The Russian Conquest

The gradual subjugation of the Bashkir and Qazaq steppe by the Russian state over the preceding century and a half had brought Russia into geographical contiguity with the khanates of Central Asia by the middle of the nineteenth century. In the confrontation that followed, the technological and organizational superiority of Russian forces proved to be its own justification for conquest, which was accomplished with great ease and rapidity. Although the motivation behind the Russian expansion has been a matter of much debate, it seems quite clear that the initiatives of willful and ambitious generals played significant and irreversible roles in the conquest of Central Asia.^[1]

[1] Soviet historiography long focused on the economic impulse behind Russian expansion, asserting, not entirely convincingly, the necessity of a nascent bourgeoisie in Russia to find new markets. See the classic statement in N.A. Khalfin, Prisoedinenie Srednei Azii k Rossii (60-90-e gody XIX v. ) (Moscow, 1965). Much of Western historiography of Russian expansion into Central Asia, in positing a calculated Russian advance against India, is still hostage to the nineteenth-century British understanding of it; for a recent vulgarization of this theme, see Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (London, 1990). The assumption of a grand strategy behind Russian expansion has been questioned, quite convincingly m my opinion, by David MacKenzie, "Expansion in Central Asia: St. Petersburg vs. the Turkestan Generals (1863-1866)," Canadian S1avic Studies 3 (1969): 286-311; and Peter Morns, "The Russians m Central Asia, 1870-1887," Slavonic and East European Review 53 (1975): 521-538.

Russia's first territorial acquisition at the expense of a khanate came in 1853, when Russian forces under the command of General V.A. Perovskii took the Kokand fortress of Aq Masjid to complete the Orenburg line of frontier fortifications. Further action was stalled for a decade, when the decision was made to connect the Orenburg and Siberian lines. The resulting advance led to the conquest of the towns, nominally under Kokand rule, of Turkestan (Yasi) and Awliya Ata, and it finally enclosed the Qazaq steppe behind Russian lines. This was, however, only the beginning of bigger things. The following spring, M. G. Cherniaev, promoted to the rank of major general for his recent exploits, marched on Tashkent and conquered it against the express wishes of his superiors in St. Petersburg. Cherniaev's actions in Tashkent set the pattern for Russia's military activity in Central Asia over the next two decades, as military men repeatedly presented faits accomplis to imperial authorities. Military action took place in remote, barely known areas, which left imperial authorities with no ability to monitor the actions of men on the spot, for whom the militarily weak khanates represented an easy source of military glory.^[2]

Cherniaev was decorated and the territories conquered by him retained. War thus came to Bukhara. Amir Muzaffar showed little enthusiasm for taking on the Russians, preferring to continue his campaign against Kokand, but he was surprised by his own population. In early 1866, with the Russians at Jizzakh, the ulama of Bukhara led a vast throng to the amir's palace demanding the declaration of war.^[3] A similar uprising took place in Samarqand. The amir was forced to fight, but the hastily assembled army, including many volunteers with no experience of war, suffered a massive defeat. The next years were a period of uncertainty. The amir sought help from outside: an embassy led by one Muhammad Parsa traveled to India and the Ottoman empire, but to no avail.^[4] Meanwhile, his troops suffered a number of defeats, which cost him the

[2] On the Russian conquest of Central Asia, see Khalfin, Prisoedinenie Srednei Azii ; good summaries m English are Richard N. Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 1867-1917: A Study in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 1960), ch. 2; Seymour Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924 (Cambridge, 1968), chs. 2-7; and Hé1ène Carfare d'Encausse, "Systematic Conquest, 1865-1884," in Edward Allworth, ed., Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule (New York, 1967), 131-150.

[3] 'Abdul 'Azim Sami, Tuhfa-yi shahi (ms., ca. 1899-1900), quoted by L.M. Epifanova, Rukopis'nye istochniki Instituta Vostokovedeniia Akademii Nauk UzSSR po istorii Srednei Azii perioda prisoedineniia k Rossii (Tashkent, 1965), 34; Ahmad Makhdum Danish, Traktat Akhmada Donisha "Istoriia Mangitskoi dinastii, " ed. and trans. I.A. Nadzhafova (Dushanbe, 1967), 45ff.

[4] For a description of the letter to the sultan, see Epifanova, Rukopis'nye istochniki , 69-70; for some Ottoman documents concerning the embassy, see Osmanli Devleti ile Kafkasya, Turkistan ve Kirim Hanliklari Arasindaki Munasebetlere dâir Arsw, Belgeleri (Ankara, 1992), 133-134, 136-138; see also Muhammad Anwar Khan, England, Russia and Central Asia (A Study in Diplomacy ) (Peshawar, 1963), 107-112; Mehmed Saray, Rus Isgali Devrinde Osmanli Devleti ile Turkistan Hanliklari Arasindaki Siyasi Munasebetler (Istanbul, 1990), 81-88.

provinces of Khujand and Samarqand. In 1868, Bukhara was forced to pay reparations and to sign a treaty formalizing the loss of territory and granting Russian merchants equal rights in the country. Similar terms were imposed by treaty on the rump khanate of Kokand.

The khanates were allowed to exist for several interconnected reasons. Authorities in St. Petersburg, especially the Ministry of Finance, showed a marked reluctance to take on the expenditure of administering new regions. There was also the need to minimize British concerns about Russian expansion, as well as an uncertainty about the ability to control a large population little known or understood by the Russians. Only the initial conquests were to be incorporated directly into the Russian empire. Yet, the very logic of military success undermined this hope. Each round of warfare resulted in the acquisition of extra territory as reparations. In 1873, a major campaign that reduced Khiva to vassal status gained considerable territory for Russia. In Kokand, Khudayar Khan found it difficult to assert his authority over his diminished realm and in 1875 lost his throne in an uprising that rapidly turned into a movement against the Russian presence. Russian troops invaded and occupied Kokand; the protectorate was abolished and the khanate incorporated into the Russian empire. Finally, in the 1880s, the Türkmen steppe, where no khanate had managed to assert control, was conquered, often with the use of exemplary brutality (the most notable being Skobelev's massacre at Gök Tepe in 1881). Thus, at the end of the period of conquest, for all its reluctance to take on additional expense, the Russian state found itself in the possession of a vast new densely populated territory.

The 1868 treaty with Bukhara was eventually replaced in 1873 by a new, more far-reaching version that defined Bukhara's status until 1917. It made the amir "acknowledge himself to be the obedient servant of the Emperor of All the Russias." The amir also "renounce[d] the right to maintain direct and friendly relations with neighboring rulers and khans and to conclude with them any commercial or other treaties [or to] ... undertake any military actions against them without the knowledge and permission of the supreme Russian authority in Central Asia."^[5] Once he

[5] For an English translation of the treaty, see Becker, Russia's Protectorates , 316-318 (quote on 316).

had accepted Russian suzerainty, Amir Muzaffar set about making the best of it. Through a series of adroit political maneuvers, Muzaffar and his successors carved out for themselves a position of authority that their ancestors had only dreamed of. Now, despite his military defeat, Muzaffar was installed as a ruler by the Russians, who henceforth had an interest in the security of his throne. (Nor was the defeat complete. In 1873, the Russians made the khan of Khiva cede territory on the right bank of the Amu Darya to the amir of Bukhara, whom the Russians trusted more. The amir also gained territory, with Russian blessings, in Qarategin and Darwaz and in the Pamirs.)^[6] On more than one occasion, Russian troops were deployed in Bukhara to quell disorders. Muzaffar and his successors kept on good terms with Russian elites, both in Tashkent and St. Petersburg, and backed these contacts with frequent personal gifts and public donations.^[7] Domestically, Muzaffar presented himself as the most powerful surviving Muslim monarch in Central Asia. He even turned defeat into victory by claiming credit for having prevented a complete takeover by Russia.^[8] He appealed to religious piety and grounded his legitimacy in his support for the "traditional" Islamic order in Bukhara. He and his successors jealously guarded against the introduction of any new institutions that might compromise their absolute power by casting all change as a bid'at (innovation). The nature of Bukhara's political order was transformed as a result of the protectorate, Russia's professions of non-intervention notwithstanding. With the delineation of its boundaries in the treaty, Bukhara also became, for the first time, a strictly territorial entity.

Bukhara's autonomy was further reduced in 1885, when it was included in the Russian customs boundary and a Russian "political agency" was created to conduct relations with Bukhara (which until then had been carried on through irregular emissaries). The Transcaspian Railway, built in the 1880s to connect Samarqand and Tashkent with the Caspian Sea, also cut through Bukhara. A new treaty made the railway itself and all stations along it sovereign Russian territory. The po-

[6] Ibid., 90-92, 157.

[7] Thus, while Amir Abdulahad stoutly refused permission for Jadid schools in his domain, he donated 52,000 rubles in the 1890s for the establishment of a Realschule (real'noe uchilishche ) for Russian students in Tashkent. The tradition was maintained by Alimjan (r. 1910-1920) as well. See A. Dobromyslov, Tashkent v proshlom i nastoiashchem (Tashkent, 1912), 227; B. Kh. Ergashev, "Iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskoi zhizni Bukhary nachala XX veka," Obshchestvennlye nauki v Uzbekistane , 1992, no. 2, 49-53.

[8] Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Réforme et révolution chez les musulmans de l'empire russe , 2nd ed. (Paris, 1981), 86-89.

litical agency, directly inspired by the British experience of dealing with princely states in India, was located nine miles from Bukhara, in Kagan, which in time became an important outpost of Russian Turkestan. The political agent was appointed by the governor-general of Turkestan, who could thus keep a closer eye on the amir and project Russian influence into Bukhara more easily. The Russian government periodically contemplated outright annexation of Bukhara, but for the same reasons that had militated against annexation in x 868, the amir escaped unscathed, his autocratic powers intact, until the revolution of 1920^[9]

The khan of Khiva was less successful. His realm was smaller and poorer, and the peace treaty accordingly more punitive. Over the decades, Muhammad Rahim Khan (1864-1910) and his successor were far less prominent in Russian public life, but since they could not make claims to authority like those of the amirs of Bukhara, they proved more open to reform. Their authority over their realm was less certain, however, and an uprising by nomadic tribes in 1916 led to massive Russian intervention that all but abolished the protectorate.

Yet, only the military could be wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the progress of Russian arms in the region. The Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs took a different view of the matter, the former worrying about the expense of administering vast new territories in a period of fiscal restraint, and the latter fearing "complications" in its relations with Britain, which saw any Russian advance as a direct threat to its occupation of India. The fears of these two ministries were reflected in the final outcome, but the military succeeded in setting the pace of conquest. Russian expansion ended when the southern boundaries of the empire were defined in a series of treaties with Britain, which thus made Russian actions subject to European international law. By that time, however, the Russian empire had acquired numerous new subjects and huge tracts of land that it ruled directly. This rule proved quite stable, at least partly because strategic considerations remained paramount in the eyes of local administrators.^[10] It was also backed by large numbers of troops, usually numbering around 50,000, who were frequently deployed.^[11] There

[9] Becker, Russia's Protectorates , ch. 12.

[10] David MacKenzie, "Turkestan's Significance to Russia (1850-1917)," Russian Review 33 (1974): 167-188, provides a nuanced view of the changing significance of Turkestan to Russia. As the discussion below of irrigation policy shows, however, strategic considerations never completely disappeared.

[11] David MacKenzie, "Kaufman of Turkestan: An Assessment of His Administration," Slavic Review 26 (1967): 272.

were few overt challenges to Russian rule until the uprising of 1916, although a certain unease about the thinness of their authority never left the minds of the new rulers.