The 1916 revolt and the Ürkün

In the summer of 1916 the Tsar ordered Central Asian men conscripted for labour behind the Russian front. Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and others rose up, and Russian troops and settlers answered with massacres. Perhaps 100,000 or more people died, many of them Kyrgyz fleeing over the Tian Shan into China in the winter exodus remembered as the Ürkün. Kyrgyzstan now marks it as a national tragedy.