Basmachi Rebellion 1916-1931

In 1916, when the Russian government ended its exemption of Muslims from military service, much of Russian Central Asia rose in a general revolt against Russian rule. After arising in the Fergana Valley, the movement became a rallying ground for opponents of Russian or Bolshevik rule from all parts of the region. The Russians applied a derogatory term, Basmachi* (which originally meant brigand), to the groups. Although the resistance did not apply that term to itself, it nonetheless entered common usage.

The great mass of the Muslim population of Russian Central Asia took no part in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Only after the Bolsheviks attacked the Muslim religion, intervened directly in native society and culture, and engaged in armed seizure of food did the indigenous population offer fierce resistance in a national and holy war against the Soviet regime, known as the Basmachi Rebellion.

The indigenous resistance movement proved the last barrier to assimilation of Central Asia into the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, more than 20,000 people fought Soviet rule in Central Asia. The several Basmachi groups had conflicting agendas and seldom coordinated their actions. Peasant unrest already existed in the area because of wartime hardships and the demands of the amir and the soviets. The Red Army's harsh treatment of local inhabitants in 1921 drove more people into the resistance camp. However, the Basmachi movement became more divided and more conservative as it gained numerically. It achieved some unity under the leadership of Enver Pasha, a Turkish adventurer with ambitions to lead the new secular government of Turkey, but Enver was killed in battle in early 1922. Except for remote pockets of resistance, armed opposition to Soviet rule in Central Asia ended by 1926. Sporadic fighting continued until 1931. The defeat of the Basmachis caused as many as 200,000 people, including noncombatants, to flee eastern Bukhoro in the first half of the 1920s. A few thousand subsequently returned over the next several years.

The communists used a combination of military force and conciliation to defeat the Basmachis. The military approach ultimately favored the communist side, which was much better armed. The Red Army forces included Tatars and Central Asians, who enabled the invading force to appear at least partly indigenous. Conciliatory measures (grants of food, tax relief, the promise of land reform, the reversal of anti-Islamic policies launched during the Civil War, and the promise of an end to agricultural controls) prompted some Basmachis to reconcile themselves to the new order.

*Transliterated from Russian as BASMACHESTVO.

References

Turkmenistan - A Country Study; Soviet Union - A Country Study; Tajikistan - A Country Study; Basmachi Revolt.

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