THE BASMACHI REVOLT

Emerging in the first half of the 20th century as a military, political and religious movement to fight against Soviet rule established by the Bolsheviks, the revolt was accompanied by armed mutinies, terrorist acts, hostage taking, sabotage, subversive actions, blackmails, advocating of ultra-radical ideas and other weapons from the extremist arsenal.

The Basmachi Revolt lasted for over 16 years — in Kyrgyzstan, the last seats of the Basmachi were destroyed in 1934. During the WW2 the movement it found its «second wind»: about 90 armed gangs of deserters, military service evaders and pillagers were destroyed between 1941—45.

ORIGINS

The Russian empire had made vassal states out of the Emirate of Bukhara and other Central Asian Khanates. The Parmirs, however, effectively remained an no-go-area and formed part of the arena for what Kipling was to call «The Great Game».

The revolution of 1917 was quickly followed by a decree from Lenin stating that «full freedom to exercise religious ceremonies and the inviolability of mosques is guaranteed to the Tatars of the Volga region and the Crimea, to the Turks of the Transcaucasia, to the Kyrgyz and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan and to the Chechens and highlanders of the Caucasus.»

In December, the Bolsheviks convened the All-Russia Muslim Conference where they assured the clergy of their good intentions. They even handed over an ancient relic — Osman’s Koran. This simple policy of the Soviet commissars’, flirting with the faithful, succeeded in achieving the desired outcome: the mullahs began a propaganda campaign among parishioners to support the new «revolutionary order.» Later the clergy were to regret this.

Emissaries were sent to Kokand to demand that the Emir submit to Bolshevik rule. His response was to kill the emissaries and declare a holy war. An uneasy truce followed while both sides sought to strengthen their positions. The Emir conspired with White, anti-Bolshevik Russians and British political agents. The end came swiftly after the arrival of the Bishkek born Mikhail Frunze as commander of the Red Army in Turkestan. First Khiva fell, then Bukhara. The emir fled to Afghanistan — abandoning his harem but taking with him his troop of dancing boys.

The fall of the vassal state was marked by many citizens of the being city massacred. Press reports in British India reported that all witnesses «unanimously spoke of unheard excesses during the seizure of Bukhara» and of the Soviet Power establishment there: arsons, mosques used as stables, banned public liturgies, assassination or imprisonment of all more or less influential citizens, mass confiscation of goods, tearing away women’s yashmaks and so on.

The nationalization of land which had begun in 1918 was also an important factor in the origins of the uprisiing. The policies of expropriating land plots and of irrigation and drainage networks from large owners and the mass slaughter of livestock, forced collectivization, abolition of private trade, brutalities in requisitioning farm products and many other things devastated the region of Turkestan, and embittered the population of Semirechye (Seven Rivers area), the Kara-Kum, the Moyunkum Steppe, the Fergana Valley, Tien Shan, Pamir-Alay and other areas. By the spring of 1919, 1,200,000 people in the area were starving.

The former police chief in Kokand, Irgash, was the first to hoist a flag against the Soviets. Driven by the events in his home-town of Kokand he assumed the role of commander-in-chief of the so-called Army of Islam. He was blessed by the aksakals (the elders) for a holy war and raised on a white felt carpet as an official leader. This marked the beginning of the war of unprecedented in cruelty, that for more than 15 years exhausted both sides. Hotbeds of the insurrection movement began to appear here and there, merging into a jointly irreconcilable front enveloping the whole region with the flames of war.

WHO WERE THE BASMACHI?

«Basmachi» is a Uzbek word which translates as «bandits». The first report of the Basmachi — as impoverished nomad-robbers — dates back to 1912—15. The Kyrgyz usually called them [karakchy] or [tonoochu] meaning brigands. Several years later these gangs turned into a strong mass movement.

Soviet movies about the Civil War showed the Basmachi movement as isolated weak gangs who only used to slaughter active Soviet partisans, rob peaceful dehkans (peasants) and suffer regular and overwhelming defeats from brave Red Army soldiers.

The generally accepted view of the Basmachi as Islamic fanatics is only partly correct. Their ranks included prisoners of war: Czechs, Hungarians, Pole, Catholics and Protestants. There were clerics, former Marxists, anarchists, monarchists, Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, cadets, [kazi] and [bai-manaps], adventurers, professional mercenaries, criminals and many others among the Basmachi. The British provided specialists trainers and instructors and were the principal arms suppliers. Some troops were commanded by Russian (Orthodox Christian) officers and Cossack squadrons were involved in shock and penal troops. The Basmachi were also aided by volunteers from China, Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan. The Basmachi movement was «multi-layer, multi-sided, multi-language, multi-ethnic and multi-religious». The strongest group included mainly the rural and urban poor, peasants, craftsmen, farm-labourers, animal breeders and rural migrants. This was an «all-people» resistance movement to fight against Soviet rule rather than a collection of «counter-revolutionary, Pan-Islamic and Pan-Turkic and feudal types» as it was treated in the Soviet propaganda.

Mikhail Frunze, the Soviet commander of the Turkestan front, even wrote : «the Basmachi main forces included hundreds and thousands of those in this way or another offended by the power. Seeing no protection anywhere, they have entered the Basmachi movement and thus imparted it an unprecedented strength.»

ENVER PASHA

Enver Pasha had served as Minister for War in the Ottoman Empire. When the empire fell at the end of the First World War in 1918, he was forced to flee and ended up in Moscow. Here he managed to convince Lenin that he just the man to bring Central Asia, Afghanistan and British India to heel, and was despatched to Bukhara in November 1921 to prepare an army for the conquest.

Pasha had different plans, however. He wanted to create a Pan-Turkic state with Central Asia as it«s center and power base. Once in Bukhara he set about conspiring with Basmachi leaders who had already, with their grassroots support and intimate knowledge of the mountainous geography, proved worthy opponents of the Soviet fledgling government. Pasha was to provide the one thing that they lacked — a leader who could unite them.

It is perhaps ironic that Enver — who had once, as a Young Turk, fought against the Islamic «Scholasticist Recidivists» demanding Shari’a law in Istanbul, should collaborate with a similar group, using religious epithets more than a dozen years later and more than a thousand miles away — and should be remembered as the leader of an Islamic Revolt.

Sneaking out of Bukhara — he soon amassed a force of 20,000 recruits. Initially his army scored great successes — capturing Dushanbe and most of the former Emirate. He refused to negotiate with the Bolsheviks — who responded by sending an army of 100,000 men and announcing reforms — reconvening the Islamic courts, tax cuts and returning confiscated land — thus eating into the support of the rebels amongst the populace.

Other support also faded away, or failed to materialise. His troops disappeared back into the mountains from where they had emerged, and the Emir of Afghanistan refused him reinforcements (instead signing a treaty with the Bolsheviks). In August 1922, he rode out from Dushanbe with a small band of loyal officers and supporters. No-one really knows what happened to him — his body was never recovered — but it is thought he died, sword in hand, in a skirmish where the entire Basmachi platoon was wiped storming a machine gun post in the Parmirs east off Dushanbe.

Enver Pasha«s death did not end the rebellion, however. Isolated bands continued to fight on, scattered and dwindling in numbers into the 1930»s. There are many accounts of raids and the brutality they inflicted on the local population only further served to undermine their popular support.

AFTERMATH — and REVIVALS

In 1920 Lenin issued an appeal to the Russian Communists to be more tolerant and sensitive to Muslim demands — but his pleas fell on deaf ears and large numbers of nomads went to support the White Russian forces, only to cross sides later, appalled by the attitudes and atrocities of the White Generals and with a belief that the Bolsheviks offered a better future with greater freedom and development for Central. Asia.

At first there were considerable reforms : the Islamic courts, mosques and religious schools were permitted to reconvene; a Muslim militia was established; tax cuts were initiated; confiscated land was returned; reintroduction of private trade; repatriation of those Russians most chauvinistic in their attitudes and the active encouragement of locals to join the Party and organs of government.

In 1924, the Soviets, anxious to reduce the Pan-Turkish influence of Central Asia began the re-invention of the nationalities — each was given its own distinct ethnic profile, language, history and territory — and eventually a republic. Some say that Stalin was personally involved in drawing the boundary lines — he had been chairman of the Nationalities Committee.

This was not, however, the end of the story. In December 1927, Soviet Union adopted the farm collectivization plan. In the Kirgiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Kyrgyzstan), the policy was rigorously enforced. Individual farmers were full of anger and resentment. In such an environment, the spirit of the Basmachi movement once again revived. However, the law enforcement bodies and the army were ready. They confiscated weapons and ammunition from caches, caught the organizers and leaders of the new «Basmachi» and executed them publicly.

The last tide of anti-Soviet actions in Kyrgyzstan emerged in the 1930s when the collectivization campaign entered its final stage. Now discord was mainly spread by kulaks (rich peasants) and feudal lords unwilling to surrender their estates to the proletarian power. Between 1930 and 1935 there were at least 160 recorded attempts to launch uprisings against the communists in Uzbekistan alone. They were aided by what Basmachi remnants were left hiding in the almost inaccessible mountains. The Basmachi’s tactics were at that time quite different from earlier days. Using heavy guns, bomb-carrying airplanes, cavalry attacks, storms, sieges and campaigns involving thousands of people. It was seldom that the Basmachi acted openly. They mainly used terrorist acts, sabotage and subversive activities.

THE BACMACHI IN KYRGYZSTAN

In Kyrgyzstan, the most significant events took place in the South, the seat of Basmachi movement, (The Kyrgyz in the North have always been more Russified and it may be that the 1916 uprising had eliminated much of the fighting spirit from amongst the Northern tribes). The Army of Islam together with General Monstrov’s Peasant Army captured Osh and Jalal-Abad in 1919 — going on to seize Andijan and Fergana. From here, Basmachi troops went to help Djunaid-Khan who was waging war in the Khiva sands.

There is a story of the one-eyed Kurshermat, (a well-known Basmachi leader), escaping from prison by «pulling down the wall and killing his escort».

In 1919 there were about 40—50 gangs (each comprising 100—200 sabres — a total of between 4000 and 10,000 rebels) in the Fergana valley. The next summer about 30,000 Basmachi were concentrated there. The troops and police had scarcely reported the gangs liquidation in 1921 when more than 200 Basmachi gangs revived. Nevertheless, by the autumn of 1923, when the voluntary militia (which numbered numbered almost 20,000) seized 99 Basmachi chiefs and over 3,000 ordinary Basmachi soldiers along with 931 rifles, 13 machine-guns, 34,710 cartridges and other weapons — the Basmachi movement was destroyed as a political and military force — what remained was «purely criminal» elements.