The Basmachi Revolt, or Basmachestvo (Басмачество) as it is called in the Russian language, was an uprising against Soviet rule in Central Asia.

The Basmachi Revolt began in 1917. Soviet sources portray it as a movement of Islamic traditionalists, together with common thugs and rabble-rousers as well as Islamic radicals. The rebels who started the revolt were called Basmachi, or 'Bandits', a deliberately pejorative term which has much the same meaning as Dacoit in India. Other historians would argue that many ordinary peasants and nomads who opposed the cultural imperialism of Russia, and perhaps more importantly objected to Bolshevik brutality and requisitioning of food and livestock, were an important component of the rebel base.

The Basmachi had soon spread and multiplied across most of Turkestan. Much of Turkestan at the time was, ironically, not actually under the Soviet Russia against which the Basmachi were rebelling, but under other regimes, albeit regimes that were allied with Soviet Russia.

By the early 1920s, the Basmachi Revolt had become so widespread that the Soviet government realized they risked losing their Turkestani territory. Infighting among the Basmachi meanwhile made them weaker compared to the Soviet political establishment (who, by comparison, had a common purpose and single vision, in addition to greater military power). Lenin's government made conciliations to national sentiment in order to quell the Turkestanis' objections to being politically a part of the Soviet Union, and the revolt had largely died out by 1926.

The rebellion was a popular subject for Red Westerns, and featured as a central part of the plot of the films White Sun of the Desert (Белое Солнце Пустыни) The Seventh Bullet (Седьмая Пуля) and Telokhranitel (Телохранитель).

Sources & Further Reading

Mustafa Chokay "The Basmachi Movement in Turkestan" The Asiatic Review Vol.XXIV 1928

Sir Olaf Caroe Soviet Empire. Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (London) 1953

Х. Турсунов Восстание 1916 Года в Средней Азии и Казахстане (Ташкент) 1962

Б.В. Лунин Басмачество (Ташкент) 1984

Alexander Marshall "Turkfront: Frunze and the Development of Soviet Counter-insurgency in Central Asia" in Tom Everett-Heath (Ed.) Central Asia. Aspects of Transition (London) 2003

External links

• http://www.ku.edu/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy-6/cae12.html
• http://www.angelfire.com/on/paksoy/togan.html