People of the Revolution and the USSR

Counter-revolutionary forces 1857–1938 → Died in exile

Yomut Turkmen chief who held real power in the Khanate of Khiva in 1918–1920 and fought Soviet rule for more than a decade

Born in 1857 (some sources say 1862), the son of a Yomut Turkmen chief, he served as a village judge (kazi) and water distributor (mirab) and made his name in the Turkmen uprisings of 1912–1916. Appointed commander of the armed forces of Khiva by Asfandiyar Khan in January 1918, he had the khan assassinated, installed the khan’s uncle Sayyid Abdullah as a puppet and took real power. He besieged Petro-Alexandrovsk in November 1918 and in 1919 opened contact with Kolchak’s government, but in early 1920 the Red Army defeated him and he retreated into the Karakum desert. He then repeatedly invaded the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic and the Turkmen SSR, besieging Khiva in January 1924. He went into exile in Persia and Afghanistan and died near Herat in 1938.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1880–1944 → Died in exile

Last Emir of Bukhara, driven into exile in Afghanistan by the Red Army in 1920

Born in Bukhara in 1880, the son of Emir Abdulahad Khan, he was sent at thirteen to Saint Petersburg, where he spent three years at the Nicholas Cadet Corps studying government and military affairs, and on his return governed Nasaf and Karmana. In 1911 he became the twelfth and last emir of the Manghit dynasty. He began his reign with reforms against bribery and unauthorised taxation, but soon sided with the traditionalists, and after 1917 he repressed the reformers, the Young Bukharans among them. He repulsed the Bolshevik attack led by Kolesov in March 1918, but during the Bukhara operation at the end of August 1920 he fled via Dushanbe to Kabul. In exile he cooperated with the British in the hope of regaining power and is said to have supported the Basmachi; he died in Kabul in 1944.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1889–1931 ✕ Executed by shooting

Lakai tribal chief who fought for the restoration of the Emir of Bukhara as the leading Basmachi commander in eastern Bukhara

Born around 1889 in the village of Koktash in the Emirate of Bukhara, the youngest son of an elder of the Uzbek Lakai tribe, he became bek of his tribe in 1920 and entered the service of Emir Said Alim Khan. After the emir fled he rallied the tribes of eastern Bukhara and led the Basmachi in the name of the emir’s restoration. Championing Islamic conservatism, he drove the Jadids from the movement’s ranks and was so suspicious of Enver Pasha that he once arrested him. After withdrawing to Afghanistan in 1926 he kept raiding across the border and also fought Afghan government troops. Captured while crossing the Kafirnigan River on Soviet territory in June 1931, he was taken to Tashkent and shot on 31 August. Uzbekistan’s Supreme Court rehabilitated him in 2021.