Basmachi Revolt
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The Basmachi Revolt (Russian: ), or Basmachestvo (Басмачество), was an uprising against Russian and Soviet rule in Central Asia.
The movement started still in 1916 during the First World War as a revolt against Russians, and it developed into a long-time civil war against Soviet rule.
Soviet sources portray it as a movement of Islamic traditionalists, together with common thugs and rabble-rousers as well as Islamic radicals. The rebels who started the revolt were called Basmachi, or 'Bandits', a deliberately pejorative term which has much the same meaning as Dacoit in India. Other historians would argue that many ordinary peasants and nomads who opposed the cultural imperialism of Russia, and perhaps more importantly objected to Bolshevik brutality and requisitioning of food and livestock, were an important component of the rebel base.
The Basmachi had soon spread and multiplied across most of Turkestan. Much of Turkestan at the time was, ironically, not actually under the Soviet Russia against which the Basmachi were rebelling, but under other regimes, albeit regimes that were allied with Soviet Russia.
By the early 1920s, the Basmachi Revolt had become so widespread that the Soviet government realized they risked losing their Turkestani territory. Infighting among the Basmachi meanwhile made them weaker compared to the Soviet political establishment (who, by comparison, had a common purpose and single vision, in addition to greater military power). Lenin's government made conciliations to national sentiment in order to quell the Turkestanis' objections to being politically a part of the Soviet Union, and the revolt had largely died out by 1926.
The rebellion was a popular subject for Red Westerns, and featured as a central part of the plot of the films White Sun of the Desert (Белое Солнце Пустыни), The Seventh Bullet (Седьмая Пуля) and Telokhranitel (Телохранитель - The Bodyguard).
Sources & Further Reading
- Х. Турсунов: Восстание 1916 Года в Средней Азии и Казахстане. Таschkent (1962)
- Б.В. Лунин: Басмачество Taschkent (1984)
- Яков Нальский: В горах Восточной Бухары. (Повесть по воспоминаниям сотрудников КГБ) Duschanbe (1984)
- Alexander Marshall: Turkfront: Frunze and the Development of Soviet Counter-insurgency in Central Asia in Tom Everett-Heath (Ed.) "Central Asia. Aspects of Transition", RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2003; ISBN 0700709568 (cloth) ISBN 0700709576 (pbk.)
- Fazal-ur-Rahim Khan Marwat: The Basmachi movement in Soviet Central Asia: A study in political development., Peshawar, Emjay Books International (1985)
- Marco Buttino: Ethnicité et politique dans la guerre civile: à propos du "basmačestvo" au Fergana, Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, Vol. 38, No. 1-2, (1997)
- Mustafa Chokay: The Basmachi Movement in Turkestan, The Asiatic Review Vol.XXIV (1928)
- Sir Olaf Caroe: Soviet Empire: The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism 2nd ed., London, Macmillan (1967)
- Glenda Fraser: Basmachi (parts I and II), Central Asian Survey, Vol. 6 (1987), No. 1, pp. 1-73, and No.2, pp. 7-42.
- Baymirza Hayit: Basmatschi. Nationaler Kampf Turkestans in den Jahren 1917 bis 1934. Köln, Dreisam-Verlag (1993)
External links
- http://www.angelfire.com/on/paksoy/togan.html
- http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy-6/cae12.html Basmachi
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