Russian Conquest Research Articles

The Russian conquest of the Bukharan Emirate: military and diplomatic aspects

This article examines the history of Russian conquest of Bukhara, with special reference to military and diplomatic aspects. From the beginning of the Russian advance into the region, relations between Russia and Bukhara had several peculiarities, but were characterized above all by mutual incomprehension. In my view, the main obstacle to the development of relations lay in the different understandings the two sides had of the nature of a peace agreement or treaty. In this paper I try to shed light on some questions arising from the military conflict between the Emirate of Bukhara and Russia in the interpretations of Russian military historians and Bukharan chronicles of the period. The focus is on a comparative analysis of the military capabilities of the Bukharan Emirate and Russia, the differences in weapons technology between these two powers, the links between the Russian advance in the region and the domestic and foreign policy of the Bukharan emir, Muzaffar, the situation in the emirate, and the use of Islamic ideology as a mobilizing force for the population in opposition to Russian expansion.

‘Nechto eroticheskoe’, ‘courir après l'ombre’? – logistical imperatives and the fall of Tashkent, 1859–1865

This article explores the debates that preceded the Russian conquest of Tashkent in 1865. It argues that none of the explanations usually given for this – the ‘men on the spot’, ‘cotton hunger’, or the Great Game with Britain – is satisfactory. Instead, it shows that the War Ministry and the governors of Orenburg had advocated the capture of Tashkent from the late 1850s, and that General Cherniaev's assault in 1865 was at least tacitly authorized. The motives for the Russian advance combined the need for better supply chains to the steppe fortresses, a desire to ‘anchor’ their new frontier in a region with a sedentary population, and concern for security from attacks by the Khoqand Khanate. Economic considerations and rivalry with Britain played very minor roles.

Introduction: Killing the Cotton Canard and getting rid of the Great Game: rewriting the Russian conquest of Central Asia, 1814–1895

Они забыли дни тоски,Ночные возгласы: «К оружью»,Унылые солончакиИ поступь мерную верблюжьюThey have forgotten days of melancholy,Forgot the night-time call ‘To arms’!Forgot the dismal salty steppe...

‘How will we appear in the eyes of inovertsy and inorodtsy?’ Nikolai Ostroumov on the image and function of Russian power

This article offers a close reading of several unpublished manuscripts by the Russian Orientalist, administrator and missionary ideologue Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov, who spent most of his career in the Turkestan governor-generalship. Ostroumov's violent Islamophobia and close relationship with the colonial administration support to some extent the thesis of Edward Said and other postcolonial theorists that European views of the ‘Orient’ were an epistemological construction of negative attributes that reflected European self-perceptions, and that academic Orientalism was often the handmaiden of colonial power and expansion. However, much of Ostroumov's writing was so abstract and divorced from the social and political realities of Turkestani society that it was of little practical use, something compounded by his view of Orthodox Christianity and Islam as polar opposites. Ostroumov's private writings reveal a deep anxiety regarding the durability of Russian conquest and rule in Central Asia, and paranoia about the decline and destruction of the Christian faith and European civilization.

Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus. By MichaelKhodarkovsky. Cornell University Press. 2011. 224pp. £21.50/$35.00.

Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus. By MichaelKhodarkovsky. Cornell University Press. 2011. 224pp. £21.50/$35.00.

1715. aasta tallinnakeelne Uus Testament uues valguses [Shedding new light on the Tallinn-Estonian New Testament of 1715

This article offers the first study of how the Tallinn-Estonian editio princeps of the New Testament was seen through the press from 1713 to 1715. Work on this translation took most of the second half of the seventeenth century, passing through several stages of revision. After the Russian conquest of 1710 and the plague, it took until the beginning of 1713 before the ruling bodies of the Lutheran church in Estonia started to function again. From September 1713 to March 1715, the work of the consistory was interrupted again (or at least no minutes are preserved). The existing minutes of the Estonian Lutheran consistory and of the general assemblies of the clergy nevertheless cast an important new light on the printing of the translation. Tallinn pastor Eberhard Gutsleff procured a manuscript containing the text of the translation according to the last revision before the war. The Tallinn printer, Johann Christoph Brendeken, offered to defray the printing costs if only 150 subscribers were found. That was quickly the case. The minutes list the subscribers: 26 pastors serving in different parishes all over Estonia. More than 20 copies were ordered by Eberhard Gutsleff, Heinrich Gutsleff and Christian Hoppius – three men who are known to have been involved in the editing and publishing process. The other subscribers mostly ordered three to six copies. If the remaining copies of the New Testament were distributed in similar numbers to pastors, hardly any copies could have reached the homes of peasants, artisans or estate owners. Last but not least, the minutes contain a specimen print of eight pages, dated 1713. A detailed comparison of this specimen print with the first edition from 1715 shows that the text had been thoroughly revised in the meantime – a fact no other source mentions. Indeed, the minutes explicitly state that the New Testament was to be printed following the last revision before the Russian conquest. Th e text of the specimen print contains only 2023 words (Matt. 1:1–5:3). Nevertheless, between the 1713 and 1715 versions, some considerable lexical, grammatical as well as orthographical changes can be observed. These alterations were probably made by Eberhard Gutsleff, who appears to have seen the manuscript through the press. The changes, alas, were not necessarily for the better, and the following editions (the second edition in 1729 and the first complete Bible in 1739) oft en reached solutions closer to the specimen print of 1713 than to the fi rst edition of 1715. Keywords: Bible translation, book history, history of the Estonian literary language. Jürgen Beyer (b. 1965) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre of Tartu University Library. Correspondence: Tartu University Library, W. Struve 1, 50091 Tartu, Estonia. E-mail: jurgen.beyer@ut.ee Kristiina Ross (b. 1955) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of the Estonian Language. Correspondence: The Institute of the Estonian Language, Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn, Estonia. E-mail: kristiina.ross@eki.ee

Exile to Siberia, 1590–1822: Corporeal Commodification and Administrative Systematization in Russia by Andrew Gentes, and: Voennye faktory russkoi kolonizatsii zapadnoi Sibiri, konets XVI–XVII vv by V. D. Puzanov, and: Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598–1725: Manipulation, Rebellion, and Expansion into Siberia by Christoph Witzenrath (review)

Andrew Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822: Corporeal Commodification and Administrative Systematization in Russia. 256 pp. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN-13 978-0230536937. $89.00. V. D. Puzanov, Voennye faktory russkoi kolonizatsii zapadnoi Sibiri, konets XVIXVII vv. (Military Factors in the Russian Colonization of Western Siberia in the Late 16th and 17th Centuries). 431 pp. St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2010. ISBN-13 978-5914192683. Christoph Witzenrath, Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598-1725: Manipulation, Rebellion, and Expansion into Siberia. 277 pp. New York: Routledge, 2007. ISBN-13 978-0415416214. $170.00. The inscription of Siberia onto the mental maps of empire makers and simple subjects alike has driven important contributions in Sibirevedenie, and the trend is by no means exhausted. (1) The studies under review here, in contrast, provide valuable boots on the ground perspectives on Siberia. While not insensitive to the question of perception, they explore the Russian state incorporated and administered this imperial space, whether through the building and manning of fortifications (Puzanov); the military--administrative functions executed by Cossacks (Witzenrath); and the mobilization of the exile system to meet labor and settlement needs (Gentes). As such, we might classify them as part of what Andreas Kappeler has called a second wave of imperiology, exploring the how of empire. (2) The three studies are also united by the fact that they are organized around categories of people: exiles in Gentes's case; military servitors in Puzanov's; and Cossacks for Witzenrath. While these studies are not squarely social history, they are substantially inflected with it. Largely as a result of the source base, state policy and institutions shape the narratives. This focus on people underscores a prominent aspect of the history of Siberia: the chronic, ubiquitous human resource challenges that administering Siberia posed. The Russian state constantly struggled against insufficient labor and competence, an inescapable fact that reverberates through each of these studies. Gentes shows that from Peter's reign onward, exiles were deliberately used to fulfill labor and then settlement imperatives. For Puzanov, labor supply greatly informed not only the dynamics of army dispatches along the fortification lines that he describes but also agricultural initiatives in Siberia. In Witzenrath's study, it was the state's considerable dependence upon Cossack labor that enabled this group to wield such leverage against central authority. Nor does the question of the driving force behind Russian conquest--an enduring staple of Siberian historiography--generate significant disagreement in these three interpretations. (3) The militarized and state-directed nature of Siberian expansion and the society there emerges as a compelling feature in all of these books. Puzanov, holding populist interpretations of Siberian history directly in his historiographical crosshairs, assigns the state a central role. Gentes's narrative emphasizes the state over individual initiative in Muscovy's initial advances into Siberia. Even Witzenrath, who argues that the state in Moscow was at the mercy of its servitors on the periphery, nonetheless explores dynamics in question within (even if not entirely coextensive with) an overarching state apparatus. Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822, the first volume in a promised trilogy, traces the institutional development of the exile system, reconstructs the Siberian experience of exile, and draws lessons about imperial Russia's failure to reform. (4) Given the associations of Siberia with exile and the popularity of Gulag literature, it is surprising to realize the gap in English-language scholarship that this study fills. Although a recent spate of scholarship has begun to rewrite the history of punishment from corporal, cultural, and legal perspectives, one harkens back to George Kennan for an extensive Englishlanguage treatment of the exile system. …

Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus. By Michael Khodarkovsky. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. xiii, 200 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $35.00, hard bound.

Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus. By Michael Khodarkovsky. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. xiii, 200 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $35.00, hard bound. - Volume 72 Issue 1

Bitter choices: loyalty and betrayal in the Russian conquest of the North Caucasus

Introduction 1. The Frontiers of the North Caucasus 2. Atarshchikov's Childhood 3. Journey through the Northeast Caucasus 4. Inside Ermolov's Iron Fist 5. St. Petersburg and Poland 6. Return to the North Caucasus 7. Interpreter and Administrator 8. Russian Policies and Alternatives 9. The First Desertion 10. From Semen Atarshchikov to Hajret Muhammed ConclusionNotes Glossary Bibliography Index

Waqf Administration in Tashkent Prior to and After the Russian Conquest: A Focus on Rent Contracts for the Kūkeldāš Madrasa

Waqf Administration in Tashkent Prior to and After the Russian Conquest: A Focus on Rent Contracts for the Kūkeldāš Madrasa

Murder in Manghishlaq: Notes on an Instance of Application of Qazaq Customary Law in Khiva (1895)

The Russian conquest of Central Asia marked the beginning of record-keeping for Qazaq arbitrators ( bīs ) and customary law ( ’ādat ). It remains obscure how bīs complied with the colonial regulations obliging them to record their court proceedings. I approach this issue first by questioning the utility of extra-judicial sources crafted in Russian at the instigation of colonial bureaucrats; hence, I argue that the comparison alone of ’ādat -related judicial records written in Turki (Chaghatay) with šarī’a court certificates allows situating the legal terminology applied by Qazaq arbitrators within the discursive tradition of Islamic law. By way of illustrating my approach, I offer a close reading of a report of a murder case adjudicated according to Qazaq customary law in the vicinity of Khiva in 1895. My commentary on the summary of the trial sheds light on the interplay of customary and Islamic law in the region. In addition, it challenges earlier interpretations of the use of the exculpatory oath among the Qazaqs.

Michael Khodarkovsky, Bitter Choices, Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus

Readers familiar with Michael Khodarkovsky’s two previous books on the Kalmyks and the Steppe Frontier will look forward to reading Bitter Choices. It is the story of Semen Atarshchikov, born a Chechen, who followed in his father’s footsteps to become a Cossack, an interpreter in at least two languages of North Caucasus highlanders, was sent to Petersburg to join Nicholas I’s Circassian Guard (which took part in the crushing of the Polish uprising), became an officer, returned to the North Ca...

L'Islam au pluriel dans la formation des identités centrasiatiques lors de la conquête russe

The Russian conquest provoked the emergence of an identity quest among the peoples of Central Asia, which was only accelerated during the Soviet period. The present paper aims at reconsidering the interaction between the Tsarist power and the Kazakh noblemen under Russian rule : far from fueling the islamic resistance as in other parts of Russian Turkestan, this cooperation largerly contributed to the consolidation of Kazakh proper and unique sense of national identity.

A colonial experiment in cleansing: the Russian conquest of Western Caucasus, 1856–65

In the course of colonial conquest, Russian military policy underwent a process of radicalization which culminated in the expulsion of most of the local population. This policy was explicitly referred to as “cleansing” by Russian contemporaries. Even though imperial Russian officials did not yet think in ethnic terms and were not backed up by biologistic concepts, their images of Northern Caucasians had become highly essentialized. In the case of the Circassians from Western Caucasus, this essentialization led to their exclusion from the “civilized” world and turned them into objects to be dispensed with. This article seeks to explain the origins of Russian “resettlement” and “cleansing” by locating them within the emerging field of governmentality and tracing their further development. It argues that Russian colonial authorities, in conducting their strategy of “final subjugation,” created a new, supplementary instrument of state power that could be used where other, less openly violent techniques of domination and control had failed. In contradiction to widespread assumptions, in Northern Caucasus the mission to civilize and the intent to destroy could exist side by side and even came to complement each other.

The political economy of reform in Central Asia: Uzbekistan under authoritarianism

1. Geographical and Historical Introduction - From the Beginnings of Turkic Settlement to Russian Conquest. Religious and Language Background Explored 2. The Soviet Legacy - Uzbekistan's Social Progress under a Colonial, Communist Regime, 1917-91 3. The Uzbek Road to Economic Reforms 4. Growth, Income, and Social Consumption 5. Human Rights in Uzbekistan and its Central Asian Neighbors 6. Comparisons with Central Asian Neighboring States [Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan] 7. Energy in Central Asia 8. International Economic Relations in Central Asia 9. Conclusion

Georgia and Iran: Three Millennia of Cultural Relations An Overview

AbstractWhen Georgia was incorporated into the Russian Empire, the rich background of interaction with Persian culture, the result of centuries of contact, was lost to the scholar whose interest in Georgian history came to depend on Russian historiography with its focus on the period under Russian rule and its misreading of anything prior to that. Western scholarship, often oblivious of the far reach of Persian culture, devoted too little attention to the subject or gave it short shrift. Owing largely to the recent work of Georgian scholars, a century of neglect is now being reversed, but an overall picture of the breadth and depth of Georgian-Iranian interaction is still lacking. This paper proposes to offer a general overview from the third millennium BCE to the Russian conquest of Georgia, when Persian influence began its decline.

The Lost Mosque(s) in the Citadel of Qajar Yerevan: Architecture and Identity, Iranian and Local Traditions in the Early 19th Century

AbstractThe mosques in the citadel of Yerevan are lost today and almost unknown. Here, the most significant of them is reconstructed from visual and literary sources, documented by unpublished photographs, and related to the early Qajar period under the last Iranian governor Husayn Khān, prior to the Russian conquest of Yerevan in 1827. The second mosque in the citadel is attributed to the Ottoman period; the third one remains uncertain. While the type of the Qajar mosque is compared to earlier buildings in Yerevan, notably the 18th-century Gök Jāmi', stylistic elements are analysed with reference to early 19th-century architecture in Iran and a building at Qazvīn. The interpretation seeks to understand the different references of the Qajar mosque as the construction of a visual statement of local and Iranian identity in a period of change.

The tatar ruling houses in Russian genealogical sources

The “Genealogy of the Tatar Sovereigns” ( Rodoslovnaia tatarskikh tsarei ) preserved in various (official and private) genealogical books of the 16th–17th centuries is a unique and precious monument of both Tatar and Russian history. This text owes its existence to the lively interest of the Russian state in the inner relations of the declining Tatar states towards the middle of the 16th century. Its genesis cannot be disconnected from the Russian conquests of Kazan and Astrakhan. The bulk of the genealogies was compiled in the 1550s and based on Tatar sources. A critical analysis of these genealogies, comparing every piece of data with other contemporary (Russian and Oriental) sources, is a task yet to be accomplished, but the significance of these texts is beyond doubt. What I tried to do in this paper was to emphasise and analyse a few noteworthy aspects of this group of monuments.

Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonia's ‘War of Monuments’ from Another Angle

Taking as its point of departure the recent heightened discussion surrounding publicly sited monuments in Estonia, this article investigates the issue from the perspective of the country's eastern border city of Narva, focusing especially upon the restoration in 2000 of a ‘Swedish Lion’ monument to mark the 300th anniversary of Sweden's victory over Russia at the first Battle of Narva. This commemoration is characterised here as a successful local negotiation of a potentially divisive past, as are subsequent commemorations of the Russian conquest of Narva in 1704. A recent proposal to erect a statue of Peter the Great in the city, however, briefly threatened to open a new front in Estonia's ongoing ‘war of monuments’. Through a discussion of these episodes, the article seeks to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics, nationalism and post-communist transition.

View of Muslim Authors on the Russian Conquest of Turkistan. Evolution of New Realias: Pro and Contra

The problem of the attitude of the local population of Turkistan towards the Russian conquest, as well as to their presence, has been covered by written works from the moment of Russia's advance into Central Asia. The historiogra phy on this question includes hundreds of books and research works.1 Until re cently, local authors' views and estimations of the Russian conquest were in volved above all in the standpoint of the justification or confirmation of the idea of the fundamental significance of the conquest of Central Asia by the Russian empire for the local people. During the post-Soviet period, the ideas and conclu sions of local authors were used with another aim, precisely as proof of the colo nial policy of Tsarism and its administration in the kray (territory). It should be noted that the attitude of local Muslim authors to the Russian conquest and their presence in Turkistan and in the states (khanates) of Buxara and Xiva was not unequivocal. The estimations and views of local authors were remarkable for their variety changing from silent apathy to active propaganda of armed revolt against the Russians. By the end of the 19th century, many authors had already written odes of eulogy about the Russians, Russia, and devoted their works to and in honor of the new orders and innovations.