The seismic colony: earthquakes, empire and technology in Russian-ruled Turkestan, 1887–1911

ABSTRACT

For much of Russia’s fractious history, the earth’s stability at least could be taken for granted. The imperial heartland was situated deep on the Eurasian tectonic plate, rarely experiencing fatal seismic activity. As the empire expanded, however, it acquired several of Eurasia’s most earthquake-prone regions. This interplay between colonization and seismic landscapes produced a novel entity: the ‘seismic colony’. With its occasional earthquakes and perpetual risks, the seismic colony posed a significant challenge to Russian rule, particularly in Turkestan. Earthquakes devastated infrastructure, gave lie to the civilizing mission and fostered social disorder, thereby undercutting the technologies of rule that the empire relied on to exploit the region. Engaging analytical tools from the history of environment and technology, this article details this threat and the developments it prompted from Russian experts and settlers, including first-response efforts, reconfigured construction practices, and the concretization of seismology as a science and infrastructure.

KEYWORDS:

• Earthquakes
• natural disasters
• environment
• science
• technology
• Central Asia

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the participants at the 2017 Central Eurasian Studies Society Conference and 2018 Princeton Russia and Eurasia Workshop for commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. In addition to the journal editors and reviewers, special thanks to Michael Gordin, Ekaterina Pravilova, William Whitham, and issue editors Julia Obertreis and Jonas van der Straeten. Zhanetta Broniusovna Karelina, Mariia Fedorovna Matveeva, Saule Sataeva and Enlik Tolykbaeva kindly assisted with several of the images.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Historians have debated the suitability of the term ‘colonialism’ to the Russian experience. The empire’s contiguous geography, the argument goes, blurred core and periphery to a degree that set Russia apart from its maritime rivals. While acknowledging the administrative and demographic consequences of Eurasian geography, like many scholars I employ ‘colony’ to recognize the metropole’s extractive relationship with Turkestan – a sense of distance reinforced by the peculiarity of seismicity. On imperial comparisons, see Lieven (2001).

2 Contemporary Almaty. All dates are O.S. Although Semirech’e belonged to Turkestan in the colloquial sense, it changed hands administratively between the General-Governorships of Turkestan (1867–82 and 1899–1917) and of the Steppes (1882–99) (Smirnova 2008, 116–119).

3 Document 133, in Agafonova (1960, 265).

4 In Russian, scholars have published descriptive narratives and sourcebooks (Demin 2005; Nurmagambetov 1999). It is my understanding that Douglas Northrop is undertaking a history of Eurasian earthquakes and Nicholas Breyfogle will address earthquakes in his environmental history of Lake Baikal (see also Breyfogle 2014).

5 For recent treatments of Soviet-era earthquakes, see Doose (2018) and Raab (2017).

6 A single footnote cannot do justice to the thriving conversation on environment and Russian expansion. Because the collection brings together many influential voices, a good starting point is Breyfogle (2018).

7 On the conquest of Central Asia’s phases and rationales, see Morrison (2020).

8 Leibin was the third generation of a Jewish photography dynasty. It was the elder Leibins who photographed Dostoevskii alongside Kazakh scholar Chokan Valikhanov in 1858; Proskurin (2001, 55).

9 I borrow the category ‘agent of empire’ from Peterson (2016).

10 Earthquake coverage bore a gendered focus on female disaster victims, especially mothers.

11 The prevalence of stone architecture was partially a consequence of conservationist forestry laws; Obzor Semirechenskoi oblasti za 1890 god 1891 (OSO)(1890), 104.

12 OSO (1887, 52, 40, 73).

13 OSO (1887, 18).

14 OSO (1887, 51). Another 994 homes fell elsewhere in the oblast'.

15 OSO (1887, 56, 52). Initially light tremors prompted residents to run outdoors.

16 OSO (1887, 52).

17 OSO (1885, 58–59).

18 The term sart denoted settled Central Asians.

19 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Semirechenskago Oblastnogo Komiteta po okazaniiu pomoshchi postradavshemu ot zemletriaseniia 22-go dekabria 1910 goda naseleniiu Semirechesnkoi oblasti (Otchet) 1912, 9.

20 Otchet (1912, 9).

21 OSO (1887, 53). I place “Kyrgyz” in scare quotes to reflect the ethnonym’s ambiguity. The moniker could refer to Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other groups.

22 Others relocated to the circus, and in Andizhan, survivors decamped to railway carts (“Zemletriasenie v Andizhane” 1902, 1028).

23 Years prior, one of the report’s authors noted the resilience of some Caucasian mosques (Veber 1903, 10).

24 OSO (1887, 50).

25 Otchet (1912, 4).

26 Rumours that nearby Przheval’sk was buried also proved unfounded; “Velichaishee zemletriasenie v Rossii” (1911): 18.

27 Vernyi’s residents issued a rebuttal; “Neskol’ko slov naschet ‘Pravdy o Vernom’” (1911).

28 “Proshenie A. S. Leibina o vyezde iz g. Vernogo,” published in Grinberg (2001, 128). Abram sought an exemption from the law that confined Jewish relocation to the Pale of Settlement, where he would feel himself an “exile”; “Otkaz v pros'be A. S. Leibina,” published in Grinberg (2001, 130).

29 OSO (1911, ii–iii; 1913, ii–iii).

30 OSO (1887, 52).

31 OSO (1887, 53–55).

32 OSO (1888, 20, 56).

33 For the full membership list, see Otchet (1912, 53–55).

34 OSO (1911, 80).

35 OSO (1911, 79–82).

36 OSO (1911, 81–83; 1912, 64).

37 OSO (1911, 83).

38 Otchet (1912, 64, 66, 79).

39 Otchet (1912, 14).

40 Although this instance of ‘international aid’ is noteworthy, press attention on Turkestan’s earthquakes was global (e.g., “Earthquake in Asia, Hundreds Killed” 1911; “The Earthquake in Central Asia” 1911).

41 OSO (1887, 55).

42 For a brief history of the cathedral and its creators, see “O khrame,” in Voznesenskii kafedral’nyi sobor. Retrieved January 20, 2020, from https://cathedral.kz/ru/pages/about-the-temple.

43 A. Zenkov, “Seismicheskie trebovaniia, kotorym dolzhny udovletvoriat' postroiki, sooruzhaemye v mestnostiakh, podverzhennykh zemletriaseniam,” published in Turekulov and Turekulov (2001, 141–142; also 142–147).

44 Otchet (1912, 94).

45 Before Russian settlement in Semirech’e, forests were important for local production and pasturing, but there was no large-scale forestry (Baizakov 2014, 65).

46 OSO (1887, 70).

47 OSO (1887, 66–67).

48 OSO (1887, 68, 72).

49 Otchet (1912, 23).

50 By the early twentieth century, Semirech’e’s forest cover hovered at 1.4% (Masal’skii 1913, 518). More work is necessary to determine the exact impact of earthquakes on Central Asia’s shrinking forests.

51 See also the special issue “Witness to Disaster: Earthquakes and Expertise in Comparative Perspective.” Science in Context 25/1 (2012): 1–154.

52 Mushketov (1899, v–vi).

53 (Mushketov 1899, v-vi).

54 Documents 114–116 and 118–119, published in Agafonova (1960, 215–219, 229–230).

55 Document 107, published in Agafonova (1960, 209).

56 Document 116, published in Agafonova (1960, 219–220).

57 B. B. Golitsyn, “Novaia organizatsiia seismicheskoi sluzhby v Rossii,” published in Bonchkovskii (1960, 417–418).

58 B. B. Golitsyn, “Zemletriasenie 3–4 ianvaria 1911 goda,” published in Bonchkovskii (1960, 374).

59 For example, an 1893 earthquake in the Persian city of Quchan sent Persian subjects fleeing across the porous border to Ashgabat. General Lieutenant Aleksei Nikolaevich Kuropatkin ordered a team of doctors to Quchan, where they helped victims and reported on the damage (Tsimbalenko 1899, 13). In the Russian Caucasus, Armenians who had fled persecution in the Ottoman Empire became principal victims of an 1899 earthquake (Mushketov 1903, x).