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Siege of Khiva | |||||||
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Part of Basmachi rebellion Russian Civil War | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Khorezm PSR RSFSR | Basmachi movement | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Vengy Angello † Semyon Pugachov | Junaid Khan | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
garrison : 800 relief force : unknown | 9,000 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
garrison : 200 relief force : unknown | heavy |
The siege of Khiva was an operation between 19 and 24 January 1924 by Basmachi insurgents to conquer the city of Khiva from the Red Army.
While the Russian Civil War had been decided in favor of the Red Army on all other fronts, the situation in Central Asia remained volatile because of the ongoing Basmachi rebellion.
By January 1924, the situation in the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (former Khanate of Khiva) had become much more complicated. By that time, cavalry units of the Basmachis, numbering some 3,000 men under the command of Junaid Khan, had received British semi-automatic rifles and machine guns. [1] Junaid Khan was also reinforced with some 6,000 local Kurbashi horsemen. [1]
After deciding to begin a new campaign against the Bolsheviks, the Basmachis came out of the desert, captured several kishlaks and, under the leadership of the former Khanate minister Sadiq Bakalov and Turkmen leader Agadzhi Ishan, organized uprisings in Sadivar, Pitnak and Hazorasp and took Xonqa.
On 19 January 1924, the Basmachi force arrived at Khiva and laid siege. The garrison of the city of only 290 soldiers successfully repelled attempts at assault. For the defense of the city, companies of workers and Komsomol detachments were formed, which numbered around 500 people.
During the fighting, the commander of the garrison, a Hungarian called Angello, was seriously wounded and captured by the Basmachis. Having tortured him, the Basmachis then cut off his head, which they impaled on a stake and put on display for those who defended the fortress. During the defense of Khiva, around 200 Red Armymen were killed or seriously wounded. [1]
After some 4 days, a relief force of the Red Army began to advance towards Khiva. In the area of Pitnak, serious battles broke out with the Basmachis of Turkmen leader Agadzhi Ishan, which lasted about two days. The Basmachis were crushed. The Turtkul Cavalry Squadron, under the command of political commisar Surinov, managed to bypass the outposts of the Basmachis, and reach Khiva, inflicting a heavy defeat upon the Basmachis and forcing them to abandon the siege.
Further developing the offensive, the units of the Red Army were able to virtually destroy the Basmach forces.
On the 8 April, Junaid Khan was forced to retreat across the Persian border with the remnants of his troops.
The Basmachi movement was an uprising against Imperial Russian and Soviet rule in Central Asia by rebel groups inspired by Islamic beliefs.
Russian Turkestan was the western part of Turkestan within the Russian Empire’s Central Asian territories, and was administered as a Krai or Governor-Generalship. It comprised the oasis region to the south of the Kazakh Steppe, but not the protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva. It was populated by speakers of Russian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik.
The Khanate of Khiva was a Central Asian polity that existed in the historical region of Khwarazm from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Afsharid occupation by Nader Shah between 1740 and 1746. Centred in the irrigated plains of the lower Amu Darya, south of the Aral Sea, with the capital in the city of Khiva. It covered present-day western Uzbekistan, southwestern Kazakhstan and much of Turkmenistan before the Russian conquest at the second half of the 19th century.
The Yomut or Yomud is a Turkmen tribe that lives in Western and Central Asia, including Gorgan, Iran; Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan; the eastern Caspian shores; Khiva, Uzbekistan; and Dashoguz, Turkmenistan.
The First Battle of Geok Tepe was the main event in the 1879 Russian expedition against the Akhal Tekke Turkmens during the Russian conquest of Turkestan. Nikolai Lomakin marched 275 miles to the Geok Tepe fortress, but mismanaged the attack and was forced to retreat. The next year, this was reversed by Mikhail Skobelev in the second Battle of Geok Tepe.
The Bukharan People's Soviet Republic was a Soviet state that governed the former Emirate of Bukhara during the years immediately following the Russian Revolution. In 1924, its name was changed to the Bukharan Socialist Soviet Republic. After the redrawing of regional borders, its territory was assigned mostly to the Uzbek SSR and some to the Turkmen SSR.
During the mid-eighteenth century the Afsharid empire of Nader Shah embarked upon the conquest and annexation of the Khanates of Bukhara and Khiva. The initial engagements were fought in the late 1730s by Nader Shah's son and viceroy Reza Qoli Mirza who gained a few notable victories in this theatre while Nader was still invading India to the south. Reza Qoli's invasions of Khiva angered Ilbars Khan, the leader of Khiva. When Ilbars threatened to make a counter-attack Nader ordered hostilities to cease despite his son's successes and later returned victoriously from Delhi to embark on a decisive campaign himself.
In the Russo-Khivan War of 1873, Russia conquered the Khanate of Khiva, and it became a Russian protectorate.
The conquest of Central Asia by the Russian Empire took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. The land that became Russian Turkestan and later Soviet Central Asia is now divided between Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan across the center, Kyrgyzstan in the east, Tajikistan in the southeast, and Turkmenistan in the southwest. The area was called Turkestan because most of its inhabitants spoke Turkic languages with the exception of Tajikistan, which speaks an Iranian language.
The Bukharan Revolution refers to the events of 1917–1925, which led to the elimination of the Emirate of Bukhara in 1920, the formation of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic, the intervention of the Red Army, the mass armed resistance of the population, suppression of Basmachi, the inclusion of Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic into the Soviet Union on September 19, 1924, as a separate union republic, the elimination of the newly established republic as a result of national disengagement and the formation of the Uzbek SSR, the Turkmen SSR and Tajik ASSR in 1924.
The Khivan Revolution was a communist revolution in 1917–1924 in the Khanate of Khiva, which led to the liquidation of the Khanate in Khiva, the establishment of the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic, and the subsequent inclusion of the republic into the USSR through national disengagement and the formation of the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR in 1924.
The Turkestan Army was a White army during the Russian Civil War, which operated from January 1919 to February 1920, in the Transcaspian Oblast area.
Junaid Khan ; (b.1857/62–1938) was a Turkmen tribal leader who became the Chief of the Armed Forces and later the de facto and last ruler of the Khanate of Khiva.
Alexander Alexandrovich Luchinsky was an Army General of the Soviet Army and a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Viktor Kirillovich Baranov was a Soviet Army lieutenant general and a Hero of the Soviet Union.
The Red Army intervention in Afghanistan in 1929 also known as the First Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan of 1929 was a special operation aimed at supporting the ousted king of Afghanistan, Amanullah Khan, against the Saqqawists and Basmachi.
The Red Army intervention in Afghanistan in 1930 or the Second Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan of 1930 was a special operation of the Central Asian Military District command to destroy the Basmachi economic bases and exterminate their manpower in Afghanistan. The operation was carried out by parts of the combined cavalry brigade under the command of the brigade commander Yakov Melkumov.
Yakov Arkadievich Melkumov was a Soviet military commander of Armenian origin. He fought in the First World War and the Russian Civil War. He particularly distinguished himself during the Russian Civil War fighting against the Basmachi movement on the Turkestan Front. He is known for commanding the unit that killed the former Ottoman general who had commanded the Basmachi rebels, Enver Pasha, who was one of the main architects of the Armenian genocide.
Shir Muhammad-bek Gazi, also known as Mahmud-Bek also known under the nickname Korshirmat was a prominent figure of the Basmachi Movement in exile since 1923, the first head of the Turkestan Union during the Great Patriotic War with the support of the Abwehr to restore the insurrectionary movement in Turkestan.
The Battle of Pitnak was fought in 1740 between Nader Shah and Ilbars Khan II, the ruler of the Khiva Khanate. Fought in Pitnak, now in Uzbekistan, the battle took place within the framework of Nader's Central Asian campaign.