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The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia
During the summer of 1916, approximately 270,000 Central Asians--Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks--perished at the hands of the Russian army in a revolt that began with resistance to the Tsar's World War I draft. In addition to those killed outright, tens of thousands of men, women, and children died while trying to escape over treacherous mountain passes into China. Experts calculate that the Kyrgyz, who suffered most heavily, lost 40% of their total population.
This horrific incident was nearly lost to history. During the Soviet era, the massacre of 1916 became a taboo subject, hidden in sealed archives and banished from history books. Edward Dennis Sokol's pioneering "Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia," published in 1954 and reissued now for the first time in decades, was for generations the only scholarly study of the massacre in any language. Drawing on early Soviet periodicals, including "Krasnyi Arkhiv" ( "The Red Archive"), Sokol's wide-ranging and exhaustively researched work explores the Tsarist policies that led to Russian encroachment against the land and rights of the indigenous Central Asian people. It describes the corruption that permeated Russian colonial rule and argues that the uprising was no mere draft riot, but a revolt against Tsarist colonialism in all its dimensions: economic, political, religious, and national. Sokol's masterpiece also traces the chain reaction between the uprising, the collapse of Tsarism, and the Bolshevik Revolution.
A classic study of a vanished world, Sokol's work takes on contemporary resonance in light of Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed efforts to persuade Kyrgyzstan to join his new economic union. Sokol explains howan earlier Russian conquest ended indisaster andimplies that amodernconquest might have the same effect. Essential reading for historians, political scientists, and policymakers, this reissued edition is being published to coincide with the centennial observation of the genocide."
This horrific incident was nearly lost to history. During the Soviet era, the massacre of 1916 became a taboo subject, hidden in sealed archives and banished from history books. Edward Dennis Sokol's pioneering "Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia," published in 1954 and reissued now for the first time in decades, was for generations the only scholarly study of the massacre in any language. Drawing on early Soviet periodicals, including "Krasnyi Arkhiv" ( "The Red Archive"), Sokol's wide-ranging and exhaustively researched work explores the Tsarist policies that led to Russian encroachment against the land and rights of the indigenous Central Asian people. It describes the corruption that permeated Russian colonial rule and argues that the uprising was no mere draft riot, but a revolt against Tsarist colonialism in all its dimensions: economic, political, religious, and national. Sokol's masterpiece also traces the chain reaction between the uprising, the collapse of Tsarism, and the Bolshevik Revolution.
A classic study of a vanished world, Sokol's work takes on contemporary resonance in light of Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed efforts to persuade Kyrgyzstan to join his new economic union. Sokol explains howan earlier Russian conquest ended indisaster andimplies that amodernconquest might have the same effect. Essential reading for historians, political scientists, and policymakers, this reissued edition is being published to coincide with the centennial observation of the genocide."
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 3, 2026
Succinct, if dated, account of this revolt in the middle of the First World War that cost the lives of 9,000 Russians and 200,000 Central Asians.
Gives a concise background of the rapid deployment of Russian enterprises and officials in Central Asia from the latter half of the nineteenth century, the development of the cotton industry, and the fact that cheaper food imports from Siberia put Central Asian growers out of business.
Gives a chronological breakdown by location of each event in the revolt which makes it clear that the individual revolts were not coordinated, and that the significant temporal differences in the beginnings of each revolt in each place allowed Kuroptakin to very effectively sequence and redeploy instead of fighting against a generalised revolt all at once.
Also makes it clear that the tribal structure in Central Asia had not been broken by 1916, and that Moscow had allowed Central Asian culture and traditional structure to exist unhindered, in stark contrast to the policies of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Sir John A. Macdonald in North America, which explains why neither Canada nor America faced anything like this revolt during the First World War.
The only limitation is that this book was written during the Cold War, based on Soviet sources. That means that the place names given in this book bear little resemblance to those given in Adeeb Khalid's far more recent book Central Asia , which makes trying to correlate the events and places described in common in both books a chore.
Otherwise, this is a superb book.
Gives a concise background of the rapid deployment of Russian enterprises and officials in Central Asia from the latter half of the nineteenth century, the development of the cotton industry, and the fact that cheaper food imports from Siberia put Central Asian growers out of business.
Gives a chronological breakdown by location of each event in the revolt which makes it clear that the individual revolts were not coordinated, and that the significant temporal differences in the beginnings of each revolt in each place allowed Kuroptakin to very effectively sequence and redeploy instead of fighting against a generalised revolt all at once.
Also makes it clear that the tribal structure in Central Asia had not been broken by 1916, and that Moscow had allowed Central Asian culture and traditional structure to exist unhindered, in stark contrast to the policies of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Sir John A. Macdonald in North America, which explains why neither Canada nor America faced anything like this revolt during the First World War.
The only limitation is that this book was written during the Cold War, based on Soviet sources. That means that the place names given in this book bear little resemblance to those given in Adeeb Khalid's far more recent book Central Asia , which makes trying to correlate the events and places described in common in both books a chore.
Otherwise, this is a superb book.
March 11, 2021
It clearly shows that the book was written in 1954 in the US It is especially visible in case of the availabilty of sources. I do not think that republishing the work on the cetenniary of events was a bad idea-The work was certanily important as being a long English languague publication devoted to the subject, but it clearly needed more editorial comments devoted to mentioning later research. Instead we just get short praise of the book as the fundamental work in the field that shows "truth" hidden by Soviet historiography, while it is clearly a product of its time
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews