Turkestan military organization

The Turkestan Military Organization (TVO) was preparing an uprising against Soviet power in the Turkestan region of the Russian Empire . The organization’s active assistance was provided by agents of foreign special services, primarily English, from the border area ^[2] , and agents acting under the guise of foreign diplomatic missions accredited in Tashkent under the government of the Turkestan ASSR . Initially, a protest against the Soviet regime in the province was scheduled for August 1918, but for a number of reasons the date of this protest later had to be postponed to the spring of 1919.

The Turkestan Military Organization (TVO) included many officers, led by Colonel P. G. Kornilov (brother of the famous leader of the White Movement L. G. Kornilov ), Colonel I. M. Zaitsev , and Lieutenant General L. L. Kondratovich ^[3] , the former assistant to the Governor-General of Turkestan, General E. P. Dzhunkovsky , as well as Generals Lastochkin, Gordeev, Pavlovsky, Colonels - Rudnev, Tsvetkov, Butenin, Savitsky, Oraz-Khan-Serdar, Krylov, Lebedev, Alexandrov , lieutenant colonels - Blavatsky, Kornilov, Ivanov, officers - Gaginsky, Stremkovsk minutes, Feldberg et al. ^[4] . Later, the commissar for military affairs of the Turkestan Republic K. P. Osipov ^{[5] also} entered the ranks of the TVO, surrounded by such officers as Colonel Rudnev, orderly Osipova Bott, Gaginsky, Savin, Butenin, Stremkovsky and others ^{[6] ]} .

Ultimately, all the anti-Bolshevik forces of the region rallied around TVO — the Cadets, the Mensheviks, the Right Social Revolutionaries and bourgeois nationalists, the Basmachis, and the Muslim clergy, former officials of the tsarist administration, Dashnaks, and Bundists.

In August 1918, in Tashkent, on the basis of the Turkestan Military Organization, the Turkestan Union for the Fight against Bolshevism was created, which, in addition to the officers, included, in the opinion of Soviet historians, such civilians as Count G. Dorrer, mining P. P. Nazarov , officials A. S. Tishkovsky, Shkapsky, Ivanov, technician Popov, engineer Agapov, Cadets Shendrikov, Schepkin, Mensheviks Zakhvatayev, Levin, Mauer, Pogrebov, Skvortsov, Khvostovsky, Socialist-Revolutionaries Funtikov, Domogatsky, Koluzaev , Khodzhaev, Belkov, Chaykin and others. The members of this underground organization established contact with the chieftain Dutov , General Denikin , Kazakh nationalists-Alashordins , the emir of Bukhara , the leaders of the Ferghana and Turkmen Basmachi , the Trans-Caspian White Guards, the British consuls in Kashgar , Kuldzh , Mashhad. The leaders of the organization signed an agreement under which they pledged to transfer Turkestan under an English protectorate for a period of 55 years. In turn, the representative of the British special services in Central Asia, Wilfred Malleson, promised TVO representatives assistance in the amount of 100 million rubles, 16 mountain guns, 40 machine guns, 25 thousand rifles and the corresponding amount of ammunition. Thus, according to the TurkChK staff, shared by Soviet researchers of this historical period, representatives of the British secret services not only helped the conspirators, they determined the goals and objectives of the organization and controlled its actions, which, however, is not confirmed by well-known documents from foreign sources.

In October 1918, the special services of the Turkestan Republic - together with the criminal investigation department of Tashkent - went on the trail of an underground anti-Bolshevik organization, after which a number of arrests were made among its leaders. The leaders of the underground who remained at large left the city, but some branches of the organization survived and continued to operate. The English officer, who is on a diplomatic mission in Tashkent - F.M. Bailey - moved to an illegal position. According to Soviet historians, it was TVO that played an important role in initiating the uprising led by Konstantin Osipov in January 1919.

At the last stage of its existence, representatives of the new Soviet nomenclature — the Bolshevik-Leninist Agapov ^[7] and the technician Popov — actually entered the ranks of the TVO.

After the defeat of the uprising, the officers who left Tashkent formed the “Tashkent Partisan Officer Unit” (101 men), since March fighting together with other anti-Bolshevik formations against the red units in the Ferghana Valley , and then near Bukhara . Then the remnants of the “Tashkent officer partisan detachment” were combined with units of the Turkestan army .

1. ↑ The first significant clash of Russian army officers in Turkestan with the Soviets occurred in February 1918, when the detachment of Colonel I. M. Zaitsev , who returned from Iran, clashed with the Bolsheviks at Rostovtsevo station on February 14, 1918. Ironically, it was in these battles that the successes of the armed Bolshevik detachments under the command of the former ensign Konstantin Pavlovich Osipov contributed to his further career, soon after which he became the military commissar of the Turkestan ASSR .
2. ↑ After the seizure of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks (including in Turkestan), the British secret services established a coordination center led by an experienced intelligence officer, General Wilfred Malleson, at the border surveillance point for the adjacent territory in Mashhad ( Persia ). In the preface to F. M. Bailey ’s book “Mission to Tashkent” (Bailey, FM (Frederick Marshman), “Mission to Tashkent”; originally published: London, Jonathan Cape, 1946), English writer Peter Hopkirk (en) the work of British intelligence in Central Asia, writes:

   “... At the same time, a small British military mission led by General Wilfred Mullison was sent to Mashhad at an old British listening post and observation post in northeast Persia to deal with what is happening in the Trans-Caspian region directly in front of them, as well as to try to persuade the local population, which also overthrew the power of the Bolsheviks, to oppose any Turkish or German attempts to seize the railway ... "

   - Peter Hopkirk, preface to F. M. Bailey ’s book “Mission to Tashkent” (Bailey, FM (Frederick Marshman), “Mission to Tashkent.” Originally published: London, Jonathan Cape, 1946), p. 6.

   From this center, Malleson coordinated the actions of agents sent to Turkestan. By the summer of 1918, according to the Cheka of the Turkestan Republic (TurkChK), British officers Bailey and Blackker, a Russian officer Dzhunkovsky and a prominent civilian Tishkovsky, and others appeared in Tashkent with the assistance of Malleson. The American consul in Tashkent, R. Tredwell, also carried out active work to intensify counter-revolutionary, anti-Soviet forces. It should be noted that Soviet historians in their works considered British agents to be the main inspirers and organizers of the anti-Soviet speech of Dutov, the White Cossacks of Colonel Zaitsev near Samarkand , the Emir of Bukhara in March 1918, the White Guards and Socialist Revolutionaries in Ashgabat , the struggle of the Kokand autonomists and Basmachis . Although now this seems to be a somewhat exaggerated and generally erroneous opinion.

3. ↑ Kondratovich Luka Lukich. Biography (neopr.) . // Project "Russian Army in the Great War".
4. ↑ R. R. Nazarov, Candidate of Philosophy, Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan (Tashkent) . "The White Guard of Turkestan." - The All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference “Civil War in the East of Russia” (Perm, November 24–26, 2008). Site "Perm State Archive of Socio-Political History" // permgani.ru
5. ↑ Later it was he who led the anti-Soviet uprising in January 1919 in Tashkent.
6. ↑ The TVO leadership included generals Kondratovich, Lastochkin, Gordeev, Pavlovsky, colonels Rudnev, Tsvetkov, Butenin, Savitsky, Oraz-Sardar, Zaitsev , Krylov, Lebedev, Alexandrov, lieutenant colonels Blavatsky, Kornilov, Ivanov, officers Gaginsky, Stremkovsky, Feldberg and others. Of the non-military, an active role was played in TVO by geological engineer Nazarov , English agent Tishkovsky, leftist Socialist-Revolutionary Ashur Khodzhaev and others.
7. ↑ House of I. S. Agapov - safe house of the Bolshevik party (1904). (unavailable link) // kulturnoe-nasledie.ru (unavailable link from 09/28/2018 [311 days])

• Turkestan Army (VSYUR) ;

• Golinkov D. L. "The collapse of the anti-Soviet underground", Prince. 1, p. 253-254.
• “ Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR ”, vol. 1, “ Soviet Encyclopedia ”, 1983.
• A.N. Iskander, Prince. “Heavenly campaign”, “VIV”, No. 9, p. 8. (inaccessible link)
• [1] Ganin A. V. “The Great Game of Major General I. M. Zaitsev.”] Almanac “The White Guard”. 2005, No. 8. S. 193-207.
• Sergey Volkov . "The tragedy of Russian officers." Chapter 4. “Officers in the White Movement”. Author’s site of Sergey Volkov “White Movement” on the virtual server of Dmitry Galkovsky // samisdat.com