WI Warlordism in Russia?

* The Republic of Turkey, established only in 1922, was a latecomer in formal terms, but various Turkish militants had been active in the Muslim parts of the Caucasus since the beginning of the Warlord Era. Turkish rifles and mountain guns 'somehow' found their way into the hands of the armies of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the South West Caucasian Government in Kars was a Turkish creature from its formation in 1918 to its annexation in 1924. Farther afield, Turkish agents moved among the Basmachi and other Muslim rebels in Central Asia. Enver Pasha's quixotic adventures in and around Tashkent are only the most famous example of Pan-Turkish schemes, schemes that did play a small part in the independence of Altai, Bashkiria, Buryatia, Kazakhstan, Khakasiya, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Tuva and Uzbekistan.

The ex-Soviet "-stans" of Central Asia and their titular nationalities were all drawn up by Moscow bureacrats with rulers, straightedges, and little knowledge of the countries they were dividing up-pre-Soviet borders were quite different. In the 18th century, Kazakhstan was occupied by the Kazakh Khanate (a loose collection of nomadic tribes). South of it were three Khanates, all named after their capitals-Khiva (western Uzbekistan and the Caspian coasts of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan), Bukhara (central Uzbekistan, extending down into Turkmenistan a little), and Kokand (centered on the Ferghana Valley, which is today divided between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyztan. Its control also extended into much of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and in the 19th century it ruled Tashkent). Much of Turkmenistan was occupied by nomadic tribes, virtually all of the modern cities in it date from the Russian era.

During the 19th century, Russia occupied Kazakhstan and sent expeditions to crush the three Khanates to its south. Kokand was annexed, and Khiva and Bukhara were stripped of most of their territory and forced to become Russian protectorates. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks replaced the Khivan and Bukharan Khans with "People's Soviet Republics", which were annexed into the USSR in the 1920's.

In this TL, the two likely outcomes are, IMO, the restablishment in some form (either as republics or monarchies) of Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand within their pre-Russian borders, or some sort of pan-Turkic movement uniting the whole area. I don't know which is more likely-Turkey would support the latter, and Afghanistan (don't discount them, they just won the Anglo-Afghan war and are right next to the area) would likely aid the Khivan and Bukharan Khans in an attempt to assert themselves against the White and Red warlords running around.

Again, I'm not quite sure what the outcome of this would be, but the evolution of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc. within their OTL borders is ASB, as they have no reason to exist in this TL.
 
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The ex-Soviet "-stans" of Central Asia and their titular nationalities were all drawn up by Moscow bureacrats with rulers, straightedges, and little knowledge of the countries they were dividing up-pre-Soviet borders were quite different.

Urk! OTL Knowledge Fail on my part. :eek: The line is clumsy on top of all that, too. Reads like a phone book. Let's pare it down to

Enver Pasha's quixotic adventures in and around Tashkent are only the most famous example of Pan-Turkish schemes, schemes that did play a small part in the independence of Bashkiria and the other Central Asian republics that emerged out of the ashes of the Russian Empire.

and I'll clarify what the others are in the eventual timeline itself.
 

Susano

Banned
The ex-Soviet "-stans" of Central Asia and their titular nationalities were all drawn up by Moscow bureacrats with rulers, straightedges, and little knowledge of the countries they were dividing up-pre-Soviet borders were quite different.
Nationality has nothing at all to do with country. Kokand, Bukhara and Khiva were all purely dynastical constructs, and they certainly were not nations. Of course, since the latter two still existed at the Russian Revolution your prediction that they will in some form most likely remain/become again independant is probable. Still, that doesnt mean the Soviets werent right in abolishing those territories. All in all I think the borders drawn by the USSR were allright. Of course there was a bit of divide and conquer - one could have also argued to combine Kazakhs, Karalpaks and Kyrgisians into one nation. And of course the Kazakh northern border included quite many Russians, that also intended. But apart from that, the borders were quite sound I would say.
 
Nationality has nothing at all to do with country. Kokand, Bukhara and Khiva were all purely dynastical constructs, and they certainly were not nations. Of course, since the latter two still existed at the Russian Revolution your prediction that they will in some form most likely remain/become again independant is probable. Still, that doesnt mean the Soviets werent right in abolishing those territories. All in all I think the borders drawn by the USSR were allright. Of course there was a bit of divide and conquer - one could have also argued to combine Kazakhs, Karalpaks and Kyrgisians into one nation. And of course the Kazakh northern border included quite many Russians, that also intended. But apart from that, the borders were quite sound I would say.

Well, you're right in that nationality and country are not the same thing, but the Soviets also engaged in a little bit of ethnic engineering. There was the Kazakh/Karakalpak/Kyrgyz example you mentioned, and also others like the creation of the "Uzbek" identity (in pre-Soviet times, "Uzbeks" were nomads who spoke a language similar to Kazakh. The Soviets depricated the orginal "Uzbek" language, but used the name for another language previously known as Turki, a name also used for the Uighar language in China, which is mutually intelligible with Uzbek. (A History of Inner Asia, 29-34). The whole process was quite arbitrary, and as you said, had more than a little bit of "divide and rule" about it.

Its also important to consider that all of the Turkic languages are quite close to each other-to give one example, all of the Turkish speakers I have talked to say they can understand Uzbek (not even in the same subgroup of Turkic languages). Before the 1920's, Turkic speakers used a language called Chagatai as a lingua franca. The language of Timur's court, Chagatai had a rich literary tradition and was the court language of Khiva, Bukhara, etc. until the Soviets replaced it with Russian. Any Central Asian polity (whether a surviving Khiva/Bukhara or a pan-Turkic state) would most likely have encouraged the use and adoption of Chagatai as a unifying feature, similar to the replacement of the various Italian dialects with Tuscan by Italy, the assimilation of all the German dialects into modern German, etc.

And, the borders the Soviets ended up drawing just don't make any sense. The main centers of Tajik culture were Samarkand and Bukhara, which the Soviets put in Uzbekistan. (What became Tajikistan was almost entirely rural until the 20th century). Even today, the area around Samarkand and Bukhara has a large Tajik population, which the Karimov government habitually understates. Another example is the Ferghana valley, to the east of Samarkand, which the Soviets split between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. This area was traditionally one political and economic unit, with its residents interacting with each other much more than what are now the rest of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. But now, thanks to some bureaucrats in Moscow, its residents have to cross three countries to get from one end of it to the other. Or the fact that Kyrgyzstan and (especially) Tajikistan are mostly rural with little means of supporting themselves. Central Asia was historically a very pluralistic and ethnically mixed area, and the Soviet nationality programs and borders quite simply made very little sense.
 

Susano

Banned
That Samarkand and Bukhara used to be ethnically Tajik would be news to me. Not saying it cant be, but surely they were also centres of Uzbek (or Turki) culture, right? And they simply could only belong to one single SSR. And the Ferghana Valley, well, what to say, as I understand things it was and is an ethnic mess. Difficult to try to draw ethnic borders there for anybody, I dont think that required any Soviet malice! It still seems to me the only fault of them is to attempt that, the drawing of ethnic borders, but then ethnic SSRs simply was a cornerstone politic of them, and nothing limited to Turkestan.

As for the Uzbek example, well, that still only sounds like renaming an ethnicity, not... artifically creating it or something. That the Uzbeks and the Uighurs might be for all practical purposes the same ethnicity might be, but its hardly the fault of the Soviets that the Soviet/Russian-Chinese border runs through them.

A Turkstan SSR (or maybe SFSR) using that Chagatai as language is an interesting idea for an alternative, though...
 
Still working on this. Got the basic outline of events done, now to pound and hammer it into something more readable and fleshed-out.

Any suggestions for potential minor warlords, btw? I've made up a few, but it's more fun to use OTL figures such as Sternberg. Truth is stranger than fiction and all that.
 
That Samarkand and Bukhara used to be ethnically Tajik would be news to me. Not saying it cant be, but surely they were also centres of Uzbek (or Turki) culture, right? And they simply could only belong to one single SSR. And the Ferghana Valley, well, what to say, as I understand things it was and is an ethnic mess. Difficult to try to draw ethnic borders there for anybody, I dont think that required any Soviet malice! It still seems to me the only fault of them is to attempt that, the drawing of ethnic borders, but then ethnic SSRs simply was a cornerstone politic of them, and nothing limited to Turkestan.

As for the Uzbek example, well, that still only sounds like renaming an ethnicity, not... artifically creating it or something. That the Uzbeks and the Uighurs might be for all practical purposes the same ethnicity might be, but its hardly the fault of the Soviets that the Soviet/Russian-Chinese border runs through them.

A Turkstan SSR (or maybe SFSR) using that Chagatai as language is an interesting idea for an alternative, though...

Well, I was thinking more on the lines of an independent state with Chagatai as an official language for this TL, seen as how the Soviet Union is stillborn. It was a popular idea among anti-Russian Central Asian intellectuals at the time.

Also, in 1917 shortly after the October Revolution, a group of Central Asian intellectuals set up something called the Provisional Government of Autonomous Turkestan in the city of Kokand (today in the far east of Uzbekistan). Unfortunately they never raised much of an army and the Bolsheviks wiped them out in 1918. But since the Bolsheviks are a much less effective force in this TL, I'm thinking the whole thing might last a little longer...
 
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