Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Isolation also meant that Moscow was not fully able to temper the anti-Muslim excesses of the (largely Russian) Soviet leadership in Turkestan, which continued throughout 1918 and even beyond the time when direct communication between Moscow and Tashkent was restored (with the recapture of Orenburg by the Red Army in January 1919). Eventually, though, Moscow’s influence was brought to bear, through the dispatch to Tashkent of VTsIK’s Turkestan Commission, and on 24 September 1920, a new constitution of the Turkestan ASSR was proclaimed, in which Muslims participation was encouraged, although Pan-Turkism was tempered by the exclusion from Turkestan of Khiva (as the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic) and Bukhara (as the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic). The Turkestan ASSR was formally dissolved on 27 October 1924, and its territories were divided among the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (now Turkmenistan), the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (now Uzbekistan), the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (now Tajikistan), the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast′ (now Kyrgyzstan), and the Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast′ (now Karakalpakstan).

The chairmen of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Turkestan ASSR (Turksovnarkom) were F. I. Kolesov (15 November 1917–30 April 1918 and June–5 October 1918); P. A. Kobozev (30 April–June 1918); V. D. Figel′skii (23 October 1918–19 January 1919); K. E. Sorokin (30 March 1919–March 1920); K. S. Atabaev (19 September 1920–1922); T. R. Risqulov (1922–12 January 1924); and S. A. Ismalov (12 January–27 October 1924).

TURKESTAN COMMISSARS.See FOURTEEN TURKESTAN COMMISSARS.

TURKESTAN COMMISSION. The Turkestan Commission (or Turkkomissia) of the VTsIK and Sovnarkom of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was established on 8 October 1919. Its original members were G. I. Botkin, Sh. Z. Eliava, M. V. Frunze, F. I. Goloshchekin, V. V. Kuibyshev, and Ia. E. Rudzutak. It was granted full authority to act in the name of Sovnarkom and VTsIK within the borders of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and to assist the latter with the establishment of Soviet power in the region, as the White presence in the region collapsed.

The Turkkomissia arrived in Tashkent on 4 November 1919 and immediately concluded that the only way forward was to co-opt local nationalist leaders who were of a radical bent (chiefly the proponents of Jadidism) into the new Soviet institutions. Consequently, a Fifth Regional Party Conference of January 1920 elected a Regional Bureau that was largely Muslim and had the Jadid leader Tursan Hojaev as its secretary. Hojaev subsequently oversaw an attempt to turn the local Bolshevik organization into what Moscow interpreted (probably correctly) as an instrument of Pan-Turkic nationalism: he attempted to remove non-Turkic peoples from the organization, proposed the establishment of an independent Turkic Communist Party (at this point local Communists were affiliated with the Russian Communist Party), and argued in favor of a unitary Central Asian State. The Turkkommissia rejected all this, with the endorsement of Moscow (which established a party Turkbiuro, sent the Chekist Jēkabs Peterss to join the Turkkommissia to toughen it up, and made G. Ia. Sokol′nikov its chairman), and proposed instead the division of Turkestan into three separate ethnic republics (with Khiva and Bukhara separated from Turkestan). This was achieved in the new constitution of the Turkestan ASSR, proclaimed on 11 April 1921, which built on the previously established Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic (26 April 1920) and the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic (8 October 1920). Its work done, the activities of the Turkkommissia were wound up on 16 August 1922.

TURKESTAN FRONT. This Red front was created according to the orders of the Revvoensovet of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on 23 February 1919. On 14 August 1919, it was augmented by the southern group of forces from the Red Army’s Eastern Front, as that group’s offensive drove the Whites from the southern Urals. By early 1920, its forces numbered some 114,000 men from the Astrakhan Group (which was part of the 11th Red Army, prior to 14 October 1919), the 4th Red Army, the 1st Red Army, and the forces of the Turkestan ASSR.