Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Basmachi movement
Summary
The Basmachi movement (Басмачество, Basmachestvo, derived from Uzbek: "Basmachi" meaning "bandits") was an uprising against Russian Imperial and Soviet rule in Central Asia by rebel groups inspired by Islamic beliefs.
The movement's roots lay in the anti-conscription violence of 1916 that erupted when the Russian Empire began to draft Muslims for army service in World War I. In the months following the October 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized power in many parts of the Russian Empire and the Russian Civil War began. Turkestani Muslim political movements attempted to form an autonomous government in the city of Kokand, in the Fergana Valley. The Bolsheviks launched an assault on Kokand in February 1918 and carried out a general massacre of up to 25,000 people. The massacre rallied support to the Basmachi who waged a guerrilla and conventional war that seized control of large parts of the Fergana Valley and much of Turkestan. The group's notable leaders were Enver Pasha and, later, Ibrahim Bek.
The fortunes of the movement fluctuated throughout the early 1920s, but by 1923 the Red Army's extensive campaigns had dealt the Basmachis many defeats. After major Red Army campaigns and concessions regarding economic and Islamic practices in the mid-1920s, the military fortunes and popular support of the Basmachi declined. Resistance to Russian rule and Soviet leadership did flare up again, to a lesser extent, in response to collectivization campaigns in the pre-WWII era.
The term "Basmachi" is of Uzbek origin and means "Bandit" or "Robber" which probably derived from "baskinji" meaning "Attacker". The Russians used the term for the Central Asian resistance fighters, and it was widely used throughout the region to denote them, in an attempt to persuade the public that the fighters were no more than criminals.
Russian Turkestan and Central Asian revolt of 1916
Prior to World War I, Russian Turkestan was ruled from Tashkent as a Krai or Governor-Generalship.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.