Each postcommunist country has debated and revisited its national past, partly in order to integrate the national narrative in a broader European perspective, partly in order to eliminate communist falsifications and myths, and partly in order to (re)construct a basis for national identification and state integration. Even in many western European countries the pendulum seems to be swinging back from a total dissolution of national history in European frameworks or structural processes to renewed endeavors to involve history in societal (rather than ethnic) cohesion. Most professional historians, however, have qualms about identifying a fixed set of key events and heroes in national history that each and every citizen is supposed to know.
Not so Evgenii Glushchenko. His narrative on three key figures of the Russian conquest of Turkestan in the 19th century knows no second thoughts. The whole dilemma of the Russians’ conflicting national and imperial identities does not figure in his study, as only the empire counts. The repressive policies of Tsarism in Turkestan are omitted, as the victims of oppression play no part in the eulogy of the three heroes: Konstantin von Kaufman, Mikhail Skobelev, and Mikhail Cherniaev. The Soviet ruse of justifying Tsarist conquest in terms of the toilers of Turkestan’s later participation in the great Russian Revolutions is redundant from Glushchenko’s point of view. If ever the empire needed a justification – which seems doubtful from this book – the fact that the Russian conquest blocked the colonial expansion of Great Britain in Central Asia should suffice.
The three heroes are relatively well known in Russian and Soviet historiography. Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman (1818-1882) was a general of the Engineers who became Governor-General of Turkestan in 1867 and one of the leaders of the conquest of Central Asia. Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev (1843-1882) was a general too, of the Infantry, participated in the Khiva campaign of 1873 and, taking over von Kaufman’s command in the middle of the campaign, succeeded in putting an end to the Kokand uprising of 1873-1876. Part of the military fame of this ardent pan-Slavist is based on his siege of Pleven during the Balkan campaign of 1877-1878. In the same Russo-Turkish war, another pan-Slavist, General Mikhail Grigor’evich Cherniaev (1828-1898) commanded the Serbian army. He had earlier earned the nickname “Lion of Tashkent” by instigating the eventual conquest of Turkestan in retaliation to native raids in 1864-1865. The worshipping of these three imperial heroes already began in the late 19th century, in the small local communities of Russian colonists as well as in the center of the empire they had helped to expand.
The main body of the book consists of a descriptive and amazingly uncritical narrative on the three heroes, each section placing one of them in the spotlight. Von Kaufman gets the lion’s share of the book, 180 pages, whereas Skobelev, “the white rider on the white horse,” and Cherniaev, “the arch-strategist of the Slavic army,” have to be satisfied with a slightly more condensed, but no less romanticized, version of their adventures and heroism. The first chapter on Skobelev suffices to illustrate the style and objective of the author: the stage is set by the stories of his grandfather, who lost his left arm fighting against Napoleon, and his father, a veteran of the Hungarian, Caucasian, Crimean, and Turkish campaigns. Whereas most soldiers and officers partook of the dangerous and tenuous campaigns in Central Asia for opportunistic and pecuniary reasons, the ambitious Skobelev desperately wanted to join the Khiva campaign of 1872. The story of the campaign against the Khanate of Khiva then unfolds with Skobelev at center stage. Despite hardship and difficulties he remained “true to himself” (P. 235) in character and habit. The actual military actions are more of a backdrop for his exceptional skills and personality. Again, the issues of colonial expansion and dominion seem to have no moral or historical dimension: “Governor [Skobelev] favored the brutal repression of the armed uprising against Russian rule, but at the same time, he insisted that his subordinates treat the peaceful inhabitants with consideration” (P. 249).
Typically, the sources indicated as the basis of Glushchenko’s hero-worshipping are a peculiar mixture of 19th-century publications and Soviet history writing from the 1940s and 1950s, some British literature from the late 19th century and the occasional archival documents (mainly from the Russian State Military History Archive, RGVIA). The reader looks in vain for references to relevant literature such as George Demko’s book on the colonization of Kazakhstan, Daniel Brower’s monograph on Turkestan or, more specifically, David MacKenzie’s biography of Cherniaev.^[1]
The 400-odd pages of the book may contain numerous details on the military and other activities of the heroes, but it contains no qualms, no second thoughts, and no doubts. Quite on the contrary: “With their military genius and organizational talent, they managed to expand the territory of the Russian empire by more than 5,000 square kilometers in a short period of time, thereby averting the potential colonial expansion of Great Britain in Central Asia” (back cover). The famous Nicholas Riasanovsky praised von Kaufman and Skobelev as “able and resourceful commanders” and offered a structural explanation: “Russian expansion into Central Asia bears a certain resemblance both to colonial wars elsewhere and to the American westward movement. Central Asia proved attractive for commercial reasons. …Also, Russian settlements had to be defended against predatory neighbors, and that led to further expansion.”^[2] For quite a sober estimation, one western historian recently noted: “The post of the borderland governor in the tsarist empire was fraught with contradictions. On one hand, there was the high title, the immense prestige, the ready chance for personal enrichment, the virtual certainty that a job well done would lead to further promotions up the imperial ladder, and the simple thrill of ruling as a de facto emperor over huge territories on the state’s sensitive frontiers. On the other hand, there was cultural isolation and the material discomforts of life on the periphery, the likelihood that a job poorly done or even just the great distance from St. Petersburg could precipitate a permanent fall from grace, and the practical challenges of the job itself. …As a result, it is hardly surprising that the men who took the assignment tended to be the most venal, dutiful, energetic, or careerist of the tsar’s leading imperialists. In fact, many of them appear to have been all these things at once.”^[3]
In his introduction, however, Glushchenko has no qualms explicitly instrumentalizing the endeavors of these 19th-century heroes for Russia today. Starting from the observation that the serious crisis that Russia is in today has to have an impact on the state of mind of its people (P. 3), Glushchenko draws a parallel to the crisis of the 19th century. At that time, he argues, Russia was on the rise economically, territorially, and intellectually, but alas failed to overtake the West (P. 11). He concludes that the three heroes “were effective, because they had an effective instrument at hand – the Russian soldier, who was, in the true sense of the word, their creature” (P. 14). Typically, the conclusion of the book is presented in the introduction, prior to the actual exposй of the lives and deeds of the three heroes, and culminates in a biblical prophesy for today’s Russia, namely, that those who persevere will be saved (P. 20).
In sum, in terms of historical content the book is dйjа-vu and the historiographical position of the author is too blunt and too unreflective to be of any real interest. The symbiosis of Russian ethnic nationalism and imperial pride is reminiscent of late-Soviet popular eulogies of tsarist conquerors. The most obvious parallel, however, is with the wild right-wing political dreams of reestablishing the pre-revolutionary gubernatorial system of the tsarist epoch and doing away with the Soviets’ ethno-federalism – curing the ailing Russian nation by means of past (and future) imperial projects.