Space is Very Big

The first thing we need to understand is that Russian Civil War is a ridiculously large conflict. To steal from Douglas Adams the Russian Civil War is big. You may think your father’s ongoing feud with your great-aunt is a long, complicated war, but that’s just peanuts to the Russian Civil War. And so, while this podcast has been focused on Central Asia’s role in the Russian Revolution and Civil War, we have to acknowledge that the Bolsheviks and the White Army are responding to the Civil War as a whole and so sometimes they decisions they make in Central Asia don’t make sense unless we understand what is going on with the civil war in Poland and Ukraine and Siberia, etc.

But before we can talk about influences, we must ask: who are the Bolsheviks? They are a minority party that either missed the February 1917 revolution (*coughLenincough*) or were caught completely unawares of the revolution. They then utilized this revolution to gain enough power to undermine Kerensky’s provisional government.

Once in power, the Bolsheviks tried to create a communist state while pulling out of a world war and collapsing into a civil war. The Bolsheviks tried to reshape society and export their version of communism to the rest of the world, but were stuck thinking of security in imperialist terms and having to reformulate communist principles to meet the demands of a nation in the middle of a massive civil war while recovering from complete governmental failure. I think in some ways they were crippled from the start by Lenin’s belief that a revolution could only succeed if a dictatorship of the proletariat led it and that there had to be a centralist, one party system of government to ensure the complete transformation from capitalist society to communist society. Of course this opens the government system to corruption and exploitation of a strong man (like both Lenin and Stalin). His ideas also get infused with this idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be dismantled until the revolution is achieved. But since they existed in a world that was still very much at war and very much still imperialist and capitalist and the revolution would always be needed and so would its vanguards.

For the purpose of this episode, the Bolsheviks main concerns were:

1. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty is signed on March 3^rd, 1918. This treaty forces Russia to renounce all territorial claims over its European domains such as Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states (and even then it was like, yeah, but we didn’t mean it soooo your ours again, right?)
   • In a wider twist of fate, the anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian government at the team was recognized by the Germans before the Bolshevik government because Trotsky was having a fit over the treaty terms (reference is Smele’s book)
     • While this ends an unpopular war, it’s not great for a new power and it hurts the Bolshevik’s attempts to created communist buffer states (Russia is so fragile right now, the last thing the Bolsheviks need is German buffer states as neighbors-assuming Germany wins the war)
2. The Communist Revolution is stalling in the West. The Bolsheviks will hold out hope for a massive workers revolution in Germany, but even with the events in Hungary in the 1920s, it becomes clear that it’s not going to take in the West, which leaves the East
3. The Bolshevik front is huge. They have deep issues with Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Baltic States, internal troubles with peasants, Allied interventions, and the Czech legion takes the Trans-Siberian railroad between Lake Baikal and the Ural regions.
   • And Siberia gets rid of all Bolshevik influence and declares itself as independent. It is now ruled by the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia. The White Army is establishing itself in Siberia (that’s actually one of the reasons why the Tsar and his family were murdered. The local Soviets didn’t want them falling into White hands.)
   • By mid-1918 the White Army (with the aide of the Czech legion) controlled the cities Samara, Saratov, and Omsk (cutting the railroad that connected Russia with its Central Asian territories).
     • By September 1918, the anti-Bolshevik forces came together in the city of Ufa and created the Provisional All-Russian Government headquartered in Omsk (we’ll discuss this in more detail in next episode)

So where does that leave the Alash Orda?

Alash Orda-1918

The Alash Orda wants a partner that will recognize its right to self-determination, but is not asking for full independence. Their ideal state is a Russia ruled by a democratically elected All-Russian Constituent Assembly in which the Alash Autonomy would have self-determination within their own state but still remain part of the bigger Russian whole. This was a realistic position developed from the knowledge that the Steppe was integrated into the political-economic system of Russia and to sever that tie would be dangerous and is consistent with their asks of the Tsarist government.

However, like their Kokand counterparts the Alash Orda are not getting along with their local soviet neighbors. There seems to be minor clashes, the leaders of the Alash Orda are wanted and have bounties on their heads, and this makes them wary of the Bolsheviks. It is also a continuation of the ongoing struggle between Russian Settlers and the people of the Steppe. Yet at the same time, the Alash Orda are willing to negotiate with the Bolsheviks, especially since the Bolsheviks have been signaling that they were welcoming of their Muslim brethren and want to honor “self-determination”. But we’ll quickly see that the Alash Orda’s definition of self-determination is not the same as the Bolsheviks.

Initial Conversations

As we mentioned, the Bolshevik priority is maintaining some sort of Russian integrity. The Brest-Litovsk treaty took away the western territories and the White Army in Siberia has cut off Siberia and Central Asia from the Red Army and governmental officials, even though communication is still possible. Their solution is to capitalize on people’s grievances with the Tsarist system and, by extension, the White Army (who don’t help their own cause as we’ll discuss in next episode) and turn that grievance into support for Bolshevism. One way to do this is to champion a form of federation.

In January 1918, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopts a Declaration of the Rights of Laborers and of the Exploited People. This say that all peoples of Russia had a right

“to adopt an independent decision at their own plenipotentiary Soviet Congress; whether they desire and on what oundations to participate in a federal government and in the rest of the federal Soviet institutions”

Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 27

Stalin would later elaborate on this idea of self-determination through federalization by arguing that

“for this reason, in practice, we ought to restrict the application of the principle of self-determination to the approval of a congress of the republics entering into a Soviet federation” (28, Dina A. Amanzholova) and that “the principle of self-determination must be a means for the struggle of socialism”.

Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 28

From January 1918 to about March/April 1918, the Bolsheviks used various committees, congresses, and commissariats to manage the rapid descent into never ending autonomous states. This included creating a Commissariat for Inner-Russian Muslims Affairs which consisted mostly of Tatars and Bashkirs, as well as the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities Affairs. These commissariats created departments to manage the many peoples of the Russian territories and reached out to local representatives to assist in their efforts. The key point for the Bolsheviks was ensuring that these autonomous states were consist with Bolshevik principles and ruled by Bolshevik supporters.

Their first attempt at establishing a republic from the top down was the creation of the Tatar-Bashkir Republic. Created on March 22^nd, 1918, the republic subsumed local actors and organizations and placed the initiative within the hands of the Bolsheviks and their supporters. They took this model and tried to expand it to other autonomous states. On March 28^th, 1918 the Kazakh received a request to “immediately send representatives to organize a commissariat for Kirghiz affairs for work in the implementation of a Kirghiz State.” (Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 30)

The Alash Orda and the Bolshevik both seemed to have engaged with each other in good faith. As of April 1918, the Bolsheviks seemed willing to recognize the Alash Autonomy on the condition that the Alash Orda acknowledged the power of the Council of People’s Commissars as the central power and recognized the power of the local Soviets. If they did this, the Alash Orda would have the power to organize a Commission for the Convocation of the Republic Constituent Assembly.

For their part, the Alash Orda seemed willing to recognize the central power of the Soviet republic but were less willing to acknowledge the power of the local soviets. The Alash Orda proposed that the Alash Autonomy would retain the highest legislative and administrative power until the Commission could be called and a republic established. They were also willing to allow the Soviets to retain local power but it to be “organized on democratic principles with observance of proportional representation from the nationalities” (Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 32). They proposed that in places where there were no Soviets, then the power would fall to the Kazakh committees, city administrations, and courts, and they wanted the right to create a people’s militia. This was unacceptable to the Bolsheviks.

Everything Falls Apart

The main problem was that the Alash Orda and the Bolsheviks were approaching the same problem with ideologically opposed solutions.

The Alash Orda desired to a create a cadre of leader who would be equal to their fellow Bolsheviks and organize society along a nationalist line. They were committed to their nationalist approach to state building.

The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, were approaching state building from a class-based viewpoint. They wanted to take power away from the “autonomous-bourgeois groups” and hand it to the masses thus converting a nationalist autonomous project into a Soviet autonomous project. The People’s Commissariat for Nationalities Affairs said that the:

“lack of desire on the part of bourgeois-national groups to recognize the local soviets as their striving to transform autonomy into a tool for enslaving the masses. Only on the basis of local soviets, on the basis of the recognition of their power, was the formation of the autonomies of the Kirghiz, Tatar, Bashkir, and other peoples possible.”

Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 34

They rejected the idea of a system of government built on minority and majority nationalities and wanted to use class as the core principle of government,

While this sounds noble, it’s really no different then a power, like the United States, creating a new system of government based on democratic principles. The idea that we take power away from the aristocrats and hand it to the masses and we’ll have democracy. The Soviets were talking about state autonomy and local power, but it had to be on the Soviet’s terms. I would not say that the Bolsheviks were attempting to colonize Central Asia, at least not in 1918, but there is a fine line between discussing the future of an autonomous state with political, intellectual, and political equals and trying to force down a political philosophy onto local peoples without taking into consideration their own expertise or even the obvious fact that, by Marx’s own logic, Central Asia was not a state functioned along the terms of class. The closest they came to acknowledging this was during a session of the Executive Committee of the Saratov Soviet of Deputies:

“There is nobody from who they [soviets] can be comprised. There are virtually no workers, nor are there really any soldiers to speak of either. We only have the zemstvo institutions, which the center has decided to preserve”

Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement, pg. 36

This is an important thing to understand, because the disconnect between the Bolshevik approach to state building and the approach of the indigenous people of Central Asian will be a thorn in the side of the Bolsheviks from 1918 and beyond.

The relationship between the Alash Orda and the Bolsheviks worsened and by May 1918, the Bolsheviks saw the Alash Orda as no different from the other bourgeois parties (such as the Kadets) and claimed that “its chairman, the protégé of the Provisional Government Bokeikhanov, is wanted by the Turgai Oblast Executive Committee” (Dina A. Amanzholova, Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movem, pg. 37). For their part, the Alash Orda were angry with the Bolsheviks’ refuse to honor their proposal. They were also alarmed of the growing conflict with the local soviets, the increased violence that came with being in the backyard of a civil war, and the mass starvation that was affecting Central Asia. They argued that:

“The economic disintegration, the foodstuffs collapse, the complete disorganization of transport, the killing off of the country’s trade and industrial life, the robbing, the looting of people’s livelihood and the complete absence of even a semblance of any law and order-al this poured fuel on the fire and led its citizens’ hatred towards the Bolsheviks. People everywhere prepared for an overthrow.”

Gulnar Kendirbai, “We are Children of Alash…”, pg. 40

Unable to compromise with the Bolsheviks, the Alash Orda looked for other allies. Relying on their former relationship with the Kadet and Siberian government (the Alash Autonomy had been one of the first governments to recognize the Siberian Autonomy as a real government), they turned to the White Army. Another factor in their decision may have been the military situation as of May 1918. We’ll discuss this in more detail in our next episode, but as of May the Czech Legion had taken the city of Chelyabinsk and were on their way to taking most of the Trans-Siberian railroad from Lake Baikal to the Ural Region. And Russian officers overthrow the soviets in Petropavlovsk (a city in modern day Kazakhstan) and Omsk. By July the White Army and their comrades had taken Siberia and declared an autonomous Siberian government. It may have seemed wise at the time to side with the army in control of the region as oppose to the Bolsheviks who were still trying to raise an army and were spread thin on so many fronts.

So, by May 1918, the Alash Orda had thrown their lot with the White Army, raising local militias and fighting alongside the White Army’s forces in Siberia, hoping against all hope, that they would find support for their dream of a federation made out of equals within the anti-Bolshevik conglomerate. Their hopes would soon be dashed by reality.

References

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

Central Asia: a New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present by Adeeb Khalid

Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: the History of the Alash Movement by Dina A. Amanzholova

The “Russian” Civil Wars: 1916-1916 by Jonathan D. Smele

‘”We are Children of Alash…” The Kazakh Intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century in search of national indeitty and prospects of the cultural survival of the Kazakh people’ by Gulnar Kendirbai, Central Asian Survey, 1999, Vol 18 No 1