1916 revolt and the Urkun
A labour draft sets Turkestan and the steppe ablaze
Nicholas II's June 1916 decree drafting Muslims for rear-area labour sparked a revolt from Khujand to Turgai; insurgents killed several thousand Russian settlers. Troops crushed it brutally, and tens of thousands of Kyrgyz and Kazakhs fled across the Tian Shan to China, an exodus Kyrgyz call the Urkun. Estimates of the dead range from 100,000 to 270,000; Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Russian readings differ.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 2 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 2 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 4 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 23 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 11 years earlier
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — 2 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 3 years later
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 12 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 17 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 1 year later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 1 year later
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 13 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 20 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 25 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 8 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 1 year earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — same year
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — same year
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 1 year later
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 19 years earlier
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — 18 years earlier
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — 17 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 12 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 6 years later
Americas
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 3 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 2 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 2 years earlier
- 1920–1933 Prohibition in the United States — 4 years later
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 23 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 23 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 5 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 4 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 20 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 69)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 60)
- Marie Curie (aged 49)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 47)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 46)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 45)
- Winston Churchill (aged 42)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 38)
- Albert Einstein (aged 37)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 35)