Conflict as a Resource: An Anatomy of the “Turkmen Unrest” in Khorezm, 1914–1916

Abstract

During the spring of 1915, at the height of Russia’s grueling battles on the fields of World War I, there was another event unfolding in the remote southern borderlands of the Romanov Empire that at first glance might seem insignificant. On Easter night, March 22, 1915, Turkmen armed militias besieged the capital of the Khanate of Khiva, which had been a de facto protectorate of the Russian Empire since 1873. At the head of the Turkmen detachments was a certain Muhammet-Kurban Serdar, who later became widely known as Junaid Khan. For the first time since the Russian conquest, the Turkmen groups of Khorezm dared to attack the capital of the khanate, threatening Isfandiiar Khan, who ruled “at the gracious pleasure of the Great White Tsar” (1910–1918). Previously, the presence of the Russian garrison at the fort of Petro-Aleksandrovsk, the administrative center of the Amu Darya Department (ADO), was enough to protect the power of the Khivan ruler from challenges by his subjects. The memory of the cruel “lessons” that were taught to the wayward Turkmen tribes during the conquest of the khanate in 1873 and 1876 helped the representatives of the colonial administration to keep the Turkmen leaders subservient simply through “indoctrination.” This time, too, the intervention of the new head of the ADO, Colonel V. P. Kolosovskii, who sent a Cossack sotnia to Khiva, was sufficient to restore order. According to a participant in this small expedition, “the authority of the Russians in Khiva was so great that the arrival of a detachment to Khiva was sufficient to restore the peace.” The siege was lifted, and the Turkmen militias returned to their nomad camps. Despite the bloodless resolution of the crisis, this episode marked the beginning of much more dramatic events. Less than a year later, the