Twelfth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Resolution on the Secession of the Autonomous Turkestan Socialist Soviet Republic (ATSSR) from the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR). May 11, 1925

Adopted by the Twelfth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in May 1925, this resolution gave formal state sanction to the national-territorial “delimitation” of Central Asia. It approved the breakup of the Autonomous Turkestan Republic and the creation of new republics and regions, arguing that Uzbek, Turkmen, Kirghiz, Kara-Kirghiz, and Tajik populations should be reorganized into separate Soviet units “in accordance with their national characteristics.” The document captures the early Soviet conviction that building socialism in the former empire required drawing new borders, fixing new national categories, and turning them into durable administrative realities.

Original Source: XII Всероссийский съезд Советов: стенографический отчет: бюллетени №№ 1–[7]. Москва: Издание ВЦИК, 1925, с. 245–246.

1. To approve the decision of the second session, eleventh meeting, of the VTsIK on granting to the Uzbek, Turkmen, Kirghiz, Kara-Kirghiz, and Tadzhik peoples inhabiting Turkestan the right to secede from the ATSSR and to form new socialist soviet republics and regions in accordance with their national characteristics.

2. To approve, in conformity with the general will of the working and dekkan masses of the Kirghiz, Kara-Kirghiz, and Kara-Kalpak peoples, expressed at their congresses of Soviets, the unification of the parts of the territory of Turkestan inhabited by the Kirghiz with the Autonomous Kirghiz Socialist Soviet Republic, and to approve the formation of the Kara-Kirghiz region within the composition of the RSFSR and of the Kara-Kalpak autonomous region within the composition of the Autonomous Kirghiz Socialist Soviet Republic ...

Source: Walter Russell Batsell, Soviet Rule in Russia (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), Chapter VI.