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76y^K 94(47).084.3+94(57)«1917/1918»
DOI
Adeeb Khalid
The Quest for Autonomy in Turkestan: Hopes, Challenges, and Tragedy
Russian rule over Turkestan was only a half-century old when it collapsed. Nicholas II abdicated a few months before the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the governorate-general of Turkestan in 1867. It had been put together from territory conquered in the previous decade and a half and it continued to expand until 1889 when Russian conquests in Central Asia finally stopped. Thus, in some part of Turkestan Tsarist rule lasted less than three decades. As the last territorial acquisition of the Tsarist era, Turkestan occupied a uniquely distant place in the legal and political landscape of the Russian empire. It was governed under its own statute which entrenched local peculiarities into law. The indigenous population of Turkestan retained customary courts and was not subject to conscription. ^ It was never integrated into the imperial system of ranks and standings S (sosloviia i sostoianiia), and its elites were not admitted to the Russian ^ nobility. Legally, with the exception of a few individuals, it was classified as 2 inorodtsy, although locally the term tuzemtsy was commonly used, with all g the colonial connotation of the English term "natives". At the same a settler society took root in Turkestan, composed of people who arrived with the 13 conquering armies. There was substantial peasant settlement in Semirech'e, o but most of the newcomers were urban, who usually lived in "new cities" g that had been built after the conquest as specifically European spaces. The term "Russian" was used synonymously with "European" to denote all those who had come to Turkestan after the Russian conquest: Ukrainians, £ Poles, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, in addition to Russians. "Europeans" and ^ "natives" lived parallel existences, with only a few points of interaction1.
In such conditions, there was no question of the introduction of the zemstvo in Turkestan. The region was granted representation in the State Duma (Europeans and "natives" voted in separate curiae), but the Stolypin reform of 1907 abolished that, leaving even the European population of the region disenfranchised. Tashkent had a municipal duma that functioned under a modified version of the municipal self-government law of 1870, according to which the number of Muslim deputies limited to one third. There were few other avenues for civic participation for the Muslim population of Turkestan. Given all this, the political mobilization of 1917 was therefore quite extraordinary. Large crowds gathered in many cities as the news of the abdication of Nicholas II arrived in Turkestan, and activists began to establish political and cultural organizations2. An umbrella organization called Shuroi Islom (or Shuro, "Muslim Council") appeared in Tashkent in March and began to organize branches in other cities across the region. Its activity culminated in the convocation of the Muslim congress. The Shuro was led by a nascent group of modernist reformers, known as the Jadids, who over the previous decade and the half had articulated a program of cultural reform centred around new kinds of education and premised on a new vision of the world. They assumed that the new political order inaugurated by the demise of Autocracy presented an opportunity to implement their program of reform. Their knowledge of the modern world made them, in their own eyes, the natural leaders for their community in this era of opportunity. They were joined by a small group of local Muslims with Russian educations — jurists and lawyers who possessed the linguistic and professional tools necessary in the new era. They spoke in the name of "the Muslims of Turkestan", an ethno-confessional community delimited by territory. It encompassed the indigenous population of the region, with the exception of the small community of local (so-called Bukharan) Jews. It excluded the populations of Bukhara and Khiva, which were protectorates and distinct from the Russian-ruled territory of Turkestan. But the organizers of the
5 Shuro also imagined themselves as part of a number of other communities, the most relevant of which was the community of the Muslims of the Russian empire. Muslims
^ from other parts of the Russian empire were to play some role in Turkestan's politics « throughout 1917. A Tatar delegation visited Turkestan and Bukhara in April with jH a largely self-imposed mission to help the local population prepare for the new era. ^ Independently of that delegation, the young Bashkir activist Ahmed Zeki Validov J§ (later Velidi Togan) arrived in Tashkent in the first weeks after the revolution.
6 He saw in Turkestan the cradle of the empire's Turkic population (and half of its ^ Turkic Muslim population) and hurried there to be part of the struggle for its future. £ The idea of an autonomous Turkestan had some precedent. It had never been s publicly debated (for such a thing was impossible under the old regime), but we have § one document from 1907 that sheds light on the vision for the future of Turkestan ^ entertained by some of the people who were active in 1917. It was composed by <o Mahmud Khoja Behbudiy (1874-1919), arguably the most influential Jadid figure h in Turkestan, who sent it to the Muslim Fraction of the Third Duma in the hope that c
it would be appended to the official programme of the Ittifaq ul-Muslimin ("Union of Muslims"), the political movement established by several prominent Muslim figures from European Russia, and that the Muslim Fraction in the Duma would use it as a guideline in seeking new legislation. The following year, Behbudiy presented a copy of the document to Count K. K. Pahlen when he arrived a tour of inspection of the governorate-general. The document had no legal standing, of course, but it provides a sense of how one important Jadid figure saw Turkestan's political future3.
Behbudiy envisioned Turkestan as a self-governing part of the Russian empire, on the basis of equal and universal franchise, with control over immigration and resettlement, education, and cultural life. This autonomy was to be based on equality in citizenship. Turkestan's Muslims were to have representation in the State Duma in proportion to their numbers. All cities in Turkestan were to acquire municipal dumas, also with proportional representation for Muslims4. Behbudiy also envisioned Muslims "from all over the world" being allowed to acquire landed property in Turkestan (existing legislation gave this right only to Muslims from Turkestan and to Christian subjects of the Tsar); at the same time, immigration or settlement were to be permitted only "at the demand of the people of Turkestan"5. All official institutions should have Muslim members, and no one ignorant of local conditions should be allowed to serve6. Schools should be free of government oversight, and the teaching of "Russian letters" not be mandatory7. The central pillar of Turkestan's autonomy, however, was to be an "administration of spiritual and internal affairs" (Idora-yi ruhoniya va doxiliya), a combination of a spiritual administration and a ministry of internal affairs, that would largely run Turkestan. Turkestan remained beyond the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly, established by Catherine II in 1788 to organize Islamic authority in the Volga-Urals region and on the Kazakh steppe. Behbudiy wanted the creation of something similar, but with more expansive authority, for Turkestan. That administration, to be run by men "acquainted with the shariat and the present era", and elected for a five-year term, would have jurisdiction over criminal matters and supervise the work of Muslim administrators and judges, oversee all matters of civil and personal law, supervise the functioning of mosques and madrasas, and to have ultimate oversight over waqf property8. It would also be responsible for drafting legislation on the questions of land and water "in conformity with the local way of life and the 21 climatic and geographical conditions of Turkestan". The administration was also to act "g as a watchdog over "Russian institutions", and to defend the interests of the Muslim g population9. This was clearly wishful thinking in the Tsarist era but nevertheless an ^ indication of the possibilities imagined by Behbudiy and other activists like him. -a
Behbudiy was one of the most prominent speakers at the first congress of Muslims in April 1917, where he successfully pushed the idea of territorial, rather than cultural autonomy. The congress resolved that Turkestan should be an autonomous J3 part of a democratic, federal Russian republic. From then on, all Muslim actors in § Turkestan agreed on the idea of territorial autonomy, even if they disagreed on many other things. Yet, the project of autonomy faced a number of problems. g
First, Turkestan was a sprawling territory that had taken its form as a result of Russian conquests in the late 19th century. It comprised the five oblasts of Transcaspia, Samarqand, Syr Darya, Ferghana, and Semirech'e. Transcaspia was separated from the rest of the governorate-general by the protectorates of Bukhara and Khiva and its nomadic population had few connections with the rest of the province. Semirech'e oblast in the northeast also had a predominantly nomadic population (Kazakhs and Kyrgyz) but it had also experienced the most sustained settlement of Slavic (Russian and Ukrainian) peasants in the governorate-general. For several years, it had been part of the Steppe krai. The northern reaches of Syr Darya oblast also contained a substantial Kazakh population. The rest of Turkestan was an agrarian zone with a dense population. Kazakh intellectuals from Semirech'e and Syr Darya oblasts were active both in Turkestan and in the nascent Kazakh autonomist movement of Alash Orda that was centred in the Steppe krai to the north. Alash Orda spoke of the unification of all Kazakhs into one administrative unit. The main mobilization for Turkestani autonomy was based in the cities of the sedentary zone of Turkestan, where the leaders had a more parochial understanding of the community. While they spoke of all of Turkestan, their main concerns were about the sedentary population of the three core oblasts of the governorate-general. In 1917, the Jadids became increasingly fascinated by national idea centred on the sedentary Turkic population of Central Asia. At the same time, Turkestan did not include Bukhara and Khiva, whose populations were deeply connected to that of the governorate-general.
Second, in the sedentary zone of Turkestan, the political leadership came to be deeply contested between the Jadids and their allies on the one hand, and conservative forces, headed by the ulama (Islamic scholars) on the other. The April congress was the high point of political unity and common purpose among the Muslim population of Turkestan. Already by the end of April, however, cracks were appearing in the
5 façade of unity that the enthusiasms of March had created. The ulama did not G care for the challenge posed to their authority and their status by the Jadids. They ^ had bristled at the assumption of leadership by the Jadids in the first days of the « revolution. By May, they were fed up with the criticisms of the old order by the
Jadids. In society at large, the competing claims of authority produced conflict on % the streets. Already in April, there were reports of bloodshed in Namangan. By May, s§ the ulama had created their own organization, Ulamo Jamiyati (Society of Ulama),
6 and begun to push back against the pretentions of the Shro dominated by the Jadids. ^ For the rest of the year, the ulama and the Jadids struggled with each other as much £ as with other groups10.
s Finally, and most importantly, the Russians in Turkestan were not on board § with the idea of autonomy. Turkestan's Russians were surprised by the scale of ^ the mobilization among the indigenous population. They had assumed that the indigenous population would remain politically inactive (as had been the case in £ 1905). In the first days of the new order, Russian society established committees C
of public safety. In Tashkent, the 19-member Executive Committee of Public Organizations co-opted two Muslims as representatives of the old city and thought it had done enough. In Samarqand also the local committee co-opted two Muslims. It was surprised when a mass meeting in the old city a few days later demanded that Muslims be granted not two, but 58 of the 90 seats in the executive committee. This led to some consternation among local Russians. N. S. Lykoshin, a long serving official who had served as governor of Samarqand oblast', was alarmed at the demands, which he thought were preposterous. "These people lived for centuries under the despotic administration of their khans and emirs, under the severe statutes of their strict religion", he wrote. "Our natives were never citizens; they were always only members of the general Muslim religious community, regardless of which state they happened to live in"11. Therefore, they had no right to demand participation in the new order that had just dawned. In Tashkent, N. G. Mallitskii, the head of the Tashkent duma, put the matter in a different way. He was enthusiastic about the new order and the political rights it had brought. "What is to be done so that the voices of this minority are not drowned in the sea of voices of the native population and so that the results of European education in the region are not left to chance, that is, not made subject to whether the local native populations is headed by people of a progressive way of thinking, with a European education, or, owing to the complete absence of such people, municipal self-government fall into the hands of people who do not understand European culture and do not value its blessings"12. The solution was to have separate municipal administrations for "natives" and "Europeans". The Russian and "native" parts of Turkestan's cities should have separate dumas, with separate budgets. In cities where the "native" and "European" populations were not spatially segregated, Europeans should be guaranteed at least a third of the seats, even if this contravened the principles of the four-tailed franchise. Mallitskii saw this as a way of containing national conflict. Clearly, for Mallitskii and other liberal Russians like him, democracy had to be domesticated to the peculiar conditions of Turkestan. For much of the year, the tenor of the Russian liberal press reflected these assumptions. Turkestanskii kur'er, the major liberal newspaper in Tashkent, carried numerous articles bemoaning the fact that the natives were being misled by the a wealthy members of their society. Radical segments of the Russian population had 21 a similar, but different answer. "g
The first soviet was founded in Tashkent's new city on March, 3 by Russian g workers and soldiers. Soviets formed all over Turkestan in the spring and summer ^ of 1917. By the end of April, at least 63 soviets had come into being13. But they were -a all composed of European soldiers and workers, the two most strategic pillars of the old order. An all-Turkestan Soviet was duly elected, but the Tashkent soviet, ^ based in the new city, remained the most active, the most radical, and the most J3 influential. It made little effort to cultivate relations with the indigenous poor, § who continued to organize in parallel. At the end of March, the Tashkent soviet arrested A. N. Kuropatkin, Turkestan's governor-general, and deported him back g
to inner Russia. The Provisional Government appointed a Turkestan Committee to take his place. The nine-member committee duly arrived in Turkestan but it could never function properly or assert its authority. After March 1917, Turkestan was largely independent of the centre and events took their own course there. The most important local phenomenon was the famine that began to show its face over the summer of 1917 and that soon became one of the prime motors of conflict in Turkestan. As access to food became a matter of life and death, the Tashkent soviet found itself using "revolutionary" tactics of requisitioning food to support itself.
The crisis deepened further in September when the Jadids and the ulama both held separate congresses. The Shuro had called the second Turkestan Muslim Congress for early September to discuss the activity of the Central Council, the questions of land, water, and food supply, and the political future of Turkestan14. The ulama effectively sabotaged it by vehemently criticizing it in a pamphlet as a conference of atheists15. The Congress opened with barely 100 delegates instead of the 500 expected and almost no ulama in attendance. It nevertheless heard a proposal, drafted by Islam Shahiahmedov, a graduate of the law faculty in Petrograd, outlining a plan for far-reaching autonomy for Turkestan. Shahiahmedov saw Turkestan enjoying territorial autonomy in a federal Russia. It was to have its own duma with authority in all matters except external affairs, posts and telegraphs, and the judiciary. The region was to enjoy complete autonomy in the economic realm, including control over mineral and water resources. Shahiahmedov's project also called for the equality of all citizens of Russia, regardless of religion, nationality, or class, the freedoms of assembly, religion and conversion, and the abolition of censorship and the passport system. The Congress recommended broad dissemination of the project for discussion before being put to a vote at the next conference16. The Congress also passed a resolution on questions of "education and civilization", which called for universal, compulsory, free elementary education in the vernacular, the organization of a hierarchy of newS method schools and teachers' colleges, and the creation of a university in Turkestan.
All education was to be funded by the state but under Muslim control. Russian ^ was to be introduced only in middle school. Traditional Islamic education was to « be reformed and regulated, with madrasas being subject to oversight17. Finally, jH a resolution called for the establishment of a Shariat administration (mahkama-yi % shar'iya) in each oblast, but with the crucial proviso that the electoral principle be J§ maintained and that its members should be "educated and aware of contemporary & needs"18. This was almost exactly the language Behbudiy had used in 1907-1908. ^ It was clearly meant to distance traditional ulama from the leadership and bring in £ those with modern educations to the fore.
s The ulama met in their own congress a week later, a huge affair with over § 500 delegates from the five oblasts of Turkestan as well the Turghay and Ural'sk ^ oblasts of the Steppnojy krai. The congress unanimously resolved itself to be in favour of a federative democratic republic, with Turkestan having its own duma with h jurisdiction over issues of land and water, as well as its own militia. It also called c
for a halt to the creation of land committees and the socialization of land. None of this was drastically different from the form of autonomy the Jadids' congress had heard the previous week. The crucial difference lay in the ulama's resolution of the questions of religion and women. The congress resolved that "the affairs of religion and of this world should not be separated, i. e., everything from schools to questions of land and justice should be solved according to the shariat". Similarly, "Women should not have rights equal to those of men, but everyone should have rights according to one's station as adjudged by the shariat"19. Implicit in this statement was the assumption that it would be the ulama themselves, not anyone "educated and aware of contemporary needs", who would interpret the shariat. This guaranteed the entrenchment of their authority in the new regime that they envisioned. Finally, the congress called for the Muslims of Turkestan to maintain unity, and suggested that this unity be embodied in a new party to be called the Ittifoq ul-Muslimin (Union of Muslims) which should replace all existing organizations such as the Shuroi Islomiya20. This was nothing less than a call for the abolition of the organizational infrastructure of Jadidism in Turkestan, an aggressive assertion by the ulama of their power. Each side now saw itself as the sole legitimate representative of the community and to act on its behalf.
As these conferences met, the situation on the ground was changing very fast. The famine was making its presence felt and the revolutionary practice of requisitioning and confiscating food (and other commodities) was on the rise. This had a clearly ethnic dimension to it, with European soldiers confiscating supplies from local merchants and capitalists. Matters came to a head on September 11, when soldiers from two regiments arrived at the Tashkent railway station and began confiscating grain from passengers, many of whom were peasants from villages around Tashkent who had come to town to sell their animals and to buy grain for the holiday. The situation deteriorated rapidly, and the following day, a mass meeting of soldiers formed a provisional revolutionary committee which proclaimed the overthrow of both the Provisional Government and the Turkestan Soviet and took power in its own hands21. The causes of this putsch were rooted in local conflicts and not connected to any pan-Russian "revolutionary upsurge" after the Kornilov affair. The putsch was roundly a condemned by all sides in Turkestan. The Turkestan soviet, far more moderate than 21 its Tashkent counterpart, denounced the takeover as "threatening anarchy"22, while "g V. P. Nalivkin, the head of the largely ineffective Turkestan Committee denounced it g as the "counterrevolutionary actions of dark forces <...> having nothing in common ^ with the all-Russian revolutionary movement"23. The Provisional Government sent in -a reinforcements from Kazan under the command of Major General B. A. Korovichenko to quell the uprising. Korovichenko managed to reassert control but he could not hold ^ on to it for very long. On 27 October, the ispolkom of the Tashkent soviet, backed by J3 several groups of soldiers, began an armed insurrection against the government, which § by this time was defended only by a small number of Cossack units, a group of Junkers, and some Tatar troops. These forces proved vastly inadequate and Tashkent's Russian g
soldiers took power in the name of the Soviets by 1 November.
Composed entirely of Europeans, the Tashkent soviet had become de facto the ruler of Tashkent and pretended to rule all of Turkestan. Its proclamations made no mention of autonomy, cultural or territorial. There were no Muslims at all in the Sovnarkom or the ispolkom of the soviet. Yet, the response of Muslim society was differentiated. The Ulama Jamiyati hastily organized a congress in Tashkent in the second week of November which resolved that, given that "the Muslims of Turkestan <...> comprise 98 percent of the population," it was "impermissible to advocate the assumption of power in Turkestan by a handful of immigrant soldiers, workers, and peasants who are ignorant of the way of life of the Muslims of Turkestan". It nevertheless proposed the creation of a coalition with the Tashkent soviet to govern Turkestan until the Constituent Assembly, the main goal of the February revolution, could be convened24. The Tashkent soviet curtly refused the offer: "The inclusion of Muslims in the organ of supreme regional power is unacceptable at the present time in view of both the completely indefinite attitude of the native population toward the power of the Soviets of soldiers', workers', and peasants' deputies, and the fact that there are no proletarian class organizations among the native population whose representation in the organ of supreme regional power the faction would welcome"25. In the colonial conditions of Turkestan, the language of class could legitimize the perpetuation of national and ethnic hegemony of the settlers.
The Shuroi Islomiya took a different path. Its members convened their own congress in Kokand in the Ferghana Valley on November 26. Conditions in Turkestan made travel difficult, and the majority of delegates came from the Ferghana oblast, but all the major figures in the organization were all present when the Congress opened. Also present were large numbers of Russian and Jewish representatives of municipal and other public organizations from Turkestan (although most in fact came from Ferghana). The congress was thus more than simply a gathering of Muslims;
5 it represented an alliance of the Shuro with moderate Russian forces in Turkestan. After only brief debate, the Congress passed the following resolution: "The Fourth
^ Extraordinary Regional Muslim Congress, expressing the will of the peoples of « Turkestan to self-determination in accordance with the principles proclaimed by jH the Great Russian Revolution, proclaims Turkestan territorially autonomous in ^ union with the Federal Democratic Russian Republic. It entrusts the elaboration J§ of the form of autonomy to the Constituent Assembly of Turkestan, which must
6 be convened as soon as possible. It solemnly declares that the rights of the national HU minorities inhabiting Turkestan will be safeguarded in every possible way"26.
£ The conquest of power by the Tashkent soviet had driven the Shuro to declare the s autonomy it had hoped to achieve through the Constituent Assembly. The Congress § elected an eight-member "provisional government of Turkestan". Muhamedjan ^ T'in'ishpaev served as prime minister and minister for internal affairs, while Mustafo & Cho'qoy (Chokaev) was minister for external affairs. The government was to be h responsible to a 54-member Council. The congress elected 32 of them (including c
Behbudiy and many other prominent members of the Shuro), leaving the rest to be filled by representatives of various non-Muslim parties and organizations27. The declaration of autonomy was very explicitly set within the framework established by the Provisional Government. It aspired to autonomy within a federal democratic Russian republic and it offered one third of the seats in the assembly to "national minorities", i. e., Europeans, even though their demographic weight was much slighter than a third.
This generosity towards "national minorities" was in part driven by reality. Writing in exile ten years later, Cho'qoy recalled that there have been many people at the congress in Kokand who wanted to declare independence (and even some who wanted an emirate). Cho'qoy and his colleague Ubaydulla Xo'jayev were able to convince the congress to vote for autonomy because outright independence would have been impossible to achieve28. The indigenous population had no arms. There were also no bureaucrats or officials amongst it. The governorate-general had a two-tiered administrative structure, in which indigenous functionaries staffed the lower rungs of administration but all higher administrative positions were in the hands of Europeans. There were no indigenous figures with the expertise necessary for running a government. Full independence was scarcely an option in November.
This changed quickly. Already by that time, social revolution in Russia had turned into state collapse. The Russian civil war might officially have begun in the spring of 1918, but already in the autumn of 1917, the authority of the central government had largely evaporated in Tashkent. Local actors were able to act as they pleased. The usurpation of power by the Tashkent soviet was one example, and it shaped the course of the autonomism in Turkestan. If in November, the Kokand congress had opted for autonomy, its leadership began to have second thoughts as the situation changed around it. Mustafa Cho'qoy noted that "the absence of government in Russia today <...> makes the convocation of the Constituent Assembly doubtful"29, implying that the autonomous government need to explore other options. Circumstances forced the Kokand government to think beyond the Russian orbit.
The collapse of the Russian war effort on the Caucasus front offered a possibility. In November 1917, the Ottomans had begun to contemplate an offensive in the Caucasus in the hope of establishing a geopolitical buffer between the Ottoman 21 state and Russia. The Committee of Union and Progress sent a certain Hasan Ru§eni "g Bey to Baku to establish a Caucasian branch of the party. Over the coming months, g some Ottoman officials were to entertain grandiose visions of annexing Turkestan ^ to the "great caliphate" and to forestall a British advance into Central Asia and the -a Caucasus. The turnaround in the military situation transformed the political calculus of many in Turkestan, who began to hope that the Ottomans might be a consequential presence in the chaotic affairs of the region30. The Kokand government dispatched J3 a delegation headed by Obidjon Mahmudov, its minister of food supply, to Baku, § ostensibly to search for grain, but in effect to make contacts with Ottoman agents. Mahmudov met Ru§eni Bey in Baku and sought Ottoman help for Turkestan. g
"We have desperate need of qualified men from Turkey to reform the internal affairs of Turkestan and to form a national force", Mahmudov wrote in a memorandum. "I have come to Baku on behalf of my Turkestani compatriots to receive instructions and men from you"31. Ru§eni Bey seconded a team of twenty officers under one Yusuf Ziya Bey to Kokand to help establish "national organizations" in Turkestan. In the event, only Ziya Bey made the journey, and he was overtaken by events. By the time he reached Tashkent after several months of difficult travels, the Kokand government was no more and Tashkent was under Soviet rule32. In any case, it is unlikely that the Ottomans would have had the resources to follow through on any of their hopes. For the Kokand government, the approach to the Ottomans was a desperate measure, produced by a rapidly shifting political situation.
On 10 January 1918, the autonomous government announced plans for convening a constituent assembly of Turkestan in March. It was to have 234 members elected from four oblasts of Turkestan (Semirech'e was not committed) based on the four-tailed franchise granted to all men and women over the age of 20. There was, however, a crucial breach of this principle. One third of the seats were reserved for Europeans, who were to vote in separate curiae33. The need to win over moderate settlers meant a breach of the principle of equal franchise. Yet, the announcement of a Turkestani constituent assembly was a sign that the hopes of a federated Russian state were wearing thin.
Not surprisingly, the autonomous government found its path to be extremely difficult. Seeking to mobilize support, it organized demonstrations in its support throughout Turkestan. Demonstrations took place successfully in Andijon on 3 December and Tashkent on 6 December34, but a second demonstration in Tashkent the following week resulted in a bloodbath. Demonstrators attacked the prison and freed prisoners taken by the soviet during its conquest of power the previous month. Russian soldiers then fired into the crowd, killing several people, while many
5 others were killed in the ensuing stampede35. The freed prisoners were recaptured and summarily executed by Soviet forces. Meanwhile in Kokand, the autonomous
^ government was discovering that while it could bring people out into the streets, « it could not govern. There was no bureaucratic class in Turkestan, no indigenous jH cadres with any experience in administration or government beyond the grassroots ^ level, so the government was staffed by amateurs who also faced a total lack of J§ financial and military power. The Kokand government proved incapable of levying
6 taxes, although it managed to raise three million rubles through a public loan. It also HU sought to raise an army, but with little success. Since the indigenous population £ had not been subject to conscription, the only Muslim soldiers available were Tatar s or Bashkir troops stationed in the region. Members of the Kokand government § travelled around Ferghana in search of money and men. The army never really ^ materialized, although according to a contemporary press report, military units
belonging to the Kokand government held a parade in the old city of Kokand on h 9 January 1918 (o. s.), with one thousand armed troops participating36. The figure c
was most likely an exaggeration and served little more than to alarm the Europeans. By February, the autonomous government turned to one Ergash, the commander of the militia of the old city of Kokand, and appointed him the "commander-in-chief" of its army. The grandiose title did little to hide the fact that the army had few weapons and no officers or trained men, and that it was no match to the forces commanded by the Tashkent soviet.
There were other problems as well. Members of the government differed over the best course to take. Tynyshpaev felt that measures being taken by the government would only antagonize the Bolsheviks37. Soon after the new year, he resigned from his post as prime minister and soon left Kokand and concentrated his energies on working for Alash, the Kazakh national movement that had just declared autonomy. The end came soon. In mid-February, as soon as Tashkent could spare the men, it launched an all-out assault on Kokand. The battle was won easily through the use of ruthless force, which left much of the old city of Kokand burnt to the ground. The autonomous government of Turkestan had ceased to exist after 78 days.
The massacre at Kokand transformed many things, but it did not squelch the hope of attracting help from outside the Russian orbit. Over the summer of1918, two different missions travelled to the Ottoman Empire in the hope of seeking assistance. One mission, led by G'ozi Yunus, pleaded with the ministry of war for help in seeking Turkestan's independence. As a result of six decades of Russian imperialism, its petition claimed, Turkestan lacked the "civilizational strength" necessary to strive for independence, but given proper leadership, however, its people would be willing to shed "oceans of blood" in the cause of the liberation of Central Asia and the Muslim world in general38. The Ottoman defeat in October put paid to these hopes. Other activists took a different tack and sought to internationalize the issue. Already in December 1917, Behbudiy had suggested that Turkestan should be represented at any peace conference that might take place in the future39. In the spring on 1919, he set out for Baku, then the capital of the independent Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, where he was to meet Saidnosir Mirjalilov, another member of the defunct Kokand government. They hoped to travel to Paris to present Turkestan's case before the peace conference. The plan failed because Behbudiy was arrested by a Bukharan border guards as they travelled across the emirate and tortured to death40. 21 A second attempt to bring Turkestan to the attention of the Versailles conference was "g made by Cho'qoy, the head of the autonomous government. He escaped the massacre g at Kokand and fled to Tashkent, where he hid for two months, before arriving in ^ Askhabad (Transcaspian oblast') where Russian Mensheviks had overthrown Soviet -a power in early 1919 and established a government of their own41. There he was joined by Vadim Chaikin, a socialist revolutionary lawyer who had lived in Andijon and ^ had been sympathetic to native aspirations. Chaikin had collaborated with Muslim J3 activists and his acquaintance with Cho'qoy was of long standing. Together, they § sent a telegram in the name of a "Committee for the Convocation of the Constituent Assembly of Turkestan" to Woodrow Wilson and the Paris Peace Conference, asking g
the congress to guarantee the territorial unity of Turkestan and the recognition of "the right of the country (whose culture is thousands of years old) to a free and autonomous existence in fraternal friendship with the people of Russia"42. The telegram evoked no response and Turkestan never came up at the peace conference. That was the end of any talk of Turkestan's independence.
Moscow had little control over the way events played out in Turkestan. The sovnarkom established by the Tashkent soviet in November 1917 was a coalition of Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, Internationalists, and Maximalists and it acted as it pleased. Railway links with Russia had been cut and Tashkent's independence from the centre continued. Seeking to assert some control over the region, Moscow appointed an "extraordinary commissar for Turkestan" to act as its plenipotentiary. That agent was Petr Kobozev, who arrived in Tashkent in April with two Tatar officials from Narkomnats in tow. Together, they set about breaking the hold of the settlers on power. They mobilized the Muslim population and inducted it into the new institutions of power. A "soviet of Muslim and peasant deputies" began functioning in the old city of Tashkent in April, and its members participated in the 5th congress of soviets that convened in Tashkent on 21 April. Kobozev also forced a re-election to the Tashkent soviet before that congress. "A brilliant victory of ours in the elections to Tashkent's proletarian parliament has decisively crushed the hydra of reaction", he telegraphed to Moscow. "White Muslim turbans noticeably have grown in the ranks of the Tashkent parliament, attaining a third of all seats"43. At the congress, he had himself elected chair of the presidium and forced the inclusion of several Muslims in it. And, to top it all off, the congress declared Turkestan "an autonomous Soviet federative republic in the geographic boundaries of Turkestan krai <...> in a federal relation with the Russian Soviet Federated Republic"44.
So, a little over a year after the First Muslim Congress of Turkestan had first declared Turkestan autonomous with a liberal democratic Russia, the Fifth Congress
5 of Soviets of Turkestan now declared Turkestan autonomous within a socialist Russia run by soviets. This autonomy too was territorial, but its leadership was
^ dominated by Europeans. The congress created the Central Executive Committee « of Turkestan as the supreme organ of power in the region. Kobozev ensured that jH nine of its 36 members were Muslims and that the new sovnarkom contained four ^ Muslims out of sixteen, but Europeans remained in a solid majority45. The actual J§ scope of the autonomy proclaimed in April 1918 remained to be determined. The
6 Tashkent government sent a mission to Moscow in the summer of 1918 which HU presented surprisingly hardnosed demands for autonomy. The situation remained in £ flux and it was only in the June 1920 that Moscow was able to impose its terms on s Tashkent and determine the shape of Soviet autonomy to its own satisfaction.
§ For the non-Russians of the empire, the Russian revolution was a national ^ moment. It promised to rewrite the relationship of the various national communities & to the imperial centre. Yet, one of the more remarkable things about it was that with h the exception of the Poles (largely under German occupation) and the Finns, no c
national group demanded outright independence. Most national movements worked to secure a future in a liberal, democratic Russia. The Provisional government's promise of a Constituent Assembly based on equal, direct, universal, and secret suffrage provided a common reference point for all national movements in the former empire. In that sense, 1917 was not a full-blown anti-imperial moment. This was equally true of Turkestan. All the various futures debated in Turkestan in 1917 were located in the Russian orbit. The question was about renegotiating Turkestan's position in Russia, not of independence. As we saw, there were obvious practical obstacles to independence for Turkestan, but to a remarkable degree, most Muslim actors in Turkestan seemed content with the promise offered by the Provisional Government. That promise was dented by Russian and other European actors in Turkestan, who for one reason or another could not countenance the promise of full democracy. It was Russian parties of the radical left that challenges the Provisional Government and the hope of the Constituent Assembly. The conquest of power by the Tashkent soviet, first attempted in September, the actualized in late October, drove Turkestani actors to contemplate independence. In the first months of 1918, then, a future beyond the Russian orbit became imaginable. Brute force, however, dashed those hopes, as European soldiers destroyed the autonomous government proclaimed at Kokand. The Soviet autonomy proclaimed a couple of months later a Bolshevik counterpoint to the autonomist movement of 1917. In the long run of Soviet history, the principle of autonomy produced a number of largely unintended consequences. In 1918, however, Soviet autonomy was built on the grave of indigenous aspirations.
1 I have discussed the nature of Russian rule over Turkestan on a number of occasions; for the most succinct articulation, see Khalid A. Culture and Power in Colonial Turkestan // Cahiers d'Asie centrale. 2009. N 17-18. P. 403-436; Халид А. Туркестан в 1917-1922 гг.: борьба за власть на окраине России // Трагедия великой державы: Национальный вопрос и распад Советского Союза. М., 2005. С. 189-226. _
2 Абдуллаев Р. Национальные политические организации Туркестана в 1917-1918 году. ^ Ташкент, 2014. ^
3 The text of the document is reproduced by Necip Hablemitoglu and Timur Kocaoglu ^ (Behbudi'nin Turkistan Medeni Muhtariyeti Layihasi // Turkistan'da Yenilik Hareketleri 2 ve ihtilaller, 1900-1924: Osman Hoca Anisina incelemeler / Ed. Timur Kocaoglu. Haarlem, я 2001. P. 448-466 (facsimile reproduction). P. 438-447 (transcription in modern Turkish з orthography)).
4 Ibid. P. 452 (arts. 1-3).
5 Ibid. P. 466 (arts. 21 and 25 respectively).
6 Ibid. P. 463-464 (arts. 1-2, 6).
7 Ibid. P. 465 (arts. 17-19).
8 Ibid. P. 453-463. ^
9 Ibid. P. 457-458 (arts. 24 and 32 respectively). Hi
10 On the conflicts between the Shuro and the Ulama Jamiyati, see Khalid A. The Politics of £ Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley, 1998. Chap. 8. tx
11 Лукошин Н. С. Граждане туземцы! // Туркестанский курьер. 1917. 19 марта. д
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12 Котюкова Т. В. «То, что казалось полгода тому назад недостижимой мечтой, сегодня уже является недостаточно смелым»: Доклад ташкентского городского головы Маллицкого о реформе городского самоуправления в Туркестане. Апрель 1917 // Исторический архив. 2012. № 2. С. 105.
13 Рудницкая Д. М. Из истории строительства Советов в Туркестане. Ташкент, 1964. С. 100— 104.
14 Kengash. 1917. 31 August.
15 Kengash. 1917. 12 September.
16 Kengash. 1917. 13 September; the text of the draft resolution in autonomy is in Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. 7, 10 September.
17 Turon. 1917. 21 September.
18 Turon. 1917. 14 September.
19 Ulamo isyazdining qarorlari // Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. 30 September.
20 Toshkandda ulamo siyazdi // Ulug' Turksiton. 1917. 30 September.
21 Буттино М. Революция наоборот. Средняя Азия между падением царской империи и образованием СССР. М., 2007. С. 180-186 et passim; see also Sahadeo J. Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923. Bloomington, 2007. Chap. 7.
22 Победа Октябрьской революции в Узбекистане. Т. 1. Ташкент, 1963. С. 316.
23 Котюкова Т. В. «Выступления темных сил под руководством безответственных лиц...» Телеграмма председателя Туркестанского комитета Временного правительства В. П. На-ливкина. Сентябрь 1917 г. // Исторический архив. 2007. № 5. С. 199.
24 Ibid; Siyazdining qarori // Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. 18 November.
25 Quoted by Туркестан в начале XX века: К истории истоков национальной независимости. Ташкент, 2000. С. 74.
26 Победа Октябрьской революции в Узбекистане. Т. 2. Ташкент, 1972. С. 27; Агзамходжаев С. История Туркестанской автономии (Туркистон Мухторияти). Ташкент, 2006. С. 188-194.
27 Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. 8 December.
28 Cho'qoy o'g'li Mustafo, "Xo'qand muxtoriyati haqinda // Yangi Turkiston (Istanbul). 1927. N 7. S. 7-11.
29 Vaqit (Orenburg). 1917. 17 December.
30 See, e. g., Hoji Muin. Islom dunyosining najoti // Hurriyat. 1918. 10 April.
31 Mahmudov to Ru§eni Bey, 9 January 1918, quoted by KuratA.N. Turkiye ve Rusya: XVIII Yuzyil Sonundan Kurtulu? Savanna Kadar Turk-Rus ili§kileri (1798-1919). Ankara, 1970. S. 512.
^ 32 Kurat A. N. Turkiye ve Rusya. S. 511-517.
о зз Turkiston uchreditilnoy sobroniyasi // Ulug' Turkiston. 1918. 14 January; К Туркестанской S автономии // Новый путь. 1918. 24 января.
гч1 34 Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. 10, 16 December; another demonstration with 20,000 present took
place in Samarqand on 22 December: Hurriyat. 1917. 29 December. « 35 Katta miting'// Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. 10 December; Fojeali voqea // Ulug' Turkiston. 1917. jjH 16 December; Toshkandda muxtoriyat nimoyishi // al-Izoh. 1917. 25 December. S. 277. ^ 36 Ulug' Turkiston. 1918. 21 January (o.s.).
sS 37 Исхаков С. Российские мусульмане и революция (весна 1917 — лето 1918). М., 2004. С. 461. § 38 Quoted by Reynolds M.A. Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and % Russian Empires 1908-1918. New York, 2011. P. 242. s 39 Vaqit. 1917. 21 December.
40 Baysun A. R. Turkistan Milli Hareketleri. Istanbul, 1943. S. 33. u 41 The details of Cho'qoy's movements in 1918 as well of as of his political intentions remain 5S murky. This account is based on the memoirs of his wife Mariia: Qokayeva M. J. Mustafa § Qokay'm Hatiralari / Ed. Erol Cihangir. Istanbul, 2000. S. 85. H 42 UK National Archives (Kew). WO 106/61/25. J^ 43 TsGARUz. F. 25. Op. 1. D. 78. L. 5-6 (16.04.1918).
44 Kobozev's telegram to Moscow in Победа октябрьской революции в Узбекистане. Т. 2. С. 259. £ 45 Наша газета. 1918. 12 мая. С
References
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AGZAMKHODHZAEV S. Istoriia Turkestanskoi avtonomii (Turkiston muxtoriyati) [Turkestan autonomy history. In Russ.]. Tashkent, 2006.
BAYSUN A. R. TurkistanMilliHareketleri [Turkistan National Movements. In Turk.]. Istanbul, 1943.
Behbudi'nin Turkistan Medeni Muhtariyeti Layihasi // Turkistan'da Yenilik Hareketleri ve Ihtilaller, 19001924: Osman Hoca Anisina Incelemeler [Behbudi's Conqueror of Turkistan Civil Relations // Innovation Movements and Revolutions in Turkistan, 1900-1924: Reviews in memory of Osman Hodja. In Turk.] / Ed. Timur Kocaoglu. Haarlem, 2001. P. 448-466.
BUTTINO M. Revoliutsiia naoborot: Sredniaia Aziia mezhdu padeniem tsarskoi imperii i obrazovaniem SSSR [The reverse revolution: Central Asia between the fall of the tsarist empire and the formation of the USSR. In Russ.]. Moscow, 2007.
QOKAYEVA M.J. Mustafa Qokay'in Hatiralari [Memories of Mustafa Chokay. In Turk.] / Ed. Erol Cihangir. Istanbul, 2000.
ISKHAKOV S. Rossiiskie musul'mane i revoliutsiia (vesna 1917 — leto 1918) [Russian muslims and revolution (Spring 1917 — Summer 1918). In Russ.]. Moscow, 2004.
KHALID A. Culture and Power in Colonial Turkestan // Cahiers d'Asie central. 2009. N 17-18. P. 403-436.
KHALID A. The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley, 1998.
KHALID A. Turkestan v 1917-1922 godakh: bor'ba za vlast' na okraine Rossii // Tragediia velikoi derzhavy: natsional'nyi vopros i raspad Sovetskogo Soiuza [Turkestan in 1917-1922: The struggle for power on the outskirts of Russia // The Great Power tragedy: The national issue and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Russ.]. Moscow, 2005. P. 189-226.
KOTIUKOVA T. V. "To, chto kazalos'polgodu tomu nazad nedostizhimoi mechtoi, segodnia uzhe iavliaetsia nedostatochno smelym": Doklad tashkentskogo gorodskogo golovy N. G. Mallitskogo o reforme gorodskogo samoupravelniia v Turkestane. Aprel' 1917 g. ["What seemed like an unattainable dream six months ago is now not bold enough": Report of the Tashkent Mayor of Mullitsky on the reform of urban self-government in Turkestan. April 1917. In Russ.] // Istoricheskii arkhiv. 2012. N 2. P. 99-114.
KOTIUKOVA T. V. "Vystupleniia temnykh silpod rukovodstvom bezotvetstvennykh lits...": Telegramma predsedatelia Turkestanskogo komiteta Vremennogo pravitel'stva V. P. Nalivkina. Sentiabr' 1917 g. ["The dark forces uprisings under the leadership of irresponsible persons.": Telegram of V. P. Nalivkin, Chairman of the Turkestan Committee of the Provisional Government. September 1917. In Russ.] // Istoricheskii arkhiv. 2007. N 5. P. 197-201.
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REYNOLDS M. A. Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 19081918. New York, 2011.
RUDNITSKAIA D. M. Iz istorii stroitel'stva sovetov v Turkestane [From the history of Soviet-building in Turkestan. In Russ.]. Tashkent, 1964. 3
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SAHADEO J. Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923. Bloomington, 2007.
Turkestan v nachale XXveka: K istorii istokov natsional'noi nezavisimosti [Turkestan at the beginning of the 5 20th century: On the history of the origins of national's independence. In Russ.]. Tashkent, 2000. g
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FOR CITATION
Adeeb Khalid. The Quest for Autonomy in Turkestan: Hopes, Challenges, and Tragedy //
Petersburg historical journal, no. 2, 2020, pp. 63-78
Abstract: The idea of autonomy was in the air across the non-Russian territories of the empire and it presented itself as the logical goal to activists in Turkestan as well. A mere six weeks after the abdication of Nicholas II, a Congress of the Muslims of Turkestan convened in Tashkent and after a week of intense debate, it demanded Turkestan to be a territorially autonomous part of a future democratic, federal Russian republic. The quest for autonomy defined the parameters of Turkestani Muslim political action throughout the year 1917, even as the meaning of autonomy was contested and the conditions for its realization remained bleak. Coming only seven weeks after the collapse of the Autocracy, however, this was a remarkable feat of political mobilization and an achievement of a new political imagination. This article will explore where the idea of Turkestan's autonomy came from, what it meant, and the challenges it faced.
Key words: Turkestan, autonomy, Russian revolution of 1917.
ДЛЯ ЦИТИРОВАНИЯ
А. Халид. Поиск автономии в Туркестане: надежды, вызовы и трагедия // Петербургский
исторический журнал. 2020. № 2 (26). С. 63-78
Аннотация: Идея автономии витала в воздухе на нерусских территориях империи и представляла собой логическую цель и для активистов в Туркестане. Спустя всего шесть недель после отречения Николая II в Ташкенте был созван Съезд мусульман Туркестана, после недели интенсивных дебатов он потребовал, чтобы Туркестан стал территориально автономной частью будущей демократической федеративной российской республики. Стремление к автономии определяло параметры политической деятельности туркестанских мусульман в течение всего 1917 г., даже несмотря на то что значение автономии было оспорено, а условия для ее реализации оставались безрадостными. Однако спустя всего семь недель после краха самодержавия это был замечательный подвиг политической мобилизации и достижения нового политического воображения. В этой статье будет рассмотрено, откуда взялась идея автономии Туркестана, что она означает и с какими проблемами она столкнулась.
Ключевые слова: Туркестан, автономия, Революция 1917 г. в России.
Author: Adeeb Khalid — Jane and Raphael Bernstein, Professor of Asian Studies and History, Director of Middle East Studies, Carleton College.
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