Turkestan and the problem of autonomy

Russia hurried to complete colonization of Central Asia as it was worried by advance and plans of the British in Central Asia.

Steady consolidation of British rule in India worried the Russian tsar the most. With each conquest, the British were getting closer to what are today Afghanistan and Central Asia, two weak buffers separating British India from the Russian heartland.

To impede Russian mobilization into Central Asia, the British engaged the Russians in what came to be known as the "Great Game”.

Turkestan was the last important territorial acquisition of tsarist Russia. In 1860s and 1870s Russia defeated and subjugated the principalities of Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand.

In 1867 the Government General of Turkestan was established with headquarters in Tashkent. It included 5 provinces: Semirechensk, Syr-Daria, Ferghana, Samarkand, and Transcaspia, and two dependent principalities- Khiva and Bukhara.

The total losses of Russia between 1847 and 1881 in the conquest of Turkestan were 1,000 killed and 3,000 wounded.

After its conquest Turkestan became both politically and economically dependent on Russia. The administration of the country was placed entirely in the hands of the military; the Moslem natives did not participate in it. The provinces of Turkestan were before long suitable for cultivation of cotton, and with the help of Russia and foreign capital large-scale cotton plantations were established. On the eve of WWI, Turkestan supplied more than one half of Russia’ s cotton requirements; during the war, all.

The Russian who had settled in Turkestan belonged largely to the privileged urban class. It had been estimated that about 1900 between one-third and one-half of the entire Russian population in that area consisted of noblemen, officials, clergy-men, merchants, and other elements connected directly either with the administration or with the commercial establishments which were developing the economy of Turkestan. The official statistics on the proportions between the locals and Russians in 1910 was like follows-

Natives- 6,806,085

Russians- 406,607.

The Russian newcomers, like the other Europeans who had followed in their wake, lived in separate headquarters of the city, and kept from the indigenous Moslem population, much as the Western population did in other colonial areas of Asia and Africa.

But Turkestan greatly profited from Russian rule. Russian military authorities imposed order and stopped the perpetual warring between the native tribes, and made possible industrial development – constructed railroads, canals.

But the hostility between the Russians and natives was very strong. Russian were a privileged caste, therefore, their status rested on the fact of preservation of political and economic prevalence of Russian here.

Therefore, the problem of autonomy that arose with the outbreak of revolution was not supported by Russians.

The native political movement in the Turkestan of 1917 consisted of two wings:

-a religious-conservative, organized in the Ulema Dzhemeiti (Association of Clergymen) led by Ser Ali Lapin

-a secular one, led by Munnever Kari and Mustafa Chokay.

The Ulema had monarchist inclinations and concentrated on the introduction of Moslem courts and the establishments of religious law (sharia) throughout Turkestan.

Its rivals, people connected with the jadidist movement, wanted a westernization of Moslem life in Turkestan and increased participation of the natives in the political life. The two groups representing the clerical, orthodox elements, and the middle class, lay elements respectively, at first they were hostile to each other.

But in the latter part of year, when Russian opposition to native political aspirations solidified, the moved closer and eventually merged.

In addition there was a Moslem socialist movement, organized in the Union of Toiling Moslems in Skobelev (Fergana) and the Ittihad in Samarkand. These associations were largely under SR (socialist revolutionaries) and Menshevik influence. And numerically they were extremely weak, but in the revolutionary period they were exploited with some success by the Bolsheviks.

In 1917 the leadership of the political movement of the Turkestan natives was in the hands of the liberal Moslems, who took the initiative in convening at the beginning of April a Turkestan- Moslem Congress.

The resolutions of the Congress demanded the introduction of a federal system in Russia, and the return to the natives of all the confiscated lands. The Congress appointed a Turkestan Moslem Central Council, with Mustafa Chokay as its chairman. The Central Council established within a short time a network of provincial or0anizations in all parts of Turkestan, and endeavored to centralize the political activities of the Turkestan natives.

It participated in the May All-Russian Moslem Council, and established contacts with the Alash-Orda.

But then throughout the remainder of Revolution and Civil war, the Moslem organizations in Turkestan and the steppe regions developed independently of each other.

The Turkestan committee composed of 9 men (5 Russians, 4 Moslems) appointed by the Provisional Government to replace the tsarist governor General Kuropatkin, had no power at all.

In the summer 1917, following the withdrawal of the liberal members from the Russian cabinet, the Turkestan Committee, composed largely of Kadets, also tendered its resignation.

Petrograd appointed a new Committee under the Orientalist Nalivkin, but it was ineffective too.

The actual authority was in the hands of the Tashkent soviet headed by a Russian socialist Revolutionary, the lawyer G.I. Broido, and dominated by SR’s and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks had no separate party organization in Tashkent until December 1917, nor in other parts of Turkestan until 1918, but they did maintain a distinct faction within the Soviet and on a number of occasions advanced Leninist resolutions.

In June 1917 the Bolshevik faction in Tashkent Soviet numbered 5 men only, and the size of their organized party following at that time can be gauged by the fact that in December 1917 the strongest Bolshevik cell, that of Tashkent, had a mere 64 members.

The weakness of the Bolsheviks was offset by the growth of a left wing within the SR party, and the ultimate triumph of Communism in Tashkent in late 1917 was made largely possible by the cooperation of the left SR’s with the Bolsheviks. The Tashkent Soviet represented the interests of the European population of Tashkent, especially the soldiers and the skilled workers.

It should be said that the idea of autonomy was not widely developed among Turkestan Moslems. What they needed- some form of self-determination in form of self-rule. This problem could be solved by the Constituent Assemble, election were to be held in summer 1917.

Russians, being outnumbered 15 to 1 by the natives, had every reason to fear that if the elections were to be based on the principle of universal, direct vote, they would be completely submerged by the Moslems and possibly lose to tem all the nominations.

They preferred the curie system of voting, in which Russians and natives balloted separately.

Projects to this effect were widely discussed in Russian circles, and one of them was formally accepted by the Tashkent Soviet.

At the same time, the Soviet submitted a scheme whereby the administration of the city would be divided into 2 parts, a Russian and a native.

Народно-освободительная борьба в период присоединения Казахстана к России