Russia divided modern-day Central Asia into three different entities: the Khiva and Bukhara protectorates and Turkestan.
The Muslim Emirs ruled the protectorates:
As long as the emirs remained loyal and handed economic and international control to Russia, they retained control over internal affairs.
Turkestan, however, was ruled by Russian governor-generals and their administrative staff.
The region was broken into four different oblasts:
the Syr Darya oblast
Semirechye oblast
Ferghana and Samarkand oblast
Transcaspian oblast.
Tsarist Russia was a particularist empire, meaning that each social group had their own specific legal statuses and obligations to the state.
The indigenous peoples were isolated from Russian society and denied certain rights.
The settlers were granted certain protections and rights to indigenous lands.
Russians held all high ranking administrative positions while indigenous peoples held local administrative positions
Few Russian administrators learned the local language, making them reliant on the local administration to rule.
The Turkestan administration ignored Islam, believing it would die without state support.
Islam did not have an official status and the state did not try to control mosques or madrasas.
The Islamic courts remained open, but the office of the Islamic judge was elective and they had limited jurisdiction.
This further isolated the indigenous peoples.
They had tools to deal with issues that arose within their own communities.
They had no mechanisms to deal issues that occurred with the Russian settlers.
Russian settlers streamed into the Steppe, displacing Qazaq and Kyrgyz communities
By 1911, 1.5 million Russians lived in the Qazaq Steppe, where they made up 41.5% of the population.
The influx of settlers displaced hundreds of thousands of Qazaq and Kyrgyz peoples, took up scarce resources such as water and land.
The Qazaq people responded by physically fighting for the right to exist, but also by creating an intelligentsia who tried to engage with the Russian political system.
These intellectuals would come together to create the Alash Orda, a Qazaq political party.
The people of Central Asia demanded the right to political participation.
The Russian conquest created a power vacuum filled by the ulama, a new class of merchants, and intellectuals.
The ulama and merchants benefited from the Russian administration.
The intellectuals wanted greater political participation.
The 1905 Duma reforms piqued the hopes of the intellectuals for greater political participation.
However, the reform did little to address the deeply ingrained issues facing the communities in Central Asia.
Reference
Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazakh Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1751-1917 by Ian W. Campbell
Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Coexistence by Shoshana Keller
Russia’s Protectorate in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924 by Seymour Becker
Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo
Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid
