RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA || INTRODUCTION: The Russian Presence in Central Asia

Canadian Slavonic Papers

INTRODUCTION: The Russian Presence in Central AsiaAuthor(s): GEOFFREY WHEELERSource: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 17, No. 2/3, RUSSIANAND SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA (Summer and Fall, 1975), pp. 189-201Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40866865 .

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INTRODUCTION

The Russian Presence in Central Asia

GEOFFREY WHEELER

The establishment of the Russian presence in what is now known to the world as Soviet Central Asia* can be divided into four phases. It began in the first half of the eighteenth century with the gradual annexation and pacification of the Kazakh steppe adjoining western Siberia. The second phase started in the 1850's when Russian forces advanced from the south of the steppe to the capture of Tashkent and the establishment there of the governorate-general of Turkestan. The third phase lasting from 1868 to 1884 saw the reduction of Bukhara and Khiva to a state of vassalage, the annexation of the khanate of Kokand and the subjugation of the Turkmens of Transcaspia, the most warlike and redoubtable element in the whole region. The fourth and final phase, which is still continuing, was the sovietization of the region following the Revolution of 1917 and its administrative reorganization into the existing Soviet Socialist Republics forming integral parts of the Soviet Union. The purpose of the present introductory essay is to sketch in broad outline the problems which have confronted the tsarist and Soviet regimes during these four phases.

The Russians began their southward advance into Central Asia without any clear idea of their ultimate objective or of the problems they would encounter. The first phase of the advance, the annexation of the Kazakh steppe, lasted over a century. The Kazakhs had no modern weapons or military organization, but their mobility and elusive- ness made them intractable enemies. Being nomads they had no towns or other settled habitations which could be captured and used as points of vantage. During the second and third phases, in which the Russians brought the rest of the region under their direct or indirect control, they encountered little serious resistance except from the Turkmens in the southwest. The settled districts offered better commercial and economic prospects than the Kazakh steppe, and since they abutted directly on Iran and Afghanistan, their annexation to Russia served the purpose of preempting suspected British designs on Central Asia.

Some Western writers tend to give the impression that the Soviet assumption of power in Central Asia after 1917 was not, as it has been described above, a phase in the establishment of the Russian presence, but the start of a completely new era. It seems unlikely that Asian

* For the purpose of this introduction this term should be taken as including the five SSRs of Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.



190 REVUE CANADIENNE DES SLAVISTES

historians of the future will see the matter in this light. From the point of view of the Muslim population which came under direct Rus- sian rule, the great climacteric was that their destinies now passed out of the hands of admittedly capricious native rulers into the less familiar and unpredictable hands of people of alien race and culture. The Soviet take-over did not radically change this situation. In spite of marked differences in ideology and style of government, both regimes have been confronted with the same basic problem - how to derive the maximum advantage for the Russian or Soviet state as a whole from a strategically vulnerable region acquired by conquest and annexation, with the cooperation, or at least without the active opposition, of a population ethnically distinct and culturally non-conformist.

Although the methods employed by the two Russian regimes have been very different, it is noteworthy that the tsarist regime was characterized by certain positive and negative features which paved the way for the much more dynamic and materially progressive methods adopted by its Soviet successor. On the positive side may be mentioned the securing of the Iranian, Afghan and Chinese frontiers and the establishment of Russian influence in the Chinese province of Sin- kiang; the ruthless subjugation of the only really bellicose and intran- sigent element in the region, the Turkmens of Transcaspia; and the introduction of a non-Asian settler population of over two million. On the negative side there was the absence of four important features char- acteristic of most other colonial administrations: locally recruited military formations equipped with and trained in the use of modern weapons; a nucleus of native personnel trained in clerical and administrative duties; higher educational establishments; and the prospect of eventual self-government. But for these circumstances the Soviet take- over might well have proved impracticable. The presence of well trained and equipped native armed forces combined with an educated native élite experienced in administration and imbued with nationalist ideas would have confronted the new regime with resistance far more serious than that opposed to the original tsarist invading forces. In the event, all that the Red Army had to cope with was the uncoordinated resistance of ill-equipped and unorganized guerrillas only sporadically supported by a bewildered and starving population.

The political aims of the tsarist regime in acquiring the steppe region and Turkestan were not clear-cut and no plans for the political future of the indigenous population were ever formulated. Nor was local pressure for the formulation of such plans ever exercised, mainly because universities, the classical breeding grounds of nationalist movements elsewhere, did not exist. Social and administrative reforms advo- cated by the Senate Commission of 1908-09, which might have paved the way for such movements, were never put into operation. The



THE RUSSIAN PRESENCE IN CENTRAL ASIA 191

administration was an essentially military one, unconcerned with political and social problems, and liberal-minded Russian educationalists and scholars such as Il'minskii and Nalivkin thought more in terms of social welfare, modernized education and the eventual assimilation of the Muslims into a Greater Russia than of ultimate political self- determination. Probably the nearest the tsarist government ever got to attributing any political significance to the indigenous population of Central Asia was the inclusion of ten Muslim deputies (four from the steppe region and six from Turkestan) in the second Duma of 1907; but these were dropped from the third Duma later in the same year.

Unlike its predecessor, the Soviet regime quickly formulated detailed and ambitious plans for the region's political future. The so-called national movements which sprang up during the chaos of the Civil War were mere mushroom growths: their leaders had little political under- standing and no administrative experience; and they attracted no significant material support from either the White Russians or from the adjoining Muslim countries. The Soviet government had no intention of fostering these movements; instead it proposed to treat what was regarded as the incipient disease of nationalism by homeopathic methods, that is, the arbitrary creation of "nations" and "nation-states" where none had existed before. In the case of Central Asia this amounted to the substitution of the idea of "nation" for the various tribal, clan and extended family groupings. The Soviet plan bore some resemblance to that conceived by the Western powers in dealing with the situation in the Middle East, where the breakup of the Ottoman empire had left the former Arab provinces and protectorates without effective government and where nationalism was in full cry. But whereas the newly created Arab states were designed to, and did eventually become independent political units with international status, the Central Asian republics were conceived as, and have in fact remained, integral parts of the Soviet Union whose Asian frontiers coincide precisely with those of the tsarist empire.

The first comprehensive and practical step towards the implementa- tion of the "nationalities policy" was the so-called national delimitation of 1924 which resulted in the territorial re-division of the former governorates-general of the steppe region and Turkestan, together with the former states of Bukhara and Khiva, into the existing five republics. Each of these was endowed with much of the panoply of the sovereign nation-state but with none of its reality. Central control over all human activities throughout the region has from the beginning been assured by the creation in each republic of a Communist Party affiliated to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The application of the Soviet nationalities policy in Central Asia has always been strongly criticized in the West on the grounds that it was



192 CANADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS

imposed on the people without their consent, and that it was merely a device enabling Moscow to "divide and rule" while ostensibly adhering to the communist principle of self-determination. Viewed objectively, however, and without regard to the high-sounding moral and ethical arguments advanced by supporters and opponents of the Soviet regime, it can also be seen as a practical expedient for restoring and maintaining law and order and preserving the integrity öf the Russian state. The Soviet regime has not been the first to claim moral justification for a policy prompted by material considerations.

But original, ingenious and temporarily effective though the nationalities policy may have been, the Soviet claim that it constitutes a lasting solution to the "national problem" is not yet substantiated. Islamic culture has proved unexpectedly resistant. The physical and cultural isola- tion in which the Soviet regime was able to conduct its experiment for over four decades is no longer proof against the infiltration of new ideas and ambitions among a Muslim population which, while retaining most of its own culture, has made notable progress in modern education, technical know-how and administrative experience.

Ever since their military conquest of the region and their annexation of the greater part of it, the Russians have been obsessed with its stra- tegic vulnerability. They have always felt their presence to be threat- ened from at least one quarter. During most of the nineteenth century they regarded Britain as a dangerous rival not only in Iran and Afghan- istan, but at least commercially, if not politically, in the Central Asian khanates. In spite of China's military weakness and political disarray, the addition of a new 1,800-mile frontier with the Chinese province of Sinkiang greatly increased the apprehension with which tsarist Russia had always regarded her neighbour. Finally, the Russians had little confidence in the loyalty of their new Turkic and Iranian subjects, regarding them as dangerously susceptible to Pan-Turkic and Pan- Islamic influence. However lacking in substance these fears may have been, they were sincerely felt and caused the tsarist regime to take certain preventive measures. These included the retention in Central Asia of a garrison out of all proportion to the needs of internal security; occasional preemptive strikes such as the temporary occupation of parts of China and Iran; and the withholding from the local population of any kind of military training either by the raising of locally recruited military formations or by conscription in the Russian armed forces. These measures had the effect of: 1) preventing any serious revolt until 1916 when, as a result of the war with Germany, the Russian garrison was depleted; and of: 2) instilling a lasting fear of Russia in adjacent countries.

For the Soviet regime the problem of the security of its Central Asian frontiers has assumed even greater proportions than for its predecessor.




The same broad principles involving the intimidation of neighbouring countries and the exclusion of the local population from direct and responsible participation in defence have been followed, albeit with some notable difference in method. The large garrison has remained and recently has been greatly increased, and frontier control and the troops involved in it are now the separate responsibility of the Com- mittee of State Security (KGB). After 1924 some not very serious attempts were made to form locally recruited national units, but these were disbanded in the 1930's and for the first time the male population was made liable for compulsory military service in the Soviet armed forces.

For many years after the Revolution the spectre of aggression by Western powers was kept before the eyes of the people of Central Asia in common with the rest of the Soviet population. Although this spectre has not been allowed to disappear from view, it has been overshadowed for over ten years by that of China. Whatever may be the Soviet assessment of Chinese military intentions and capability, there can be no doubt that as far as Soviet Asia and particularly Central Asia is concerned, China is regarded now as the Soviet Union's foremost military as well as political enemy. The Central Asian frontier is felt to be particularly vulnerable since it is straddled by a large, more or less homogeneous, Muslim population whose attitude in the event of Sino- Soviet hostilities might result in serious complications.

Cultural problems may be taken as embracing what M. Ginsberg has described as that "complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." These problems have always occupied a prominent, and during the Soviet regime a dominant, place in Russian thinking on Central Asia. This is because the modernization of the region's culture has seemed to them an essential preliminary to the merging of its people with the Russian or Soviet people as a whole. The policies of the tsarist regime were affected to a certain extent by a sense of cultural mission; in principle the Russians have always been anxious to confer the benefits of their culture on others. But in cultural matters the administration in Central Asia lacked both funds and initiative, and unlike the British administration in India, it was opposed to enlisting the services of missionaries.

The official tsarist attitude towards Islamic culture was that it was effete and militated against any kind of modern progress. Apart from some limitation of Islamic judicial authority, coercion was ruled out; the prevailing view being that, faced with the greatly superior Russian culture, Islamic ideology, traditions and way of life would inevitably wither away. No attempt was made to reform or develop the existing Muslim educational system. The only counter-attractions offered were



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the unpopular "Russo-native" schools and the provision of a small quota for Muslims in the schools designed for the rapidly growing non-Muslim settler population. No official aid or encouragement was given to the successful and popular "New Method" schools set up by the Jadids, the progressive Muslim reformist movement founded at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In public instruction the tsarist regime made relatively little impact: by 1917 the average literacy rate had not amounted to more than 2 per cent, and this was almost confined to the larger towns; and there was not a single university or other higher educational establishment. On the other hand, much had been done in the modernization of communications and in urban development.

Communists see culture as composed of two parts: what they call "spiritual culture," which refers to "the state of education, knowledge, art and other forms of social consciousness whose development is con- ditioned by the material circumstances of social life"; and "material culture," which relates to "the state of productive forces and the work habits of people." The Soviet regime agreed with the tsarist regime's contemptuous assessment of Islamic culture, but so far from leaving it to die of inanition, they proposed to develop a new "spiritual culture" on modern and secular lines and to remove, by force where necessary, everything which in their view interfered with "material culture."

If modernization is taken to mean the adoption of European as distinct from Asian ways in respect of social grouping, public health, public instruction, literature and the arts, then the effect of the Soviet campaign of cultural regimentation must be seen as greater in such fields as education and technical training than in those independent Muslim countries which have conducted modernization campaigns on similar lines. How much nearer the changes imposed by the Soviet regime have brought realization of the great Russian dream of an all-embracing Russo-Muslim symbiosis is another matter. Given the necessary knowledge and know-how, the Muslim world as a whole has shown itself quite ready to accept most of the appurtenances of Western civilization and has no objection to the substitution of the "nation" for tribal and kin groups. Education on modern and even mainly secular lines has been successfully introduced by national governments in most independent Muslim states, and although they were imposed by an alien regime, similar changes have been accepted philosophically by the Muslims of Central Asia. Even much more drastic measures such as the wholesale closure of mosques, the embargo on pilgrimage and the abandonment of the Arabic script were put through without arousing active opposition. But although these changes have undoubtedly had a considerable mod- ernizing effect on work habits and productivity, they have not brought any lessening of the aloofness with which the Muslims regard the




Russian and other non-Asian settlers in their midst. Having grown accustomed to the only form of grouping now allowed them (the nation), the Muslims see no need to "draw closer" to the Russians.

In such fields as education, drama, cinema and broadcasting the Muslims have responded to Soviet regimentation somewhat enthusias- tically. In others such as literature, painting and sculpture, the response has been reluctant and perfunctory. Interference in, and restrictions on, social and religious practices have met with passive but nonetheless determined resistance, and many ways have been found of circumventing them. The continuation of such admittedly barbarous practices as bride-price, levirate, child marriage and marriage by abduction, many of which are dying out in independent Muslim countries, is said to be due more to an obstinate determination to cling to familiar relics of the past than to belief in their merits.

The effect of the far-reaching language reforms is of outstanding interest. Like the Kemalists in Turkey, the Soviets believed that the retention of the Arabic script was a fundamental obstacle to the modernization at which they were aiming: its complications impeded education and the development of languages to suit modern scientific requirements; and it was regarded as a formidable symbol of the Islamic civilization stigmatized as outdated and as militating against modern progress. Soviet linguistic policy has undergone considerable modifica- tion since it was first formulated, but its broad aims still stand: the development of national languages equipped with phonetic alphabets and capable of keeping pace with modern scientific requirements; and the adoption of Russian as a "second mother tongue." For a long time the impression was given, or at any rate received, that national languages would remain in a category subordinate to that of Russian, and would eventually be phased out altogether. Since the Twenty-second Party Congress in 1962, however, there have been indications that this position is changing - the proportion of books and periodicals published in national languages rather than in Russian is increasing. Most remarkable of all is the appearance in Uzbek and other Central Asian languages of the first volumes of multi-volume encyclopaedias. These range over every conceivable scientific subject and show clearly that the national languages have reached a stage where they can be used as the media for higher scientific instruction. This is more than can be said of the national language of any other Muslim country except Turkey. Taken with other indications this development seems to suggest that from being among the most backward of the Muslim world fifty years ago, the Soviet Central Asian people are now at least on the way to becoming the most advanced. Their modernization was initiated by the Soviet-Russian regime, but it now has developed a momentum of its own.




The tsarist Russians were well aware of the economic potentiality of Central Asia long before they began to establish their presence there. They thought mainly in terms of agriculture and two-way trade, but they also knew of the existence in the steppe region of considerable deposits of coal, copper, gold, silver and lead. From the Russian point of view, it was the development of agriculture which offered the best prospects. The exploitation of the mineral resources began towards the end of the eighteenth century during the pacification of the Kazakh steppe and was later extended on a minor scale to the settled districts of Turkestan. But during the whole course of the tsarist regime, mineral exploitation was primitive and limited in scope owing largely to lack of capital investment and an adequate labour force.

At the time of the conquest agriculture was mainly concerned with subsistence crops, exports being practically confined to silk and cotton. Once the Russian presence was established, cotton became and remained the region's chief economic asset. By 1911 Central Asian cotton growing had been so far expanded that it provided over half of Russia's total requirements. The growth and marketing of other crops such as silk, cereals and fruit was also developed, and several new crops such as wine grapes and beets were also introduced successfully. Apart from state provided aids to the economy like irrigation works, communications and a few projects such as forestry, the financing and development of the agricultural economy was left to private enterprise, of which there was no lack. The government provided encouragement in the form of special customs tariffs and financial credits. It is noteworthy, however, that the system of providing financial credits for the cotton industry has been severely criticized by Soviet economists, probably with justification.

When it is remembered that the tsarist presence in the cultivated areas lasted barely fifty years, the economic progress registered must be seen as considerable. It was a tribute to Russian planning and experimentation, and it undoubtedly benefited the local population as well as the metropolitan power. In the pasturelands of the steppe region where the Russian presence had been established for over a century, much less was achieved. The once thriving animal husbandry of the Kazakhs was severely hit by the influx of over one-and-a-half million non-Asian peasant settlers who were given priority over the native herdsmen and were allowed to encroach on their grazing land. It was only just before the Revolution that this situation began to improve but animal husbandry was doomed to suffer almost total ruin during the collectivization period of 1929 to 1932.

Soviet publicists have always expressed the view that whatever economic advance took place during the tsarist regime was due not to the policies and action of the government but to the presence of, and fra-




ternal assistance provided by, the Russian people. This, of course, is merely a propaganda gimmick designed to justify the Soviet seizure of power and to gloss over the fact that after the chaos and famine brought about by the Revolution between 1918 and 1921, the economy could only be saved from total disaster by the New Economic Policy which amounted to a temporary reversion to the tsarist policy of encouraging private enterprise. In Central Asia more than elsewhere in the Union, the NEP was more than a practical economic necessity. Although of short duration, it served to mitigate the feeling of desperation engend- ered by the first three years of the Revolution and thus to create a more favourable atmosphere for the achievement of the ultimate aims of the new regime. In particular, it provided much needed supplies of grain for the famine stricken areas.

The economic problems facing the Soviet regime were infinitely greater than those of its predecessor. From being merely a useful sup- plement to Russia's economy, the natural resources of Central Asia had now become of vital importance, especially cotton and to a minor extent some other commodities. The new regime was also committed to new and still unproven social and economic methods which it proposed to apply to a once potentially prosperous but now impoverished population. Rightly or wrongly, too, it considered itself to be under constant threat from beyond its borders.

Any survey of economic development in Soviet Central Asia nec- essarily falls into two periods separated by World War II. During the first period the Soviet regime was concerned primarily with agriculture and with returning the region to its pre-Revolution function as a source of raw materials. It was a period characterized by inefficiency and excessive ruthlessness, as well as dogged determination. Collectivization created widespread distress and discontent, particularly in Kazakhstan where it played havoc with animal husbandry. But by 1937 there were signs of recovery: gross production of cotton reached 70 per cent of the 1913 level; and it was said to have increased twelve-fold by i 940. A considerable number of the Muslim workers had been drawn into the new state industries, if only in the lower grades of employment.

It was in the period following the war that the great expansion of the Central Asian economy began to take place, particularly in industrialization. Western assessments of developments up to 1940 had varied according to the political opinions of economists: those of the Left tended to take Soviet assessments at their face value, while those of the Right were apt to dismiss these as mere propaganda and to pre- dict imminent collapse. The prevailing belief, and the one which col- oured all anti-Soviet propaganda, was that not only were Soviet motives and methods objectionable but that their material achievements were negligible.




The first objective and authoritative report of the Central Asian economy made public in the West was that produced in 1957 by the Research and Planning Division of the Economic Commission for Europe under the title of Regional Economic Policy in the Soviet Union: The Case of Central Asia. This report expressed a cautiously favourable assessment of Central Asia's economic progress and potentialities. It also discounted by implication much of the Soviet eulogistic propaganda and was therefore strongly criticized in the USSR. By now it is more or less generally accepted that in the Central Asian economy as a whole progress during the past twenty-five years has been remarkable, and this includes not only the cotton industry, light industry and the coal, oil and gas industries, but also the related fields of irrigation, hydroelectric energy and consequently, the standard of living. This is not simply the result of specifically Soviet methods, but rather of the Russian presence which, with one brief hiatus, has been steadily extended and consolidated during the past two centuries. It is true, however, that the recent acceleration of the expansion of Central Asia's economy, particularly in respect of industrialization, is the result of Soviet investment and Soviet methods, the latter including the introduction of large numbers of skilled Russian and other non-native workers in order to move industrial production onto higher levels.

During the nineteenth century the establishment of the Russian presence in Central Asia excited great interest in the outside world, particularly in Britain and British India. By 1917 this interest had almost evaporated, and it is only comparatively recently that it has shown signs of revival. As far as the academic world is concerned Central Asia has always tended to fall neatly between the two schools of Oriental and Slavonic studies and in consequence has been largely ignored.

The general impression derived from information reaching Western governments in the early years of the Revolution was of a once prosperous and tolerantly governed region which had passed into the hands of a totalitarian, ruthless and also inefficient regime. It was widely supposed that its economy was ruined beyond recovery, that the Muslim population was seething with discontent and that Soviet rule would never survive a second world war. This appreciation, for which there was considerable justification, seemed to be confirmed by reports received in the 193O's of nationalist movements and of the purges and execu- tions which followed their disclosure. Little account was taken of Soviet dynamism or of the tendency of the Muslim population to con- form rather than to resist.

In any event, World War II strengthened rather than weakened the Soviet position in Central Asia. Conditions there were much less severe than in the western part of the USSR, and the region's embryo industries benefited from the plants and trained personnel moved into it



THE RUSSÏAN PRESENCE IN CENTRAL ASIA 199

from the war zone. After the war economic and living conditions began to improve steadily. But with the deterioration of East-West relations a propaganda war was inevitable. The West seized on what were for a time justifiably believed to be the deplorable political and economic conditions in Central Asia as a propaganda theme likely to foster discontent among the Muslim people of the region, and also to counter Soviet propaganda directed towards the uncommitted countries of South and Southwest Asia. Any effect which Western propaganda may have had in keeping alive national consciousness in Central Asia was partly negated by the fact that it also gave the fallacious impression that the West was intent on liberating the Muslim population from the Soviet yoke. Insistence on the bad and worsening economic and living conditions continued long after the uncommitted countries had become aware that these conditions were improving and were in some instances better than their own.

During the 1950's some attempts were made both in Europe and in the United States to move away from the wishful thinking inseparable from propaganda into the field of dispassionate enquiry. Such enquiry inevitably led to the conclusion that the truth probably lay somewhere between the Western picture of stagnation, muddle, deprivation and non-cooperation and the sharply contrasting picture painted by Soviet propaganda of universal "progress," prosperity and contentment. Reac- tions to this conclusion and to the small amount of literature which expressed it were varied. In general, it was subscribed to by those Western government departments which were concerned with fact rather than fancy and which had access to untainted sources of information. In other quarters, however, and especially in those which relied on refugee sources, the conclusion that not only was material progress being made in matters affecting the economy, but that living conditions were steadily improving met with incredulity amounting at times to suspicion.

Particularly interesting was the Soviet reaction to this Western attempt to arrive at the facts of their Central Asian experiment. Far from being gratified at the long-postponed recognition of their positive achievements, the Soviet authorities condemned it as a new and sinister propaganda technique designed to impart an air of verisimilitude to continuing criticism of Soviet policies and methods by lending to it an atmosphere of spurious objectivity. Illogical though this assumption may seem, it is not altogether surprising. So long as Western propaganda about conditions in Central Asia continued to discount what most uncommitted Asian countries had come to accept as the facts of Soviet material progress, the Russians did not regard it as particularly dangerous. What they objected to was that amalgam of the positive and the negative in which the scientific analysis of conditions prevailing in



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any colonial administration is bound to result. The fact that theirs is the only Asian colonial administration still in existence naturally makes the Russians allergic to any close study of it.

The close association of Central Asia with propaganda and the exag- gerated claims and counterclaims made by supporters and opponents of the present regime have tended to keep the region outside the pale of serious academic study, and thus to obscure its great and growing importance. This importance lies, perhaps, most of all in the novelty of the experiment being conducted there. Although this experiment was only made possible by the conquest, annexation and development carried out by the previous regime on more or less stereotyped imperial lines, it has since displayed a combination of characteristics of which there is no precedent in the history of imperialism. These characteristics include the synthetic creation of allegedly sovereign states geared to the centre by an all-powerful instrument of control - the Communist Party; universal conscription in the Soviet armed forces as distinct from the creation of locally recruited military formations; public instruction ranging from compulsory primary to higher and technical education on modern lines; the systematization and modernization of national languages; the integration of the economy into the national economy of the metropolitan power; and the segregation of the local population from the outside world. The introduction of these innovations has been accompanied by social and cultural regimentation, purges and execu- tions, and by many ill-conceived social, economic and agricultural projects. But during the past twenty-five years these have been succeeded by much positive achievement and by the creation of living conditions and social security which compare favourably with those prevailing in many, if not most, countries of South and Southwest Asia.

The fact that, in spite of many miscalculations and setbacks and of confident Western predictions of imminent collapse, the Soviet experiment in Central Asia has endured for fifty years is significant. But it is not conclusive, for recently certain new factors have supervened which were not foreseen by the early Soviet planners: the burgeoning in the artificially created republics of a genuine national individuality; the considerable material progress now being registered under "bourgeois nationalist" governments in adjoining independent Muslim states; and the emergence of China as a powerful and potentially hostile neighbour likely to prove a pole of attraction for the people not only of Central Asia but also of the whole Asian Third World. It is not hard to see that the appearance of these relatively new factors adds greatly to the importance of Central Asia as an object of close and cumulative study, which it is hoped the present symposium will serve to promote.




RÉSUMÉ/ ABSTRACT

The Russian Presence in Central Asia

La présence russe en Asie centrale a commencé de s'établir au dix- huitième siècle sous le régime tsariste par l'avance des troupes russes de Sibérie occidentale dans les territoires qui constituent aujourd'hui le Kazakhstan. En 1884 les russes avaient déjà occupé les régions habitées du Turkestan et s'étaient assuré le contrôle de ce qui est maintenant l'Asie centrale soviétique. Sous l'administration tsariste, le développe- ment de ces régions fut considérable sur le plan économique, nul sur le plan politique et assez limité sur le plan culturel. Mais ce fut l'assujet- tissement tsariste qui rendit possible la prise de pouvoir soviétique après la révolution.

Le régime soviétique constitue une phase nouvelle de la présence russe en Asie centrale, mais non pas une époque entièrement nouvelle. Les deux régimes ont eu à faire face aux mêmes problèmes politiques, militaires, culturels et économiques, mais le régime soviétique a adopté des méthodes beaucoup plus directes et énergiques. Il en est résulté, en particulier, un développement considérable de l'économie, ainsi qu'un auroissement notable du niveau de vie.

Les méthodes soviétiques d'administration de l'Asie centrale diffèrent à bien des égards des méthodes impériales. Parmi les différences essen- tielles, il faut noter la création de républiques, dites souveraines, orien- tées vers le centre par l'intermédiaire du tout puissant parti commu- niste; la conscription universelle de la population mâle dans les forces armées métropolitaines; le grand essor de l'éducation primaire, secon- daire, supérieure et technique; et le développement des langues natio- nales. Mais certains facteurs nouveaux, tels que l'apparition inattendue, au sein de ces républiques crées artificiellement, d'une véritable indivi- dualité nationale, ainsi que la présence d'une Chine, devenue puissante et potentiellement hostile, tout au long des 1800 milles de la frontière sino-soviétique du Sinkiang, commencent à créer des doutes quant à l'avenir de l'Asie centrale sous le régime soviétique.

G. W.



Documents

RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA || INTRODUCTION: The Russian Presence in Central Asia