Paul Goble
Staunton, March 11 – The first “color
revolution” orchestrated by foreign powers against Russia took place even
before the Bolshevik revolution when German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish
agents helped organize the 1916 revolt in Turkestan against tsarist orders that
Central Asians would be drafted to serve in support capacities in the Russian
war effort.
That argument is advanced by three
Kyrgyz scholars, Dosmir Uzbekov, Marat Suyubayev, and Kulnara Koybagarov, in an
extensive and heavily documented essay in the current issue of Moscow’s Novoye
voyennoye obozreniye (nvo.ng.ru/realty/2020-03-12/8_1085_1916.html).
Most of what they write has long
been known to Western scholars. (For a useful introduction to this complicated
event, see Edward Dennis Sokol, The
Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia (Washington, 2016).) The real question is why have three Kyrgyz
scholars made this argument now.
There
are three obvious reasons. First, most people in Central Asia view those who
revolted in 1916 as national heroes. Linking them as this article does to the actions
of foreign intelligence services undercuts that narrative (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/10/new-kyrgyzstan-memorial-day-focuses.html).
Second,
in the Putin era, Moscow and its allies in the former Soviet republics are
convinced that the people do not act unless they are organized and led by
elites, good or bad. Blaming the German and Turkish intelligence services
reinforces that view of Central Asians, suggesting that the Turkestanis couldn’t
have possibly acted on their own.
And
third, choosing to emphasize this aspect of 1916 plays into an even more
important Kremlin narrative, the notion that Russia has always been surrounded
by enemies and that they will use various nefarious means to undermine Russian
power and that what has been happening recently is only the latest chapter in a
very old story.
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