Basmachi movement | |||||||||
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Part of World War I and the Russian Civil War | |||||||||
Bukhara under siege by Red Army troops and burning during the Bukhara operation, 1 September 1920 | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Russian Republic (1917) Russian SFSR • Turkestan ASSR • Kirghiz ASSR Khorezm PSR Bukharan PSR Soviet Union (from December 30, 1922) In cooperation with: Amanullah loyalists (1929) Afghanistan (1930) |
Basmachi movement Khanate of Khiva (1918–20) White Army Alash Autonomy (1919–20)[1] Emirate of Bukhara (1920) Supported by: Afghanistan (until mid-1922)[2] Saqqawists (1929)[3] | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Mikhail Frunze Grigory Sokolnikov Pyotr Kobozev Yakov Melkumov Vitaly Primakov Vasily Shorin August Kork Semyon Pugachov Mikhail Levandovsky Konstantin Avksentevsky Vladimir Lazarevich Magaza Masanchi Fayzulla Xoʻjayev Mohammad Nadir Shah # Sardar Shah Wali Khan Ghulam Nabi Khan |
Enver Pasha † Ibrahim Bek † Irgash Bey † Madamin Bey † Junaid Khan Muhammad Alim Khan Korşirmat Konstantin Monstrov † Habibullāh Kalakāni | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
Turkestan Front: 120,000–160,000[4] | Perhaps 30,000 at its height, over 20,000 (late 1919)[5] | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
9,338 killed or died of disease 29,617 wounded or sick (Jan. 1921 – July 1922)[6] 516 killed 867 wounded or sick (Oct. 1922 – June 1931)[7] Total: 40,000+ 9,854+ dead 30,484+ wounded or sick | Unknown | ||||||||
Tens of thousands of civilians killed.[8][9] Several hundred thousand Kazakh and Kyrgyz people killed or evicted with an unknown amount dying to famine according to Sokol.[10] Alternative estimate: 150,000 dead in 1916.[11] |
History of Tajikistan |
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Timeline |
Tajikistan portal |
The Basmachi movement (Russian: Басмачество, romanized: Basmachestvo, derived from Uzbek: Босмачи, romanized: Bosmachi, lit. 'bandits')[12] was an uprising against Imperial Russian and Soviet rule in Central Asia by rebel groups inspired by Islamic beliefs.
The movement's roots lay in the anti-conscription violence of 1916 which erupted when the Russian Empire began to draft Muslims for army service in World War I.[13] In the months following the October 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized power in many parts of the Russian Empire and the Russian Civil War began. Turkestani Muslim political movements attempted to form an autonomous government in the city of Kokand, in the Fergana Valley. The Bolsheviks launched an assault on Kokand in February 1918 and carried out a general massacre of up to 25,000 people.[8][9] The massacre rallied support to the Basmachi who waged a guerrilla and conventional war that seized control of large parts of the Fergana Valley and much of Turkestan. The group's notable leaders were Enver Pasha and, later, Ibrahim Bek.
The fortunes of the movement fluctuated throughout the early 1920s, but by 1923 the Red Army's extensive campaigns had dealt the Basmachis many defeats. After major Red Army campaigns and concessions regarding economic and Islamic practices in the mid-1920s, the military fortunes and popular support of the Basmachi declined.[14] Resistance to Soviet leadership did flare up again, to a lesser extent, in response to collectivization campaigns in the pre-WWII era.[15]
These traditionalist, protomujahideen—called Basmachi, meaning "bandits", by the Soviets— described themselves as standing for Islam, Turkic nationalism, and anticommunism. One of these bands of Muslim rebels was led by Enver Pasha, ...