Searching for Forms and Methods of Acting on Indigenous Population by Turkestan Soviet and Communist Party Bodies in the Context of Fighting the Basmachi in 1918-1924

Abstract

The protest movement of the Turkestani indigenous population against the Soviet rule known in history as “Basmachi movement” became the most important stage of the Civil War in the Central Asian territory of the former Russian Empire. This phenomenon, complicated in terms of motivating features, social composition, and ideological dimensions, had been researched throughout the entire period of Soviet Union. However, the researchers were conditioned by rigid ideological framework, the ban on access to documental sources, and several other restrictions, that excluded the possibility to provide unbiased objective assessment of the Basmachi phenomenon. Questions relating to the true causes of the movement, and specifically those that disclosed the support to the movement from the majority of Turkestani population, remained beyond the research scope. The collapse of the USSR, the access to formerly classified closed archives made it possible to largely change the view on the history of this popular protest. In the proposed paper, the author’s research is supported by materials from newly identified sources in the holdings of the Russian State Military Archive and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. The author claims in the paper that a significant part of the causes that boosted the scale of the movement and its support from the population resulted from gross mistakes of the Soviet government in socio-political reforms and especially in matters of nationalities policy. Correcting these mistakes, applying new forms and methods of acting on indigenous peoples made it possible for Bolsheviks to gain the victory over the Basmachi and bring the internal political situation in the region to stability.