TLIAFD: Turkiston Imperiyasi/Империя Туркестан

1891-1923
I made a thread about a united Central Asian state a couple years back. This is the result.

I figure Heavy had the right idea- a timeline in a few days leaves me remarkable leeway to take my time researching stuff and pouring my precious time into an internet forum populated by people who live thousands of miles away from me. Also, I'd appreciate help with making the maps for this TL, though given that there aren't a lot of people interested in Central Asia, I understand.

%C3%B6zzerkk.png

Central Asia during the Russian Civil War

[Part I- 1891-1923]

Fyodor Ivanovich Kolesov

20 May 1891, Ural’sk, Russian Empire- 17 September 1960, Alma-Ata, Turkic SSR

Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Turkestan ASSR), 1917-1927

Chairman of the Turkic SSR, 1927-1955

In another world, Fyodor Kolesov would have remained an unobtrusive member of the Communist Party, known only for his position at the head of the Council of People’s Commissars in the Turkestan ASSR, forgotten by history, reduced to less than a footnote, one name among many others. In this world, however, he found himself in the right place at the right time.

Born in Ural’sk, Kolesov was educated at the local seminary, but would find himself in Tashkent as a clerk in the offices of the Central Asian Railway in 1911 following the death of his father (a junior civil servant). It was in Tashkent that he would come into contact with the Jadid movement.

The Jadids were a group of reformist, progressive pan-Turkic ideologists active in the region, and took an interest in the bright young man. Kolesov rapidly gained the trust of the Jadid community in the city and leveraged this to become an influential pro-reform voice in meetings.

With the attempt of the Russian Imperial government to press Muslims into service, the Central Asian Revolts of 1916 thus commenced. The newly married Kolesov took a leading role in this revolt. Through his connections with the Jadid movement and his friendly relations with Imperial Russian bureaucrats in Turkestan, he was able to successfully feed information about Russian troop movements to the revolt, and thereby gained prominence as an opposition figure and a supporter of the Jadid movement, though he would never convert to Islam. It was during this time that he became an acquaintance of a technician by the name of I. I. Bel’kov and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks).

After the October Revolution, Kolesov joined Bel’kov and his compatriots in declaring the formation of the Tashkent Soviet on 2 March 1917. This organization stood in direct opposition to the Turkestan Muslim Council in Kokand, and with Kolesov’s connections in the Jadid movement as well as his reputation as an increasingly invaluable figure in the movement, would-be fighters for the Kokand faction were split in their loyalties, allowing for the relatively bloodless defeat of the opposition.

Kolesov was able to utilize his standing in the nascent Tashkent Soviet to ingratiate himself further into the Jadid movement, eventually taking complete control and moulding it into a less spiritual, more Communist-flavoured group in the region in the 1930s.

Kolesov took a key role in the establishment of institutions in the region, successfully reconciling the progressive, Islamic Jadid movement with the revolutionary Bolsheviks- mostly in favour of the Bolsheviks. He led the seizure of the northern portion of the Central Asian Railway in late 1917, establishing the Tashkent Soviet as a sizeable power in the region. A combination of natural charisma and deliberate politicking cemented Kolesov’s role as the leading figure in the Jadid movement as well as in the Tashkent Soviet, and he quickly became one of the go-to figures for would-be strongmen in the region, being nicknamed “the Railway Man” for his iron control over the transportation network in Turkestan.

Much of Kolesov’s consolidation of power was achieved by way of his position in the Jadid movement, which meant that there were many informers willing to inform on potential "counter-revolutionary"- by this he meant counter-Kolesov- activity. By pre-emptively getting rid of potential rivals and keeping his allies close, Kolesov was able to transform the embryonic Turkestan ASSR (only theoretically under Soviet oversight) into a one-man autocracy.

Kolesov’s ideology, though overtly Communist, was informed also by Jadid teachings. Primarily, he subscribed to the pan-Turkic ideals of the Jadid movement, considering himself a “Turkestani” and engaging in infrequent if spirited correspondence with those seeking to develop a pan-Turkestani, Central Asian language. He completely rejected his Russian heritage and his education at the seminary. To this day, all articles written on Kolesov (including contemporary writings) state that his parents were Russian-Kazakh and Uzbek, which would justify his claim to Turkic heritage.

With the conclusion of the Russian Civil War, Kolesov was appointed to the position of Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, legitimizing his rule in the region. He was instrumental in achieving the incorporation of the former quasi-independent states of Kokand, Bukhara and Khiva into the Turkestan ASSR. Among his allies, Fayzulla Khodzhayev was arguably the most influential- he ascended to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union in 1923, in recognition of Kolesov’s consolidation of power in Tashkent and, by definition, Turkestan. Another ally is the former technician I. I. Bel’kov, who was a proxy of Kolesov from October 1917, being present at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in St. Petersburg. Bel’kov was later elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

This state of affairs in Turkestan- the loosening of central authority in the region- was achieved by the sheer scale of brutality reached by the Russian Civil War. Historians today attribute this to the murder of Leon Trotsky, who was a Bolshevik military reformer, by elements of the “Military Opposition” in the Communist Party. Only through the appointment of Ephraim Sklyansky, Trotsky’s ex-deputy, in early 1919 were the Bolsheviks able to reverse the devastating reversals of the past year and ultimately prove victorious- at the cost of at least half a million casualties.
 
Last edited:
1924-1940
Sorry for not continuing this timeline; I got stuck doing other things. One thing led to another, and, well... eight months later, I'm back. One thing to note, though: the endgame is, as mentioned in the title, a unified Central Asia under a monarchy. I have an idea how this can be achieved, but if you disagree, agree but have some ideas, etc., feel free to comment.

Wow, my Paint skills are fantastic.

özzerkk.png


[Part 2- 1924-1940]

Fyodor Ivanovich Kolesov

20 May 1891, Ural’sk, Russian Empire- 17 September 1960, Alma-Ata, Turkic SSR

Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Turkestan SSR), 1917-1927

Chairman of the Turkic SSR, 1927-1955

Until Lenin’s death, Kolesov was able to use his control over state apparatus to muster sizeable bands of Jadid adherents and Communist true believers to crush the basmachi anti-Soviet bands. Formerly members of the Jadid movement, they split away after Kolesov gained control of the group and waged a determined resistance in the arid plains, and were only definitively extinguished in the early 1930s.

Lenin’s death in 1924 opened the way for further conflict in Russia. Kolesov enthusiastically switched his support to and fro between candidates, from Stalin to Bulganin, from Kamenev to Zinoviev. However, distrust of Kolesov meant that the warring Communist luminaries often all but refused his assistance. Therefore, the Turkestan ASSR became de facto independent from 1924 to 1927, when the last vestiges of Stalin’s influence were wiped out by Sverdlov. Only by making substantial concessions to Kolesov (such as abandoning the Russian SFSR’s claims over ‘his’ Republic) was Sverdlov able to return Turkestan to the fold as a Union Republic in the Soviet Union as the Turkic SSR.

Yang_Tseng-hsin.jpg

Yang Zengxin

Elsewhere, with the fall of the Qing regime in China, Xinjiang came under control of Yang Zengxin in 1912, who seized power after the departure of his nominal superior. He was assisted in this by large numbers of Hui Muslim troops, mustered with the help of the Jahriyya, a Sufi order active in China. Though technically a warlord, Zengxin remained largely aloof from the chaos taking place to the east, much like his ‘independent’ compatriots in Tibet to the south, instead opting to consolidate his power through remorselessly playing various factions at court against one another and doing the same thing with the Chinese and the native Uyghur population.

From the late 1910s to Yang’s death in 1928, Kolesov established an unsteady correspondence with his fellow ruler. Perhaps there were some similarities between the two of them- Yang had long been in contact with leading Muslim clans in his home province of Yunnan, and used the experience gained from these interactions to gain the respect of the native Muslim population of Xinjiang. Yang was an ethnic Han Chinese, while Kolesov, though he had a stronger claim to Turkestani heritage, almost exclusively used Russian. Both men were, some historians argue, deeply conscious of the lack of connection between themselves and their subjects, and strove to counter this throughout their lifetimes to varying degrees of success.

Initially, Yang had taken a defensive stance with regard to the Soviets, declaring to his Muslim subjects that “they are a people who are entirely without religion and who would harm them and mislead their women.” However, due to weak central authority during the Russian Civil War and his cordial relationship with Kolesov, Yang would later moderate his stance and even go so far as to conclude trade and military deals with Kolesov- but, pointedly, not with the central Soviet government in Moscow.

The relative isolation of the Turkestan ASSR/Turkic SSR from the bloody conflict in Russia (largely insulated by the Kirghiz ASSR/Kirghiz SSR, which would play a significant role in Kolesov’s consolidation of power in the future) allowed Kolesov to build up his own forces, unhindered by external influence. It was around this time that Kolesov, hitherto a fervent follower of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, began to experiment with capitalist methods in a bid to build up his country as quickly as possible.

The brutality of the Russian Civil War, as well as the extended unrest that followed after Lenin’s death, removed one sizeable thorn in the side of the Qajar dynasty of Iran. With Russia prostrate, the British seized the chance to obtain more influence in Iran- a policy pursued in conjunction with the deployment of troops marching north to the Caucasus (the policy was later abandoned when casualties exceeded acceptable limits). The then-Shah, Ahmad Shah Qajar, searched desperately for allies against British encroachment- and found them in the semi-independent Turkestan ASSR and the Kingdom of Afghanistan, a power desperate to modernize.

Thus, by the late 1920s, there existed an axis of three like-minded Islamic powers desperate to reform their economies with Western technology. The “Islamic powers”- so named because the Republic of Turkey was, at the time, fiercely secular, and because all other Islamic countries were under the British or French boot- sent teams to America and encouraged defections from the British Raj, while cultivating a lively Islamic scholarly tradition within their borders. Although Turkestan and Iran would thrive, Afghanistan- owing mostly to periodic eruptions of anti-reformist forces- remained unstable. Gradually, the country fell under the shadow of Turkestan, with Iran holding sway in its westernmost provinces.

Kolesov’s influence in Xinjiang, providentially, peaked around the time that Yang was assassinated at a banquet in 1928 by Fan Yaonan, a pro-Nationalist figure. Islamic propaganda had been flowing through the porous border for nearly a decade at this point, and the Hui Muslim and Uyghur peoples had become enamoured of the thriving, egalitarian state next door. Prolonged intrigues in Ürümqi followed by the confirmation of Jin Shuren by the KMT further intensified this mutinous mood in the populace. This culminated in the “Islamic Revolution” of 1930, fueled by Turkic arms and advisors, which overthrew Jin and his corrupt, violent regime. The new regime, under Islam Adil, proceeded to flounder on its own for two more decades, after which a violent dominance shift in favour of the Uyghurs led to Uyghurstan joining the Soviet Union as the Uyghur SSR.

By necessity, Sverdlov was unable to centralize the Soviet Union to as significant a degree as his Tsarist predecessors had. This meant that, although the economy of the Soviet Union had improved significantly owing to local bureaucrats, pseudo-entrepreneurs and smugglers, its armed forces had been devastated by the Civil War and then by the brutal internecine warfare between various factions after Lenin’s death. This was not a condition that had gone unnoticed by hostile powers- most significantly, nationalist forces in Europe, shepherded by the still-potent German Reich, and also by the ever-expansionist Japanese Empire. Historians have made much of how Sverdlov was a weak leader for allowing industrialization to proceed at a glacial pace, but the fact of the matter is that the peoples of the Soviet Union were tired of war.

Unfortunately, war wasn’t tired of them yet.

wcasia1925large.gif
 
Top