Kokand Autonomy

After the February Revolution Turkestan saw the rise of the Shuroi Islomiya, dominated by Jadids, and of the conservative Ulamo Jamiyati, which put sharia first. The Soviet that seized Tashkent in November 1917 set up a Sovnarkom, but its chairman Fyodor Kolesov rejected a Muslim congress’s offer of a coalition, declaring that “the inclusion of Muslims in the organ of supreme regional power is unacceptable at the present time”. Muslim political forces then met in Kokand, the commercial centre of the Fergana Valley beyond the Tashkent Soviet’s reach, where some 250 delegates declared autonomy. The first prime minister was the Kazakh Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaev, succeeded in early January 1918 by Mustafa Shokay. Most of the native population supported the government: rallies thousands strong were held in Namangan, Samarkand and elsewhere, and 60,000 gathered in Tashkent. Yet the Autonomy could not tax and lived on a 3-million-ruble loan and donations, and its internal quarrels deepened when Soviet forces seized 8 million rubles, its own account included, from the Kokand branch of the State Bank. Its army of about 2,000 had no officers or trained men and relied on Ergash, the Kokand militia chief. Attempts to join forces with Alexander Dutov’s South-Eastern Union, the Alash Autonomy and the Emir of Bukhara all failed, and People’s Commissar for Nationalities Joseph Stalin answered a plea for recognition by saying that the workers of Turkestan should disperse the Tashkent commissariat “by force” if they had the power.

In mid-January 1918 the Fourth Regional Congress of Soviets outlawed the Autonomy and ordered the arrest of its members. Once Dutov’s railway blockade was lifted in January and arms reached Tashkent, the military imbalance became decisive. When forces on the Autonomy’s side seized the Palace of Khudayar Khan and the Kokand Soviet’s headquarters on the night of 11 February, the Tashkent Soviet declared martial law and sent troops under Konstantin Osipov. Under shelling the government split between Shokay’s cabinet and the hardliners, and on 18 February the commander-in-chief Ergash seized power in a coup. When he rejected an ultimatum to surrender on the 19th, Soviet forces shelled the city heavily, and on the 22nd a delegation from the old city agreed to disarm and recognise Soviet authority. The captured city was sacked and its inhabitants massacred; even the English-language sources differ on the toll, from more than 10,000 to as many as 25,000. Supporters of the Autonomy were summarily executed or arrested, and Soviet food requisitioning caused a famine. The armed resistance Ergash began in the summer of 1918 grew into the Basmachi movement, and the Autonomy became a symbol of resistance to Soviet rule.