that the people were awaiting liberation. The Red Army marched to the gates of Bukhara and demanded that the emir surrender the city to the Young Bukharans. As Russian sources report, the emir responded by killing the Bolshevik delegation, along with several hundred Russian supporters of the Bolsheviks in Bukhara and the surrounding territories. The majority of Bukharans did not support an invasion and the ill-equipped and ill-disciplined Bolshevik army fled back to the Soviet stronghold at Tashkent. Deposition and death However, the emir had won only a temporary respite. As the civil war in Russia wound down, Moscow sent reinforcements to Central Asia. On 2 September 1920, an army of well-disciplined and well-equipped Red Army troops under the command of general Mikhail Frunze attacked the city. After four days of fighting, the Ark of Bukhara was destroyed, the red flag was raised from the top of Kalyan Minaret, and the Emir Alim Khan fled, first to his base at Dushanbe (in present-day Tajikistan), and then finally to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he died in 1944. He is buried at the Shuadoi Solehin cemetery. He was awarded Order of Prince Danilo I and a number of decorations. Family Although the emir had several children, the exact number of offspring the emir had is unknown. Emir Alim Khan had three official wives in Bukhara but after settling in Afghanistan, people there sympathized with him and many gave their daughters to him as wives. Therefore, he had several more wives in Afghanistan. Seyid Alim Khan had numerous offspring, which according to some estimates is about 500 people. During the last years of the Emir's life, almost all of his descendants were with him, with the exception of a few people. Due to the fact that by the end of August 1920 the Red Army was rapidly surrounding and began to bombard and storm Bukhara, Seyid Alim Khan hastily began to evacuate himself, his family and some of his close associates. However, possibly due to the suddenness of the forced evacuation, his three young sons—about 8–10 years old (according to other sources, 4–6 years old), Sultanmurad, Shahmurad and Rakhimkhan—remained in Bukhara. After the capture of Bukhara, the Bolsheviks discovered them and at first wanted to shoot them together with the remaining several members of the family and close associates of the emir (similar to the execution of Nicholas II with his family and close