How (Not) to Govern

The Kokand Autonomy has been created, but now Tinishbayev and his ministers have to figure out what to do with this newly created governmental body. They faced three big problems: lack of funds and raging famine, lack of arms and an aggressive neighbor, and overall lack of governmental experience amongst its members.

Finances

As we’ve talked about in our other episodes, famine hit Turkestan hard starting in 1917, increasing ethnic clashes, creating groups of bandits who would later become the Basmachi in the rural areas, and providing the Russian Settlers the excuse they needed to settle old scores with their indigenous neighbors and forcefully establish themselves as agents of order and security. The Kokand ministers were aware of all of these issues, but also understood that they would not be able to government effectively without money first and foremost. However, they were unable to levy taxes and had no other sources of funding.

Since all of the cabinet ministers were inexperienced scholars, merchants, and members of the religious class with no governing experience, they relied on what they knew: talking to the people through various publications and venues and organizing mass demonstrations.

Their first demonstrations occurred in Andijan on December 3^rd and Tashkent itself on December 6^th. A second demonstration occurred in Tashkent a week later, and, this time, the demonstrators targeted the local prison that held political enemies arrested by the Tashkent Soviet when they first took power in November. Russian soldiers were called to suppress the demonstration which they did by firing into the crowd, killing several demonstrators, while others were crushed to death during the stampede that followed. The freed prisoners were eventually recaptured and executed by the Tashkent Soviet.

However, the Kokand Autonomy got this idea that public support could be turned into financial support, if approached the right way. To achieve this end, many members of the Kokand government traveled throughout Turkestan, holding fundraisers. For example, on January 14^th, Choqoy and Mirjalilov held a fundraiser in Andijan and raised 17,200 rubles. However, their most successful financial scheme was a public loan which raised 3 million rubles by the end of February 1918. Yet, the Kokand Autonomy was still unable to levy taxes on its population, meaning it didn’t have a sustainable method of extracting wealth.

If we think back about our discussion on the IRA, we’ll remember that Michael Collins’ greatest contribution was actually in the financial realm. Without his national loan scheme, the IRA would not have survived or been as successful as it was. The money allowed the IRA to buy arms and create an alternative shadow government that opposed “established” British rule. This is the same exact situation the Kokand Autonomy was facing, but not only was it finding it hard to consistently raise funds and manage widespread famine and ethnic violence, it also didn’t have an IRA equivalent to protect it or enforce its edicts.

This brings us to the second biggest problem facing the Kokand Autonomy: the lack of arms.

Military Capabilities

In 1918, the Russian Settlers had most of the guns and were supported by the Russian soldiers and many POWs stationed in Turkestan. The Kokand Autonomy didn’t have many weapons nor did they have an army they could pull from for defense. Because Russia never conscripted its Turkestan population, the only potentially friendly troops with experience available to the Kokand government were the Tatar and Bashkir troops stationed in the region. But they weren’t enough to constitute an army and there were tensions amongst the Tatars, Bashkirs, and other peoples who made up Central Asia. Instead, the Kokand Autonomy had to rely on volunteers to form the bulk of their army. Similarly, to the region wide fundraisers, members of the Kokand government would travel throughout Turkestan to recruit soldiers. They were never able to create an army but seemed to attract enough volunteers to hold a parade in the old city of Kokand on January 9^th, 1918.

            Once they had enough men to constitute a “army” they needed to find a commander. To that end, they offered command to Irgush. We talked about Irgush in our episode on the Basmachi, but he had been a cop before becoming Kokand’s commander-in-chief. What he inherited was a collection of unarmed men who had no officers to train them and no military experience. Meanwhile, the Tashkent Soviet was preparing to launch an attack on Kokand to crush the Kokand government.

Tashkent Soviet

The Tashkent Soviet was threatened by having an autonomous, Muslim government next door. Their anxiety was increased by the December demonstrations and news that the Kokand government was organizing an army (never mind that the violent actions of the Soviet itself justified Kokand’s need for an army).

We must remember this was happening within the context of WWI and by 1918, the Russian war front in the Caucasus had collapsed, opening a path for the Ottoman army. While the Jadids would always flirt with a deep love for the Ottomans, and even sent one of their ministers Mahmudov to Baku to negotiate with the Ottoman forces for grain, there is no evidence they ever made concrete plans for the Ottoman Empire to invade Central Asia and support their cause. The connection Mahmudov made with the Ottoman officer Ruseni Bey is an interesting movement of what-ifism, but never led to any solid plans. Instead, Ruseni Bey would travel to Kokand but arrive too late to be of any use. He would later organize a branch of the CUP in Tashkent and former members of the Kokand Autonomy would travel back and forth from Central Asia to Istanbul in 1918 and 1919, but again these efforts came to almost nothing, except to haunt the Bolsheviks.

            The second biggest driver for the Tashkent Soviet was the lack of food. As we’ve seen in our other episodes, food and resources had always been a painful point of contention for the Russian Settlers and the indigenous population. WWI made things worse with Russians attacking Muslim merchants for hoarding food and settlers getting into violent quarrels with the nomads of the steppe over food and land. As famine swept through Turkestan, the Russian Settler’s belief that the Muslims of Turkestan were hoarding mountains of food grew. When the Russians heard of the Kokand Autonomy, they were convinced that the government owned huge stocks of grain that they refused to share with the similarly starving Russians. This, in itself, was justification enough for a violent confrontation. They began recruiting in December of 1917, targeting former soldiers and POWs. On February 14^th, 1918, they launched their assault.

            It began with cannon fire joined in by indiscriminate machine fire, killing thousands and setting most of old Kokand on fire. The soldiers, once the meager defense fell apart, swarmed the city and began looting. According to one eyewitness account:

“All the stores, trading firms, and rows of stalls in the old city were looted, as well as all banks, and all private, more or less decent apartments. Safes…were broken open and emptied. The thieves gathered their plundered goods on carts and drove them to the railway and the fortress.”

Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923, pg. 202

The assault killed an estimated 14,000 people, most of whom were Muslim, and overthrew the Kokand government 78 days after its creation.

The Russians, however, proved to themselves that they could organize a full-scale military operation and would use these skills to continue their requisitions of indigenous property and food, using communist rhetoric to justify their actions. In doing so, they created a new problem for themselves: starving indigenous refugees fleeing from all over the region into Tashkent looking for food while the Soviet’s own armed soldiers turned into nothing short of armed thugs, using force to take the best of whatever food was around for themselves.

Without any indigenous body of government to speak up for them, the Muslims of Turkestan were at the mercy of their Russian neighbors and Basmachi warlords while their Russian neighbors were at the mercy of their only militant monster they created to survive.

Kokand Legacy

Despite being a failed attempt at autonomous government, the Kokand Autonomy mentally scarred the Russian settlers and the Bolsheviks. For decades after the Soviet Union established control over Central Asia, association with the Kokand Autonomy would be an eventual death sentence. The Soviets would associate the alternate government with bourgeois nationalism and Pan-Turkic aspirations which of course threatened the Soviet’s version of imperial communism. It also left their Central Asian borders open to outside interference whether from the Ottoman Empire or, much later, Afghanistan and the British.

When it comes to the Ottoman Empire, there is some evidence that the high command considered annexing Turkestan, but these were pipe dreams at the most. The closest the Ottomans came to threatening Russian rule in the Caucasus and Central Asia was taking Baku in 1918, but their lack of resources and four years of ruthless modern warfare prevented any further expansion. Even the fears about British or Afghani intervention (which we’ll discuss later in the season) were half-baked and revealed more about Russian fears than reality on the ground. Just as the British feared the Russian bogeyman during the Great Game, the Soviets went through a similar period of insecurity in Central Asia between 1918 and 1930.

            The Kokand Autonomy’s gravest sin, in Soviet eyes, was that it was an alternate form of government that maybe could have worked if it hadn’t been smothered during its infancy. While the members of the Kokand government were inexperienced, they were desperately trying to build governmental infrastructure through their fundraisers and army recruitment while also trying to win international recognition. Members of the government such a Behbudiy tried to bring their case to the Paris Peace Conference. Behbudiy was arrested by the Bukharan Emir and tortured to death before he could make it to Paris, but Mustafa Cho’qoy tried again after the fall of Kokand. Long story short, Mustafa fled Tashkent in 1918 and found his way to Ashgabat, where the Russian Mensheviks had just overthrown Soviet power and established its own autonomous government. Cho’qoy along with Vadim Chaikin, a Socialist Revolutionary Lawyer, send a telegram to Woodrow Wilson and the Paris Peace Conference, asking for the recognition of the territorial unity of Turkestan and its right to “free and autonomous existence in fraternal friendship with the people of Russia” (Khalid, pg. 82).

The peace conference ignored the telegram, but the Bolsheviks believed it was proof that Cho’qoy and the Kokand Autonomy were going to sell Turkestan out to imperialists. Even though the telegram went nowhere, it frightened the Bolsheviks, believing that “imperialists” would use it as an excuse to stamp out communism within Central Asia. Cho’qoy who would eventually resettle in Paris became the devil incarnate for the Bolsheviks and any association with him-past and present- proved fatal to many of Cho’qoy’s associates. In the end, the Kokand Autonomy was a non-Bolshevik approved form of government that risked being a rallying cry for the Soviet’s enemies and thus it had to be destroyed and anyone associated with it had to be monitored and eventually destroyed as well.

The Kokand Autonomy’s final legacy is in what was created out of its fall. Men such as Irgush would flee to the rural areas of Turkestan and create the first true instance of what would known as the Basmachi. We talked about it briefly in our episode on the Basmachi, but after Kokand fell Irgush went to the Ferghana and by the end of 1918 had organized 4,000 fighters under his command. He would later ally with another Basmachi commander, Madamin Bey and hinder Bolshevik efforts to establish control form 1919 onward. Others, like Fitrat, Xo’jayev, and Tinishbayev fled to “safe” spaces within Turkestan and crafted new ways to protect the Muslims of Turkestan while achieving the Muslim led government they desired. Famine grew worse as the Tashkent Soviet violently requisitioned food and property from their Muslim neighbors and Turkestan saw a massive population decrease as people died or fled to neighboring regions. And the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were still raging their war in the north, threatening Kazakh and Kyrgyz lands.

Turkestan was currently in its own little bubble of ethnic conflict and starvation, but the fall of Kokand created the circumstances that would enable Muslim reformists to find common cause with the approaching Bolsheviks while providing the fuel the Basmachi would need for a prolonged guerrilla campaign.

References

Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid

Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo