La rivolta dei basmaci nell’Asia Centrale sovietica (1918-1931)

Of the many fronts of the Civil War in Russia (1918-1922), Central Asia was one of the most complex. In those far provinces, the struggle between Bolsheviks and White forces was inter- twined with the action of groups of fighters known as Basmachi, who engaged Moscow’s forces until the early 1930s. Their resistance to Sovietisation, combining Muslim and national identity and ideological opposition, was not only part of the incipient global clash between communism and capitalism, but also a sort of re-enactment of the Great Game, in which the Anglo-Indian Em- pire supported the Islamic guerrillas in anti-Russian function. This study is dedicated to analysing the Basmachi movement and the Kremlin’s action to eradicate it. This theme is only apparently outdated. It is not difficult to recognise certain parallels with what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s, with Western aid to the mujahedin against the Soviets and, mutatis mutandis, to the anti-government rebels in Libya and Syria since 2011.