Officious Aliens: Tatars' Involvement in the Central Asian Revolution, 1919–21

Abstract

Officious AliensTatars' Involvement in the Central Asian Revolution, 1919–21 Norihiro Naganawa (bio) A gentle wind of the East has brought you, angels.Look upon the sky, stars created the celestial body.Upon your arrival, the Ferghana rubs its head on the ground.You saw, flowers blossomed for you at your every step.You felt, we finally became calm before your compassionate eyes.Thanks to you, we bring our valuable aspirations into being.Not until the heavenly homeland is cleansed of devils,Not until Satan falls silent will we lay down our gunsBefore your eyes newspapers and books, weapons in hands. In the press organ of the Communist Party of Turkestan, the Uzbek poet "Chıghatay" eulogized the First Volga-Tatar Infantry Brigade, which had arrived in the Ferghana Valley in mid-January 1920 to fight the Basmachi, anti-Soviet insurgents.1 This ode sheds light on an unusual node in the establishment of Soviet power in the region, raising questions. Why were Tatars there? Why were Tatar soldiers struggling by means of newspapers and books? How did Tatars themselves see their mission? Were they mere useful pawns of the Bolsheviks who shared the locals' faith? How should we evaluate their relationship with the local population and its native elite? The Tatar Brigade's operations in the Ferghana Valley undermine a canon of Civil War literature, which has developed discretely along the lines of [End Page 63] regions and national republics.2 True, Soviet historians of the Civil War in Central Asia did not fail to mention the Tatar Brigade's praiseworthy role in battles against the Basmachi and the political education of the local population in the Ferghana Valley. But their pivotal concern was to prioritize native titular peoples' alliance and collision with the Soviets, while downplaying any coherent trajectory of the Brigade's mediating operation in Central Asia.3 More recent fundamental works, too, have inherited this line of analysis and narrative. Marco Buttino attributes the Soviets' changing tactics in their struggle with the Basmachi in the Ferghana Valley and their attempt to create a separate Muslim Red Army to a contentious rivalry among native Muslim Communists led by Turar Rysqulov (1894–1938), their Russian "colonial" counterparts in Tashkent, and representatives from Moscow; Tatar units of the Red Army appear in minor, accidental episodes showing them to be dubious elements prone to violence.4 Adeeb Khalid and Hisao Komatsu are no exceptions, either. Of course, their contribution is different, as they manifestly demonstrate the agency of local intellectuals, the Jadids, in fulfilling their own vision of modernity, which had already taken shape under tsarist colonial rule, amid their struggle with another Bolshevik vision of modernity. Although Khalid does mention Tatar agents during the Civil War here and there, their role should be clarified to provide an intricate picture of the natives' early encounter with Bolshevism.5 [End Page 64] This article excavates a hitherto fragmented and underrated layer of the Central Asian revolution. Exploring the Tatar intermediaries' predicaments when they came into contact with the Muslim population in Turkestan and Bukhara, I assess strengths and vulnerabilities in the early Soviets' transmission of power to the fractured empire's borderlands. First, I analyze the Tatar Brigade's struggles and negotiations with the Basmachi to illuminate the profound dilemmas that belied the Brigade's self-presentation as a Bolshevik "civilizer," a view that its political workers strove to impose on both the soldiers and the local population. Second, I show the rise and fall of those individuals from the Tatar Brigade who were involved in the two watersheds of the revolution in Central Asia: the replacement of leadership inside the Communist Party of Turkestan in July and the conquest of the Bukharan Emirate in September 1920. The Tatar rendering of Bolshevik language—such as reinforcement of the class struggle, liberation of the oppressed East from capitalism and imperialism, and self-determination—enabled Tatar agents to recruit indigenous men to the Red Army and to engage in elite politics well enough to harness the Turkestan Party to Moscow's will. Yet once they looked identical to Russian colonialists in the turbulent aftermath of the Bukharan Revolution, the very logic...