The study of Russian imperial expansion and the development of imperial institutions have emerged as significant areas of academic exploration since the opening of new archives in Central Asia. Armed with a preponderance of documents from the (fatefully fleeting) liberalization of archives in Tashkent, Daniel Brower offers a sweeping view of Russian imperial attitudes and some local responses to Russian rule in Turkestan. Filling a number of important gaps in the English-language discourse on Central Asia, Daniel Brower’s Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire provides a solid new introduction to Russian imperial policy and its struggles and failures in Turkestan. Brower presents a clear narrative drawn from broad sources by illuminating life beyond Moscow that reacts to its decisions and debates. Brower focuses on the intellectual, cultural, and bureaucratic aspects of the creation of Turkestan, the incorporation of Turkestan to the Russian Empire, the religious questions of Russian rule, and the settling of Turkestan.
Following a thematic rather than chronological narrative of the colonial experiment in Turkestan, Brower centers his work on the question of how the colonial failure in Turkestan signaled the imminent collapse of the Russian Empire. In fact, Brower begins with the idea that the Russian Empire was a “failed colonial endeavor.” For Brower, the Turkestan rebellion of 1916 represents the harbinger of the Russian revolution; and, he argues that the imperial bureaucracy’s inability to handle the complexities of colonial administration revealed deeper problems within the Tsarist government. Brower asserts, “The fall of the empire a few months after the Turkestan uprising did not proceed in any direct manner from the colonial troubles. An understanding of this crisis does, though, reveal in microcosm, the flaws of the Russian regime itself” (153). Although these events reveal a notable portent of revolution (particularly attractive to those engaged with the margins), the Russian revolution is far too complex to be linked solely to an examination of the imperial bureaucracy and crisis of imperial identity.
Brower establishes Turkestan as a unique case of Russia’s imperial project where the Russian bureaucracy treated the region as a separate territory distinct from contiguous expansion (as in Siberia). Here, the Russian Empire experimented with its own interpretation of European imperialism. Certainly, Poland and Finland represent other exceptional imperial territories within the Russian Empire, but Brower maintains Turkestan’s distinctiveness as a category of imperialism with all its implicit racism. Following this line of thought, Brower presents Turkestan as a singular example in the formation of a Russian imperial consciousness. Its failure represents a collapse of the Empire’s internal logic and identity.
In order to establish the uniformity of Russian imperial consciousness, Brower seemingly contradicts himself by expounding the divergent theories that conceptualize the Russian Empire as it expanded eastward. These ideas were intensely debated in the second half of the nineteenth century within the highest levels of the Russian government. Through this, Brower brings the personalities and rival ideologies of Russian imperialism in Central Asia to life: Konstantin von Kaufman, Alexei Kuropatkin, Nil Lykoshin, Nikolai Kryzhanovsky, among others. Brower characterizes the debate within the imperial bureaucracy as a conflict between the reform agenda set during Catherine II’s rule (and extended by the emancipation and reforms of Alexander II) and a conservative attitude set by the military and those believing in centralization to maintain security and to protect Russian settlers.
The uncontrolled migration of settlers from southern Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia provided a challenge for both sides of the debate. The debate centered on the extent settlers could create a sense of grazhdanstvennost’ (civic pride, citizenship) that would unite the Empire or conversely alienate the local Turkic and Persian populations. Brower identifies grazhdanstvennost’ as the key to understanding Russia’s civilizing mission in Turkestan. Brower would benefit from drawing the concept of grazhdanstvennost’ away from imperial rhetoric and seeing it as a civilizing mission. Furthermore, the limits of central authority through an understaffed bureaucracy and a local military administration led to a tremendous diversity in the supervision and execution of imperial decrees and the civilizing mission.
The debate over and the optimism of imperial ideology ultimately were inundated by frustrations with Turkestan locals, Russian settlers, and a bureaucracy that hindered their plans. Moreover, Brower establishes that “Russian colonialism in Turkestan remained riven by policy contradictions and abortive reform measures from its origins to the empire’s fall” (25). Thus, there are no clear answers to explaining either the failure to formulate or exact a consistent imperial policy in Turkestan. On the other hand, Brower seems to believe that there was a right way to rule Turkestan (the United States was clearly not an effective model in Brower’s mind) and that somehow the Russians could not execute it effectively. These hypotheses diminish the effectiveness of the monograph.
Where are the local intellectuals? Brower makes an effort to include Muhammedjan Tinishpaev as an example of the native viewpoint (notably limited to his Russian language sources) but his responses to Russian rule are overused, uncriticized, and stale by the end of Brower’s work. Moreover, the Turkestan native-language press is largely ignored. Perpetuating the limiting perspective of bureaucratic documents, Brower maintains the platitude that “Islam ceased to be a problem after vigorous campaigns to suppress religious worship swept through the region” (176). The Soviets would have us believe this too; but numerous newer studies, including Shoshana Keller’s recent work To Moscow Not Mecca (2002), demonstrate a far more complex reality where religion continues to inspire the faithful or instigate protest into the 1930s and beyond.
Brower’s work continues the confusing and inconsistent use of ethnonyms, especially with his use of Kyrgyz, Kazak, Kirgiz, Sart, Turkmen, Uzbek in the text. While Brower employs geographic indicators to help, his work still reveals the need for a better understanding of the conflation of ethnonyms. And, as the precise geographic boundaries changed several times during the period of his study (in 1865, 1882, 1898, and 1924), we should question the homogeny and iconography of Turkestan. Or is Brower continuing the line of anti-Soviet Turkic exiles that promoted the ethnic unity of Central Asian Turkic groups despite so much ethnographic evidence to the contrary? Perhaps we should not ignore its significance when “the Turkestan administration produced multicolored ethnographic maps that purported to place the various ethnic groups in their proper geographic locations” (53) as easily as Brower does. Moreover, it is worthy of mention that the rebellions of 1916 that become a centerpiece for Brower’s work often occurred beyond the formal territory of Turkestan in the Kazak steppe and Kyrgyz mountainous regions.
Despite the particular limitations in a clearly ambitious and broad project, Brower tells a good story and provides a valuable English-language text for introducing students to Russian rule, concepts of the Russian Empire, and the imperial history of Turkestan. Availability in paperback would also make this text much more accessible.
This work signals a beginning to a prolific field rather than a definitive work on the subject. It is clear that there is a need for more study of the region. Continuing from Brower’s work, we should ask how local intellectuals interpret their place in the Empire. We should draw further comparisons with the Ottoman Empire as multi-ethnic and multi-religious states that remained influenced by but peripheral to the European experience. We should consider the function of Islam in these imperial processes. And, we need to go beyond Brower’s brief epilogue to deepen our understanding of the complex Soviet transition from the Russian Empire.