Peasant Settlers and the ‘Civilising Mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865–1917

Abstract

This article provides an introduction to one of the lesser-known examples of European settler colonialism, the settlement of European (mainly Russian and Ukrainian) peasants in Southern Central Asia (Turkestan) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It establishes the legal background and demographic impact of peasant settlement, and the role played by the state in organising and encouraging it. It explores official attitudes towards the settlers (which were often very negative), and their relations with the local Kazakh and Kyrgyz population. The article adopts a comparative framework, looking at Turkestan alongside Algeria and Southern Africa, and seeking to establish whether paradigms developed in the study of other settler societies (such as the ‘poor white’) are of any relevance in understanding Slavic peasant settlement in Turkestan. It concludes that there are many close parallels with European settlement in other regions with large indigenous populations, but that racial ideology played a much less important role in the Russian case compared to religious divisions and fears of cultural backsliding. This did not prevent relations between settlers and the ‘native’ population deteriorating markedly in the years before the First World War, resulting in large-scale rebellion in 1916.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Clare Anderson, Nicholas Breyfogle, Richard Huzzey, Will Jackson, James Renton and the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

[1] Nazaroff, Hunted through Central Asia, 161.

[2] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 135–37; Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 202–03; Morrison ‘Sowing the Seed of National Strife’.

[3] Remnev and Suvorova, ‘Obrusenie aziatskikh okrain Rossiiskoi Imperii’.

[4] Lowry, ‘Rhodesia 1890–1980’; Washbrook, ‘The British Community in India’, 124–25, 184–85, 193; Bolton, Poor Whites.

[5] Mogilner, ‘Russian Physical Anthropology’; Mogil'ner Homo Imperii, 15–19, 187–278.

[6] Sunderland, ‘Russians into Yakuts?’.

[7] Prochaska, ‘History as Literature, Literature as History’.

[8] Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (hereafter PSZ) Sob.3 Tom IX No. 6198 13 July 1889; PSZ Sob. 3 Tom XVI No.13464 2 Dec. 1896; PSZ Sob.3 Tom XXIV No. 24,701 6 June 1904.

[9] Ageron, Les Algériens Musulmans, vol. 1, 37–48; Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, 290–93.

[10] Holquist, ‘In Accord with State Interests’; Campbell ‘Settlement Promoted, Settlement Contested’.

[11] Glinka, Aziyatskaya Rossiya, vol. 1, 440–99, here 440; emphasis in original.

[12] Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii, 24–25; Etkind, Internal Colonization, 61–71.

[13] Kaufman, Pereseleniya i Kolonizatsiya, 3.

[14] Semenov, ‘Znachenie Rossii v kolonizatsionnom dvizhenii’, 358–59; Sedel'nikov et al., eds, Rossiya. Polnoe Geograficheskoe Opisanie, 13–15; Woeikoff, Le Turkestan Russe, 297–98.

[15] The literature on this subject is now too extensive to cite in full, but see in particular the debate among Adeeb Khalid, Nathaniel Knight and Maria Todorova on the application of Edward Said's Orientalism to Russia. Khalid, Knight and Todorova, ‘Ex-Tempore’; Khalid, ‘Culture and Power in Colonial Turkestan’; Burbank and Cooper Empires in World History, 251–86.

[16] Sunderland, ‘The Ministry of Asiatic Russia’, 120–50; Morrison, ‘Metropole, Colony and Imperial Citizenship’, 355–59.

[17] Sunderland, ‘The “Colonization Question”’; Masoero, ‘Territorial Colonization in Late Imperial Russia’. The most sophisticated statement of this distinction at the time came from a young official of the Pereselencheskoe Upravlenie. Gins, ‘Pereselenie i Kolonizatsiya’.

[18] Although they were not a majority, large non-Russian populations remained even in areas that were part of metropolitan Russia, notably the Muslims Tatars of the Volga and Crimea. Thus, even in relation to his ill-defined sphere of ‘internal colonization’, Etkind is wrong to suggest that in the Russian empire ‘non-Europeans were either assimilated or annihilated’. Etkind, Internal Colonization, 251.

[19] The best account of the 1916 revolt and the reprisals which followed it is Happel, Nomadische Lebenswelten und Zarische Politik; see also Buttino, Revolyutsiya Naoborot, 58–91; the only account in English remains Sokol, The Revolt of 1916.

[20] For example, Suleimenov, Agrarnyi vopros v Kazakhstane, 116–26; Brusnikin, ‘Pereselencheskaya Politika Tsarizma’; Ginzburg, ‘Pereselentsy i mestnoe naselenie Turkestana’; Fomchenko, Russkie poseleniya v Turkestanskom krae; for a critique of Soviet scholarship, see Maltusynov, Agrarnyi vopros v Kazakhstane, 21–34.

[21] Earlier works include Treadgold, The Great Siberian Migration; Coquin, La Sibérie; Demko, Russian Colonisation of Kazakhstan; more recently, see Moon, ‘Peasant Migration’; Sunderland, ‘Peasant Pioneering’; Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers; Steinwedel, ‘Resettling People, Unsettling the Empire’. On the colonisation of the Kazakh steppes, see Nishiyama, ‘Russian Colonization in Central Asia’; Martin, Law and Custom in the Steppe, ch. 3; Kendirbai, Land and People; Sabol, Russian Colonization, 38–52; Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 62–86.

[22] Good, ‘Settler Colonialism’; Denoon, Settler Capitalism; Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies; Russell, Colonial Frontiers; Veracini, Settler Colonialism.

[23] Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 505–17.

[24] Barrett, At the Edge of Empire; Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field.

[25] The exception is Jeff Sahadeo's excellent monograph Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, but this deals largely with urban settlers.

[26] Kennedy, Islands of White, 3, 167–92.

[27] Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 10, 153–54.

[28] Petition from Kantarbai Karimbaev to the Asinskii Police Chief, 1 June 1913, Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereafter TsGARKaz) F.433 ‘Mirovoi sud'ya 2-go Uchastka Tashkentskogo Okruzhnogo suda g. Aulie-Ata’ Op.1 D.287 ‘Po obvineniyu krestyan Kuyukskoi volosti Shevchenko, Beznosova, Popova i drugikh v napadenii na aul i za uchastie v drake’ ll, 6-ob (verso). A ketmen is a type of large hoe.

[29] Protokol No. 24, 3 June 1913; Protokol Sudebno-Meditsinskogo Osmotra, 4 June 1913, TsGARKaz F.433 Op.1 D.287 ll.9–12ob.

[30] In the nineteenth century the Russians invariably referred to the Kazakhs as ‘Kirgiz’, in order to distinguish them from the Cossacks (Kazaki).

[31] Protokol, 5 June 1913, TsGARKaz F.433 Op.1 D.287 ll.14–17.

[32] Protokol, 5 June 1913, Protokol doprosa, 7 June 1913, TsGARKaz F.433 Op.1 D.287 ll.17ob–18ob, 23–24.

[33] Postanovlenie o privlechenii obvinyaemykh, 3 Aug. 1913, TsGARKaz F.433 Op. 1 D.287 ll.64–67ob; ll.93–96ob, 100–01, 146–55.

[34] N. A. Maev ‘Zapiska o merakh k uvelicheniyu russkogo naseleniya v Turkestanskoi Oblasti’, 19 July 1867, Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan (hereafter TsGARUz), Fond I-1 ‘Kantselyariya Turkestanskogo General-Gubernatora’, Op.16 D.15, ‘S zapiskoyu poruchika Maeva, o merakh k uvelicheniyu russkogo naseleniya v Turkestanskoi Oblasti’, ll.3ob-4.

[35] Galuzo, Vooruzhenie russkikh pereselentsev, 7–8.

[36] ‘O merakh dlya razvitiya v Turkestanskom krae russkogo zemlevladeniya’, 6 Oct. 1872, TsGARUz ,F. I-1 Op.14 D.82 ll.3-4ob.

[37] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 169–77.

[38] Polovtsov, Otchet chinovnika osobykh poruchenii, 5–6; Rumyantsev ‘Usloviya kolonizatsiya Semirech'ya’, 209.

[39] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 7–9.

[40] ‘Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo Kraya’, PSZ, Sob.3 Tom VI (1886) No. 3814, 12 June 1886, 328, 338–39.

[41] Anon., ‘Kolonizatsiya Turkestana pri Grodekove’; Uyama, ‘A Particularist Empire’, 48.

[42] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 179–80; on the Andijan uprising, in which 20 Russian soldiers were killed by the followers of a Sufi leader, see Manz, ‘Central Asian Uprisings’; Babajanov, ‘Andizhanskoe vosstanie 1898 goda’; Morrison, ‘Sufism, Panislamism and Information Panic’.

[43] Shkapskii, ‘Pereselentsy i agrarnyi vopros’, 20–21; Geier, Po russkim seleniyam, 32–33.

[44] Sunderland, ‘Peasant Pioneering’, 899–901; Siegelbaum ,‘Those Elusive Scouts’.

[45] Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 147–63; an example of official promotional literature is Anon., Opisanie Semirechenskoi Oblasti, a mixture of hectoring advice and blurred photographs.

[46] Sunderland, ‘Peasant Pioneering’, 906; see also Siegelbaum, ‘Those Elusive Scouts’, 49–52.

[47] ‘Chislinets’, ‘Selenie Skobelevo (Perovskogo Uezda)’.

[48] Poznyakov, ‘Russkie poselki v Golodnoi Stepi’, 22.

[49] Brusina, Slavyane v Srednei Azii, 22–23.

[50] Kaufman, Pereseleniya, 260.

[51] Suleimenov, Agrarnyi Vopros, 124–25; Polovtsov, Otchet chinovnika, 145, 179–83; Demko, Russian Colonization, 110–11, 211.

[52] ‘Sart’ was a generic term used by the Russians for the settled population of Turkestan, Dungans are Chinese Muslims, Taranchi means ‘farmer’ and was a term used for Uighurs who had migrated to Turkestan from Kulja after the region was returned to China in 1881.

[53] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 25; Rumyantsev, ‘Usloviya kolonizatsiya Semirech'ya’, 209, 216

[54] Semenov, ‘Znachenie Rossii v kolonizatsionnom dvizhenii’, 368.

[55] Skornyakov ‘Iskusstvennoe oroshenie’, 249; a desyatina is 1.09 hectares.

[56] Vasil'ev Semirechenskaya Oblast’ kak koloniya.

[57] Petition from the settlers of Uspenskoe, Chu region, Pishpek District, 24 Aug. 1908, Russian State Historical Archive, St Petersburg (hereafter RGIA), F.1396, ‘Reviziya Senatora Palena K. K. Turkestanskogo Kraya v 1908–1910gg.’, Op.1 D.293 ll.18–19; Polovtsov, Otchet chinovnika, 79; Shkapskii, ‘Pereselentsy i agrarnyi vopros’, 20–21; Vorotnikova, Chuiskie pereselencheskie uchastki, 1–10.

[58] Maya Peterson suggests that the link between new irrigation projects and colonisation became explicit only in the very last years of Tsarist rule before the First World War, and that cultivating more cotton was the principal aim. Peterson, ‘Technologies of Rule’, 179. However, as it was only in this period that any significant new state irrigation projects were completed, and newly irrigated land was explicitly reserved for European settlers (who were notoriously bad at cultivating cotton), I believe the point still stands.

[59] ‘O vyrabotke pravil ob otvode chastnym litsam oroshennykh kazennykh zemel’ v Golodnoi Stepi, Samarkandskoi Oblasti’, 8 Jan. 1910, RGIA, F.426, ‘Otdel zemel'nykh uluchshenii Ministerstvo Zemlustroistvo’, Op.3 D.499 ll.13–15ob.

[60] ‘Vysochaishe Utverzhdennyya Vremmenyya Pravila o dobrovol'nom pereselenii sel'skikh obyvatelei i meshchan-zemledel'tsev’, PSZ, Sob.3 Tom XXIV No. 24701, 6 June 1904, 604; on the role of schismatics in Transcaucasia, see Breyfogle. Heretics and Colonizers.

[61] On the concentration of Ukrainians in Akmolinsk province, see Stebelsky, ‘Ukrainian Settlement Patterns’.

[62] Yuferev, ‘Opyt opredeleniya normy’, 301–05.

[63] Turchaninov, Itogi Pereselencheskago dvizheniya, 48–51.

[64] Vorotnikova, Chuiskie pereselencheskie uchastki, 22.

[65] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 283; Nikita, a Russian settler in the Chimkent district whose life story was narrated in considerable detail by Geyer, had first attempted to settle in Tomsk and was eventually impelled towards Turkestan by the 1891 drought. Geier, Po Russkim Seleniyam, 85–88.

[66] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 249–61; the text of the report states that were 78 settlements in Turkestan, but I am assuming that this is an error and that the tables are more accurate.

[67] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 346.

[68] Krivoshein, Zapiska Glavnoupravlyaushchago, 45–46.

[69] Bauer, Kappeler and Roth, Die Nationalitäten des Russischen Reiches, vol. B, 264, 366.

[70] Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 137.

[71] Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 135–42.

[72] Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society, 41–47, 57–68, 108–36, 170–76; Sahadeo, ‘Epidemic and Empire’.

[73] Sinitsyn, ‘Zametki po povodu nashikh pereselentsev’.

[74] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 162–63.

[75] Petition from 33 settlers of Bai-tyk, Chimkent, May 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.293 ll.7ob.

[76] Lt-Col Kalmykov to the Pahlen Commission, 26 Aug. 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.264 l.37.

[77] Chu, Pristav, to K. A. Molchanov, 21 Aug. 1910, TsGARKaz, F.184, ‘Zaveduyushchii pereslencheskim delom v Aulieatinskii uezde Syr-Dar'inskoi Oblasti’, Op.1 D.15 l.8ob.

[78] Poznyakov, ‘Russkie poselki v Golodnoi Stepi’, 4–13.

[79] Kaufman, Pereseleniya, 33–38; see, for instance, the petition from the peasants of the settlement of Munke, Karakistakskaya volost’, April 1909, asking for land to be taken from the Kazakhs of the neighbouring aul and given to them. RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.264 ll.53–54ob.

[80] Petition from Gali Akhmedovich Uzbekov and Akhmedbek Koibagarov, 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.262 ll.38ob, 43–45ob; on the use of Central Asian horses by the Russian military, see Ferret, ‘Des Chevaux pour l'empire’.

[81] Kotiukova, ‘Problemy rossiiskoi pereselencheskoi politiki’, 58; see also Morrison, ‘Sowing the Seed’, 11–15.

[82] Anon., Pereselenie za Ural v 1908 godu. The slip pasted on the front cover reads: ‘v Turkestan i na Kavkaz pereselenie ne razreshaetsya’ (in Turkestan and the Caucasus resettlement is not permitted).

[83] ‘Chlenu revizionnoi komissii kn. Vasil'chikov ot Pishpekskogo uezda’, 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.46 ll.21ob; similar sentiments appear in a petition from a settler in Kazalinsk, Timofei Antonovich Lutsenkov, 12 May 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.264 ll.23–24.

[84] Isaev, Pereselenie v russkom narodnom khozyaistve.

[85] Lykoshin, Pereselenie i Pereselentsy, 2, 67. Lykoshin would become one of Turkestan's best-known scholar-administrators, and was military governor of Samarkand province at the time of the 1916 revolt.

[86] Anon., ‘Ob usilenie russkago elementa v krae’

[87] Andreev-Berezovskii, ‘Zadachi Pastyrskago sluzheniya’.

[88] Geier, Po Russkim seleniyam, 33.

[89] Ibid., 34–35.

[90] Kaufman, Pereseleniya, 335; Ernazarov and Akbarov Istoriya Pechati Turkestana, 28, 80.

[91] Geier, ‘Sredne-Aziatskaya obshchestvennaya zhizn’.

[92] Geier, Po Russkim seleniyam, 23.

[93] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 406; Morrison, ‘Sowing the Seed of National Strife’.

[94] ‘Berotov’, Strana Svobodnykh Zemel’, 58.

[95] Gins, ‘Pereselenie i Kolonizatsiya’, ch. 1, 100.

[96] Graham, ‘Impressions of Seven Rivers Land’, 126.

[97] Kaufman, Pereseleniya, 9–10.

[98] Shkapskii, ‘Pereselentsy i agrarnyi vopros’, 19.

[99] Trofimov, ‘K svetu!’

[100] Nazaroff, Hunted through Central Asia, 139.

[101] Brainin and Sharifo, Vosstanie Kazakhov Semirech'ya v 1916 godu (Alma-Ata, 1935), 4, citing I. Stalin, ‘Marksizm i natsional'nyi-kolonial'nyi vopros', 1934, 71; Ryskulov, ‘Istoriya SSSR: Turkestan i Kazakhstan’; Galuzo, Turkestan-Koloniya; see Pianciola, ‘Décoloniser l'Asie Centrale?’.

[102] On this shift, see Tillett, The Great Friendship; see further Galuzo, Agrarnye otnosheniya na yuge Kazakhstana, which is of particular interest given the contrast with the same historian's work 30 years earlier.

[103] Weisensel, ‘Russian-Muslim Inter-Ethnic Relations’, 51, 57–59; Buttino, Revolyutsiya Naoborot, 45–57.

[104] Maltusynov, Agrarnyi vopros, 129–37; Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 70–73.

[105] Happel, Nomadische Lebenswelten, 76–94

[106] Nazaroff, Hunted through Central Asia, 139.

[107] Rumyantsev, ‘Usloviya kolonizatsiya Semirech'ya’, 212; bai means a wealthy individual.

[108] ‘Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo Kraya’, PSZ, Sob.3 Tom VI (1886) No. 3814, 12 June 1886, 328, 338–39; ‘Polozhenie ob upravlenii oblastei Akmolinskoi, Semipalatinskoi, Semirechenskoi, Ural'skoi i Turgaiskoi’, PSZ, Sob.3 Tom XI (1891) No. 7574, 143.

[109] Shkapskii, ‘Pereselentsy i agrarnyi vopros’, 22–24.

[110] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 154–58, 304–05.

[111] Ibid., 306–10, 313; Geier, Po Russkim seleniyam, 52–54.

[112] Petition from Alexei Mikhailovich Merzlyakov, n.d., RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.264 ll.25–28.

[113] Prigovory, 1910–11, TsGARKaz, F.184 Op.1 D.14, ‘o sporakh mezhdu zhitelyam selo Stavropolka i kazakhami sosednikh aulov’, ll.12–14, 46–48.

[114] Palen, Pereselencheskoe Delo, 306–10, 313.

[115] Petition from Efima Dorofeeva Knyshova, 10 Dec. 1908; letter from the Aulie-Ata D.C., 17 Nov. 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.262 ll.60–61.

[116] Petition from settlers of Belovodskaya division, 26 Oct. 1908, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.264 l.57.

[117] Morrison, ‘“White Todas”’.

[118] Bartol'd, ‘Pis'mo v redaktsiyu’.

[119] Rezolyutsiya, 24 Jan. 1896, TsGARKaz, Fond 149, ‘Mirovoi Sud'ya 1-go uchastka Aulie-Atinskogo Uyezda’, Op.1 D.16 ll.25–29.

[120] See Morrison, ‘Sufism, Panislamism, and Information Panic’, 272–74.

[121] ‘Zhaloba Krestyan Semirechenskoi Oblasti Pishpekskogo uyezda Belovodskoi volosti sela Novo-Troitskogo’, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.45 ll.238–39; ‘Proshenie doverennogo ot obshchestve kirgiz Saburovskoi volosti Beksultana’, 7 Oct. 1908, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.256 ll.169ob, http://zerrspiegel.orientphil.uni-halle.de/t380.html; ‘Prosheniya Tomu Akhinbekova, doverennogo ot naseleniya Dzhanopskoi, Chumyshlinskoi i dr. volostei Pishpekskogo uezda’, 20 June 1909, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.263 ll.164ob, http://zerrspiegel.orientphil.uni-halle.de/t1105.html; ‘Proshenie Kirgiz Aulieatinskogo uezda Biikul'skoi volosti No.7-i, Chuike Esengil'dieva i Biktura Bikbulatova’, Aug. 1908, RGIA, F.1396 Op.1 D.263 ll.187–88, http://zerrspiegel.orientphil.uni-halle.de/t1106.html (all last accessed 1 Oct. 2011).

[122] Timaev, ‘Gryadushee Turkestan’.

[123] Galuzo, ‘Vosstanie 1916 g.’, 56.

[124] Buttino, Revolyutsiya Naoborot, 72–73; Brower, ‘Kyrgyz Nomads and Russian Pioneers’.

[125] Galuzo, ‘Vosstanie 1916 g. v Srednei Azii’, 60.

[126] Veracini, ‘“Settler Colonialism”’.

[127] Robinson, ‘Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism’, 124–25.

[128] Veracini, ‘“Settler Colonialism”’, 319–20.

[129] Good, ‘Settler Colonialism’, 605–11; Veracini, Settler Colonialism, 71–72; Morrison, ‘“White Todas”’. This is a major theme of Ageron, Les Algeriens Musulmans et la France.

[130] Prochaska, Making Algeria French, 149–55.

[131] This was true even of the ‘aristocratic’ Kenya colony. Jackson, ‘Dangers to the Colony’.

[132] Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 153–65; Moore, ‘Colonial Manhood and Masculinities’.

[133] Steinwedel, ‘Resettling People, Unsettling the Empire’, 135–39.

[134] Riasanovsky, ‘The Problem of the Peasant’.

[135] Khalid, ‘Culture and Power’, 417.

[136] The literature on this is now extensive; see, in particular, Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire; Hirsch, Empire of Nations. The best Central Asian case studies are Edgar, Tribal Nation; Bergne, The Birth of Tajikistan.

[137] Yaroshevski, ‘Russian Regionalism in Turkestan’; Khalid, ‘Tashkent 1917’, 279–80; Buttino Revoliutsiia Naoborot, 204–09.

[138] See the review of Sunderland's Taming the Wild Field by V. I. Grachev and O. A. Rykin and response in Antropologicheskii Forum no. 6 (2007): 414–36; Timchenko, ‘Problema Prisoedinenie Kazakhstana k Rossii’.

[139] The now classic statement of this thesis is Hall, Civilising Subjects.

[140] Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society, 85.