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The Basmachi Revolt began in 1917. Islamic traditionalists who opposed the cultural imperialism of Russia were an important component of the rebel base, but common thugs and rabble-rousers throughout Central Asia also joined the effort in large numbers. The rebels who started the revolt were called Basmachi.

The Basmachi had soon spread and multiplied across most of Turkistan. Much of Turkistan at the time was, ironically, not actually under the Soviet Russia against which the Basmachi were rebelling, but under other regimes, albeit regimes that were allied with Soviet Russia.

By the early 1920s, the Basmachi Revolt had become so widespread that the Soviet government realized they risked losing their Turkistani territory. Infighting among the Basmachi meanwhile made them weaker compared to the Soviet political establishment (who, by comparison, had a common purpose and single vision, in addition to greater military power). Lenin's government made conciliations to national sentiment in order to quell the Turkistanis' objections to being politically a part of the Soviet Union, and the revolt in 1926.

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