Osh. Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in February 1917

February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1917 in Osh.

The overthrow of the tsarist autocracy on February 27 (March 12), 1917, in Petrograd, and soon in Moscow, by the uprising workers and soldiers — mostly peasants dressed in soldiers' overcoats — led to the widespread victory of the second Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution across the country by March. The most characteristic feature of this revolution, both in the center of the country and in the national outskirts, including the Turkestan region with Kyrgyzstan, was the establishment of dual power. Alongside the self-appointed representative bodies of power — the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and later the emerging Peasant Councils — the organization of the Provisional Bourgeois Government in Petrograd and its numerous urban and rural local bodies (bourgeois executive committees and similar committees) was underway. Such a remarkably unique, complex, and contradictory political situation emerged everywhere as a result of the victorious February Revolution of 1917, which, as V. I. Lenin put it, "went further" than a typical bourgeois-democratic revolution.

Attempts by the Turkestan Governor-General Kurapatkin and his entire administration to conceal from the people the victory of the revolutionary uprising over tsarism, to prevent further radicalization of the masses and fundamental changes in the governance of the region, proved futile. The most vivid manifestations of the revolutionary struggle of the working masses were their unrestrained anger against the decayed old regime and its tsarist appointees, the organization of Councils in the mountainous region, as well as throughout the country, the idea of which had emerged in the fire of the first people's revolution of 1905-1907. When the stirring news of the revolution in Central Russia reached the cities and villages of Central Asia, railway stations, and miners' settlements, the working population was swept by a broad wave of political meetings and assemblies, mass manifestations and demonstrations, starting from Tashkent, where the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies emerged in the first days of March, and ending with the mountain ails in southern Kyrgyzstan. Their participants demanded the immediate removal of tsarist appointees, the disbandment of the hated police and gendarmerie, the release of political prisoners, and expressed support for the first Councils, demanding a fair democratic solution to the labor, agrarian, and national questions.

When on March 4, 1917, the miners of the Kyzyl-Kiya mine learned about the revolutionary events in the country and the regional center, they sent their representatives to the regional city of Skobelevo (now Ferghana) to verify the authenticity of this news, and upon the return of their envoys on March 6, they elected the first Workers' Council in Kyrgyzstan at a general meeting. It included a group of revolutionarily inclined workers led by I. E. Yedrenkin. The day before, the Kyzyl-Kiyans had thwarted an attempt by the administration to create a Council ("Committee") of the employers' appointees, headed by an engineer, where there was only one worker. Nevertheless, several conciliators from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party managed to enter the Council, hindering its work further.

Later than the Kyzyl-Kiyans, the miners of Suluktu learned about the revolutionary upheaval in the capital and the establishment of Councils in Petrograd, Tashkent, and Khojent (now Leninabad in the Tajik SSR) from the soldiers of the Khojent garrison. When the mining industry, resorting to police assistance, prevented the workers from holding a meeting to elect their Council, the Suluktu miners, led by the revolutionary Bolshevik D. T. Dekanov, sought help from the Khojent Council of Soldiers' Deputies and, with the assistance of its representatives, elected the Workers' Council of the mine on March 16.

The working people of Osh and its district did not remain aloof from the turbulent political events of February-March 1917.

No matter how much the frightened regional and local authorities of Turkestan, as well as the district authorities in Osh and other cities of the Fergana region, tried to hide from the population the shocking news of the overthrow of the autocracy, the news reached the working people of the cities, villages, remote kishlaks, and mountain ails, causing joy and triumph among the workers. As soon as the news of the revolutionary changes in Central Russia and Tashkent reached Osh, large meetings and demonstrations took place here, as in other cities of Kyrgyzstan. As an eyewitness to the revolutionary events of February-March 1917 in Osh and a participant in the civil war in southern Kyrgyzstan, D. V. Kordub recalls that a democratically inclined colonel, a former front-line soldier Babitsky, informed the soldiers of the garrison about Nicholas II's abdication, announcing that officers should now be addressed without noble titles, simply as Mr. Captain, Colonel. Leaflets with the text of the "Marseillaise" were distributed to soldiers who could read, and instead of a prayer on Easter at the garrison church, they sang "We renounce the old world." The soldiers were warned of the need to be vigilant, and that if the police and gendarmes did not voluntarily surrender their weapons, they would have to be disarmed by force.

According to the newspaper "Turkestanskoye Slovo," on March 10, the workers of the "Russian" and "native" parts of the city — Russians, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz, together with the soldiers of the Osh garrison, moved in a united surge towards the city prison to free the prisoners who had been languishing there — the rebels of 1916 and other political prisoners. More than 300 opponents of tsarism were freed from the hands of the revolutionary people. This was one of the stirring manifestations of mass international solidarity among the working people during the February Revolution in southern Kyrgyzstan. Alongside the workers, as an active revolutionary force in the region, the demobilized front-line soldiers, soldiers from rear militia detachments, local military units, and garrisons in Osh, Gulcha, and other large settlements of the region also emerged. "The police, guards, and gendarmes were disarmed," reported a correspondence from Osh to the Bolshevik "Pravda" on March 23, 1917, about the tumultuous events of those days on the ground. Demonstrations of troops with red flags and slogans "Long live free Russia!" took place.

The energy of the masses awakened to political activity was manifested in their desire to establish their own, popular organs of power and to quickly eliminate the tsarist order and its guardians.

In the early days after the February Revolution, in the absence of an organized social-democratic organization in Osh, the small number and disunity of workers and craftsmen in small industries and workshops, and the lack of organization among the surrounding laboring peasantry — both resettled and indigenous, especially in need of political enlightenment, the democratically inclined soldiers proved to be the most effective revolutionary force. Already on March 14, 1917, at a general meeting in the city, the Union of Soldiers of the Osh Garrison was created, later (from March 24) called the Council, and their own company committees were also elected. The Union consisted of 17 deputies elected by direct elections and secret ballot: 1 delegate from 50 soldiers. However, two officers made it into the Union — half of the command staff of the garrison, and the first chairman of the Union became ensign Vetovetsky, a Socialist-Revolutionary. This alone can serve as an indicator of the still weak political consciousness of the soldiers and their trust in the newly emerged "defenders" of freedom in the face of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.

By the decision of the Osh Council of Soldiers' Deputies on April 27, 1917, the holiday of all workers — May Day — was celebrated in the city for the first time in solidarity with the Councils of Petrograd and Moscow. It was held under the slogan "Brotherhood of all peoples and the demand for a decree on the eight-hour workday!" On that day, columns of soldiers from the local garrison, the urban poor, and the kishlak (from surrounding villages) marched to the church square in the city center, where a city-wide rally was held at 10 a.m. The gathered citizens heard about the struggle of the working people for their liberation and the history of the May Day celebration. Revolutionaries-Bolsheviks B. Sultanov and K. Kabuljanov spoke at the rally on behalf of the indigenous population.

The most steadfast line in defending the interests of the working people in the region was pursued in their practical activities by the Workers' Councils of Suluktu and Kyzyl-Kiya. In the spring and early summer of 1917, the Osh, Khojent, and other district-city Councils, which influenced the population of the southern Kyrgyz regions, initially acted as revolutionary-democratic organs of power: they removed the most hated tsarist officials, replaced the police with a people's militia of revolutionarily inclined soldiers, supported the introduction of an eight-hour workday at enterprises by means of a decree, and attempted to control the management of municipal services and the food supply for the population, etc. However, the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leadership of the local Councils, taking advantage of the still unconscious and trusting attitude of the working people towards the conciliators-defenders, hindered the unfolding of revolutionary-democratic transformations and voluntarily ceded their real power to the emerging and strengthening anti-people elements of the Provisional Bourgeois Government.

Joyful, albeit initially vague, rumors about the fall of the hated autocratic regime, the "white tsar," which was detested by the Kyrgyz and all other oppressed peoples of Central Asia, spread uncontrollably even in the Uzbek and Tajik kishlaks of Eastern Pre-Fergana, reaching the Kyrgyz ails of Pamiro-Alai. The laboring peasantry welcomed the arrival of the long-awaited "days of freedom" with enthusiasm and organized celebrations and holidays (sail), to which Russian townspeople and workers were invited.

Meanwhile, the urban bourgeoisie and bureaucratic intelligentsia, the old regime's officer corps, and kulaks-colonizers in the districts, with the support of the bourgeois-nationalist elements organizing themselves (in opposition to the emerging Councils and unions of democratic strata of the population), hastily formed their district-city and later rural organs of power. In the northern part of Kyrgyzstan, these were called executive committees of public organizations, while in the south they were called committees of public safety. They unconditionally supported the anti-people policy of the Provisional Bourgeois Government, which, in essence, was anti-people but initially disguised itself with supposedly left, pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, as well as the will of the regional and district authorities and the commissioners appointed by them.

In March 1917, the first Committee of Public Safety in southern Kyrgyzstan was established in Osh, and by May such Committees were functioning in Ak-Burinsk, Alai, Gulcha, Uzgen, Jalal-Abad, and other volosts of Southern Kyrgyzstan, with representatives of the baymanap elite taking control. Acting in concert with the Provisional Government, which did not want to give the peoples of multinational Russia either peace, bread, or real freedom, they opposed the growing revolutionary movement in the region, particularly the democratic resolution of the national question. Moreover, the Provisional Government had no intention of satisfying the urgent demands of the Kyrgyz people, which were contained in telegrams from Kyrgyz volosts to Petrograd: to allow Kyrgyz refugees — the rebels of 1916 — to return to their native lands, to "put a stop" to the planned resettlement of Kyrgyz from their ancestral fertile lands to the barren "Zanarynsky Mountains," and to send home the laborers mobilized in 1916-1917 by the tsar's decree for front-line work. The feudal-bay and Muslim elite in the ails were quite reasonably afraid of the beginning of the self-willed flight of the latter from rear work, as well as road, irrigation, and other works in the region, where Kyrgyz rear workers communicated with revolutionarily inclined Russian workers, and some even participated in the February Revolution in several cities of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Returning to Osh, Uzgen, Jalal-Abad, Suzak, and other settlements and kishlaks, rear workers sided with the Turkestan Bolsheviks in their struggle to transform the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one.

Thus, in Osh and the district, neighboring areas, as well as everywhere in the region and in the country as a whole, as a result of the victory of the February Revolution, although later than in the center, dual power was established, intertwining two dictatorships — revolutionary-democratic and bourgeois organs of power. Moreover, here too, the subsequent revival of the Councils, whose Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leadership betrayed the interests of the workers and peasants, yielding positions to the counter-revolution that sought to establish unilateral power, occurred as the Bolshevization of the Councils progressed, in the struggle for the victory of the ideas of the Great October in the mountainous region.