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.
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.