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Provisional Government of Irad (1992)

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The Provisional Government of Irad, formally the Provisional Government of the Republic of Irad (Iradi: Irad Respublikasynyn Ubaktyluu Ökmötü), was the revolutionary authority that governed Talas and the territory held by the anti-communist side from February to October 1992. It grew out of a coordinating council chaired by the historian Amanbek Alimbekov that took over the city's administration during the Winter Uprising of 1992. On 11 March 1992 the Talas Town Hall Meeting elected Alimbekov Provisional President and proclaimed the Republic of Irad, beginning the First Iradi Civil War against the Socialist Republic of Irad (SRI) in Kobozev.[1]

With Talas under siege, the Provisional Government signed the Alimbekov-Baker Treaty with the United States on 2 June 1992 and ratified it unanimously the same day, giving up the independence it had proclaimed in exchange for military protection. After the US intervention, Operation Starlight, ended the war on 18 August, it sat in an advisory role beside the interim US administration until October 1992, when Alimbekov dissolved it on the opening of the interim Territorial Legislature of Irad. Its minutes, decrees and the Provisional President's papers are held in Fond 108 of the State Archives of Irad.[1][2]

Background

The Provisional Government's leaders came largely from the national movement of the perestroika years. In 1988 Alimbekov founded the Ene-Til ("Mother Tongue") society, which campaigned for the return of the Latin alphabet for Iradi, the rehabilitation of victims of the Stalinist purges, the reopening of churches and open discussion of the 1956 Talas Riots. Its meetings in Talas drew students and young lecturers of Iradi State University (now Talas State University), and the police harassed it under the government of First Secretary Vasily Chernov of the Communist Party of Irad.[3]

After the Communist Party declared the SRI on 9 October 1991, Chernov's government issued emergency decrees in November that banned non-communist gatherings and publications and ended the limited self-government of the rural clans. Ene-Til's newsletter was closed. Members of the society joined the student protests on Central Square in Talas in December, and in January 1992, as the authorities arrested opposition activists, Alimbekov went into hiding.[2]

Formation

On 3 February 1992 OMON detachments fired on demonstrators on Central Square. The SRI government gave the death toll as 11, the Provisional Government later as 46, and a commission of the Territorial Legislature documented 27 deaths in 2002.[4] Over the next three days armed workers, defecting police and clan horsemen seized the city's arsenals and the regional party headquarters. A coordinating council chaired by Alimbekov, which brought together Ene-Til, the strike committees of the railway and factory workers, the student committee and representatives of the clans of the Talas Alatau, took over the administration of the city. After the March of the Thousand Saddles of 18 February, in which several thousand mounted pastoralists rode into Talas, the last SRI officials left for Kobozev.[2]

The council styled itself the Provisional Government from late February. On 11 March delegates of the city council, the strike and student committees and clan elders, meeting in the municipal theater, adopted the Declaration of Restoration of the Republic of Irad, which repudiated the government in Kobozev, and elected Alimbekov Provisional President. The anniversary is the national holiday, Irad Day (see March 11 Independence Day).[1]

Organization

The Provisional Government had three parts, according to its minutes:[2]

  • the Provisional President, Alimbekov, who chaired its meetings, signed its decrees and conducted its foreign contacts;
  • a council of commissioners, each responsible for a department such as defense, supply, internal order, information or reconstruction. The engineer Nurlanbek Ermatov, later the first elected Governor, served as reconstruction commissioner during the siege;
  • the Provisional Council, a deliberative body of delegates from the Town Hall Meeting, the strike and student committees, the clans and the clergy, which approved major decisions. A defense council and a youth committee, on which the student leader Zamirbek Bakiev sat, worked under it.

Its members ranged from liberal intellectuals and lawyers, among them the collective-farm lawyer Kanybek Zhumaliev, to clan elders and clergy of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church, who celebrated open-air liturgies among the protesters. Historians describe a "reformist caucus" of commissioners and Talas professionals who favored market reform and close ties with the West, and who later founded the Democratic Party of Irad (DPI).[5]

Policies

The Provisional Government governed by decree. Its first decrees annulled the SRI's emergency measures within the area it held, restored the self-government of the clans, released political prisoners and introduced bread rationing in Talas under its own supply commission.[6] It raised gendarmerie detachments from defecting police and volunteers to keep order in the city, the origin of the present Republican Gendarmerie of Irad, whose name recalls their service to the Republic. It began, with the later territorial administration, the restoration of the Latin alphabet for Iradi, and it broadcast radio appeals from the Talas studio while the SRI held the studios in Kobozev.[7]

The Provisional Government also returned to the church the buildings closed in the Soviet period. The Church of St. Janyl in Iyık Janyl was reconsecrated on 14 September 1992, the anniversary of the church's union with Rome.[8] In the same year Alimbekov instituted the President's Cup for ulak tartysh, contested in the week of Irad Day.[1]

Civil war and the treaty

When the war began, the Provisional Government held Talas and much of the Talas valley, including the former Soviet air base west of the city. Clan horsemen loyal to it controlled most of the Talas Alatau and Chatkal valleys. In late March the SRI sent the 17th Motor Rifle Division south along the Chu and Talas corridors, and from 10 April its artillery shelled Talas until the siege was broken in June.[9] The city's defenders included student militias, defecting police, workers' detachments and the mounted irregulars of Kuban Mamytov and Bektur Zhumabek uulu, who harassed SRI supply columns in the mountain passes. Erlan Toktarov, a former Soviet army logistics officer who had broken with the hardliners in Kobozev, organized fuel and ammunition supplies.[9]

The Provisional Government received no foreign recognition. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan closed their borders, citing the inviolability of post-Soviet borders. Its envoys approached the United States through its embassy in Almaty and at meetings in Geneva, proposing association with the United States in exchange for military protection and economic reconstruction.[10] By late May the water supply had been cut and ammunition was running out. On 2 June Alimbekov and US Secretary of State James Baker signed the treaty in the basement of the damaged municipal theater, and the Provisional Council ratified it unanimously the same day. Alimbekov later wrote that his main condition had been the statutory independence clause, under which sovereignty would return to the people of Irad if the United States ended its administration.[3]

US Marines landed at the air base on 6 June. Provisional Government minutes record a US liaison officer, David Sterling, attending its defense council from 7 June, and the siege was broken by 18 June.[2] Provisional units advanced with US forces toward Kobozev, beating back an SRI armored counterattack at the end of July (see Battle of Kobozev Railhead (1992)). Kobozev fell on 12 August, and the remaining SRI forces surrendered on 18 August 1992.

Dissolution

After the surrender the Organic Act of the Territory of Irad took effect, and executive authority passed to an interim US administration headed by the High Commissioner. The Provisional Government continued to meet in an advisory role. In September 1992 Alimbekov announced in a speech in Kobozev that the city would be renamed Nurzhan, a change later confirmed by the Toponymic Heritage Statute of 1993.[1] In October the interim legislature, drawn largely from the Provisional Council and from district delegates, first met in Legislative Hall in Talas. Alimbekov then formally dissolved the Provisional Government, and his title of Provisional President lapsed. The same month members of its reformist caucus constituted the DPI. Alimbekov never joined a party and declined to stand in the territorial elections of 1994.[3][5]

Legacy

Because the Provisional Government both proclaimed the Republic and signed it away, all sides of later Iradi politics claim part of its record. Official histories of the Irad Special Economic Zone present it as the founder of the territorial institutions that the ISEZ still uses, while tribal leaders honor the proclamation of March 1992 and the horsemen who defended Talas but regard the treaty as a surrender of sovereignty.[9] In December 2006 the lawyers who argued for the Statutory Independence Ruling (2006) relied on the independence clause its president had negotiated. Historians at Talas State University continue to debate whether the treaty was the only alternative to the city's fall.[9]

The records in Fond 108, opened to researchers after 1992, include the minutes of the Provisional Council and the council of commissioners, the emergency decrees, ceasefire records and Alimbekov's papers from 1992. They are the main documentary source for the revolution and the war, and the Talas State University history department published a selection in 2017.[2][9]

See also

References

  1. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 108: Provisional Presidential Papers of Amanbek Alimbekov (1992).
  2. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 108: Revolution of 1992 and Provisional Government Minutes.
  3. ^ Alimbekov, Amanbek (1998). From Soviet Republic to Territorial Sovereignty. 2 vols. Talas: Talas State University Press.
  4. ^ Territorial Legislature of Irad, Commission on the Events of 1991–1992 (2002). Report on the Shootings of 3 February 1992. Talas.
  5. ^ Talas State University Press (2012). Parties and Elections in the Territory of Irad, 1992–2006. Talas, pp. 23–71.
  6. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 108: Provisional Government Emergency Decrees and Ceasefire Records (1992).
  7. ^ Abdyldaev, Nurlan (2015). Two Wars for Talas: Armed Forces and Politics in Irad, 1992–2007. Talas: Talas State University Press, pp. 23–71.
  8. ^ Archeparchy of Iyık Janyl (2023). Diocesan Directory and Clergy List. Iyık Janyl.
  9. ^ Department of History, Talas State University (2017). The War of 1992: A Documentary History. Talas State University Press.
  10. ^ US Department of State (1992). 'Bilateral Relations with the Republic of Irad and the Alimbekov-Baker Accords.' US Department of State Dispatch, Vol. 3, No. 23.
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