A state in Central Asia, the successor of the Khanate of Bukhara (1500–1785). Since 1873, a protectorate of the Russian Empire.

 

Under the influence of the revolutionary events of 1917, the confrontation between the government of Emir Seyid Alim Khan and the Young Bukharans, who demanded democratic transitions, intensified in the Emirate. After the October coup of 1917, the Bolsheviks recognized the Emirate of Bukhara as a sovereign state, but the Emir of Bukhara, not without good reason, saw in them a threat to his power. When the Young Bukharans decided to raise an armed uprising in order to overthrow the Emir, they turned for help to the Council of People’s Commissars of Soviet Turkestan (Bolshevik chairman Fedor Kolesov). This attempt – it was called Kolesov’s campaign – failed. The Emir brutally suppressed the uprising. On March 25, 1918, the Emir and the Representative of the Council of People’s Commissars of Soviet Turkestan concluded a peace treaty.

 

Later on, Seyid Alim Khan relied on the support of the leaders of the Basmachi Irgash and Madaminbek (summer of 1919), negotiated with representatives of the Khanate of Khiva on joint activities against the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic, established contact with the government of Aleksander Kolchak.

 

On March 30, 1920, the Soviet delegation headed by the commander of the Turkestan Front of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army Mikhail Frunze issued an ultimatum to Seyid Alim Khan: to introduce Soviet money into circulation in the territory of the state, to facilitate the stationing of Red Army forces in the territory of Bukhara, etc. After the Emir refused to fulfill these requirements, preparations for a military operation against the Emir’s forces began.

 

On August 16–18, 1920, the 4th Congress of the Bukhara Communist Party, teamed up with the Young Bukharan revolutionaries, decided to start an armed uprising against the Emir’s power. The beginning of the revolution was marked by the uprising on August 27, 1920, in Old Chardzhou. The forces of the Red Army came to the aid of the rebels that occupied the capital of the Emirate during the Bukhara operation (August 29 – September 2). The Emir escaped to Eastern Bukhara. On September 2, 1920, the revolution won in Bukhara.

 

On October 8, 1920, the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic was proclaimed in the territory of the former Emirate of Bukhara.