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.