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| Enver Pasha |
The
Russian revolution of November 1917 that set the grounds for the Soviet
Union was followed by a civil war. Bolshevik troops were sent into
Central Asia to establish Soviet power in 1919-1920. A local movement
headed by Muslim elements, known as the Basmachi revolt (the Turkic word
basmachi originally meant “bandit”), took advantage of the blunders of
the Soviet government in Tashkent (the current capital of Uzbekistan) to
challenge its authority and set a movement of national liberation.
Enver
Pasha, former Ministry of War of the Ottoman Empire and one of the main
perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, had become a fugitive of justice
after his condemnation to death in absentia by the Ottoman
court-martial in July 1919. He had first left Constantinople for Berlin
in late 1918 and in 1919 had gone to Moscow, where he engaged in
pro-Turkish activities among the Bolsheviks. After participating in the
Congress of Eastern Peoples of Baku (September 1920), he tried to
reenter Anatolia in 1921, but was rejected by Mustafa Kemal.
Enver
decided to return to Moscow and won over the trust of Soviet
authorities. Lenin sent him to Bukhara, in Soviet Turkestan, to help
suppress the Basmachi Revolt. He arrived on November 8, 1921. Instead of
carrying his mission, he made secret contacts with some rebel leaders
and defected along with a small number of followers. He aimed at uniting
the numerous rebel groups under his own command and taking the
offensive against the Bolsheviks. He managed to turn the disorganized
rebel forces into a small well-drilled army and establish himself as its
supreme commander. However, David Fromkin has written, “he was a vain,
strutting man who loved uniforms, medals and titles. For use in stamping
official documents, he ordered a golden seal that described him as
'Commander-in-Chief of all the Armies of Islam, Son-in-Law of the Caliph
and Representative of the Prophet.' Soon he was calling himself Emir of
Turkestan, a practice not conducive to good relations with the Emir
whose cause he served. At some point in the first half of 1922, the Emir
of Bukhara broke off relations with him, depriving him of troops and
much-needed financial support. The Emir of Afghanistan also failed to
march to his aid."
Operation
Nemesis had succeeded in the liquidation of several of Enver’s
colleagues in European capitals. An Armenian group assassinated Ahmed
Djemal Pasha on July 25, 1922, in Tiflis under the very sight of the
Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Ten days later, Enver would find his
own Armenian nemesis in Central Asia.
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| Hakob Melkumian |
Yakov
Melkumov (Hakob Melkumian), born in Shushi (Gharabagh) in 1885, was a
decorated career officer who had participated in World War I and after
the revolution had entered the Red Army. After fighting in Bielorrusia
(Belarus) in 1918, he became a cavalry brigade commander in Turkestan in
late 1919, and from 1920-1923 he was involved in the suppression of the
Basmachi revolt.
On
August 4, 1922 Melkumian’s brigade launched a surprise attack while
Enver had allowed his troops to celebrate the Kurban Bayrami holiday,
retaining a 30-men guard at his headquarters near the village of
Ab-i-Derya, near Dushanbe. Some Turkish sources claimed that Enver and
his men charged the approaching troops, and the Turkish leader was
killed by machine-gun fire. Melkumian published his memoirs in 1960,
where he stated that Enver had managed to escape on horseback and hid
for four days in the village of Chaghan. A Red Army officer infiltrated
the village in disguise and located his hideout, after which the troops
stormed Chaghan, and Melkumian himself killed Enver in the ensuing
combat.
After seven decades in Ab-i-Derya, Enver’s remains were taken to Turkey
in 1996 and buried at the Monument of Liberty cemetery in Istanbul.
Melkumian was decorated with the second order of the Red Army for
killing Enver and defeating his forces. The Armenian officer continued
his military career until 1937 in Central Asia. He was arrested in June
1937, during the heyday of the Stalinist purges, and charged with
participated in the “military-fascist conspiracy.” He was sentenced to
15 years in prison and 5 years of deprivation of civil rights. After the
death of Stalin, he was freed in 1954 and rehabilitated. He died in
Moscow in 1962.
