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 CENTRAL ASIA

What is the legacy of Soviet colonialism in Central Asia? How can nation states
be formed in the twenty-first century? Does political Islamism pose a threat to
the secular regimes of Central Asia?
The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the creation of five states in Central
Asia which had never before existed. Over the last decade, the region’s leaders
have attempted to forge nations and carve countries from a complex political,
historical and sociological mix. This pioneering collection examines the radical
transition Central Asia experienced in the twentieth century – from Russian
colonialism, through Soviet hegemony, to a sudden and largely unsought inde-
pendence. The shifting approach to identity construction during the Soviet
period continues to have crucial relevance today. Soviet educational and institu-
tion-building initiatives have provided the ideological, social and governmental
building blocks manipulated by the leaders of the new independent states. Their
success can be measured by the speed with which the nation states have been
constructed, the political stability that has been prevalent in all but one of the
five countries, and the ease with which institutional – if not constitutional –
continuity has been maintained.
Following President George W. Bush’s declaration of a ‘War on Terrorism’
and the subsequent ousting of the Taleban regime from power in Afghanistan,
the strengths and policies of Central Asia’s regimes have become matters of
geopolitical significance. This collection assesses these policies against the back-
drop of a Soviet legacy and the vigorous attempts of these countries to build
secular states within the Islamic world.

Tom Everett-Heath is editor of the Middle East Economic Digest.

 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH FORUM
Series Editor: Shirin Akiner, School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London

Other titles in the series:

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE HEART OF ASIA

CENTRAL ASIA A History of Russian Turkestan and the
Edited by Shirin Akiner, Sander Tideman & John Hay Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest
Times
QAIDU AND THE RISE OF THE
Frances Henry Skrine and Edward Denison Ross
INDEPENDENT MONGOL STATE IN
CENTRAL ASIA THE CASPIAN
Michal Biran Politics, Energy and Security
Edited by Shirin Akiner & Anne Aldis
TAJIKISTAN
Edited by Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Frederic Gare ISLAM AND COLONIALISM
& Shirin Akiner Western Perspectives on Soviet Asia
Will Myer
UZBEKISTAN ON THE THRESHOLD
OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: AZERI WOMEN IN TRANSITION
TRADITION AND SURVIVAL Women in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
Islam Karimov Farideh Heyat

TRADITION AND SOCIETY IN THE POST-SOVIET DECLINE OF

TURKMENISTAN: GENDER, ORAL CENTRAL ASIA
CULTURE AND SONG Sustainable Development and
Carole Blackwell Comprehensive Capital
Eric Sievers
LIFE OF ALIMQUL
A Native Chronicle of Nineteenth Century PROSPECTS FOR PASTORALISM IN
Central Asia KAZAKSTAN AND TURKMENISTAN
Edited and translated by Timur Beisembiev From State Farms to Private Flocks
Edited by Carol Kerven
CENTRAL ASIA
Aspects of Transition
Edited by Tom Everett-Heath
CENTRAL ASIA
Aspects of transition

Edited by Tom Everett-Heath

 First published 2003
by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2003 Tom Everett-Heath editorial matter and selection; individual chapters the
contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the
accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal
responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-45135-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-45808-7 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–700–70956–8 (hbk)
ISBN 0–700–70957–6 (pbk)
 CONTENTS

Notes on contributors vii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1
T O M E V E R E T T- H E AT H

1 Turkfront: Frunze and the development of Soviet counter-insurgency

in Central Asia 5
ALEXANDER MARSHALL

2 The Kokand Autonomy, 1917–18: political background, aims and

reasons for failure 30
PA U L B E RG N E

3 Ethno-territorial claims in the Ferghana Valley during the process of

national delimitation, 1924–7 45
A R S L A N KO I C H I E V

4 Land and water ‘reform’ in the 1920s: agrarian revolution or social

engineering? 57
GERARD O’NEILL

5 Nation building in Turkey and Uzbekistan: the use of language and

history in the creation of national identity 80
ANDREW SEGARS

v
 CONTENTS

6 Nation building and identity in the Kyrgyz Republic 106

RO B E RT L O W E

7 The use of history: the Soviet historiography of Khan Kenesary

Kasimov 132
H E N R I F RU C H E T

8 Soviet development in Central Asia: the classic colonial syndrome? 146

ALEX STRINGER

9 Environmental issues in Central Asia: a source of hope or despair? 167

L A R S JA L L I N G

10 Instability and identity in a post-Soviet world: Kazakhstan and

Uzbekistan 181
T O M E V E R E T T- H E AT H

11 The Uzbek Mahalla: between state and society 205

E L I S E M A S S I C A R D A N D TO M M A S O T R E V I S A N I

12 ‘Fundamentalism’ in Central Asia: reasons, reality and prospects 219

P E T R A S T E I N B E RG E R

13 Water: the difficult path to a sustainable future for Central Asia 244
KAI WEGERICH

Bibliography 264
Index 283

vi
 N OT E S O N C O N T R I BU TO R S

Paul Bergne served for many years as a member of HM diplomatic service,

working mainly in the Middle East, during which time he studied Arabic at
the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies and Persian and Turkish at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He ended
his overseas career as ambassador to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Since his
retirement in 1996, he has been working in the Central Asian and Persian
sections of the World Service of the BBC, as well as teaching and
researching the early Soviet period of Central Asia at St Antony’s College,
Oxford.
Tom Everett-Heath graduated from Cambridge University with a BA in
History. He subsequently earned an MA in Middle Eastern Area Studies from
the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Since
1998, he has been working for the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) in
London and the United Arab Emirates. He is currently MEED’s editor.
Henri Fruchet, a native of Montreal, earned a BA in History and East Asian
Studies from McGill University, and an MA from the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, where he focused on Central Asian
and Chinese history.
Lars Jalling was a post-graduate student at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London.
Arslan Koichiev is an historian and a journalist, currently with the BBC.
Areas of study include the history of the Khokand khanate and Kyrgyz docu-
mentary sources of the nineteenth century. He also writes on contemporary
Central Asian affairs.
Robert Lowe completed an MA in Asian History at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London, in 1999. After an internship at
the Kyrgyz Embassy in London, he worked for the Times of Central Asia news-
paper in Kyrgyzstan. He now works for the Middle East Programme at the
Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

vii
 C O N T R I BU TO R S

Alexander Marshall graduated from Glasgow University in 1996 and the

School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London in
1997. He is currently completing a Ph.D. thesis at Glasgow University on the
Asiatic Section of the Russian General Staff, 1800–1917. His interests include
the military history of Eurasia, the steppe nomads, and Russian foreign policy
towards the steppe frontier and the Far East.
Elise Massicard graduated in political science and turcology in Paris and
Berlin. She wrote her MA thesis on the Mahalla in Uzbekistan, and is
currently working on her Ph.D. thesis on Alevi collective identity in Turkey
and Europe. She is a fellow of the Franco-German research centre in Berlin.
Gerard O’Neill completed a BA at Manchester University in Turkish and
Persian languages and literatures, and Turkish/Ottoman and Iranian history.
Subsequently he earned his MA in Turkish and Central Asian history, politics
and society at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London. He has worked as an interpreter, translator and researcher on a
variety of projects connected with the Turkish/Turkic world and the Middle
East. Currently, he is focusing on late Ottoman–Iranian relations.
Andrew Segars, after graduating from the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, in 1997 with an MA in Modern Turkish Area
Studies, spent nearly two years as a research student and lecturer at Almaty
Abai State University in Kazakstan. He is currently Country Director for the
American Councils for International Education in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Petra Steinberger studied politics, journalism and philosophy at Munich
University and has an MA in Middle Eastern Area Studies from the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She currently works as a
journalist for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and is editor of
Die Finkelstein-Debatte (Piper, 2001).
Alex Stringer was a post-graduate student at the School of Oriental and
African Studies, Universiy of London.
Tommaso Trevisani studied philosophy and social anthropology in Rome,
Berlin and Oxford. His interests include state–society relations in post-Soviet
Central Asia, with a particular focus on the Ferghana Valley region.
Kai Wegerich completed an MA in Social Anthropology & Political History at
University College London and an M.Sc. in Development Studies at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Currently, he
is a Ph.D. student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, focusing on
water management in Central Asia. His research interests include water
management, environmental scarcity, social adaptive capacity, institutional
change and conflict. Wegerich has worked as a consultant for the
International Water Management Institute on a project addressing the
sustainability of water user associations in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

viii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This collection of essays was conceived at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, in a seminar on Central Asian history led by Dr
Shirin Akiner. Its contents have been inspired by the enthusiasm for Central
Asian history instilled by Dr Akiner: most of the contributors have benefited
directly from her teaching, and all have benefited from her wisdom. Without the
advice, help and support of Dr Akiner, this work would not have been started or
completed.
Since its inception, this book has been through any number of permutations,
and responsibility for editing has passed through different hands. Although she
may not recognize its final shape, the efforts of Petra Steinberger, in particular,
have been invaluable, and I am most grateful to her.
I should like to thank my father, John Everett-Heath, who was kind enough to
read and give his opinion on a number of the chapters. My thanks also go to
Rachel Saunders at RoutledgeCurzon for both her assistance and her patience.
Lastly, I should like to thank Claudia Pugh-Thomas, who not only gave
constant guidance but also read and sub-edited the entire work, as well as
offering tireless encouragement.

Tom Everett-Heath, October 2002

ix
 INTRODUCTION

Tom Everett-Heath

On 1 March 2002, a website focusing on Uzbek news ran two headlines: ‘Kyrgyz
and Uzbeks continue talking over frontier’ and ‘Uzbek national song festival
ends in Tashkent’.
The first story detailed the slow progress made in establishing the boundary
between Kyrgyzstan and its southwestern neighbour. After two years of hard
work, a mere 290 kilometres of the 1,400-kilometre-long frontier had been
agreed. The Uzbek border was not alone in needing definition: Kyrgyzstan had
only signed agreements on the delimitation of its frontier with two states, China
and Kazakhstan, and even preliminary consultations had not been opened over
what was likely to be its most heavily disputed flank, the border with Tajikistan.
The second story focused on Uzbekistan’s first festival of national variety
songs – ‘Aziz ona yurtim navolari’ (Melodies of the Motherland) – in which partici-
pants performed modern compositions based on folk songs and classical music
‘revised’ by Uzbek poets and composers.
The news stories highlight two of the most important themes running through
this collection of essays: the modern redefinition of frontiers underlines the polit-
ical importance of the Soviet legacy in Central Asia; the complex methods by
which identity has been negotiated during and after the region’s Soviet experience
is illustrated by the contemporary need for national song festivals.
A decade old, the five states of Central Asia that emerged from the ruins of
the Soviet Union – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan – are struggling still with their colonial past. The lines drawn on maps
by the Soviets during the 1920s – which were initially adopted at independence
in 1991 – are being redrawn, throwing into sharp relief the importance of the
original Soviet methodology, its objectives and the way in which those objectives
have shaped the political and economic development of the region.
Equally important to any understanding of modern Central Asia are the
Soviet attempts to forge national identities in the 1920s where no nations had ever
existed. Some of the same tools, and many new ones, have been taken up by the
regimes that assumed control a decade ago. The science or, perhaps, art (as in the
case of national folk songs) of identity construction and nation building is once
again of crucial importance to the very survival and stability of the region’s states.

1
 T O M E V E R E T T- H E AT H

Also significant is the exceptional speed and extent of Central Asia’s period of
transition. In Kazakhstan, for example, communities were transformed from
nomadic animal husbandry to heavy industrial labouring within a single genera-
tion. Perhaps only the indigenous inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, after the
discovery of oil, experienced such a rapid shift from the pre-agricultural to the
post-modern. In contrast to the Arabian experience, however, that of Central Asia
was complicated by the imposition of Soviet ideology. More importantly, the tran-
sition was controlled by external forces – the over-arching demands of Moscow –
as opposed to being a semi-organic process engendered by domestic needs.
This century of upheaval contains the defining forces of contemporary
Central Asia. Just as the very existence of five independent states is the direct
result of the early Soviet nationalisation programme, so can many of the major
issues facing each of these states find roots either in the period of Soviet rule, or
in the indigenous reaction to that experience. The legacy extends far beyond the
political or the macroeconomic: another headline of 1 March 2002 read,
‘Kazakhstan: Study says fallout from nuclear tests affected three generations’.
The impact of Soviet nuclear experiments in Semipalatinsk is as serious an issue
today as the environmental crisis in Uzbekistan that has resulted from Soviet
attempts to establish a cotton monoculture.
The trials of independence are inextricably linked to the region’s colonial
past, a fact which encourages the chronological division of the essays in this
collection: seven chapters focus on the years of Soviet rule, the other six concen-
trate on the post-independence period. The first group includes a case study by
Arslan Koichiev of the Soviet approach to national delimitation during the
1920s. Then, as today, complex issues of ethnicity and the tessellated nature of
settlements and enclaves provoked fierce controversy. That these borders are
once again under dispute is a reflection not only of the arbitrary nature of the
previous attempt at delimitation, but also of how the ideological connection
between ethnicity and nationalism – first introduced in the 1920s – has taken
root and flourished.
Two detailed examinations analyse indigenous resistance to Soviet hegemony.
Alexander Marshall explores the Soviet response to the Basmachi uprising, which,
despite a lack of political coherence, posed such a considerable threat to the
Revolution in the east that the military establishment was forced to develop an
entirely new approach to counter-insurgency. The legacy of the Bashmachi move-
ment, having rapidly entered the realms of folklore, was fought over and
rewritten by Soviets, nationalists and separatists alike. Equally, the Kokand
Autonomy, a brief and doomed attempt to establish an independent government
within present-day Uzbekistan, has become an historical battleground, as
discussed by Paul Bergne.
Other chapters deal directly with the Soviet impact on the development of
the region. Gerard O’Neill looks closely at the transformation of landownership.
The diktats of Marxist-Leninist thought – and later the realpolitik of Stalinism –
demanded the abolition of traditional structures of land tenure and the forma-

2
 I N T RO D U C T I O N

tion of vast collective farms. The re-engineering was as much a social as an agri-
cultural process, but it paved the way for the subsequent drive for massive cotton
production, particularly in Uzbekistan. Fuelled by the political will and the
economic needs of the core – Moscow – large parts of Central Asia underwent
the most radical of transformations, the results of which are still felt keenly
today. The micro and macro benefits of a cotton monoculture continue to be
fiercely debated, and the associated impact on the environment and patterns of
water use has become a highly contentious issue.
Alex Stringer offers a broad assessment of colonial influence, significantly
focusing on the benefits to the Central Asian republics of inclusion in the
broader Soviet superstructure. Tempting as many in the West have found it to
identify only the negative elements of the Soviet period, rule from Moscow
brought massive advances to the availability and quality of healthcare and
education, as well as dramatically developing intangibles, such as the emancipa-
tion of women.
The Soviet authorities also actively sought social transformation through
ambitious identity-building programmes. While boundaries were used to carve
Russian Turkestan into five discrete Soviet Socialist Republics, initiatives were
launched to create and shape national identity within these states. Although the
ultimate goal was to be the emergence of New Soviet Man, the efforts made
during the 1920s and 1930s provided the foundations upon which more recent
attempts at nation building have been based. Andrew Segars offers a compelling
comparison of the Soviet use of history and language to forge a new framework
for identity construction in Uzbekistan with contemporaneous efforts by Atatürk
to build a strong concept of ‘Turkishness’ from the ruins of the Ottoman
Empire.
Henri Fruchet tackles a similar theme from a different perspective. His study
of the historiography of Khan Kenesary Kasimov illustrates the importance of
doctrinal orthodoxy within Soviet Central Asia and the urgency with which
accounts and analysis of the recent past were moulded to suit the ideologies of
the present.
Many of the instruments used by the early Soviets to build national identity,
such as the rewriting of history and legend and the reworking of custom and
tradition, have been taken up again by the post-independence regimes. Robert
Lowe examines the process in Kyrgyzstan where semiotics and ‘ethnosymbols’
have been used by the regime of President Akaev with both sophistication and
simplicity. From the inclusion of tent-shaped designs on the national flag,
symbolic of the nomadic past, to the country’s preoccupation with the mythical
hero Manas, the state has sought to construct a new Kyrgyz identity.
In Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and other post-independence Central Asian states,
one of the greatest barriers to successful nation building has been ethnic diver-
sity; when consensus is lacking, attempts to construct national institutions can be
more divisive than cohesive. In Kazakhstan, the continued presence of a
substantial number of Russians, particularly in the north of the country, has

3
 T O M E V E R E T T- H E AT H

proven destabilising and disruptive to attempts to build a Kazakh nation and

state. Tom Everett-Heath offers a case study that illustrates how clumsy identity
construction in Kazakhstan and the perceived threat of radical Islamism in
Uzbekistan – together with deteriorating economic conditions and threatening
demographic trends – could prove to be the fault-lines along which internal
tension and instability might emerge.
The issue of radical Islamism is examined more closely by Petra Steinberger,
who argues that the term ‘fundamentalism’ is misunderstood and misused, and
that the Central Asian approach to Islam on both state and individual levels
remains a crucial tool of identity construction as well as an instrument of
authority, control and political opposition.
Elise Massicard and Tommaso Trevisani contribute a focused study of a
different use of tradition for the support of the state and the extension of its influ-
ence into the private sphere of life in Uzbekistan. The memory of the Mahalla has
been reawoken and is being warped into an instrument of rule through which the
central government’s authority has been legitimised and enhanced.
The remaining two essays of the collection dealing with the post-Soviet
period focus on the environmental challenges faced by the region. The first, by
Lars Jalling, addresses issues on a broad front: the impact of nuclear tests in
Kazakhstan; soil erosion; the desiccation of the Aral Sea; and the ways in which
environmental issues have been politicised. Kai Wegerich offers a detailed and
sophisticated analysis of the politics and practicalities of water usage in the Amu
Darya and Syr Darya basins and the future of the Aral Sea.
The core themes of Central Asia’s decades of transition are addressed from
multiple directions due to the diverse subject matter of these essays and the
eighty-year period covered by the collection. Two simple conclusions can be
extracted. The Soviet legacy – be it political, economic, social, ideological or
environmental – is crucial to an understanding of contemporary Central Asia.
More importantly, this legacy and the reactions to it – the fruits of transition –
will be the key determinants of the region’s future.

4
 1
TURKFRONT
Frunze and the development of Soviet
counter-insurgency in Central Asia

Alexander Marshall

The revolt begins, 1916–19

The Russian Civil War witnessed a sudden upsurge of separatist and anarchist
guerrilla movements in many parts of the old Tsarist Empire, but in few areas
was one so pronounounced as in Central Asia, where groups of mounted raiders
– Basmachi, to use the local term, meaning ‘bandit’1 – conducted a sporadic and
violent struggle against the Soviet authorities for over ten years. During this
period of violent civil unrest, the nascent Red Army was driven to collate and
assess both its own civil war experience of high manoeuvrability (militarily and
politically) and some of the practical experiences of its Tsarist predecessor to
produce a formula that would enable the settlement of this territory. The
methods of one man in particular – the future ‘Soviet Clausewitz’, M. V. Frunze,
himself a son of settlers in Central Asia – provided the Reds with the key to
achieving victory against their disorganised, yet elusive, foes.2 This was a key that
would notably elude the Soviet Army over sixty years later when it found itself
fighting a similar opponent in Afghanistan. The reason for the loss of this key
may lie ironically with Frunze himself, whose lasting legacy to Soviet military art
was that of the ‘Unified Military Doctrine’ – a doctrine of flexibility in his own
day that came to exhibit increasing intellectual rigidity under later proponents.
The crisis that arose in the Tsarist system in Central Asia in 1916 had a
considerable prehistory, stretching back to the nineteenth century. Ever since the
Andijan uprising of 1898, the indigenous population of Central Asia had
expressed increasing dissatisfaction with a corrupt bureaucratic regime that first
drove them into a cotton monoculture, with attendant economic complications,
and then repeatedly and openly seemed to steal from them via the expropriation
of ‘surplus lands’ to Russian settlers. This latter movement resulted in yearly
famines between 1910 and 1913.3 Fears of future rebellions led by fanatical
mullahs grew and led to something of a ‘siege mentality’ amongst the Russian
population – every Russian settler was issued with a Berdan rifle,4 and adminis-
trative posts came to resemble miniature forts.5 When, in 1916, the manpower
crisis on the Eastern Front led to the call-up of the Central Asians to serve as

5
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

labour workers behind the front lines, these fears proved justified as a vicious
rebellion exploded amongst the Sarts, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and Turkomen, swiftly
assuming the aspect of a savage ethnic conflict. Russian settlers were killed, their
wives raped, their houses burnt, in an uprising so violent that Cossack and
artillery units had to be withdrawn from the Eastern Front to help deal with it.6
Whilst the Russians, under Governor-General Kuropatkin, eventually dealt with
this revolt using their own extreme methods, several leaders emerged (notably
Dzhunaid Khan) who were to head the roving Basmachi bands in future years.7 A
condition of general anarchy was created which the Bolsheviks took several years
to overcome.
The stability of the civil state was further eroded by no less than four political
upheavals over the following three years: the February Revolution saw the power
of Governor-General Kuropatkin replaced by the dual authority of a Provisional
Government committee and Soviet in Tashkent; Muslim congresses called by
Muslim nationalists in May led to the formation of the Muslim Provisional
Government of Autonomous Turkestan in Kokand in November 1917; the
Bolsheviks, meanwhile, having set up their own government that same month in
Tashkent in opposition to their Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary (SR)
rivals, launched an attack on Kokand which culminated in an infamous pogrom
on 18 February 1918. They were then themselves challenged by the ‘January
Events’ of the Osipov rising in Tashkent in 1919 before the final arrival of
Frunze and the Turkkommissia. This hurricane of events played a large part in
the formation of the Basmachi revolt, and figures prominently in the Soviet and
Western historiography of the period. The nature of the Revolution in Central
Asia received cogent analysis from early Marxist historians in the USSR during
the 1920s, who suffered in considerable number under Stalin. Their studies,
whilst necessarily rather rigidly class-based, give an important insight into the
events of the early revolutionary period and the errors of the first Bolshevik
government in Tashkent, the Sovnarkom, which was widely blamed in early
Soviet literature for the explosion in Basmachi strength between 1918 and 1925.
(Later, even more ideological accounts stressed the role of ‘foreign intervention-
ists’ in sparking the Basmachi revolt, often arguing from flimsy evidence.8)
The political situation in Central Asia in 1917–20 evolved from the peculiari-
ties of the Tsarist administration, where 400,000 Russians (less, if one counts
actual administrators alone) ruled approximately six million natives.9 Local poli-
tics focused on the interaction of three groups: the Russian colonists, cut off
from contact with Moscow for nearly two years by the forces of the White
Cossack, Ataman Dutov, at the so-called ‘Orenburg cork’, who correspondingly
developed their own form of communism in relative isolation; the ‘traditional’
rulers and leaders of the local population, the Khans, Beks and Mullahs; and the
new and fragile generation of Muslim intellectuals who had grown up between
the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth under the
influence of Ismail Gasprinskii – the ‘Jaddidists’ who formed the ‘Young Khivan’
and ‘Young Bukharan’ movements.

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 T U R K F RO N T

The Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow itself recognised

the deep flaws in the policies of the early Tashkent Soviet:

Cut off by White bands almost from the first days of the revolution in
Soviet Russia, Turkestan found itself left to rely on its own strength. Not
having itself a strong revolutionary tradition or experience of sustained
class struggle, the thin layer of Russian workers, naturally, to a consider-
able degree fell under the influence of colonial-nationalist elements and
involuntarily moved to politics at odds with the international interests of
proletarian revolution. … Former servants of the Tsarist regime, adven-
turists and kulaks under the guise of class struggle, carried on their own
wild persecution of the local population.10

Local observers were even more blunt and frank in their criticisms of the
Sovnarkom’s failings. Ryskulov, a leading member of the Young Kazakh party,
recorded Tobolin, a member of the Tashkent Soviet at the time, as saying that
resources would be better expended on the war fronts than in trying to preserve
the lives of the famine-wracked Kazakhs, who were doomed anyway.11 It was
estimated in 1919 that one half of the population was starving. Taking into
account those also affected by the epidemics of typhus and malaria, Ryskulov
later calculated that ‘about one third of the population must have died’.12
Having enumerated the faults of the Tashkent committee – ‘recognition of
Armenian ‘Dashnaktsutiun’ party, ruination of the Ferghana population, collab-
oration with Semirechie kulaks, the [first] expedition to Bukhara, and
incomprehension of our mission in relation to the dekhkans [peasants]’ – he
opined that communism in Turkestan had only been saved by the actions of ‘a
handful’ of native revolutionaries.13 Some of these same criticisms were repeated
even by later Soviet historians, who, at the same time, were anxious to accen-
tuate the fact that the Kokand government was a creation of White Guards and
foreign interventionists; Shamagdiev claimed that in about fifteen months the
Armenian dashnaks employed by Tashkent had tortured and murdered around
20,000 people,14 and admitted that local Red Guard detachments were ‘not
regulated by discipline … [and] supplied themselves from the [local]
population’.15
Most accounts, even later Soviet ones, therefore acknowledge the crucial role of
the Sovnarkom’s policies in antagonising the local population:16 by banning
Muslims from participating in the political life of the Soviet, claiming they were not
members of the proletariat (which, from the Marxist perspective, was true), by
banning the rule of shariah, and by actual aggressive acts, such as the requisitioning
of waqf lands and persecution of the natives, the Sovnarkom swelled the ranks of
the criminal bands traditionally known as Basmachi with both starving peasants and
a small number of disaffected Muslim intellectuals.17 The influence of the latter
should not, however, be exaggerated; one of the great flaws of the Basmachestvo was
that at no time did it become a modern nationalist movement, despite the claims

7
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

made for it by individual participants such as Professor Zeki Veledi Togan, whose
views were influential amongst Western scholars over a considerable period.18
Rather, it remained in many aspects essentially a tribal rebellion, and what organi-
sation and strength it later developed, particularly under Ibrahim Bek (Ibragim, in
Russian accounts), revolved around its tribal character and the support granted it by
the feudal Emir of Bukhara and the rulers of Afghanistan. Mustafa Chokaev, who,
as leader of the Kokand Provisional Government, was in a good position from
which to judge Turkestan’s political development, was adamant about the true situa-
tion in Turkestan at the time of the Revolution – the fall of Kokand had effectively
quashed any hopes of the political nationalist movement gaining power, and the
Basmachi movement bore no relation to that struggle:

The movement became a sheer spontaneous struggle of the masses

against the ‘Soviet colonisers’. This was the weak point of the move-
ment. Each of the leaders of the [basmachi] detachments, whose
numbers constantly increased, the so-called ‘Kurbashi’, set himself his
own aim and programme. … The front was not a national or national-
political one. The Turkestan Basmaji movement is the evidence of our political
weakness.19

So it was that the Basmachi evolved from being pre-war bandit gangs to func-
tioning as large-scale symptoms of the famine, terror, distress and repression
prevalent in Central Asia during the early Civil War, while simultaneously
becoming real enemies of Russian rule. Invariably mounted on horseback, swift-
moving and chiefly armed with swords, grenades and carbines, the Basmachi
could offer no real resistance to Soviet forces on the field of battle, yet they made
maximum use of their knowledge of the local terrain to carry out raids and
ambushes.20 Whereas in the Ferghana Valley, Basmachi activity remained limited
to hit-and-run raids, in both Lokai and the deserts of Turkmenistan it took on a
much greater scale, with larger defensive battles. Under the Turkmen leader,
Dzhunaid Khan (possibly the most able Basmachi leader bar Ibrahim), attacks
were made on villages and cities, and Khiva itself was occupied temporarily.21
Against such opponents, the early Soviet government had the great advantage
(noted by Chokaev) of retaining control of most of the cities and lines of commu-
nication from the very beginning. However, its army, mostly composed of foreign
prisoners-of-war and mercenaries like the dashnaks, fatally lacked the element of
discipline so necessary to fighting an irregular opponent.22 This was never more
evident than in the aftermath of the fall of Kokand. In Soviet accounts this is
usually presented as a heroic rescue of the besieged local Soviet garrison23 (Soviet
claims that they were ‘forced’ to intervene would become a recurring theme of
their foreign policy), but this does little to explain the slaughter of 14,000 people
there or the days of rape and looting that followed.24 So weak was the army’s disci-
pline, in fact, that in the subsequent expedition to Bukhara in March 1918, the
city’s enraged population savagely repulsed the soldiers after a brief parlay. By the

8
 T U R K F RO N T

time the main Red Army broke through to reach Tashkent, the local communist
authorities had ceased even trying to rule the countryside. Instead of pursuing the
Basmachi, the authorities negotiated with them. The two main leaders of the
Basmachi at the time of the arrival of the Turkkommissia were Madamin-Bek and
Irgash, who ruled the Margelan and Kokand areas, respectively. Madamin was
aided by Monstrov’s ‘Peasant Army’ – a group of armed Russian peasants – whom
the Sovnarkom, with typical political incompetence, had managed to alienate.
With the arrival of Frunze and his fellow colleagues from Moscow, however, Soviet
policy in Central Asia was about to change dramatically.

The revolt encompassed, 1920–6

M. V. Frunze
Mikhail Vasil’evich Frunze was perhaps the most successful military commander
produced by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War to come to Central Asia. In
early 1920, aged only 34, he had risen through the ranks of the early Bolsheviks
by virtue of unswerving diligence to the cause and his long-recognised ability to
study the military implications of implementing a political revolution. As a
result, on taking command of the Eastern Front in 1919 against the armies of
Kolchak, he immediately demonstrated his grasp of tactics and the need for
political work alongside military operations. His regrouping of forces for the Ufa
counter-attack, where a brilliant victory was achieved by manoeuvre rather than
any overwhelming overall numerical superiority, can be seen as the first stepping-
stone in the development of Soviet ‘operational art’. His actions thereafter on
the Turkestan Front revealed his continuing dedication to manoeuvre and envel-
opment operations. Overall, his achievements in practice during the war, and as
a theorist after it, easily excelled those of his only slightly younger contemporary,
Tukhachevskii, though the latter’s name remains better known in the West.
On his final arrival in Tashkent on 22 February 1920, in addition to his mili-
tary abilities, Frunze brought three valuable factors. He was the only man in the
six-man policy-making Turkkommissia with personal experience of Central
Asia, having been born in Pishpek amongst the Kyrgyz and speaking fluent
Kazakh. Secondly, he had already established a harmonious and fruitful relation-
ship with Kuibyshev, the political officer who would serve as his right-hand man
in Central Asia, and who was also a member of the commission. And finally, he
also brought two disciplined, well-equipped and battle-hardened armies, the 1st
and 4th, with junior commanders who knew his methods, and a large Muslim
element (Tatars and Bashkirs) which would prove useful in political work.
Between 1920 and 1923, this force amounted to between 120,000 and 160,000
men, with artillery, aircraft, armoured cars and trains, a naval flotilla and heavy
machine-gun support. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in Central Asia.
Although his influence and precepts would prove to be the decisive element in
turning the tide of the Basmachestvo, Frunze’s actual time in Turkestan would be

9
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

short – from February to his departure again to the Southern Front against
Wrangel in September 1920. In addition, he was preceded by his five fellow
commission-members, who reached Tashkent in November 1919, and immedi-
ately began the important political work that would soon change Soviet fortunes.
The numerous independent supply organisations were unified, the Turkestan
Cheka were disbanded, as were the notorious Armenian units, and the more
prominent local Russian officials put on open trial, with about 1,000 expelled.
Troops were dispatched to purge local authorities and aid resettlement of the
persecuted Kyrgyz and Kazakhs.25 On Frunze’s arrival, however, a political crisis
had arisen which he alone addressed and resolved. Local Muslim intellectuals,
led by Ryskulov and with the sympathy of Eliava, a member of the
Turkkommissia, had come forward via the Fifth Conference of the Turkestan
Communist Party with demands for more autonomy for Turkestan. This issue
demanded control of foreign policy, an individual Turkic Communist Party and
a Turkic Red Army. Frunze’s reaction to these proposals was to reject them cate-
gorically and to instruct the Turkkommissia to place its own men in all organs of
party and government so as to prevent such nationalist deviations arising.
Although this may appear to have been a reprehensible and even backward step
on Frunze’s part, from a military perspective it was vital and necessary. It
immensely simplified lines of supply and administration between the centre and
the periphery at a time when the Red Army was on the verge of making an all-
out effort to suppress the Basmachi. In trying to re-create a stable civil society
from a state of chaos, the first demand had to be administrative simplicity; to
have attempted to create devolved local authorities at this stage, when all else
was still in flux, could have proven truly disastrous and set back stability in
Turkestan even further. Although Ryskulov and his fellow local communists took
an appeal against the decision to Moscow, Frunze’s decision stood, leading ulti-
mately to their resignation in protest.26
Frunze’s second political success, which puts the first in perspective, was to
banish the local communist organisation of ethnic Russian railway workers.
These men had been behind the original revolution in Tashkent, and believed
that they alone had a right to the reins of power. Some of them had been plot-
ting a ‘second October’ against the Turkkommissia, which was seen as too
sympathetic to native demands.27 Their expulsion ended this danger. Frunze’s
measures ensured that communist efforts in Central Asia would henceforth
neither be complicated by party-nationalists nor be stained with the same racial
bias as the previous Sovnarkom.
For his opposition to autonomy, Frunze has sometimes been seen by Western
historians as simply the brutal instrument of Russia’s centralising desires, a man
who conquered Central Asia simply by virtue of the large forces at his
command. In actual fact, numbers can prove an illusory advantage in a guerrilla
war, as later generations have time and again discovered, and Frunze’s policies
were considerably subtler. By May 1920 he had already outlined the general
tactics that he and his successors would pursue against the Basmachi:

10
 T U R K F RO N T

(1) Quickly to set about decisive action against remnants of Basmachi

bands, setting the goal of their complete annihilation.

(2) To produce for this a definite plan, including 1) occupying with

strong garrisons all the most prominent oblasts, capable of being bases of
Basmachi, such as, for example, Uch-Kagan, Balikchi, Naukat,
Sharikhan and so on. 2) The formation of sufficiently strong detach-
ments for carrying out active operations. Attached to every garrison
there is to be a flying column for the destruction of petty bands
appearing in their area.

(3) In action to display firmness and decisiveness. Every kind of negotia-

tion with [Basmachi] band ringleaders is to cease.28

This order should be taken in conjunction with his later private conversation
with Mel’kumov: ‘The liquidation of the basmachi is a necessity in a short time.
… This is possible. It is necessary only to isolate the Basmachi from the peaceful popula-
tion, who are exhausted by the extortions of the Kurbashis.’29
Frunze’s policies showed a remarkable grasp of the necessities of twentieth-
century counter-insurgency. By creating a ‘sieve’ of forts to occupy ground and
flying columns able to catch the guerrillas, he hoped to separate the Basmachi
from the population amongst whom they hid, and to destroy them in open battle.
The effect of the forts was to be complemented by the creation of home-guard
units in the small kishlaks (the winter quarters of nomadic tribes), cutting off the
predatory Basmachi from their main sources of supply and support.30 As well as
demonstrating the counter-insurgent response to Mao’s ‘fish-in-water’ thesis of
the modern guerrilla, almost ten years before Mao himself wrote on the subject,
this also suggests that Frunze must have had some knowledge of the Boer War,
where such techniques were first attempted on a large scale by Lord Kitchener.31
Frunze knew, however, that military policy had to be buttressed by a suitable
political stance. He was the first Red Army commander to understand the true
nature of the Basmachestvo, having condemned the Sovnarkom, claiming that
under them ‘[c]ontrolling organs of power were seized by a group of adventur-
ists, desiring to fish in troubled waters.’32 He then went on to note:

The Basmachi are not simply brigands: if they were, then obviously they
would long ago have been killed off. No, the main strength of the
Basmachi consists of hundreds and thousands of those who, one way or
another, were blocked or offended by the previous authority: not seeing
anywhere any defenders they fled to the Basmachi and imparted to them
fantastic strength.33

Political education and political reform were fundamental to Frunze’s overall

plans for Central Asia. The direct attacks on Islam that had occurred under the

11
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

Sovnarkom were curtailed, native religious schools and courts were allowed to
continue functioning, and waqf land was returned. Party schools opened in every
oblast of Turkestan, and the prosecution of those associated with the crimes of
the previous Soviet regime continued, with Kuibyshev disarming and disbanding
the Soviet 4th Regiment for committing crimes against the populace.34 The
implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in Central Asia continued
this constructive political work, as bazaars were reopened and the grain requisi-
tioning of ‘War Communism’ was replaced by prodnalog (tax in kind), tax
assistance for peasants, and the delivery of seed to farmers. Kuibyshev urged the
use of magic lantern shows and cinematographs to spread the Soviet message to
the largely illiterate population.35 Two ‘agitation trains’, the Rosa Luxemburg and
Red East, made rapid cross-country propaganda tours.36
Despite the generally progressive nature of his policies, which in the long
term assured Soviet victory in Turkestan, during his actual stay there Frunze
undoubtedly made some political errors as well. First, despite the aforemen-
tioned instructions to cease all contact with Basmachi ringleaders, negotiations
continued intermittently, causing lulls in activity that gave the deceptive impres-
sion of peace. Monstrov’s army, having suffered a severe defeat during its joint
attack with Madamin-Bek on Andijan from the forces of the newly arrived Red
Army in September 1919 – losing in battle over 1,000 dead and injured –
defected to the Russian (Soviet) side in early 1920.37 Following the mysterious
death/disappearance of Irgash in 1919, negotiations opened with Madamin-
Bek, the premier Basmachi leader, which led to Madamin himself becoming a
Soviet emissary.38 The futility of such policies was demonstrated, however, when
Madamin was assassinated during negotiations with a fellow Basmachi leader.
Such Basmachi as did transfer their allegiance to the Soviet side were invariably
only ‘winter Bolsheviks’, those who would return to their original bands, freshly
armed, the following spring.
On 7 May, Frunze signed a directive to conscript 35,000 Central Asians into
the Red Army, allowing entire units of individual nationalities (Turkoman,
Kyrgyz) to be set up, despite his earlier opposition to autonomous forces. Such
decrees created fierce opposition in a country unaccustomed to military service,
as the earlier Tsarist decree had demonstrated, and Frunze’s armies had too few
native cadres to deal with the influx of reluctant recruits. Many Muslim draftees
fled to the Basmachi with their arms, and the Bolsheviks were forced to disarm the
1st Uzbek Cavalry Brigade. The ambitious conscription decree proved a disas-
trous failure due to the lack of resources necessary to ensure its efficient
implementation, and the final effect was to swell Basmachi strength to 30,000
during the summer of 1920.39
The final political drawback during Frunze’s stay in Central Asia, though an
unavoidable one in the circumstances, was the complication created by his own
attack on Bukhara, which resulted in the forces of the large army hastily
recruited by the Emir eventually joining and supplementing Basmachi strength.
The Emir, who had pursued increasingly reactionary policies since his first

12
 T U R K F RO N T

encounter with the Soviets in 1918, was now seen as a menace to the Soviet
regime, and an attack under Frunze’s guidance was launched on his capital in
September 1920. The aim of Frunze’s forces was, allegedly, to aid the local rising
of the ‘Young Bukharans’, though it is questionable how many of these were left
after the failure of Kolesov’s initial contact with Bukhara and the repression of
liberal elements that followed. Certainly, if they were anything like their kindred
‘Young Khivans’, whom Soviet forces had ‘aided’ in finally expelling Dzhunaid
Khan from Khiva in January 1920, their contribution must have been small.
Skalov, the major Red Army participant, was driven to comment on the latter:
‘The strength of the Young Khivans is more inflated than a soap bubble, their
influence in Khiva is almost nil, and they do not conduct any work at all. One
has to watch them all the time in case they commit some stupidity.’ 40
Frunze’s operation against Bukhara, a classic encirclement by four indepen-
dent operational groups which assembled and deployed in complete secrecy,
encountered fierce resistance and unexpected difficulties – the city’s thick ancient
walls absorbed artillery shells without any effect, leading fire to be concentrated
on the gates and so reducing avenues of attack – but after five days it resulted in
the fall of the capital.41 The Emir managed to escape, however, retreating to his
residence at Dushanbe, from where he needled the Soviet authority in Central
Asia.
During an expedition to complete the rout of the forces at the Emir’s disposal
– from his sanctuary in Eastern Bukhara he gathered around him the forces of
Kurshirmat, a leading Basmachi, and Ibrahim, destined to be his most loyal
supporter – the difficulties of local conditions became fully apparent for the first
time. The first problem was one of supply. During the ‘Gissar [Hissar]
Expedition’ in February 1921, men were issued 200 cartridges and machine-guns
limited to five belts of ammunition from the outset. Light machine-guns enabled
the Red cavalry forces to repulse the mass charges of the enemy they encoun-
tered and artillery provided effective cover for their own attacks, but climatic
conditions were severe, with two days spent in a malaria-infested valley.42 The
Basmachi demonstrated for the first time their alarming propensity to avoid, and
to infiltrate behind, large columns of troops.43 Ultimately, the Emir again
escaped, this time to the safe haven of Afghanistan, from whence he continued
to fund Basmachi activity.
With the fall of the fort at Gissar, and the subsequent occupation of
Dushanbe, the Basmachi practically gave up defending fixed positions and the war
took on a fully mobile character. In 1921–2, the Red Army began to conduct
large-scale sweeps. Whole cavalry brigades with air support advancing on wide
fronts from their well-garrisoned bases and strong points may have managed to
capture large numbers of Basmachi, but the main ringleaders and their small
corps of hard-line followers always escaped.44 The war might have continued for
some time in this desultory manner but for the rise of a Basmachi leader who
enabled the Reds to destroy their mobile opponents in precisely the fixed battles
they sought. It is ironic, therefore, that most Western sources should consider this

13
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

man the greatest leader the Basmachi had, a view usually based on the pan-Turkic
writings of the aforementioned Professor Togan.45 But this leader was already
famous, if not for his military competence. His name was Enver Pasha.

Enver
When Enver Pasha, the former Turkish Minister of War, arrived in Central Asia
in 1921, following an eventful journey via Berlin and Riga, he came initially as a
Bolshevik ally and participant at the Baku Congress of Toilers and Workers of
the East.46 Not long after his own participation at that conference, however,
Enver, who had always been prone to pan-Turkic dreams, defected to the
Basmachi side and rode out of Bukhara on an alleged hunting trip to meet
Basmachi ringleaders. With him he took a number of disaffected Bukharan
Jaddidists, the most prominent amongst them being Usman Khodzaev, along
with some of his own entourage of seventy-four Turkish officers whom the
Russians had hoped would help to raise a loyal Muslim army. It is symbolic of
Enver’s own alien status as a Western Turk in Central Asia, however, that
Ibrahim Bek immediately took him prisoner on suspicion of his being a double
agent. With the Emir’s intercession, he was released eventually and given permis-
sion to raise an ‘Army of Islam’ to combat the Soviet presence. He came at the
crest of a wave of renewed Basmachi activity, the reasons for which are disputed
in the existing literature – Mel’kumov implied that certain nationalist Young
Bukharans deliberately fostered differences between the Red Army and the local
population,47 whilst the Emir claimed that it was the depredations and routings
by the Red Army that created a backlash in the countryside.48 In January 1922,
Enver launched a successful attack on Dushanbe, taking the town, 120 rifles and
two machine-guns.49 With that success behind him, he proceeded to launch a
series of fruitless attacks on Baisun, defended by the 5th Rifle Regiment, each
charge withering under the concentrated fire of the Russian troops.
Baisun was symbolic of Enver’s ambitions – a small town, it lay on the
approach to the ‘Iron Gates’, the strategic pass through the mountains between
Eastern and Western Bukhara, so-called from the days of Tamerlane.50 Such an
objective would have been suitable for an army, but not a guerrilla force. The
Red Army, seizing this opportunity to destroy concentrated numbers of Basmachi
in the field (estimates of the strength of Enver’s army vary wildly between 7,000
and 17,000 men), abandoned their former policy of slow ‘partridge drives’ on a
wide front in favour of lightning strikes by small, mobile columns.51 Red Army
forces possessed no overwhelming numerical superiority – the main (right)
striking column mustered only 1,500 sabres, 800 bayonets and eight guns – but
were considerably more disciplined and better equipped.52 On 15 June, the right
column, divided into a number of smaller tactical groups and marching to their
starting positions by night to achieve surprise, surrounded and destroyed Enver’s
headquarters at Kofrun. Many of his troops, trapped in the trenches devised for
them by their Turkish advisers, lacking artillery or reserve ammunition, were

14
 T U R K F RO N T

annihilated in a storm of shrapnel, high-explosive and machine-gun fire.53 As his

defences crumpled under repeated cavalry and infantry attacks, Enver and a
small group of men escaped to the mountains to the south, but in Mel’kumov’s
apt words: ‘The Army of Islam ceased to exist.’54 In contrast with previous oper-
ations, Red Army pursuit, aided by consistently accurate information from their
scouts and agentura (local informers), was to prove relentless for over two months.
Enver fought for three days to hold a bridgehead at Denau at the end of June,
but retired ultimately, leaving 165 dead on the field. Dushanbe was retaken in
July, the Basmachi once more dying in their trenches in precisely the type of set-
piece confrontation they should have avoided, and Enver was driven further and
further east to Bal’dzhuan. A three-day battle ensued in this town in August
1922, with Red Army ‘artillery preparation’ allegedly leading to around
12,000–15,000 Basmachi casualties being taken out of the town when it fell.55
Enver escaped again, but Red Army cavalry caught up with him at a small kishlak
to the north-east of Bal’dzhuan on 4 August. The first squadron spread out and,
moving uphill to Enver’s camp, was met by a charge from their quarry – in the
vanguard on his favourite grey horse, Dervish – and twenty-five of his men, and
driven back downhill. At that moment, however, Enver’s men came under fire
from a machine-gun squadron dismounted in the rear to cover just such an even-
tuality. Enver was hit five or six times in the chest and head and killed instantly,
as was his second-in-command, Davlet, a few seconds later. The Reds retired
without apprehending the extent of their victory.56
Although it is difficult to extract true figures of casualty returns from the
available sources, there is little doubt that Enver’s campaign struck a disastrous
blow to the Basmachi movement, inflicting losses due to a premature move to
semi-regular warfare from which it never really recovered. Far from being a
visionary leader, Enver, displaying the same mixture of ineptitude and arrogance
that had destroyed his Third Army at Sarikamis in 1915, gave the Bolsheviks an
assured victory.57 It is little wonder that Ibrahim Bek, the most tactically astute
Basmachi leader, would have nothing to do with Enver, though their differences
were undoubtedly over political as well as military matters. Achieving as much as
Enver (forming disciplined semi-regular forces with uniforms and standardised
equipment), and at less cost, Ibrahim symbolised the paradoxes of the Basmachi
movement.58 A brilliant leader, he was also a political reactionary, and the Emir’s
man, and would even aid the Soviets in the persecution of the liberal Jaddidist
nationalists, whom he loathed.59 During Enver’s campaign he carried out his
own independent raids. As if deliberately trying to highlight Enver’s shortcom-
ings as a guerrilla leader, Ibrahim’s ambushes and retreats were, more often than
not, highly successful. Even Soviet historians conceded that ‘[i]n October 1922
Ibrahim Bek was struck some appreciable blows, but he on every occasion
managed to hide in the mountains.’60
Measured objectively, therefore, few of the claims made for Enver – that he
was ‘a leader of overriding authority’ or that he alone provided ‘an efficient
army organisation’ – stand up to close scrutiny.61 Even the claim that he may

15
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

have been able to draw additional aid from Afghanistan, as ‘a man very popular’
there,62 should be questioned. Madamin-Bek had received aid from the Afghans
as early as 1919,63 and Glenda Fraser argues that Enver may have discouraged
aid from that country by his foreign, pan-Turkic ideology.64 What is certain is
that 1922 marked a crucial turning point in the war between the Soviets and
Basmachi: ‘The year … was the last in which the Basmachi could be said to rival
the Soviets in apparent power in Turkestan.’65 The year ended with the
Bolsheviks in the ascendant. Responsibility for that must lie in greater part with
Enver Pasha.

Ibrahim Bek 1923–6

With his death, Enver left his most lasting positive input to the Basmachi move-
ment: his grave became a shrine, symbol and gathering point for mullahs until
the Soviets banned meetings there after a few years, realising its political value to
the Basmachis.66 The war continued meanwhile, though increasingly difficult
political conditions for the Basmachi compelled them to take refuge either in
remote mountainous or desert areas, or in Afghanistan itself. The Basmachestvo
had, by now, largely ceased to be a mass movement and was increasingly
peopled purely by professional guerrillas, who formed two main groupings: the
followers of Dzhunaid Khan, who carried out his own private campaign in the
deserts of the Kara-Kum, a sideshow within a sideshow; and those Kurbashis who
worked under the guidance of the ex-Emir of Bukhara in Kabul. Haji Sami,
Enver’s immediate successor (and the Salim Pasha of Soviet accounts), formed
part of the latter group, though, like his former master, he had his own dictato-
rial tendencies. Conditions were increasingly difficult for subversive activity in
Turkestan itself. Bolshevik propaganda continued apace. The country began to
be flooded with Cheka intelligence agents, while Tatars operated in the Soviet-
backed Bukharan secret police. The Reds’ administrative grasp on the state
tightened, symbolised by the increasing number of Bolshevik-initiated local
congresses, or kurultais, and Moscow’s growing success in insisting that dekhkans
play a role in government. The holding of such a kurultai of Lokai, Ibrahim’s
own tribe, in December 1923, represented a particular coup for the Bolsheviks.67
The tribal authorities of the kishlaks and the feudal classes were increasingly
undermined by practical aid and propaganda, and in 1923 the Bolsheviks
conceived a further political tool to unseat the Basmachi by forcing the peasants to
grow cotton. The principle was simple: corn, normally prohibitively expensive to
the country dekhkan, was offered on the condition that it was only for food and
not for sowing, and that the peasants planted only cotton. ‘By reducing the
sowings of wheat in the spring of 1923, the Russians succeeded in driving the
Basmachi into forcible extortion of corn, alienating the sympathies of the natives
and causing dissension among the Basmachi bands.’68
This political policy was complemented by continued military campaigns,
which once again assumed the form of large-scale sweeps and clearing opera-

16
 T U R K F RO N T

tions, but with tactical modifications. From 1923 onwards, a key aspect in all
Soviet operations was the increasing political disaffection of the local population
from the Basmachestvo. By now, Red Army expeditions were invariably accompa-
nied by small groups of militia and volunteer detachments (dobrovol’cheskie otriady),
which might occasionally be political liabilities, but did provide invaluable
knowledge of local terrain. A special sixty-man cavalry unit of Lokai tribesmen
was formed, for example, to track down Ibrahim, their fellow Lokai.69
The effect of these changes was manifested when the Basmachi launched their
spring campaign of 1923. This marked the first time that the Basmachi
consciously tried to operate as a coordinated body: the tactics and strategy had
been decided during a meeting between the Emir and leading Kurbashis at Kabul
in August 1922.70 This presaged the growing tendency for professionalism asso-
ciated with the Basmachi that later would lead, through strict accounting of
weaponry, not only to the assignment of each Kurbashi to a particular sphere of
action, but also to a better system of communications to ‘the best Basmachi force,
man for man, ever fielded’ under Ibrahim Bek.71
Coordinated plans demanded greater internal discipline. This was encour-
aged during the latter part of 1922 when Haji Sami recrossed the border from
Afghanistan to settle local disputes between Basmachi leaders and have himself
declared supreme leader of the movement. The introduction of discipline
required stern measures, and Haji’s intervention in the dispute between Fuzail
Maksum and the brothers Ishan Suleiman and Ishan Sultan concluded with the
latter two being hanged.72 At the subsequent meeting of Basmachi leaders at
Muminabad (within Soviet territory) the plans for the coming campaign were
articulated, and Haji was recognized as lashkar bashi (commander-in-chief). The
Basmachi plan was ambitious, based on the reoccupation of Eastern Bukhara
through uniting all Basmachi forces, whilst at the same time increasing their
numbers through local agitators – a goal that the Basmachi largely achieved. The
general number of Basmachi increased from 2,945 to 5,030 men between
December 1922 and June 1923.73 Attacks were to be launched on Soviet
garrisons, but also this time on the Russian’s Revkoms (Revolutionary
Commissions) and local party workers, reflecting the Basmachis’ understanding
that they were now fighting a political, as much as a military, war. Basmachi
strategy had become far more sophisticated than anything that had preceded it.
Nonetheless, this plan failed, partly because of the improved methods of the
Soviets, and partly because Haji Sami remained, like his late master, over-ambitious.
His initial attack on the Red Army garrison at Kuliab in December 1922–January
1923 was successful: the fort fell after its ammunition supply was exhausted, but
Sami’s band was driven from that point shortly afterwards by relieving forces of the
15th Cavalry Regiment. Retiring and regrouping in the Gissar Valley, Sami united
his forces with Ibrahim Bek’s in February. Leaving Ibrahim to cover his rear in
Lokai, he proceeded westwards with 600 men to spread the revolt throughout the
thinly garrisoned Karsh–Kerk–Termez–Baisun area. Here, however, he was out-
manoeuvred by the vigorous activity of the Turkfront commander A.I. Kork (later a

17
 ALEXANDER MARSHALL

prominent victim of Stalin’s purges). Kork dispatched the 3rd Cavalry Brigade with
a 76 mm battery to surround and annihilate Sami’s group as they advanced. These
Red Army forces, conducting an encircling manoeuvre over a distance of more
than 175 kilometres, trapped Haji Sami’s force in the triangle of
Koludar–Guzar–Tegi Khoram on 13 March and routed them.74 Retiring in
disarray, Sami retreated through Denau to Kelif, where a further blow completed
his forces’ disintegration and ended the Basmachis’ short-lived unity of command. In
the words of the Russian official history, the detachments of Sami now split into two
groups, ‘those content and discontent with Salim Pasha’.75 This situation continued
until July 1923, when Sami fled across the border to Afghanistan, never to return.
He was to die shortly afterwards, far away from Central Asia, at the hands of
Kemalist secret police.76
With the defeat of the Basmachi advance, the initiative passed to the
Bolsheviks, who launched their own campaign in March under the auspices of
the newly arrived corps’ commander, the renowned Civil War leader Pavel
Andreevich Pavlov. Pavlov instituted three measures that rendered the
Bolshevik counter-offensive particularly devastating. First, he instituted the
principle that attention would be focused on seizing and occupying the bases of
Basmachi support, rather than on fruitless pursuit of the bands themselves.
Three main such ‘seats of Basmachestvo’ now existed: the mountainous
stronghold of Matcha; the adjoining areas of the Lokai and Gissar Valleys to
the south; and the capital of Fuzail Maksum, mountainous Garm, far to the
east. For executing his mission, Pavlov possessed greatly increased forces. In
response to the requests of the Bukharan Soviet, Moscow bolstered the
Turkfront to the point where 5,832 men with 222 machine-guns and artillery
pieces were operating in Eastern Bukhara in 1923.77 Second, he planned to
strike against all three Basmachi bases simultaneously, allowing them no time to
prepare or regroup. Lastly, he earned Mel’kumov’s admiration by freeing the
cavalry from being bound to follow the pace of accompanying infantry,
increasing their effectiveness by allowing them greater independence and
freedom of movement.78
The campaign that followed was notable for the striking successes achieved in
difficult conditions. Matcha, for example, had long proved particularly difficult
to penetrate, with the snow-capped peaks and avalanches common to the area
giving it a resemblance to the Caucasus. In 1922, elements of the 11th Cavalry
Division, part of the famous 1st Cavalry Army, had suffered a serious tactical
reverse in Matcha. The Division’s indigenous field guns and machine-gun carts
(tachanki), so suitable for fighting on the plains, proved difficult to transport into
the mountains, and division officers were so inexperienced in mountain fighting
that they neglected to send dismounted scouts ahead of the main column. The
resulting retreat of the 2nd Brigade had come close to being a military disaster.79
The March offensive of 1923 was marked, by contrast, by methodical advance
and suitable supply and transport; all guns and machine-guns were assigned to
pack trains, and supplies were stockpiled on the Samarkand–Pendzhikent line in

18
 T U R K F RO N T

advance.80 In the fighting that followed, the three Red Army columns, greatly
aided by local volunteers who served as interpreters, scouts and engineer labour,
eventually took and occupied the main kishlak of Oburdon and its accompanying
arsenal on 2 April 1923.
An advance by two columns from the Dushanbe and Samarkand military
districts against Garm to the east proved equally successful. Garm fell on 29 July
after a twelve-hour battle and Fuzail Maksum fled to Afghanistan, slightly
wounded, on 12 August.81 Only in the southern Gissar–Lokai area was Soviet
action less than decisive. However, as long as Haji Sami remained in the country,
the Soviets exploited the rift between him and Ibrahim Bek to strike blows at
both men’s forces. The greatest gains came from the increased level of political
work carried out in the Lokai Valley, culminating with the introduction of land
reform in November and the kurultai in December, where it was declared that
Islam was not incompatible with communism. These measures were to benefit
some of the military campaigns in the shape of growing numbers of local
informers, as Mel’kumov noted: ‘The new tactics, adhered to by Pavlov, coun-
tered the traditional representatives of the Basmachi. In May 1923 the forces of
Ibrahim Bek were struck blows wherever they appeared.’82
In September, however, Ibrahim, by now lashkar bashi and the last major
Basmachi leader still in Eastern Bukhara, retained enough strength to launch his
own counter-attack. His plan, typically well conceived, was to strike the Soviet
garrison at Naryn at the moment when Soviet recruitment turnover meant that
the greatest number of inexperienced, untested troops would be in position
there.83 Soviet political measures had had some success in separating the Basmachi
from the local population, however, and Mel’kumov claimed that Ibrahim was
reduced to threats of execution to help raise troops.84 The garrison held out long
enough to be relieved, and the final result was a string of serious defeats for
Ibrahim. Soviet sources put his losses at 117 Kurbashis and 1,565 soldiers.85 A lull
ensued in the conflict. Ibrahim remained active, however, and sought professional
soldiers for his movement, a process that involved not only greater regimentation
and centralisation of command, but also the formation of special propaganda
groups to counter the Soviet message in the auls and kishlaks.86
In the interim, the Soviets maintained their political effort, whilst their mili-
tary forces concentrated on inflicting a major defeat on Dzhunaid Khan in the
Khorezm Desert in 1924.87 The following year was notable for a Soviet impetus
whose repercussions were felt in the wider political situation. Red Army forces
occupied the island of Urta-Tugai on the Soviet–Afghan border, forcing the
Afghan government to tighten their border controls, and rendering the traffic of
Basmachi between Afghanistan and Turkestan considerably more difficult.
If Enver Pasha’s misconceived 1922 campaign had done much to destroy the
Basmachi as a mass movement in the field, Pavlov’s 1923 campaign had done
much to remove the natural roots of the hard-line insurgents. Though Ibrahim
continued to receive residual support from the Lokai, and though Fuzail
Maksum would return to Garm on a wave of popular support in 1929, the

19
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