Founded in the wake of the Central Asian revolt of 1916 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, the party supported Pan-Turkism, federal republicanism and land reform.
Some of its leading members, including Turar Ryskulov, became prominent figures within the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR).
[11] Points of disagreement between Alash and Üsh Zhüz included issues of land reform, Central Asian autonomy and the role of Islam in politics.
By the end of the civil war in 1922, Ryskulov himself declared that the Alash Autonomy had been a legitimate representative of Kazakh interests, breaking from the Bolshevik line that it was a "tribal-nationalist" creation.
Southern Kazakh leaders subsequently adopted the educational and land reform programmes of the Alash Autonomy, pushing for them within the new Soviet government.