active in the city (at least according to official Soviet histories). On January 8, 1918 Bolsheviks moved to seize control of the local soviet and by January 21, 1918 Bolshevik power was secured over the city.
Civil War
With its location on the Trans-Aral Railway, Aktobe was a strategic point much contested between the Red Army and their White opponents during the Russian Civil War. Kazakh and Russian inhabitants of Aktobe and its environs actively supported both sides in the conflict.
In mid-1918, elements of the Bolshevik First Orenburg and Twenty-eighth Regiments, commanded by G.V. Zinoviev, were effectively besieged in Aktobe by forces commanded by Ataman Dutov. Dutov, commanding approximately 10,000 rifles, 5,000 sabres, and 500 jigits (warriors) of the Alash Orda movement's newly-formed Second Kazakh Mounted Regiment, attacked Aktobe in October, 1918. The attack only reached as far as the village of Ak Bulak.
In the autumn of 1918, Mikhail Frunze's Fifth Army and Mikhail Tukhachevsky's First Army were ordered to break through and clear the railway, in order to allow Red Army forces to link up with Bolsheviks along the Syr Darya. White pressure on Aktobe was relieved by Frunze’s capture of Uralsk, Orenburg and Orsk in early 1919, but by April Dutov and Admiral Kolchak was able to launch a combined counteroffensive. Aktobe finally fell to the Whites on April 18, 1919, once again severing Bolshevik rail links to Central Asia. In this offensive, the Whites also managed to capture and execute Amangeldy Imanov, a Kazakh military leader who had been operating in the Aktobe region with the support of Moscow.
By June 1919, Frunze had received reinforcements and had moved back on to the offensive. On September 10, Aktobe was secured by the Fifth Army after an eight-day battle. 20,000 of Kolchak's troops were captured, along with the easternmost part of the city. From this point, Bolshevik
