Central Asian revolt of 1916
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Central Asian revolt of 1916 | |
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Part of the N.S. ) – February 1917 | |
Location | |
Result | Revolt suppressed |
Nikolai Sukhomlinov
Mikhail Folbaum
Muhammad Alim Khan[1]
Small number of escaped POW volunteers[11]
1,384 missing[12]
Total: 7,562 dead
- ^ According to Abdulla Gyun Dogdu, Sami Bek was a Rebel leader of Turkish origin.[8]
History of Kyrgyzstan |
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The Central Asian revolt of 1916, also known as the Semirechye Revolt[15] and as Urkun[16] (Kyrgyz: Үркүн, romanized: Ürkün, lit. 'Exodus', , IPA: [yrˈkyn]) in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, was an anti-Russian uprising by the indigenous inhabitants of Russian Turkestan sparked by the conscription of Muslims into the Russian military for service on the Eastern Front during World War I. The rampant corruption of the Russian colonial regime and Tsarist colonialism in all its economic, political, religious, and national dimensions are all seen as the contributing causes.
The revolt led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz and Kazakhs into China, while the suppression of the revolt by the Imperial Russian Army led to around 100,000 to 270,000 deaths (mostly Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, but also Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks) both directly and indirectly.[13] Deaths of Central Asians are either the result of diseases, violence or famine. The Russian state was not able to restore order to parts of the Empire until after the outbreak of the October Revolution and the subsequent Basmachi revolt (1916–1923) further destabilized the Central Asia region.
The USSR regime's censorship of the history surrounding the Central Asian revolt of 1916 and the Basmachi revolt has led both Central Asian and international researchers to revisit the topic in the 2010s. The revolt is considered a seminal event in the modern histories of several Central Asian peoples. Special importance is given to the event in Kyrgyz historiography due to the fact that perhaps has many as 40% of the ethnic Kyrgyz population died during or in the aftermath of the revolt.
Alexander Kerensky and some Russian historians were the first to bring international attention to these events.[17]
Background
The Russian conquest of Central Asia during the second half of the 19th century imposed a colonial regime upon the peoples of Central Asia. Central Asia's inhabitants were taxed by Tzarist authorities and made up around 10% of the Russian Empire's population but none served in the 435-seat State Duma.
By 1916, Turkestan and the Governor-Generalship of the Steppes had accumulated many social, land and inter-ethnic contradictions caused by the resettlement of Russian and Ukrainian settlers, which began in the second half of the 19th century, after the Emancipation reform of 1861 which abolished serfdom. A wave of resettlement was introduced by a number of lands and legislative reforms.
On June 2, 1886, and March 25, 1891, several acts were adopted which were "Regulations on the management of the Turkestan Krai" and "Regulations on the management of Akmola, Semipalatinsk, Semirechye, Ural and Turgai regions" that allowed most of the lands of these regions to be transferred to the ownership of the Russian Empire. Each family from the local population were allowed to own a plot of land of 15 acres for a perpetual use.[18]
From 1906 to 1912, as a result of Stolypin reforms in Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia, up to 500,000 peasant households were transported from central regions of Russia,[18] which divided about 17 tithes of developed lands.
The revolt
Institution of conscription
After Emperor Nicholas II adopted on the "requisition of foreigners" at the age of 19 to 43 years inclusive, for rear work in the front-line areas of the
On 25 June 1916 (8 July 1916,
Beginning of the uprising
The first casualties of the revolt were on July 3–4, 1916 (16–17 July 1916,
The rebels had several demands, including transparency in how the lists of citizens due for conscription were compiled, to delay the draft until the end of the harvest, and for one man of each family to stay at home.[26]
83 Russian settlers died and 70 were captured following riots in Jizzakh.[27] The news about the uprising in Jizzakh led to further uprisings in the Sansar river valley and around Zaamin and Bogdan.[24] A force consisting of 13 companies, 6 cannons, 3 sotnias of Cossacks and three-fourths of a company of sappers was dispatched from Tashkent to deal with the uprising in Jizzakh.[24] The force retook the Russian settlement of Zaamin[24] and Jizzakh, causing many civilian casualties.[27]
On July 17, 1916 (July 30,
On 31 July (13 August,
On August 10 (23 August,
By August 11 (24 August,
A Kyrgyz attack on the Russian settlers in Sazanovka, near Lake Issyk-Kul was repelled after a local women shot the Khan who was leading the attack, causing the offensive to disintegrate.[31]
Rebel weaponry
The rebels, including those under the control of Ibrahim Tulayaf, suffered weapon shortages throughout the course of the Rebellion. Weapons used by the rebels included iron-tipped spears and horse-whips.[32]
At one point in the rebellion, Ibrahim had discovered that several munition carts would soon pass through the mountain road that followed the
Massacres by the rebels
Other villages full of Russian immigrants and Cossacks were burnt down by the insurgents. Because the majority of men got drafted and were at the front, the settlers could not organize a resistance. Some settlers fled, some fought, while others were helped by friendly Kyrgyz neighbors.
In some places, especially in the Ferghana Valley, the uprising was led by dervish preachers who were calling for a jihad. One of the first people who announced the beginning of a "holy war" against the "infidels" was Kasim-Khoja, an
The Governor-General of the Steppe Region Nikolai Sukhomlinov postponed the draft service until September 15, 1916 (28 September,
Suppression of the revolt
As a response, around 30,000 soldiers, including
Local Cossacks and settler militias played an additional role too. By the end of the summer, the insurrection was put down in the Samarkand, Syrdarya, Fergana, and in the other regions as well, forcing the rebels into the mountains. In the mountains, the rebels suffered from the cold.[36] In September and early October, the revolt was suppressed in Semirechye and the last remnants of resistance were crushed in late January 1917 in the Transcaspian region.
By the end of Summer 1916, The Rebellion had started to wane. Aleksey Kuropatkin issued an order, explaining who was exempt from the draft, what kind of service the Kyrgyz would serve, and that conscripts would receive one ruble per day and free food and lodging. However, with no reliable lines of communication, this message took over a month to reach the rebels.[37]
On December 13, 1916 (December 26, 1916
Massacre and expulsion of Kyrgyz people
By order of the Turkestan governor-general, military courts were established in district cities and imposed death sentences towards all the rebels who took part in the uprising. What ensued was a campaign of collective massacre and expulsion of Kyrgyz civilians and insurgents alike by Tsarist forces.[39][40] Settlers participated in the killings, as revenge for the abuses they suffered from the insurgents.
In the eastern part of
One account from 1919, three years after the start of the revolt, describes the aftermath of the uprising as follows:[43]
It took me nearly a whole day to drive from Tokmak to the village of sonovka. I kept passing large Russian settlements on the road ... then Kirghiz villages completely ruined and razed literally to the ground – villages where, but three short years previously, there had been busy bazaars and farms surrounded with gardens and fields of luzerne. Now on every side a desert. It seemed incredible that it was possible in so short a time to wipe whole villages off the face of the earth, with their well-developed system of farming. It was only with the most attentive search that i could find the short stumps of their trees and remains of their irrigation canals. The destruction of the aryks or irrigation canals in this district quickly reduced a highly developed farming district into a desert and blotted out all traces of cultivation and settlement. Only in the water meadows and low-lying ground near the stream is any cultivation possible.
Deaths
The Kyrgyz historian Shayyrkul Batyrbaeva puts the death toll at 40,000, based on population tallies[44] but other contemporary estimates are significantly higher.[45] Special importance is given to the event in Kyrgyz historiography due to the fact that perhaps has many as 40% of the ethnic Kyrgyz population died during or in the aftermath of the revolt.[14]
In his 1954 book, The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia, Edward Dennis Sokol used government periodicals and the Krasnyi Arkhiv (The Red Archive) to estimate that approximately 270,000 Central Asians—Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks—perished at the hands of the Russian army or from diseases, famine. In addition to those killed outright, tens of thousands of men, women, and children died while trying to escape over treacherous mountain passes into China.[14]
3,000 Russian settlers were killed during the first phase of the revolt.[13] Overall, 2,325 Russians were killed in the revolt and 1384 went missing.[12] Other much high figures have also been cited: Arnold Toynbee[who?][unreliable source?] alleges 500,000 Central Asian Turks perished under the Russian Empire though he admits this is speculative.[46] Rudolph Rummel citing Toynbee states 500,000 perished within the revolt.[39] Kyrgyz sources put the death toll between 100,000[47] and 270,000;[47][43] the latter figure amounting to 40% of the entire Kyrgyz population.[43] The Kyrgyz division of Radio Free Europe claimed at least 150,000 were massacred by Tsarist troops.[40]
Legacy
Urkun was not covered by USSR textbooks, and monographs on the subject were removed from USSR printing houses. As the USSR was disintegrating in 1991, interest in Urkun grew. Some survivors have begun to label the events a "massacre" or "genocide."[41] In August 2016, a public commission in Kyrgyzstan concluded that the 1916 mass crackdown was labelled as "genocide."[48] In response the Russian State Duma chairman Sergei Naryshkin denied it was genocide stating: "all nations suffered 100 years ago."[40]
See also
- Wanpaoshan Incident
- Basmachi movement
- Sepoy Mutiny
- Dungan Revolt
- Pacification of Libya
- Western imperialism in Asia
- Turgai Uprising (1916—1917)
External links
- Photo gallery of human and animal remains from Urkun incident at Bedel Pass, from RFE/RL
- Semirechye on Fire. A Story of Rebellion – Documentary on the 1916 Rebellion
- Maps:
- Urkun (Exodus) August-September of the 1916 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3647847)
- Map of events in Pishpek uezd from July 4th to August 23rd in 1916 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3660815)
- Map of events in Przhevalsk uezd from July 4th to August 23rd in 1916 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3660820)
- Leaders of the 1916 Uprising (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3660802)
- Commemoration sites of the 1916 tragedy (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3660798)
Literature
- Chokobaeva, Aminat, Cloé Drieu and Alexander Morrison, editors. The Central Asian Revolt of 1916 : A Collapsing Empire in the Age of War and Revolution. 2020. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Noack, Christian: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich. Nationsbildung und Nationalbewegung bei Tataren und Baschkiren 1861–1917, Stuttgart 2000.
- Pierce, Richard A.: Russian Central Asia 1867–1917. A Study in Colonial Rule, Berkeley 1960.
- Zürcher, Erik J.: Arming the State. Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia, 1775–1925, London 1999.
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1317504351.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 33:30)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ISBN 978-1-4214-2051-6.
The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia is an aspect of the history of the First World War and the history of Russia which has, unfortunately, been sorely neglected in the English literature on the period.
- ISBN 978-1-5261-2944-4.
The perceptions of the war in Semirech'e suggest that we ought to view the rebellion as an integral part of World War I. The war in Semirech'e was a war on the domestic front brought about by the war fought on the foreign front.
- ISBN 9781421420509.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 16:40)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "1916: Baatyrkan is the leader of the revolt" (in Kyrgyz). Retrieved 2016-04-17.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 27:35)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 16:58)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ISBN 978-1-5261-2944-4.
- ISBN 9781421420516.
- ^ ISBN 9781421420516.
- ^ ISBN 978-1107030305.
- ^ a b c The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia, Edward Dennis Sokol, 1954, 2016, https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/revolt-1916-russian-central-asia
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 0:52)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ Pannier, Bruce (2 February 2012). "Victims Of 1916 'Urkun' Commemorated". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
The events are known in Kyrgyzstan as "Urkun" ("exodus").
- ^ Abraham, Richard: Alexander Kerensky. The first love of the Revolution, London 1987. p.108.
- ^ a b "История Туркестана" [History of Turkestan] (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2013-05-04.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 10:18)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 7:55)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 11:03)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 12:26)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 13:29)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ ISBN 9781421420516.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 13:38)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 14:15)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ a b "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 15:13)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 15:35)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 15:47)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 17:34)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 21:50)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 25:00)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 25:43)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 19:51)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 26:47)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 34:04)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 31:32)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 39:55)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ a b "Russian Democide: Estimates, Sources, and Calculations". hawaii.edu. Row 30. Retrieved 2018-11-22.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: location (link) - ^ a b c "Kyrgyz Film About 1916 Massacre Makes Way To Screens". Radio Free Europe. Archived from the original on 2019-12-09.
- ^ RFE/RL. Retrieved 2006-08-02.
- ISBN 978-0-521-89796-9.
- ^ ISBN 9781421420516.
- ^ "Semirechye on Fire (Timestamp 48:40)". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
- ^ LECTURE: Central Asia in Revolt the Cataclysm of 1916, SAIS, Jun 9, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjWT0CFkI18
- ^ Rummel, R.J. "Statistics of Russian Democide". Hawaii.edu.
- ^ a b "Commission Calls 1916 Tsarist Mass Killings Of Kyrgyz Genocide". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 16 August 2016.
- RFE/RL. 2 November 2017. Retrieved 2018-03-27.