Central Asian revolt of 1916

rdf:langString Central Asian revolt of 1916

rdf:langString Central Asian revolt of 1916

rdf:langString Monument dedicated to the memory of the Urkun massacre in Victoria park, Karakol, Kyrgyzstan

rdf:langString ~100,000–270,000 Central Asians died from violence, famine and disease

rdf:langString Total: 7,562 dead

rdf:langString /22px|border Turkic tribal confederations

rdf:langString Russian Turkestan * Emirate of Bukhara * Kazakh tribes

rdf:langString Mohammed Alim Khan

rdf:langString Alexei Kuropatkin

rdf:langString Ibrahim Tulayaf

rdf:langString Kanaat Abukin

rdf:langString Makush

rdf:langString Nikolai Sukhomlinov

rdf:langString Sami Bek

rdf:langString Shabdan Batyr

rdf:langString Central Asian revolt of 1916

rdf:langString the Asian and Pacific theater of World War I

rdf:langString Revolt suppressed

rdf:langString Small number of escaped POW volunteers

rdf:langString It took me nearly a whole day to drive from Tokmak to the village of sonovka. I kept passing large Russian settlements on the road ... then Kirghiz villages completely ruined and razed literally to the ground – villages where, but three short years previously, there had been busy bazaars and farms surrounded with gardens and fields of luzerne. Now on every side a desert. It seemed incredible that it was possible in so short a time to wipe whole villages off the face of the earth, with their well-developed system of farming. It was only with the most attentive search that i could find the short stumps of their trees and remains of their irrigation canals. The destruction of the aryks or irrigation canals in this district quickly reduced a highly developed farming district into a desert and blotted out all traces of cultivation and settlement. Only in the water meadows and low-lying ground near the stream is any cultivation possible.

rdf:langString The Central Asian revolt of 1916, also known as the Semirechye Revolt and as Urkun (Kyrgyz: Үркүн, romanized: Ürkün, lit. 'Exodus', , IPA: [yrˈkyn]) in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, was an anti-Russian uprising by the indigenous inhabitants of Russian Turkestan sparked by the conscription of Muslims into the Russian military for service on the Eastern Front during World War I. The rampant corruption of the Russian colonial regime and Tsarist colonialism in all its economic, political, religious, and national dimensions are all seen as the contributing causes. The revolt led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz and Kazakhs into China, while the suppression of the revolt by the Imperial Russian Army led to around 100,000 to 270,000 deaths (mostly Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, but also Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks) both directly and indirectly. Deaths of Central Asians are either the result of diseases, violence or famine. The Russian state was not able to restore order to parts of the Empire until after the outbreak of the October Revolution and the subsequent Basmachi revolt (1916–1923) further destabilized the Central Asia region. The USSR regime's censorship of the history surrounding the Central Asian revolt of 1916 and the Basmachi revolt has led both Central Asian and international researchers to revisit the topic in the 2010s. The revolt is considered a seminal event in the modern histories of several Central Asian peoples. Special importance is given to the event in Kyrgyz historiography due to the fact that perhaps has many as 40% of the ethnic Kyrgyz population died during or in the aftermath of the revolt. Alexander Kerensky and some Russian historians were the first to bring international attention to these events.