dreams melted into air, 1919–29Tsar removed the exemption from national service enjoyed by Turkistan’s
Muslims and forcibly conscripted them to replace Russia’s losses on the
Western Front. The widespread protests that followed quickly turned into a
war for independence and the Russian authorities, backed by armed settlers,
responded with bloody repression. Between June 1916 and October 1917 as
many as one and a half million Central Asian people were killed.
The October Revolution of 1917 raised hopes that the Bolshevik govern-
ment would agree to self-rule in Turkistan and the Caucasus. With Russia
on the brink of collapse, Lenin adopted a policy of ‘feigned benevolence’,
publicly holding out the prospect of self-determination until the Red Army
was strong enough to crush the revolt. 27 In preparation for the showdown,
Communist commissars were dispatched to the region to establish and arm
local soviets. Encouraged by Lenin’s promise of self-rule, in December 1917
the Turkistan Extraordinary Conference declared Turkistan an autono-
mous region with Kokand as its capital and over the next few months the
Tatars, Kurds and Azeris followed suit. Just over a year later, however,
Lenin sent thousands of troops into the region to crush the secessionist
movements. The lightly armed rebels stood no chance. When Kokand fell
in March 1919, more than 14,000 of its inhabitants were massacred and
mosques, libraries and bazaars destroyed.
The fall of Kokand led to the formation of the Turkistan National
Liberation Movement, the forerunner of the Basmachi Movement, an
organization dedicated to the establishment of an independent Turkistanian
state. The movement, however, was split ideologically as well as by tribal
and regional differences, while its army was poorly armed and trained.
Some eight months after the fall of Kokand the Red Army, backed by
Russian settlers known as Jadidis, besieged Khiva. 28 When the city fell
in February 1920 the Khan was deposed and the region renamed the
Khwarazmian Peoples’ Republic. In September of the same year Bukhara
was taken by storm and Muhammad ‘Alim, Khan of Bukhara, fled to
Ferghana and eventually to Afghanistan, where Amir ’Aman Allah Khan
gave him sanctuary.
By the autumn of 1921 the basmachis were on the brink of defeat, only
for the situation to change dramatically with the defection of a Turkish
general, Enver Pasha, who had been a leader of the Young Turk Revolution
of 1908. Following the coup of 1913 he became the most powerful of the
Triumvirate of army officers who ruled Turkey during the Great War, but
he fled after the signing of the Armistice of Mudros, which ended Turkey’s
involvement in the Great War. He was then sentenced to death in abstentia
for having ordered the mass deportation and expulsion of Armenians,