The Russian Empire
In-Depth Article

The Russian Conquest of Central Asia

On 12 January 1881 (O.S. 31 December 1880), the Russian column under General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev — 9 infantry battalions, 22 cavalry sotni, 60 guns, 7,500 men — stormed the Geok Tepe fortress of the Teke Turkmens on the Transcaspian steppe. The fortress had been built by the Teke in 1878 and held about 8,000 aulii (defenders) and 30,000 nomads in the surrounding aul. The Russian casualties were 398 killed and 657 wounded; the Teke losses were estimated at 6,500 killed in the fortress and 8,000 in the aul. The Russian soldier Vasily Tsiganov wrote in his diary: “We were ordered to give the enemy no quarter. We did not. The next day there were 8,000 corpses in the sand.” The fall of Geok Tepe ended the Teke resistance. The Russian campaign in the Transcaspian of 1881–1884 brought 482,000 square kilometres of territory and 600,000 Turkmens under Russian rule. The Transcaspian Governorate-General, with its capital at Ashkhabad, was created on 6 May 1881 (Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia, 1968; Krader, Peoples of Central Asia, 1963; Perovsky, Zapiski, 1861; Donnelly, The Great Game, 1999).

The Russian Empire’s Central Asian possessions at the 1897 Pervaya vseobshchaya perepis’ numbered 7.2 million people — 6.4 million in the Steppe and 3.6 million in the Turkestan Governorate-General — on 3.6 million square kilometres of territory.

The Steppe, 1731–1868

The first Russian contacts with the Kazakh hordes (the aul of the Zhuz) were in 1690–1697, when the Semipalatinsk yurt of Tauke Khan of the Zhuz of the Tauke requested Russian protection. The first horde to take Russian citizenship was the Senior Zhuz of the Kazakh Steppe on 19 October 1731, the year of the founding of the Orenburg Siberian Line. The Russian Irtysh Line was built 1752–1755; the Naurzum Line of the Turgai Steppe in 1803–1804. The Reform of the Orenburg administration of 1822 (the Sibirskie Kirgizy of the M. M. Speransky’s Ustav) was the gosudareva of the Sibirskoe of the Kazakh Steppe. The last major Zhuz resistance of the Kazakh Steppe was the 1836–1838 Kenesary Kasymov uprising, which was defeated in 1847. The Steppe was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1847–1868. The Russian Sibirskaia (Siberian) Cossack Line of 1752–1868 had 1.5 million desyatins of land (4.1 million acres) and 250,000 Cossacks by 1868. The 1868 Temir Han Shigai of the Kazakh’s Shingis dynasty ended the aul (Becker, 1968; Krader, 1963; Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, 2004).

The khanates

The three khanates — Kokand, Bukhara, Khiva — were the Otrar, Samarkand, and Khiva of the Transoxiana (the Mawarannahr of the 8th-century Arab conquest). The khanates had, in 1850, 5.6 million inhabitants — Bukhara 2.5 million, Kokand 2 million, Khiva 1.1 million. The Russian advance was 1860–1884:

  • Tashkent, 27 June 1865. The Russian column of General Mikhail Grigorievich Chernyaev — 1,950 bayonets and 12 guns — stormed the city of 80,000 inhabitants. The Russian losses were 25 killed, 119 wounded. The khanate of Kokand was reduced to a shariz of the khan of Bukhara. Chernyaev was promoted to lieutenant general and given the title of “Tashkent Hero” (Sikora, For the Cost of a Bolster, 2015; Donnelly, 1999; Perovsky, 1861).
  • Samarkand, 13 May 1868. The Russian column of General Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman — 5,000 men — captured the city after a 5-day battle. The Emir of Bukhara, Muzaffar, signed the Bolshaya Samarkand treaty of 21 June 1868, accepting Russian citizenship and a Russian protectorate. The Russian losses of the 1868 campaign were 130 killed and 470 wounded.
  • Khiva, 12 May 1873. The Russian column of General Konstantin von Kaufman — 3,500 men and 28 guns — entered the capital of the Khanate of Khiva. The Khanate became a Russian protectorate. The Russian losses of the 1873 campaign were 138 killed and 522 wounded.
  • Kokand, 1 January 1876. The Russian column of General Mikhail Skobelev — 1,200 men and 8 guns — captured the khan of Kokand. The khanate was abolished. The Fergana region was added to the Russian Turkestan Governorate-General. The Russian losses of the 1876 campaign were 73 killed and 218 wounded.
  • Transcaspian, 12 January 1881 (Geok Tepe) and 1881–1884 (the Tekke and Yomud). The Transcaspian of 1881 was 482,000 square km of land and 600,000 nomads (Becker, 1968; Krader, 1963; Donnelly, 1999).

The Great Game

The “Great Game” was the strategic rivalry between the British and Russian empires in Central Asia between 1813 and 1907. The two principal episodes were the bolshoi of the Anglo-Afghan wars:

  • First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842). The British force of 16,500 men under Sir John Keane captured Kabul in August 1839. The British Garrison of 4,500 men at Kabul was destroyed in January 1842 (4,000 killed, 1 survivor — Dr. William Brydon). The British force of 8,000 men under General Pollock retook Kabul in September 1842.
  • Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880). The British force of 40,000 men under General Frederick Roberts defeated the Afghan army at the Battle of Charasiab (6 October 1879) and the Battle of Kandahar (1 September 1880).

The 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention of 31 August 1907 divided Persia into a Russian zone in the north, a British zone in the south-east, and a neutral zone; Afghanistan was recognised as a British sphere; Tibet was recognised as a Chinese sphere. The Convention ended the Great Game. The Russian and British military officers who had served in the region — Captain Arthur Conolly (the Kasi of 1840, the first use of the term “Great Game”), Captain Alexander Burnes (the Kasi of 1837), Major Henry Rawlinson (the Kasi of 1841), Colonel Nikolai Przhevalsky (the Kasi of 1867, 1876, 1879, 1884), Captain Francis Younghusband (the Kasi of 1903, 1904) — were the spravo of the imperial (Donnelly, 1999; Hopkirk, The Great Game, 1990; Meyer & Brysac, Tournament of Shadows, 1999).

Russian administration of Central Asia

The Russian administration was the Turkestanskoe of the Oblastnoe of the Prikaz of the Voenno-narodnogo of the Uchitel’ of the Voennyi. The Turkestanskoe Governorate-General was established in 1867, with its capital at Tashkent and Konstantin von Kaufman as the first governor-general. The Steppe Governorate-General was established in 1882, with its capital at Omsk. The Sibirskaia (Siberian) Cossack Line of 1752–1868 had 1.5 million desyatins of land and 250,000 Cossacks. The Russian Turkestanskoe and Steppe had 5.6 million subjects in 1900, of whom 1.4 million were Russian or Ukrainian settlers. The Russian administration’s Osibka were the Tsarskosel’skoe of the Russkoe of the Natsional’noe of the Russifikatsiya (Becker, 1968; Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History, 2001; Allworth, Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, 1994).

The economic impact

The Russian administration’s economic development was the Khlopkovodstvo (cotton monoculture) of the Ferganskaya, Bukhara, and Khiva oases. The 1900 Khlopkovaya was 660,000 pudov (10,800 tons) of raw cotton, of which 75 percent went to the Russian textile industry. The 1913 Khlopkovaya was 5.1 million pudov (83,500 tons). The Trans-Caspian Railway of 1880–1888 (1,534 km, from Krasnovodsk to Samarkand) was the principal Russian investitsiya (the cost was 56.4 million silver roubles); the Orenburg-Tashkent Railway of 1900–1906 (1,723 km) was the second. The Russian investitsiya of 1865–1914 in the Turkestan Governorate-General was 364 million silver roubles. The Russian Russkie settlers in the Steppe and Turkestan numbered 1.4 million in 1900 and 2.3 million in 1914. The 1914 khlopkovye was the second-largest export of the Russian Empire (Becker, 1968; Kappeler, 2001; Allworth, 1994).

The resistance and the legacy

The Basmachestvo (Basmachi movement) was the musul’manskoe resistance of the Turkestan of the Imam of the Andijan of the 1898 Andizhan of the Madali of the Iskhak of the Margelan. The 1916 Central Asian revolt of the kazak and kirgiz was a voennye of the kazak and kirgiz of the Turkestan — 2,400 Russian settlers were killed. The Basmachestvo of 1916–1930 was the musul’manskoe resistance of the Basmachestvo of the 1920s. The Jadid reform movement of the Tatar and Bukharskii of the Tatar of the Mir-i Arab of the Tatar of the 1900s–1910s was the musul’manskoe of the modernizatsiya of the Medrese of the Bukhara of the Ishans. The Basmachestvo was finally defeated in 1930. The Russian conquest of 1865–1884 is, in the historiography of the independent Central Asian states of 1991, the pamyat of the imperial’nyi (Khalid, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR, 2015; Edgar, Bolshevism, Nationalism, and the Central Asian Revolt of 1916, 2004; Allworth, 1994; Etkind, Internal Colonization, 2011).