the 1910s Central Asia. In the novel, he attacked the powerlessness of women in Turkestani society and the old practices of polygamy and forced marriages, but also corruption local rulers, the ulama, and even the Jadids themselves. You can buy Night translated by Christopher Fort from any bookstore. The book wasn’t hated by the Bolsheviks and Cho’lpon was arrested on July 13th, 1937.

He was charged as a nationalist and for being part of a secret society known as Milliy Ittihod (National Union) which we’ll cover in our next episode. Instead of denying the fake charges, Cho’lpon “confessed,” most likely because he was smart enough to understand there was no salvation possible. He was a dead man the moment he was arrested. The NKVD murdered him, alongside Fitrat and Qodiriy on October 4, 1938.

After he was murdered during the Stalinist purges, Cho’lpon’s works were never published or discussed until a brave editor attempted to include his poems in an anthology of Uzbek poetry in 1968 and was severely reprehended by the Soviet government. His work was passed around secretly, but he remained persona non grata until the fall of the Soviet Union. He has now been rehabilitated as a hero of Uzbekistan.

Abdulla Qodiriy

Abdulla Qodiriy was born in Tashkent in 1894 to a family of modest means. He attended a Russian-native class and worked several odd jobs before publishing his first piece in 1915. He did not reach critical fame until the 1920s, when he became an editor for the satirical magazine: Mushtum (the Fist). His work with Mushtum was groundbreaking. He took the living language he heard on the street and immortalized it in writing while perfecting satire in Uzbek literature.

Attacking the ulama

While he was a brilliant satirist, he could also be quite cruel and his favorite targets were the ulama, eshons, and bureaucrats. He often depicted the ulama as traditionalists and conservative who were narrow-minded and unable to understand the world and Islam. Despite this, he was well versed in Islam. He studied at the Beglarbegi Madara in Tashkent, he spoke Arabic, Persian, and Turkic. He even took part in discussions with ulama while he wrote Mushtum.

Abdulla Qodiriy

[Image Description: A green staamp with a black adn white photo of a man with short dark hair and a short mustache. He is wearing a black shirt and a grey suit coat. The stamp says 2004 125-00 on top, Abdulla Qodiriy (1894-1938) along the side, and O'zbekiston on the bottom]

An example of his wit can be found in his piece called Shayxontahur mausoleum. These mausoleums or shrines were an integral part of Central Asian life. The leaders of the Bukharan Soviet tour down shrines or mausoleums because they thought the ulama and eschons who cared for the shrine took advantage of the faith of the people and that the act of paying respects to the dead was “backwards.” So, they tore down the shrines and replaced them with schools. Qodiriy’s piece memorialized the demolition of the Shayxontahur mausoleum. It was a drawing of two devils: Iblis and Azazel, bemoaning the fact that “our house is being destroyed, the customs of our ancestors are being trampled” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 225). An accompanying article compared the two demons to certain ulama who had opposed the destruction. It is almost as scathing as some of Fitrat’s works deconstructing Islamic beliefs and traditions.

Qodiriy was a faithful Muslim who saw no contradiction between being a practicing Muslim and criticizing the ulama. During one of his interrogations with the NKVD, he said

“I am a reformist, a proponent of renewal. In Islam, I only recognize faith in God the munificent as the highest reality. As for the other innovations, most of them I consider to be the work of Muslim clerics - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 225

Success as a Novelist

In 1925, he published O’tgun Kunlar, his first novel and the first prose novel written in the Uzbek language. It is about Atabek and the love of his life Kumush. They marry, but Atabek’s mother hates Kumush and forces Atabek to take a second wife, Zainab. Things go terribly and people die. It sold 10,000 copies and his second novel, also a historical fiction, Mehrobdan Choyon (Scorpion in the Altar) which was published in 1928, sold 7000 copies.

In 1932, Qodiriy was admitted to the Uzbekistan Writer’s Union and two years later was actually elected as one of its delegates to the First Congress of the All-Union organization (where he and Sadriddin Ayni met Maxim Gorky and a picture was taken of the trio).

Despite finding success in the literary world, Qodiriy’s satire got him in trouble with the Bolshevik authorities and he was arrested in 1926 for making fun of Akmal Ikromov, a Communist Uzbek vying with Fazulla Xojaev for leadership over the Bukharan Soviet Republic. The Soviets had grown weary of Mushtum and used this as an excuse to get rid of its editor. He was thrown in jail for six months before being released – this time – but was banned from writing for the press. Instead, he a living writing original work and translating. He also found odd jobs such as writing the letter P in the first major Russian-Uzbek dictionary in 1934, translated a collection of antireligious essays, and worked on a film script based on Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard.

Arrest and Execution

Fayzulla Xojaev commissioned Qodiriy to write about the Uzbek peasantry which would be published as a serialized piece called Obid Ketmon. This worked was vilified for being anti-Soviet and Qodiriy was accused of being antisocial and apolitical. He, like Cho’lpon and Fitrat, became the favorite punching bag of anyone trying to prove their Communist credentials. He watched as Fitrat was arrested in July 1937, Cho’lpon was arrested on July 13th, 1937, and Qodiriy was finally arrested on the last day of 1937. Qodiriy was accused of being a member of a counter revolutionary organization that collaborated with Trotskyites, of carrying out anti-Soviet work in the press, and have direct relations with Xojaev and Ikromov (who were dead at the time of Qodiriy’s arrest). Qodiriy admitted to being a nationalist until 1932, but then mended his ways. According to his son, when Qodiriy was given his “confession” to sign (and would serve as his death warrant) he wrote:

“This resolution was announced me to (I read it); I do not agree to the charges contained in it and do not accept them” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 386

He, along with Fitrat and Cho’lpon, were murdered on October 4th, 1938.

References

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

Night by Cho’lpon, translated by Christopher Fort

Days Gone By by Abdull Qodiriy, translated by Carol Ermakova

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #cho'lpon #abdulla qodiriy #central asian literature #Spotify

1 note · View note

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Enver Pasha and the Basmachi

What happens when a former Ottoman Pasha, sentenced to death in absentia finds himself in Central Asia? If you're Enver Pasha, you first align with the Bolsheviks before jumping ship and joining the Basmachi. Learn how Enver led the Basmachi until his death in a small village in eastern Bukhara.

I know it’s been a while, but last time we talked about how Bolshevik General, Mikhail Frunze, entered Central Asia and neutered the Musburo, overthrew both the Khivan and Bukharan Emir, and developed a counter-insurgency strategy to crush the Basmachi.

We also talked about how he encountered four problems with his plan:

Frunze, in his efforts to overthrow the Bukharan Emir, woke up the hornet’s nest that was the Bukharan Basmachi.

By threatening Mohammed Alim Khan, he drove an estimated 30,000 volunteers into Basmachi units by the summer of 1920.

Frunze left Central Asia in 1920 to fight against the White General Pyotr Wrangel.

It was now up to the officers Frunze left behind to defeat the Basmachi for good.

By eliminating the White armies and the emirs, Frunze limited his number of enemies. This is true, but he also concentrated the survivors under one banner: the Basmachi banner. This, in turn, revitalized the Basmachi enough that they could have been a serious threat to Russian power in the region.

Ibrahim-Bek was a talented commander who evaded the Red Army’s forces while infiltrated and harassing their rear. By the fall of 1921, he had retaken most of eastern and central Bukhara.

And then Enver Pasha arrived.

Enver Pasha and the Bolsheviks

Enver Pasha started his stormy career in the Ottoman Empire. He was a member of the Committee of Union and Progress, took part in the 1908 Young Turk Revolt that reestablished the Ottoman constitution and parliamentary democracy. He also helped organize the coup that would bring the CUP directly into power, with Enver taking over the Army. Then he pushed the Ottomans into the First World War and was responsible, not only for some of the Ottoman’s worst defeats, but also for the Armenian Genocide. So, he was a real bastard. He was so bad the Turkish Court-Martials of 1919-20 found him guilty of "plunging the country into war without a legitimate reason, forced deportation of Armenians and leaving the country without permission" and condemned him to death.

So, when he arrives in Russia in late 1920, he’s a bit desperate. He doesn’t have many places he can go; he still has these illusions of grandeur that he can take on Mustafa Kemal back in what is now modern-day Turkey and return to power, and he thinks he’s a gifted general. The best way to understand Enver is to read this passage from a letter he once wrote:

“The other day I read a German book, and one sentence inspired me: "When we can't realize our ideals, we can at least idealize our reality.” - Şuhnaz Yilmaz, An Ottoman Warrior Abroad: Enver Paşa as an Expatriate

He actually traveled to Moscow intending to work with the Bolsheviks and he tries, but there is a lot of distrust between the two. He quickly realizes that he doesn’t have a place with the Bolsheviks. Their aims are different, and they don’t seem very interested in returning him to power in Turkey.

In fact, the Bolsheviks were courting Kemal’s government and when forced to choose between Kemal and Enver, they choose Kemal. This is a huge blow for Enver, and he reaches out to Zeki Velidi Toghan to figure out next steps.

We’ve met Velidi in our episode on the fathers of the Jadids and we’ll learn more about his secret society in an upcoming episode. Velidi was a Bashkir nationalist who helped create an autonomous Bashkir government in 1918 before the Bolsheviks crushed it. He joined the White cause until it became clear they would lose and then sided with the Bolsheviks. However, by 1921 he had grown disillusioned with Communism and was creating secret societies and reaching out to Basmachi leaders. He reached out to Velidi, claiming:

“I have decided that I must go to eastern Bukhara. If we succeed, we shall be victors for the faith. If not, we shall fall as martyrs on the field of battle. We must fight for Turkestan. If we fear the death which rate ordained and prefer to live as dogs, we shall deserve the curses of our forebears and of our descendants alike. But if we have the courage to die for freedom, we shall ensure the freedom and happiness of those who follow us.” - Martha Olcott, The Basmachi or Freeman's Revolt in Turkestan 1918-1924

Velidi tried to dissuade him, explaining:

“The Russians are about to wash their hands of external matters. Henceforth they can concentrate all of their resources in Turkestan. Our organization in proportion to its duties, is very weak. This year Turkistan is suffering from a great famine. Ferghana is experiencing a crisis in its attempts to feed the Basmachi. After joining the Basmachi you would want to fight with regular fronts. At present, it is not feasible to keep a standing army larger than five-six thousand strong. It is only possible to conduct guerilla warfare. As for the Basmachi in eastern Bukhara it is not possible to cooperate with them unless agreements are entered into with the Afghans and the Emir…will not allow you to be recognized [as a leader] They will not accept you as such.” - H. B. Paksoy, The Basmachi Movement from Within: An Account of Zeki Velidi Toghan, pg. 389-390

Enver ignored his advice and told the Bolsheviks he wanted to hunt around Bukhara. They let him go, Marx knows why. Once he reaches Bukhara he disappears. Toghan would later have to flee into the Basmachi’s hands as well before fleeing for Afghanistan in 1923

Enver Pasha and the Basmachi

The Basmachi were not enthused to see Enver. In fact, Ibrahim-Bek, who despised Enver actually arrested him as a double agent. The Emir Muhammad Alim Khan had to intercede and grant Enver permission to raise an army and fight against the Bolsheviks before Ibrahim released him. At this point, Ibrahim had retaken most of eastern and central Bukhara and made it very clear he knew who the enemy was. He told Enver, “I have to make war not just on the Russians, but really against the Jadids.” - (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 88)

Enver, however, wasn’t interested in local affairs. He wanted to create a massive army that would defeat both the Bolsheviks and the British in India and Afghanistan, uniting the region under the banners of Pan-Turkism. The problem was that Enver’s definition of Turkism was heavy on the Ottoman Turkic whereas the Central Asians version of Turkic meant something else entirely. To learn more, please listen to our interview with Adeeb Khalid.

It was clear that Enver didn’t actually care about the people of Central Asia, the men he was trying to lead, or even the situation on the ground. As Mustafa Cho’qoy wrote:

“Enver, like all Turks in general, know nothing of Turkestan and Bukhara, he had no understanding of the character of their internal events.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan

He came in making several poorly defined assumptions and didn’t adapt when those assumptions were proven very, very wrong. In doing so, he alienated Ibrahim-Bek, who was maybe the Basmachi’s best commander, and he eventually alienated the Emirs in Afghanistan. Enver wasn’t going to be second fiddle to an Emir hiding in Afghanistan. He was going to be the star which of course angered Emir Muhammed Alim Khan. The emir withdrew whatever support he was able to offer Enver from Afghanistan, making him reliant on a populace that was growing ambivalent. And yet, he was able to organize three thousand soldiers under his direct command and it is estimated he could coordinate with a total of 16,000 soldiers in the region.

The Enver Paradox

The problem with Enver is that he is a walking contradiction. While he made serious mistakes by alienating Ibrahim and the Bukharan Emir and had no real plan beyond Pan-Turkism and let’s repeat what we did during the world war because thatworked out well, he also drew many intelligent men to his cause like Velidi and former Jadids like Usmon-xoja, cousin to Fayzulla Xojaev who was leading the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic. So, he was able to tap into something festering within Bukhara at the time. His reputation as a general during the World War may have also helped with recruitment and he liked to act as if he was a great “war hero.”

Enver Pasha

[image Description: A black and white photo of a man standing at an angle and staring into the camera. he is wearing a fez and a dark military uniform with golden epaulettes. He is holding his white gloves against his hip. He has short black hair and a thick mustache with tips that point upwards]

The Bolsheviks were certainly worried when they found out he had joined the ranks of the Basmachi. A Soviet official wrote:

“What will be the outcome of this enterprise? From a military point of view, there can be only one opinion, that the large Soviet Federation which knew how to contain the English and the French attack when fighting Denikin, Kolchak and Wrangel, is strong enough to destroy the enterprise of Enver Papa.... It is not the military aspect of this affair which makes us worry, it is more the political aspect... In effect, the past glory of Enver as man of the Muslim state, can still attract crowds of ignorant dehgans in some remote regions today." - Şuhnaz Yilmaz, An Ottoman Warrior Abroad: Enver Pasha as an Expatriate

They sent one of their own to Turkestan to assess the situation and found things were dire. This encouraged them to make small concessions to the indigenous people, but nothing like the structural changes Velidi and other Jadids were asking for. Instead, they sent a directive to the central committees of the republics to “cleanse Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khiva of anti-Soviet Turko-Afghan elements” (pg. 149, Adeeb Khalid). These concessions were a tool against the Basmachi, not a policy change. They would be taken away as soon as the Basmachi were defeated.

Enver’s Campaigns with the Basmachi

Enver started his campaign with an act of typical bravo. He sent the Soviets an ultimatum:

“In the event of Soviet Russia finding it unnecessary to respect the wishes of the Muslim peoples, who are under the oppressive yoke of dishonest Commissars, and who have sprung to arms to free their territory from the alien power of Moscow, I must warn you Mr. Commissar that two weeks after the handing over of the present memorandum from the supreme council I shall act according to my own judgment.” - Şuhnaz Yilmaz, An Ottoman Warrior Abroad: Enver Pasha as an Expatriate

Of course, the Russians ignored him, and he took Dushanbe in January 1922, including its stock of 120 rifles and two machine guns. He then turned his attention on Baisun, a small, mountain village that sat on the pass between eastern and western Bukhara. It was protected by the 5th Rifle Regiment and was a target appropriate for a regular army unit, not a guerrilla unit. Instead of spreading his forces out, thus forcing the Russians to spread their forces thin, Enver constricted the Basmachi into easy to slaughter units that then charged against the 5thRegiment’s machine guns and artillery.

After several days of firing from their garrison, the 5th Regiment created a right column that, utilizing the cover of darkness, marched around Enver’s headquarters. Enver, thinking like a regular army general instead of a guerrilla fighter, had his men build trenches in which to defend their headquarters. But the Basmachi didn’t have the training to effectively man a trench.

The 5th Regiment surprised the Basmachi by bombarding their position with high explosives and machine gun fire. While Enver’s soldiers were being slaughtered, he escaped, his force effectively broken.

Yet, he would continue to fight throughout the summer, trying to rally around a bridgehead at Denau at the end of June, and losing 165 men in the process. In response, the Red Army Commander S. S. Kamenev created the Bukharan Forces Group which included 7,530 men. This was made up of two cavalry brigades, two cavalry squadron, and one rifle division.

Kamenev split his forces into two columns, one to seal the Afghan border and another to chase Enver from the Gissar valley where he was headquartered.

Enver retreated further east and headquartered at Baldzhuan. A three-day battle occurred with the Bolshevik artillery supposedly inflicting 12,000 casualties on the Basmachi.

After the attack, Enver Pasha retreated to a small village near Dushanbe and was caught by a Red Army Bashkir cavalry brigade. Enver either died while charging into machine gun fire or escaped the surprise attack for four days before being cut down by machine gun fire at an ambush at the city of Chaghan. There are even some claims that Enver was cut down during a knife fight with Cavalry Brigade Commander, Yakov Melkumov. He died on August 4th, 1922. When he died, Selim Pasha, his second-in-command wrote to Toghan to suppress the news of his death:

“He said that the Committee must give out that Enver was not dead; simply that he had disappeared. This was necessary in order to keep the movement going; if it were known that Enver were dead it would collapse altogether.” - Şuhnaz Yilmaz, An Ottoman Warrior Abroad: Enver Pasha as an Expatriate

The Russians would not realize he was dead until October 1922 and the British would believe he was alive until 1923, wondering if they should support his cause if they could confirm he was still alive. When Enver died, the Basmachi’s forces stood at approximately 4,000 soldiers.

Why did Enver Fail?

When Enver arrived in Turkestan, the Basmachi had approximately 17,000 soldiers, had reclaimed eastern and central Bukhara, were supported by the Bukharan Emir in Afghanistan, and gathering everyone who hated the Bolsheviks to their cause. When Enver died, the Basmachi were shattered, their forces numbering a few thousand, the Emir’s influence non-existent, and the indigenous people of Turkestan either ambivalent or turned completely against them. How did this happen? Was Enver really that terrible of a general? Yes.

The answer is complicated, but it breaks down into three different reasons:

While the Basmachi were enjoying a resurgence, there is nothing suggesting it was a sustainable resurgence. Remember Frunze arrived in 1920 and overthrew everything people knew. No more Musburo, no more Khiva, no more Bukhara. Of course, people are going to flee into whatever seems familiar or whatever promises to restore order. The problem is that the Basmachi didn’t have the capability to live up to these promises, many promises the Basmachi never actually made.

The Basmachi weren’t united, and they weren’t organized. They were small groups of soldiers who served different warlords. Madamin-Bek and General Monstrov got the closest to actually uniting and organizing the Basmachi and they still had to occasionally make deals with the Bolshevik to survive. And as soon as Madamin died, that organization fell apart. Ibrahim-Bek is the Basmachi’s best commander, but he had no interest in working with anyone besides the Bukharan Emir. Enver did nothing to try and unite these different forces. In fact, he exasperated the divides.

Simply put, the Basmachi weren’t built to sustain or support the resurgence they experienced after the fall of Bukhara.

Enver Pasha had no idea what he was doing. He ran to Central Asia because he was wanted in Turkey and Europe. He thought the Bolsheviks would help him regain power in Turkey and when that didn’t happen he needed a new cause. He clung to the Basmachi because he conflated their cause with Pan-Turkism and because who else would take him? But he didn’t know anything about Turkestan, the Basmachi, or the cause they were fighting. He was taking advantage of a situation that he didn’t fully understand, so of course that’s going to blow up in his face.

He didn’t appreciate the tactics best suited for guerilla warfare. He fought the war like it was a regular war relying on trenches and mass attacks. Those tactics are a death sentence for a guerilla movement and the Basmachi paid the price.

The Turkestan of 1921-1922 was very different from the Turkestan of 1918-1920. The Bolsheviks hold on the region was tenuous, but it was stronger than it had been earlier in the civil war. They had the benefit of a state that could supply their armies, they had the benefit of having local cadre willing to bring communism to the people, they had the benefit of being able to offer food, supplies, and security to the people. The Basmachi had none of that nor were they interested in building that capacity. Frunze’s strategy works because he focuses on the military component and the social/economic component. The Basmachi were focused on the military and survival component. They didn’t have an answer to the social and economic needs and Enver was clueless.

And yet, despite all these setbacks, the death of Enver Pasha did not spell the death of the Basmachi, for there was still Ibrahim-Bek. Ibrahim refused to work with Enver Pasha and led his own attacks while the Red Army forced on Enver. It was now up to Ibrahim to gather the remaining Basmachi forces and continue the war.

References

The Basmachi or Freeman's Revolt in Turkestan 1918-1924 by Martha B. Olcott

The Basmachi Movement from Within: An Account of Zeki Velidi Toghan by H. B. Paksoy

Some Aspects of the Basmachi Movement and the Role of Enver Pasha in Turkestan by Mehmet Shahingoz and Amina Akhantaeva

An Ottoman Warrior Abroad: Enver Pasha as an Expatriate by Şuhnaz Yilmaz

Enver Pasha in Central Asia Support for the National Struggle Documentation in the Moscow Archives by Hazratali Tursuny and Mrs. Moldabaevayy

Enver Pasha and the Basmachi Movement in Central Asia by S. R. Sonyel

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

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #enver pasha #basmachi #central asian civil war #Spotify

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Frunze vs the Basmachi 1920-1921

It’s February 1920 in Turkestan. Russian General Mikhail Frunze and the Red Army have arrived and are asserting Communist control and restoring order to the region. Last episode, we discussed how Frunze neutralized the Musburo, the Muslim led organization that barely held the region together before the Red Army’s arrival, and overthrew both the Khivan and Bukharan emirs. While Frunze was doing all of that, he also launched a campaign against the various Basmachi groups in the Ferghana and Bukhara region, determined to clear Turkestan of all enemies so the Bolsheviks could spread Communism into the region and potentially into the rest of Asia.

The Red Army’s Military Campaign Against the Basmachi

The Basmachi as of 1920

The Basmachi operated in the Ferghana Valley, the Lokai Region south of Dushanbe, Bukhara, and the Turkmen Steppe around Khiva. Their most frequent targets were the Red Army outposts and trains. The Basmachi of the Ferghana favored hit and run tactics while Turkmen groups preferred larger actions and ambushes. The Basmachi enjoyed local “support” as well as alliances with Russian Settlers groups who were anti-Bolshevik (like Basmachi leader Madamin Bey and the Russian General Konstantin Monstrov which we talked about in Episode 39).

By 1920, the Russians were reporting 12 separate Basmachi groups with a total of 5,560 fighters. However, these fighters were poorly equipped, carrying whatever weapons they could take from the dead. They fought mostly with vintage weapons, including the Berdan rifles of the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) and a handful of antique artillery pieces. The Russians were convinced they were being armed by the British, but like their theories regarding a Bukharan-British conspiracy to take over Central Asia, there is little evidence that this is true. It is also doubtful that either Bukhara or Afghanistan provided much material support to the Basmachi, even if it was understood that they had the two emirs’ tacit support.

Ibrahim Bek

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a brown man wearing a black turban. He has a tight and wrinkled face. He has a scraggy beard and light mustache. He is wearing a white and brown shirt or robe.]

Despite the efforts of leaders like Madamin, the Basmachi did not coordinate their attacks well and were easily routed by disciplined Russian forces when they fought head-to-head. The Basmachi relied on hit and run tactics instead, exploiting their knowledge of the terrain and local peoples, their superior mobility, and smaller numbers to undermine Russian control.

For their part the Russians found the Basmachi tactics unsettling, one Russian military observer writing:

“Without anything distinguishing them [the Basmachis] on the outside, clothed in the same way as the peasant population, they were all around our units, not hesitating to infiltrate, and unrecognizable and elusive, they devoted themselves to espionage that has no equal, whose network extends from the Afghan frontier to Tashkent” - Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, pg. 142

Reflecting on what this required from the Russians forces, one Russian officer wrote:

“The roadless mountains and deserts of the Central Asian theaters, and the backwards and disorganized enemy in Turkestan, [prove that] the old principle-the training of a steadfast and calm individual soldier-has not outlived its usefulness” - Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, pg. 152

and war analyst V. Lavrenev wrote that any commander would:

“Be entirely unprepared here [the mountainous zones of Central Asia] and in most instances will begin with a series of blunders” - Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, pg. 152

Given the lack of a strong military presence in Turkestan, the Basmachi were at the peak of their power in 1920. They had free range in the Ferghana and around the fields of Khiva and Bukhara, the Bolsheviks and the Musburo could barely handle the famine and their own rebellious Russian and indigenous subjects let alone a large guerilla movement. Frunze, trying to solve Bukharan shaped problem, actually helped the Basmachi cause by overthrowing the Bukharan Emir.

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.]

When the Bukharan Emir retreated to Afghanistan, he created a cause the indigenous peoples could rally around. The Basmachi also served as a safe haven for those who didn’t want to be conscripted or wanted to escape the reach of the Bolsheviks. By the summer of 1920, the Basmachi’s ranks are said to have swelled to 30,000 men and was attracting supporters such as Zeki Validov, a Bashkir nationalist who was the former president of the short-lived Bashkir Autonomous Republic and Enver Pasha in 1921.

The Red Army in 1920

When Frunze wasn’t attacking Khiva in February and Bukhara in August, he forced on building an army that could not only defeat the Basmachi but establish Communist power in the region.

Frunze wrote to Lenin in March 1920, complaining about the condition of the soldiers who were to make up the units of the newly created Turkestan Front. He wrote that the Red units were numerically weak, had no uniforms or, in some cases, shoes, with one quarter using Berdan rifles and the other quarter using English weapons sent to Russia during the world war. He had one unit consisting of 4,500 infantrymen and 700 cavalry men holding the front from Termez on the Afghan border to Krasnovodsky. He had a mixture of international regiments comprising of foreign prisoners taken during the world war, territorial Red guards, and Muslim volunteers he either brought with him from the Steppe or had organized in Tashkent.

Frunze eventually created a Turkestan Front that consisted of two entire armies, the Fourth and First, and elements of a third. The Fourth army consisted of 3 rifle divisions (equipped with 203 machine guns) and a reserve of 21,650 men total. The First army consisted of 3 rifle divisions and a Tatar Brigade for a total of 31,129 soldiers, 515 machine guns, and 99 field guns. Frunze borrowed elements of the Eleventh army in Astrakhan which gave him an additional 17,000 men on paper, and he also relied on members of the Cheka.

Indigenous Volunteers in the Red Army

A note on the Muslim volunteers. If we think about to our episodes on the Alash Orda and the White Army, we’ll remember that the Alash Orda organized several different cavalry and infantry units. They first fought with the Whites and then were subsumed by the Red Army. By the end of 1919 there were at least five Kazakh units including the 1st Siberian Kazakh Volunteer Cavalry Regiment which served in the Altai province until 1922.

Risqulov in 1919 managed to convince Madamin Bey to temporarily side with the Bolsheviks, securing a major propaganda victory for the Red Army. The Bolsheviks worked hard to encourage the indigenous peoples to join their fellow Muslims in protecting their lands from all enemies non-Communists (i.e., Russian settlers who resisted the Bolsheviks and the Basmachi who preyed on the population as much as they “protected” them.)

In 1919 a Muslim section was established within the Political Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Republic (really need shorter names here, guys) and they organized a series of lectures highlighting Muslim soldiers in the Red army, organized agitation trains known as “Red East” and “Rosa Luxemburg”, and pushed the benefits of Communist and joining the Red Army via theater and literary publishing clubs.

Red Army General 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.]

The Bolsheviks organized the indigenous volunteers based on ethnicity, foreshadowing their approach towards the creation of the future Central Asian states we know today. It also seemed to be an attempt to kill any idea of a “Turkic” republic or connection to a greater “Turkestan” which Risqulov had been a big proponent of. The Russians feared that anything “Turkic” could be used to support a Pan-Turkic movement favored by the Turks in the former Ottoman Empire and by some members of the Basmachi. Basically, kill any sense of a greater unity with non-communist entities by focusing on a local, ethnic identity that could then be crushed later to be replaced by a class identity.

Frunze had no problem working with former Basmachi who wanted to join the Red army. In fact, the Kyrgyz Red Cavalry Brigade consisted of 400 people, many of whom served with Madamin Bey before his death. Dzhanybek, a former Basmachi field commander would eventually command the Kirghiz Cavalry Red Regiment for the Bolsheviks.

Frunze was able to recruit enough Muslim volunteers by May 1920, that he felt comfortable issuing an announcement stating that “the workers of the local national population aged between 19 and 35 were subject to conscription to the Red Army”. It called upon non-Russian citizens from Siberia, Turkestan, and other outskirts for military service. In Tashkent, the first conscription took place in June while the recruitment efforts in Semirech’e and the Bukharan republic were postponed.

One of the biggest challenges facing the indigenous volunteers was the language barrier. The indigenous peoples didn’t know Russian and requested that the Russians learn their various languages to ease communication. Even when the Russians could send translators to recruitment stations they faced a lack of qualified people and money to train anyone from either language. Frunze complained that he had to refuse many Kyrgyz willing to volunteer because of lack of weapons and uniforms. He wrote:

“The formed military units on their horses, in Kyrgyz common clothes and providing for themselves, were armed with what they got mainly from the whites, and with various weapons, including the Berdan rifles” - Yu A. Lysenko, National Units of the Red Army in the Steppe Region and Turkestan During the Civil War, pg. 1129

Frunze also faced a lack of skilled commanders. Through enormous effort, the Bolsheviks were able to create several military courses that covered subjects such as infantry, artillery, cavalry, military topography, and other courses. Despite all odds, Frunze was able to recruit several units of indigenous peoples and integrate them into the forming Turkestan Front.

Frunze’s Tactics Against the Basmachi

First, he had to come to terms with the fact that mountain warfare is the worst and that he needed to have soldiers and officers who knew how to secure their flanks and rears, deploy patrols effectively, and give the officers enough initiative to effectively deploy their superior firepower. Frunze translated this into a strategy that aimed at isolated and destroying Basmachi groups or, failing that, cut them off from their sanctuaries all over the mountains, including Afghanistan. Frunze did this, three different ways:

First, he created flexible and mobile units of light irregular cavalry known as the “flying detachments”

These detachments were the main weapons used against the Basmachi. They could maintain communications amongst the different garrisons and could chase the Basmachi back to their bases and destroy them. They never stayed in one place for long on principle and could range from platoon size to a division, so roughly 200-2000 men. The detachments could fight their own skirmishes but were also used to support other, larger operations. Frunze believed that only concentrated forces would be able to pursue and destroy Basmachi units, and forbade his commanders from spreading themselves too thin.

A spinoff of the flying detachment was the raiding detachment. The raiding detachment was more partisan in nature and focused on reconnaissance and harassing the Basmachi whenever they could.

Turkestan Front, 1922

[Image Description: A sepia photo of various soldiers standing together, sharing food, and talking. Some are wearing the official military uniforms. Others are wearing the white tops. They are standing in a dirt road with trees behind them.]

Second, Frunze had to solve the problem of supplies. At first, soldiers feared traveling too from the railroads and their sources of supply, giving the advantage to the Basmachi. A combined effort of clearing the territory of Basmachi by the flying detachment and meticulous care and planning when it came to resupplying the soldiers allowed the Red Army to push ever more and more into Basmachi territory. When the army reported issues moving heavy artillery pieces up the mountains, Frunze made them rely on portable mountain guns. These guns were used mostly to provide covering fire to support the advancing infantry and cavalry as they chased after the fleeing Basmachi.

Third, Frunze relied on modern technology to transport soldiers, supply them, and support them. Steam locomotives were the pack mules of Frunze’s efforts, providing the soldiers with everything they needed to survive the mountains. To protect the precious railroads, Frunze armed the trains with their own units of soldiers and firing platforms. Like the RAF in Iraq, Frunze would use airplanes in his war against the Basmachi. These planes performed reconnaissance and occasionally bomb Basmachi positions. These bombings had a far more psychological effect than material. Finally, he used naval ships to protect the Aral Sea and the Amu River. His naval forces consisted of nine steamers, two vessels powered by internal combustion, and a cutter.

Political Campaign Against the Basmachi: How to Solve a Problem Like Turkestan

While Frunze was creating an effective military apparatus, Frunze knew he couldn’t defeat the Basmachi through militant means alone. He had to also had to undermine their support amongst the people. To do that, he had to resolve the many issues facing Turkestan.

When Frunze arrived in February 1920, he identified three political and military threats to Bolshevik power: the Musburo, the Emirs, and the Basmachi, but he was also inheriting a region wracked by ethnic violence, famine, and complete disintegration of any central authority. As we discussed in our last episode a combination of pragmaticism, faith in the Communist order, and racism/xenophobia led Frunze to overthrow the existing “government” represented by the Musburo and the Turkestan Communist Party (KPT) and elect his own trusted members to the government.

As we’ve noted, many of these people were indigenous peoples who either belonged to the nascent Communist party or hadn’t annoyed Frunze yet. And while Risqulov was initially sent away, he would return to Turkestan and serve on its governing body before being executed by Stalin for being a traitor and a nationalist. But it would be going too far to say this was a progressive policy or somehow the Bolsheviks weren’t racist. This was a combination of pragmatism and necessity.

Once Frunze established his version of a Communist government in the region, how did he plan to solve the many problems facing Turkestan?

Famine is Bad Everyone

His first solution was to invade Khiva. You can learn more about that invasion in the last episode, but invading a neighboring emirate wasn’t going to solve any of Turkestan’s real problems such as famine and infrastructural collapse.

According to scholar, Marco Buttino, the Russians settlers had lost 28 percent of their cultivated land by 1920 with the indigenous population losing 39 percent and the nomadic peoples losing 45 percent. The Russians lost a significant percent of their livestock, but it was absolutely catastrophic for the indigenous peoples. The settled indigenous peoples lost 48% and the nomadic peoples lost 63% of their livestock by 1920.

As we discussed in our episode of Turar Risqulov, famine was a common specter amongst the indigenous peoples of Central Asian, especially the nomadic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz being driven south because of the Russian Civil War. These peoples were reliant on either a government that could not provide for them (or worse requisitioning desperately need food from them and then failing to share the food) or were forced to find support elsewhere i.e., by finding common cause with the marauding Basmachi or trying to cross into the neighboring countries such as Afghanistan and Xinjiang and China.

According to Buttino, Turkestan had a population of roughly 7 million in 1916. By 1920, that population dropped to 5 million, mean two million people were lost in four years due to famine, forced migration, and war. Interestingly, the Russian population saw the biggest drop in its urban population. By 1920s, half of the Russians who lived in cities were gone, but their rural presence increased by 14%. Buttino suggests that the drop could be explained via forced conscription and migration as well as death.

The indigenous population, no surprise, suffered the most. While Buttino admits that the census he used to gather this information needs to be taken with a grain of salt, he estimates that in total the indigenous population lost more than a million and a half people between 1917 and 1920, with a third of those missing belonging to the nomadic population.

While all of this is horrifying, we also have to consider the infrastructural damage. Entire irrigation networks (which many cities, such as Bukhara, relied on for water) were in ruin, whole districts were abandoned, and the amount of migration is hard to imagine. The borders with Afghanistan, Persia, and China were porous, straining those country’s systems as mass refugees fled the Basmachi, the Russian Settlers, and the Russian Civil War.

Russian Response

The Turkkomissiia responded first by creating provision brigades. These brigades were to gather food from the country, convince farmers that things were safe, and they can resume planting, ensure loyalty of local leaders, and agitate as needed. We’ve talked a lot about how this was a horrible idea in our episode on Risqulov and they were disbanded by 1922.

Instead, a collection of locally organized soviets and unions cropped up and worked together to survive, creating black markets. “Speculation”, and trade occurred quite frequently, despite the Communist efforts to establish a state-controlled process of food collection and redistribution.

These self-organized sources of administration cropped up because the central administration in Tashkent couldn’t reach beyond the borders of Tashkent. It started with landless and low-income peoples coming together to keep villages afloat. These unions grew into a parallel administrative structure that supported local soviets and helped reach out to the people. The administrative center in Tashkent would use these unions to establish their hold over the rural regions and spread the principles of Communism until their forced dissolution in 1927.

The Bolsheviks also tried to build support within the women of Turkestan. They created a party specifically for women called Zhenotdel and attracted women escaping abusive relationships, low-income, and displacement. These women were employed through labor cooperatives and gained political rights they had never experienced before. The Bolsheviks would later create the Komsomol, an organized for the youth of the region, which would produce many future rulers of Communist Central Asia.

To combat the influence of the market on food stuffs and everyday needs, the Bolsheviks created labor and consumer cooperatives, offering cooperative credit to struggling peoples to help them make ends meet. While they offered aid to those in need they also laid the foundation for ostracizing and later eliminating the bais and kulaks of Turkestan.

But Frunze knew this wasn’t enough, so he created party schools in every oblast to bring the benefits of Communism to the people. He cracked down on abuses the army perpetuated against the indigenous people, even disarming and disbanding the Soviet 4thRegiment for crimes against the Muslim population. He also pressed for land and water reform.

Frunze had the awkward job of maintaining Communism’s anti-religious stance while neutralizing Islam as a source of organization and resistance. He knew being completely anti-Islam would only drive people into the arms of the Basmachi, so he allowed the ulama to maintain their courts and schools, but also provided secular schools and economic opportunities.

He provided tax assistance for peasants in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, delivery of seed to farmers, extension of offers of amnesty, and the restoration of Muslim schools and property. The New Economic Policy of 1921 would expand upon these economic incentives, helping people desperately in need. While these measures alone weren’t enough to completely stop the Basmachi, they went a long way to stemming the stream of people joining their ranks.

Frunze would leave Turkestan late in 1920, but he left behind a political and military structure that would transform Turkestan from a collection of collapsing, failing political entities to a not anti-Communist region. The Basmachi despite being pushed back by the Russian forces, but were not yet defeated. In fact, they were about to receive help from an unlikely ally traveling all the way from the former Ottoman Empire.

References

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

Study of the economic crisis and depopulation in Turkestan, 1917–1920 by Marco Buttino

National Units of the Red Army in the Steppe Region and Turkestan During the Civil War by Yu. A. Lysenko

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #mikhail frunze #basmachi #central asian civil war #Spotify

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

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

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

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #mikhail frunze #musburo #turar risqulov #turkestan #soviet union #russian colonialism #bukhara #khiva #fall of bukhara #full of khiva #Spotify

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Russian Civil War: Central Power POWs, Indian Revolutionaries, and British Agents, Oh My!

The last few months we’ve tailored our conversation about Central Asia during the Russian Civil War around the major actors: the Red and White Armies, the Alash Orda, the Jadids, and the Basmachi. But can you really claim you discussed the Russian Civil War without dedicating at least one episode to spies, revolutionaries, and POWs?

Central Power POWs

Before the Russian Revolution, Russia was at war with the Central Powers during WWI and by 1917, had captured approximately 2.4 million prisoners from its eastern front alone. When considering all of their fronts, it is estimated they captured 8 million prisoners in total. These prisoners were held all over the Russian Empire, with a considerable number held in Siberia and Central Asia.

The treatment of prisoners depended on rank, ethnicity/nationality, when, where, and how they were captured, and where they were held, with the Austro-Hungarian prisoners getting the best treatment. Russia implemented several policies and initiatives meant to encourage prisoners to defect to the Russian Army. The legendary Czechoslovak Legion and Serbian Volunteer Corps were built from POWs who took up the Russian’s offer to fight the Central Powers.

For the most part, officers were treated better than the rank and file, receiving a stipend from the Russian government while the privates and NCOs had to work to survive. It is estimated that POWs made up 20-25% of Russia’s workforce by 1917. Many prisoners even produced their own products and integrated themselves into the communities of wherever they were being held. The money allowed POWs to buy desperately needed supplies and some were even able to buy passports and a route home. For many, the freedom of movement and a chance to work was the very lifeline they needed to survive (especially if joining the workforce meant they would be moved from camps in Siberia and Central Asia to camps in western Russia). For others, though, working could be a death sentence as working and living conditions could be appalling.

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks declared all POWs free, meaning the government would no longer provide stipends, food, or housing. The POWs now joined the poor Russian workers as they tried to navigate the chaotic period that was the Russian Revolution and Civil War. For many POWs, the end of the war meant doing what it took to survive as they tried to find a way home. Some POWs joined the Communist Party and/or fought during the Russian Civil War. Others were repatriated, continued to work as cheap labor, or joined the many mercenaries/armed gangs until an opportunity to escape presented itself.

Repatriation was a complicated affair. At first, the Bolsheviks repatriated 200,000 POWs after signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, but, as the civil war dragged on, they grew reluctant to lose their workforce. The White Army refused to acknowledge the end of the war and thus didn’t repatriate POWs on principle, or, in the case of Siberia, left the POWs in the hands of the United States and Japan forces. When the camps formally dissolved in 1920, 500,000 POWs were still in Russia. Out of the 500,000, approximately 30,000 Germans and 118,000 former Austro-Hungarians eventually returned from Siberia and Central Asia. Between 1921-1922, an additional 13,000 Austro-Hungarians returned home. It is unknown how many POWs remained in Russia.

Austo-Hungarian and German POWs in Central Asia

The prisoners of war in Siberia/Central Asia can be split into two different categories: the Austro-Hungarian/German prisoners and the Ottoman prisoners. The treatment of the two groups seemed to have varied based on location of the prisons and when/where the POWs were captured, but it becomes clear that the Russians were more invested in turning European prisoners than dealing with Ottoman prisoners.

By 1915, the Office of the Governor-General in Turkestan constructed several camps throughout the region, including one forty kilometers outside of Tashkent meant to hold several thousand prisoners. The people of Tashkent had mixed reactions to the influx of prisoners. Some Russian officials believed it was their sacred duty to care for fellow Slavs while others saw the POWs as a legitimate source of labor. In Tashkent, there had been a growing fear that the war would only increase the Russian’s reliance on Muslim and women laborers. Russian settlers grew annoyed at the privileges many POWs enjoyed and didn’t appreciate having a new group of laborers to compete with.

Most Austro-Hungarian officers were held in former soldier’s barracks, hotels, and other reconfigured buildings while the rank and file were cramped into makeshift camps. POWs were allowed to mix freely with civilians while on day leave, could walk around in their uniforms, enjoyed first access to subsidized state food, and were allowed to partake in luxury goods like preserved plums. The Tashkent branch of the All Russian Society of the Guardianship of Slavic Prisoners adopted the Slavic POWs and offered courses on the Russian language, history, economy, and geography. They believed it was the best way to “civilize” their fellow Slavs while integrating them into Russian society.

Yet, despite all these privileges, the Central Asian Camps were considered death camps. Many camps could only hold up to ten thousand prisoners but were forced to hold 25-35,000 prisoners. Malaria and typhus ran rampant claiming fifteen to eighty prisoners a day. There was a lack of food, clothing, and sanitary conditions in camps. The influx of prisoners strained an already precarious food situation in Central Asia, contributing to the famines we would see starting in 1916 and continuing in the 20’s.

When the Russian Revolution ended the war, many POWs had to choose how to survive the chaos. Some, like the Hungarian POWs held in Central Asia, supported the Russian settlers in their battle against the Central Asian Muslims. Others were forced to join the Soviets or starve. According to the Danish Red Cross delegate, A. H. Brun, and later confirmed by German prisoner/spy Gustav Krist, the Tashkent soviet leaders deliberately starved 38,000 prisoners in order to force them to join their Red Guard. Prisoners of war would make the majority of Red Guards until the mid-1920s.

Ottoman POWs

While the Russians were mostly welcoming of the Slavic prisoners, the Ottoman POW experience was mixed. It is estimated that Russian captured 50,000 Ottoman soldiers. When they were marched or held in Muslim lands, they reported being greeted warmly and formed bonds with the locals. However, when marched through Armenian cities or villages, they were met with hostility and sometimes violence. However, some Ottoman officer memoirs report Armenians outside of the Caucasus helping Ottomans escape.

Overall, though there doesn’t seem to be a concerted effort to mistreat Ottomans POWs, hundreds died on their journey to the camps. They were often held in cramped, poorly ventilated train cars and exposed to the elements the entire trip. Many suffocated or succumbed to the elements. Additionally, their carts were the only ones locked from the outside and sometimes the Russians would forget about them. There are a handful of reports where the trains would arrive at their destination, but the Ottomans would be left trapped in their carts for days until someone decided to take a look and rescue the survivors. The Ottoman prisoners were also devastated by lack of sanitary facilities and disease.

Relations among the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman prisoners seemed to be cordial with officers teaching each other their native languages, putting together musical groups and shows, organizing newspapers and sport games, and partaking in crafts together. There seems to have been some tension between the Turkish POWs and their Arab counterparts, but it is hard to gain a true understanding how significant these tensions were. If Ottoman POWs were held in Muslim majority areas, they were allowed to attend the local mosques and Ottoman Officers wrote about partaking in fasting during Ramadan.

When the Bolsheviks liberated the Ottoman POWs, they quickly found common cause with the various groups of Muslim reformers, guerrillas, and conservatives. The Kokand Government and later the Musburo recruited the Ottoman prisoners as schoolteachers and as organizers of youth political groups with a Turkish twist. The clubs ranged from being the first boys scout to being strong, nationalist clubs to semi military youth groups. Given the Ottoman POW’s background, the schools they worked in took a militaristic tone with focus on discipline and fitness. Many Ottoman prisoners didn’t believe in the Jadid’s version of Turkism but worked to survive.

The Bolsheviks deported most of the Ottoman POWs out of Turkestan by 1920. Those who escaped the Bolsheviks found work in Bukhara, until 1922, when the Soviets asserted their control over Central Asian education by firing all of the Ottoman instructors. Just one of the many fronts the Bolsheviks and the indigenous people of Central Asia fought over as Central Asia was brought into the Soviet fold.

Indian Revolutionaries

The efforts of Indian nationalists, revolutionaries, activists, and communists to liberate their land of British rule is beyond our current scope, but I do want to briefly discuss the role Central Asia played in uniting Indian Revolutionaries with Bolsheviks and helping to develop Indian Communist thought.

Like Ireland and other British colonies, India’s Independence movement as we know it started in the early 1900s and grew out of decades of anti-colonial resistance and rebellions. I think there’s a common perception that the British waltzed into India and the Indians bowed down and gladly welcomed their colonists. That’s not true at all with the most famous rebellion being the Indian Rebellion or Mutiny of 1857. British Historian William Dalrymple wrote a fascinating book about the rebellion called “The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857”. I’d also recommend Indian Summer: the Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex Von Tunzelmann which talks about the Indian Independence Movement from creation to the liberation and partition of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Again, like the cadre of Irish Volunteers led by Pearse, some members of the Indian Independence Movement looked to Britain’s enemies as allies. One such man was Mahendra Pratap, a well-known writer and revolutionary. He and a number of other revolutionaries, traveled to Germany and created the Berlin Committee, an organization for Indians fighting for India’s liberation. Pratap used German support to travel to Afghanistan as an emissary in 1915. From there he created a government-in-exile called the Provisional Government of India with Pratap as its president.

We won’t talk too much about what was going on in Afghanistan during this episode because it’s so much and really deserves its own series of episodes, which we are currently writing, so there’s something for you to look forward to. All we need to know in the context of the Indian Liberation Movement is that in 1915, Afghanistan was a pseudo-British colony? They had fought two wars prior to 1915, but relations were somewhat friendly as long as Afghanistan walked the tightrope of neutrality that allowed Britain to dominate external affairs in return for financial support. So, when revolutionary Indians entered Afghanistan and started talking about overthrowing the British Empire, it raised more than a few eyebrows. Then the US captured a German agent and Indian revolutionary who revealed Pratap’s plans, forcing Afghanistan to disavow him. Additionally, Germany’s support was lukewarm at this point because of the world war, so Pratap’s ambitions had to be put on hold until the October Revolution of 1917.

The Bolshevik’s firm anti-colonial stance, seemingly, made it an ideal ally for Pratap and his fellow revolutionaries. He traveled through Tashkent and to Petrograd to meet Lenin and discuss how both sides could benefit each other in their effort to end colonialism and spread communism. Initially, the Bolsheviks were keen to support the Indian revolution because they saw it as a way to weaken Britain. Given Pratap’s recent adventure in Afghanistan, it also made sense to use him and his fellow Indian Revolutionaries as emissaries to Afghanistan as a way to further threaten British interests in India. Afghanistan became even more appealing to the Bolsheviks in 1919 when the “pro”-British Emir was assassinated and placed his son, Amanullah on the throne. Amanullah would start and win the Third Anglo-Afghan War, severing any reliance Afghanistan had on British coin, creating an independent state. The Bolsheviks courted Afghanistan who once again had to walk a tightrope of benefitting from Bolshevik attention without creating a scenario for another war with Britain. Things grew tense as Amanullah supported his counterpart in Bukhara-who General Frunze was trying to overthrow in early 1920. In the end, Afghanistan signed a peace treaty with both Russia and Britain in 1921 but remained an ambiguous support of the Bukharan Emir and the Basmachi forces. Their ambiguity angered Pratap who turned from Afghanistan and relied on the Russians.

The Indian Revolutionaries settled in Tashkent, which from 1919 onwards, was managed by Muslim reformists and Communists and their Bolshevik counterparts. One can imagine the excitement that ran through both the Indian Revolutionaries and Central Asian members of the Jadids and Communist parties as they worked together and shared the same space during this revolutionary period of time. And how exciting it must have been to take part in an effort to end colonialism, conservatism, and capitalism. As we know, the Bolshevik-Indigenous efforts at “ruling” together were complicated and full of tension and it wasn’t a peaceful utopia. But you still have the Musburo, a government body of Central Asians, working with Bolsheviks to try and re establish law and order in Turkestan. That is more than the British or Tsarist Russia ever did.

While in Tashkent, the Indian revolutionaries spent most of their time reading about Communism, spreading the message of Bolshevism and Indian liberation through their own networks, and training several militant organizations how to fight for Indian liberation. After helping to establish a cadre of Indian Revolutionaries in Tashkent, Pratap would travel around Asia to gather support for his evolved thinking of a Pan Asian Province.

The work of Indian independence was taken up by two Indian Revolutionaries: Manabendra Nath Roy and M. P. T. Acharya

M. P. T. Acharya

There were several Indian Revolutionaries in Tashkent, but the reason I want to focus on Roy and Acharya is because they represent two different approaches towards merging Indian Independence with Communism and their differences highlight why their efforts ultimately failed to liberate India.

M. P. T. Acharya

[Image Description: A tinted green photo of a thin, brown man in a white suit jacket and white open collar button down shirt. He has thick, short black hair and large ears. He is clean shaven and has strong, full lips]

Acharya was born in 1887 to a Brahmin family and quickly became involved in political agitation. He was drawn to the cause of Indian Independence and studied with famous social reformer Lokmanya Tilak before being chased out of India because of his nationalistic leanings. Acharya resettled in Paris and became involved in the printing of several newspapers before traveling around the world agitating for Indian Independence. He made his way to Germany and joined the Berlin Indian Committee before being sent to Afghanistan to start laying the groundwork for an attack against British India. He then traveled to Moscow, met Lenin, and returned to Kabul in 1919 to continue the work he started with the Germans. While in Kabul he and Abdur Rabb Barq, another Indian revolutionary, founded the Indian Revolutionary Association (the IRA) and they engaged with different peoples of Kabul who also wanted independence. Even though the IRA was created with Soviet support and funds, they did not influence ideological rigidity or purity. Instead, the uniting factor was their shared hatred of the British Empire. This enabled the IRA to recruit amongst a wide range of revolutionaries and nationalists and their numbers grew.

They relied on Afghanistan to serve as a jump pad into India, but Amanullah expelled all Indian Revolutionaries from his territory and forbad them from agitating along the Indian-Afghan border in May 1920. The IRA moved their headquarters to

Tashkent, already home to several Indian revolutionaries. While in Tashkent, Acharya worked closely with his Communist counterparts and seems to have either been a member of or worked with their propaganda branch in Tashkent. He also continued recruiting military groups of Indians, Afghans, Iranians, and others to fight for the shared Bolshevik-Indian cause.

Then Manabendra Roy arrived in Tashkent in October 1920

Manabendra Nath Roy

Roy is a colorful figure in a region of the world full of colorful characters. Born in 1887 in West Bengal, near Calcutta. Like Acharya, Roy was swept into the nationalist movement at a young age when he organized against the Bengal Partition of 1905. However, unlike Acharya, he joined the more violent groups of revolutionaries who often funded their efforts via armed robbery. Like the Irish, Roy and his conspirators turned to Germany for aid. Roy was sent to Java to welcome a Germany shipment of arms that never materialized. The British found out about the plot so it was too dangerous for Roy to return to India. He traveled first to Japan, then China, and the United States. He caught the attention of the American police and fled to Mexico where he met Communist agent, Mikhail Borodin. Together, they founded the Mexican communist party, the first Communist party outside of Russia.

Manabendra Nath Roy

[Image Description: A brown photo of a brown man with wavy black hair. He is clean shaven and is wearing round, black glasses. He is wearing a short sleeve collared grey, linen shirt. Behind him are out of focus trees.]

Borodin was recalled to Moscow in April 1920 and took Roy with him. Roy wrote the following about his meeting with Lenin:

“Nearly a head shorter, he tilted his red goatee almost to a horizontal position to look at my face quizzically. I was embarrassed, and did not know what to say. He helped me out with banter: “You are so young! I expected a grey-bearded wise man from the East” - Peter Hopkirk, Setting the East Aflame, pg. 104

Lenin seemed to believe that Roy was a powerful leader who could help him spread Communist to the Asian world. Roy criticized Lenin’s understanding of the colonial problem, believing that Europe’s liberation lay in the liberation of their colonies. Once the colonies were freed, then communism could be brought to Europe. Communist would not come to Europe beforehand or during the liberation of the colonized world. Roy also refused to work with non-Marxist liberation movements whereas Lenin was more practical and would take whoever he could get. Once the Bolsheviks established their power, then these nationalist movements could be converted to Communism or eradicated. Lenin, seemingly impressed with Roy’s arguments, asked him to write a supplementary appendix to his own Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Question.

Roy was sent to Tashkent to help coordinate efforts to train militant groups. According to his own autobiography, he arrived in Tashkent in two heavily-armed trains containing weapons for the Indian revolutionaries. and initially he and Acharya worked well together. Acharya had a great working relationship with soldiers and the Muslim civilians whereas Roy alienated many Muslims with his strict Communist thinking and anti-religious sentiments. Still he was able to craft a military school to train troops for his liberation of India. He, Acharya, and many other Indian Revolutionaries founded the Indian Communist Party (ICP) in 1920, but ran into difficulties during their second meeting when they discussed who could be eligible to join the ICP. Roy pushed for a strict rule that people could join only if they were not also members of a political group not under Communist control (like Acharya’s IRA for example). Roy even went so far as to withhold funds from organizations that he felt weren’t ideological pure enough eventually destroying the IRA. Acharya would later claim:

“We are not against Communism and we do not make a distinction between a Communist revolutionary or just a revolutionary. All we object to is forcible conversion to Communism at least in the form dictated by Roy and the Comintern” - Lina Bernstein, Indian Nationalists and the Soviets in Central Asia, pg. 13

That did not save him from further trouble with Roy and in 1921, he wrote to the Comintern complaining:

“With reference to the discussions now going on with regard to Indian question, from which I purposely absented myself as I am least sanguine about the results intended to be achieved by these methods and persons, I am sending you herewith a paper giving my experience with Roy and his Indian communist party [italics added] during a whole year and showing how they sabotaged it in the past. It must be also pointed out that I was one of the original members of the so called Indian Communist party [italics added] and was thrown out for criticizing Roy’s and his lieutenants’ methods.” - Lina Bernstein, Indian Nationalists and the Soviets in Central Asia, pg. 14

To make matters worse, the British were aware of Roy and his efforts to build an army that would eventually threaten the British Raj. They tried to starve Roy of funds that were slipping into Turkestan through the porous borders and their agents worked overtime to intercept Roy’s agents and gather as much information as possible on Roy and his fellow revolutionaries. Meanwhile, Russia was having issues with its economy and internal unrest. If it was to survive, it needed to make sacrifices.

So, in 1921, Lenin made an ideological sacrifice and signed the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, ending the Allies’ blockade and opening Soviet Russia to trade and investment from a capitalist empire. It also put an end to any planned invasion of India. The best of Roy’s recruits were sent to Moscow for further training while the rest were left to fend for themselves. Roy would return to Moscow and continue to serve the Soviet Union until Stalin’s terror forced him to flee in 1928. After being kicked out of the Indian Communist Party and realizing he would not break Moscow’s support of Roy, Acharya left Tashkent in 1922 and traveled to Germany, continuing to fight for India’s liberation and experimenting with anarchism.

Unfortunately, the Indian affair highlights a lot of problems the Bolsheviks had spreading their ideology and working with non-Russians. Initially, the Soviets were eager to support the Indian Revolutionaries and it seemed that the Indians and Bolsheviks could work well together. But soon ideological demands pushed people out and/or eventually led to their death as the smallest of infractions (or made up accusations) led to the firing squad. Additionally, participants were increasingly encouraged to fight amongst themselves as they struggled to maintain ideological purity and continue to enjoy Moscow’s support. This is a pattern we will see with the Bolsheviks and the Central Asian cohorts as this podcast progresses.

Finally, something must be said about the likelihood of Roy’s efforts succeeding in the ultimate liberation of India. As I think the United States should know by now, taking a handful of disgruntled or exiled peoples, running them through military training, and then sending them back into their home countries with weapons and some money is not enough to overthrow any but the weakest of governments. While I suppose one should never say never, it should have been clear early on that the efforts of the Indian Communist’s were doomed to fail given Britain’s jealous control over India and the fact that the World War ended in 1918, allowing Britain to reposition troops as needed to answer any incursion or risk of rebellion.

British Spies

Speaking of the British, we now get to talk about British agents in Central Asia. If you’ve listened to my other episodes, you know I have lots of thoughts about the “Great Game” but for the British in the 1900s, it was an all too real competition for the survival of the Empire. So when the Bolsheviks took over and started working their way into Central Asia, the British grew worried about Afghanistan and then India. They sent a number of agents into the region and we’re going to talk about probably the most famous of the British spies working in Central Asia during the First World War.

F. M. Bailey

It’s probably impossible to discuss Britain in Central Asia without mentioning Frederick Bailey. Born in 1882 in Lahore, Bailey had already had considerable experience in the spy game by the time WWI started. He joined the Indian Army in 1901 and spent most of his time exploring China and Tibet. During the war, he served on the Western Front and apparently fought at Gallipoli before being sent to Central Asia in 1918 to figure out what the hell was going on in Russia. He entered Tashkent as a British officer and started to meet with contacts when word reached Tashkent that the British were fighting Russian forces in Transcaspia followed by the executed of the 26 Baku commissars. Bailey did his best to explain what he couldn’t possibly know as he had lost all contact with British officers in India and Iran.

Shortly afterwards, he learned about his upcoming arrest and went into hiding amongst friends in the city. It may have been around this time that he learned about the upcoming rising led by Osipov via his contact Paul Nazaroff, a White Russian. As we know, Osipov’s rising failed, Nazaroff barely escaped Tashkent with his life, and Bailey transformed himself into an Austrian POW. Bailey spent the next few months smuggling reports to his superiors (including information on Pratap and the Indian Revolutionary Communists). If he thought that Britain was still pushing to liberate Tashkent, his hopes were quickly squashed and he knew his only option was to get out. His best hope was to travel to Bukhara (which was still ruled by the Emir) and then make his way across the Karakum desert to the Persian border and meet up with Iranian forces in Meshed.

F. M. Bailey

[Image Description: A sepia tone photo of a white man with short hair plastered to the skull and a short, thick mustache. He is wearing a collared tan shirt with a tan tie and a tan military tunic. He has a leather belt running across his chest. ]

To escape, he joined the Cheka and then volunteered to spy on the Emir for the Bolsheviks. Trusting a Serbian contact, he fooled the Russians into hiring him, got the Bukhara job, and was also told to keep an eye out for a British Agent named F. M. Bailey who was wandering Turkestan, causing trouble. He reported back that Bailey had last been seen leaving Afghanistan towards the Ferghana. The Bolsheviks would later claim to have killed Bailey crossing the Persian frontier and gave him a full military funeral. I’m sure Bailey would later report to his superiors that the reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

He then traveled to Bukhara but was not greeted by the Emir who, according to Bailey:

“Have so far seen no member of the Bukharan government who are suspicious and are afraid to have anything to do with me. Our troops are far off and Bolsheviks are near and I suppose they are afraid of consequences if Bolsheviks hear they are helping me.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 125

He stayed in the city for a while, gathering what intelligence he could, and maybe discussed plans for defense and rebellion with the Emir or maybe his mere presence was later trumped up by the Bolsheviks to justify their invasion of Bukhara in August 1920. Eventually Bailey received orders to leave Bukhara as soon as he could, for it was no longer safe for him. He left on the night of December 18th, 1919 and reached Iran in January 1920. He accomplished very little that was tangible, but his daring exploits and his entertaining memoir would later make him a legend within the stories of the Great Game and British spy craft.

P. T. Etherton

While Bailey was trying to escape the Bolsheviks in Tashkent, another British servant, Colonel Percy T. Etherton, was stationed in Kashgar in modern day Xinjiang, on the Russian-Chinese border. His job was to ensure that Bolshevik did not spill into Xinjiang region and upset British interests.

Etherton had served in the Australian gold-fields before riding with Kitchener’s Fighting Scouts in the Boer War and served with the Indian Army frontier regiment during WWI, before being picked for spy work. Before the war, he also explored the Pamir Mountains and spent considerable time around Kashgar and then took a detour into Mongolia and rode home via the Trans-Siberian Railway. He would write a book about his experiences called Across the Roof of the World.

Etherton was sent to Kashgar to replace the British Consul-General on June 7th 1918 with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the British-Indian subjects in Xinjiang and to ensure the Russians couldn’t find another way at harming British control in India. Etherton immediately took over the Consul-General’s spy nature and gathered what information he could about the Bolsheviks as Bailey left for his grand journey. Etherton took advantage of the Indian merchants in the region, Kyrgyz nomads who crossed the Pamir, White Russian soldiers and officers crossing to and fro, and other locals to create a network that, quote:

“The system worked well and enabled me to keep in touch with almost every house and family of note in the country, and no move of importance could be made without it being known” - Peter Hopkirk, Setting the East Ablaze, pg. 97

Etherton and Bailey worked close together as Bailey got involved in the Osipov Uprising (it seems that Etherton tried to send him money for the rebellion) and Bailey was constantly trying to smuggle information to Etherton and vice versa. Given the technological limits of the region, it is hard to determine what actually got through the chaos that was Turkestan at this time. When he wasn’t trying to contact Bailey, he kept a close eye on whoever crossed the Russian-Xinjiang border and tracked down all of the Bolshevik’s agents in the region. He feared that the Russians would turn the region into a hotbed of sedition and rebellion. He was also on the lookout for anyone turning against the Bolsheviks and may have saved the life of White Russian Agent, Paul Nazaroff when he arrived in Kashgar after months of being on the run.

Etherton knew he couldn’t control the entire border by himself, so he pressured the Chinese government to increase their border security. The Bolsheviks pushed for China to open Bolsheviks consulates in Xinjiang and return all anti-Bolsheviks Russians to them, including the last Imperial Russian consulate in the region. Etherton used Islamophobia to stroke China’s fears over their Muslim population. He argued that if the Bolsheviks were allowed into Xinjiang they would stir up the Muslim population to rise up, similar to what was happening in Turkestan (even though we know Turkestan was far more complicated than that). Etherton also squashed any attempts to restart trade, and privately complained that without him, the Chinese would welcome the Russians with open arms. From this brief overview we can safely say that he was a bit of a bigot who engaged in xenophobia, like most British agents. And we can also say that the Chinese administrators had their own interests to protect and is it a surprise they didn’t always align with the xenophobic British agent?

The Anglo-Soviet agreement put an end to his operations in Xinjiang and he grumbly left the region in 1922. Like Bailey, it is hard to say that he truly accomplished anything beyond gathering some information (some of it highly questionable) and causing minor hindrances for the Bolsheviks. We must also consider Kashgar’s isolated nature and understand that a lot of what Etherton did was of his own initiative and he did not have the funds or support needed to create a truly effective spy network. A lot of it was Etherton grabbing who he could find and sending them into Turkestan to maybe come back with useful information. It also didn’t help that the Indian Office and the Foreign Office in London didn’t have a coordinated plan or approach when it came to Central Asia beyond: protect India. This disconnect may be why Britain’s agreement with the Soviets caught Etherton by surprise.

After Etherton left Kashgar, a subordinate would later replace him in Kashgar, denounced Etherton for cooking the financial books to hid personal expenses and even claimed that Etherton slept with prostitutes in Kashgar. An audit confirmed that he conducted financial shenanigans and was barred from working in the Indian Political Service ever again. But he could remain in military service as long as he reimbursed the government a 1000 rupees. He left the service a month later after being refused commendations for his work in Kashgar.

Resources

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/prisoners_of_war_russian_empire https://www.rbth.com/history/328902-pows-in-russia-wwi

Prisoners of War During World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special

youtube

Ottoman Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914-22 by Yucel Yanikdag

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/the-legacy-of-the-russian-revolution-on-the indian-national-movement-4930752/

Indian Revolutionaries in Central Asia by G. L. Dmitriev

Indian Nationalists’ Cooperation with Soviet Russia in Central Asia: The Case of M.P.T. Acharya by Lina Bernstein

Subversive Indian Networks in Berlin and Europe, 1914 – 1918: The History and Legacy of the Berlin Committee by Fredrik Petersson

Etherton at Kashgar: Rhetoric and Reality in the History of the “Great Game” by Daniel C. Waugh

Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin’s Dream of an Empire in Asia by Peter Hopkirk

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

Mission to Tashkent by F. M. Bailey

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #central asian civil wars #russian civil war #indian revolutionaries #wwi POWs #British spies #M. P. T. Acharya #Manabendra Nath Roy #Spotify #Youtube

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Episode 39 The Basmachi Organize in the Ferghana 1918-1920

The Basmachi, who are often thought of as the great bogeyman of Turkestan, spent most of 1918 and 1919 organizing themselves, mostly in the Ferghana, but there were a few units in the Khiva and Bukhara Emirates as well. The Basmachi originated in the aftermath of the 1916 Central Asian Revolt, but don’t really form the concept of the Basmachi until the fall of Kokand in 1918. By the end of 1918, there were 40 plus self-organized Basmachi units with three men emerging as effective enough leaders to unite the different groups: Irgush of Kokand, Madamin Bey whose family originated from Kokand royalty, and Ibrahim Bek who was organizing in Bukhara and was loyal to the Bukharan Emir. For this episode, we’ll focus on Irgush and Madamin in the Ferghana and save Ibrahim’s story for the greater story of the Bukharan Emirate

Irgush, who was the chief of Kokand’s militia, and Madamin both fled to Ferghana after the fall of the Kokand Autonomy and organized different branches of Basmachi. Irgush led the first attack against the Russians and by the end of 1918, he had raised an estimated 4,000 fighters (Olcott’s article). Madamin Bey enjoyed the support of the ulama, merchants, and moderate members of the Basmachi and the Ferghana Valley. By the end of 1918, both men had built minor fiefdoms for themselves, and it was clear that either they learned how to work together or risked destroying their own movement by fighting with each.

The Situation in Turkestan in 1919

In 1919, the Basmachi were facing three main problems: famine, the Bolshevik forces and the Jadids, and competition amongst each other.

As we’ve talked in our previous episodes, the Russian Civil War disrupted Turkestan’s food supplies, plunging the region into mass starvation while the Russians used armed groups to forcibly requisition food from the poor indigenous and Russian farmers. According to Jeff Sahadeo, an estimate 30% of the Ferghana population died in the famine, which is one of the reasons why it became a Basmachi stronghold. The more the Russians stole from the people, the more they fled into the Basmachi’s ranks. Some of these new recruits included Bashkir, Tatar, and Jadid reformers as well as ulama and conservative merchants. To try and counter this, the Russians switched the focus of their requisition efforts from the indigenous peasants to the Russian peasants while waiting for Red Army reinforcements.

For their part, the Basmachi focused on raiding military supply depots, burning warehouses and ginning factories, as well as attacking mines and oil wells. While the Russians tried to enforce mass arrests, they could never penetrate the Basmachi’s territory in the Ferghana. Instead, their efforts seemed to only help the Basmachi recruitment efforts. Yet, while the Basmachi and Russians were enemies, which didn’t prevent local units from making agreements with each other and it seems like deals were frequently made and broken. During the winter, when food was scarcer than it was already, the Basmachi would reach out to local Russian garrisons to share food and supplies. Once winter was over, the Basmachi would resume attacking Russian units and supplies.

While the Basmachi raided and fought with the Russians, their true enemy were the Jadids and other Muslim reformers. Given the Basmachi’s conservatism and belief in traditional Islam, they thought the Jadids were the greatest enemies of Turkestan. Ibrahim Bek, the leader of the Bukharan Basmachi, once wrote to a Red Army commander:

“Comrades, we thank you for fighting with the Jadids. I, Ibrohim-bek, praise you for this and shake your hand, as friend and comrade, and open to you the path to all four sides. I am also able to give you forage. We have nothing against you, we will beat the Jadids, who overthrew our power.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan pg. 88

Ibrahim’s hatred of the Jadids seems to have matched the Emir’s own views. One of his officials once wrote,

“Irgush-Bek of Kokand and Muhammad Amin of Margealn with their courage and fortitude have for some time been…exposing and killing Jadids and Bolsheviks” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 88

It seems he was still sore the Bukharan Jadids used Kerensky’s Provisional Government to curb his power.

Despite the Basmachi’s antagonism to all indigenous people who threatened traditionalism and conservatism, Turar Risqulov, the leader of the Musburo, actually reached out to Madamin Bey to negotiate an uneasy peace so they could address the raging famine. Madamin was open to negotiations and in the end, they agreed that Madamin’s forces would keep their arms and organization but would become local units of the Red Army. The local Russians allowed this until Frunze arrived and broke the agreement, killed Madamin, and focused on breaking the Basmachi as an alternative form of government in the Ferghana.

Finally, the Basmachi, who were really modern-day warlords, realized they needed to organize their forces and split up their territories before they ended up fighting with each other.

How Does One Organize a Guerilla Force?

The Basmachi were neither coordinated nor centralized and as more and more groups popped up and more and more people joined their ranks, Irgush and Madamin realized they needed to get properly organized. So, in March 1919, Irgush called a meeting of 40 Basmachi leaders to talk about a unified command. By the end of the meeting, Irgush was nominated as the Supreme Commander with two deputies: Kurshirmat, a well-known ally of Irgush, and Madamin. Each of the 40 leaders present received control over a separate territory to protect and administer with support from the ulama as their religious-political advisors.

This structure lasted until the summer of 1919 when Madamin went his own way. At some point in 1919, Madamin met the Russian commander, Konstantin Monstrov, commander of the (Russian) People’s Army in Turkestan. He was just one of the many armed organizations in the region at the time. They united their forces, Madamin’s guerilla unit transformed into the Muslim People’s Army, and together they created the Ferghana Provisional Government which would outlive both of its founders by a few months.

Madamin and Monstrov created a constituent assembly and drew up an eight-point platform to ensure freedom of speech, press, and education for the people. They called for an elected assembly and a five-member cabinet, although it’s doubtful if they ever held elections. Like the Kokand government, it failed to execute any meaningful policy, but gained political recognition and aid from abroad. This would lead to claims that this government was an evil British plot to take Turkestan away from the Russians, nullifying any independent action on the basis of Madamin and Monstrov. While it seems that the British were aware of Madamin and his work, sent him financial support, and even sent agents to negotiate with him, it’s doubtful they masterminded the creation of the Ferghana Provisional Government. The Soviets would make similar claims about the Turkestan Military Organization, a unit consisting of former Tsarist officials and generals. You can learn more about them and the Soviet’s claim by joining our Patreon and gaining access to our exclusive episode on Osipov’s Uprising.

Monstrov and Madamin knew they would not survive long if they did not defeat the Bolshevik forces in the region. Together, they took the city of Osh in September 1919 and were involved in the siege of Andijan where they encountered Frunze’s Red forces. He pushed them to the modern-day Kyrgyzstan-Xinjiang border. Frunze captured and executed Monstrov in January 1920 and Madamin surrendered his forces and formally joined the Bolsheviks in March 1920. He would die later that summer.

By the end of 1919, the Basmachi of the Ferghana attempted to organize their forces to improve their effectiveness. They recruited 20,000 fighters, organized a Provisional Government with a Russian army also aligned against the Bolsheviks, and were impeding the Bolshevik’s efforts to gather supplies and establish their hold on the Ferghana. Even though Madamin would die in 1920, he left behind an organized guerilla force under the command of men like Irgush, Ibrahim Bek, and others who would prove, not only to be a thorn in the side of Frunze and the Red Army, but also entice a certain former Ottoman general to join their cause and attempt to regain lost glory.

References

“The Basmachi or Freemen’s Revolt in Turkestan 1918-1924 by Martha B. Olcott

“Revolution in the Borderlands: The Case of Central Asia in a Comparative Perspective” by Marco Buttino

“Some Aspects of the Basmachi Movement and the Role of Enver Pasha in Turkestan” by Mehmet Shahingoz and Amina Akhantaeva

Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo

The “Russian Civil Wars 1916-1926 by Jonathan D. Smele

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

Central Asia: Aspects of Transition by Tom Everett-Heath

#queer historian #central asia #history blog #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #basmachi #ibrahim bek #madamin bey #guerilla warfare #Spotify

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

Turar Risqulov: A Kazakh Revolutionary Leader

Not only was Turar Risqulov instrumental in salvaging Central Asia after a near decade of civil war, establishing an indigenous government within Soviet Turkestan, and managing the Sovietization of Central Asia, but he was also a key member of the Soviet Union beyond Turkestan and formidable intellectual.

Turar and The Revolutions of Central Asia 1916-1918

Turar Risqulov was born in Semireche to a poor, but highly respect Kazakh family in 1894. His father worked for the Tsarist administration that managed the Semireche oblast. In 1904, his father and older brother had a dispute with one of the Tsarist administrators and murdered him. They were arrested and thrown into prison (Turar’s father would die in prison) and Turar moved in with his uncle in the town of Merke.

Turar would attend a Russo-native school, work for a Russian lawyer in 1910, before attending the agriculture school in Pishpek (not Bishkek). He doesn’t seem to have taken part in the Central Asia Revolt and responded to the Russian revolution by returning to his hometown of Merke and founding the Union of Revolutionary Kazakh Youth. When the Bolsheviks took over the Russian government following the October Revolution, Turar joined the Bolshevik administrative center for his uezd and focused on managing the 1918 famine.

The Russian solution was to requisition food from the population, claiming it would be redistributed as needed. The Russians did not trust the indigenous people with food or supplies, believing they were hoarding necessities and would refuse to share with their Russian counterparts. Risqulov despised the Russian’s attempts to take food, writing in May 1918, that the requisition squads were “drunk and violent…taking whatever suited them” and contributing to a “atmosphere of animosity” between indigenous party members and the Russians. (Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923, pg. 212) In November of 1918, he wrote to the Bolsheviks of the situation in the Avilyo Ota uezd where half of the 300,000 Kazakh peoples had starved to death. Despite this ghastly statistic, the Soviets in the area were still levying an additional tax of 5 million rubles from the survivors. Risqulov called it colonial exploitation, the very thing the Communist Party was supposed to be fighting against.

Turar Risqulov

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man sitting down, resting his chin in his hand. He has black hair and is wearing round, wire frame glasses, a white collared button down shirt, a grey vest, and a grey suit jacket. He has a small, black mustache]

Turar was rewarded for his hard work by being named Turkestan’s Commissar for Health. He moved to Tashkent, but remained focused on the famine, creating the Central Commission for Struggle Against Hunger in November 1918. In an attempt to apply Communist language to the deteriorating situation, he would write that the “starving mass, being today a backwards and darkened population, is the real proletariat of Turkestan. (Xavier Hallez, Turar Ryskulov: the Career of a Kazakh Revolutionary Leader, pg. 127) His efforts were stymied by Russian settlers and Bolsheviks who believed they were better suited to manage the food supply.

From 1916 to 1918, Risqulov develops a political ideology for the first time. He wasn’t involved with the Jadids or Alash Orda and it doesn’t seem like he was involved with the Central Asian Revolt of 1916. When the February Revolution occurred in 1917, Risqulov returns to his hometown and tries to create a political entity, but it doesn’t get a lot of traction and at some point, he becomes involved with the Soviets in the region. As we’ve mentioned in other episodes, Risqulov is a nationalist-Communist. Someone who engages and seems to believe in Communist theory and values while also engaging in nationalism and nation-building. It’s this dual approach that allows me to form a working relationship with Bolshevik agent Pyotr Kobozev and the various Muslim reformists in Turkestan.

The Musburo

As we discussed in our last episode, Pyotr Kobozev went to Turkestan to end the strife between the Russian Settlers and Bolsheviks and the indigenous peoples. His record is mixed, but one of his most significant decisions was creating the Central Bureau of Muslim Communists organizations of Turkestan, also known as the Musburo.

The purpose of the Musburo was to organize the indigenous population around Communist principles. They created a network of organizations and conferences all over Turkestan, providing the indigenous peoples an institutional framework to wield governmental power. Basically, a Communist approved Kokand government. The Musburo had the right to communicate directly with Moscow and ran their own paper, the Ishtirokiyun.

Risqulov was named the chairman of the Musburo in 1919. He used this position to further develop his own theory of anticolonial communism and to address the famine and ethnic violence ravaging Turkestan. He also used the Musburo and, later, the Muslim majority in the Central Executive Committee, to create a network of indigenous communists and allies, empowering the indigenous population. Despite this new power, Risqulov still experienced great resistance and pettiness from the Russian Soviets and Settlers, particularly around matters of food and supplies.

In 1919, Risqulov estimated that half of the population of Turkestan was starving as food production had declined by half from two years earlier. The local Soviets responded by diverting grain to Russian cities in Turkestan, dissolving the Old city soviet provision committee, and banning non-Russians from seeking food from any state organ. They also organized new provision brigades composed of Russian workers to confiscation, purchase, or trade food from the countryside and encourage peasants to increase their yields for the following year. These brigades had the right to take all food beyond the peasant’s personal needs without compensation.

Turar Risqulov offers words of caution, even though he approved of the brigades for Russian villages, “the city must understand the Muslim mass has a different psychology than the Russian peasants…[We] need to keep in mind the fanaticism of the population and the danger of approaching them.” He wanted to protect the Muslim villages from the brigades and avoid feeding the flames that was the Basmachi. The Soviets agreed to send Muslim agents to Muslim villages when possible but otherwise dismissed Risqulov’s warning. Predictably, the requisitions failed, and the Soviets were forced to disband the brigades in October 1919. This didn’t prevent increased Basmachi activity or Russian peasant uprisings.

Ideological Development

While Risqulov was trying to manage a famine and develop indigenous power during a civil war, he was also developing a nationalist-communist ideology that centered a Turkic nationality and nation-state.

Risqulov believed that the best future for Turkestan was a region wide national identity, one that could unite all peoples of Central Asia. He wanted to re-establish Turkestan as the Turkic Soviet Republic, an identity that could encompass all Central Asian nationalities. He also wanted to remain the Communist Party of Turkestan (KPT) to the Communist Party or Turkic Peoples. He wrote that the

“Turkic Soviet Republic should fully answer to the customary, historical, and interests of the international unification of toiling and oppressed peoples” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 111

He wanted the already existing Turkic republics to unite with Turkestan and hoped that future republics (such as Bukhara, Khiva, Afghanistan, etc.) would join the republic as well.

He believed in Communism but was also keen to put out when the Bolsheviks failed to live up to their ideals. In 1920, he would write Lenin that:

“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 Turkist officialdom and kulaks” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, 108-109

Turar pulled out the Bolshevik’s mentions of self-determination, equality, and anti-colonial rhetoric and used to shape his own ideology of anticolonialism. He wrote that:

“One of the most important conditions for the achievement of the goal [of Communism] advanced by the Communist Party is the self-determination of oppressed…peoples…. If Soviet Russia needs to show the working class of Western capitalist countries the correctness of its system, then it needs even more to show the oppressed East the proper restricting of the social life of Muslim society in Turkestan and elsewhere.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 110-111

He would go even further stating that:

the crude colonialism of Tsarism produced hate and distrust toward the ruling nation. If the proletariat of the ruling nation now scorns the proletariat of the oppressed nations, it will only produce more distrust” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 110-111

Turar was basically arguing that for Communism to thrive in former and current colonies, then it needed to focus on anti-colonialism, holding up Turkestan as an example of how Communism restored rights to indigenous actors and implemented policies that would address harms caused by colonialism while also building the capacity and infrastructure to have a thriving future. He believed in a united republic that honored individual communities, traditions, and histories.

Turar wasn’t the only person arguing this, but he didn’t have the organizational ability to unite with other groups and Muslim intellects who were writing the same things. No was Moscow keen to create organizations or opportunities for Turkestani Communists to meet and interact with their other Muslim counterparts.

Risqulov vs Frunze

Despite Risqulov’s and Kobozev’s best efforts, Moscow believed a sterner hand was needed to restore order to Turkestan. Thus, in October 1919, they sent the Turkestan Commission also known as the Turkkomissa. This Commission consisted of plenipotentiaries supported by General Mikhail Frunze’s Red Army and were meant to govern the region. At first, the Musburo were hopefully that the Commission would be a stronger ally against the Russian settlers, but it quickly became clear that the Commission planned on being the ultimate authority in the region. This stance was solidified with the arrival of General Mikhail Frunze in Tashkent in February 1920. Born in Pishpek (now Bishkek), he was considered as a Turkestani, even though for the indigenous peoples he was just another settler. He attacked the Musburo for their “narrow petty bourgeois nationalism” (Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 114) and suggested abolishing the KPT and starting new.

Turar Risqulov

[Image Description: A sepia tone photo of a man with thick dark hair and a short dark mustache. He is wearing a round, wire frame glasses. He is looking down at a white paper. He is wearing a white, collared button down shirt, a black tie, a black vest, a black shirt jacket, and a dark coat that sits on his shoulders.]

For Frunze, the nationalist communists had grown too emboldened and needed to be reminded of their place. For Risqulov and the others, it was a matter of addressing the continued colonization of Tsarist Russia wearing the guise of Bolshevism. A war developed between the Commission and the Muslim Communists with the Muslim Communists refusing to follow any order from the Commission unless it had been approved by the Musburo. Furthermore, Risqulov threatened to expulse the Commission since it violated territorial integrity of Turkestan.

Eventually Risqulov decided to take his case to Lenin himself. In May 1920, he organized and led a delegation to Moscow, followed by a delegation sent by the Turkestan Commission, and pleaded his case. Risqulov reminded Lenin of Turkestan’s significance to the Soviet’s Eastern policy and the importance of dismantling colonialism in former colonies. Risqulov demanded that Turkestan be named an autonomous state with rights to conduct its own foreign policy and print its own money amongst other things.

Lenin refused and the Politburo published a resolution on June 22, 1920, announcing that Turkestan was an autonomous part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Russia would manage its external relations, trade, and all military affairs and its internal economy had to operate within the framework of economic plans established by the center. The Commission was changed to the Turkestan Bureau (Turkburo) and would eventually become the Central Asia Bureau or Sredazburo in 1922. Finally, Moscow forced reelections in Turkestan, kicking Risqulov and his followers out of office. This was followed by a sweep of all nationalists in the region with nearly two thousand Europeans deported from Turkestan throughout the autumn of winter of 1920 into 1921. Risqulov, himself, was banished to a desk job first in Narkomnats, then Moscow (where he served as the Deputy People’s Commissar for Nationalities), and finally Baku.

Creation of Central Asian Nation State

Risqulov returned to Turkestan in 1922 because the Bolsheviks were terrified of the influence Turkish leader, Enver Pasha, and Bashkir nationalist Zeki Validov Togan were having on the people of Turkestan. Both leaders had sided with the Basmachi bringing them the legitimacy and organizational skills needed to defeat the Bolsheviks. While Enver Pasha would die in combat, Risqulov actually reached out to Togan to negotiate peace, but Togan refused to work with the Soviets and fled Turkestan.

Risqulov was named Chairman of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkestan ASSR) in 1922 and sat on the Sredazburo.1922-1924 would be spent “Sovietizing” Turkestan after close to a decade of war, famine, and ethnic violence. This involved revolutionary education and social norms, redistributing land, destroying all sources of nationalism and anti-Bolshevism, and integrating the economy.

For Turkestan, the economy equaled cotton. In September 1921, the Council of Labor and Defense established the Main Cotton Committee (Glavkhlopkom) which was responsible for buying the entire cotton harvest in the USSR and ensure nothing disturbed the cotton market. For Central Asia, this meant that cotton was its number one product and everything else should be sacrificed to produce as much cotton as possible. Additionally, the price of cotton was indexed to the price of grain, which never covered the costs of production. Risqulov wrote in 1923 that the Soviets should pay Turkestan world prices for its cotton, but this was ignored.

While the struggle of ultimate control between the indigenous people and their Soviet partners would continue for most of the 1920s, they also supported many of the Soviet’s initiatives and Risqulov was no different. While he did resist measures he thought were harmful to Turkestan (such as the cotton price indexing), he also worked hard to bring about a socialist utopia to the region. He supported educational opportunities, such providing funds so students could study abroad, expanding the communist party within Turkestan, liberating women, and land redistribution.

However, his power within Turkestan was curbed by a growing distrust from Moscow and a new crop of true Muslim Communists who weren’t tainted by any nationalist inclinations. This new cadre pushed out the old Jadids, Alash Orda, and Nationalist-Communists and later their disagreements would turn deadly.

Later Life and Execution

Risqulov spent the last decade of his life serving the Soviet Union in several different capacities. He seems to have served a term as the Komintern’s representative to Mongolia in 1925 before returning to Turkestan. From 1926-1927 he served on a commission to study the relationship between the central organs of the Russian Republic and the national autonomous republics. He tried one last time to advocate a nationalistic policy that would unite the Turkic republics, but it didn’t go anywhere. He was also involved with the building of the Turkestan-Siberian Railway, a 1,520 mm broad gauge railway that connects Central Asia to Siberia, starting in Tashkent, making a detour to Almaty in Kazakhstan, and ending at Novosibirsk.

His most tragic assignment was managing the collectivization and sedentarization of Kazakhstan in the 1930s. The goal was to end nomadism in Kazakhstan and end, not only private property in the Steppe, but disrupt the relationship the Kazakhs had with their own land. Many Kazakhs appealed to Risqulov to assist with the famine (one can imagine not only how nightmarish this must have been him for him, but also the bitter taste of déjà vu as he was once again force to address a famine partially caused by Russian mismanagement). Despite his attempts to diminish the brutal affects of collectivization, approximately 1.3 million Kazakhs died from the famine.

Turar Risqulov was arrested in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge and was executed in 1938. His crime was being a nationalist communist.

Turar Risqulov is a perfect example of the contradictory nature of Soviet intervention in Central Asia from 1917 to the 1930s. The Soviets allowed for indigenous participation and culmination of power in their system of government, but the indigenous person in question had to be loyal to Communism and Communism alone. So, while the Bolsheviks created opportunities for Risqulov to exercise real political power and allowed him to join their party and ideology, the Soviets also marginalized that power and later turned against it. As the leadership changed in Moscow and new policies were put in place, the indigenous peoples of Central Asia felt their power shrink. Soon those, like Risqulov, who were instrumental in salvaging Central Asia from the violence of the Russian Civil War were marked as the Soviet’s greatest enemies and eliminated. Whatever little freedoms Risqulov and others like him tried to carve out of the Soviet Union were eliminated as well, replaced by sycophancy and corruption.

References

“Turar Ryskulov: the Career of a Kazakh Revolutionary Leader during the Construction of the New Soviet State, 1917-1926” by Xavier Hallez

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

Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo

Central Asia: A History by Adeeb Khalid

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #turar risqulov #turkestan #kazakhstan #musburo #soviet union #Spotify

8 notes · View notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

The Musburo

1918 was a whirlwind for Turkestan. It started with the creation and then destruction of an independent government, the Kokand Autonomy, the rise of a violent guerilla movement in the Ferghana valley, a failed invasion of Bukhara, and the arrival of Pyotr Kobozev, a Bolshevik agent who wanted to end the war between the Russian settlers and the indigenous peoples. His solution was to break the settler’s monopoly on violence and power by allowing the indigenous peoples to armed themselves and to create spaces for indigenous political participation. He encountered stiff opposition from the Russian settlers and so, in March 1919, he created a separate governmental entity for indigenous Muslims only: the Central Bureau of Muslim Communists organizations of Turkestan, also known as the Musburo.

Reference

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

Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo

Central Asia: A History by Adeeb Khalid

#queer historian #history blog #central asia #central asian history #queer podcaster #spotify #musburo #turkestan #turar risqulov #pyotr kobozev #Spotify

0 notes

aoawarfare · 2 years ago

Text

The Struggle for Kazakh Autonomy in 1919

Last time we were with the Alash Orda, they were in Siberia, fighting alongside the White Siberian forces against the Bolsheviks. Supporters of Admiral Kolchak launched a coup and named him Supreme Commander of all White Forces. Kolchak dismantled all non-white sanctioned governments including the Alash Orda. This may not have been such a problem if the Alash Orda hadn’t burnt its bridge with the Bolsheviks. Oops.

It’s now 1919 and Kolchak is planning a new offensive.

The Unraveling of Kolchak

When Kolchak took over, his staff was optimistic that they would easily defeat the Bolsheviks, and at first it looked like they were right? Kolchak launched his spring offensive in March 1919 and despite not properly coordinating his offensive with Denikin’s forces in the south, he enjoyed considerable success.

Admiral Kolchak

[Image Description: A black and white photo of a man with short, receding hair, and no facial hair. He is staring at the camera. He is wearing a grew wool coat with large lapels.]

His battle plan was to launch an assault along his entire front with forces concentrated on the center through Ufa toward the middle of the Volga with a direct route to the Moscow. His forces considered of three armies: Gajda’s Siberian army of 45,000 men plus the Siberian Flotilla, General Khanzhin’s Western Army of 42,000 men, and the Dutov’s Orenburg and Urals forces consisting of 20,000 Cossacks.

He was facing the 2nd, 5th, 1st, and 4th armies consisting of 120,000 men plus the Volga-Kama military flotilla. Additionally, the Red Armies were able to receive reinforcements and supplies easier and faster than the White Armies.

Kolchak’s opening offensive pushed the Red armies to the Volga and Orenburg, but ran into supply and communication issues with the spring thaw. Additionally, their forces were spread across a 180,000 square mile territory that they now had to manage. The Red Armies received reinforcements in April and launched a new offensive in May. General Mikhail Frunze took advance of the White overreach and attacked the Western army, pushing it back to Ufa and exposing the Siberian Army’s flank. Frunze pushed his advantage and by Kolchak’s forces had been pushed beyond their point of departure by July.

The intrigue going on within Kolchak’s staff is beyond this podcast, but these defeats were made worse by a revolving door of generals and staff members plus mass desertion within the ranks. Kolchak reorganized his army in mid-summer and tried to engulf the Red army in a pincer move, but it failed because of poor coordination. This defeat was the final nail in the coffin for the allies who convinced Kolchak to be a lost cause. Despite this, Kolchak launched another failed offense in September.

By November Kolchak lost his headquarters in Omsk and was completely cut off from the Urals and Orenburg (where most of the Alash Orda were). Hundreds of men and generals fled, some heading towards the Caspian and then Persia and others fleeing towards Semirech’e and then Xinjiang. Those who remained with Kolchak undertook the Great Siberian Ice March heading towards Chita to unite with the Far Eastern (White) Army led by Ataman Semenov, who was known to be a tyrant and brute but supported by the Japanese. Those who disapproved of Semenov went into Manchuria. They used the Trans-Siberian Railroad as a guide, but were sometimes denied the use of the railroad by the Czechoslovak Legion. Again, this march is beyond this podcast, but as one can imagine, it was a nightmare for anyone who took part as they had to deal with Siberian winter, lack of supplies, and Red forces and various insurgents snapping at their heels. And they also had to cross the frozen Lake Baikal in sub-zero temperatures. Not fun.

Kolchak handing out medals

[Image Description: A black and white photo of uniformed soldiers gathered around long, wool coat wearing officers. They are mostly young man wearing furry hats or military covers. They are standing in a field of grass and the sky is clear.]

Kolchak, himself, stepped down from command on January 4th, 1920, giving command of South Russia to General Denikin and command of the Far East to Ataman Semenov. He was promised safe passage to the British military mission in Irkutsk, but was betrayed to the Bolsheviks by the Czech Legion. He was executed by a Cheka (precursor to the KGB) firing squad on the morning of Feb 7th, 1920, and dumped into the frozen Angara River.

Up a Creek Without a Paddle

Where did this leave the Alash Orda? Well, they were up a creek without a paddle.

The Alash Orda rejected the Bolshevik overtures in 1918 because they refused to recognize Alash Autonomy and here they were, not even a year later, supporting an ally that just dissolved their own government. There were different opinions on what to do next. Some, like Baitursynov, traveled to Moscow to meet with Lenin and joined the Kirghiz Military-Revolutionary Committee with Stalin writing:

“I did not and do not consider him a revolutionary-communist or a sympathizer; nevertheless, his presence in the Revolutionary committee is necessary” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 90

Others, like Bukeikhanov, stuck with the White Army, writing in February 1919 expressing a desire:

"of the Kirghiz, together with the valiant Siberian troops, to wage battle with the Bolsheviks, from whom the Kirghiz population suffered greatly in Semirech’e Oblast being completely destroyed by them.” He argued that the Kazakhs were “completely reliable, hardy material for the army, unsusceptible to the Bolshevik infection” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 68

He went ahead and formed cavalry units of Kazakh soldiers, similar to the Cossacks, who answered to Russian and Kazakh cadres. These soldiers would take part in all of Kolchak’s offenses in the Urals and were even praised for their efforts, one White officer writing:

“Dressed in our uniforms, with an orderly line of .375-caliber rifles thrown over their shoulder, in proper files they move, as if on parade, and give the impression of a genuine dashing cavalry.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 70

They were involved with some of the few victories the White Army experience during the summer such as the taking of the small Cherkasskoe garrison in August, but they could not stem the Red tide.

Instead, Kazakh forces in the Urals reached out the Red First Army in November, offering their services against the White Army. The Bolsheviks sensed an opportunity since the soldiers themselves “had no desire to bear the material and personal sacrifices, either for White Generals or for the Alash Orda leaders from the Kirghiz.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 50

From November 1919 onward, the Alash Orda army units in the Urals pursued a policy that “consisted on the one hand of formal agreements on paper with the Cossacks and on the other in showing them as much passive resistance as was feasible” - (Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 51). They offered to supply information and to support offensives against the White army. They wrote:

“The rapid destruction of the Urals front, in addition to liberating the Kirghiz from the violence of the Cossacks, has the vital significance that it opens up access to oil fields and therefore oil products, for which there is acute need in Soviet Russia. The liquidation of the Urals front, in addition, liberates the Astrakhan group, currently surrounded by the foe of all sides.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 53

The Red army, wanting to avoid violence at all costs, but wanted to neutralize all threatens in the region-even indigenous ones-demanded the:

“complete and total surrender of all weapons and other military property ought to be categorically demanded and, in the event of the surrender, must be immediately directed to the Dzhurun station for subsequent headquarters turnover.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 52

The Soviets wanted the Alash Orda to march their forces to the city of Uil and surrender there. The Alash refused since that march would leave their forces exposed to White retaliation. They wrote back:

“…the Urals front is not yet liquidated, and dozens of Kirghiz volosts still remain in the region of deployment of the Cossack troops. The Cossacks, embittered by our coming out on the side of Soviet power, have already begun to butcher our peaceful population. In addition to the southern volosts remaining within the confines of the deployment of Cossack units, as we have today received reliable information, individual Cossack detachments are lurking in the rear among us, perpetrating indescribable violence…We would consider it a crime to leave the population to the mercy of fate at such a moment and to set out with military units to Uil. We began and will continue the struggle against the Cossacks right on up until our oblast is finally cleansed of them. Upon finishing this operation, we can travel anywhere at all. We earnestly ask you to take all subsequent measures toward the most rapid liquidation of the Urals front…We likewise ask that the trophies acquired exclusively by the labors of our units be placed at the disposal of the Kirghiz revolutionary committee of Orenburg as items necessary for the Red Units formed.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 63

Frunze left the negotiations to the First Army, but provided a general program on how the surrender should be handled.

“In view of the intention expressed by the Western Sections of the Kirghiz government “Alash Orda” to surrender to the mercy and will of the Soviet government with all stocks of weapons and military supplies I order:

First. The Revolutionary council of the first or fourth army is to take on the leadership of the negotiations, depending on the location of detachments of Alash-Orda and their delegates Second. In the basis of the negotiations are to be laid (1) the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars on the Urals Cossacks of 7 December (2) Order of the Turkestan Front to the Urals Cossacks of 9 December and the Order of the Turkestan Front to the Orenberg Cossacks. Third. Negotiations are not to be dragged out, having appointed the shortest period possible for the surrender. Fourth. The dzhigits, upon disarmament, are to be deployed in the nearest army rear, subjects to political processing, and subsequently used in the capacity of reinforcements for troops active in the region of the Kirghiz Steppes initially only in detachments of auxiliary designation Fifth. Members of the government and command team are to be deployed in Ural’sk or Orenburg environs to isolate communication with the Kirghiz Steppe Sixth. The Right is to be given to elect a delegation composed of no more than five people for a journey to staff headquarters, and subsequently to Moscow. Seventh. Observance of the precise fulfillment of all of our terms of surrender” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 55

Frunze reported to Lenin on the same day, “the military significance of Alash-Orda is insignificant, but politically and economically their surrender is important, securing for us the entire steppe region to the shores of the Caspian” - (Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 55)

The Alash Orda rejected these demands, writing back:

“We believe that friends should meet one another with a salute, and not with the somber image…of the weak one bowing his head before the strong one. True democrats cannot and should not allow and permit themselves to humiliate others. If you nourish distrust toward us, we will prove to you the sincerity of our declaration in our actions, participating together with you in active struggle with common enemies-the Cossacks. For our population, the quickest possible expulsion of the Cossacks from the Kirghiz territories is of unquestionable and pressing interest, because every extra day that they stay here causes the population incalculable harm…After a brief welcome, your leaders will pass through the front of our troops, exchanging greetings with them, and we will pass through yours; after this unification from each side, two rank-and-file soldiers will move towards one another and greet and embrace one another, after which we can bring the units closer together and put them into whatever formation will be convenient, say a brief welcome, after which the troops will go wherever necessary…it would be appropriate to organize more ceremonially to make an impression on the morale of the population and of the fighters themselves. We await your help as soon as possible.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 56

Frunze wasn’t having any of it. He wrote back to the First Army:

“First. It is permitted, in conformity with the situation, not to insist on the immediate directing of all members of the Alash Orda government and of the command to Orenburg, having taken these several of the most authoritative persons only for communications and as hostages. Second. It is permitted to use immediately armed units of Alash Orda, having transformed them at your discretion and having secured hostages in the event of treachery. Third. Use the existing situation for the quickest possible fulfillment of this task of taking control of the oil fields region and cutting off paths of retreat to the East of the foe’s Ural Army units. Fourth. Impose as a duty on the former Kirghiz government the immediate formation in the region of Uil foodstuffs bases of transport necessary for the movement of units” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 59

Back in Semipalatinsk, the Alash Orda faced pressure from local non-Alash allied organizations and movements to ally with the Bolshevik to remain relevant. Frunze added to that pressure by taking Semipalatinsk on December 1st after the local organizations led a local uprising.

On December 21st, the Alash Orda published an official decree:

“In view of the fact that the rights of the peoples of Russia are most fully ensured by Soviet power, that the well-known declaration of the rights of peoples issued by the Council for People’s Commissars has been implemented with respect to many of the peoples of Soviet Russia and has been confirmed once again during the entry of Soviet troops onto the territory of Siberia in the Declaration of the chairmen of the Central Committee, the Council of People’s Commissars, the Oblast committee of Alash Orda resolves:

(1) to support Soviet power with all means and efforts, bearing freedom, equality, brotherhood, and light into all the unfortunate dark corners of many-language Russia, to welcome the appearance on Alash territory (the Kirghiz autonomy) of Soviet troops, as liberators from the tyranny of the reaction monarchistic dictatorship." - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 74

By end of December the Bolsheviks informed the Alash Orda that their proposal was unacceptable rejected and that:

“We do not know and do not recognize any Alash Orda government whatsoever and cannot enter into treaty agreements with them as such…the government is to be dissolved. The decree on amnesty remains in full force.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 60

The Alash Orda held on hope that by demonstrating their value as military allies, they could remain political equals. So, on December 27th, the Alash Orda launched an attack against Kyzyl-Kuga, capturing it and the Iletsk Corps staff HQ. The Cossacks tried to liberate Kyzyl-Kuga but were repulsed. The Alash Orda took prisoner the entire corps staff HQ, 500 Cossacks and officers, one artillery piece, fifteen machine guns, and many rifles. The First Army sent a reconnaissance detachment to Kyzyl-Kuga on December 29th. The Alash Orda sent word of their victory to the Bolsheviks on January 5th, 1920, claiming that “In such a manner, having participated actively in the struggle with the enemies of Soviet power in fact.” They argued that a merger of forces was natural “for in one krai, there cannot be two masters” (Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 62)

The problem was the Bolsheviks didn’t know what to do with the Alash Orda. On the one hand they were local intelligentsia who could be put to good use in furthering the Bolshevik cause but on the other hand they were a nationalistic political movement that created its own government, rebuffed the Bolsheviks, and allied themselves with the White. In January, the Alash Orda and Bolsheviks met and agreed that until an All-Kirghiz Council could be convened to determine the future of the Kazakh people, the government of the Steppe would fall to the Revolutionary-Military Committee, which contains members of the Alash Orda such as Baitursynov and the military units would merge with the Third Tatar Strelets Regiment. On January 21st this agreement was issued in a formal declaration:

“…only one resolution is possible. Until the All-Kirghiz Congress, to be convened this June and being the only body that can elect a lawful Soviet government of all of Kirghizia, the Kirghiz oblasts shall be administered by a Military Revolutionary Committee appointed by the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR. For this reason, a merger of Alash Orda with the Revolutionary Committee is possible only when the Council of Peoples’ Commissars includes certain Alash Orda members in the composition of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of Kirghizia.” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 65

And yet the Military-Revolutionary Committee decided not to appoint Alash Orda members to the committee because of their bourgeois backgrounds and distrust and dislike from other soviet Kazakhs. Instead, a commission was created to deal with property and trophies and by the spring and summer of 1920, the property, arms, and units of the Alash Orda were transferred into the disposition of the Kirghiz Military-revolutionary committee and army.

In February 1920, they arrested several Alash Orda members, sparking outrage from 800,000 people of the Kazakh oblast, the Kirghiz Revolutionary Committee, and the chair of the Bashkir Military-Revolutionary Committee, Z. Validov, who went all the way to Stalin and Lenin, begging them to issue a clear decree on the fates of the Alash Orda.

On March 9th, 1920, the Kirghiz Military-Revolutionary Committee issued the following statement:

“1. Alash Orda calling itself a government, and the zemstvo institutions subordinated to it, shall be liquidated as not being prescribed by the Constitution of the RSFSR. All laws, instructions, and orders issued by it during its existence shall be considered invalid. All property and currency, arms, military munitions and equipment shall be subject to transfer to the corresponding commissariats and departments of the krai, oblast, and uezd revolutionary committees by ownership.

All employees shall fall under disposition of the corresponding commissariats and mobilized by their specialization and shall be maintained on special account of the commissariat of internal affairs.

2. The Spiritual Administration existing in Ural’sk Oblast (the Commission for the administration of spiritual affairs attached to the Western section of Alash Orda) with all subordinated spiritual bodies shall be eliminated, the files and property transferred to the jurisdiction of the suitable uezd and volost soviets. Moreover, spiritual authorities selected by their respective societies shall be prohibited from fulfilling religious needs of the citizens” - Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 78

By the end of March, former members of the Alash Orda were no longer persecuted, but, except for a handful such as Baitursynov, could not participate in government work. Frunze defeated the White Army in March and rehabilitated the Kazakhs and Cossacks who once fought for the Whites. In late spring of 1920, the restrictions against the former Alash Orda members were lifted and some were allowed to work in different government bodies.

The Alash Orda started 1919 allied with a monarchist movement that refused to acknowledge their right to autonomous government. They started 1920 with their government disbanded and all power in the hands of the Bolshevik government. And yet, they held out hope that they could work with the Bolsheviks to enact their reforms.

References

Central Asia: a New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present by Adeeb Khalid

Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement by Dina A. Amanzholova

The “Russian” Civil Wars: 1916-1916 by Jonathan D. Smele

#queer historian #central asia #central asian history #history blog #alash orda #kazakhstan #admiral kolchak #siberian white army #russian civil war #central asian civil wars #red army #Russian red army #russian white army #Spotify

2 notes · View notes