On 25 June 1916 the Russian government, exempting Central Asians from military service but needing labour, decreed the conscription of men aged 19 to 43 from Turkestan and the Steppe for rear work on the front. The decree fell on populations already resentful at land seizures for Slavic settlement and at wartime requisitions, and revolt spread through Samarkand, Ferghana, the Semirechye and the Kazakh steppe, with attacks on officials and settlers. Punitive detachments and armed settlers responded with massacres, the burning of encampments and the confiscation of livestock. The Kyrgyz of the Issyk-Kul basin fled over the Tien Shan into Chinese territory in the autumn and winter, and large numbers died of cold, hunger and attack on the passes. The Institute for Security and Development Policy states that about 270,000 Central Asians were killed and that the Kyrgyz lost roughly 40 percent of their population. The revolt and the flight remain politically sensitive: Kyrgyzstan marked the centenary in 2016, and Russian commentators criticised the commemoration.
The Russian imperial government conscripted Central Asians for rear labour service, and after the resulting revolt punitive detachments and Russian settlers killed Kyrgyz and Kazakh communities and drove survivors over the Tien Shan passes into Chinese Turkestan
The 1897 imperial census counted about 5.3 million in the Turkestan governorate-general; with continued growth and the Steppe oblasts included, the population liable to the June 1916 labour decree was roughly 7 million. The Kyrgyz of Semirechye, who bore the worst of the reprisals and the flight to China, numbered under a million within that total.
The Institute for Security and Development Policy gives about 270,000 Central Asians killed by Russian forces, with the Kyrgyz losing roughly 40 percent of their population. Lower estimates of around 100,000-150,000 are used by other historians, who separate deaths in punitive operations from deaths on the flight into China and from later famine, and who note that some of the population loss represents emigrants who did not return rather than deaths. Deaths occurred by killing, by exposure and starvation on the mountain passes, and in the disorder that followed.
The labour conscription decree, the punitive operations, the burning of encampments and the seizure of livestock and pasture are documented in Russian provincial and military records and summarised in the Institute for Security and Development Policy study.
Kyrgyzstan, China