Russian Turkestan[a] was the vast region of Central Asia governed by the Russian Empire, often described by historians as a colonial possession.[1] It was formally organized as the Turkestan Governorate-General[b] in 1867, and was also known as the Turkestan Krai[c] from 1886 onward. For administrative and military purposes, its territory was managed as the Turkestan Military District.
It comprised the oasis regions south of the Kazakh Steppe but excluded the Russian protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva. While these states retained internal autonomy, their independence was largely nominal, as Russia controlled their foreign relations and military affairs.[2] The population consisted primarily of speakers of Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik, with a significant Russian settler minority.[3]
Although Russia had been pushing south into the steppes from Astrakhan and Orenburg since the failed Khivan expedition of Peter the Great in 1717, a more systematic conquest began in the 1850s. After subjugating the Kazakh hordes, Russian forces captured key Kokandi forts, including Ak-Mechet in 1853. However, the most decisive phase of the conquest began in 1865. That year the Russian forces took the city of Tashkent[4] under the leadership of General Mikhail Chernyayev, who expanded the territories of Turkestan Oblast (part of Orenburg Governorate-General). Chernyayev had exceeded his orders (he only had 3,000 men under his command at the time) but Saint Petersburg recognized the annexation in any case. This was swiftly followed by the conquest of Khodzhent, Dzhizak and Ura-Tyube, culminating in the annexation of Samarkand and the surrounding region on the Zeravshan River from the Emirate of Bukhara in 1868.
An account of the Russian conquest of Tashkent was written in Urus leshkerining Türkistanda tarikh 1262–1269 senelarda qilghan futuhlari[d] by Mullah Khalibay Mambetov.[5][6]
The administration of the region had an almost purely military character throughout. Following Von Kaufman's death in 1882, a committee led by Fedor Karlovich Giers (or Girs), brother of the Russian Foreign Minister Nikolay Karlovich Giers, toured the region and drew up reform proposals, which were implemented after 1886. In 1888 the new Trans-Caspian railway, begun at Uzun-Ada on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 1877, reached Samarkand. Nevertheless, Turkestan remained an isolated colonial outpost. Its administration preserved many features from the previous Islamic regimes, such as Qadis' courts. Russia implemented a system of indirect rule, devolving much power to a "native" administration of local Aksakals (elders or headmen), which created a sharp distinction from the direct governance systems in European Russia. In 1908, Count Konstantin Konstantinovich Pahlen led another reform commission to Turkestan, which produced in 1909–1910 a monumental report documenting administrative corruption and inefficiency. The Jadid educational reform movement originated among Tatars and spread to Central Asia. This modernist Islamic movement advocated for adapting to modernity through new methods of teaching (usul-i jadid), emphasizing secular education and cultural renewal alongside religious studies.
The Russians implemented a policy of deliberately enforcing anti-modern, traditional, and conservative Islamic education to keep the local population in a state of torpor and prevent foreign ideologies from penetrating.[8][9]
Russian rule contributed to the Turkification of the Ferghana and Samarkand Tajiks, replacing their language with Uzbek, resulting in a dominantly Uzbek-speaking Samarkand, whereas decades before Tajik Persian was the dominant language in Samarkand.[10]
Revolt of 1916 and aftermath
In 1897, the railway reached Tashkent, and in 1906, a direct rail link with European Russia was opened across the steppe from Orenburg to Tashkent. This led to much larger numbers of ethnic Russian settlers flowing into Turkestan than had hitherto been the case, and their settlement was overseen by a specially created Migration Department in Saint Petersburg (Russian: Переселенческое Управление, romanized:Pereselencheskoye Upravleniye, lit.'Resettlement Administration'). This caused considerable discontent amongst the local population as these settlers took scarce land and water resources away from them. In 1916, discontent boiled over in the Central Asian revolt of 1916. It was sparked by a decree issued on 25 June 1916, that conscripted the native population, previously exempt from military service, into labour battalions for work on the Eastern Front of World War I.[11] Thousands of settlers were killed, which triggered brutal Russian reprisals, particularly against the nomadic population. To escape the Russian reprisals, many Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz fled to China, with the Xinjiang region becoming a key sanctuary for fleeing Kazakhs.[12][8] The Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Kazakhs were all impacted by the 1916 insurrection caused by the conscription decreed by the Russian government.[13][14] Order had not fully been restored by the time the February Revolution took place in 1917. This ushered in a still bloodier chapter in Turkestan's history. In early 1918, the Bolsheviks of the Tashkent Soviet launched an attack on the Kokand Autonomy, leaving an estimated 14,000 local inhabitants dead.[15] Resistance to the Bolsheviks by the local population (dismissed as "Basmachi" or "bandits" by Soviet historians) continued well into the early 1930s.
Administration and demographics
By 1897, the Turkestan Governorate-General was divided into five oblasts (provinces). The population was overwhelmingly rural, with detailed figures recorded in the 1897 Russian Empire census.[16]
The five oblasts of Russian Turkestan, c. 1900
Population by oblast
The 1897 census provides a detailed breakdown of the population across the five oblasts.
Population of the Turkestan Governorate-General by Oblast (1897 Census)[16]
↑ Khalid, Adeeb (1998). The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. University of California Press. p.296. ISBN978-0-520-21356-2.
Beisembiev, T.K. The Life of Alimqul (London) 2003
Komatsu, Hisao. "The Andijan Uprising Reconsidered: Symbiosis and Conflict in Muslim Societies: Historical and Comparative Perspectives", ed. by Tsugitaka Sato, Londres, 2004.
Erkinov, Aftandil. Praying For and Against the Tsar: Prayers and Sermons in Russian-Dominated Khiva and Tsarist Turkestan. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2004 (=ANOR 16), 112 p.
Malikov, Azim. "Russian policy toward Islamic 'sacred lineages' of Samarkand province of Turkestan Governor-Generalship in 1868–1917" in Acta Slavica Iaponica no 40. 2020, p. 193-216.
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