The chairmen of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Turkestan ASSR (Turksovnarkom) were F. I. Kolesov (15 November 1917–30 April 1918 and June–5 October 1918); P. A. Kobozev (30 April–June 1918); V. D. Figel′skii (23 October 1918–19 January 1919); K. E. Sorokin (30 March 1919–March 1920); K. S. Atabaev (19 September 1920–1922); T. R. Risqulov (1922–12 January 1924); and S. A. Ismalov (12 January–27 October 1924).
TURKESTAN COMMISSARS. See FOURTEEN TURKESTAN COMMISSARS.
TURKESTAN COMMISSION. The Turkestan Commission (or Turkkomissia) of the VTsIK and Sovnarkom of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was established on 8 October 1919. Its original members were G. I. Botkin, Sh. Z. Eliava, M. V. Frunze, F. I. Goloshchekin, V. V. Kuibyshev, and Ia. E. Rudzutak. It was granted full authority to act in the name of Sovnarkom and VTsIK within the borders of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and to assist the latter with the establishment of Soviet power in the region, as the White presence in the region collapsed.
The Turkkomissia arrived in Tashkent on 4 November 1919 and immediately concluded that the only way forward was to co-opt local nationalist leaders who were of a radical bent (chiefly the proponents of Jadidism) into the new Soviet institutions. Consequently, a Fifth Regional Party Conference of January 1920 elected a Regional Bureau that was largely Muslim and had the Jadid leader Tursan Hojaev as its secretary. Hojaev subsequently oversaw an attempt to turn the local Bolshevik organization into what Moscow interpreted (probably correctly) as an instrument of Pan-Turkic nationalism: he attempted to remove non-Turkic peoples from the organization, proposed the establishment of an independent Turkic Communist Party (at this point local Communists were affiliated with the Russian Communist Party), and argued in favor of a unitary Central Asian State. The Turkkommissia rejected all this, with the endorsement of Moscow (which established a party Turkbiuro, sent the Chekist Jēkabs Peterss to join the Turkkommissia to toughen it up, and made G. Ia. Sokol′nikov its chairman), and proposed instead the division of Turkestan into three separate ethnic republics (with Khiva and Bukhara separated from Turkestan). This was achieved in the new constitution of the Turkestan ASSR, proclaimed on 11 April 1921, which built on the previously established Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic (26 April 1920) and the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic (8 October 1920). Its work done, the activities of the Turkkommissia were wound up on 16 August 1922.
TURKESTAN FRONT. This Red front was created according to the orders of the Revvoensovet of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on 23 February 1919. On 14 August 1919, it was augmented by the southern group of forces from the Red Army’s Eastern Front, as that group’s offensive drove the Whites from the southern Urals. By early 1920, its forces numbered some 114,000 men from the Astrakhan Group (which was part of the 11th Red Army, prior to 14 October 1919), the 4th Red Army, the 1st Red Army, and the forces of the Turkestan ASSR.
In May–July 1919, forces of the Turkestan Front engaged with the Armed Forces of South Russia’s Turkestan Army in Transcaspia, as well as with the Southern Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. On 13 September 1919, Red forces broke through the White lines to unite with the forces of the Turkestan republic, and in October 1919, they overcame the forces of the Urals Cossack Host (commanded by General V. S. Tolstov). The following year, forces of the Turkestan Front closed on Khiva and Bukhara, forcing the respective emirs, Said Abdullah and Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, to flee, and thereby laying the ground for the establishment of the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic. For the next five years, forces of the Turkestan Front were engaged in campaigns against the Basmachi, along the Ferghana valley, until, in June 1926, they were reorganized as the Central Asian Military District. This marked the closure of the last active Red Army front of the civil-war period.
Commanders of the Turkestan Front were M. V. Frunze (15 August 1919–10 September 1920), G. Ia. Sokol′nikov (10 September 1920–8 March 1921), V. S. Lazarevich (8 March 1921–11 February 1922), V. I. Shorin (11 February–18 October 1922), A. I. Kork (18 October 1922–12 August 1923), S. A. Pugachev (12 August 1923–30 April 1924), M. K. Levandovskii (30 April 1924–2 December 1925), and K. A. Avksent′evskii (2 December 1925–4 June 1926). Its chiefs of staff were A. A. Baltiiskii (15–23 August 1919 and 2 October 1919–18 March 1920), F. F. Novitskii (acting, 23 August–2 October 1919), A. K. Anders (18 March–29 April 1920), P. B. Blagoveshchenskii (acting, 29 April–24 September 1920), F. P. Shafalovich (24 September 1920–16 December 1922), Gerardi (acting, 16 December 1922–17 February 1923), A. V. Kirpichnikov (17 February–15 October 1923), A. D. Shuvaev (15 October 1923–25 April 1924), N. I. Kamkov (25 April–28 June 1924), and B. N. Kondrat′ev (28 June 1924–4 June 1926).
TURKESTAN MILITARY ORGANIZATION. This was the name adopted by an underground organization of tsarist officers and other (chiefly Russian) anti-Bolsheviks at Tashkent that had the aim of overthrowing Soviet power in Turkestan. It began life in August 1918, as the Turkestan Union for the Struggle with Bolshevism, and was headed by Colonels P. G. Kornilov (brother of General L. G. Kornilov), Colonel I. M. Zaitsev, Lieutenant General L. L. Kondratovich, and the former tsarist assistant governor-general of Turkestan, E. Dzhunkovskii. It was subsequently joined by the Commissar for Military Affairs of the Turkestan ASSR, K. P. Osipov.
According to Soviet sources, the organization established contact with the British military mission of General Wilfred Malleson, who supplied it with funds and arms. A wave of arrests conducted by the Cheka in October 1918 damaged the Turkestan Military Organization, but did not destroy it, and Osipov was able to stage a serious but unsuccessful uprising against the Soviet authorities at Tashkent in January 1919 (the Osipov Rebellion), during which the Fourteen Turkestan Commissars were executed. When that uprising was crushed, the remnants of the organization fled the city.
TURKESTAN RED ARMY. This Red force was created by a directive of the commander of forces of the Red Army’s Eastern Front, S. S. Kamenev, on 5 March 1919. Its complement included the Orenburg (later 31st) Rifle Division (March–June 1919), the 3rd Turkestan Cavalry Division (March–June 1919), the 2nd Rifle Division (May–June 1919), the 24th Rifle Division (May–June 1919), and the 25th Rifle Division (May June 1919). The Turkestan Red Army was engaged in battles with forces of the Orenburg Cossack Host and other White formations around Orenburg during March and April 1919, and in May–June 1919 participated in the successful Red counteroffensive against the forces of Admiral A. V. Kolchak’s Russian Army. The army was disbanded on 15 June 1919.