There is a powerful draw toward European models of imperialism and intellectual eurocentrism when explaining the Russian empire in the nineteenth century. History writing in the former Soviet Union is complicit in this thinking. In the past generation, scholarship outside the former Soviet Union has increasingly questioned the models of empire applied to the Russian and Soviet cases with varying results. Many scholars agree, however, that Central Asia provides one of the clearest cases of the Russian imperial domain.
Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (1993)^[1] provided an effective counterpoint to the scholarly tendency toward eurocentrism. Said demonstrated that European imperialism was reinforced by artists’ and writers’ perceptions of the “Orient:” the urge for conquest was enhanced through the conceptualization of the “natives” as “inferior.” In Russian history, the cultural mission to civilize the “other” was strongly expressed in Russia’s relationship to Asia. Fyodor Dostoevsky, a brief resident of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, was particularly enthusiastic in this attitude.^[2] Bill Ashcroft, on the other hand, has suggested the poignant image of “the Empire writing back.”^[3] And, internationally significant authors such as Naguib Mahfouz, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz rewrote the backwardness and cultural alienation imposed on them by engaging the “West” in a level of literary discourse that pleased dominant artistic sensibilities while jarring those unfamiliar with a “native” viewpoint. Some argue that these writers transcended Said’s challenge by turning a culture of imperialism, classification, and control into one of self-reflection, magical realism, and empowerment.
Distinctions between the British, French, Ottoman, and Roman empires and their prolific comparisons with Russia are equally instructive as they encourage us to explore what makes each case unique in its time and place.^[4] Yet scholarship on the Russian empire of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has revealed anything but a consensus on the nature of Russia’s empire.^[5] Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of pivotal works have set out to explore the imperial nature of the Soviet state and its role in the collapse.^[6] They have sought to explain how the Soviet Union maintained its empire, particularly in Central Asia. And scholarship in the future will continue to ask questions about the imperial devices employed by a Bolshevik and Soviet apparatus intent on maintaining the physical space of Russia’s vast empire while embedding that territory with new mechanisms and philosophies of power. Even political scientists and former “Kremlinologists” have embraced the shift of Russian studies to postcolonial or “Eurasian” studies that allows them to explore the continuities of the Russian and Soviet empires to the present.^[7]
Ignoring the advances of this recent scholarship, the editors of the series Okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii^[8] frame their discourse on empire with the words of István Bibó. Specifically, they implement an anti-Soviet treatise on the rights of small nations: The Distress of the East European Small States (A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága, 1946).^[9] In this essay, Bibó is interested in the general failure of the historical framework of nation-states and the subsequent challenges of small states to locate themselves in the redefined geopolitical landscape of postwar Europe. While this work is important to understand the crisis of Eastern Europe (and their nationalist instincts) under the Soviets, we should call into question whether this provides an effective model for Central Asia whose relationship to Russia was remarkably different. Moreover, we should question whether one model is adequate to discuss Russia’s diverse imperial relationships with Poland, the Baltic States, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Why the editors ignore the more influential works of Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Miroslav Hroch, among others, on the question of nations remains a mystery to this reader.^[10]
Despite the past generation of persistent academic exchanges, many Russian and Central Asian scholars still need to engage the discussions on nationalism and empire in a meaningful way. The persisting efforts of Ab Imperio, which embarked on a campaign to correct the imperfect access to scholarship, have had seemingly scant impact on Tsentral’naia Aziia v sostave Rossiiskoi imperii.^[11] And, despite its worthy bibliography, the work shows little signs of engaging the rest of the world, choosing to rely on more or less conventional Soviet frameworks. A heady list of important works from the past decade should no longer be ignored: drawing attention to comparative perspectives;^[12]historiographies;^[13]gender studies;^[14] Russian imperial devices;^[15] Soviet imperial devices;^[16] the particular cases of Afghanistan^[17] and Xinjiang;^[18] and concepts of Eurasianism,^[19] for example. This scholarship has been increasingly available through the Internet; at the same time, scholars of Slavic studies, studies of empire, nationality studies, and Central Asian studies based in North America have reached out to scholars from around the world.
In its first passage, Tsentral’naia Aziia offers a worldly intent: “The history of mutual relations between Russia and Central Asia now draws the increasing attention of both Russian and foreign researchers” (P. 10). Yet this statement also suggests a curious question: do the Central Asian contributors under review fit in the binary of rossiiskii or zarubezhnyi? There is no question of its Russian orientation: “It is necessary to recognize that Russia, despite all the costs of this process, introduced stability and conciliation to Central Asian society, extricated religion from a condition of economic and social stagnation, and developed the elements of infrastructure of a modern society” (Pp. 26-27). The authors intend that the collection comprises “various backgrounds” and “varying opinions” (P. 29) but they consistently view Russian conquest as a positive force in the history of Central Asia. Do these scholars still believe in the voluntary union of Russians with Kazakhs and Kyrgyz (Pp. 43-46)? Is there a better word than “prisoedinenie”? The ambiguous and conflicting ideas of “joining,” “annexation,” “affiliation,” and “consolidation” render a vague notion of a decisive act: Russian armies invaded and continued to occupy wide expanses of Central Asia for over a century. In this vein, two well-researched, engaging, and contrapuntal views on the Russian Empire in Central Asia are regretfully marginalized at the end of the book: S. V. Timochenko, “The Problems of the Annexation of Kazakhstan to Russia in Contemporary Kazakhstani Historiography” (Pp. 338-359) and V. V. Germanova, “The Invasion of the Russian Empire in Central Asia” (Pp. 360-381). In addition to their provocative arguments, they reveal the current political stakes of these questions in Russia and Central Asia.
While the first part of the book provides a historical overview with particular attention to the nineteenth century (the account of Central Asia’s pre-Russian history beginning in 5000 BC covers ten pages and entirely ignores religion), the second section shifts from a chronological framework to thematic chapters and follows Soviet theoretical models and extends Russo-centered themes.
“Culture” largely pertains to education here, and the work provides scant attention to literature, music, drama, architecture, and decorative arts. Moreover, the authors extend the mythologies of Soviet-era heroes in Abai, Aini, Hamza, without questioning their complex role as cultural mediators. On the other hand, historically challenging figures like Abdur Rauf Fitrat, Faizulla Khojaev, and Mustafa Chokaev are almost invisible here. They intriguingly write that “culture was scarcely the only sphere of public life in Central Asia to which the Russian conquest can be characterized as a wholly progressive phenomenon” (P. 182). There is no doubt that the complex role of Central Asia’s polyvalent culture requires more than pithy remarks.^[20] One wonders why an entire chapter on “Russian influences on daily life” is necessary here. More lamentably, the authors ignore Central Asian influences on the daily lives of Russians in the region.^[21] The discussion on religious politics is arguably the weakest section, given the importance of the topic for Central Asia and the wealth of recent research.^[22]
The naming of peoples in Central Asia has long provided a challenge to Russian and Soviet observers, who were not content to accept local interpretations of identity based on place names, tribal affiliations, or religious grounds. The comedy of this process is detailed in a chapter on the national “classifications” of Central Asia but without its irony. In the end, the Russian imperial bureaucracy preferred to describe local populations as either “sedentary indigenous” or “nomadic.” A much more interesting moment is overlooked by the untimely conclusion of the book in 1920. The Soviet “delimitation” of Central Asia during the 1920s involved a complex series of compromises and definitive judgments that established the boundaries of nation-states still existing today.^[23] Indeed, the tendency toward conflation in the Russian imperial era extends to this scholarship as well. The confusion of grouping “Jadids, Pan Islamism, and Pan-Turkism” (repeated by the authors) would come back to haunt many ardent Bolsheviks in the 1930s when xenophobia and hysteria prevailed in the purges. The authors rightly identify that “it is important to underline that [the Jadid movement] did not have a single political platform or unified representation for its various predilections and political direction” (P. 282). Yet the success of the partnership between conservative religious leaders and Russian imperial bureaucrats to undermine their ideological challenge goes unmentioned in this text.^[24] Moreover, the politically volatile combination of students returning from Istanbul, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Arab nationalism, the implications of the First World War, as well as the print “revolution” in Central Asia had an impact that is also unexplored here. These forces cannot be overlooked when examining the growing protests against the Russian imperial government and their poorly organized labor conscriptions.
In general, Tsentral’naia Aziia v sostave Rossiiskoi imperii obscures its significant potential with persistent Russian bias. The authors frame “Russia’s civilizing mission” in contrast to Russian ethnographic descriptions of the “vagrant” Kazakhs and Kyrgyz and the “fanatic” Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Sarts (P. 323). These unqualified remarks are used without citation to separate misguided nineteenth-century remarks from the views of the authors. This book is less interested in how Central Asia figures into the variegated physical and imperial landscape of the Russian empire; instead the work should be more aptly entitled, “Russians in Central Asia,” to convey its apparent focus. Despite its drawbacks, the real delight of this collection is that we see (most significantly and for the first time) a new generation of scholars emerging to engage the history of Central Asia in Russian. This young group, educated together in St. Petersburg and Moscow, reflects the growing diversity of intellectual paths as well as the decentralization of Central Asian studies in Russia. We can hope that future endeavors will reach beyond this introductory venture.
Marco Buttino’s study of the Russian Revolution in Central Asia, La rivoluzione capovolta,^[25] is a well-researched contribution to scholarship on the region. The past decade has witnessed the release of several important histories of modern Central Asia by a new generation of scholars; this may be the most comprehensive and readable monograph in the group. The fact that an Italian-language book has received such praise and attention in the field is indicative of its importance.
Investigating the revolutionary era from turn-of-the-century Tashkent until 1920s Soviet Central Asia, Buttino centers his discussion on the collapse of social and political institutions at the end of the imperial era as well as the struggle for power and emergent Soviet government in Turkestan. Thus he takes a broad approach to the temporal framing of the revolution. Buttino uses an expansive geographic framework to encompass Central Asia; this contrasts with much recent research that has underscored national histories of the region. The monograph focuses on three geographic areas: Tashkent, the local seat of imperial and then Bolshevik power; Semirech’e, a semi-nomadic region that suffered most during the famine; and the Fergana valley, the agricultural heartland that remained relatively autonomous from Russian influences and a focal point for anti-Soviet activism.
Like Daniel Brower’s Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire,^[26] Buttino’s work seeks to understand how the crisis in imperial authority led to catastrophic consequences on the Russian imperial periphery. His research becomes more than a case study to offer a wide-ranging view of the region in a time of uncertainty and political rupture. Nevertheless, Buttino frames the revolution as a distinctly Russian event, a revolution that arrived “by telegraph.” But the revolutionary moment is an extended one; he argues, “The revolution does not spread rapidly after Petrograd and the revolutionary ideas are not ethereal and unchanging” (P. 13). Here, Buttino bridges the 1917 chasm that tends to be overstated in scholarship on the revolution and enumerates aspects of the political transformation through the early 1920s. And the Red Army’s subjugation of Muslims and Central Asians to consolidate power is part of that story.
Questions of revolution on the “empire’s Muslim periphery” are recast to reveal a complex center–periphery dynamic where the challenges and solutions are worked out differently in Tashkent than in Petrograd and in Moscow. Buttino asserts that “revolutionary discourses and slogans justify the end of the democratic process and the beginning of the restoration of colonial order: the revolution is overturned” (P. 10). Although change at the local level is key, the revolution ultimately reconfirms the rule of Russians as an imperial minority in Central Asia.
To contextualize this transformation, Buttino spends considerable time describing Tashkent before the revolution. It was a society that relied on careful negotiation between Russian Tsarist officials and local elites. Jeff Sahadeo may offer a more complex image of urban Tashkent in his recent Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923,^[27] but Buttino frames his discussion in a much broader context.
The pivotal moment in this story was the famine. Buttino renders this in exacting detail as has been done in no previous work. He argues that the famine was used as a weapon and as a “dictatorship” through the cynical and effective use of power. Essentially, the Russian Bolsheviks of Tashkent used the widespread lack of resources to exact revenge and to achieve supremacy in the city. He even adds that “what happened in Tashkent occurred in the other cities of Turkestan as well” (P. 263). Preexisting tensions between locals and Russians were exacerbated by the deeper economic crises introduced by the European war, revolution, and civil war. Buttino also details the suffering of nomads and peasants at the expense of the cities and their consolidation of power. Starvation and epidemics ravaged the population outside the major cities. And nomadism ceased to be possible at this point (Pp. 411-412).
The urban–rural divide existed not only between Russians and non-Russians. A variety of political and economic interests competed in the postrevolution power vacuum: Russian farmers did not want to relinquish their resources entirely to the Russian urban elite. Muslim religious elites competed with reformers, and Buttino provides a brief overview of the Kokand autonomy movement (Pp. 269-283). He also describes a “revolution within revolution” when revolts proliferated against Soviet power, such as the basmachi in Andijan and in Semirech’e.
In this moment of crisis, a new elite emerged under the Soviet banner that was distinctly Russian in ethnicity. This conflict made the economic situation worse. Buttino affirms, “The first preoccupation of Sovnarkom during the revolt was the situation in the capital” (P. 238). Their power extended little beyond the larger cities of the region; and they confronted new Muslim urban elites that professed nationalism and independence. This was a violent confrontation. A systematic “military reconquest,” Buttino asserts, “accompanied the formation of the centralized institutions of the Soviet State” (P. 13).
Not only an example of innovative scholarship, La rivoluzione capovolta is also a point of departure and raises questions for further research. It complements Adeeb Khalid’s work on Central Asian intellectuals, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform^[28] as well as Arne Haugen’s The Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia.^[29] Buttino implements tsarist administrative reports, numerous newspapers from Tashkent and Vernyi, as well as military, party, and regional archives in Tashkent, Fergana, Moscow, and London. Buttino offers impressive conceptual analysis that combines data and detail alongside an explication of agency of the key political actors in the region, such as Alexei Kuropatkin, Ubaydullah Khojaev, Mustafa Chokaev, Muhammetjan Tynyshbaev, and Turar Ryskulov. The book has a good, basic bibliography and a useful glossary of terms, but it lacks an index, which would have been helpful.