The Colonial System of Power in Turkistan

The Colonial System of Power in Turkistan
Author(s): Nadira A. Abdurakhimova

Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Special Issue:
Nationalism and the Colonial Legacy in the Middle East and Central Asia (May, 2002), pp.
239-262
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 34 (2002), 239-262. Printed in the United States of America
Nadira A. Abdurakhimova
THE COLONIAL SYSTEM OF POWER

IN TURKISTAN
The history of Turkistan in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century has
repeatedly attracted the attention of social scientists. It is widely recognized that the
tendency of most Soviet authors was to consider this history under the rubric of "the
progressive consequences of annexation to Russia," at a time when the main historio-
graphical trend was to investigate the history of revolutions, movements of the work-
ing class and peasants, riots among the people, and national-liberation movements.
Under the same rubric, during a rather long period until the end of the 1980s, many
problems of local Turkistan society were written about. As a result of this approach,
some questions remained unasked-questions that challenged the officially mandated
proposition that "despite tsarist colonialism, the annexation of non-Russian peoples to
Russia was a progressive reality." In particular, one of these questions has to do with
the history of the state that governed the territory of Turkistan in the colonial and
post-colonial periods.
The aim of this article is to illuminate the main principles underpinning the organi-
zation of the colonial system of power in Turkistan in the second half of the 19th and
the early 20th century, to reveal the structure of the system and how it changed over
time, to trace the directions in which it developed, and to explore the characteristic
features of the military-administrative methods by which Turkistan was governed. I
will also show how novel the political situation was in 1917, when a grass-roots
movement for Turkistan's autonomy began. This article was written using material in
the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Russian State Military-
Historical Archive, the published accounts of senatorial inquiries and reform programs
for Turkistan, and the available literature.
The second half of the 19th century was a time of drastic changes in the lives of
the people of Central Asia. As a result of tsarist military action, they were enmeshed
in a new system of juridical, political, and socio-economic relations that reduced them,
initially, to so many provinces of Russia, on which they were made dependent. Intro-
duced by force, these relations undermined the previous social system in the region
and its own potential for future development on a national basis. A phased juridical
legalization of the new ties between Russia and Central Asia took place against the
Nadira A. Abdurakhimova is Professor, Faculty of History, National University of Uzbekistan, Tashkent

700 011, Uzbekistan; e-mail: ec@ec.tashkent.su.
? 2002 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/02 $9.50
240 Nadira A. Abdurakhimova
background of the occupation of Kokand khanate, achieved through the development

of colonial institutions of power and a system of administration that conceived the
relationship as one pairing metropolis and colony, center and periphery.
In March 1865, by decree of the ruling senate,' Turkistan district was created from
all the territories bordering the Central Asia possessions from the Aral Sea to Issyk
Kul Lake, and was included under the Orenburg governorate. The system of internal
administrative and territorial division was adjusted to accommodate military needs,
and it was divided into military territorial units. The city of Aralsk, Fort Number 1
(later renamed Kazalinsk), and Perovsk (Kizil-Orda) formed the right front. The center
included the Turkistan and Chimkent areas. The cities of Aulie-Ata, Merkeh, and
Pishpek were on the left front. Upon the occupation of Tashkent by the tsar's forces,
a special administrative unit was created and named Tashkent district. In 1866, the
Irdjar and Zaamin, Uratubeh, and Djizak regions were included in the district.
Turkistan district was formed through a process of continuous military action, as a
result of which there was no official demarcation of its borders with the Bukhara,
Khiva, and Kokand khanates. Moreover, its demarcation with the West Siberian Gov-
ernorate also was postponed. The form of administration already developed during
the epoch of absolutism in the national-colonial outskirts had more or less reliably
protected the interests of autocracy in Povolzhye, Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Caucasus,
and several other regions. They were based on a merger of military and civil authori-
ties, and on a concentration of administrative, judicial, and economic functions in the
same institutions. These principles, almost unchanged, were followed in Turkistan under
new historical conditions.
The district was initially administered according to the Provisional Regulations of
6 August 1865. The military governor was a head of the local administration.2 Military
and civil authority was concentrated in his hands. Heads of departments, who simulta-
neously were the military commandants, were in command of provinces. Heads of the
local population reported to them. Local heads were appointed from among the Rus-
sian functionaries and carried out police surveillance over the local population. They
were in charge of tax collection, ensuring that the local population discharged its
duties and obeyed the orders of the local government, and the activities of traditional
Muslim judicial and economic organizations. In urban areas, analogous duties were
laid on city governors, appointed from among the officers of the Russian army.
A so-called native administration, elected by the local population, played an auxil-
iary role in that governance. As during khanate times, an "elder" (aksakal) was in
charge of the native population of the cities, and elders of the city quarters reported
to him; police functions were carried out by "chiefs" (ra'is); and collectors known as
"zakatchi" were in control of tax collection. The nomadic population of Turkistan,
divided into clans, sections, and subsections, was managed by chieftains with heredi-
tary titles such as manap, sultan, and bey. Despite the hereditary aspect of these of-
fices, the czarist officials were the ones who made the specific appointments, and the
military governor had to approve them.3
The Provisions of 6 August 1865 preserved the system of Islamic law courts pre-
sided over by a Muslim judge (qdzi) for the settled population, whereas the courts for
the nomadic population were conducted by the beys. The changes in the structure of
these courts may be summed up as an equalization of rights for all kazis through the
The Colonial System of Power in Turkistan 241
abolition of the position of chief Muslim jurist (kazi-kalan); the introduction of the
appointment of judges by election to three-year terms; giving a plaintiff the right to
appeal to the kazi whom he trusted more; transfer to the czarist courts of cases involv-
ing the local population that affected the interest of Russian nationals; transfer of
verdicts on all criminal and civil cases that involved the death penalty or mutilation
according to Islamic law (shari'a) or customary law ('adat) to the military governor
for his approval; and the transfer of debatable cases arising from disputes over trade
to special commerce courts (which consisted of representatives of local and Russian
merchants) for their consideration. The military governor also had a right to substitute
for a judgment handed down by the "people's" courts the judgment that would have
obtained under Russian military-criminal law.4
The whole system, by analogy with Transcaucasia, was named a "military-popular"
administration. Its introduction had as its practical consequence the development of a
typical occupying regime aimed at securing the home fronts of the Russian army,
supplying it, and organizing tax collection from the population. The people of Turki-
stan from the very beginning were put under dual oppression. The administrative and
taxation system of the khan, which had been in part preserved, was not undermined
but reinforced by the power of the Russian bureaucratic state and its police, and
complemented by colonial oppression.
The actual administration of the region showed that the established regime was
still ineffective and did not provide (from the new sovereign's point of view) for a
full-value taxation system; nor was it able to undermine the political influence of
those sections of the population (big feudals, khan officials, Muslim clergies, clan
aristocracy, and nomads) that opposed the annexation of Turkistan by Russia. The
search for a more effective system of administration ended in 1867 through the issu-
ance of a law organizing the Turkistan governorate as part of the Russian empire,
with the gradual introduction of all-Russian laws on its territory-laws that favored
the bourgeoisie.
The Turkistan governorate was divided into provinces (oblasts), districts (uezds),
counties (volosts), and villages. In the regions bordering the Central Asia khanates,
military-territorial units (okrugs, otdels, and rayons) were created instead of the civil
units, but they played the same role. Originally, Turkistan consisted of two prov-
inces-Sirdarya, with its capital in Tashkent, and Semirechensk, with its capital in
Verniy. As a result of further acquisition of territories, in 1868 a military province of
Zarafshan was created, with its capital in Samarkand; then in 1873, an Amudarya
district was created, with its capital in Petroaleksandrovsk (Turtkul). In 1876, as a
result of the liquidation of the Kokand khanate, Fergana Province was created, with its
capital in New Margelan (Skobelev, Fergana). Further changes took place according to
the Regulations on Administration of the Turkistan Governorate of 1886: the military
province of Zarafshan was reorganized into a civil province of Samarkand; Semire-
chensk province, which had been incorporated into the Steppe governorate in 1882,
was returned to Turkistan in 1899; in the same year, a fifth province-Zakaspiysk-
was added. It was organized in 1881 and until 1899 had formed a part of the Cauca-
sian governorate.
The total area of Turkistan at the end of 19th century was 1,738,918 square kilome-
ters. The population, according to the incomplete data of the First All-Russian census
was 5,280,983. According to the data gathered by the statistical board of Russia, the
population was 6,492,692 in 1911. According to these censuses, the total indigenous
population in 1897 was 4,986,324, growing to 5,941,604 in 1911. The total number
of Europeans in 1897 was 197,420, growing by 1911 to 406,607. Eighty-six percent of
the population was concentrated in rural areas, while the proportion of urban dwellers
was about 14 percent. The share of the urban population was high only in so-called
native provinces-Sirdarya, Fergana, Samarkand-where the biggest trade and indus-
trial centers (such as Tashkent, Kokand, Samarkand, Andizhan, etc.) were situated.
The nature of the topic leads me to be interested in internal differentiation within these
populations. Such statistics are given only for the Russians in the 1897 census. Noble-
men and officials made up 2.1 percent, the urban strata and clergy made up 6.5 per-
cent, farmers made up 20 percent, and kazaks made up 3.1 percent of the total Russian
population. If we take into account the prosperous share of farmers and kazaks, ap-
proximately one-half of the Russian population was a force in the colonial machinery
of Russian autocracy in Turkistan. It was supported by the Russian army, and it con-
trolled all political and economic activity in the region. This was the social basis for
the colonial regime in the second half of 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
The main aim of tsarism in the region was the military repression of the local
population's resistance to the conquerors and securing the permanent public status of
the country. This aim predetermined the social character of colonial policy in Turki-
stan and the principles of its legitimization. It was of secondary importance, especially
at the beginning, that the development of the regime's program was carried out in the
economic and legal conditions of late-19th-century Russian reformism. After all, the
weak Russian bourgeoisie lacked any broad program of claims in economic or in
political spheres. This weakness allowed colonial administrators systematically to dis-
regard all the timid requests from liberal reformers who agitated for the introduction
of civil administration in Turkistan, intensive industrial development, and the educa-
tion of the indigenous population. In practice, the Central Asian possessions were
subjected to instrumental, bureaucratic methods of administration and colonial exploi-
tation by administrators who drew on the experience accumulated in other national
outskirts of the empire.
"The success of the conquests of 1863-1867," wrote the first governor-general
K. P. Kaufman, in his report to tsar, "shook the whole political system of that country,
which is quiescent and isolated in its quiescence. However, it was not able to get
control over the defeated forces, was not able to synchronize it with the fulfillment
of a new positive political and civil program brought to the region by the interests of
Russian State."" Real life was much more complicated than the "civilizing" plans of
czarism supposed. Tens of thousands of people rose to fight against czarist aggression.
Kaufman had to secure the interests of the Russian state in an atmosphere of stubborn
resistance to the occupiers. None of the more important cities surrendered without a
fight. "Asians, of course, know very well the terrifying details of this bloody chronicle
of our military actions in Central Asia," wrote a contemporary of those events, M.
Zinovyev. "Nevertheless, all cities and fortresses that we met on our way we had to
seize by force."6
The development of a programmatic set of plans for the administration of Turkistan
was shaped by the wartime situation. Such plans were put forward as new territories
were occupied, and as a rule they had a temporary character.7 But everyone confirmed
the "indivisibility of military and administrative authorities and their combination in
one arm." At the same time, the conditions mentioned earlier and administrators'
ignorance of traditional socio-juridical and cultural norms of the local population
forced czarism to grant "administration of all domestic affairs which had no political
connections to persons elected from the local population" and "the establishment of
high-level institutions which matched, if possible, the ones that already existed in the
other parts of the empire." In legal spheres it was resolved to leave Islamic law and
local customs in place until such time as "they will be defined by the Russian laws."
Other legal goals included the elimination of everything in native administration that
was absolutely harmful to the interests of the state, the gradual development of gov-
ernment bodies in conformity with the demands of the local administration (depending
on how complicated these were), and, possibly, a total separation of the courts from
the administration, in accordance with the local situation.8
These general principles were developed and detailed in numerous decrees, instruc-
tions, and directives that controlled and regulated the life of the people of Turkistan
in that period. The tsarist military-bureaucratic system was based on exact hierarchy
and collateral subordination of all its parts. The governor-general, who was appointed
by the tsar and reported to the Russian Ministry of War, was at the top of that system.
He was the head of civil administration and commander of all troops of the Turkistan
military province. According to imperial laws, the governor-general was the "principal
guardian of the inviolability of the rights of the autocracy, benefits for the state, and
accurate execution of laws."
Administration was carried out with the help of a complicated bureaucratic ma-
chine, put into motion by the entire hierarchy of Russian functionaries. Administrative
bodies were subdivided into those of governorate, province, district, and county, corre-
sponding to their place and purpose in the system of colonial administration. The
main section of the bureaucratic machine was represented by the chancellery of the
Turkistan governorate, which was created in 1867. The chancellery was an executive
body in charge of matters of regular order and inspections, of land regulations and
obligations, of road construction and mining, of the resolution of the questions con-
nected with Russian protectorate over Khiva and Bukhara; and of relations with neigh-
boring countries of the East. The role of the chancellery was especially important in
the preparation and implementation of different normative documents on the adminis-
tration of the governorate. It took part in development of all Turkistan bills that were
received by Russian ministries and the State Council for their further examination.
The chancellery very actively dealt with personnel questions and staffing for all state
institutions with functionaries of different specialties and ranks. The authority of that
regional power in military, political, and administrative spheres was almost unlimited.
This fact was particularly mentioned by a committee on reforms headed by the secret
adviser F. K. Girs, who wrote that the "chancellery came to have the unlawful and
unusual position of a key institution."9 In the center, its activity was controlled by the
Russian Ministry of War.
Local administration in the provinces was headed by military governors who simul-
taneously commanded the troops as heads of corps or divisions, depending on the
number of troops located in the province. In Semirechensk, the provincial military
governor was also an authorized ataman, or leader of the Semirechensk kazak forces.
According to the Statute of the Year 1867, administrative, police, legal, and military
power was concentrated in the hands of the Russian military. Regarding the lower-
level administration and local population, governors, as a matter of fact, were given
nearly dictatorial powers, including the appointment and dismissal at their discretion
of members of the district administration, except the head of the district, or uezd,
regarding whom they could only submit a written statement to the governor-general.
They approved the volost, or county officials, and could at their discretion simply
make appointments in cases in which elections were canceled. They approved public
judges and candidates for their positions and reviewed complaints about officials in
district or county administrations. They had a right to impose fines, not higher that
100 rubles, and to put a local national under arrest for a term of no longer than one
month. They were given control over the activities of all judicial institutions and
prisons and over approval of verdicts on criminal cases.'0
Such wide powers were also given to the heads of Zarafshan and Amudarya, even
though in the Russian hierarchy they technically were comparable only to heads of
districts, or uezds. In addition, these officials were given diplomatic functions. The
authority of the head of Zarafshan extended to "conducting border relations" with the
beys of the neighboring Bukhara emirate. The head of Amudarya was, in his turn, a
diplomatic representative of Russia in the khanate of Khiva. The administration of the
large province or oblast was among the most important state institutions. In fact, it
was analogous to the provincial bureaucracies in the metropole but had wider author-
ity, because it substituted for almost all the varied provincial institutions that existed
at the center of the empire." Oblast administrations, in their structure, consisted of
departments, which increased in number with the strengthening and reinforcement of
the colonial regime. In 1867, there were only three departments: administrative, eco-
nomic, and judicial. But at the beginning of the 1890s, survey, construction, rural-
medical, mining, and other departments were opened. Under each of the five oblast
administrations, printing offices and statistics committees were established. So-called
advisory boards were established and worked under administrations to discuss and
resolve technical, medical, scientific, and other daily questions. Specialists competent
in one or another sphere were invited as experts and consultants to these boards.12
The main role in provincial administration was played by the economics division. It
was entrusted with the regional organization of the settled and nomad population;
with the administration of pious endowments (waqfs); with the regulation of water
usage and taxation of the native population; with the estimation of monetary duties,
customs-duties collection, investigation, and settlement of disputable cases; with the
consideration and approval of different contracts; with the registration and issuance
of licenses for the exploitation of the resources of the oblast; for opening of industrial
enterprises and trade firms on request from private persons; and with the registration
of trade arrangements and contracts.13
In their prosecution of these duties, officials seldom recognized the ordinary norms
of administration or basic concepts of lawfulness and juridical protection. Often their
individual, personal authority outweighed any regulation or decree. On the whole, as
one can see, none of the social structures in the region could exist without administra-
tion, supervision, or control from specially created institutions and the functionaries
working in them. A clear tendency of colonial authorities toward comprehensive regu-

lation, and interference in all spheres of life of the local population, becomes increas-
ingly clear and distinct when we look at the structure and functions of the lower-level
institutions of power.
The head of the district, or uezd, supervised the local bureaucracy and commanded
the troops located in the district. District heads were appointed and dismissed by the
governor-general on advice from the military governors of provinces. The district
head was an administrator, policeman, regional head, city mayor, and chair of regional
administrative assembly at the same time.14 The uezd administration planned and con-
trolled the work in the district. The whole burden of the routine affairs of administra-
tion of state and rent matters, tax calculation, and control over the district's county
and village administrations fell on this part of the system. One could say that the
district head monopolized power in almost all spheres of life in the uezd community,
implementing the logic and essence of czarist colonial policy on this level. In fact,
this part of the system turned out to be the most incompetent, pursuing its own selfish
interests, and it demanded numerous attempts at reorganization aimed at reinforcing
and expanding it.
The cities of Turkistan, except Tashkent, did not have self-government. According
to the Statute of the Year 1867, the management of socio-economic matters in the
cities was carried out by an elected local administration. Cities were subdivided into
quarters, which were headed by aldermen (aksakals). They were elected by conven-
tions of delegates, who were in turn selected by gatherings of property owners in the
quarter. City aldermen dealt with tax collection and distribution of duties. They re-
ported to the mayor (or overall elder, aksakal), who was appointed by the military
governor of the province and served as police chief within the limits of the city. All
lower-level police officials (including the officials known as mashrabs, the heads
[mirabs] of the irrigation system, and judges-kazis and beys) reported to the mayor.
All of them received a salary out of taxes on the population of the city.15
In 1876, all municipal treasury administrations were abolished by the directive of
K. P. Kaufman, and all municipal services were put under the control of the district
administration. An exception was allowed for the cities of Samarkand and New Margi-
lan, which retained municipal administrations. These consisted of Russian military
officials and representatives of the local merchants appointed by the military gover-
nors.16 The city of Tashkent, being a political, administrative, and cultural center and
the capital of the Turkistan governorate, had a peculiar administration. As in other
cities, the municipal administration of the social and economic spheres depended on
a mechanical implementation of directives from the chief of the city. In 1877, the
Statute on Cities, which had governed cities in the central territories of the empire
since June 1870, was introduced in Tashkent. According to the statute, all municipal
services reported to a city council (duma) elected by property owners. At age twenty-
five voting rights were given to the people of Tashkent who were nationals of the
Russian empire, owned real estate, paid city taxes, and were not under prosecution or
investigation.7
Voting rights were given to seminaries, mosques, and other organizations that
owned real property, including endowments that were subject to taxation. The alder-
men of the Asian part of the city did not have the right to vote so long as they held
their positions. According to the Statute on Cities, one-third of the City Duma was
elected by the Asian part of the city, and two-thirds by inhabitants of the "New"
Tashkent-that is, by the "European" part of the city population. Voters were assigned
to subdivisions according to property qualifications. Each subdivision, irrespective of
the number of members included, elected an equal number of representatives to a city
council consisting of twenty-four persons. This non-proportional representation had
the effect of fostering a dominance of the city council by affluent groups such as
landlords, factory owners, merchants, functionaries, military men, and so on.'8
For instance, of the twenty-four members of the first order elected to the first
Tashkent city council, only six were from the native population. Among the members
of the second order, only eight were indigenous, and among third-order members,
seven natives were elected. These numbers give clear evidence of the discrimination
permitted by the authorities toward the native population. Whereas 80,000 persons
were allowed to elect only twenty-one individuals to the city council, the Russian
population (which amounted to only 3,921 in 1877) elected forty-eight members.19
The unfair ratio of members in the Tashkent council was noted in the report of
secret adviser Girs, who wrote that many questions were settled "quite disadvanta-
geously for the Asian part of the city" and that a "more or less fair ratio of the
representatives of both parts of the city in [the] Duma might not only bring benefits
in a sense of joining of both nationalities but also guarantee correct and equitable
self-government."20
However, "equitable self-government" was not in the plans of the colonial authori-
ties. As a result of the reform of 1877, another bureaucratic mechanism of administra-
tion was created that had nothing in common (either in its essence or in its formal
features) with the real organization of self-government. The main responsibilities
given to the city council were tax collection and supervision of order in the city. The
city board (two-thirds of whose members represented the Russian part of the city)
was an executive body of the Tashkent city council.2' The Tashkent city head was
appointed by the administration. His appointment was confirmed by the minister of
war on a recommendation from the governor-general of Turkistan. In the 1870s to the
1880s, this position, as a rule, was occupied by the head of Tashkent. The first gover-
nor-general, K. P. Kaufman, who proposed this combination, explained that it was
meant "to avoid the accidental election of an individual who did not meet the require-
ments for appointment to this position and, above all, because of the political status
of the city, the main portion of which consists of recently conquered Muslims."22
Practically, it meant absolute subordination of city government to the colonial admin-
istration, which in the final analysis was a rather determined and purposeful state
policy.
Volost administration (which can be glossed in English as that of the "county")
consisted of an administrator and a convention of delegates. Elections were held in
two stages. First, a village board gathered, and one candidate from every fifty house-
holds was elected. Then village candidates gathered for the volost convention, which
was conducted in the presence of the representatives of the Russian administration.
As a rule, the head of a district or his assistant observed the process, but he did not
interfere in the elections. Before the convention began, the presence of all foremen
was confirmed, and if two-thirds of them were present, the convention was considered
to have a quorum. The volost convention was responsible for the elections of the
administrator, judges, and candidates to their positions. The main responsibility of this
lower-level administration was successful and timely tax collection. In his report, in
which he summed up the results of his fourteen years of administration (1867-81),
Kaufman emphasized the role of these new institutions for the regime. "Without native
democratic government, it is impossible to hope either for receipt of taxes or for the
proper functioning of the newly created institutions."23
To weaken the authority of pre-modern social and economic authorities, smaller
administrative units were created not on a clan basis, as had been the case, but on a
territorial one. Thus, the unit was set to encompass no more than 200 homesteads or
nomad tents in rural communities, and from 1,000 to 2,000 in volost communities.
Such division was often met by those who had held large feudal estates, and by the
tribal leaders, with displeasure and opposition. They correctly perceived this innova-
tion in the demarcation of authority as a juridical abolition of the old kin-based admin-
istrative units of the Kyrgyz and other nomadic groups.
The colonial administration explained that employing a territorial principle to de-
marcate administrative divisions was necessary to eliminate "inconveniences for the
administration." Senator K. K. Palen, who inspected Turkistan in 1908-09, openly
acknowledged that the "unification of a big clan under one chief would complicate
the maintenance of order in the steppe."24 To "maintain order," the authority of clan
chiefs was demolished, and an election system was introduced that enabled the nomi-
nation of new people who were loyal to the czarist administration for the position of
county and village head. If the personality of a head did not satisfy the Russian
administration, the military governor could set new elections or replace him with
another person at his discretion.
Czarist administration quite broadly used this particular right. For instance, Senator
Girs, in his report on activities of volost and village administrations in 1882, gave the
following data: "38 out of 109 administrators of Sirdarya province were discharged,
which is 35% or about 13 cases per year"25 Similar data could be presented for other
provinces. Lower-level functionaries quite often abused their official positions. There
is an enormous number of well-documented cases of unlawful requisitions, misappro-
priation of taxes collected from people, and reprisals against disagreeable people.
Elections very often were accompanied by cruel fights between different groups that
were attempting to put their candidates in a position.
"The eagerness to become a volost head," wrote Girs in his report, "can be ex-
plained by, on the one hand, a quite significant salary, and, on the other, control over
tax collection for the entire county, at a time when unlawful misappropriations, tardy
remission of money to the Treasury, and even concealment of the money were possi-
ble. Besides, the head of the volost, by virtue of his authority [Paragraph 112 of the
Statute of 1867], could impose fines up to 3 rubles. The control of his activities in
such with regard to such amounts was totally impossible, especially given the nomadic
life style of the population."26
Thus, a share of the functions of the administrative machinery was passed to repre-
sentatives of the native population. Such "compromise" in a system of colonial author-
ity was dictated by the military situation and by the necessity of ensuring elementary
stability and relief from the "burden" of undertaking colonial tasks. This tactical ap-
proach to the problem of administration was also dictated by the experience gained in
other regions of the empire and by the desire to accomplish more quickly and success-
fully the task of turning the whole region into a colony. The general characteristics of
the colonial system of power are reflected in its institutions concerned with protection
and punishment. The protection of the interests of tsarism was carried out by judicial
bodies. The main elements of the judicial system consisted of elected courts of kazis
and beys, or "people's" courts; uezd courts; temporary court-martial commissions;
judicial departments in provincial (oblast) administrations; and the judicial department
of the chancellery of the Turkistan governorate.
According to the Statute of the Year 1867, the court of kazis and beys, which was
named the "people's" court, was to be the court of first instance. All criminal cases,
and civil cases involving suits for less than 100 rubles, were subject to the individual
verdict of a judge. Lawsuits involving greater sums were reviewed by panels of kazis
and beys. As the court of second instance, they decided cases involving suits for less
than 1,000 rubles. At the same time, they were the appeals courts that reviewed claims
that lower-level judges had made illegitimate rulings. In addition, there existed courts
of third instance, consisting of extraordinary panels of people's judges. They dealt
with arguable questions that arose between people from different volosts and uezds.
About 90 percent of the population appealed to the court of kazis and beys.
Intrigues and conflicts about elections, often accompanied by violence among the
contending parties, arose because the Statute of the Year 1867 contained rules for
eligibility for election to judicial office and stipulated a particular level of educational
attainment for those holding the position of people's judge. In the previous khanates,
the khan would appoint a judge only after a thorough search, selecting the most de-
serving candidate out of many on the basis of an examination showing thorough
knowledge of Islamic and customary law. The voting system, in which the people
decided on the candidate's competence, weakened the necessity for these prerequisites.
In addition, colonial authorities vetted candidates for their loyalty to the czar, approv-
ing the results of the elections.
As a result of this policy, uneducated people who were ignorant of Islamic and
general law were elected to the position of "people's" judge, and various abuses and
violations took place. A lack of exact gradation in penalties that would differentiate
among various types of crime gave judges enormous latitude in choosing punishments
for those found guilty. Panels of the "people's" judges often approved the illicit ver-
dicts of their colleagues and in this way guaranteed that their own verdicts would not
be challenged. They thus used their review authority to protect individual judges from
incurring any responsibility for mistaken verdicts.
Abuses by the judges caused true discontent among the people, who appealed to
higher courts. However, the authorities were unable to abolish the order they had
established. They hoped to fashion out of the judges, after some time, a reliable state
"instrument" for the protection of the political and social order that was established
in Turkistan. Developments in the court system and legal proceedings stipulated by
the judicial reform of 1862 in Russia itself had almost no impact on similar processes
in Turkistan. A partial separation of the judicial system from the administrative one
was introduced only on the uezd level. In accordance with an order issued by Kauf-
man, jurisdiction over uezd courts was denied to military governors and their assis-
tants, heads of the departments of the district military administration, and the head of
the chancellery of the governor-general. However, military governors had a right to
rebuke and reprimand uezd judges.27
On the provincial and governorate level, judicial functions were given to the depart-
ments of the chancellery of the governor-general and of the oblast administration.
They acted as chambers of the criminal and civil courts, as did panels of uezd judges.
The judicial department of the chancellery (right up to the adoption of the "statute"
of 1886) also carried out appeal functions. The governor-general was entrusted with
public-prosecutor functions. In this connection, the chancellery enjoyed more rights
over the courts than "even [the] Ministry of Justice," according to Girs, "exercised
over the dependent courts."28
In addition, temporary military-judicial commissions operated in Turkistan, follow-
ing the Code of Military Decrees when examining cases. They had jurisdiction over
cases of "crimes against the regime," those "against the peace and order," murders of
officials, grave criminal offenses, and cases between Russians and representatives of
the native population. The direct combination of administrative and judicial functions
in the hands of the military-bureaucratic personnel on almost all levels led to a total
dependence of judicial verdicts on their will, degree of competence, and level of
demands. The people of Turkistan experienced feelings of uncertainty, fearing lack of
protection before these courts and what they viewed as strange juridical codes that
had little in common with the norms and customs that they were used to. They also
felt indignation at the greed and corruption of the "people's" judges who cooperated
with the colonial authorities and aggravated the burden they bore under colonial rule.
In the colonial administration of Turkistan, the police played an important role.
They, along with the army, formed a loyal instrument, stronghold, and protector of
the interests of the autocracy in the region. Police authority was given to all officials
of the local administration, from governor-general to uezd administrator. The gover-
nor-general had a right to banish "politically harmful individuals" for up to five years
and, when such individuals resisted the authorities, to bring their cases to the military
court. Military governors obtained the right to arrest people among the local popula-
tion "at their discretion," which gave the police free rein. District heads were given a
right to fine the local population for minor misdeeds and disobedience or to put them
under arrest.
Police officials and administrators with police authority forged penalties to their
own advantage or according to their interests. They also conducted preliminary inves-
tigations of cases, as was provided in Russian criminal law. Prisons were situated next
to administration and police offices. Prisons of the civil and military departments were
built in all large cities, and even in settlements of the region. Seventy thousand to
80,000 rubles were allocated annually from the czarist treasury for the construction
and maintenance of prisons. Tashkent prison, one of the biggest, simultaneously
served as a gathering point for transit prisoners from Turkistan to the prisons of Euro-
pean Russia and Siberia. Pre-formed groups went afoot through the desert to Siberia
via Chimkent and Aulie-Ata. In bad weather, convicts had to spend the night in nomad
tents erected by the locals, in caravansaries, or in empty huts.
Ultimately, fourteen prisons and twenty-six jails were built in the three native re-
gions. A coercive regime was set up in the prisons, where elementary sanitation was
lacking and the prison administration's activities were almost unchecked. Almost noth-
ing changed after the introduction of prison committees of trustees.29 Consisting of
officials, representatives of the clergy, and military men, they were little concerned
about protecting the interests of the prisoners and seldom inquired into prisoners'
problems. They mainly "observed" the executive and financial activities of the prisons
and acted in strict accordance with the instructions of the Head Prison Committee of
Russia.
From the 1860s through the 1880s, the colonial system of power in Turkistan was
established. This process witnessed the occupation of Central Asian territories; the
destruction of the former mechanisms of power that had been wielded by khans, beys,
and the local aristocracy; the implantation of the basics of Russian state administra-
tion; and the development of cheap and effective systems of exploitation of the rich
natural and human resources of the region. The implementation of these aims became
a business for the militarized bureaucracy, which occupied all key points of the admin-
istrative system. Only on the volost and village levels was the organization of power
given into the discretion of the local population. But in practice, this tactical maneuver
served the pragmatic interests of czarism, which thereby achieved its own objectives
by acting through traditional local institutions. Acting on the basis of temporary stat-
utes and the czar's decrees and directives, czarist functionaries established absolute
and almost unchecked authority over the whole Turkistan society. Colonial authorities
adopted a less harsh, though patronizing and paternalistic, policy toward only a thin
layer of the loyal native population, recognizing its potential role in the stimulation of
economic undertakings and in increasing the economic potential of the newly acquired
colony, and hoping for development of its own "cadres" for the realization of the
colonial policy in the provinces. When such cadres did not in fact materialize in
sufficient numbers, the colonial authorites responded by developing and strengthening
their repressive and protective mechanisms of power and by giving the officials of all
ranks, from volost to regional, almost unlimited authority. But the new system took
root badly and painfully in Turkistan soil. It could not seriously alter the dynamics of
the local society, especially as new forces opposed to the colonial regime grew up
under the severe pressure of the colonial regime.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SYSTEM OF POWER

IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES
At the beginning of the 1880s, the ruling circles in Russia decided to accelerate the
legitimization of the colonial regime in Turkistan. In July 1881, a decree was issued
that Saint Petersburg be provided with the final version of the "statute" developed by
Kaufman and his administration. A discussion of the project was entrusted to a com-
mission headed by M. D. Skobelev. This commission was soon dissolved, however,
in part because M. G. Chernayev, who was appointed to the position of governor-
general after the death of Kaufman (his long-time and irreconcilable opponent), re-
quested a total revision "to clarify necessary changes in the regional administration."30
This revision was conducted in 1882 by Girs, who put together a report along
with an explanatory note "concerning the principal basis for the organization of the
administration of the governorate." Kaufman's project and the noted documents were
passed to the Special Commission, created by the tsar's decree of 1884 under the
leadership of a member of the State Council, Earl N. P. Ignatyev. Ignatyev's Special
Commission prepared the text of yet a fifth draft of the "statute," which consisted of
four parts: administrative organization of the governorate; judicial organization; land
organization; and duties and taxes. The statute envisaged altering the names of and
further unifying the territorial units of the governorate; restricting the governor-gener-
al's authority (noting that Kaufman's extensive powers "were necessary only for the
beginning of the organization of the governorate"); transforming slightly the gover-
nance of the districts, provinces, and the governorate itself to limit interference in the
work of judicial and administrative institutions; and creating new forms of legal proce-
dure in accordance with Russian judicial regulations of 1864. A plan for the reorgani-
zation of landed property that specified rights of ownership, utilization, and disposal
of land opened the way for the development of private property in land, turning it
into a commodity and thus meeting the interests of the Russian and national bourgeoi-
sie, which was developing day by day. Later, elements of the land statute proposed
by the Special Commission were reflected in a law of 1886. The head of the land and
agriculture administration of Russia, A. V. Krivoshein, acknowledged that "[t]he word
'property' is not the only one in the Turkistan Statute." The State Council was careful
to pronounce this word once and for all in 1886, "because of inadequacies in the
elaboration of the types of land ownership that had existed in the region and because
of total uncertainty over the local water issue, which was closely connected with land
ownership. But all those elements of property rights were given in the law: ownership,
utilization, and disposal, including the right of expropriation of the land by the meth-
ods of serfdom."31
The proposal developed by the Ignatyev commission was approved by the czar's
decree on 12 June 1886 and became a legislative document that functioned with minor
modifications until 1917. A new normative document of 1886 retained the basic prin-
ciples of "military-popular" administration, limited the rights of the colonial adminis-
tration in the departmental line and in the judicial sphere, and compensated for these
limitations by a widening of police and penal functions. In accordance with the new
legislation, a system of administrative structures was supplemented by a new institu-
tion, the Council of Turkistan Governorate. It was given the right of initiating legisla-
tion with regard to questions of administrative policy. In addition, it directed matters
of administrative character, land organization, and taxation.32
The formally collective nature of the council's discussions of vital problems of
administration to some extent limited the "bureaucratic radicalism" of the head admin-
istrators of the governorate and, later, repeatedly provoked criticism from conservative
figures who thought that the council only undermined the governor-general's author-
ity.33 Changes connected with the introduction of the new statute also affected the
authority of the governor-general in foreign-policy matters. It was primarily applied
to Russia-Bukhara relations. In 1886, the Russian empire's political agency, which
was part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was established in Bukhara. Head officials
of that institution became official representatives of Russia in the Bukhara emirate.
Beginning in 1899, all foreign-policy matters in Turkistan were put under the con-
trol of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They became the purview of diplomatic offi-
cials who were directly engaged in managing relations with neighboring countries. At
the same time, the role of the colonial administration in the economic sphere was nar-
rowed. This process resulted in the establishment of numerous state institutions that
were subordinate not to the Ministry of War but to other ministries-the Ministry of
Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, and the Ministry of Internal
Affairs. In fact, this reorientation turned the administration of the governorate into an
intermediary between central state institutions and local organs in Turkistan. Although
the latter were nominally subordinate to the governor-general, they now received their
official instructions directly from the center, bypassing him.
Along with administrative institutions, financial organs played an important role for
autocracy. As a result, from the very beginning of the establishment of the colonial
regime the ruling circles in Russia did not wish to see the colonial administration
given broad powers. According to the resolution of the State Council of 4 May 1868,
authority over the financial sphere was transferred to the Turkistan Control Chamber,
which represented the Department of State Control.34 The documents of the Control
Chamber record numerous instances of the destructive felling of trees, the unlawful
licensing of mining and exploitation of mineral resources, untimely payments of rent,
and many other acts concealed by some institutions. A. I. Dobromislov wrote in this
regard, "The Control Chamber was always busy with work which was especially
ticklish during the first decade of its existence when predators from all parts of Russia
dealt with the state budget with undue familiarity."35
By establishing local institutions in the governorate, the Ministry of Finance first
took an interest in increasing the profitability of its colonies. In this aspiration it was
assisted by an excise department (from 1886), which dealt with the collection of
indirect taxes from the production and trade of matches, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, oil
products, and with the collection of stamp, judicial, passport, and other duties. It was
also aided by the Turkistan customs office (from 1890), which secured for Russia all
the markets of the Central Asian region. Also important was the founding of branches
of the state bank in Tashkent (1874), Samarkand (1890), Kokand (1893), and Bukhara
(1894). Numerous commercial banks promoted the intensification of the penetration
of Turkistan by Russian trade and industrial capital. Among the commercial banks,
the paramount role was played by Saint Petersburg and Moscow banks such as Rus-
sia-Asian, Volga-Kama, Moscow International, Saint Petersburg International, and
Russian Trade-Industrial. By 1915, ten branches of state banks and forty branches of
commercial banks had been opened in Turkistan. They created and ensured monopo-
listic agreements, set the tone in entrepreneurial spheres, and gradually turned into an
important factor in the economic life of the region. Because of these banks, the opti-
mal exploitation of rich natural and human resources of the newly acquired czarist
colony was systematized, and financial inflows to the Russian budget quickened. One
may assume that giving Russian ministries a paramount role in this sphere, which was
so important for czarism, was a sign of a certain pragmatism among the authorities.
It also confirms the existence of plans for the colonization of the economy of Turki-
stan at the beginning of the imperial venture. Under the aegis of the Ministry of
Finance, by the law issued on 9 May 1889, the institute of tax inspectors was estab-
lished. Inspectors were agents of the Turkistan Budget Chamber in cities and districts
of the region. Their functions involved observation of and control over the apportion-
ment of taxes and their collection from the settled and nomad population, including
taxes on trade and on land. Inspectors also had a right to control the activities of the
officials in provinces and districts, which formally limited the tyranny and abuse of
power by administrative personnel.
Inspectors often were not competent themselves, however, and their work methods
came to cause additional tensions in society. Numerous instances of unauthorized
increases in duties, of extortion and forgery, and of tampering with land-registration
documents are recorded in the cases that were under inspectors' jurisdiction. So, ac-
cording to Knyaz Mansirev, one of the officials of the land-taxation commission who
investigated the changes in taxation in Turkistan in the 1890s, many of the inspectors
were "experienced only in the copying of documents in taxation departments," with-
out having a clear notion of the measures that were under realization. "Not knowing
a word in a local dialect they were supposed to investigate the authenticity of endow-
ment documents," said Mansirev, "and all of them, according to the earlier fixed
custom, were declared spurious.... By that act all rights of the religious and charita-
ble establishments were revoked, and... agitation and concealed opposition to every-
thing associated with foreign (i.e., Russian) influence were nourished."36
The Turkistan mountainous district, created in 1895, was working to increase the
profitability of the mining industry for the czarist treasury. It controlled all geological
surveys and organized the exploitation of new mines, pits, and oil fields. Overall
supervision of natural resources was conducted by the Department of Agriculture and
State Property, established in 1897. It dealt with irrigation, forestry, experimental
research, control over agricultural educational institutions, hydrotechnics and hydro-
metrics schools, gardening, viticulture, and fruit-growing schools.37 Its activities in
gathering and analyzing cotton-growing data were of considerable importance, involv-
ing a calculation of the total area occupied by cotton, and knowledge of the condition
of the crops, the prospects for a good yield, and the collection of data on the condition
of cotton-cleaning plants and oil mills and the price of fiber. Measures were taken,
though on a limited scale, to purchase and distribute agricultural implements and
machinery and to popularize elementary agronomic knowledge in the region.38
One of the important areas in which the department worked was implementation
of the czarist migration policy in Turkistan. The organizational and technical side of
the migration of Russian peasants from the inner provinces was under the supervision
of a specially created migration department, initiated in 1907 and reorganized in 1911
into the Immigration Administration.39 By speeding the migration of Russian peasants
to Turkistan, the czarist government was trying to address land starvation in the Rus-
sian center and, more important, to establish for itself a stable support group of immi-
grants. The settlers were given large allotments. According to the law of 1886, each
man received ten land units (desyatinas), and beginning in 1903, the allotments were
increased to twenty per household in the regions with mixed farming.
As a result of the migration policy, forty-one peasant settlements and thirty kazak
stanicas had been established in Semirechensk province by 1908. When the agrarian
reform of conservative statesman Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (1862-1911) was im-
plemented in 1911, there were already 155 peasant and kazak settlements with a popu-
lation of 200,000 people in the same province. In 1909, there were ninety-two peasant
communities in Sirdarya province, and in 1911 there were 108. In Fergana, there were
twenty-three settlements in 1911; in Samarkand, there were thirteen."4 Of course, the
numbers themselves are not important. What is important is how these settlements
were perceived by locals and the upheaval they brought to their lives. A senatorial
inquiry conducted by K. K. Palen recorded the "mass removal of Kyrgyz from their
winter stations."41 Not individual households but whole settlements, or auls, were
removed. After the adoption of a law amending Article 207 of the Turkistan Statute
on 19 December 1910, a practice of land expropriation from the local population was
legitimated and intensified, and mass land expropriations began in settled regions. It
was considered necessary to direct the migration into cotton-growing regions.
"Great Empire" or nationalistic tendencies in the government's plans for "Russian
Turkistan" were most clearly expressed in a "note" from the minister of agriculture,
A. V. Krivoshein, to the czar. In the note, Krivoshein connects the development of
agriculture in the region with the question of the strengthening of "Russian lands" in
irrigated areas, because only then, wrote Krivoshein, would the "political predomi-
nance of the Russian nation" be secured by "its economic power." The plan was to
irrigate about 3 million desyatinas of land, which were to be put at the disposal of
"300,000 Russian households."42 The idea of creating a new "Russian Turkistan with
sound Russian households" was realized with great difficulty. Russian farmers could
not adjust to a new culture of irrigated agriculture. Even though they were getting
allowances, they could not organize their households. Land was becoming impover-
ished because of the Russian peasants' unskillful and destructive farming practices.
Possibilities for transition to more extensive production were therefore undermined,
increasing the lopsidedness in the development of the regional economy caused by its
specialization in agriculture and raw-material supply.
The administrative structures and state institutions created and used during the pro-
cess of Turkistan's colonization actually worked on behalf of the internal market of
the metropolis, securing the region's lasting political dependence on Russia, as well
as its economic and financial dependence. The institutions did foster some factories,
but this industrial sector consisted of small enclaves of capitalist production that were
not yet an integral part of the national economy. They served the needs of industrial-
ists, merchants, dealers, firm owners, and others, assisting them in realizing fabulous
profits and simultaneously raising the level of consumption of medium-size and small
producers. Together with changes in the system of administrative and state institutions
in Turkistan at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, important
changes took place in the judicial system and in the penal institutions. They "per-
fected" themselves in accordance with the Statute of 1886 and legislative documents
adopted by czarism "on an urgent basis" because of the growth of opposition to the
autocratic regime both in the center and in the national provinces of the empire.
Among them, I should particularly mention the Statute of Measures for the Protec-
tion of State and Public Order, adopted on 14 August 1881, which considerably ex-
tended the limits of the authority of the central and local bodies. According to the
statute, the czarist government introduced at its discretion the state of "intensive" or
"extreme" surveillance. The reasons for declaring an area in a "state of emergency"
were formulated very vaguely and gave the authorities the possibility of interpreting
them quite broadly. For this reason, Turkistan governors-general turned the "excep-
tional measures" of regional administration into almost permanent ones.
Beginning in 1892, Turkistan was on "high" or "highest" alert; thus, in that year a
Special Statute Declaring the "Highest State of Emergency" was issued in the Tash-
kent, Chimkent, and Aulie-Ata districts of Sirdarya province, as well as in Fergana
and Samarkand provinces. The statute, issued for a period of one year, later was con-
stantly extended and came to be permanently in force, with only a few short intermis-
sions. In 1896, the governor-general of Turkistan, Baron Vrevskiy, asked the govern-
ment "to declare a state of 'highest emergency' not for a year but as a permanent
measure for the whole territory of Turkistan governorate." By the order issued on 30
May 1898, Fergana and Samarkand provinces, as well as the Tashkent, Chimkent, and
Aulie-Ata districts of Sirdarya province, were declared in a state of highest emergency
because of popular uprisings in the Fergana Valley. A state of "intensive" surveillance
was implemented in Turkistan throughout 1905, until it was replaced by "extreme"
surveillance in September 1906, which was introduced in all the cities adjacent to the
route of the Central Asian railway. This state of alert remained in effect until Septem-
ber 1911, with short intermissions of two to three months at a time.44 After more than
two years, the state of alert was declared again on 26 July 1914, and in July 1916 it
was replaced by martial law because of the need in that year to put down the biggest
national-liberation movement against tsarism that Turkistan had ever seen.
During the "state-of-emergency" periods, the police and punitive functions of the
local administration were becoming unlimited. The use of violence and repression
typical of colonial power was supplemented by severe crackdowns that deeply trauma-
tized the people of Turkistan, helping foster more national self-consciousness and
leading them to an irrepressible desire to be liberated from what they increasingly
viewed as a hateful regime. In August 1907, in accordance with a government direc-
tive, a Special Department for the Organization of Investigation in Turkistan was
established in Tashkent. In October of the same year, the special department was
reorganized into the Surveillance Department, which carried out secret investigations
into cases of treason. Secret agents and police spies took root among the local popula-
tion, infiltrating various political organizations. Rumors were deliberately spread, par-
ticularly about the Pan-Islamic and Pan-Turkish movements, depicting them as ene-
mies of the Russian population. Such putative enmity, ascribed to the local population,
always in turn provided good grounds for repression. The resorting to these measures
suggests not only that the colonial system of power in Turkistan was by then in crisis,
but also that the czarist political system as a whole was characterized by extreme
fragility.
The reorganization of the judicial system in Turkistan aimed at its further unifica-
tion with the Russian system and an increase in its relative independence from the
administration. Because of the constant states of emergency, however, the separation
of courts from the administration was never more than a formality. Nevertheless, the
judicial system at the end of the 19th century had changed somewhat from its earlier
iteration. Judicial departments of the provincial administrations were replaced by pro-
vincial courts, and instead of the district courts, district boards of arbitration were
established (according to the Statute of 1886). Later, in 1898, a judicial reform was
conducted that brought into action okrug (military-administrative) courts instead of
the provincial courts, which were abolished. The Tashkent judicial chamber, which
served as the Supreme Court for the whole territory of Turkistan, yielded review of
its judgments only to the senate in Saint Petersburg. Okrug courts were introduced in
five provinces with the institution of investigators, public prosecutors, attorneys, and
jurors. Military courts (which dealt not only with cases involving military men but
also with those involving the civil population that were transferred to them on an
"exceptional" basis) continued their work and took on special significance.
The military courts meted out punishments on an especially large scale during times
of crisis in the colonial regime in Turkistan. This happened, for instance, when in July
1916 the biggest anti-military, anti-colonial national-liberation movement began in
Turkistan. Peasants, craftsmen, and city and rural poor people took an active part in
the movement against the local administration. They impeded recruitment for military
service by obliterating lists of mobilized soldiers. They killed the representatives of
the authorities and organized bloody battles against police and army.
Authorities urgently formed military and drumhead martial courts. To speed up the
inquiry into the rebellion, Minister of War D. S. Shuvalev recommended granting
these courts a right of free access to all regions for prompt trials. All accomplices of
the rebellion were called to account for criminal offenses according to Article 100 of
the Criminal Code, which stipulated capital punishment as the sole penalty for active
rebellion. According to that article, many members of the Dzhizak rebellion in whose
actions authorities saw "attempts to seize part of the empire" were condemned.45 Court
hearings were conducted behind closed doors; for two or three days, czarist justice
punished the convicts. Despite the fact that many cases ran to hundreds of pages,
verdicts were passed with "incredible promptness" as an assistant to the head prosecu-
tor, Ignatovich, boasted in a report to the commander of Turkistan military okrug. It
was recommended that punitive squadrons be sent to rebellious cities "to level to the
ground all the settlements that refused to provide workers to fire upon the rebellious
mobs."46 The recommendations were followed rigorously.
The total number of dockets, according to the official data, was thirty-five. A total
of 933 persons were convicted of involvement in the rebellion, and 201 were con-
demned to death. After review of the verdicts by Governor-General Kuropatkin, twenty
people were executed, 587 were sentenced to various terms in prison, and 346, or
about 30 percent, were pardoned. Courts molded by czarism, including military, drum-
head martial, and special courts, protected the interests of the autocratic political
regime, committed lawlessness, and exercised a cruel and total tyranny over represen-
tatives of the local population.
The judicial reforms of 1886 and 1898 in Turkistan-which aimed to separate the
courts from the administration and create a more or less independent counterbalance
to the "military-popular" administration-did not have lasting significance. The new
sense of justice laid out in the Russian legal reform statutes of 1864 (which favored
the bourgeoisie), which were applied thirty-five years later in Turkistan, touched only
representatives of the upper and middle layers of the Russian population. It did not
encompass even the lower levels of the Russian population, for whom the statutes'
guarantees of the inviolability of private property meant little, given that they seldom
possessed much. The native population of Turkistan still resorted to the "people's
courts," which were quite distorted under the influence of the colonial system. The
preservation of the "people's courts" primarily served to reinforce the influence of
the authorities on the behavior, and on the economic and social style of life, of the
local social groups that were expected to undergird the colonial regime in the prov-
inces. That the people of Turkistan were so ill-served by the courts of qdzis and beys
can be explained by the corruption of the judges and their poor knowledge of the
basics of Islamic and civil law. Under these circumstances, the policy whereby the
judges were selected on the basis of their loyalty to the colonial regime was carefully
concealed.
The inconclusive nature of the judicial reforms can be blamed on the internal work-
ings of the administration. They allowed the colonial government not only to employ
military (almost feudal) as well as, simultaneously, capitalist methods of exploitation,
but also to turn a profit from the pre-modern forms of economic activity that were
typical for a society that lagged behind the "Great Russian Center" in its economic
development. Thus, the evolution of the system of administration at the end of the
19th and the beginning of the 20th century occurred under substantial influence from
external forces that were extending their economic influence from the center of Russia
into Turkistan. As a result, many efforts were made to develop a complementary web
of state institutions that worked for a widening and strengthening of the economic
base in order to achieve colonial aims. The interference of the Turkistan provincial
administration in the workings of these institutions was substantially limited, for under
the direction of central ministries and departments, the latter made Turkistan economi-
cally and financially dependent on Russia itself.
New service branches of the economy developed with the help of novel state institu-
tions and with the organization of credit for the agrarian sector through state and
commercial financial structures. All of these more or less improved economic condi-
tions in Turkistan. But even though relatively high rates of growth were achieved, the
proceeds were poorly distributed, and the condition of the majority of the population
of Turkistan worsened as poverty rates in the cities and rural areas increased. The
activities of the authorities and state institutions were directed toward fostering pro-
duction specialization under the influence of the needs and interests of the metropole,
the czarist treasury, and the Russian bourgeoisie and landlords. The interdependence
of all the elements of the power structure also evolved under the influence of critical
social conflicts between the authorities and society, and that of the national-liberation
struggle of the people of Turkistan against the colonial regime. This national-liberation
struggle led to a widening and strengthening of the policing and punitive functions of
the authorities and the development of new institutions dedicated to carrying out sys-
tematic surveillance over the people of Turkistan.
Despite this strong colonial pressure, the local community did not change its inter-
nal workings or basic direction and looked for ways to revert to a more natural course
of development and bring into being a national, independent state. History gave them
such an opportunity in February and October 1917, when the reform movement spread
widely and the first democratic republic-Turkiston Muhtoriyati-was created by the
common efforts of national democrats.
A significant role was played in this movement by the bourgeoisie, clergy, and
others, who came out with their program of democratic renewal and the development
of Turkistan society in May 1917, when the First Muslim Congress in Tashkent was
organized by the National Center (Shuro Islamiya). There, representatives of both the
national-liberal, progressive movement (the Jadids or Reformers) and the Muslim

clergy (Jumhuriyat-i Ulama) met. The Muslim clergy were ready to reconsider some
of their conservative views and to take a chance on national self-determination, which
became plausible as a goal in the wake of the February Revolution. These two groups
united on the basis of those values they held in common, and which for a very long
time had formed the basis of national culture and informed the nation with principles
of self-determination.
The national center, putting aside its squabbles, gradually worked out a program
for the formation of an autonomous Turkistan as part of the Russian Democratic Repub-
lic, which was accepted in September 1917 in Tashkent. But in that city a heated
power struggle developed between Turkistan's Provisional Government Council and
the labor soviets and soldier deputies. The rivalry between them, and the armed oppo-
sition, led to the establishment of the military dictatorship of General Korovichenko,
who was sent to Turkistan with punitive troops from Petrograd.
In this complicated political situation, the recently formed national bloc decided to
rest its appeal on a program of national self-determination in Turkistan. An analysis
of the program reveals, in general, the democratic orientation of its makers, which is
most obvious in the sections on state formation in Turkistan. The document noted:
"The Syr Darya, Samarkand, Fergana, and Transcaspian regions must be parts of Russian
Republic as a separate territorial-autonomous federation, organized on the basis of the
national-cultural self-determination of all peoples, which settle these regions, under
the designation 'Turkistan Federated Republic.' 47
Further, the document declared, with regard to the creation of parliamentary govern-
ment in Turkistan, "the legislative power for the internal administration of the Turki-
stan Federation and its self-government belongs to the Parliament of the Turkistan
Federation, which shall be elected by direct vote every five years on the basis of
general, equal, ballot, with obligatory proportional representation therein of all nation-
alities that populate Turkistan's territory." Moreover, it was specified that the function-
ing of Parliament must be exactly coordinated with the main laws of the Russian
Republic, on the one hand, and with the claims of Islamic law, or shari'a, on the other.
A special chapter was devoted to the organization of a House of Laws, which was
named the Islamic Court, or Mahkama-i-Shari'a, which not only interpreted the law
and adjudicated the claims of the shari'a, or Muslim legal code, but also was granted
the right to supervise all state establishments and to function as the highest judicial
institution of the Turkistan Federation. The Shaykh al-Islam, or chief Muslim juriscon-
sult, was named the Superior Guardian of Justice.
As we see, this state, based on the principles of Islamic law, was to exist in a kind
of symbiosis with the religious institution. As is well known, in the old Central Asian
khanates Islamic law and its prescriptions played the sort of role that we would now
assign to political ideology. The resolutions of a congress held at that time dealt with
a number of urgent practical questions. In particular, the congress declared abrogated
all fixed prices, the right to requisition foodstuffs, and the right to hold monopolies.
In order to prevent famine in the country, it also resolved to cease the planting of
cotton, which had already been reduced in 1917 to 50 percent of the crop, and to sow
only corn. The administration of land and water was given to a National Convention.
The activity of the land committees, which adhered to a policy of socializing land and
water, was declared discontinued. The congress rejected the class-based approach to
deciding political problems employed by the Bolsheviks, as well as the latter's hunger
for power, and their evident disregard of the interests of local people. Instead, the
congress announced quite different positions: the local population would be willing,
it declared, to participate in government only if it were democratic and guaranteed
the realization of its rights of free self-determination, and if it were recognized that
the Council of the Muslim Deputies of Turkistan, representing the entirety of the local
population, constituted the lawful government.48
This alternative program of the national democratic movement, however, remained
without implementation. The Third Congress of Labor, Soldier, and Peasant Deputies
of Turkistan, meeting in Tashkent on 15 November 1917, usurped the right to solve
the problem of how power was to be structured. The Bolsheviks from the first days
demonstrated their attachment to the great-power, colonialist policies that were the
legacy of czarism concerning the native population, to whom by habit they continued
to refer as "aliens" or "indigenes." Thus, concerning the participation of the native
population in power structures, it was said: "allowing Muslims to serve, at the present
time, in the highest revolutionary government bodies of Turkistan is unacceptable,
because the attitude of native peoples to the power of Labor, Soldier, and Peasant
Deputies is totally undetermined, and because there are no proletarian class organiza-
tions among the native population."49 To satisfy the "purity" of the class line, the
Bolsheviks sacrificed the interests and rights of millions among the native population
of Turkistan.
One more attempt to realize the right of people to self-determination and to the
creation of their own state was made in Kokand on 26 November 1917, at the Fourth
Extraordinary Muslims' Congress of the territory. This article is not the place for a
detailed elucidation of its work and programmatic decisions. These questions have in
any case recently been addressed.5" I can say that the main result of the congress's
activity was the declaration of Turkistan's autonomy under the name "Turkiston Muh-
toriati," which was the first practical experience of the formation of a national-demo-
cratic state system in Turkistan along the principles analyzed earlier when we consid-
ered the September Congress in Tashkent. Nevertheless, despite the widespread
support of the Muslim masses, Turkistan's (Kokand's) autonomy was forcibly sup-
pressed by the Bolsheviks in January-February 1918. Local leaders urged armed resis-
tance to Soviet power. To put down this resistance, Soviet rule actively started to
pursue a policy of national-state self-determination from above by the propagation of
the Soviet model of national autonomy. The concrete realization of this policy was
the formation of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkistan. In actual fact, the tsarist
empire was succeeded by a Soviet one.
Thus, during the second half of the 19th and in the early 20th century, Central Asian
statehood underwent a violent transformation toward a new political and economic
model. This model, called "military-popular," and later "military-administrative," had
been approved in the other national regions of the empire, but it had its own peculiari-
ties in Turkistan. The following main components of the model can be discerned: the
demarcation of the occupied territory of the Central Asian khanates and the unification
of the new administrative units according to the Russian model and jurisdiction; the
centralization of military, civil, and legal powers in the hands of the tsarist bureau-
cracy, which inserted itself into the key positions in the colonial system; the institu-
tionalization of the state machinery, and its gradual rationalization regarding local
historical realities, in order to speed the introduction of a cheaper and more effective
system for the exploitation of the material and human resources of the region; a deci-
sion to preserve and make use of some of some pre-colonial social, legal, and adminis-
trative institutions and standards in order to avoid conflict with the new subjects and
their local elite, which had lost many of its privileges; and, finally, the creation of a
new skilled base in the provinces.
Developing according to a principle of "center-periphery," the process had a ten-
dency to combine Russian and local customs. Representatives of the native population
who were loyal to Russia could be elected to positions in the state service as middle-
and low-ranking officials and thus retained their power over the people in almost
unaltered form. The tendency toward eclecticism was most typical during the first
phase of the creation and functioning of the colonial power system, which took place
in the 1860s to the 1880s under wartime conditions, and under the unlimited authority
of one of the most talented and experienced administrators, K. P. Kaufman. In its
second phase, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the administrative system
became increasingly centralized.
In my opinion, the most characteristic activities of the authorities were the follow-
ing: moving key parts of the Turkistan governor-generals' powers to the Russian
ministries; further unification of office work and legal proceedings in accordance with
imperial bureaucratic structures; the widening of the resettlement movement and a
consequent growth in Russification; extension of the authorities' repressive functions
and the increasing resort to "extraordinary" measures by the government to the point
that these became routine; and working, ultimately in vain, for reformist plans to
abolish the elective basis of local "autonomy," and absolutely to subordinate local
governance and juridical practice to the Russian machinery of state.
To various degrees, and depending on the situation, prevailing official doctrines,
and the intensity of resistance, the anti-national system not only had an adverse effect
on the social and cultural development of local society. It also laid the basis and
created conditions for the introduction of the Soviet model of national autonomy,
which did not correspond to the moral and spiritual norms of Turkistan's society.
The national-democratic movement had been developing together with all-Russian
democratic processes in 1917, and had declared its commitment to the creation of a
republican, parliamentarian form of government in Turkistan within the framework of
a single democratic Russia. The democrats gave form to their program by creating
Turkistan autonomy, which was then suppressed by the Soviets' armed intervention.
The real national self-determination of the Central Asian peoples, including those in
Uzbekistan, finally became possible only at the end of the 20th century.
NOTES
'Collection of Legislation and Directives of the Ruling Senate, Saint Petersburg, 1863-1917, part 1,
doc. no. 50, 1865.
2Commander of Novokokand Line, General M. G. Chernayev was appointed as a first military governor.
In February 1866, after the recall of Chernayev to Petersburg oblast, it was headed by D. I. Romanovskiy.
3Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan (hereafter, CSA), F. 1-336.
4Ibid., F. 1-450.
5Draft of the report of the general-adjutant K. P. Kaufman on organization in the oblasts of the Turkistan
general-governorship, 7 November 1867-25 March 1881, comp. titular counsellor P. Homutov, Saint Pe-
tersburg, 1885.
6"Russkiy Vestnik," no. 5, 1868.
7Draft of the statute on administration in Semirechensk and Sirdarya oblasts, Saint Petersburg, 1867.
8Draft of the report of the general-adjutant K. P. Kaufman, 163.
9F. K. Girs, "Report on Revision of Turkistan Kray," Saint Petersburg, 1888, 10.
'OCSA, F. I-1, op. 27, d. 659 1. 18, 109-26; draft of the statute on administration in Semirechensk and
Sirdarya oblasts.
"Draft of the statute on administration in Semirechensk and Sirdarya oblasts.
12Sirdarya oblast survey for 1885, Tashkent, 1886, 252.
13CSA, F. I-, Chancellery of Turkistan general-governor, op. 27, d. 659, 1. 27-28.
15CSA, F 1-17, Sirdarya Oblast Administration, op. 16, d. 55, 1. 101, op. 3, d. 203, 1. 26.
16Ibid.; CSA, F. 1-1 op. 16, d. 1650, 1.5.
"'CSA, F. 36, d. 1328, 18-19.
'8CSA, F. 1-36, Office of the Head of Tashkent, d. 1328, 1.18-19.
19L. K. Brodskiy, "To the 35th Anniversary of Tashkent City Self-Administration," Tashkent, 1912, 37.
20Girs, "Report," 117.
21CSA, F. I-, op. 12, d. 648, 1.2.
22Ibid., op. 11, d. 737, 4.
24"Report on Revision of Turkistan Kray, Conducted under the Highest Order by Senator Earl K. K.
Palen. Rural Administration: Russian and Regional," Saint Petersburg, 1910, 9.
25Girs, "Report," 29.
26Ibid., 46.
27Ibid., 206.
28Ibid.
29The Sirdarya committee of trustees was established in 1879; that in Fergana in 1882; and that in
Samarkand in 1888.
30CSA, F I-1, op. 25, d. 26, 1.5.
31A. V. Krivoshein, Notes of the Head Administrator of Agriculture and Land Organisation on His Visit
to Turkistan (Saint Petersburg, 1912), 57-58.
32"Statute on administration of Turkistan Kray, 22 July 1886," Tashkent, 1886, 4.
33Palen, "Report," 13.
34CSA, F I-1, op. 16, d. 2287, 1.5.
35A. I. Dobromislov, Tashkent in the Past and Present (Tashkent, 1912), 72.
36Stenographic report of State Duma, 4th calling, 5th session, 17th meeting, 15 December 1916.
37CSA, F. 1-7 Department of Agriculture and Land organization in Turkistan Kray, op. 1, d. 2428, 1.7.
38Ibid., 1.8.
39CSA, d. 2790, 1.67, d. 109, 1.34.

40V. I. Massalskiy, "Turkistan Kray," in Russia (Saint Petersburg, 1913), 19:324, 326, 330, 332.
41"Migration Matters in Turkistan," in Palen, "Report," 57.
42Krivoshein, Notes, 81.
43A state of "intensive" surveillance was introduced when "[p]ublic order in any area is disturbed by
criminal encroachments on state regime or on the security of people and their property, or by preparation
of such so that utilization of active laws will not be sufficient": Full Code of Legislatures, 3rd ed., vol. 1,
no. 350, 6.
44CSA, F. I-I, op. 31, d. 1143, 1.4; ibid., F. 1-18, d. 14890, 1.3-8.
45The Rebellion of 1916 in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, document collection, Moscow, 1960, 73.
46Russian State Military-Historical Archive, headquarters, Asian part, 1916, op. 4, d. 40, 1. 116.
47Turkistan Messenger, 11 November 1917. The representatives from Semirechensk did not attend the
congress. Delegates expressed their willingness to make Semirechensk part of the Turkistan Federation.
48Ulug Turkiston, 30 September 1917.
49The Victory of Great October Socialist Revolution in Turkistan, document collection, Tashkent, 1947, 93.
5OS. Agzamhodjaev "Turkiston Muhtoriati: The Struggle for Freedom and Independence, 1917-1918"
(Ph.D. diss., Tashkent University, 1988).

The Colonial System of Power in Turkistan

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The Colonial System of Power in Turkistan

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The Colonial System of Power in Turkistan

Author(s): Nadira A. Abdurakhimova

THE COLONIAL SYSTEM OF POWER

Nadira A. Abdurakhimova is Professor, Faculty of History, National University of Uzbekistan, Tashkent

? 2002 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/02 $9.50

background of the occupation of Kokand khanate, achieved through the development

working in them. A clear tendency of colonial authorities toward comprehensive regu-

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SYSTEM OF POWER

national-liberal, progressive movement (the Jadids or Reformers) and the Muslim

39CSA, d. 2790, 1.67, d. 109, 1.34.

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