Creating a Revolutionary History of the Soviet East: the Turkestan Uprising of 1916 in Soviet Historiography and Propaganda of the 1920s and 1940s

Abstract

The article analyzes the contexts of the formation and development of the image of the Turkestan uprising of 1916 in Soviet historical science and propaganda of the 1920s and 1940s. The work uses both published and unpublished sources. In particular, an unpublished monograph by A.V. Shestakov is being introduced into scientific circulation. It is demonstrated that the uprising was firmly embedded in the class-anti-colonial discourse of the Soviet historical narrative, fulfilling the function of constructing the revolutionary history of Central Asia and building its continuity with the October Revolution. It is indicated that the foreign policy factor played a significant role in updating the image of the uprising, since the Soviet government considered the uprising as a mobilizing image for the colonial-dependent peoples. Despite the revision of the evaluation of the anti-Tsarist uprisings in the 1940s, the Turkestan uprising retained its position in the official policy of memory, since it opposed the “idealization of the feudal past” and supported the all-Union revolutionary myth.