A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

From Governorates-General to Union Republics 221
This was the conclusion of the multidimensional struggle for
Turkestan.In two stages, Moscow first neutralized the insubordinate
Russian elements who had been loath to treat politically acceptable
natives as equals; then, however, it fashioned the future of this former
colony according to its own ideas and wishes, not to those of the
Muslims.Moscow had played its cards well, but in the last analysis it was
the irrefutable argument of having the Red Army at its disposal that
made this victory possible.
the khorezmian and bukharan people’s soviet
republics
The TASSR (Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), created
in March 1920, lasted until October 1924, and in territorial terms it was
a continuation of the Governorate-General of Turkestan.Territorial
continuity also marked, in the same period, the People’s Soviet
Republics of Bukhara and Khorezm (Khwarazm).During the colonial
period, both the emirs of Bukhara and the khans of Khiva had managed
to impose upon their citizens the worst of the two worlds: the small but
energetic groups of young Bukharans and Khivans knew that as Russia’s
vassals, their countries had joined the humiliated and exploited ranks of
colonies; as subjects of semi-medieval autocrats, they themselves were
deprived even of those marginal benefits that Russian colonialism did
bring to the directly administered Governorate-General.The
Revolution of October 1917 and the Bolsheviks’ appeals to the Muslims
of Russia offered them, they thought, a unique opportunity of liberating
their countries both from decadent despotism and from colonialism.
As a result, their conception of the struggle taking shape in Central Asia
as well as their course of action between 1917 and 1920 had a different
slant from those of their fellow Muslims elsewhere in the area.
The reformists at first did not aim at abolishing the two monarchies;
all they wanted was a moderation of the despotism and some degree of
modernization of the institutions and of education.The khan of Khiva
and especially the emir of Bukhara with their conservative entourages
proved tough and stubborn opponents, however.They persistently
refused even these changes, so that the reformists were in the end driven
both logistically and psychologically into the arms of the Russian revolutionaries
as their indispensable allies.Thus while the Bolsheviks of
Tashkent were extinguishing the poignant Khoqand experiment, the
reformists of the two principalities were appealing to them for help in