Soviet republic, formed in Central Asia after the elimination of the Khanate of Khiva.

 

On February 2, 1920, units of the Workers ’and Peasants’ Red Army took Khiva with the help of detachments of the Young Khivans and Turkmen volunteers. Khan Sayyid Abdullah Khan abdicated and handed power over to the Provisional Revolutionary Government chaired by Young Khivan Jumaniyoz Sultanmuradov. Representatives of the Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian SFSR for Turkestan (Turkestan Commission) arrived in Khiva in early April and assisted in the formation of Soviet authorities and the preparation of the Congress of People’s Representatives.

 

On April 26, 1920, the 1st All-Khorezm Kurultai (Congress) proclaimed the formation of the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic. On April 30, Congress adopted the Constitution of the republic which declared the property of the khan and his family the national property. Kurultai elected the Council of People’s Commissars (Nazirs), the government of the Khorezm PSR, chaired by Polvonniyoz Hoji Yusupov, a former Young Khivan. Soviet power establishment in the Khorezm PSR caused fierce resistance from the local nobility (bays) and the Muslim clergy. The Bolsheviks’ opponents created Basmachi detachments led by Junaid Khan, the former de facto dictator of the Khanate of Khiva.

 

The Russian SFSR became the first state to recognize the Khorezm PSR and conclude military-political and economic agreements. While the Bolsheviks strove to strengthen their influence on the policy of the Khorezm PSR and remove former Young Khivans from the ranks of the Communist Party of Khorezm. The government of Polvonniyoz Hoji Yusupov was removed in March 1921 and the Provisional Revolutionary Committee took over. The Committee disenfranchise members of the khan’s family, former khan and tsarist officials, and persons who exploited hired labor. The 2nd All-Khorezm Kurultai (in May 1921) condemned the policy of the Yusupov government as “anti-national”, approved the new version of the Constitution, and suggested the new name for the supreme body of state power of the Khorezm PSR — Kurultai of the Soviets of the Working People. The Constitution prohibited the clergy and persons using hired labour from entering the Government.

 

On October 30, 1923, the 4th All-Khorezm Kurultai transformed the Khorezm PSR into the Khorezm Soviet Socialist Republic and announced it a part of the USSR as a union republic. The Khorezm SSR was eliminated in 1924 as a result of the national-state demarcation of the Soviet republics in Central Asia.