Chapter 8
1917: The Moment of Truth

The Russian revolution of February 1917 arrived in Turkestan by telegram and took everyone by surprise. Overnight, the political order in place for a half-century disappeared. Groups scrambling to organize in the new order followed the example of events unfolding in Petrograd, but since social tensions in Turkestan had little in common with those of distant Petrograd, the politics of the new era were fully embedded in the colonial realities of Turkestan. The familiar patterns of dual power appeared in Turkestan, too, as executive committees of the Provisional Government appeared side by side with soviets of workers', soldiers', and peasants' deputies within the first few days of the revolution, but both sides represented the Russian population. Far more significant was the divide between Russian and Muslim politics, as the Russian-native dichotomy that had framed Central Asian life since the conquest became a significant political vector.

The revolution also transformed the nature of Muslim politics in Turkestan. Overnight, the struggle over culture, confined to a restricted public space and fought over schools and newspapers, was transformed into an explicitly political struggle to be decided by the vote. This put the Jadids in a difficult position, for it was quite clear that their struggle for authority within their society had just begun. Strategies that worked in the struggles of urban elites did not always succeed in the era of mass mobilization. As the conflict between the Jadids and their opponents came into the open, it shaped the reactions of both sides to the oppor-

tunities opened up by the revolution. The Jadids embraced the promise of liberal constitutionalism embodied in the February revolution and, in keeping with their political strategies of the tsarist period, sought to maximize Turkestan's participation in Russian life, a hope reiterated by Jadid writers throughout the year. Their opponents sought to protect the local specificities that marked Turkestan's position in the empire and upheld their position within Turkestani society.

For the Jadids, 1917 was a turning point. The emergence of open politics pitched them in unforeseen directions. They struggled on two fronts: for the defense of their nation's interests against the colonial aspirations of the Russian population of Turkestan, and for control of their nation's destiny against many opponents in their own society. Before the year was out, many of them found themselves experimenting with running a government. Their lack of success led to a fundamental shift in both the premises of their reform and the political strategies they were willing or able to employ. The year 1917 marked a shift from the politics of admonition to those of mobilization, while the nation for whose benefit the Jadids acted in politics came to be imagined increasingly as an ethnic entity, with the rhetoric of Turkism firmly being foregrounded. As we will see in the Epilogue, both of these shifts were of paramount importance in understanding the politics of the early Soviet period.

Colonial Revolution

A. N. Kuropatkin, the recently appointed governor-general, put the matter in its imperial context when he confided to his diary on 6 March: "Nothing special has happened yet, but we can expect anything, even terrorist acts, which are especially dangerous in Asia where we Russians form a third [sic] among the 10 million strong native population."^[1] His first instinct, therefore, was to suppress the news of the revolution in Petrograd, but his efforts at concealment were unsuccessful, and the news became widely known through unofficial channels in Tashkent early the next morning.^[2] On z March, Russian workers of the Central Asian and Tashkent railways organized a soviet, which in turn elected a Tashkent Soviet of Workers' Deputies on 3 March. Soldiers at the Tashkent garrison followed two days later and organized a Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies

[1] "Iz dnevnika A. N. Kuropatkina," Krasnyi arkhiv , no. 20 (1927): 60.

[2] Istorua Tashkenta s drevneishikh vremen do pobedy fevral'skoi burzhuazno-demokraticheskoi revoliutsu (Tashkent, 1988), 286.

on 5 March. The same day, the Tashkent City Duma called a meeting of all public organizations, which proceeded to elect a nineteen-member Executive Committee of Public Organizations with V. P. Nalivkin, a moderate Menshevik in spite of his long career as a functionary in Turkestan, as chair.^[3] All the trappings of dual power were in place in Tashkent.

The initial assumption among all sectors of Russian society was that the revolution would not question their supremacy in Turkestan and that it would remain a largely Russian affair, as had been the case in 1905. The earliest efforts to organize public life in Tashkent therefore made no attempt to include the native population. The public organizations represented in the Executive Committee were all organizations of Russians in the Russian part of Tashkent, and dual power was at first a purely Russian affair. The token presence of "natives"—Ubaydullah Khojaev and Tashpolad Narbutabekov were coopted into the Tashkent Executive Committee to represent the old city—only served to underscore this assumption. On 6 March, Kuropatkin addressed separate assemblies of Russians and Muslims, assuring the latter (in an abridged version of his speech to the Russian assembly) that "under the new order of life in Russia their lives, too, will be easier than before."^[4]

But this was not to be a repeat of 1905. The rise of the reading and listening public over the previous decade and, more importantly, the war and the uprising of 1916, had politicized local society, and in March 1917 the proclamation of the new order was universally celebrated as the dawn of a new age of liberty, equality, and justice. A long poem, "The New Freedom," by the Tashkent poet Sirajiddin Makhdum Sidqi, published in an enormous edition of 10,000 copies on 12 March, provides a glimpse at how the revolution was received in this distant colony of the Russian empire. "Praise be that the epoch of freedom has arrived. The sun of justice has lit the world.... The time of love and truth has come.... Now, we have to set aside our false thoughts; ... the most important aim must be to give thought to how we will live happily in the arena of freedom."^[5] A few weeks later, Sidqi published another narrative poem giving an account of the revolution in Petrograd with a print run of 25,000. Here again, Sidqi's fundamental theme was liberty: The events in Petrograd, which he recounts in considerable detail, were the

[3] P.A. Kovalev, Revoliutsionnaia situatsua 1915-1917 gg. i ee proiavlenua v Turkestane (Tashkent, 1971), 217.

[4] "Iz dnevnika," 60.

[5] Sirajiddin Makhdum Sidqi ,Taza hurriyat (Tashkent, 1917), 2.

culmination of a long struggle by the people of Russia for liberty that dated back to the Pugachev revolt in the 1770s. The verse format of the pamphlet bridged the gap in intelligibility by translating the episode into a form fully accessible to the local population.^[6]

Sidqi's call for action was echoed by many others in Turkestan. The newly established newspaper Rawnaq ul-Islam declared that "it ... [was now] necessary to pass from the epoch of words to the era of deeds."^[7] Even Behbudi broke his composure and in a moment of excitement criticized the old regime, in which "missionaries, or rather men wishing to destroy us and our sacred shariat," had subordinated the shariat to the Turkestan Statute.^[8] And indeed, in the very first days of the new order, a number of organizations appeared among the Muslim population. The Jadids played a crucial part in this period of organization. As early as 5 March, activists in the old city of Tashkent formed a committee to "explain the meaning of the revolution to the Muslim population and to prepare it to take advantage of the new political situation."^[9] On 9 March, a public meeting in old Tashkent, presided over by Ubaydullah Khojaev and Munawwar Qari ,attracted 20,000 people.^[10] Another, even larger public meeting on 13 March at the main mosque elected by acclamation four deputies to the Tashkent Executive Committee. The meeting also elected a separate commissar for the old city and resolved to elect a forty-eight-member committee to administer it. This committee met the following day and chose the name Tashkand Shura-yi Islamiya (Tashkent Muslim Council) for itself. In due course, the Shura decided to send delegations to other cities in Turkestan to initiate organizations, induct new members, and raise funds.^[11] But similar meetings, perhaps on a less spectacular scale, took place in almost every city of Turkestan.

The Tashkent Shura, which in contemporary Russian sources was commonly translated as the "Soviet of Muslim Deputies," was clearly intended to be the counterpart of the soviet in the Russian city. In the long run, this audacious bid to secure self-administration did not suc-

[6] Sidqi, Buyuk Rusiya inqilabi (Tashkent, 1917). Sidqi's poems are only one example of a minor literary explosion unleashed by the February revolution in Turkestan. For obvious reasons, this corpus has received no scholarly attention.

[7] Rawnaq ul-Islam (Kokand), no date (April 1917), no. 5.

[8] Mahmud Khoja Behbudi, "Bizga islahat kerak," Najat , 17 April 1917.

[9] D.I. Manzhara, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Srednei Azii 1905-1929 gg. (Vospominanua ) (Tashkent, 1934), 36.

[10] Najat , 23 March 1917. The figure of 20,000 was most likely exaggerated, bur it nevertheless indicates a completely unprecedented scale of mobilization.

[11] Najat , 26 March 1917 UT , 25 April 1917; Tirik soz (Kokand), 2 April 1917.

ceed, and the Shura came to be a coordinating committee of Muslim organizations in Tashkent. By the summer, when other organizations had emerged beyond its ambit and, eventually, in direct opposition to it, it had become one Muslim organization among many in Tashkent. But in March, it served to assert a Muslim presence in the politics of the most important city in Turkestan, and it tapped the widespread enthusiasm aroused by the revolution.

This enthusiasm was also reflected in the rebirth of the vernacular press. The first month of the new order saw a number of newspapers launched in Tashkent, Samarqand, and Kokand. However, the biggest coup was the takeover of the TWG by a group of Jadids in mid-March. In pursuance of demands by social organizations that both TWG and its parent publication, Turkestanskie vedomosti , be given over to the public (obshchestvo ),^[12] the Tashkent Executive Committee of the Provisional Government organized a public meeting on 12 March to discuss the fate of TWG . The meeting, with Nalivkin in chair, convened in the Teachers' Seminary, which since its inception in 1879 had been headed by N.P. Ostroumov, who was present as editor of TWG . In attendance were Munawwar Qari ,Ubaydullah Khojaev, and a host of other Tashkent Jadids. Ostroumov resigned as editor before the meeting began, and his permission to leave was granted. Nalivkin, speaking in Turkic, decried "the extremely constrained position" of the vernacular press that had existed until then but expressed hope for a better future "now that there are no secrets between the government and the Muslims." The evening ended with Munawwar Qari being elected the new editor of the newspaper, which was renamed Najat (Salvation).^[13]

Ostroumov might have thought the world had turned upside down. The same bewilderment is clear in a letter sent to a Tashkent newspaper by N. S. Lykoshin, the orientalist and longtime Turkestan hand who until recently had been governor of Samarqand oblast. Lykoshin drew his readers' attention to "the transformation in the worldview of our natives," who never had even as many popular rights as those expressed in the Novgorod veche . The difference between Russian and native had to be established, even if only through an appeal to the hoary myths of eleventh-century Novgorod. "These people lived for centuries under

[12] TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 8, d. 528, ll. 16-160b.

[13] Gr. Andreev, "Soveshchanie po reorganizatsii 'Turkestanskoi Tuzemnoi Gazety,'" Turkestanskie vedomosti , 16 March 1917; "Tarikhi majlis, yakhud Astraumof ornida Munawwar Qari ,"Najat , 19 March 1917.

the despotic administration of their khans and amirs, under the severe statutes of their strict religion.... Our natives were never citizens; they were always only members of the general Muslim religious community, regardless of which state they happened to live in." Their incapacity to become citizens was clearly demonstrated in 1916, when, "presented with the demand to raise troops, our natives responded not as citizens, but simply as people in whom the instinct for self-preservation was much stronger than [the sense of] duty.... Disorders erupted in the region, Russian blood flowed, and punitive expeditions were called up." Once "pacified" (and Lykoshin knew all about the "pacification," for he had been responsible for the suppression of the uprising in Jizzakh, one of the bloodier episodes in the uprising), the natives had turned to other unsavory practices, such as the campaign of petitions against functionaries launched by "the secret society 'Taraqqiparwar.'" It was in these conditions that the natives entered Russian political life. "The administration explained to the natives the recent events, but of course it was not possible to explain everything completely. The native mass heard nothing sensibly, and understood nothing sensibly. Only it became clear that with the change in the government, our native population was also given the same rights as the other citizens of our fatherland.... This our practical natives understood very well and, not thinking apparently of the obligations of Russian citizenship, turned all their attention to the most rapid realization of their new rights." Lykoshin's ire was raised by events in Samarqand, where the organizers of the first executive committee, formed on 5 March, had coopted two Muslims (one of whom was Behbudi) as its members. At its first meeting, however, the committee had decided that the Muslim population should elect its own deputies. A mass meeting held two days later had resurrected the petition campaign and, in addition to calumniating various members of the administration, had been impertinent enough to ask that taxes raised in old Samarqand not be spent on the Russian part of town and that Muslims be granted not two, but fifty-eight of the ninety seats in the executive committee.^[14]

Lykoshin's views were not necessarily typical of the Russian population, but the unease at the prospect of the transformation of natives into citizens was widely shared. Once the bewilderment had worn off and it became clear that the Provisional Government intended to extend full citizenship to Turkestan and to grant its Muslim inhabitants the fran-

[14] N.S. Lykoshin, "Grazhdane tuzemtsy!" Turkestanskii kur'er , 19 March 1917.

chise on the same basis as other citizens, Russian organizations acted to protect their privileged status in the region.^[15] This took the form of a demand at the Regional Congress of Executive Committees in April to create separate dumas for the Russian and "native" parts of cities in Turkestan, each controlling separate budgets. This attempt to protect the privileges that had been assured under the old regime (the Tashkent Duma was assured a two-thirds Russian composition) and to protect the interests of the Russian population from the impact of democracy clearly pitted the Russian community against the local population. In mid-summer, this issue took a different form, as local Russians demanded the creation of a special electoral unit for the Russian population of Turkestan in the elections to the Constituent Assembly to ensure that the local Russian population was not drowned in the sea of local voters. Both these demands directly contradicted the principle of universal and equal franchise and were contested by Muslim representatives.

The Russian left, which had a considerable presence in Turkestan (the region had returned several socialist deputies to the Second Duma), did not differ markedly in this respect from the rest of Russian society. A Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies had emerged in Tashkent at the very beginning of the revolution. Given the situation in Turkestan, it was by definition a Russian institution. The labor movement in Turkestan had always been a Russian affair, with little effort to propagandize the "natives." In the conditions of empire, even Russian workers were a prosperous elite in Turkestan, since "belonging to the industrial proletariat in [this] tsarist colony was the national privilege of the Russians."^[16] For the labor movement, native society with its dark Asiatic masses signified little more than the panorama of backwardness that socialism was to conquer. It had failed to protest against the atrocities committed against the local population in 1916. For its part, the Muslim artisans were organized along very different principles. The struggles of the Russian labor movement would scarcely have been intelligible to them even if the Russians had made any effort to be inclusive.^[17] The case of the soldiers

[15] In April, the Provisional Government ordered new elections for all existing municipal dumas (including that of Tashkent) on the basis of universal suffrage (Robert Paul Browder and Alexander F. Kerensky, eds., The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents , 3 vols. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961], I: 261-262). It also introduced dumas into other cities m Turkestan.

[16] G. Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia —opyt Turkestana (Oxford, 1985 [orig. Moscow, 1921]), 110.

[17] Ibid., 83 et passim. For a similarly harsh appraisal of the Russian labor movement and the early Soviet regime in Turkestan, see the opening pages of S. Ginzburg, "Basmachestvo v Fergane," in Ocherki revoliutsionnogo dvizhenua v Srednei Azii: sbornik statei (Moscow, 1926)

was even more obvious: Even the most humble Russian soldier in Turkestan was a member of an occupying force and derived his identity on the colonial fringe from that fact. Moreover, many of the soldiers stationed in Turkestan in February 1917 were recent arrivals, having been sent just the previous autumn to quell the uprising against recruitment. Russian peasants, mostly armed settlers competing with the local population for land and water, were also quick to organize soviets. The majority of them lived in Semirech'e, where the bloodshed from the previous year continued well past the revolution.^[18] The soviets' claim to power thus violated the principle of autonomy of Turkestan on both "national" and territorial grounds, but their monopoly over armed force in the region at a time when all constituted authority was disintegrating ensured that they emerged as very significant political actors.

Muslim Politics

Many of the local Muslim organizations founded in the first weeks of the revolution were concerned primarily with cultural or educational issues, while others had more overtly political aims, although the two sets of goals were rarely separable. The Splendor of Islam Society (Rawnaq ul-IslamJamiyati) in Katta Qorghan ,for instance, aimed to "acquaint the people with the present situation and to send people to the villages to spread ideas of citizenship [ghrazhdanliq ]and knowledge, in order to prepare our brothers for the Constituent Assembly and to reform our schools."^[19] Along with the mushrooming of organizations went the adoption, no matter how superficially, of new norms of procedure. On 22 March a meeting of the prominent ulama of Kokand began with the election of a chair and a secretary to record the minutes of the proceedings.^[20] Agendas were drawn up for meetings and minutes diligently kept and promptly published in the press. The revolution had produced new forms of sociability among the local population that the tsarist regime had done its utmost to curtail. Although the more ambitious among

[18] Marco Buttino, "Turkestan 1917, la révolution des russes," Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique , 32 (1991): 66-67, 70-71.

[19] UT , 5 May 1917, 3. Very similar aims were expressed by the Muslim Education Society in Samarqand (Samarqand anjuman-i maarif-i islamiya jamiyatining mukhtasar proghramasi [Samarqand, 1917], 2-7).

[20] Tirik soz , 2 April 1917.

them could still comment with dismay that most of the new organizations remained mere societies or circles,^[21] there was little question that the nature of politics had changed irrevocably in Turkestan.

For the Jadids, the revolution was a summons to action, and they acted to realize their long-held wishes. The organizational activity of the first weeks of the revolutionary era bore the marks of cultural struggles of Central Asia. The enthusiasm that led to the reemergence of the periodical press was replicated in other areas of Jadid concern. Munawwar Qari organized a commission in early March to work toward creating a common program for all Muslim schools in Turkestan and to suggest ways of introducing the teaching of Russian into them.^[22] New-method teachers formed unions in Tashkent and Kokand and, in true revolutionary fashion, convened a Turkestan Teachers' Congress, which met in Tashkent on 20 May.^[23] Over the summer, the Jadid-led Turkestan Central Council organized teacher training courses in Tashkent, which paralleled similar initiatives in Samarqand.^[24] Abdullah Awlani went as Turkestan's delegate to the All-Russian Muslim Teachers' Congress in Kazan in August 1917, where he was elected to the presidium.^[25]

The revolution opened up entirely new domains to competition among Muslim elites of Turkestan. Now the state came to occupy a central place in their thinking about the future; the politics of admonition gave way to the politics of mobilization, and votes took the place of exhortation. They sought to use the freedoms allowed by the revolution to ensure full participation for Turkestan in the political life of the Russian republic (which had been a basic political goal of the Jadids before the revolution). The possibilities seemed limitless now. The fundamental task was to ensure that the nation knew how to take advantage of them. Exhortations to unity and action abounded in the Jadid press, and they were combined with warnings about the dangers of not seizing the opportunity provided by the revolution: "[If we let this moment go,] it will be an enormous crime, a betrayal of not just ourselves, but of all Muslims.... We will leave a bad name behind in the history of Turkestan. God forbid, we will be accountable both to coming generations and to our ancestors and will receive retribution both in this world and

[21] "Turkistanda tashkilat masalasi," Kengash , 11 July 1917.

[22] Ibrahim Tahir ,"Maktab wa madrasalar islahi ,"UT , 5 May 1917.

[23] "Turkistan muallimlar isyizdi," UT , 24 May 1917.

[24] Kengash , 25 July 1917; Hurriyat , 18 July 1917.

[25] Kengash , 20 August 1917.

afterlife. O Muslims of Turkestan! ... Let this time not pass!"^[26] The Jadids also asserted their claim, implicit in their rhetoric of the previous decade and a half, to lead their society in the new era. Their possession of modern knowledge, especially of the Russian language, gave them the necessary qualifications for that role. Conversely, the Jadids commonly asserted that the traditional educations of the ulama had left them incapable of understanding, let alone making use of, the opportunities offered by the new turn of events.

The emergence of open politics brought the Jadids in cooperation with those Russian-educated Central Asian intellectuals who had played little or no role in the politics of cultural reform. Tashpolad Narbutabekov ,a lawyer, was from the beginning very prominent in Muslim politics. The revolution found Mustafa Choqay in Petrograd, where he worked in the offices of the Muslim Faction at the State Duma. He took the first train to Turkestan. Also taking the train was the young Bashkir historian Ahmed Zeki Velidi (1894-1970), who had spent some time in Central Asia several years earlier doing his research. Until August, when Bashkir politics claimed his attention, he played a very visible role in organizational matters. Delegations from Kazan and Transcaucasia arrived to help local Jadids organize, and some of their members ran for office. A number of lines dissolved in 1917, and the Jadids became part of a broad coalition of groups whose major common characteristics were their youth and a will to participate in the liberal politics of the revolution.

The Jadids' claim to leadership was contested by other groups in society. Tensions appeared at the outset. The induction of Khojaev and Narbutabekov into the Tashkent Executive Committee on March 6 led to grumbling in the city about "why have the youth [yashlar ]entered the committee when no ulama, functionaries, or merchants were included?" The Jadids were able to contain conflict on this occasion by going door to door over the next few days and putting the matter before the public meeting of 13 March, which in addition to ratifying the election of these two, elected two more representatives (both Jadids) to the committee.^[27] But much tougher struggles lay ahead. The Jadids retained control of the Tashkent Shura, but many other organizations, especially outside the

[26] Muallim M. H., "Bukun qanday kun?" Kengash (Kokand), 15 April 1917, 12. For other expressions of such anxiety, see Shakirjan Rahimi, "Eng zor wazifalarimiz," Najat , 23 March 1917; Abidjan Mahmudov, editorial in Tirik soz , 2 April 1917; Mirmuhsin Shermuhammadov, "Hurriyatdan nechuk faidalanamiz," Najat , 9 April 1917.

[27] "Tashkandda hurriyat harakatlari," Najat , 23 March 1917.

capital, appeared far beyond their purview. Many revolved around personalities, in effect transforming the informal politics of colonial Turkestan into the formal politics of the revolutionary era. Tashkent Jadids hoped to create a network of organizations covering all of Turkestan, but no coordinated effort ever came about. The title "Shura-yi Islam "proved quite popular, but the various shuras in Turkestan had little in common with the Tashkent organization. In Samarqand, the local shura was the organization of the ulama, many of whom were inimical to the Jadids. The three organizations in Aq Masjid represented various factions of local notables.^[28] But the most intriguing story came from Andijan.

Representativesof the Tashkent Shura arriving in Andijan walked into the ancient rivalry between two local millionaires, Mir Kamil-bay and Ahmetbek Temirbekov. Mir Kamil interfered in the meetings of the newly established organization (in one instance, his minions forced all Tatars present to wear a chalma (turban), and expelled those who refused),^[29] while Temirbekov refused to have anything to do with the Tashkent delegates. Instead, he asked the local executive committee for permission to start "his own" Shura-yi Islam .When permission was not granted, he named his organization Hurriyat (Liberty). By late May, though, numerous other organizations had come into existence and joined together to form a Ferghana Oblast Soviet of Deputies of Muslim Organizations. On 20 May, this soviet, in conjunction with the Turkestan Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, managed to have Mir Kamil exiled from Turkestan and Temirbekov sent off to Tashkent. They were allowed to return in mid-July, but only on condition that they not interfere with public affairs until the election of the Constituent Assembly.^[30]

Moderate Jadids emphasized unity in their attempts at organization. When Munawwar Qari organized the school commission in March, he invited maktab teachers to participate, clearly an attempt to build bridges with more conservative groups. The Union of Teachers in Kokand similarly took a conciliatory stance toward the ulama. As the editorial in the first issue of its magazine asserted, the community needed the ulama for guidance in religious affairs just as much as it needed open-minded, Russian-speaking, modern-educated people to take the helm in the po-

[28] Mustafa Çokay, 1917 Yili Hatira Parçalari (Ankara, 1988), 17-19.

[29] UT , 20 May 1917, 4.

[30] "Protokol zasedaiia S"ezda Andizhanskikh obshchestvennykh musul'manskikh uezdno-gorodskikh organizatsii ot 14-170e iiulia 1917 goda," TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 24, II. 26-270b.

litical realm.^[31] However, other aspects of Jadid activity worked against this attempted conciliation. One of the Jadids' first organized efforts after the revolution was a campaign against corrupt or incompetent qazis .This was clearly a continuation of the campaign pursued the previous winter by Ubaydullah Khojaev and Vadim Chaikin, but now it tapped into the general revolutionary sentiment against the old order. The Tashkent Shura called for the re-election of all qazis who had been serving for more than three years, and two days later it resolved to form a committee to "dismiss those old functionaries whose continued employment is harmful" in the new era.^[32] In Kokand, one of the first acts of the local shura was the dismissal of several qazis .^[33] Many of these functionaries, and especially the qazis among them, were to form the backbone of the opposition to Jadids that emerged by late spring.

The high point of the political movement came early, when it organized the First Turkestan Muslim Congress, from 16 to 22 April, in Tashkent. Although the congress was not representative in the strict sense of the word (Muslim organizations from all over Turkestan were invited to send delegates with mandates, but more than 100 delegates arrived on their own out of a sense of civic duty),^[34] the mere fact of its convening only seven weeks after the fall of the autocracy was remarkable. The congress opened in the mansion of the governor-general with typical revolutionary pomp, as representatives of the Provisional Government, Turkestan Congress of Executive Committees, and Turkestan Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies greeted its inaugural session.^[35] The elections to the presidium of the congress signified a victory for the Jadids: Munawwar Qari was elected president, and Ubaydullah Khojaev, Mustafa Choqay ,Narbutabekov ,Islam Shahiahmedov, and Zeki Velidi were among those elected to the presidium.^[36] The congress also elected a twelve-member delegation to attend the forthcoming All-Russian Muslim Congress organized by the Muslim Faction of the Duma in Moscow and decided to establish a Turkestan Muslim Central Council (Turkistan Milli Markaz Shurasi )as its standing executive organ.^[37] Although this organ did not begin work until 1 June, it was to provide an invaluable institutional base

[31] Muallim Hakimjan Mirzakhanzada ,"E'tizarga e'tizar,"Kengash , 15 April 1917, 14.

[32] Najat , 26 March 1917; 9 April 1917; 15 April 1917.

[33] Muallim Shakir al-Mukhtari,Kim qazi bolsin (Kokand, 1917), 2; UT , 5 May 1917.

[34] UT , 25 April 1917.

[35] Turkestanskie vedomosti , 22 April 1917.

[36] UT , 25 April 1917.

[37] Kengash , 31 August 1917.

for the Jadids; through it, the Jadids could claim to speak in the name of all Muslims of Turkestan. The sixteen-point program for the congress included a wide array of questions dealing with the political future of Turkestan, ranging from the attitude toward the new government, the forms of state organization, food supply, and land and water rights, to questions of education reform.^[38]

Yet, even the euphoria of the occasion could not hide the acute tensions within Muslim society. The congress was sharply divided on the question of autonomy. All had celebrated the dawn of freedom, and all could agree on the desirability of autonomy, but different groups had very different ideas about the meaning of these terms. The ulama were wary of a redefinition of culture that undermined their position as its authoritative interpreters. The Jadids' eagerness to use the opportunities afforded by the revolution to seek full participation for Turkestan in the new order also threatened to collapse the walls that sustained the ulama's status within the community. The ulama's response to the revolution therefore took the form of an attempt to maximize the space allowed by the regime to the regional and cultural peculiarities of Turkestan and to attempt to cordon off as much of their society as possible from the depredations of the new universalist order inaugurated by the revolution. In practical terms, it meant demands for broadening the competence of Muslim courts to new areas of criminal and personal law, which would have placed the ulama in greater control of Muslim society.^[39] The ulama were less concerned with participation in mainstream imperial life, for while they could reach accommodation with outsiders, they had no patience for those within their own society who sought to undermine their authority.

Non-Russians in the country widely assumed that the democratic Russia of the future would provide some sort of autonomy for its various nationalities. As various groups across the empire organized politically and sought to be recognized as future autonomous subjects, they debated the choice between territorial and cultural forms of autonomy (the latter would have guaranteed nationalities such cultural rights as those of language, education, and representation, without attaching those to a territory). The debate came in this form to Turkestan. Most Jadids favored cultural autonomy, for they feared that without outside help they

[38] UT , 25 April 1917; see also Browder and Kerensky, eds., Russian Provisional Government , I: 420-421.

[39] Çokay, 1917 Yili , 49.

would be swamped by the enormous influence the ulama wielded m Turkestan and thus be marginalized in public life. Behbudi, along with Zeki Velidi, vehemently opposed this position and insisted that the congress vote for territorial autonomy. They were successful, and the congress voted in favor of a democratic federative republic for Russia with Turkestan enjoying wide territorial autonomy.^[40] The Jadids' fear of territorial autonomy turned out to be justified, although a different resolution at the congress would hardly have mattered.

Conflict came into the open by late spring. In Kokand, Hamza had early got into trouble with his peers, when an article he wrote in the Kokand magazine Kengash (Counsel) provoked criticism for its generally harsh tone.^[41] In Tashkent, the Turan party (toda ), under the leadership of Abdullah Awlani ,consistently took a more radical line than the Shura. It began by requisitioning, in true revolutionary fashion, the offices of the municipal chief of Tashkent for use as its headquarters (a rare, perhaps unique, instance of such revolutionary initiative from a Muslim organization).^[42] In July it was instrumental in hosting a delegation from the Turkic Federalist Party based in Ganjä in Transcaucasia. But it was an article by Mir Muhsin Shermuhammadov in the second issue of its newspaper Turan that brought matters between the Jadids and their opponents to a head. Mir Muhsin, recently returned from a year at the new-method Galiye madrasa in Ufa, expressed the usual Jadid criticisms of traditional education. These sentiments had been repeated ad nauseum by Jadid writers and orators since the turn of the century, but now certain ulama seized upon it as a show of strength. Mir Muhsin's criticism of a medieval tract on Arabic grammar was deemed blasphemous by the qazi of the Sibzar section of Tashkent, and although Awlani apologized publicly in the next issue of the newspaper, Mir Muhsin was arrested and sentenced to death for apostasy.^[42] The sentence far exceeded the qazi's

[40] Contemporary reports (e.g., Najat , 23 April 1917) unfortunately do not provide details of this debate. Behbudi recounted his views several months later: "Turkistan mukhtariyati ,"Hurriyat , 19 December 1917; A. Z. V. Togan, Hâtiralar: Turkistan ve Diger Musluman Dogu Turklermin Millî Varlik ve Kultur Mucadeleleri (Istanbul, 1969), 152-153; see also Ahlullah Khayrullah oghli, "Turkistanda birinchi 'qurultay,'" Shura , 15 July 1917, 323-324.

[41] The article m question seems never to have been published, but the debate it provoked became public when Hamza complained m a different newspaper that he had been censored m a manner worse than he had experienced m the imperial period; see Hamza, "E"tizor," in Tola asarlar toplami , ed. N. Karimov et al., 5 vols. (Tashkent, 1988-1989), IV: 269. For Kengash's response, see Mirzakhanzada ,"E'tizarga e'tizar,"14.

[42] UT , 7 July 1917.

[43] "Shayan-i ta'assuf waqealar ,"UT , 31 May 1917. This incident caused comment in the Tatar press as well; see Shura , 15 June 1917, 286-287.

competence, but what was truly at stake was not blasphemy but an assertion by the ulama of their power within Muslim society as well as a challenge to the new Russian authorities. Ultimately, Mir Muhsin was rescued by the police from the Russian quarter and his sentence was "commuted" to eighteen months' imprisonment. Mir Muhsin managed to escape and with financial help from friends among the Jadids returned to Ufa, but the absence of widespread protest against this action was proof that the ulama retained moral and religious authority among the population at large, surely a disturbing sign for the Jadids.

As disagreements deepened, the ulama in Tashkent split from the Shura and formed their own organization, the Ulama Jamiyati (Society of Ulama). Again, the new principle of sociability is worth noting, for the Ulama Jamiyati was a modern organization quite distinct from the ulama's traditional modes of association. Although technically not a political party, the Ulama Jamiyati often functioned as one, as is clear from its actions during the rest of the year, when it mounted political campaigns, ran candidates for office, held conferences, and published magazines. Nor was it merely a trade union for the ulama; it was a political organ representing the interests of all traditional elites in Turkestani society. It was headed not by a religious dignitary but by Sher Ali Lapin, a Russian-educated Qazaq who had spent years in Russian service as an interpreter and was currently a lawyer.^[44] Nor was the Jamiyat averse to forming alliances with Russian parties of the right and the left, as its progress through the year showed.

The campaign for elections to the Tashkent Duma, set for late July after the Russians had dropped their demand for segregated dumas, pitted the Jadids directly against the ulama in a test of political strength.^[45] An offer by the Shura to field a joint slate of all Muslim groups in the city was rebuffed by the ulama, who saw little need to cooperate with their rivals. The Shura responded with a pamphlet that severely criticized "certain mullas and old functionaries who have united with foreign enemies who do not wish Muslims to achieve progress and take their affairs in their own hands and [who therefore] oppose the Shura-yi Islamiya ."^[46] Here and throughout the campaign, the Shura stressed that its candidates

[44] TsGARUz, f. 47, d. 2769, passim; Çokay, 1917 Yili , 18-19. Hélène Carrère d'Encausse ("The Fall of the Czarist Empire," in Edward Allworth, ed., Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule [New York, 1967], 216), assuming the Ulama Jamiyati to be a purely clerical organization, automatically promotes Lapin to "a mullah."

[45] Togan, Hàtiralar , 163-165.

[46] Tashkand Shura-yi Islamiyasi ,Khitabnama (Tashkent, 1917), 2.

would be able to function fruitfully in the duma because they had modern educations and were fluent in Russian. The purely traditional education of the ulama, the pamphlet went on to argue, rendered them ignorant of the times and of contemporary politics, and led them to be taken in by mischief makers (fitnachilar ). The pamphlet also asserted the credentials of the Shura's candidates, many of whom were learned in traditional knowledge.^[47]

The ulama's response was brief and caustic. In the few months of freedom, they stated in their response, the ulama of Tashkent had heard several criticisms from "inexperienced youth [yashlar ]... who had not received a complete religious or worldly education." The ulama had refused to field a joint slate because they knew who would be on that list and "which children [balalar ]would gain control of the public affairs of the Muslims of Tashkent. Keeping in mind the great importance of the duma, the ulama saw no public good coming out of cooperation in this matter with such youth."^[48] The list of candidates put forward by the Ulama Jamiyati was dominated by members of the religious elite.^[49]

Two different bases of authority were at stake here. The Shura based its claim to authority and leadership on its superior knowledge of the current situation and its claim to be able to function fruitfully in the Duma and, later, in the Constituent Assembly. The ulama derived their authority from their possession of traditional knowledge still greatly valued by society. Their condescension about the inexperience of youth also tapped into the great respect accorded to age in Central Asia. Ultimately, the ulama's claims to leadership proved more authoritative as they won the election by a landslide, gaining an absolute majority in the new duma, while the Jadids could scrape together only eleven seats. Voting was strictly according to national lines, with much of the Russian vote going to the Socialist Revolutionaries (see Table 8).

Once elected, the Tashkent Duma found it difficult to accomplish much in the chaotic situation of the summer except to provide further evidence of the tensions that existed between the ulama and the Jadids. The election of a new chairman for the duma produced the first crisis. The Ulama Jamiyati had no hesitation in putting forward as its candi-

[47] Ibid., 5, 13.

[48] Ulama Jamiyati, Haqiqatgha khilaf tarqatilgan khitabnamagha jawab wa ham bayan-i ahwal (Tashkent, 1917), 2, 5-7.

[49] "V obshchestve mull," Turkestanski kur'er , 2 July 1917, in Pobeda oktiabr'skoi revoliutsu v Uzbekistane: sbornik dokumentov (henceforth PORvUz ), 2 vols. (Tashkent, 1963-1972), I: 153.

date Lykoshin, whose amazement at natives becoming citizens we noted above. However, strong protest from other parties led to his nomination being withdrawn, to be replaced by that of A.K. Iakhimovich, whose politics were described by a disgruntled Jadid newspaper report as "to the right of the Kadets." so Iakhimovich was finally elected chair in late August, signifying an alliance between the ulama and conservative Russians.

The issue of schools provided the ulama another opportunity to humiliate the Jadids. The ulama elected five of their number to the eight-member commission formed in August to inspect schools in the city, and

[50] UT , 27 August 1917, 3.

one place went, ex officio, to the head of the duma. For the other two places, the Shura nominated Munawwar Qari, the founder of the largest new-method school in Tashkent and widely recognized as the leader of the Jadid movement in the city. In a public insult to Munawwar Qari and the Jadid cause, the ulama voted him down and instead elected two Russian socialist members of the duma to the commission.^[51] The ulama deemed even radical Russians preferable to the Jadids in questions of cultural policy, an indication of how far apart the two sides had drifted over the summer.

Tashkent provided only the most telling example of a conflict that raged throughout Turkestan. First blood had been shed in mid-April during a confrontation in Namangan, although details of the incident are extremely sketchy.^[52] In June, a meeting of the notable ulama of Kokand, called on the initiative of a qazi who had been dismissed earlier in the year, decreed that Musa Jarullah Bigi, the renowned Tatar modernist alim , and Ayaz Ishaki, the Tatar writer, were both infidels whose books should be gathered and burnt. The assembled ulama also demanded that they should have the right to supervise and censor all books and newspapers published in Turkestan.^[53] Attitudes were also influenced by events in Bukhara, where the amir had mustered conservative forces against the Jadids. In May, a certain Mulla Khalmurad Tashkandi, a conservative scholar in Bukhara, had obtained a fatwa decreeing all Jadids of Turkestan and Bukhara to be "enemies of the Islamic faith."^[54]

The question of women's place in the new era proved to be a major source of conflict. The Provisional Government granted the franchise to all citizens of Russia over the age of twenty, regardless of sex. This momentous change upset all existing calculations in Turkestan. The Jadids welcomed these new rights and set about registering women voters. They saw the right to vote as a boost to the position of women, but they also deemed women's votes to be crucial to the success of Muslim candidates in an election based on proportional representation. They succeeded in

[51] "Duma jivilishi," UT , 23 August 1917. In a few weeks, the commission decided to coopt four experts to help it in its work, and elected Munawwar Qari, as one of the four. But the ulama still managed to elect two teachers of old-method schools. "Maktab kamisiyasi," Kengash , 8 September 1917.

[52] I have encountered several indirect references to this incident: TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 1, l. 36; see also a letter signed by representatives of two Andijan organizations expressing dismay at the activities of "the Protopopovs of Turkestan": "Turkistan Protapapavlari," UT , 14 June 1917.

[53] "Khoqand ulamasining qarari," UT, 13 July 1917

[54] "Bukhara v 1917 godu," Krasnyi arkhiv , no. 20 (1927): 110.

securing a resolution of the April congress in favor of "giving" women the vote,^[55] and in July they garnered the help of Tatar women in registering women voters. As a conciliatory measure, the Jadids approached the ulama for a fatwa on whether it was permissible for women to vote if separate polling facilities existed for them and they encountered no men in the process. For the ulama, the choice between ensuring the electoral strength of the Muslim community and relinquishing their vision of a Muslim society built on gendered patterns of authority was clear-cut. They ruled that women's right to vote contravened Islamic laws and was therefore impermissible. Eventually, some Muslim women did vote, but the issue proved highly divisive throughout Turkestan. Behbudi, ever the moderate, suggested that the Jadids yield on this question for the sake of "national" unity, although in a different context he rued the fact that women's votes were crucial in assuring Muslim control of the new organs of self-government.^[56] This kind of unity was achieved in Katta Qorghan at least, where women simply did not vote in the elections.^[57]

Class was conspicuously absent from this intense political conflict, which was played out in the language of the nation and of its culture. The local urban workforce had plenty of grievances: It had suffered the consequences of the rapid transformation of the local economy under the impact of cotton and had been adversely affected by the severe economic crisis that hit Turkestan after the outbreak of the war. But it was in a period of transition, in which older patterns of organization such as the guilds were dissolving and new forms of solidarities had not emerged. The political language of the Russian labor movement remained unintelligible to Muslim artisans operating in a very different moral economy.

Artisans did begin to organize, and a Soviet of Muslim Workers' Deputies was formed in Tashkent in June at the initiative of Muslim soldiers returned from duty in the rear of the front.^[58] A Union of Muslim Toilers (Khoqand Musulman Mehnatkashlar Ittifaqi) appeared in Kokand on 25 June, and a Muslim Artisans' Union (Sanna' ul-Islam) organized in Andijan with as many as 1,500 members.^[59] Although Soviet historiography made much of the existence of Muslim labor organizations, it is unlikely that they shared much with the Russian soviets, which in turn made little effort to proselytize among the natives. A number of organizations

[55] Najat , 28 April 1917.

[56] Behbudi, "Bayan-i haqiqat," UT, 12 June 1917; Hurriyat , 3 July 1917.

[57] M. Khojayev, "Katta Qorghan" Hurriyat , 29 September 1917.

[58] PORvUz , I: 281.

[59] Hurriyat , 18 July 1917, 4 August 1917.

of Muslim artisans were headed by Jadids. The Tashkent Soviet of Muslim Workers was led by Abdullah Awlani and Sanjar Asfendyarov, a Qazaq medical doctor who was active in the Shura and who was to be prominent in the Kokand Autonomy. Its journal, despite its proletarian title (Ishchilar dunyasi [Workers' World]), differed little from any other Jadid publication.^[60]

The most prominent class-based Muslim organization existed in Samarqand, where by July, Muslim politics had split between an organization called the Shura-yi Islamiya, dominated entirely by the ulama, and a Muslim Executive Committee, which included members from "the merchants and all other groups."^[61] In August, a public gathering established the Samarqand Labor Union (Samarqand Zehmat Ittifaqi), which fielded a full slate of candidates for the municipal elections held on 8 September. Eschewing the rhetoric of Muslim unity, it openly stressed the specific needs of the poor.^[62] Many candidates on the list were workers, but among its organizers was Sayyid Ahmad Ajzi, and it acquired the support of the Jadids of the city and of their newspaper, Hurriyat (Liberty). Behbudi stood aloof, however, while Wasli campaigned actively against it. The campaign turned nasty, as the ulama declared supporters of the Ittifaq to be infidels and threatened anyone who voted for them with eviction from his neighborhood. Violence broke out on the day of the election, in which eight supporters of the Ittifaq were badly injured.^[63] In the event, the Ittifaq won only 1,796 votes and four of the seventy-five seats. The Shura had entered the election in a coalition with the (Russian) Householders' Union, and their joint list (on which there were twenty-five Russians) won fifty-five seats.^[64]

It was obvious to the Jadids that they needed outside help. Their domination of the Central Council gave them an institutional base from which they could claim to speak on behalf of the indigenous population of Turkestan, and in doing so, they could look for support to two outside sources that held considerable promise. A liberal democratic Russia

[60] Its first issue included an article (in Ottoman) on universities m Japan, two articles on the history of early Muslim dynasties, complete with tables on the titles and reigns of Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, and a piece of political commentary borrowed from UT .

[61] Mufti Mahmud Khoja Behbudi, "Samarqandda milli ishlar haqqinda," Hurriyat , 28 July 1917.

[62] E.g., "Samarqand Ishchilar Ittifaqining bayannamasi," Hurriyat , 25 August 1917.

[63] S. Siddiqi, "Har asbab oz ishi uchun yiraghlikdur," Hurriyat , 29 August 1917; H. M. Shukrullah, "Shura-yi Islamiya wa saylaw,"Hurriyat , 19 September 1917. The list of those injured is m Hurriyat , 12 September 1917.

[64] "Shahr dumasi," Hurriyat , 19 September 1917.

willing to recognize the principle of national rights while upholding a commitment to secularism and civil liberties could provide a cushion against the more reactionary demands of the ulama (as had clearly been demonstrated in the Mir Muhsin case). Similarly, incorporation into an all-Russian movement for Muslim unity under the modernist leadership of the Tatars, among whom Jadid reform had succeeded to a far greater extent, might have allowed the Jadids of Central Asia the moral and political support they needed to implement their reform, as well as providing a broader sphere of action at the all-Russian level. Yet, in the chaotic conditions of 1917, both these sources of support melted away, leaving the Jadids to wage their struggles by themselves.

The support of democratic Russia had great potential, and the early signs were hopeful. When the Tashkent Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies placed Kuropatkin under arrest on 31 March, Petrograd approved the action and, recalling Kuropatkin, appointed a Turkestan Committee of nine members (five Russians and four Muslims, none of them from Turkestan) to govern the region until the Constituent Assembly could meet and determine its political status. The committee began with great enthusiasm and high hopes, holding its first meetings on the train to Tashkent as its members prepared to take on the challenge of governing a distant colony.^[65] It was welcomed upon its arrival in Tashkent on 13 April by a throng of thousands. Troops played the "Marseillaise," and children from new-method schools sang "national" songs in the committee's honor.^[66] But the euphoria evaporated almost immediately, as the Kadet background of its members led to opposition from the Turkestan Soviet, leading six of them to resign within weeks.^[67] For much of the summer, the committee was inactive, although Nalivkin became its acting chair. Attempts to resurrect it continued down to October, but the committee was never a force to be reckoned with.

The All-Russian Muslim movement proved equally disappointing. participation in a larger Muslim community whose overall leadership was firmly in the hands of fellow Jadids appeared to Turkestani Jadids to be a guarantee against the influence of ulama at home. But the movement had tried, ever since its inception in 1904, to reconcile varied interests. Its Tatar leadership had hoped to use it as a vehicle for extending Tatar leadership to a wider constituency, hopes that were renewed in

[65] Minutes of the meetings of the committee are in TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 1.

[66] Najat , 17 April 1917.

[67] TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 1, ll. 173-1730b.

1917. The Kazan Muslim Committee sent a six-member delegation to Tashkent to help the local population organize for the awesome possibilities opened up by the revolution. Their natural affinities lay, of course, with the Jadids, but the venture proved ineffective from the beginning. The members of the delegation arrived one at a time, and although they were welcomed loudly,^[68] the leadership of the Shura had ambivalent feelings toward them. The delegation spent considerable energy on organizational matters, but local leaders were suspicious of the uninvited guests, who understood little of the local realities but felt called upon nevertheless to give advice.^[69] Differences came to the fore quite quickly; three of the members resigned and returned to Kazan by early June,^[70] and another two returned at the end of August.^[71] The All-Russian Muslim Congress at Moscow also proved unsuccessful in the long run. The fanfare of the occasion could not hide basic differences, and the conference turned into a contest between the Tatars and the rest over the question of autonomy: Mainstream Tatar opinion favored national-cultural autonomy, while almost everybody else voted in favor of territorial autonomy. Although, after lengthy debate, the congress passed a compromise resolution that recognized both forms of autonomy,^[72] the confrontation cost a de facto Tatar withdrawal from the movement. The Second All-Russian Muslim Congress, held in Kazan in July, was an all-Tatar affair, its exclusivity underscored by its organizers' refusal to avoid a conflict with a Qazaq congress in Orenburg.^[73]

Transcaucasian politicians attempted to fill the space vacated by the Tatars after June. The Ganja-based Türk Adäm-i Märkäziyät Firqäsi (Turkic Federalist Party)^[74] sent a four-member delegation to Tashkent in June to establish a local organization of the party with the aim of form-

[68] UT, 13 May 1917, 3.

[69] The malaise was mutual; Abdullah Battal Taymas, one of the Kazan representatives, looked back on his visit as a waste of time: Rus Ihtilålmden Hâtiralar (Istanbul, 1947), 39.

[70] "Qazan hay'atining isti'fasi," UT , 7 June 1917, 4.

[71] "Qazan hay'ati," UT , 27 August 1917, 4.

[72] Browder and Kerensky, eds., Russtan Provisional Government , I: 409.

[73] The proceedings of the Moscow congress are in Butun Rusya Musulmanlarining 1917nchi yilda 1-11 Mayda Maskavda bolghan umumt isyizdining protaqollari (Petrograd, 1917). See also Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge, 1960), 141-153.

[74] On the Türk Adam-i Markaziyat Firqasi, see Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan , 1905-1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge, 1985), 86, 90. Adam-i markaziyat is literally "decentralization," but the party's own publications translated it as Tiurkskaia federativnaia partiia , and I have followed that in translating the name into English.

ing a bloc of autonomist movements in the Constituent Assembly.^[75] The delegation began by building bridges with the ulama and exhorting the Jadids to greater caution.^[76] Its members traveled to various cities in Turkestan, establishing local cells and raising money. They seem to have achieved considerable success in garnering a consensus around the idea of autonomy, for in early September the party published its program, signed by fourteen men from several cities of Turkestan, including Munawwar Qari and Behbudi.^[77] Yet again, the ulama of Tashkent remained aloof, and not a single one of them appears among the signatories of the program.

The crisis deepened further in September, when the Jadids and the ulama held separate congresses. The Shura had called the second Turkestan Muslim Congress for early September to discuss the activity of the Central Council, the questions of land, water, and food supply, and the political future of Turkestan.^[78] The ulama effectively sabotaged the congress by vehemently criticizing it in a pamphlet as a conference of atheists.^[79] The congress opened with barely 100 delegates, instead of the 500 expected, and almost no ulama in attendance. It nevertheless heard a proposal, drafted by Islam Shahiahmedov, a graduate of the law faculty in Petrograd, outlining a plan for far-reaching autonomy for Turkestan. Shahiahmedov saw Turkestan enjoying territorial autonomy in a federal Russia. It was to have its own duma with authority in all matters except external affairs, defense, posts and telegraphs, and the judiciary. The region was to enjoy complete autonomy in the economic realm, including control over mineral and water resources. The project also called for the equality of all citizens of Russia, regardless of religion, nationality, or

[75] Members of a delegation from Baku had attended the meeting of the Central Council on 26 June and been coopted into it: Kengash , 28 July 1917.

[76] The first issue of its newspaper, Turan , published an article lavishing praise on the ulama: "A number of complaints have arisen since the beginning of Freedom because of discord between the ulama and the youth [yashlar ]. Gentlemen, even a little prudent reflection would force us to admit that today the ulama are our spiritual fathers and the supporters of our faith. If we youth deny their existence, we will be guilty [gunahgar ] for all time" ("Jahalat yuzindan i'tilafsizlik," Turan , 1 September 1917). The next issue of the newspaper published a similarly laudatory article about the ulama: "Al-'ulama warsat ul- anbiya'," Turan , 6 September 1917.

[77] This document has been published m modern \ by Ahmadjon Madaminov and Sand Murod, eds., "Turkistonda khalq jumhuriyati," Fan wa Turmush , 1990, no. 7, 6-8; for an English translation and commentary, see Hisao Komatsu, "The Program of the Turkic Federalist Party m Turkistan (1917)" in H. B. Paksoy, ed., Central Asia Reader: The Rediscovery of History (Armonk, N.Y., 1994), 117-126.

[78] See Kengash , 31 August 1917, for the agenda of the congress.

[79] Kengash , 12 September 1917.

class, the freedoms of assembly, religion, and conversion, and the abolition of censorship and the passport system. The congress recommended broad dissemination of the project for discussion before being put to a vote at the next conference.^[80] The congress also passed a resolution on questions of "education and civilization," which called for universal, compulsory, free elementary education in the vernacular, the organization of a hierarchy of new-method schools and teachers' colleges, and the creation of a university. All education was to be funded by the state but under Muslim control. Russian was to be introduced only in middle school. Madrasas were also to be reformed and regulated.^[81] Finally, a resolution called for the establishment of a shariat administration (mabkama-yi shar'iya ) in each oblast, but with the crucial proviso that the electoral principle be maintained and that its members be "educated and aware of contemporary needs" (zamaindan khabardar, ilmlik kishilar ).^[82]

The ulama met in their own congress a week later, a huge affair with over 500 delegates from the five oblasts of Turkestan as well the Turgay and Ural'sk oblasts of the steppe region. The congress unanimously resolved itself to be in favor of a federative democratic republic, with Turkestan having its own duma with jurisdiction over issues of land and water, as well as its own militia. It also called for a halt to the creation of land committees and the socialization of land. None of this was drastically different from the form of autonomy the Jadids' congress had heard the previous week. The crucial difference lay in the ulama's resolution of the questions of religion and women. The congress resolved that "the affairs of religion and of this world should not be separated, i.e., everything from schools to questions of land and justice should be solved according to the shariat." Similarly, "Women should not have rights equal to those of men, but everyone should have rights according to one's station as adjudged by the shariat."^[83] (Of course, since the only people capable of interpreting the shariat were the ulama themselves, this guaranteed the entrenchment of their authority in the new regime.) Finally, the congress called for the Muslims of Turkestan to maintain unity and suggested that this unity be embodied in a new party to be called the Ittifaq ul-Muslimin (Union of Muslims), which should replace all existing or-

[80] Kengash , 13 September 1917; the text of the draft resolution in autonomy is in UT, 7 and 10 September 1917.

[81] Turan , 21 September 1917.

[82] Turan , 14 September 1917.

[83] "Ulama isyazdining qararlari,UT , 30 September 1917.

ganizations such as the Shura-yi Islamiya.^[84] This was nothing less than a call for the abolition of the organizational infrastructure of Jadidism in Turkestan, an aggressive assertion by the ulama of their power. Each side now saw itself as the sole legitimate representative of the community and sought to act on its behalf.

Bread and Revolution

Ultimately, the fate of the region was decided by its Russian population, which enjoyed a monopoly on armed force rooted directly in the fact of empire. Much more than political supremacy was at stake in Turkestan in 1917. By that spring, Turkestan was in the midst of a severe economic crisis, and famine was already a possibility. The grain shortage had afflicted the whole empire since the outbreak of the world war,^[85] but it afflicted Central Asia with special force. The area under cotton had increased dramatically once the war began, making Turkestan dependent on grain imported from European Russia. The destruction wrought by the uprising of 1916 and its suppression had further disrupted agricultural production. In 1917, the rains failed and the ensuing draught crippled the grain harvest, just as political instability rendered shipments from European Russia unreliable. By autumn, when Cossack forces besieging Orenburg cut off the most direct route from Russia, Central Asia was in the grips of a full-scale famine. The struggle for political power in 1917 and the following years was played out against the backdrop of famine and the collapse of the imperial economic order.^[86] Maintaining the political supremacy of the Russian community in Central Asia had become, quite literally, a matter of life and death, since only such control could assure the settlers privileged access to food. As Marco Buttino has

[84] "Tashkandda ulama siyazdi," UT, 30 September 1917.

[85] Lars T. Lih, Bread and Authority m Russia , 1914-1921 (Berkeley, 1990).

[86] Until recently, scholarship on Central Asia has failed to take adequate notice of the famine or the economic crisis that preceded it. For recent attempts to right the balance, see Richard Lorenz, "Economic Bases of the Basmachi Movement in the Farghana Valley," in Andreas Kappeler et al., eds., Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Durham, N.C., 1994), 277-303; Marco Buttino, "Study of the Economic Crisis and Depopulation in Turkestan, 1917-1920," Central Asian Survey 9, no. 4 (1990): 59-74; Buttino, "Politics and Social Conflict during a Famine: Turkestan Immediately after the Revolution," in Buttino, ed., In a Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Sorter Union (Milan, 1993), 257-277.

persuasively argued, the actions of the Russian inhabitants of Central Asia in 1917 were motivated by this imperative.^[87]

In March, the Provisional Government proclaimed a monopoly on grain and established a network of food supply committees at every administrative level to oversee the distribution of food among the population. Turkestan, however, was exempted from this monopoly, largely because the situation there had become so dismal that the government did not want to add to the liabilities it was taking on. The food supply committees became an arena of overtly political conflict between Russians and Muslim, as various organizations struggled for control of them. The Muslim congress in April passed two resolutions on the food supply question. The first called for all grain currently in Turkestan and that which was to be imported to be distributed among the population in proportion to the weight of each community in the local population. As an operational tool, the conference called for the creation of a network of bakeries under the control of local food supply committees to ensure proper distribution. The second resolution called for the dissolution of all existing food supply committees and for their reelection, giving the local population proportional representation on them.^[88] The resolutions were largely ignored, but the question remained a major issue throughout the year. When in early June the Syr Darya oblast food supply committee decided to reconstitute itself, the representation was by organization. The Tashkent Soviet got ten seats out of forty-one, but only four members were guaranteed to be Muslims.^[89]

While these struggles continued, many Russians, especially soldiers and (newly armed) workers organized in soviets, sought other ways of intervening in the distribution process. Many Russians in Tashkent were convinced that the inhabitants of the old city had stockpiles of grain and that Muslims merchants were hiding these in order to push food prices up. The requisitioning of food from hoarders and speculators had perfect revolutionary credentials, and groups of Russian soldiers began routinely to indulge in the practice. Buttino notes several waves of req-

[87] Marco Buttino, "'La terra a chi la lavora': la poiltica coloniale russa in Turkestan tra la crisi dello Zarismo e le rivoluzioni del 1917," in Alberto Masoero and Antonello Venturi, eds., Russica: Studi e ricerche sulla Russta contemporanea (Milan, 1990), 277-332; Buttino, "Turkestan 1917," 61-77.

[88] "Muhim qararlar," UT , 25 April 1917, 3.

[89] "Aziq masalasi," UT , 14 June 1917, 3-4. Three of the four Muslim seats were to go to representatives of organizations of Muslim peasants and one to a Muslim member of the Tashkent Duma.

uisitions in the old city in Tashkent, as well as similar incidents in Samarqand and Skobelev.^[90] But matters acquired a different shape in early September around the Feast of the Sacrifice (Id-i qurban ), which fell on 10 September that year. On that day, soldiers from two regiments arrived at the railway station and began confiscating all grain in possession of the passengers, many of whom were peasants from villages around Tashkent who had come to town to sell their animals and buy grain for the holiday. Matters escalated rapidly, and the following day a vast meeting of soldiers formed by acclamation a provisional revolutionary council, which proclaimed the overthrow of both the Provisional Government and the Turkestan Soviet and took power in its own hands.^[91] Contemporary observers explicitly noted the connection between the food crisis and this putsch, but it has ever since been misrecognized as part of the revolutionary upsurge throughout the empire in the aftermath of Kornilov's march on Petrograd.^[92]

The other political issue of the summer that had a clear Russian-Muslim dimension was the continuing bloodshed in Semirech'e, and the timing of the putsch was probably connected to it. If requisitioning of food provided good revolutionary cover for protecting the interests of the urban Russian population, the soldiers' soviets provided impeccable revolutionary credentials for carrying out devastating warfare in the countryside against the nomadic population. The issue came to the fore in Muslim politics in Tashkent. It had occupied the Turkestan Committee substantially, to the extent that two of its members, Shkapskii and Tinïshpaev, spent most of their sojourn in Turkestan in Vernyi, inspecting the carnage. In April, the Shura and the Soviet had agreed to form a joint commission to investigate the situation in Semirech'e, but it took until 15 June for the commission to leave Tashkent.^[93] In July, reports by its members, returning individually, began to appear in the Muslim

[90] Buttino, "Turkestan 1917," 69-70. At times, "requisitioning" extended to other commodities as well. On 31 July, soldiers in Kokand commandeered two cartloads of draperies, which they planned to sell off. The goods belonged to solid merchants of the city, who approached the Turkestan Soviet, more moderate than its local counterparts, which directed that the goods be returned, otherwise the perpetrators "would be accountable according to the law" (PORvUz , I, 201). We do not know whether the Turkestan Soviet's writ bore fruit or not.

[91] Buttino, "'La terra a chi la lavora'," 318-326; Buttino, "Turkestan 1917," 72.

[92] The incident was reported prominently in the Provisional Government's Vestnik , where the connection with food riots is made explicitly (see Browder and Kerensky, eds., Russian Provisional Government , I: 422-424).

[93] "Yedisu haqqindagi nimayish," UT , 18 July 1917.

press, and several Muslim organizations began to plan a demonstration in support of the Muslims of Semirech'e.^[94]

The demonstration came off spectacularly on 18 August. A massive procession, carrying banners and red flags left the old city and marched through to the streets of Russian Tashkent to the governor-general's mansion. Nalivkin, then acting chair of the largely moribund Turkestan Committee, addressed the crowd in Turkic, laying the blame for the events on Russian settlers. But the demonstrators wanted more. According to the report in Ulugh Turkistan , Nalivkin was heckled: "We did not come here to listen to past history. Give us a clear answer. . .. It's been six months since freedom was declared, but the government hasn't given a thought to them [the Muslims of Semirech'e]. This is because the blood flowing in Semirech'e is Muslim and Turkic blood." A clear answer was not forthcoming, and the demonstration moved off after two hours to Kaufman Square, the center of Russian Tashkent, to listen to more speeches.^[95]

The episode was remarkable for several reasons. For all the setbacks the Jadids had suffered recently, this demonstration showed that they retained the ability to put masses of people on the streets. The ulama do not seem to have taken an active part in it, but they did not obstruct it either. The Shura's major demands were substantial: that fresh troops be sent to stop the carnage and that half of them be Muslim, that arms given to the settlers at Kuropatkin's command be taken back, that refugees returning from Chinese territory be allowed to settle on their own lands, that Cossack regiments sent to Semirech'e be withdrawn, and that a Muslim representative be added to a Provisional Government delegation being sent to the area.^[96] But it was the physical presence of large numbers of Muslims in the Russian city in an overtly political cause that upset the balance and led to the panic that culminated in the putsch of x z September.

This putsch won less than unanimous support locally. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee had acted against not just the authority of the Provisional Government but also that of the Turkestan Soviet, whose much more moderate leadership was forced to flee to Skobelev in Ferghana, where it continued to denounce this usurpation of power.^[97] The putsch was also denounced by various Muslim organizations, the Jadid conference resolving that "Muslims will never accept the acquisition of

[94] "Yedisuda dahshatli hallar," UT , 19 July, 26 July, 9 August 1917.

[95] "Yedisu Musulmanlari haqqinda buyuk nimayish," UT , 23 August 1917.

[96] Kengash , 14 July 1917; 20 August 1917.

[97] PORvUz , I, 328-330.

power by a single party in a democratic Russia."^[98] Ultimately, however, the putsch was unsuccessful because not every group among the local Russian population supported it. Petrograd was able to quell the rebellion by rushing loyal troops from Kazan under the command of Major General B.A. Korovichenko, who was able to restore order. Korovichenko began a fresh round of all-party negotiations for rejuvenating the Turkestan Committee while attempting to reassert the authority of the center. However, the coincidence of interests between the various groups that had opposed the putsch proved evanescent. As the legitimacy of the Provisional Government declined throughout the empire, the commitment to constitutional procedure on the part of Tashkent Russians, never very strong to begin with, rapidly gave way to concern for survival. As preparations began for the elections to the Constituent Assembly,^[99] the second congress of soviets in October elected a far more radical regional soviet that had fewer qualms about taking power by force. When the Tashkent Soviet took power on October 23, after fours days of fighting, the regional soviet did not oppose it.

It is crucial to realize that the conquest of power by the Tashkent Soviet preceded the Soviet victory in Petrograd and was largely unconnected to it. The roots of the October "revolution" in Turkestan lay in the balance of power between the forces represented in the soviets (predominantly soldiers and settlers) and the rest of society ("privileged" Russians and natives) as it existed on the ground. The struggle might have been clothed in the language of revolution then fashionable throughout Russia, but its reality was very different than in Petrograd. Contemporary observers in Central Asia saw the two takeovers as separate. The revolution in Petrograd was not without its possibilities, as we shall see, but the assumption of power by the soviets in Tashkent was of much greater practical import.

Contrary to the general impression in the literature, the Soviet takeover in Tashkent did not galvanize the Muslim population to united political action.^[100] The positions of the two sides were too far apart for that, and few saw the takeover as the end of politics. The pattern of parallel responses continued. The ulama convened a general Muslim congress in the second week of November, to which no Jadids were invited,

[98] Turan , 21 September 1917; see also UT, 30 September 1917.

[99] Turk eli 15. October 1917.

[100] Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, "Civil War and New Governments," in Allworth, ed., Central Asia , 225, asserts that the "refusal [of the Soviet to share power] welded the unity of all the Muslim political groups," which united around the Shura.

in order to discuss the question of relations with the new regime. The congress met when many Jadid leaders were out of town in the immediate aftermath of the fighting, and their absence led to the withdrawal of the delegation from Transcaspia.^[101] After the initial chaos, however, the congress heard more than twenty speeches. Its final resolution, noting that "the Muslims of Turkestan ... comprise 98 percent of the population," deemed it "impermissible to advocate the assumption of power in Turkestan by a handful of immigrant soldiers, workers, and peasants who are ignorant of the way of life of the Muslims of Turkestan."^[102] Rather it decided to propose to the Soviet the creation of a new Turkestan Committee to govern Turkestan until the convening of the Constituent Assembly. The committee was to have twelve members, six from the present congress and three each from the regional congresses of municipal dumas and the soviets. The committee was to be responsible to a council of twenty-four, with the ulama's Muslim congress receiving fourteen seats. The congress elected a five-member commission, headed by Lapin, to convey these proposals to the Soviet.^[103]

Even as a negotiating position, these proposals are remarkable. They indicate how secure the ulama felt in their leadership of the Muslim population and of the political weight of that population in the affairs of the region. At the same time, they indicate the continuity in politics perceived by the ulama, for the proposals were aimed at the creation of a new Turkestan Committee, the same process that Korovichenko had been attempting. The Soviet, of course, had no intention of sharing its power and curtly refused the offer. The resolution of the Bolshevik-Maximalist faction passed by the Soviet gives clear indication of its views on the matter: "The inclusion of Muslims in the organ of supreme regional power is unacceptable at the present time in view of both the completely indefinite attitude of the native population toward the power of the Soviets of Soldiers', Workers', and Peasants' Deputies, and the fact that there are no proletarian class organizations among the native population whose representation in the organ of supreme regional power the faction would welcome."^[104] The language of class could easily conceal the national and colonial dimensions of the conflict.

[101] "Musulman kraevai siyazdining batafsil qarari" al-Izah , 28 November 1917, 269.

[102] "15nchi noyabirda Tashkandda bolghan musulman kraevai siyazdining qarari," al-Izah , 28 November 1917, 266-267.

[103] Ibid.; "Siyazdning qarari," UT, 18 November 1917.

[104] The text of this resolution is in A.A. Gordienko, Obrazovanie Turkestanskoi ASSR (Moscow, 1968), 309-310.

Experiment In Government

While the ulama were negotiating with the Tashkent Soviet, several members of the Central Council had fled from Tashkent during the fighting and gathered in Kokand, where they convened their own "extraordinary" conference to address the new political situation. The Kokand conference was not convened as a result of the rebuff to the ulama by the soviet congress; rather, it was a counterpart to the ulama's conference of early November and was dominated by the Jadids and their sympathizers. Although conditions in Turkestan made travel difficult and the majority of delegates came from the Ferghana oblast,^[105] the major figures in the Shura were all present when the congress opened on 26 November. Also present were large numbers of Russian and Jewish representatives of municipal and other public organizations from Turkestan (although most in fact came from Ferghana). The Jadids had veered into an alliance with moderate Russian forces in Turkestan.

After only brief debate, the congress passed the following resolution: "The Fourth Extraordinary Regional Muslim Congress, expressing the will of the peoples of Turkestan to self-determination in accordance with the principles proclaimed by the Great Russian Revolution, proclaims Turkestan territorially autonomous in union with the Federal Democratic Russian Republic. It entrusts the elaboration of the form of autonomy to the Constituent Assembly of Turkestan, which must be convened as soon as possible. It solemnly declares that the rights of the national minorities inhabiting Turkestan will be safeguarded in every possible way."^[106] The congress elected an eight-member "provisional government of Turkestan," which was to be responsible to a fifty-four-member council. It elected thirty-two members from among those attending; eighteen of the remaining seats were to be filled by representatives of various non-Muslim parties and organizations while four seats were to go to representatives of municipal dumas.^[107]

In following up on the resolutions of the September congress, the congress affirmed the Jadids' sense of continuity with the period since February. Nevertheless, speakers were also aware that the assumption of

[105] J. Castagné, "Le Turkestan depuis la révolution russe," Revue du monde musulman 50 (1922): 47. Castagné was a French archeologist who spent several years m Turkestan.

[106] PORvUz , II, 27; cf. Mustafa Chokaev, "Turkestan and the Soviet Regime," Journal of the Royal Central Asiatic Society 18 (1931): 407.

[107] UT , 8 December 1917, 2.

power by the Soviet had altered the situation drastically. Mustafa Choqay, who was elected foreign minister, spoke of "the absence of government in Russia today ... [which] makes the convocation of the Constituent Assembly doubtful."^[108] The congress linked Turkestan's future to a liberal democratic Russia and yet promised to convene Turkestan's own Constituent Assembly. In his speech, Behbudi stressed the necessity of having Turkestani delegates present at any peace conference in the future.^[109] More practically, the congress decided, after lengthy debate, to join Kaledin's South-Eastern Union. Many speakers disputed the wisdom of an alliance with a Cossack force known for its counterrevolutionary tendencies as well as its avowed intention of "placing a cross over the Aya Sofya," but the union controlled rail routes to Russia, the only source for importing grain.^[110]

This provisional government, which became known as the "Kokand Autonomy," was dominated by Russian-educated Muslim intellectuals, with whom the Jadids had cooperated all year. Muhamedjan Tïnïshpaev served as prime minister and minister for internal affairs; the other ministers and their portfolios were Islam Shahiahmedov, deputy prime minister; Mustafa Choqay, external affairs; Ubaydullah Khojaev, in charge of creating a people's militia; Yur Ali Aghaev, land and water affairs; Abidjan Mahmudov, food supply; Abdurrahman-bek Urazaev, deputy minister for internal affairs; and Solomon Gertsfel'd, finance.^[111] The thirty-two members elected to the council included Sher Ali Lapin but no other members from the Ulama Jamiyati. Indeed, the council was remarkable for its complete exclusion of the ulama. At the same time, the congress offered moderate Russians a disproportionate role in the proposed government in an attempt to distance them from the soviets. The congress and the government elected by it were thus characterized as a broad alliance of moderate forces of the region that excluded both the ulama and the soviets.

Events had pitched the Jadids into the unfamiliar business of running a government, but November 1917 was a singularly inauspicious time for embarking on such an experiment. As a symbolic gesture, the proclamation of autonomy was widely celebrated by the Jadids throughout Turkestan. It also attracted support from several Russian organizations,

[108] Vaqit , 17 December 1917.

[109] Vaqit , 21 December 1917.

[110] Ibid.

[111] "Muwaqqat Turkistan hukumatining a'zalari," UT , 13 December 1917, I.

especially those of Ferghana.^[112] Many others in Muslim society held out little hope for it, and many feared that it would lead to war.^[113] The new government therefore called for demonstrations in its support throughout Turkestan. Demonstrations took place successfully in Andijan on 3 December and Tashkent on 6 December.^[114] The Kokand Autonomy then called a second meeting in Tashkent on the following Friday, 13 December, which that year was the birthday of the Prophet. The second meeting was intended both as a show of support and a direct challenge to the Tashkent Soviet on its own turf. The second demonstration was supported by the Tashkent Duma, which had refused to accept its dissolution by the Soviet in early December.^[115] The Soviet briefly debated participating in the demonstration under its own banners, but decided against it.^[116] Instead, it decided to allow the demonstration to take place, but not to allow it into the Russian part of the city; it also placed Tashkent on war footing on the day of the demonstration.^[117] A clearer admission of the geographic limits of its authority could not have been possible. In the event, the demonstration attracted tens of thousands of people from Tashkent and beyond, including many non-Muslims. The ulama in Tashkent had showed little enthusiasm for the Kokand Autonomy, but a group of them also joined the demonstration. The demonstration then marched into the Russian part of the city, where it quickly turned into a confrontation: It attacked the prison and freed political prisoners taken by the Soviet during its conquest of power the previous month. Russian soldiers fired into the crowd, killing several people, while many others were killed in the ensuing stampede.^[118] The freed prisoners were recaptured and summarily executed.

Two weeks later, in a transparent attempt to garner "proletarian" credentials for itself, the Kokand Autonomy organized a Congress of Muslim Workers and Peasants in Kokand. It was attended by about zoo deputies who declared that the Kokand Autonomy was not a government of the bourgeoisie alone but was "composed of the best sections of our society." Few of those taking part were either workers or peasants, and

[112] P. Alekseenkov, Kokandskaia avtonomiia (Tashkent, 1931), 35-36.

[113] Behbudi, "Turkistan mukhtariyati," Hurriyat , 19 December 1917.

[114] UT , 10 December 1917; 16 December 1917.

[115] UT , 8 December 1917; 10 December 1917.

[116] PORvUz , II: 38.

[117] Alekseenkov, Kokandskaia avtonomiia , 47-48; PORuUz , II: 59.

[118] "Katta mitingh," UT , 10 December 1917; "Fajiali waqea," UT , 16 December 1917; "Tashkandda mukhtariyat nimayishi," al-Izah , 25, December 1917, 277; cf. Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia , 115.

among the presidium we find the names of Dr. Sanjar Isfendyarov, Abdullah Awlani, and Piti Mursilzade, a member of the delegation from the Turkic Federalist Party.^[119]

While the Kokand Autonomy could bring people out into the streets, it lacked the means to assert its power. Forming a standing army in a colony of occupation was of course difficult, and the uprising of the previous year had shown how unpopular the idea of conscription was in the area. The government invited Russian and Tatar officers and Ottoman prisoners of war quartered in the area to its side, but it could recruit only sixty-odd volunteers for the ranks. Its financial resources were equally scarce. Even a government with much greater coercive power behind it would have found it difficult to raise revenue in the region's crisis-ridden economy. The Kokand Autonomy found it impossible to levy taxes. Its writ did not even extend to Russian institutions in the new city. In January, P. G. Poltoratskii, the commissar for labor in the Soviet government, came to Kokand and "nationalized" the Kokand branch of the State Bank.^[120] The government raised 3 million rubles through a loan, but they were spent quickly, and nothing more could raised.^[121] And there was little outside help to be found in the chaotic conditions of that winter. The Kokand Autonomy sought cooperation from Ataman Dutov as well as the Alash Orda regime among the Qazaqs.^[122] A mission dispatched to the amir of Bukhara produced predictably scanty results.^[123] Help from beyond the borders of the Russian empire was out of the question. Tendentious claims of Soviet historiography notwithstanding,^[124] the British were in no position to give any help. Indeed, the fear of pan-Islam paralyzed British thinking on Central Asian affairs throughout the period of Russian civil war, rendering it incapable of distinguishing be-

[119] "Musulman ishchi wa dehqan siyazdi," UT, 4 January 1918; Vaqit , 18 January 1918; Hurnyat , 9 January 1918.

[120] Alekseenkov, Kokandskaia avtonomua , 43-44.

[121] Choqay claimed that, although the sum was raised, the government could not find any arms to buy (Chokaev, "Turkestan," 408).

[122] M. Tchokaieff, "Fifteen Years of Bolshevik Rule m Turkestan," Journal of the Royal Central Asiatic Society 20 (1933): 358.

[123] Abdullah Receb Baysun, Turkistan Millî Hareketleri (Istanbul, 1943), 31.

[124] The Kokand Autonomy was demonised early in Soviet historiography. To its sins of being a counterrevolutionary alliance of local and Russian bourgeoisies was added the accusation of being "an attempt of imperialist states, especially England and America, to come to the help of exploiter classes overthrown by the October revolution and to realize their aggressive plans of turning Turkestan into their colony and a bridgehead for an attack on Soviet Russia" (Kh. Sh. Inoiatov, Otvet fal'sifikatoram istorn sovetskot Srednei Azii i Kazakbstana [Tashkent, 1962], 61).

tween various political currents in the struggle. In any case, the period in which the Kokand Autonomy existed was too early for any British action. In December 1917, a report received at the British consulate in Kashgar that the Kokand Autonomy was "doing great honor" to two aqsaqqals from Chinese Turkestan set off pan-Turkist alarms, and the British minister in Beijing unleashed a thunderous letter to the concerned authorities upbraiding them for their laxity.^[125] The British did intervene, briefly and ineffectively, in Central Asia, but the Kokand Autonomy had ceased to exist long before then.

The end came in early February. Hostilities grew between the Kokand Autonomy, entrenched in the old city, and the Kokand Soviet, which controlled the Russian quarter and the citadel. Again, Soviet power was entrenched in the planned spaces of the colonial city. By February, Dutov's blockade of Orenburg was broken, and the Soviet in Tashkent could spare enough forces to Kokand. Anticipating the arrival of reinforcements, the Kokand Autonomy opened hostilities but was soon outgunned.^[126] As the last Soviet scholar to write on the episode, P. Alekseenkov, stated in a matter-of-fact manner, "Not knowing exactly where the enemy was, the defenders of the citadel opened machine-gun fire on the old city."^[127] After the machine guns came the burning and looting. The city burned for three days. Russian soldiers were in control of whatever power remained in Turkestan.

[125] IOLR, L/P&S/10/721, 245.

[126] The Kokand government did not leave any archives behind, and therefore its activities are shrouded m mystery. For details of the negotiations between the Autonomy and the Soviet, see M. Khasanov, "Al'ternativa: iz istorii kokandskoi avtonomii," Zvezda Vostoka , 1990, no. 7, 112-113.

[127] Alekseenkov, Kokandskaia avtonomiia , 58.