National-Territorial Delimitation in Central Asia in the 1920s: the Emergence of Border Disputes

Abstract

The formation of the administrative borders of the Central Asian republics is connected with the historical events of the 1920s, the Bolshevik policy of division, or national-territorial demarcation of this vast Islamized region in the center of Eurasia. The Central Asian states that existed during the imperial period (Bukhara Emirate, Khiva and Kokand khanates), as well as during the initial period of Sovietization of the region (Turkestan ASSR, Bukhara NSR and Khorezm NSR) were not national entities. After the end of the Civil War, the Bolsheviks, within the framework of the "policy of self-determination of peoples", assumed that each state was to unite the population within a single nation, defined primarily by ethnicity. However, the implementation of these guidelines ran up against the lack of clear ethnic boundaries and the multiculturalism of the region; conflicts over the distribution of water, pasture, and minerals were not uncommon in the delimitation of borders. The territorial delimitation in the Fergana Valley, perceived by the Bolsheviks as a stronghold of the antiSoviet movement in Central Asia under the slogans of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, was especially difficult. It is no coincidence that the Fergana Valley, which was a single economic, cultural and historical complex, turned out to be divided between three state formations, the border disputes between which have not yet been finally resolved.