Features of the federative integration of Central Asia, 1918–1925

Background. The issues of constructing and maintaining a federal state remain relevant over time, and in conditions of international turbulence, they only become more significant. This is especially true when it comes to post-imperial, multi-ethnic federalism, the level of governance of which must be significantly higher than that of ordinary bourgeois federalism. The author aims to demonstrate the peculiarities of federal construction on distant borders in the context of the intersection of competing national ambitions, which the young Soviet government attempted to pacify by implementing an optimal national-territorial demarcation. Materials and methods. The article was prepared on the basis of monographs and articles on the development of Central Asia from the second half of the 19th century to the mid-1920s inclusive. Statistical material and comparative political science method were used. Results. The Central Asian region was the latest to be included into the Russian Empire. Its territorial and administrative basis was the Turkestan region and two protectorates – the Bukhara Emirate and the Khiva Khanate. The local Russian administration did not force the resettlement of peasants from Central Russia; it occurred naturally due to famine and land shortages in the inhabited territories of the empire. The fall of the autocracy and the Provisional Government contributed to nationalist unrest, which was partially neutralized with the liquidation of the Kokand autonomy in February 1918, but the Soviet government achieved a key victory only with the lifting of the blockade in January 1919. At the same time, the Basmachi movement was a serious destabilizing factor. In 1920, the Muslim authoritarian monarchies in Khiva and Bukhara were successfully over-thrown, transforming them into people's republics and then socialist republics within the RSFSR. The formation of the Basmachi in 1922 prompted a shift to streamlining the national-territorial structure in 1924–1925 along the lines outlined by V.I. Lenin as early as July 1920. At the same time, they had to overcome the local national communists. One of the most active among them was T. Ryskulov, who dreamed of creating a purely Turkic communist party and army in Turkestan. Conclusions. The national-territorial demarcation carried out in 1924–1925 primarily envisaged the abolition of the Turkestan ASSR, Bukha-ra and Khiva as pseudo-state entities and the organization of two new union republics – the Turkmen SSR and the Uzbek SSR – with the purpose of overcoming the danger of pan-Turkism and pan-Sylvanism. The Bolsheviks were in no hurry to raise the status of other republics to the level of union republics (the Tajik ASSR, the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Region), which was completely fair given the existing socio-economic and cultural back-wardness and nationalistic prejudices.