Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic
호레즘 인민소비에트공화국
The Soviet republic proclaimed by the First Khorezm Kurultai on 26 April 1920 as successor to the Khanate of Khiva, whose khan had abdicated on 2 February. With Khiva as its capital and a constitution that preserved private property, it was recognised as independent by a treaty with Russia in September 1920. It became the Khorezm Socialist Soviet Republic in October 1923, and in the national delimitation of 27 October 1924 it was divided among the Uzbek SSR, the Turkmen SSR and the Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast.
In depth
In the Khanate of Khiva the Yomut Turkmen chief Junaid Khan had killed Asfandiyar Khan in 1918 and taken real power behind a puppet khan, Sayyid Abdullah. The Young Khivans, opponents of his dictatorship, joined Turkmen chiefs hostile to Junaid and appealed to the Turkkomissiya, which, as the de facto supreme authority in the region, sanctioned a military expedition and sent its envoy Skalov. The Red Army crossed the Amu Darya on 25 December 1919 and on 22–23 January 1920 took Junaid’s seat at Bedirkend. Persuaded by Skalov, Sayyid Abdullah signed a manifesto of abdication on 2 February, and a provisional government took office under the Young Khivan Sultan-Muradov with two Turkmen chiefs and representatives of the clergy and townspeople. Skalov passed on the former khan’s remark that Khiva would live “under your wing” and reported that real power would lie with the Russian mission. On 26 April the Kurultai, which elected Vladimir Lenin its honorary chairman, proclaimed the republic and adopted a constitution that recognised private ownership of land and the means of production and gave the vote to part of the exploiting classes. The Khorezm Communist Party, founded outside the khanate, had only 600 members in April 1920.
A treaty with Russia on 13 September 1920 recognised Khorezm’s full independence. Sharia courts, old-method schools, waqf and tribal elders (aksakals) were kept at first, but the bais, the clergy and the right-wing Young Khivans resisted, and Junaid invaded again and again, in September 1920 and in January 1924, when he besieged Khiva. In early 1922 the Khorezm Communist Party was admitted to the Russian Communist Party, and in March 1923 the economic union of Turkestan, Bukhara and Khorezm created the Central Asian Economic Council. The area under cotton rose from 8,740 hectares in 1922 to 32,776 in 1923. In October 1923 the Fourth All-Khorezm Congress of Soviets turned the state into the Khorezm Socialist Soviet Republic. The country covered 62,200 square kilometres, with a population of over 600,000 according to the English-language source and about 800,000 according to the Russian-language one; more than 60 per cent were Uzbeks and about 29 per cent Turkmens. Its officials fervently opposed the delimitation but were forced to concede, and the Fifth Congress (29 September–2 October 1924) voted for the republic’s self-dissolution.