Russian revolution. A very short introduction

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Map 2. The Soviet state at the end of the civil war

'not to self-determine Georgia', the Red Army marched in to the country.

On 24 Novemberthe Bolsheviks invited Muslims to ordertheir national life 'freely and without hindrance', yet soviet power was everywhere established by ethnic Russians with a classically colonialist attitude towards the Muslim people. The claim of Tatar merchants, mullahs, and intellectuals to represent the community of Islam was widely resented by Muslims, not least by the Bashkirs of the southern Urals who, though closely related, were patronized by them for having given up nomadism relatively late. Radical Tatars, such as M. S. Sultangaliev, in the absence of a sizeable proletariat, seized on the creation of a Muslim Red Army as a vehicle to establish a Tatar- Bashkir state stretching from the mid-Volga to the Urals. Initially, Bashkirs sought to realize their aspirations by turning to the Whites, but it was not long before reform-minded ? Muslims and political radicals turned to the communists. Fearful of g becoming junior partners in a Tatar-Bashkir state, they insisted on and e got their own autonomous soviet socialist republic (ASSR) in March jg 1919. As early as June 1920, however, some began to defect to the 1 guerrilla movement, known as the basmachi, in disgust at interference in their affairs by Russian communists on the ground. In Crimea, too, the left wing of the nationalist Milli Firka joined the communists; and once the Cheka had extirpated all opposition, a Crimean ASSR was proclaimed in October 1921. Meanwhile in the middle Volga a Tatar ASSR was finally established in May 1920, but it left 75% of the scattered Tatars outside its borders. Sultangaliev and his allies, who formed the core of theTatarstan Communist Party, for a brief period brilliantly used the opportunity of having their own state to promote national identity among the Tatars.

In Turkestan there was still little agreement as to whether nationhood should be realized on an all-Turkestan scale or whether its constituent peoples should form separate states. In the steppes, the Alash Orda proclaimed Kazakh autonomy in December 1917 and turned to the

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Whites in the face of the Red Army advance. By spring 1919, however, Kolchak's hostility to Kazakh autonomy swung it towards a compromise with the Bolsheviks. In August 1920 the Kazakhs received a polity of their own in the shape of an ASSR, clan and village structures being reconfigured into Soviets. In Tashkent the Turkestan Council of People's Commissars refused to recognize the Kokand autonomous government, dominated as it was by reform-minded Muslims and conservative clerics. In February 1918 it carried out an appalling massacre, putting Kokand to the torch and slaughtering almost 60% of its inhabitants. Moscow stepped in to curb these excesses and ensured that ten Muslims were given positions in a new Turkestan Republic. This new government, however, managed to alienate the native population by seizing clerically held lands, closing religious schools, and abolishing shariat courts, so that by 1919 over 20,000 had joined the guerrillas. Following the capture of Bukhara in September 1920, the guerrilla movement spread to the whole of Central Asia, acquiring a pronounced Islamist character. It was not finally put down until 1925. The people's republics of Khorezm and Bukhara - their pre-industrial economies precluded their being called 'socialist' - along with the Turkestan ASSR lasted until 1924, when separate Uzbek, Turkmen, Tadzhik, and Kazakh republics were formed.

Overall, the civil war strengthened national identities yet deepened divisions within nationalist movements. Most nationalists proved unable politically or militarily to remain neutral in the contest between Reds and Whites and many ended up in hock to Germany, Turkey, Allied interventionists, or Poland. Most lacked solid popular support (there were exceptions, such as Georgia) and most fell prey to damaging conflicts over social and economic policies, especially concerning the land. By the end of the civil war, the Bolsheviks offered nationalists less than