The 1916 Turkestan Uprising: Awakening or Fall?
What do historians from the Central Asian republics prefer to ignore?
The series “People in White Robes, or the Influence of Manichaeism on the Development of Islam in Central Asia” and “From the Shaman’s Drum to the Sufi’s Staff, or the Path of Islam in Central Asia” discussed the specific features of the spread of the religion brought by the Arabs to Maverannahr.
This specificity, based on the synthesis of pre-Islamic beliefs with Sharia and the ideas about it of various directions of Sufism, survived until the 20th century, as seen in: “Tajikistan: Get to the Root, or Islam under Developed Socialism" And already in the late Soviet period, the second religious renaissance of the last century began in Central Asia. The first was partly connected with the Basmachi movement.
In Soviet historiography, it was given a negative assessment. With the collapse of the USSR, however, in the newly formed Central Asian republics, ideas about Basmachi were transformed, and radicals like T. Yuldashev (see: "Izetbegovic and Yuldashev – the unity of the dissimilar, or the Territory of War”) saw themselves as the heirs of this movement.
In turn, condemning pan-Islamism aimed at destroying secular statehood in the former fraternal republics of Central Asia, local historiography began to mold the Basmachi into heroes, and to view their struggle against the Soviet government as a national liberation struggle, the beginning of which was laid by the 1916 uprising in Turkestan against the imperial administration.
V. Vereshchagin's painting "At the Doors of the Mosque" is a very expressive canvas that could well be called "The Sleeping East."
The latter was also assessed in the USSR as anti-feudal, national liberation, and progressive. But Soviet historians preferred to ignore the fact that the uprising became a prologue to the Basmachi uprising.
Was the uprising progressive? Let's discuss it. Let's begin by answering the question: what did Central Asia gain from becoming part of the Russian Empire?
The region has become part of the state, writes a leading Russian specialist on stories A.V. Ganin, the author of the book "The Civil War in Russia," wrote about a region that had reached an incomparable level of socioeconomic and cultural development. The extension of all-Russian standards to the region resulted in a colossal modernization leap that would have taken centuries under other conditions. As a result of the establishment of peace and order, the development of the region, the expansion of public health services, and the fight against epidemics, mortality rates dropped significantly, and a population explosion occurred in Turkestan. From the mid-19th century to 1916, the population increased from 4 to 7,5 million. Education began to spread. A railway network covered the region. Telegraphs, post offices, irrigation canals, industry (primarily cotton growing), and banks emerged. All this led to improved economic indicators and stimulated the overcoming of centuries-old backwardness. At the same time, the Russian administration respected the traditions and customs of the indigenous population. Moreover, the indigenous administration, formed from representatives of the indigenous population, played a crucial role in the region's governance system. Naturally, radical changes were perceived ambiguously by traditional society, influencing consciousness and lifestyle, and sometimes giving rise to discontent.
In other words, the region's annexation by the Russian Empire was progressive. However, the Central Asian republics prefer to ignore these facts. Local historiography instills in the population a false and somewhat Russophobic view of the recent past, viewing the 1916 uprising as the result of "almost 50 years of Russian colonial rule in Turkestan." This is the opinion of prominent Tajik historian N. Rakhimov.
The "Ominous Grin" of Russian Imperial Colonialism in Central Asia
At the same time, the scientific community of the Central Asian republics prefers to hush up the atrocities committed by the rebels against Russian settlers, but they were of a monstrous nature.
In his study, A.V. Ganin cites evidence of the rebels' chilling cruelty toward Russian women and children. I don't think this can be found in most works by historians from the Central Asian republics. Otherwise, the rebels would turn from heroes into monsters.
What were the interethnic aspects of the confrontation, what was the role of social and religious factors in it, what were the mistakes of the imperial administration in the region, and why did the uprising occur?
The Emperor's Mistake
So, the trigger for it was the highest order of Nicholas II of June 25, 1916, “On the requisition of foreigners from Central Asia and Kazakhstan for work on the construction of defensive structures and military communications in the area of the active army.”
Both the mobilization of the male population into the army and the significant losses in its ranks, especially during the Great Retreat of 1915, made it necessary to recruit non-Russians for rearguard work. However, the date was poorly chosen, as it coincided with the summer cotton harvest, in which some of the population subject to mobilization participated.
Furthermore, the psychological factors of the non-Russians were not taken into account when drafting the decree. Firstly, they had not previously been involved in the construction of defensive fortifications; secondly, rumors began to circulate among the villages and camps of the Kyrgyz nomads about the impending dispatch of mobilized soldiers to the front.
Kyrgyz camp
Like all rumors, they were also absurd—for example, they talked about foreigners digging trenches between the opposing sides, and as a result, they would all be killed or driven ahead of the troops to be slaughtered. The effect was like a bomb exploding.
An important detail: the mobilization was not universal. However, this factor also played to the disadvantage of local authorities, as nobles, representatives of the foreign administration, mullahs, teachers and students of secondary and higher educational institutions, paramedics, translators, smallpox vaccinators, clerks, elected officials, civil servants, herders, and drivers of livestock hired under military horse service were exempt from mobilization.
As we can see, the most educated and cultured members of the non-Russian population were not subject to conscription. Perhaps they should have been actively involved in explanatory talks with their fellow tribesmen, particularly by telling them about the good wages mobilized soldiers received:
In addition to state food supplies, writes A. V. Ganin, workers received a salary of 1 ruble per day. Those unable to bring their own clothing and footwear to work received an allowance of up to 30 rubles.
But those being mobilized were unaware of this: either the authorities failed to explain it in time, or those who were pushing the ignorant masses into disobedience themselves concealed such an important aspect. Looking ahead, I note: upon learning about the wages, some of the rebels resigned. weapon.
Nevertheless, the tsar's decree proved akin to throwing a lit match into a keg of gunpowder. Here, we must take the following into account. Those non-Russians who had a positive attitude toward military service volunteered for the army. This applies primarily to the Tekin Cavalry Regiment, which demonstrated high combat qualities at the front.
The realities of war in the 20th century required educated soldiers and officers, since the demonstration of combat qualities, as a rule, is identical to tactical literacy on the battlefield, the ability to handle new types of weapons, which is unthinkable without a relatively high level of outlook.
Accordingly, taking into account, on the one hand, the exemption from mobilization of the most educated and cultured part of the foreigners, and on the other hand, their presence in the army, the darkest masses rebelled, easily manipulated by the leaders.
In this situation, there was nothing progressive about the uprising. Firstly, in the Kyrgyz camps, it was led by the feudal lords, the manaps, who wielded unquestioned power over their fellow tribesmen and had no intention of relinquishing it. Secondly, it was not so much the Russian administration and army units that were primarily targeted, but rather the defenseless villages of the Russian settlers—at least initially, once the element of surprise had been achieved.
Russian settlers in Kazakhstan
The rebels in Przhevalsky district were especially ferocious:
On August 11, the Dungans (descendants of Chinese Muslims – I.Kh.), notes A.V. Ganin, "massacred most of the peasants in the village of Ivanitskoye. The population of the village of Koltsovka was also exterminated. The surviving residents fled to Przhevalsk. By August 16–17, the village of Ivanovka was under siege; a third of the village had burned down, and the bridge was destroyed. The Kyrgyz slaughtered the village of Chetyorke, which consisted of 11 households.
I repeat, the rebels did not spare either women or children, showing monstrous cruelty towards them.
When confronted with traces of the latter—and the dark and savage masses hardly attempted to hide them—the troops and settlers responded harshly, as the Turkestan Governor-General, Adjutant General A. N. Kuropatkin, wrote in his diary:
Even during the suppression of unrest in the Jizzakh district, there were justified complaints against the troops for excessive destruction of native dwellings, looting, and unnecessary killings. The same is happening during operations in Semirechye. But these, I hope, are exceptions.
The situation of the Russian settlers was exacerbated by the mobilization of a significant portion of men to the front. And those who remained found themselves largely defenseless due to a mistake later acknowledged by A.N. Kuropatkin:
7500 Berdan rifles were taken from the Russian population for sending to the active army.
It's also worth noting: the ideological foundation of the uprising was the preaching of the Sufi dervishes, discussed in the aforementioned cycle. They persuaded the ignorant masses—the rebels were aptly called "mobs" in the documents—to view the nascent struggle as a holy war against "infidels," against whom moral restraints were lifted. A certain classic propaganda trope was also present: those who died for their faith would go to heaven.
Remarkably, losses among government troops were relatively small. The victims of the poorly armed mobs were mostly small groups of soldiers.
There were several cases of mass deaths of soldiers and officers, writes A. V. Ganin: in the Naryn district, a warrant officer with nine Cossacks and eight soldiers perished; in the village of Karkara in the Jarkent district, besieged by the Kyrgyz, according to data from August 16, 1916, 24 Cossacks of the detachment of the Narynkol-Charyn district commander, Captain M. Kravchenko, perished; and six Cossacks perished in the vicinity of Dzhalanash.
Below I will say a few words about the crisis of the empire's administrative apparatus, which became a kind of precursor to the revolution. However, in fairness, it should also be noted that the authorities took a number of smart steps that managed to prevent the uprising from spreading to other regions, particularly the perennially volatile Caucasus and the frontline Transcaucasus, located near the Ottoman Empire.
"Very few in Russia knew about this uprising," A. V. Ganin quotes one of his contemporaries as saying of those events, "since the government had taken measures to isolate the area where the uprising occurred from the rest of the empire. This was a brilliant success, and not only the masses in Russia but even representatives of the civil and military authorities were unaware of what was happening in Turkestan. If I hadn't witnessed these events, I would have considered it a miracle to tell about it."
From the point of view of the aforementioned researcher, the German-Turkish connection in the preparation of the uprising cannot be ruled out:
German-Turkish agents operated in the regions bordering Turkestan. In 1915-1916, a mission led by German captains O. von Niedermayer and V. O. von Hentig, along with several dozen officers, was in Afghanistan and Persia. On May 21, 1916, the intelligence officers left Kabul: Niedermayer headed for Persia and then on to Turkey, and Hentig to the Pamirs and China. German agents may have also been among the prisoners of war heading to Turkestan. The Germans seriously considered a military invasion through the Caspian Sea to Khiva and Bukhara and a rebellion in Turkestan, drawing on the tens of thousands of Austro-German prisoners of war held there.
Forerunners of the Basmachi
Apparently, the uprising was not fully suppressed, given the social base in Central Asia for the Basmachi movement that broke out in 1917 and lasted until the end of the Great Patriotic War.
In addition, some Kyrgyz fled to China, and after the February Revolution began to return, increasing social tensions – the killings of Kyrgyz by embittered settlers and vice versa did not stop, although they were not on a mass scale.
Now, regarding the administrative apparatus. I repeat, they deserve credit for their prompt and decisive actions to suppress the uprising and prevent it from spreading to other regions.
However, it should be noted that the administration failed to resolve the problem at the stage of its emergence, which was expressed in the proposal, after the pacification of the region, by A. N. Kuropatkin to create a district in the Issyk-Kul region in which strictly Russian settlers would live, outside the foreign environment.
Adjutant General A.N. Kuropatkin
It makes sense, but the implementation of such an idea should have been undertaken earlier, considering the need for mobilization measures against foreigners after the Great Retreat of 1915 and their possible reaction. It's not that it was unpredictable—after all, it wasn't long ago that A.N. Kuropatkin, among others, fought against foreigners.
Mostly illiterate and partly imbued with fanaticism, they, although briefly cut off from their usual way of life, inflamed by the propaganda of the dervishes, could not help but unleash their wrath on the “infidels.”
The administration's direct responsibility is to calculate steps to prevent anti-government protests, especially during a period when the state is straining its economic and military forces in the fight against an external enemy. Moreover, unlike during the time of Catherine the Great, the security services possessed the necessary resources to monitor public sentiment in the relatively recently annexed Turkestan.
The residents' memories of the independent Emirate of Bukhara and the Kokand and Khiva Khanates are still fresh. But they overlooked the uprising, and the previous policy toward non-Russians was somewhat clumsy.
Let's open A.N. Kuropatkin's diary again:
The root cause of the ease with which the Kyrgyz revolted lies deep within our land policy toward the Kyrgyz. For many years, the Kyrgyz were deprived of their nomadic and, most importantly, winter camps to create "free lands." When allocating land to the Kyrgyz during their transition to a sedentary lifestyle, the law only permitted arable land, but did not allocate land for grazing or haymaking.
Undoubtedly, the Governor-General is right when he notes:
The exhibition (that is, the mobilization - I.Kh.) of workers was the impetus, and the dissatisfaction of the Kyrgyz with the Russian regime had been growing for a long time.
I would like to point out that Alexei Nikolaevich's own career path is an example of the crisis in personnel policy in the Russian Empire, as he went to Turkestan after his unsuccessful command of the Northern Front troops during the Brusilov Offensive.
To be fair, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, while serving as chief of staff in the 16th – Skobelev – infantry division, the future Minister of War showed his best side both in terms of personal bravery and in terms of the performance of his duties, which was noted by the “White General” himself.
It seems that A. N. Kuropatkin would have been right at home as chief of staff of a division, and perhaps even an army. Commanding troops during the Russo-Japanese War proved beyond his capabilities. Interestingly, the infamous commander was a man of humble origins and a talented man who simply climbed to the wrong level.
And this isn't his fault, but a crisis in the government's policies. Perhaps he should have been promoted not so much through military ranks as through administrative ones. After all, Alexei Nikolaevich knew Turkestan well, and the way of life and customs of its indigenous population, and if he had led it instead of commanding troops in Manchuria and during the First World War, he likely would have spared the region from the upheavals of 1916, preventing the rise of the Basmachi movement, which became a headache for the Soviet regime for many years.
A.N. Kuropatkin showed leniency towards the captured rebels, as reported to the Tsar:
Considering that the main culprits were the leaders and the natives, whose direct participation in the murder of Russian people had been proven, I considered it possible to mitigate the punishment for the dark mass of the guilty.
Of the 347 death sentences, Kuropatkin upheld 32. One can only hope that those pardoned returned to civilian life, rather than joining the ranks of the Basmachi a few years later and tainting themselves by murdering citizens of Soviet Russia.
To sum up, I would like to note that the civil war that soon broke out in Central Asia took on not so much a class character as an ethno-confessional one.
According to A. V. Ganin, the former settlers fought for the most part on the side of the Reds, while the Cossacks who suppressed the uprising and their Kyrgyz opponents this time found themselves on the same side of the barricades and joined the Whites.
History lessons: will they be learned?
Building a bridge from the past to our time and, perhaps, to the future, I will note: the unenlightened dark masses are always susceptible to various kinds of demagogic propaganda.
This is worth remembering when building relationships with the leadership of the Central Asian republics and helping them overcome the legacy of the 1990s, which manifested itself in the outflow of the educated Russian population.
Young Kyrgyz: will they receive a decent education, even a basic one, or will they remain illiterate and fall prey to the propaganda of the new Basmachi?
During the years mentioned, there was an increase in the number of semi-literate, and even completely illiterate citizens, the spread of fundamentalist sentiments, and a decline in culture – a culture that was a direct result of the beneficial influence of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in the region.
To address problems in the spheres of education and culture, the leadership of the Central Asian republics and local historiography must abandon the tendentious and, at times, Russophobic view of the recent past of the peoples who lived under the shadow of the double-headed eagle, not to mention the Soviet period of their history.
References
Ganin A.V. Bloody Lessons of 1916. The 1916 Uprising in the Semirechye Region
From the diary of A.I. Kuropatkin
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