Central Asia — revolution and early Soviet control
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Question
What was the Alash Orda?
Answer
A Kazakh nationalist party founded in 1917, led by Alikhan Bukeikhanov, that declared an autonomous Kazakh government (the Alash Autonomy) at Orenburg in December 1917.
Question
What did Alash Orda originally want (before Oct 1917)?
Answer
Kazakh self-rule and land rights within a democratic, federal Russia — not full independence.
Question
Who led Alash Orda?
Answer
Alikhan Bukeikhanov, a Russian-educated Kazakh intellectual and former member of the Russian Duma.
Question
Why did Alash Orda ally with the Whites in the Civil War?
Answer
They feared Bolshevik class war more than they trusted the Whites, even though White generals mostly wanted a restored unified Russian Empire, not Kazakh autonomy.
Question
How did the Civil War end in Kazakhstan?
Answer
The Red Army retook Orenburg from Cossack forces in 1919; seeing the Whites collapse, Alash leaders surrendered in 1919-20 in exchange for amnesty and a promised autonomous republic.
Question
What is national delimitation?
Answer
Soviet policy (from 1924) of redrawing Central Asian borders along supposed ethnic lines, creating republics like the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs.
Question
What status did Kazakhstan hold from 1920-1936?
Answer
An ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) inside Soviet Russia — a lower status than a full union republic.
Question
When did the Kazakh SSR form, and what changed?
Answer
1936, under Stalin's new constitution — Kazakhstan was upgraded to a full union republic, though Moscow still held real power.
Question
What was sedentarisation?
Answer
Soviet policy forcing nomadic Kazakh herders to settle permanently in fixed villages and surrender livestock to collective farms, led locally by Filipp Goloshchekin.
Question
What was the Kazakh famine of 1930-33 (Asharshylyq)?
Answer
A catastrophic famine caused by collectivisation and sedentarisation that killed roughly 1.5 million people — about 38-42% of the Kazakh population.
Question
What was Goloshchekin's 'Little October'?
Answer
His framing of forced collectivisation in Kazakhstan as a second, harsher revolution — used to justify extreme repression against nomadic Kazakhs.
Question
Give three tools of Russification in Kazakhstan by 1940.
Answer
Script changes (Arabic to Latin 1929, to Cyrillic 1940), continued Russian/Ukrainian in-migration, and purges of Kazakh national leaders during the Great Terror (1937-38).
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Topic 12.10 hub
The emergence of Central Asian republics (1917–2020)
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