How did Nomadism Affect Border-Making during National Delimitation in Central Asia?

The dissolution of Tsarist power had an immediate impact on the political structures of Central Asia. As imperial frameworks broke down new autonomies were imagined and asserted. This continued after the Whites were routed in the Russian Civil War. A Kazakh Republic took the place of the old Governorates of the Steppe. A Turkestan Republic was created to its south as successor of the imperial Turkestan Krai. The People’s Republics of Khorezm and Bukhara remained formally independent as successors of the respective emirates, but debates on the appropriateness of these structures, and what should replace them, began immediately. Within four years they were gone. The first years of Soviet rule were therefore formative for the political structures of today’s Central Asia. The new regime replaced territories that predated the Russian Revolution with national republics and economic districts that were expected to facilitate Socialist progress. In this article, we revisit these formative years when different paths seemed open and even basic political terminology was in flux.