Soviet republic, formed in Central Asia after the elimination of the Emirate of Bukhara.

 

On September 2, 1920, units of the Turkestan Front of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army under the command of Mikhail Frunze took Bukhara with the support of the Young Bukharans movement and the Bukhara Communist Party. The emir was deposed. On September 14, new supreme authorities were created in Bukhara: the All-Bukhara Revolutionary Committee, headed by Abdulkadyr Mukhitdinov, and the Council of People’s Nazirs (ministers), headed by Fayzulla Khodzhayev, the leader of the Young Bukharans movement. On October 8, 1920, the 1st All Bukhara People’s Delegates Congress (Kurultai) proclaimed the creation of the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic. On March 4, 1921, a delegation of the Bukharan PSR concluded the treaty of union and the economic agreement with the Russian SFSR. The Constitution of the Bukharan PSR was approved in September 1921.

 

The Government carried out several revolutionary-democratic transformations, such as phase-in confiscation of emir and beck lands in favor of the land poor and landless, proclaimed the equality of women and men, etc. The policy of the Bukharan PSR authorities provoked active resistance from a part of the region’s population, which grew into an armed struggle with representatives of the Soviet government. Some of the Young Bukharans moved into opposition to the Bolsheviks as well, advocating full independence of the Bukharan PSR. In November 1921, as an extraordinary commissioner of the Republic, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of the Bukharan PSR Usman Khodzhayev was sent to Dushanbe to coordinate actions against the Basmachi movement but joined them. The Basmachi captured Eastern Bukhara, a significant part of the republic’s territory. By the mid-1920s the Bukharan PSR backed by the Red Army defeated the main forces of the Basmachi on the republic’s territory.

 

On September 19, 1924, the 5th All Bukhara Soviets Congress (Kurultai) declared the entry of the Bukharan PSR into the USSR as the Bukharan Socialist Soviet Republic, which was soon eliminated as a result of the national-state demarcation of the Soviet republics in Central Asia.