TURKESTAN MUKHTARIAT (AUTONOMY) AS PART OF THE LARGER “ALASH” PROJECT

Abstract

This article examines the debates on the creation of separate Turkic autonomies or a single federation, which took place at the meeting of representatives of Kazakhs, Bashkirs, and the population of Turkestan in September 1917 in 91 Orenburg, initiated by th e leaders of the “Alash” movement. Among the issues discussed at the meeting, Kazakhstan, Bashkiria, and Turkestan appeared as potential autonomies—that is, as independent sovereign states. The ideology of the national liberation movement in the Steppe and Turkestan regions, which ultimately led to the formation of the Alash Autonomy and the Turkestan Mukhtariat (Autonomy) in 1917, was largely in line with the political orientation of the Siberian regionalist socio -political movement that had emerged among the Siberian intelligentsia in the mid-1860s. According to the map of the “Muslim States of Eastern Russia,” these states were envisioned not only as encompassing the territory of the Ulugh Ulus (or Ulus of Jochi), but also as uniting various Turkic clans and tribes—Kazakhs (along with the Kirghiz), Tatars, Nogais, Bashkirs, Turkmens, and other Turkic peoples.