THE KAZAKH STEPPE: FROM EMPIRE TO UTOPIA

But because Turkestan was far from central Russia, and later completely cut off from it by the civil war fronts, Moscow's influence here was limited. In effect, the Turkestan authorities were left to their own devices. However, the Bolshevik central leadership sent various directives to the region that could not help but influence the situation.

Among Moscow's directives was the requirement that local Muslims be included in the region's governing bodies, in keeping with the Bolshevik ideology of the right of nations to self-determination. But this was unacceptable to representatives of the Russian community, who held the real power in Turkestan. In particular, the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the Turkestan Republic, elected at the 6th Congress of Soviets in October 1918, had only 20 representatives of the local Muslim population out of 75 members. In effect, the Russian minority in Turkestan exercised external control over the Muslim majority. For a long time, Moscow's directives were simply sabotaged.

After the Reds captured Orenburg in January 1919, communication with Turkestan was briefly opened. In February 1919, a commission on Turkestan was formed in Moscow. By March 1919, an Extraordinary Congress of Soviets and a Congress of the Communist Party had been held in Tashkent. Under pressure from Moscow at the Communist Congress, it was decided to create the Provincial Muslim Bureau (Musburo). Five Muslims were included. Marco Buttino wrote that “overcoming the resistance of many Russian Communists and the caution of others, some Communist Muslims gained considerable power. In a short period of time, the nature of the Musburo changed, it gradually separated from the Communist Party and almost became a separate party.”

A major role in strengthening the Musburo was played by its leader, Kazakh Turar Ryskulov, a native of the town of Aulie-Ata (Taraz) in the Sirdaryo Oblast. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1918, when he was appointed deputy chairman of the executive committee of the Aulie-Ata Soviet. Ryskulov was very young, only 24. He was not associated with the Alash-Orda movement - a rarity for educated Kazakhs of the time - nor with the influential Jadidis of Turkestan, nor with conservative Muslim organizations.

As noted above, Muslims were a minority in the Soviets on the ground and could not play a serious role there. In fact, the Musburo, supported by Moscow, became a parallel government for the Muslims of Turkestan.

By the end of 1919, when the communications that had been cut off in the summer were restored, representatives of the central authorities, together with units of the Red Army, were able to reach Tashkent. This finally broke the resistance of the local Soviet hierarchy. In January 1920, Turar Ryskulov became head of the Turkestan Central Executive Committee (TurkTsIK), which was essentially the government of all Turkestan.

It was an unprecedented decision. At the same time, the head of the Kirrevkom was Stanisław Pestkowski, a Pole, while Kazakh politicians played a rather minor role in its composition; the whole Kazakh political formation in January 1920 was still quite ephemeral. The Turkestan Republic, on the other hand, had a solid experience of independent existence, had its own army and a developed system of local administration.

Immediately after his appointment, Ryskulov came up with the idea of creating a new Turkic national republic. In early February 1920, at the Third Conference of the Muslim Party of the Krai, he declared that the existing constitution should be abolished, that the republic was currently under the strict control of the center, and that local conditions should be taken into account. The resolution of the conference stated that it was necessary “to carry out by means of communist agitation the idea of eliminating the aspiration of the Turkic nationalities to divide themselves in essence and in name: into Tatars, Kyrgyz, Bashkirs, Uzbeks, etc., and to form separate small republics, but to unite around the Turkic Soviet Republic for the purpose of cohesion and attraction of other Turkic nationalities not being a part of the RSFSR.”

In a sense, this project was a return to the ideas of Muslim Turkic autonomy popularized among the Muslims of the Volga region in 1917. Georgy Safarov, a member of the Turkic Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) and an active participant in the events described, called Ryskulov's idea "an updated 'communist' edition of pan-Turkism" in his 1921 book Colonial Revolution in Turkestan.

Interestingly, Ryskulov and his followers supported negotiations with representatives of the Fergana rebels, called Basmachi, in particular Madamin-bek, who were acting against the Russian-dominated Soviets. Marco Buttino wrote in this regard: “The Basmachi could thus become the army of the new state, and this would indeed be the end of Turkestan as a Russian colony, and for the communist Muslims the beginning of the Oriental Revolution, in which Turan [the historical area of Central Asia] would become the center and the main actor.” If the planned Turkic Republic was also provided with loyal military units, it could seriously strengthen its independence. Significantly, the Jadids, who were influential in Central Asia, supported the idea of a Turkic republic. The Jadids agreed with Moscow on the basis of their own understanding of the modernization of traditional Muslim society. Only the Bolsheviks could ensure their victory over the conservative Ulama and thus their accession to power in Bukhara and Khiva. In 1920, after the military occupation of the Bukhara and Khiva khanates by the Red Army, the Soviet Republics of Bukhara and Khorezm were established. The Jadids acted under the name of the Young Bukharians and Young Khivins in analogy with the Young Turks.

The Jadids, who supported Ryskulov in Turkestan, had their own political program. Among other things, they believed that the new pan-Turkic identity should be based on the language spoken by the settled population of Central Asia. This was hardly surprising. It should be recalled that in 1917 the proponents of a pan-Muslim identity within the Russian Empire planned to create it on the basis of a common Turkic language, which, according to them, was supposed to be based on the language of the Volga Tatars.

While many Volga Tatars drew on the mature written culture of their own language, the Central Asian Jadids wanted to draw on the rich written culture of historical Central Asia. This is related to their desire to use Central Asian Turkic, which was in use during the heyday of imperial statehood in the region, from the ulus of Chatagai Khan (1224-1242) to the Uzbek khanates.

This is where the term Chagataism originated. It was associated with the Chagatai language, the name given to the Central Asian Turkic language during the time of Emir Timur (1370-1405) and his successors. Adib Khalid wrote that "Chagataism sought to create a common national identity for Turkic Central Asia. The term Chagatai refers to the name of the East Turkic literary language around which Central Asia flourished in the 15th century. As such, Chagataism was clearly pan-Turkic.” However, the Chagatai language (Central Asian Turkic) in the early 20th century was the language of the settled population of Central Asia, distinctly different from the languages of the predominantly nomadic Turkic-speaking peoples — Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Karakalpaks, and Turkmens.

Both projects of a common Muslim and a common Turkish identity were linked to political goals. But at the same time, they represented quite specific interests. In the first case, it was mainly the Volga Tatars, and in the second, the Central Asian Jadids. In other words, these projects were ultimately based on the interests of quite specific intellectual ethnic élites.

In this situation, it was natural that the project of the Turkic Republic and the Turkic Communist Party advocated by Turar Ryskulov, with the predominant use of the Chagatai language, could not attract these Kazakh intellectuals. As in 1917, the Kazakh representatives in the Muslim Executive Council in Petrograd, in particular Zhakhansha Dosmukhamedov, could not be attracted to the idea of a pan-Muslim identity.

For them, the Kazakh language was naturally distinct from the Central Asian and Volga variants of the Turkic language and was an important part of Kazakh identity. Accordingly, nation-building was more in line with Kazakh interests than the more utopian projects of a pan-Muslim or pan-Turkic identity.

In any case, Moscow's alliance with Central Asian Jadid nationalist intellectuals was tactical and temporary. The central authorities in Moscow had no intention of acting in the interests of Central Asian intellectuals, although some people could have gotten that impression. As a result, the project of Ryskulov and the Jadids inevitably gave way to the idea of nation-state building.

There were many other Turkic-speaking peoples in Russia, such as Azerbaijanis (called Caucasian Tatars in the empire), as well as Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. Even the hypothetical possibility of their unification into an autonomous entity, especially if it were led by an independent Turkic Communist Party and had its own military formations, could not but cause serious concern to Moscow's representatives. The idea of creating national republics, such as the Kazakh or Bashkir republics, looked much more favorable. In any case, they were smaller than the union of all Turks or all Muslims and could be more easily ruled from a single center.

In fact, it was not surprising that the idea defended by Ryskulov was defeated. The very concept of supranational unification based on the linguistic principle seemed utopian in 1920. The tumultuous events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Ottoman monarchies in 1918, which led to the emergence of new nation-states in Europe and Turkey, triggered the rise of national movements. This rise was accompanied by the beginning of nation-state building, even if it was very formal, as in the case of the Bashkirs' and Kazakhs' autonomies in 1920.

On June 13, 1920, Vladimir Lenin wrote in the margin of the draft of the Turkestan Commission: "Request to draw up a map of Turkestan (ethnographic, etc.) with division into Uzbekia, Kirghizia, and Turkmenia. To find out in detail the conditions of unification or division of these 3 parts." On July 16, 1920, while preparing papers for the meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) on the national policy in Turkestan, Georgy Safarov proposed to divide it into national provinces, with the Kazakh population joining the rest of Kazakhstan.

It should be noted that this Moscow plan automatically weakened Ryskulov's position. In the event of the separation of the Kazakh districts from Turkestan and their annexation to the Kazakh Republic, his influence among the local Muslim élite would have been immediately reduced. It was one thing to have Ryskulov, a Kazakh, at the head of Turkestan, where there were two large provinces - Sirdaryo and Semirechye, with their Kazakh majorities. It was quite another to have a Kazakh, for example, at the head of a new republic with a predominantly Uzbek population and the capital in Tashkent.

Ryskulov got it right regarding Moscow's position and on July 18, 1920, he resigned as chairman of the Turkistan Central Executive Committee. He was followed by his associates from the Musburo of the Communist Party of Turkestan. In addition, the Turkestan Commission was re-formed; it now consisted of Sokolnikov, Surits, Peters, Bokii, and Safarov. The latter appointment is quite remarkable: it was Safarov who voiced the idea of dividing Turkestan into national territories at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b).

On August 26, 1920, Vladimir Lenin and Mikhail Kalinin signed a decree on the creation of the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic within the RSFSR (then called the Kyrgyz Republic). On October 4-12, 1920, during the First Constituent Congress of Soviets in Orenburg, its creation was officially formalized. Orenburg became the capital of the new autonomous republic. Typically, this decision was made at the very last moment. The city was incorporated into the Kazakh ASSR only in September 1920.

Orenburg as the capital was opposed by some representatives of the Kazakh part of the Kirrevkom; Akhmet Baitursynov spoke on their behalf. The annexation of the Orenburg Oblast to the Kazakh Republic meant a significant increase in the share of the Russian population. Of course, in this case, any possible prospects for increasing the role of Kazakhs in the republic's government, which was already quite insignificant in the early 1920s, were reduced even more. It is characteristic that in 1920 “Orenburg had 123,283 inhabitants, of whom 79.54% were Russians, and the Kazakhs, whose capital the city became, were not even mentioned in a separate line of the census, making up a part of 5.62% of the ‘others’.” Obviously, a politician like Baitursynov was well aware of what was happening.

For Moscow, however, Orenburg was an obvious tactical solution to ensure better control over the new republic. The head of the Kirrevkom, Pestkowski, was quite frank: "The whole question is not from where, but how to govern Kirghizia." The choice of Orenburg meant the preservation of external control over the Kazakh steppe from the imperial city. As in the mid-18th century, Bashkiria resisted the Russian advance for a long and very active period, but then was quickly relegated to the status of an internal territory. The same thing happened in 1919-1920, and Velidi was forced to flee to Baku in June 1920.

Unlike inner Bashkiria, the Kazakh steppe was something of an open door to the east and south, where the specter of world revolution beckoned to the Bolsheviks. In this regard, the vast Kazakh steppe required great efforts on the part of Moscow. This is also why it was so important to include Orenburg in the Kazakh autonomy in 1920.

The central leadership in Moscow at that time needed reliable personnel to administer the Kazakh ASSR. The Orenburg communists were better suited to carry out these Moscow goals than politicians like Stanisław Pestkowski, who were sent from the center. Moreover, Orenburg was the largest industrial city on the edge of the Kazakh steppe, and there were quite a few industrial workers here. All other cities in the steppe at that time were still more an extension of the local agricultural area, which meant that the peasant communities were more influential.

Moreover, the use of Orenburg communists to govern the KazASSR actually gave Moscow a head start in terms of time to create and train new personnel from among the local Kazakh population.

On the whole, during the years of the Russian Civil War, the Kazakh political movement went from the period of failed liberalization in 1917 through the dictatorship of the extreme left (Bolsheviks), then the dictatorship of the extreme right (Admiral Kolchak), and back to the extreme left. Despite the fact that Kazakh politicians did not realize their plans to create national-territorial autonomy, the Kazakh autonomy appeared by 1920. This was the realization of the ideological concept of the extreme left political movement in Russia. It was not a Kazakh project, Kazakhs did not play an independent role in it. Nevertheless, as a result of this, a geographically formalized territory appeared, which was called the Kazakh (Kyrgyz) Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

Another result of the Civil War was the military defeat and final collapse of two ethnically Russian communities — the Cossacks and the settler peasants. The former were defeated in a fierce struggle against the latter. It was the mutual ferocity of the confrontation that caused not only the defeat, but also heavy losses on both sides.

As a result of the civil war, the historical Cossack armies (there were five armies on the territory and in the vicinity of the Kazakh steppe - Astrakhan, Orenburg, Semirechye, Siberian and Ural) ceased to exist. The Cossack class, an important part of the system of governance of the Russian Empire on its periphery, lost its former privileged status.

However, after their victory over the Cossacks, the peasant communities were almost immediately confronted with a centralized state led by left-wing radicals in the person of the Communists with their own political and economic program. As early as February 1920, a special Bolshevik commission organized in Turkestan issued an order concerning the situation in Semirechye: “All colonists who have occupied Kyrgyz lands and buildings since 1916, both on their own initiative and by the decision of persons and bodies who had no right to do so, should leave them.” This was a very serious decision, since it concerned at least 2.5 million hectares of land that had passed to settler peasants and Cossacks after the suppression of the 1916 revolt.

The Bolsheviks did not hesitate to declare the resettled peasants, their former allies in the struggle against the Cossacks, a "gang" and “counterrevolutionary kulaks.” They tried to transfer the units formed by the resettled peasants to other regions. They even went so far as to propose disarming all Red Army units formed from “local colonizing kulaks.”

As a result, on June 12, 1920, an uprising broke out in Verny. Although this uprising ended after only a few days, the summer of 1920 saw an increasing number of uprisings in peasant communities from the Volga to the Altai. Most of them involved those who had recently fought for the Reds in the civil war.

One of the main reasons for the uprisings was the policy of confiscating food from the peasants (prodrazverstka), which the peasants in the eastern regions did not encounter until after the advent of Soviet power. But the priorities of Bolshevik national policy also played an important role. Vladimir Shuldyakov wrote that in 1919 “one of the leaders of the White Cossacks of Asiatic Russia, Ilya Shendrikov (of the Semirechye Cossacks), warned that the land contradictions between the peasants and the Cossacks, so clearly manifested in the form of armed struggle and mutual pogroms (during the Civil War - author's note), would lose their sharpness as soon as both felt the oppression of military communism.”

The Bolsheviks were generally willing to make tactical alliances. Having achieved their goal, they did not hesitate to dispose of yesterday's allies in order to gain new ones who would soon suffer the same fate. This is what Lenin called dialectics. At this particular stage, the Soviet state, by returning to the Kazakhs the lands seized after the 1916 revolt and creating Kazakh autonomy, ensured that the interests of the local Asian population were met.

This looked like the defeat of their direct competitors and the attainment of coveted autonomy. But for the Soviet state, Asian communities were as much an obstacle to the centralized management of society as the communities of the Russian population. Therefore, they were next in line for the destruction of the old world and the construction of the utopia invented in Moscow.

In the process of centralizing its power, the Soviet state would attack anyone who claimed excessive autonomy. This included rural communities, peasants, Cossacks, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and all other communities, as well as liberal-minded city dwellers.

At the same time, the heavy defeat suffered first by the Cossacks at the hands of the settler peasants, and then by the peasants themselves at the hands of the state led by the Bolshevik Party, opened up some opportunities for Kazakh society. Of course, it was far from the idea of creating its own autonomy according to its own rules, as defined at the Second All-Kazakh Congress in December 1917. Nevertheless, the Bolshevik Party's policy on the national question undoubtedly changed the status of Kazakh society.

The Kazakhs found themselves at the center of the political organization of the nation-state formation that bore their name. Instead of their previous status as a dependent society under pressure from the state and local Russian communities, they suddenly found themselves in a relatively privileged position as a state-forming people. This was, of course, a very formal thing.

The fact of creating an autonomous republic made traditional Kazakh society the subject of close attention of the Soviet centralized state. The communist leadership in Moscow planned to engage in social engineering, a large-scale reorganization of society based on its own understanding of modernization. It is clear that in this context the Bolsheviks never thought of leaving tradition unchanged.

In the specific case of Kazakh autonomy, the question was how to modernize the traditional nomadic way of life. Thus, in the early 1920s, although Kazakh society seemed to have emerged from the revolution and civil war as the main beneficiary of the events that had taken place, it had to undergo a state-organized process of transformation that turned out to be hard, brutal, and often pointless.

In any case, the Communists did not want to leave things as they were. They wanted progress in their own sense of the word, and Kazakh nomads, like other peoples of Russia, including Russians, had to change. It was a great experiment on a global scale, and the Kazakhs found themselves a part of it.