WI Tajikistan never joins the USSR – how would this have altered the dynamics of West Asia and South Asia?

PakistaniGuyUK

PakistaniGuyUK

Banned
Tajikistan is quite an interesting country with a unique culture, next door to Afghanistan and also in the general vicinity of Iran, Pakistan and China. OTL Tajikistan had zero influence on regional events as it was just a non-descript USSR border region and arguably equally as obscure within the USSR.

In that sense Tajikistan’s potential was stolen from it. As an independent nation from the very start, although small, it may have almost been the literal butterfly that would’ve subtly altered the course of events for surrounding countries to the West and South - Afghanistan, Iran etc. But how? What butterflies would these have been?

Lets assume Tajikistan becomes an independent country in 1924. Let's further assume it somehow survives WWII unscathed without being attacked by the USSR.

What happens next? How will this tiny country butterfly OTL events?

Can I chip in to start things off?

POTENTIALLY GOOD BUTTERFLIES...?
- Massive American support for the country during the Cold War poss having US bases there
- Many more Tajiks alive (country avoids Stalin and all that, as well as the famines that happened in OTL)
- Stronger and much richer Tajik identity and culture
- Not sure if it would be pro-Nazi in WWII or what (erm… not a good point just a random thought)

POTENTIALLY NEGATIVE BUTTERFLIES...?
- ATL Tension between Afghanistan and Tajikistan and Tajik territorial claims on Afghanistan (i.e. Wakhan corridor) leading to a POSSIBLE WAR between these two nations at some point post 1945? Not sure if the USSR would intervene but if neither country has the remotest interest in becoming Communist then maybe not… or maybe Iran would act the peacemaker … or would China get involved… so many damn butterflies… what are your thoughts?

SOME MORE QUESTIONS:
- How does the presence of an independent Tajikistan post-1945 alter Afghanistan internally?
- How does it potentially alter Iran and the Shah or is it still too far away to alter Iran?
- It will most likely be similar to Afghanistan to begin with (i.e. conservative and Islamic) but not fundamentalist. Does it become fundamentalist or does it somehow manage to escape the reach of Wahhabism?
- As Tajikistan will be largely Sunni and no border disputes with Pakistan, would this translate into a closer relationship with Pakistan than Afghanistan (a unique oddity of ATL)?
- If Tajikistan and Afghanistan are at it on the Northern Border (of Afghanistan), will this relieve pressure for Pakistan on the Durand Line? How will alter the India-Pakistan dynamic?

Man - so many butterflies from such a tiny country - Tajikistan the literal butterfly lol! Looking forward to your answers!
 
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Enigmajones

Just a question from your scenario you make it sound like Tajikstan had a choice in the matter, but did they? Also I highly doubt the US would have much to do with what would be a USSR puppet.
 
PakistaniGuyUK

PakistaniGuyUK

Banned
Enigmajones said:
Just a question from your scenario you make it sound like Tajikstan had a choice in the matter, but did they? Also I highly doubt the US would have much to do with what would be a USSR puppet.
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There was initially a rebellion against the Soviets in the whole of Central Asia but it was unsuccessful in OTL

In any ATL timeline I'm assuming somehow tiny Tajikistan escapes the grasp of the USSR and because it is so obscure and irrelevant to the USSR as a whole they don't really push it further and leave it be. So Tajikistan joins Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, etc as nations outside the USSR sphere of influence.
 
Remitonov

Remitonov

PakistaniGuyUK said:
There was initially a rebellion against the Soviets in the whole of Central Asia but it was unsuccessful in OTL

In any ATL timeline I'm assuming somehow tiny Tajikistan escapes the grasp of the USSR and because it is so obscure and irrelevant to the USSR as a whole they don't really push it further and leave it be. So Tajikistan joins Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, etc as nations outside the USSR sphere of influence.
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That... will be a bit hard to pull off. The most I can see is Gorno-Badakhshan falling out of Soviet control due to the Pamirs' massive ruggedness, but most of the populated areas are in the lowlands of the Ferghana valley and Khatlon Province, and those would be quickly overrun by the Red Army.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

Hmm, this is when it gets probably interesting. Although Tajikistan itself is largely a creature of Soviet national-territorial delimination as a result of korenzatsiya, having an additional Persian-speaking state in Central Asia would definitely be interesting. To get something close to modern Tajik borders, probably even including Samarkand and Bukhara, probably one place to start is actually with the Bukhara Emirate itself, which at the time of the Revolutions of 1917 was a Russian protectorate. In that sense, the tables would appear at first glance to have turned, with the Chagatai-using/Uzbek-speaking elite replaced with a Persian-speaking elite (whether or not the Samarkand dialect, i.e. the OTL dialect base of Tajik, or the Kabul dialect - i.e. Afghan Persian - is used as the basis for standard Persian in Tajikistan is an open question) - except what we actually find is not the case, as both Persian and Chagatai were still in common use, with Persian as Bukhara's official language.

Now, all throughout the period of the 1917 Revolutions and the Russian Civil War, Russia's Central Asian protectorates were disintegrating and were replaced by People's Soviet Republics. So what you would be basically asking for here would be a surviving Emirate of Bukhara, which - having decided to become independent of Russia, i.e. abolishing the protectorate - then decides to invade Russia itself (especially the Samarkand and Ferghana oblasts, which contain territory found in OTL Tajikistan [and Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan]). This enlarged Emirate of Bukhara thus ends up becoming the Kingdom of Tajikistan, with Persian as an official language and the Samarkand and Bukhara dialects as its basis (so, IOW, the Tajik language without calling it such, as even Tajiks themselves call their language Farsi, or Persian). For completeness sake to accommodate Turkic speakers, Chagatai would also continue in use. Of course, all of this has to be before the Red Army invades, so that Tajikistan could be for the USSR in Central Asia what Finland was in Europe - which makes formal recognition of independence in 1924 possible.

I'll address the rest of the OP soon, because I'm currently busy with work, but it could provide a starting point.
 

Lalli

I can't see Tajikistan getting independence in 1924. Soviet Union wouldn't allow that. Only way would be during Russian Civil War but in such case USSR probably would conquer that back like it did with Caucasus.
 
Lusitania

Lusitania

Donor
As many have indicated the communists were adamant in reconquering all parts of the Soviet Empire they could. They would of poured troops into the region till they had either depopulated the region or subdued the population. You would if needed a much weaker Soviet Union to of accomplished this but that would of probably almost guaranteed Nazi success in the eastern front.
 

Cudymcar

"Tajikistan" is an entirely Soviet thing created in 1929. Before USSR, Central Asia was divided between three Uzbek states: Khanate of Khiva, Emirate of Bukhara, and Khanate of Kokand. What is now the territory of Tajikistan, was then parts of Bukhara and Kokand.
There would be no Tajikistan without Soviet nation-building of the 1930-1950s.
 

Analytical Engine

Cudymcar said:
"Tajikistan" is an entirely Soviet thing created in 1929. Before USSR, Central Asia was divided between three Uzbek states: Khanate of Khiva, Emirate of Bukhara, and Khanate of Kokand. What is now the territory of Tajikistan, was then parts of Bukhara and Kokand.
There would be no Tajikistan without Soviet nation-building of the 1930-1950s.
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Point of order - Kokand had been abolished in 1876, the area was part of Russian Turkestan prior to the Civil War.

However, a distinct Tajikistani nationality is a Soviet creation*. They are a Persian-speaking Iranian people.



*the same way that Moldovan national identity is
 
Leander

Leander

The revolution @PakistaniGuyUK was talking about is the Basmachi movement if I remember correctly which started in 1917 during the civil war and was completly defeated by '24. This movement actuall had some success during the more chaotic times of the russian civil war but could not stand against the red army afterwards. Im not sure if you could get it to be more sucessfull, but even if you did @Cudymcar and @Analytical Engine are correct in that a tadjik national identity did not exist at that point. All the central asian identities are prodcuts of the sovjet unions nation building.
I dont know enough of the the Basmachi to know what would have become of them if they had been successfull but you might then end up with a kind of united Turkestan, or something more in line with the earlier Khanates. These states would be geopolitically still rather insignificant, but at least the united Turkestan much less so than OTLs Tajikistan. I would expect their cultural development to track more closely to places like Pakistan depending on the kind of government that gets constructed, since religious conservatives will definitly play a bigger role in politics than they ever could in the sovjet union.
The countries of central asia today all have a significant share of fundamentalists (and assorted repression measures by the authocratic governemts) and OTL Tajikistan even had a civil war after independence that was at least partially along religious lines, but the development will be so different from such an early and large point of divergence that I cant realy speculate how much influence those types might develop in that case.
 
Leander

Leander

सार्थक (Sārthākā) said:
Well except the Kazakhs and Uzbeks. They already had a strong identity since the 17th century. The others, yeah I agree.
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I would absolutely agree on the Kazhaks, but from what I have seen the Uzbek identity has at least been very strongly influenced by the time "spent" in the russian empire and sovjet union, but you are right in that their definitily is more historic continuity and connection with the earlier proto-Uzbek states.
 
PakistaniGuyUK

PakistaniGuyUK

Banned
So was it the case that there were no majority Tajiks in today's Tajikistan? Surely that can't be accurate, after all Afghanistan has Tajiks and so does Pakistan roughly around that same border region. Therefore imho the idea of Tajikistan is not entirely an artificial construct.

ATL maybe majority Tajiks take over in that area after the rebellion or alternatively Uzbek politicians/Tajik majority (sorry I have not studied the intricacies of ethnicity) but the country is still called Tajikistan. After all there are lots of groups in Afghanistan and they're happy to be called the generic term 'Afghan.'

To be honest I won't claim to know the history of the area. But I was just assuming that place escapes like a Central Asian Finland (as Dan1988 alluded to) and is called Tajikistan and its roughly covering OTL Tajikistan borders. Looking forward to Dan1988's reply whenever he gets round to it 👍
 

Coiler

Am I right in thinking that the "best case" is something like OTL Mongolia-landlocked country in the middle of nowhere that remains a firm puppet state due to geography but always maintains its nominal independence and would become genuinely so if/when the USSR collapsed as it did historically?
 
Leander

Leander

PakistaniGuyUK said:
So was it the case that there were no majority Tajiks in today's Tajikistan? Surely that can't be accurate, after all Afghanistan has Tajiks and so does Pakistan roughly around that same border region. Therefore imho the idea of Tajikistan is not entirely an artificial construct.
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The history of central asia is weird in that regard. The kind of nationalism that you see for example in europe and that gave rise to modern nation-states defined along ethnic and cultural borders did not realy take hold there before the area got subjugated first by the russian empire and than by the sovjet union. The khanates that existed in the area before worked along different lines, similiar to earlier states in other areas.
You have a kind of pan-Turkism as referenced by @Cudymcar which might have resultet in a turcik state but there indeed was no separate Tadjik cultural identity at that time. For Uzbekistan (which I know more of) you have more historic continuity with earlier "states" like the timurids and their sucessors, but I would argue that a separat Uzbek nationalism is also a product of much more recent times.
 

Darzin

Banned
Tajikistan is an entirely Soviet Creation but briefly there was the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic which could have ended up independent ala Mongolia or Tannu Tuva if the Bolsheviks had felt the need. During the very early period things were in a flux and they could have panned out differently.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

सार्थक (Sārthākā) said:
Well except the Kazakhs and Uzbeks. They already had a strong identity since the 17th century. The others, yeah I agree.
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Even then, the USSR messed things up by granting the status of Uzbek language to the "wrong" dialect variety and thus distorting the linguistic history of the area (up until then, Uzbek was basically a group of Kipchak varieties more similar to Kyrgyz; what we now call [Standard] Uzbek was actually a different group of Persian-influenced Turkic varieties called Sart).
 
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