Research for this article was made possible in part by support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Carleton College. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the AAASS convention held in Philadelphia in November 1994; since then it has benefitted greatly from comments by Marianne Kamp, Hisao Komatsu, Garay Menicucci, Ronald Grigor Suny, William F. Woehrlin, and two anonymous referees for Slavic Review.

1. Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, “The Fall of the Czarist Empire,” and “Civil War and Governments,” both in Allworth, Edward, ed., Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 213–53Google Scholar; Park, Alexander G., Bolshevism in Turkestan, 1917–1927 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 9–19 Google Scholar; Pipes, Richard, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 86–93 Google Scholar; Pierce, Richard A., “Toward Soviet Power in Tashkent, February-October 1917,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 17 (1975): 261–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Chamberlin, William Henry, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921, 2 vols. (1935; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 1:341 Google Scholar; Pierce, “Toward Soviet Power,” 269.

3. The standard Soviet account of the revolution, as it emerged in the post-Stalin period, centered around the Bolsheviks’ triumph over all opposition (including that of local bourgeois nationalists). This triumph, it insisted, embodied the friendship of peoples and the proper solution to the nationalities question in Central Asia. See, e.g., Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti v Srednei Azii i Kazakhstane (Tashkent: Fan, 1967). Early Soviet accounts, although free of such post facto justifications, nevertheless adopted the triumphalist tone of victors and were, moreover, marred by grave errors of fact stemming from their authors’ complete ignorance of Central Asian languages or politics. The best example of this literature is Georgii Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia: Opyt Turkestana (Moscow, 1922; reprint, Oxford: Society for Central Asian Studies, 1985).

4. The post-Soviet period has been marked by a severe economic crisis for Central Asian academe which has drastically reduced its output. Although much has been written about the early Soviet period and the individuals involved, the year 1917 itself has been largely ignored: see Ismoil, Hamid, “Turkiston 1917 yilda,” in Fitna san“ati, 2 vols. (Tashkent: Fan, 1993), 1:5–18 Google Scholar; Qosimov, Yo˘lchi, Qora ko˘zoynak bilan yozilgan tarikh (Namangan: Kitobkhon, 1993)Google Scholar; Abdullaev, R. M., “Iz istorii natsional'nogo dvizheniia v Turkestane posle fevralia 1917 goda,” Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, 1993, no. 4: 49–53 Google Scholar; as well as works on the Kokand Autonomy cited below.

5. Central Asia is conspicuously absent from Ronald Grigor Suny's splendid account of the revolution in the borderlands of the empire: The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), chap. 2.

6. On “cultural capital,” see Bourdieu, Pierre, The Logic of Practice, trans. Nice, Richard (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 108–12Google Scholar.

7. Masal'skii, V. I., Turkestanskii krai (St. Petersburg: Izd. A. F. Devriena, 1913), 362 Google Scholar.

8. Pobeda oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii v Uzbekistane: Sbornik dokumentov (henceforth PORvU), 2 vols. (Tashkent: Izd. AN Uzbekskoi SSR, 1963–72), 1:205.

9. Largely because of the existence of a small number of extremely valuable memoirs by Bukharan revolutionaries, the revolution in Bukhara has received far more scholarly attention than the events in Turkestan. See Ayni, S., Bukhara inqilabi tarikhi uchun materiallar (Moscow: SSSR Khalqlarining Markazi Nashriyati, 1922)Google Scholar; Khojaev, Fayzulla [F. Khodzhaev], K istorii revoliutsii v Bukhare (Tashkent: Uzbekskoe Gosizdat, 1926)Google Scholar; Khojaev, , Bukhara inqilabinin larikhiga materiallar (Tashkent: Öznäşr, 1930)Google Scholar. See also Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Réforme el révolution chez les Musulmans de l'Empire russe, 2d ed. (Paris: Presses FNSP, 1981), 190–212; Becker, Seymour, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), chaps. 14–17Google Scholar; Eisener, Reinhard, “Bukhara v 1917 godu,” Vostok, 1994, no. 4: 131–44; no. 5: 75–92Google Scholar.

10. For a detailed examination of the themes outlined in the following four paragraphs, see Adeeb Khalid, “The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform:Jadidism in Tsarist Central Asia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993).

11. Khalid, Adeeb, “Printing, Publishing, and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994): 187–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. I have consistently translated millat as “community,” not “nation,” because the term lacked an overt ethnic connotation in Turkestan in 1917. Nevertheless, it is not correct to argue (as many have, following the influential opinion of Alexandre Bennigsen) that Turkestani Muslims lacked any group identity beyond the tribal or the religious. For more detailed attention to this point, see Baldauf, Ingeborg, “Some Thoughts on the Making of the Uzbek Nation,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 32 (1991): 79–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Khalid, “Politics,” 238–58.

13. On the evolution of Russian attitudes in Turkestan, see Yaroshevsky, Dov B., “Russian Regionalism in Turkestan,” Slavonic and East European Review 65 (1987): 77–100 Google Scholar. The Russian settler response to the revolution has been analyzed by Marco Buttino in a series of remarkable articles; see his “Study of the Economic Crisis and Depopulation in Turkestan, 1917–1920,” Central Asian Survey 9, no. 4 (1990): 59–74; Buttino, ‘“La terra a chi la lavora': La politica coloniale russa in Turkestan tra la crisi dello Zarismo e le rivoluzioni del 1917,” in Masoero, Alberto and Venturi, Antonello, eds., Russica: Studi e ricerche sulla Russia contemporanea (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), 277–332 Google Scholar; Buttino, , “Turkestan 1917, la révolution des Russes,” Cahiers du monde russe el soviétique 32 (1991): 61–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buttino, , “Politics and Social Conflict during a Famine: Turkestan Immediately after the Revolution,” in Buttino, , ed., In a Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Soviet Union (Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1993), 257–77Google Scholar.

14. On the 1916 uprising, see Sokol, Edward D., The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; on Russian settlement in the Kazakh lands, see Demko, George J., The Russian Colonization of Kazakhstan, 1896–1916 (Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 1969)Google Scholar; also Olcott, Martha Brill, The Kazakhs (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), chaps. 4–6Google Scholar.

15. Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia, 83. For a similarly harsh appraisal of the Russian labor movement and the early Soviet regime in Turkestan, see the opening pages of Ginzburg, S., “Basmachestvo v Fergane,” in Ocherki revoliuisionnogo dvizheniia v Srednei Azii: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Nauchnaia Assotsiatsiia Vostokovedeniia pri TsIK SSSR, 1926)Google Scholar. Such critical evaluations of early communists were out of vogue by the 1930s.

16. Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia, 110.

17. All dates in this article are old style.

18. Sirājiddin Makhdum Sidqi, Tāza hurriyat (Tashkent, 1917), 2.

19. Nor was the print run of 10,000 indicative of a speculative instinct on the part of the publisher: a few weeks later, the same poet published a narrative poem giving an account of the revolution in Petrograd with a print run of 25,000. Here again, the fundamental theme was liberty: the events in Petrograd, which Sidqi recounts in considerable detail, represented the culmination of a long struggle for liberty that dated back to Pugachev. The verse format of the pamphlet bridged the gap in intelligibility by translating the episode into a form accessible to the local population. Cf. Sidqi, Buyuk Rusya inqilābi (Tashkent: Rawnaq Kutubkhānasi, 1917), 48 pp.

The February revolution gave rise to a small literary explosion in Turkestan, of which the works of Sidqi are only one example. For obvious reasons, this corpus has received no scholarly attention.

20. Rawnaq ul-Islām (Kokand), no. 5, no date (April 1917).

21. Manzhara, D. I., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Srednei Azii 1905–1920 gg. (Vospominaniia) (Tashkent: Sredazpartizdat, 1934), 36 Google Scholar.

22. Najāt, 23 March 1917.

23. Najāt, 19 March 1917.

24. Ibid.

25. Najāt, 26 March 1917; Ulugh Turkistān, 25 April 1917, 2; Tirik soz (Kokand), 2 April 1917. All periodicals cited here were published in Tashkent unless otherwise stated.

26. Ulugh Turkistān, 5 May 1917, 3. Very similar aims were expressed by the Muslim Education Society in Samarkand (Samarqand anjuman-i maārif-i islāmiya jamiyatining mukhtasar proghrāmasi [Samarkand: Samarqand anjuman-i maārif-i islāmiya jamiyati, 1917], 2–7).

27. Tirik soz (Kokand), 2 April 1917.

28. “Turkistānda tashkilāt masalasi,” Kengash, 11 July 1917.

29. Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistana (TsGARUz), Tashkent, f. 1, op. 8, d. 528, 11. 16–16ob.

30. Gr. Andreev, “Soveshchanie po reorganizatsii Turkestanskoi Tuzemnoi Gazety,'” Turkestanskie vedomosti, 16 March 1917; “Tarikhi majlis,” Najāt, 19 March 1917. There was delicious irony in the newspaper being taken over by Munawwar Qāri at a meeting held at the Teachers’ Seminary. Ostroumov, editor of TWG and director of the Teachers’ Seminary since its establishment in 1879, had come to Turkestan in 1877 and held a number of high-ranking official positions. His competence as an orientalist made him the confidant and consultant of successive governors-general, and by 1917 his name was synonymous with the conservative, paternalistic side of Russian power in the region. Ostroumov cultivated friendly relations with some local literati while keeping a wary eye on those, such as the Jadids (with special animus directed at Munawwar Qāri), who he feared worked against the “general state interests” of Russia.

31. The zemstvo was introduced to Turkestan by a decree of the Provisional Government of 1 July 1917: Browder, Robert Paul and Kerensky, Alexander F., eds., The Russian Provisional Government 1917: Documents, 3 vols. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 1:305 Google Scholar.

32. Togan, A. Z. V., Hâhralar: Türkistan ve Diğer Müslüman Doğu Türklerinin Millî Varlik ve Kültür Mücadeleleri (Istanbul: Hikmet Gazetecilik, 1969), 150–52Google Scholar.

33. Ulugh Turkistān, 25 April 1917. The possession of formal mandates does not seem to have been a crucial prerequisite for participating in the proceedings.

34. Turkestanskie vedomosti, 22 April 1917.

35. Ulugh Turkistān, 25 April 1917.

36. Ibid.; see also Browder and Kerensky, eds., Russian Provisional Government, 1:420–21.

37. Najāt, 23 April 1917; Ahlullah Khayrullah oghli, “Turkistanda birinchi ‘qurultay,”’ Shura (Orenburg), 15 July 1917, 323–24; Togan, Hâtiralar, 152–53.

38. Kengash, 31 August 1917.

39. Muallim Hakimjān Mirzākhānzāda, “E'tizārga e‘tizār,” Kengash (Kokand), 15 April 1917, 14.

40. Ibrāhim Tāhir, “Maktab wa madrasalar islāhi,” Ulugh Turkistān, 5 May 1917.

41. al-Mukhtāri, Muallim Shākir, Kim qāzi bolsin (Kokand: Birlik, 1917), 2 Google Scholar; Najāt, 26 March 1917.

42. I have encountered several indirect references to this incident in contemporary accounts; e.g., TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 1, 1. 36; or a letter signed by representatives of two Andijan organizations expressing dismay at the actions of “the Protopopovs of Turkestan”: “Turkistān Protopopovlari,” Ulugh Turkistān, 14 June 1917.

43. “Shāyān-i ta'assuf wāqealar,” Ulugh Turkistān, 31 May 1917. This incident caused comment in the Tatar press as well; see Shura (Orenburg), 15 June 1917, 286–87.

44. Bourdieu, Logic, 109.

45. al-Izāh, 16 June 1917, 1–5.

46. TsGARUz, f. 47, d. 2769; Çokay, Mustafa, 1917 Yih Hatira Parçalan (Ankara: Yaš Türkistan Nešriyati, 1988), 18–19 Google Scholar. Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (“The Fall of the Czarist Empire,” 216), assuming the Ulamā Jamiyati to be a purely clerical organization, automatically promotes Lapin to a mullah.

47. Sh. R., “Song harakat, yakhshi muwaffaqiyat,” Najāt, 9 April 1917.

48. Minutes of the meetings of the committee are in TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 1.

49. TsGARUz, f. 1044, d. 1, 11. 173–173ob; cf. PORvU, 1:85, 95–98.

50. Ulugh Turkistān, 13 May 1917, 3.

51. The malaise was mutual; Abdullah Battal Taymas, one of the Kazan representatives, looked back on his visit as a waste of time: Rus Ihtilâlinden Hâtiralar (Istanbul: Güven, 1947), 39.

52. “Qāzān hay'atining isti'fasi,” Ulugh Turkistān, 7 June 1917, 4.

53. “Qāzan hay'ati,” Ulugh Turkistān, 27 August 1917, 4.

54. Browder and Kerensky, eds., Russian Provisional Government, 1: 409.

55. The proceedings of the Moscow congress are in Butun Rusya Musulmanlarining 1917nchi yilda 1–11 Mayda Mäskävdä bolghan umumi isyizdining protaqollarï (Petrograd: Butun Rusya Musulmanlarï Shurasï, 1917). See also Zenkovsky, Serge A., Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 141–53Google Scholar.

56. On the Türk Adüm-i Mürküziyüt Firqüsi, see Swietochowski, Tadeusz, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 86, 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Adam-i markaziyat is literally “decentralization,” but the party's own publications used the designation Tiurkskaia federativnaia partiia, which I have followed in translating the name into English.)

57. Members of a delegation from Baku had attended the meeting of the Central Council on 26June and been coopted into it: Kengash, 28July 1917.

58. The first issue of its newspaper, Turān, published an article that lavished praise on the ulamā: “A number of complaints have arisen since the beginning of Freedom because of discord between the ulama and the youth [yāshlar]. Gentlemen, even a little prudent reflection would force us to admit that today the ulamá are our spiritual fathers and the supporters of our faith. If we youth deny their existence, we will be guilty [gunáhgár] for all time.” (“Jahálat yuzindan i'tiláfsizlik,” Turán, 1 September 1917.) The next issue of the newspaper published a similarly laudatory article about the ulamá: “al-Ulamá warsat ul-anbiyá,” Turán, 6 September 1917.

59. This document has recently been published in modern Uzbek by Ahmadjon Madaminov and Said Murod, eds., “Turkistonda khalq jumhuriyati,” Fan wa Turmush, 1990, no. 7: 6–8; for an English translation and commentary, see Komatsu, Hisao, “The Program of the Turkic Federalist Party in Turkistan (1917),” in Paksoy, H. B., ed., Central Asia Reader: The Rediscovery of History (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 117–26Google Scholar.

60. Togan, Hâtiralar, 163–65.

61. Najāt, 23 April 1917; Kengash, 25 July 1917.

62. Tāshkand Shurā-i Islāmiyasi, Khitābnama (Tāshkent: Tashkand Shurā-i Islāmiyasi, 1917), 2.

63. Ibid., 5, 13.

64. Jamiyati, Ulamā, Haqiqatgha khilāf tārqalilgan khitābnāmagha jawāb via ham bayān-i ahwāl (Tashkent: Ulamā Jamiyati, 1917), 2, 5–7Google Scholar.

65. “V obshchestve mull,” Turkestanskii kur'er, 2 July 1917, in PORvU, 1:153.

66. This expression was used in three places in the sixteen pages of the first issue of their organ, al-Izāh (16 June 1917). Muslim tradition holds that God sent a succession of prophets to bear his message to humanity. Although this succession came to an end with Muhammad, the “Seal of the Prophets,” the ulamā claimed to “inherit” its authority.

67. Ulugh Turkistān, 27 August 1917, 3.

68. “Duma jivilishi,” Ulugh Turkistān, 23 August 1917. In a few weeks, the commission decided to co-opt four experts to help it in its work and elected Munawwar Qāri as one of the four. But the ulamā still managed to elect two teachers of old method schools. “Maktab kāmisiyasi,” Kengash, 8 September 1917.

69. See Kengash, 31 August 1917, for the agenda of the congress.

70. Kengash, 12 September 1917.

71. The text of the draft resolution is in Ulugh Turkistān, 7 and 10 September 1917.

72. Kengash, 13 September 1917.

73. “Ulamā isyazdining qarārlari,” Ulugh Turkistān, 30 September 1917.

74. “Tāshkandda ulamā siyazdi,” Ulugh Turkistān, 30 September 1917.

75. “Musulmānlar!” Turk Eli, 15 October 1917.

76. “Yedisu Musulmānlari haqqinda buyuk nimāyish,” Ulugh Turkistān, 23 August 1917.

77. Buttino, ‘“La terra a chi la lavora,’” 318–26; Buttino, “Turkestan 1917,” 72.

78. The incident was reported prominently in the Provisional Government's Vestnik, where the connection with food riots is made explictly (see Browder and Kerensky, eds., Russian Provisional Government, 1:422–24).

79. PORvU, 1: 328–30.

80. Turān, 21 September 1917; see also Ulugh Turkistān, 30 September 1917.

81. Defensist Mensheviks and Right SRs had dominated the Turkestan soviet in the spring and summer; the Second Congress shifted the balance toward more radical parties, a combination of Menshevik-Intemationalists, Left SRs, and Bolsheviks: Zhizn’ natsional'nostei, 15 December 1918, 8. One should, however, be wary of setting great store by party labels in Turkestan where, as Buttino has pursuasively argued, issues of food supply and maintaining the privileged political position of the settler population were of far greater significance.

82. Carrère d'Encausse, “Civil War and New Governments,” 225, asserts that the “refusal [of the soviet to share power] welded the unity of all the Muslim political groups,” which united around the Shurā.

83. “Musulmān krāevai siyazdining bātafsil qarāri,” al-hāh, 28 November 1917, 269.

84. “15nchi noyābirda Tāshkandda bolghān musulmān krāevai siyazdining qarāri,” al-hāh, 28 November 1917, 266–67.

85. Ibid.; “Siyazdning qarāri,” Ulugh Turkistān, 18 November 1917.

86. The text of this resolution is in Gordienko, A. A., Obrazovanie Turkestanskoi ASSR (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literature, 1968), 309–10.Google Scholar

87. Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow: Izd. Politicheskoi Literatury, 1957), 1:113–15.

88. J. Castagné, “Le Turkestan depuis la révolution russe,” Revue du monde musulman 50 (1922): 47. Castagné was a French archeologist who spent several years in Turkestan before and during the revolution.

89. El bayrāghi (Kokand), 28 November 1917; Vaqít (Orenburg), 13 December 1917.

90. The ministers and their portfolios were as follows: Muhamedjan Tïnïshpaev, prime minister, internal affairs; Islam Shahiahmedov, deputy prime minister; Mustafa Choqāy, external affairs; Ubaydullah Khojaev, people's militia; Yur Ali Āghāev, land and water; Ābidjān Mahmudov, food supply; Abdurrahmān-bek Urazaev, deputy minister for internal affairs; and Solomon Gertsfel'd, finance. Cf. “Muwaqqat Turkistān hukumatining a‘zalari,” Ulugh Turkistān, 13 December 1917, 1.

91. Ulugh Turkistān, 8 December 1917, 2.

92. Vaqít, 17 December 1917.

93. Ibid.

94. Tchokaieff, M. [Mustafa Choqāy], “Fifteen Years of Bolshevik Rule in Turkestan,” Journal of the Royal Central Asiatic Society 20 (1933): 358 Google Scholar.

95. “Katta mitingh,” Ulugh Turkistān, 10 December 1917; “Fājiali wāqea,” Ulugh Turkistān, 16 December 1917; “Tāshkandda mukhtāriyat nimāyishi,” al-Izāh, 25 December 1917, 277; cf. Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia, 115.

96. “Tāshkandda mukhtāriyat nimāyishi,” al-Izāh, 25 December 1917, 277.

97. al-Izāh, 21 January 1918, 315.

98. Ibid., 316.

99. The “Kokand Autonomy” became a taboo subject very early on and remains a little-known episode of the revolution. For early Soviet treatments, already contentious, see Safarov, Kolonial'naia revoliutsiia, 111–25; P. Alekseenkov, Kokandskaia avionomiia (Tashkent: Sredazpartizdat, 1931). More recent views are in M. Khasanov, “'Kokandskaia avtonomiia’ i nekotorye ee uroki,” Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, 1990, no. 2: 41–52; Khasanov, “Al'ternativa: Iz istorii kokandskoi avtonomii,” Zvezda Vostoka, 1990, no. 7: 105–20; Shoniyoz Doniyorov, “Mukhtoriyat qismati,” Sharq yulduzi, 1991, no. 12: 159–73.

100. The attitude of the ulamā to the tragedy in Kokand is murkily visible in an editorial attacking it in “Kim aybli,” Ishchilar dunyasi, 15 March 1918, 66–68.

101. Blank, Stephen, “The Contested Terrain: Muslim Political Participation in Soviet Turkestan, 1917–19,” Central Asian Survey 6, no. 4 (1987): 47–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102. On the confrontation between Moscow and Tashkent on this issue, see ibid.

103. Rakhimov, Sh., “Prosveshchenie uzbekov,” Nauka i prosveshchenie, 1922, no. 2: 41 Google Scholar.