National-state delimitation of Central Asia. Soviet propaganda posters for the inhabitants of Central Asia (17 photos)
middle Asia
Sale of paintings by Soviet artists about Central AsiaCentral Asia: naturalness in all its diversity
The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Central Russia associate Central Asia with monotonous landscapes of the steppes, sandy deserts, slowly moving caravans of camels, colorful carpets, all kinds of exotic ... However, beautiful paintings by Soviet artists make her look at her beauty in a completely new way. In the paintings of the artists of this period, Central Asia is revealed in all its diversity, originality and brightness of colors.
In the huge collection of Alexander Gremitsky you can find landscapes, still lifes, portraits, genre paintings on this subject of many outstanding masters of an outstanding art school - Gremitsky V.G., Kovinina V.M., Tutevol K.A., Ishmametova E.D. and many other famous painters that time. You can buy a painting for the interior of your home or a worthy painting as a gift, as well as paintings of Central Asia, which will become an addition to your personal collection of paintings.
The subjects of paintings by artists dedicated to this region are very diverse and impressive. Many Soviet artists willingly depicted the naturalness and beauty of this unusual land. Vladimir Georgievich Gremitskikh loved to paint rural landscapes, which look very inspiring, even despite their apparent initial simplicity. His work "Spring in Uzbekistan" unfolds before the viewer all the beauty of the riot of flowering apricot trees, the transparency of the air, the awakening of the earth. Valery Kovinin's very interesting work "Mountain Landscape" depicts the majestic peaks of the mountains, which are buried in snow-white snows and blend harmoniously with the lush greenery of summer alpine meadows, which sets off the bright red staffage of a female figure.
Many paintings by Soviet artists are dedicated to the colorful people of Asia and their enormous, hard work - growing and harvesting cotton and tobacco. "Builders of the Karakum Canal" by Valery Kovinin shows the viewer at once a lot of people of different ages and professions. The author glorifies the work of the people of this region, who built a canal with the whole world so that water would come to the desert, and with it blooming gardens, happiness and abundance. The “First Furrow” by the same author is also dedicated to the hard work of the Central Asian farmer.
It is impossible to imagine the life of this colorful region without cotton plantations. It is his difficult cleaning that is captured in Kovinin's work "On Cotton". Here there was a harmonious fusion of the beauty of the surrounding landscape and the work of ordinary women who, on an equal basis with men, do their work, without thinking about the true grandiosity of the work being done. Many artists Soviet period loved to work in the genre of portraiture. In the collection of Alexander Gremitsky you can find such wonderful portraits as "Uzbek", "Portrait of Kaiyrgul Sartbiyeva" by Vladimir Gremitsky, "Aksakal" by Enver Ishmametov, "Uzbek Woman in a Burqa" by Claudia Tutevol and many others. To buy paintings by artists, simply follow the appropriate link.
Why is it worth buying paintings of Central Asia on this site?
You get a unique opportunity for a truly impressive selection of paintings by the most talented Soviet artists. If you like paintings by Soviet artists, then today you can buy paintings that will adequately decorate the interior of your home.
Sale of paintings in Moscow from the collection of Alexander Gremitsky is carried out at any time, regardless of weekends and public holidays. A rich selection of paintings for the interior, which will be a great decoration for your home or will be included in your personal collection. Here you can also buy a painting as a gift.
Why is it profitable to buy paintings from this collection?
An impressive selection from a well-known private collection of works by many famous Soviet artists.
Weighted prices and the possibility of registration in an aesthetic baguette.
The online catalog allows you to get acquainted with the works of any direction you are interested in in a matter of minutes.
Efficiency of processing your order with delivery throughout Russia.
Professional advice on all matters of selection and acquisition of any works included in the catalog of the site.
Give yourself the opportunity to become the happy owner of a worthy work of art!
The "calling card" of the architectural heritage of Uzbekistan is the Registan Square in Samarkand, thanks to the famous architectural ensemble of the 15th-17th centuries located on it, consisting of the Ulugbek madrasah (1417-1420), the Sherdor madrasah (1619-1636) and the Tillya-Kari madrasah (1646- 1660). The ensemble of three madrasahs is a unique example of the art of urban planning and a wonderful example of the architectural design of the main square of the city. In 2001, this ensemble, along with other ancient buildings of Samarkand, was included in the List world heritage UNESCO.
However, Prokudin-Gorsky saw this wonderful ensemble in 1911 in a completely different way than modern tourists can see it. Collapsed domes, crumbling mosaics, falling minarets. To save the latter, in the 1930s. Soviet restorers obliged them with steel ropes.
Madrasah of Ulugbek in 1911 and 1958:
In the picture of the photographer of the American magazine "Life" Howard Sokhurek, we see Ulugbek's madrasah more mothballed than restored. In the following decades, this monument was completely restored.
This is how it looks today:
Larger
The Sherdor (Shir-Dor) madrasah standing opposite it was preserved much better by the beginning of the 20th century, since it was three centuries younger. But even here, a significant work of restorers was required.
Shir Dor in 1911 and 100 years later:
Larger
Another architectural symbol of Samarkand is the mausoleum of the famous conqueror Tamerlane, known as Gur-Emir.
The family tomb of Timur and the heirs of the empire was erected in the southwestern part of the city in 1404. Mosaic, assembled from light and dark blue glazed bricks, decorates the walls and drum, geometric mosaic ornament sparkles brightly in the sun.
This masterpiece of Central Asian architecture occupies an important place in the history of world Islamic architecture. Gur-Emir served as a prototype for famous monuments architecture of the Mughal era: Humayun's mausoleum in Delhi and the Taj Mahal mausoleum in Agra, built by the descendants of Timur, who at one time were the ruling dynasty of Northern India.
The monument was restored in the 1950s (outer domes and glazing), more extensive restoration work began in 1967.
The dome of the mausoleum in 1911 and 2004:
The volume of the work done by the restorers is shown more fully by the entrance arch of the ensemble of the Gur-Emir mausoleum.
The state of the arch in 1911 and today:
Larger
No less surprising is the transformation of another Samarkand pearl - the ensemble of mausoleums of the Samarkand nobility Shakhi-Zinda.
Prokudin-Gorsky devoted dozens of photographs to this ancient necropolis, visiting it every time he visited Samarkand. The deplorable state of the monuments struck him to the core. In his report at the congress of artists in 1912, Sergei Mikhailovich threw out all his indignation and bitterness: " Mosque Shah-Zinde. Taken in the evening. There will be something left of it, because there are mullahs who are begging for money for the show. In general, the oversight of these wonderful nine-century-old monuments is extremely vile. Nothing is organized. No repairs, no one cares, no one cares."
In Soviet times, a lot of work was done on scientific study and conservation of the necropolis, but back in the 1990s. most of his mausoleums looked almost like in the time of Prokudin-Gorsky. A dramatic change happened to them literally in last years- now some parts of the ensemble are barely recognizable.
So, for example, the Nameless Mausoleum looked like in 1911 and a couple of years ago:
Mausoleum of Usto Ali Nasafi in 1907 and today:
Larger
Entrance to the Shirin-Bika-Aka mausoleum in 1911 and today:
Larger
Main entrance to the Shakhi-Zinda necropolis:
Similar changes took place with the ancient monuments of Bukhara. Perhaps we will do a separate review on them later.
Here we will show only one comparison, namely with the city citadel Ark, where the emir's palace was located.
The main entrance to the fortress in 1907 and today:
Of course, in 1907 the state of the emir's palace was relatively good, it was still being repaired. However, the Soviet restorers had to work harder later, since in 1920 the Red troops of Mikhail Frunze actively used artillery during the storming of the city.
Large-scale work to restore ancient monuments has also been undertaken in neighboring Turkmenistan. The most famous medieval sights on the territory of this country are located on the site of ancient Merv.
A thousand years ago, it was the center of a flourishing irrigation civilization, from which by the beginning of the 20th century only sand-covered ruins remained. Although they looked, on the whole, much more modest than the colorful mosques and mausoleums of Samarkand and Bukhara, Prokudin-Gorsky paid considerable attention to them.
Located away from the main tourist routes, the ruins of Merv until the end Soviet era almost did not change, and only with the independence of Turkmenistan they decided to restore them as a symbol of the ancient culture of the Turkmen nation.
One of the most recognizable monuments there is the mausoleum of Sanjar.
The Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar himself ordered the construction of the mausoleum and called it "Dar al-akhira" ("House of the Afterlife"). In 1157 he was buried. The mausoleum was destroyed by the Mongols during the invasion of Khorezm in 1221]. The ashes of the Sultan were reburied in an unknown place. Under the tombstone of the mausoleum is still empty.
This is how the mausoleum looked in 1911 and 1970:
This is how all Soviet viewers saw him in the film "White Sun of the Desert".
In 2004, the monument was restored with the assistance of the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA).
Now the comparison looks like this:
No less interesting is the fate of the mausoleum-mosque of Yusuf Hamadansky, which underwent a radical reconstruction in the 1990s.
View from approximately the same perspective in 1911 and today:
Larger
A massive minaret and another building of unusual architectural forms were built next to the mosque. And the courtyard of the mosque, where scenes from the film "White Sun of the Desert" were filmed, no longer exists.
We will definitely dedicate a separate big post to this mosque.
Own and others
For most people who grew up after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia seems to be an unfamiliar and not very clear southern region, where it is very warm, there is a lot of fruit, and from where a lot of guest workers, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kirghiz go to work in Russia.
But Central Asia, no matter how distant it may seem to us today, for more than 100 years (some areas - much longer) was part of Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union. During this time, several generations have changed. About what difficult role the "Asian question" played in Russian history, and will be discussed in this article - on the example of the Central Asian uprising of 1916.
The territories of modern Asian states - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan - were part of Russia gradually.
Northwestern (Ural Cossack army) and the North-Eastern (Semipalatinsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk and others) regions of the state of Kazakhstan within the current borders have never been part of Muslim Asia. Russian peasants and Cossacks lived here from the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. These territories were transferred to the Kazakhs by the Soviet authorities, in the course of the fight against "Great Russian chauvinism".
Most of Kazakhstan firmly became part of the Russian Empire in the late 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. Turkestan - the territory of four other Asian states, became Russian in the 60s - 80s of the century before last. At the same time, on the territory of Central Asia, during the entire period of Russian domination here and until 1920, two formally independent Muslim states remained under the Russian protectorate - the Bukhara and Khiva khanates.
Before the article, I will say right away that I consider the annexation of these lands to Russia the most severe mistake of the Russian imperial power. Carried away by superficial imperial and general civil ideas, our Russian ancestors forgot that "the East is a delicate matter." Ignoring the Islamic factor, failing to understand that the concepts of “friends” and “foes” in politics are much more real than cotton, silk and border security, led us to tragic consequences.
National politics royal authorities, of course, was not anti-Russian. It was believed that the imperial power reflects the interests of the Russian people and relies on it in its activities. But the second, unfortunately, was true to a much greater extent than the first.
What was Russia looking for in Central Asia?
If the economic benefits, then we received mostly losses. It is believed that direct subsidies to the region, not covered by anything and never returned to the treasury, during the years of their rule Russian authorities spent at least 320 million rubles in gold. For comparison, all annual the revenues of the Russian treasury in 1909 were approximately 136 million rubles. And there were so many indirect costs - for new states and the maintenance of Russian officials, education, maintenance of roads and waterways, military garrisons, pensions and benefits for the local aristocracy, and so on, that it is very difficult to take them into account completely. According to my estimates, the maintenance of Central Asia annually drew at least 15% of its income from the Russian people's organism. But there was also the Caucasus, also subsidized. Is it surprising that with such unnecessary expenses, Russia economically lagged behind England, France, Germany?
At one time, while working on my Ph. And now these thick handwritten and typewritten folders, for sure, are in the Military Historical Archive in Moscow and are waiting for a deeper study. I remember well that this territory (now Turkmenistan) covered no more than 10% of its expenses with its own income, taxes and fees. Everything else is subsidies from Russia. I remember how Kuropatkin wrote that in terms of the level of domestic improvement, street lighting, pavements, squares and parks, street sewerage, and so on, “Askhabad, the capital of Transcaspia, is an order of magnitude higher than any provincial city in central Russia.” The general did not write only that such an effect could be achieved just by robbing the population of the provinces of central Russia in favor of the population of the outskirts.
Maybe if the material and human resources of Russia had not been spent so mediocrely, but had been directed to schools and medicine, the construction of roads and enterprises in central Russia, we would not have had a terrible social revolution and civil war?
The native population of Central Asia was exempted from many state taxes. In fact, taxes were paid by the population, of course. But they did not go to the treasury of the empire, but for the maintenance of the native administration, religious schools, mosques. In Turkestan it was more than 6,000 religious schools and 445 religious schools - madrasahs. All Muslim peoples of Central Asia were exempted from military tax and military service. Russian peasants and Cossacks, in turn, paid and fulfilled all taxes and duties. What is this, if not clearly expressed national inequality? Can a state that fought almost continuously ensure the safety of the lives of some of its Muslim subjects due to the fact that others, Christians and Volga Muslims, for example, paid an increased “blood tax”? And why then should the state have such subjects?
Maybe the politicians from St. Petersburg were looking for, by annexing new lands, the security of our southern borders? But it could be obtained by strengthening the old defensive line south of Guryev, Kokchetav and Ust-Kamenogorsk. Then fertile lands Southern Siberia, which at that time had not been mastered by anyone, would have remained in Russia. But the restless Muslim population - would remain to the South of this line - would be free, sovereign and self-sufficient.
I think that it was clear to any impartial observer in Russia that, having great amount of its internal problems, the Orthodox Empire would not be able to effectively assimilate, at least in the cultural and economic sense, the 10 million native population of the Turkestan and Steppe regions. But the principle "do not think - but execute" was in effect. Upstairs, supposedly, the authorities know better. Here they are completed.
Corruption, education, court
For the government and authorities of Russia, Asia was a distant outskirts, which was little known and understood. For many officials, offending officers - a place of exile. The Russian bureaucracy was not distinguished by excessive scrupulousness. And the government - due demands.
Today we talk a lot about corruption. Corruption and bribery (baksheesh) were the norm of life in indigenous Central Asia long before the arrival of Russian power here. The Russian administration, having come to these lands, abolished slavery. But the imperial officials could not cancel the "kickbacks and servility". Or maybe they didn't really want to. It is known that many civil and military officials of Russia are deeply and firmly entangled in Asian corruption schemes.
But arbitrariness and corruption were especially widespread among the local native administration elected by the Muslims themselves. Judges, city elders, volost governors, Pentecostals, village and aul elders, having invested large sums of money in the "election campaign", further actively lined their pockets at the expense of their fellow tribesmen. Much has been written about this in the materials of the Senate revision of K. Palen, whose commission worked in Turkestan in 1908-1909 and published many reports. Despite the fact that their own robbed their own, the local foreman skillfully and successfully transferred the arrows of hatred to the Russian administration. And on the Russians in general - as infidels and conquerors.
The authorities of the Russian Empire sought to preserve as much as possible in Asia the prerogatives of the Muslim clergy, which carried out legal proceedings through adat and Sharia courts and controlled local religious (the only at that time) schools. But, having preserved the legal proceedings and local schools, the Russian authorities introduced a parallel system of Russian courts, which operated under the general control of military governors, ordinary schools subordinate to the Ministry of Public Education and the so-called "Russian-native schools". Fearing the “pernicious influence of foreign countries,” the authorities until 1900 inclusive banned the mass pilgrimage of Central Asian Muslims to Mecca and Medina. Then they allowed it.
Each Russian village is equal to a battalion of troops
general Grodekov Nikolay Ivanovich
The catchphrase of one of the first explorers of Turkestan, General Grodekov, is known: "each new Russian settlement in Turkestan is equal to a battalion of Russian troops." The authorities of the Russian Empire understood that the only reliable element in the new lands could be only the Russians and the Orthodox themselves. Therefore, the peasant colonization of the region went almost in parallel with how the new lands were occupied by the troops. The Steppe Code of 1891 allowed the local population to own free of charge 40 acres of land per person, which was relatively little for a nomad, but more than enough for a farmer. On the free lands Russian resettlement settlements and Cossack villages arose. Cossacks came to Central Asia from Siberia, a new Cossack army was created here - Semirechensky.
Since clashes with nomads were not uncommon, the authorities allowed the settlers to have weapons. However, starting in 1910, the authorities began to gradually seize weapons from the peasant settlers. As it often happens, they were reinsured, they deceived themselves. And there were few Cossacks in the region, even for the war of 1914-1917, the Semirechensky army put up only two regiments (no more than 1000 checkers) and one more regiment remained to carry out guard and border service in the region. As a result, this criminal disarmament of the Russian rural population and the conscription of many combat-ready men into the army during the Great War played a black role in the days of the uprising of 1916-1917.
Russian apartheid
A characteristic feature of Turkestan was that Russian population here it did not mix at all with the local Muslims. They lived completely apart. There was apartheid, in the most correct sense of the word. Cultural and psychological differences were too great. The daily everyday life of both the Sarts (sedentary) and nomadic inhabitants of Turkestan was too alien to the Russians. And vice versa, of course, too. Nothing united in the Faith, traditions, everyday culture. There was no ethnic mixing, there was no intermarriage.
The Russians and the natives, who often lived side by side, had neither a desire nor a need for interpenetration. At the same time, in the eyes of the locals, Russians, regardless of their status and property status, have always remained colonizers, conquerors. To understand them, in some sense, it is possible. No one has proved that Russian policy in the region was clearly and deliberately unfair. But the eternal dilemma - "friend or foe", works contrary to logic and common sense. For an Uzbek cotton grower or a Kyrgyz shepherd, any injustice from "their own" probably seemed sweeter than the cultural trends emanating from the "foreign" Russian administration. That is, there was no love, no mutual respect. There was the right of the strong, which rested on army bayonets. not based on real national interest no Russians, no local Asian population.
It is no coincidence that the person who did a lot for the historical and ethnographic study of the Turkestan region, for its education and development, the director of the Tashkent gymnasium and the trustee of the educational district, the founder of the Turkestan circle of lovers of archeology and history of the East (TKLAIV) N.P. Ostroumov, who lived almost all his life in Tashkent, said at her end the phrase that he "would not have stayed in the region for a day if the troops had been withdrawn from it."
And General A.N. Kuropatkin, a phrase-monger and rhetorician, but an observant and intelligent man who worked a lot in Turkestan, wrote in 1916: “For half a century of dominion in the region, the Russian authorities failed not only to make foreigners Russian Emperor and dedicated citizens Russian state but also to instill in their consciousness a sense of the unity of their interests with the interests of the Russian people.
Everything was exactly the same. Russia was not a civilizational monolith. Even the Volga Tatars, who lived side by side with the Russians for several centuries, gave out to the mountain at the end of the 19th century a lot of people who became pan-Turkists and pan-Islamists - supporters of the creation of a single world state of Turks and Muslims under the rule of the Turkish sultan. They, mostly educated people, began to come to Russian Turkestan in thousands, got jobs as teachers, officials - and worked with the local Turkic and Turkic-Mongolian population. Against Russia and in favor of Turkey. In Russia, they were called jadists (it would be more accurate to say - jihadists). This work was especially intensified before the beginning of the Great War (1914 - 1918) and also brought its own shoots. For example, there are cases when Central Asian Muslims publicly collected money for the treatment of soldiers of Ottoman Turkey wounded in the war. But they never voluntarily collected help for Russian invalids of the war.
Hidden national hatred in Turkestan smoldered. For her to burst into flames, she needed a reason. And there was a reason.
First World War aggravated the situation. The natives were not taken into the army and they did not die in the trenches. It can be said that Great War, which completely crossed out the entire previous move historical development Russia, the life of the natives of Central Asia was affected very slightly. But the taxes on them nevertheless increased somewhat: the supply of meat and livestock, the collection of money from the wagons, the zemstvo fees. And on June 25, 1916, an imperial decree was issued (which was developed and prepared by the Military Ministry), according to which men aged 19 to 43 from the Turkestan and Steppe regions in the amount of approximately 480 thousand people (this is slightly less than 5% of the total native population) should be called to the internal provinces of Russia and to the front line for rear work (digging trenches, erecting earthen fortifications, underwater service). This measure was obviously forced. The country's human resources were drying up. The authorities believed that another breakthrough was needed to win. It would be better if the authorities of the empire thought about how to resolve the issue with the "revolutionaries - internationalists." And with the separation from the empire of Muslim Turkestan, with the provision of complete independence to it.
They say that the decree was issued in the summer, when field work was going on in Asia. But why does not one of the apologists of the uprising recall that the Christian male population of the empire was at the front, suffered huge bloody losses for the third consecutive summer, and old men, women and children pulled the field work in Russian villages? Is this what is called fair national politics?
In July 1916, Russia became aware of the technical failure of the Russian army on the Turkish front. The corps of General Baratov retreated under pressure from the Turkish-German troops in Mesopotamia, left Kermanshah and Hamadan. The Russians still controlled vast swathes of eastern Turkey and northern and western Iran. But in Turkestan, the rumor of a retreat was immediately interpreted as a sign of the weakness of the Russian army. Pro-Turkish and pro-German agitators, and there were many such among the Jadist Tatars, began to assure the local natives that soon the troops of Germany and the Turkish Sultan would defeat the Russians and liberate Central Asia from the tsarist yoke. The Chinese also actively worked against Russia, considering the lands of Central Asia to be their own and striving to weaken Russian influence here.
As Russian officials wrote in one of the reports: “There is an indisputable reason to consider the perpetrators for agitation, firstly, some elements from the neighboring Kuldzha region (China - author), and, secondly, German agents: the determination of the leaders of the rebellion has matured and gained strength unexpectedly quickly because in their delusions they were supported by someone's proclamations, which spoke of the weakness of Russia, the invincibility of Germany and the imminent invasion of Russian Turkestan by the Chinese. The reports of Russian officials said that the collection of weapons for a future uprising and the spread of calls for it in different regions of Turkestan and the Steppe region had been noted since the summer of 1915.
Sarts uprising
The uprising broke out shortly after the proclamation of the "manifesto on rear work" - at first Ferghana Valley and in other territories of the former Kokand Khanate (July 4, 1916 in Khojent), where Islamic fanaticism and anti-Russian sentiments were traditionally the strongest. It began almost simultaneously in several dozen settlements, which clearly speaks of communication and coordination between the rebels. Almost everywhere in the Sartian lands (speaking modern language- on the lands of settled Uzbeks), the uprising was led by mullahs and dervishes. Their slogans were: "Down with the white tsar and the Russians." "Let's kill the Russians and create Muslim state».
One of the most ardent supporters of holy war"Kassym-Khodja, the imam of the Friday mosque in the village of Zaamin, became against the" infidel "Russians. At the beginning of the uprising, he was proclaimed "Zaamin Bek" and announced that, having destroyed all the Russians, he would restore the power of the Kokand Khan. Since the Russians in the Ferghana Valley lived mainly in cities, at first the victims of the rebellious Muslims were bailiffs, a few policemen and officials of the postal and telegraph department - several dozen people. Killed brutally and for show. The army of Kassym-Khoja, in fact, massacred all the Russians that fell into his hands. The actions of the rebels led to the termination of telegraph communications between Russian cities in Turkestan and the central regions of Russia. On July 17, 1916 martial law was declared in the Turkestan district.
There was a world war, and there were almost no Russian troops in the region. On a vast territory there were only scattered Cossack hundreds and spare companies. Therefore, self-defense squads were created from the civilian Russian population wherever possible. The rebels failed to take Tashkent or Samarkand. But Khojent and Jizzakh were under their control. As well as rural areas of the Fergana, Samarkand, Syrdarya regions.
Soon after the uprising began, the tsarist government realized the seriousness of the situation and the extent of the threat. Adjutant General Kuropatkin was appointed governor-general of the region, who proved himself to be a weak commander both in the Japanese and German wars, but in the civil life of the Asian outskirts - a strong administrator. Kuropatkin knew Turkestan well, he quickly gathered the Russian army and Cossack detachments into a fist and began to crush the uprising. Khojent and Djizak fiercely resisted, but were taken. By the beginning of autumn, in the lands of settled Uzbeks in the Turkestan region, the uprising was largely suppressed. Its leaders were either killed, or taken prisoner, or left for the steppes. Data on how many Russians died from a knife, checkers, bullets or peaks of fighters with infidels at the same time vary. According to my estimates, in the original territory of the uprising, in the former Kokand lands, about 200 civilians and officials, about 50 soldiers, died.
Tragedy in Semirechye
Semirechye is the area around Lake Issyk-Kul and up to Lake Balkhash in the north. On the territory of Semirechie, the most fertile and favorable part of Eastern Turkestan, there are the cities of Verny (Alma-Ata) and Pishpek (Frunze). Before the arrival of the Russians, these lands were inhabited mainly by nomads and semi-nomads - the Kirghiz and Kazakhs. There has never been a settled Uzbek (Sart) population in Semirechye. Therefore, Russian villages and Cossack villages quickly arose on plots suitable for agriculture. After the establishment of Russian power in the region, several tens of thousands of Uighur and Dungan Muslims moved here from China from repression and persecution. Like the Russians, they were mainly engaged in sedentary agriculture and cattle breeding.
By the time the uprising began in the summer of 1916, the Russian rural population of Semirechye (Cossacks and peasants) was very small. If we consider that a significant part of the Russians already lived in cities such as Verny, and adult men were almost without exception drafted into the army, then we can assume that no more than 25,000 people remained in the villages and villages, mostly women, children and the elderly. It was they who became the main victims of the massacre perpetrated by their yesterday's Muslim neighbors - the Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and Uighurs.
Flashing brightly, but being suppressed by the end of summer in settled Turkestan, the uprising quickly spread to the lands of the nomads. Here it flared up with special force and hatred. There were not enough troops to suppress it in vast expanses. The rebels burned the farms of Russian settlers, Cossacks, destroyed schools, post offices, administrative buildings. In a telegram to the Minister of War dated August 16, 1916, General Kuropatkin wrote that “in one Przhevalsky district (where there were the most Russian villagers), 6024 families of Russian settlers suffered property damage, of which the majority lost all movables. Missing and killed 3478 people. Both peasant villages and Cossack villages were taken by surprise. Then they tried to create self-defense units - but the weapons from the peasants, as already mentioned, were actively confiscated by the authorities starting in 1910 ...
A terrible tragedy occurred in August 1916 on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, where the Kyrgyz nomads destroyed Orthodox monastery, brutally (hacked to death, stabbed to death, impaled) killed not only all its inhabitants and workers, but 70 Russian children, boys and girls aged 10 to 14, who came to the monastery camp for the summer from the Vernensky gymnasium. I will write more about this.
It should be noted that, in addition to the nomads, many Uighurs and Dungans, Muslims by religion, who were recently rescued from the Chinese by giving them shelter on the lands of the Russian Empire, took an active part in the uprising against the Russians. According to official Russian reports (in my opinion, deliberately underestimated), until the end of 1916, 2325 Russian residents died in Semirechye, 1384 people were missing. This means - they were also taken prisoner, then killed - but the remains were not found ..
This is a huge figure, more than 15% of the total Russian population of the Semirechensk region. And about 30% of the total adult population of its villages and settlements.
It is terrible that it was the Russian rural settlers, disarmed by their own authorities, who suffered the most terrible and bloody losses. Some of those who survived left gruesome descriptions of the cruelty of the nomads if the latter managed to capture the Russians. They ripped open their bellies, put them on a stake, skinned them from living people. The number of Russian government officials who died during the uprising throughout Turkestan is small in relation to their total number - 9 people. The rebels also killed 22 native officials.
Rebellion in Kazakhstan
The uprising in Turkestan was largely crushed by October 2016. But it continued to blaze among the nomadic Kazakhs in the Steppe General Government. Here, as already noted, many leaders of the uprising - the Sarts fled. The slogans of the rebels were the same - "we will kill all Russians and build a Muslim state." But, since the rural Russian population in these places was not very large, but big cities they could not take the rebels, the number of Russian victims in the regions of the Steppe Territory was lower than in Semirechye. Despite the fact that the military governor Nikolai Sukhomlinov postponed the deadline for conscription for rear work, the uprising only flared up. Detachments of the rebels, under the leadership of Imanov, besieged one of the regional centers of the region - the city of Turgai.
The hastily formed consolidated Russian army units were thrown to suppress the uprising. Their total number in the Steppe region and Turkestan reached 30 thousand people. For comparison: Antonov's peasant uprising in the Tambov and Voronezh provinces of Russia in 1921 was suppressed by the Red Army and security officers under the leadership of Tukhachevsky in the amount of 40 thousand people. And the number of rebellious Kazakhs in Imanov's detachment alone during the period of its highest rise was 50 thousand. Being eventually defeated, the rebels went to the mountains and remote camps, from where they made raids until mid-February 1917. Then came February Revolution. Later, Imanov, quite logically, entered the Red Army with the remnants of his troops.
Fighting Yomuts in Transcaspia
The Transcaspian region (modern Turkmenistan) was administratively separate part Turkestan region. Its main population, the Tekin tribe, did not participate in the uprising. The second largest Turkmen tribe, the Yomuts, fought, but not against the Russians, but against the Khiva Uzbeks. The Khiva and Bukhara khanates were independent states under the protectorate of Russia. Bukhara, not daring to act openly, supported the rebels and sheltered them on its territory. Khiva was not up to it. Beginning in 1912, there was an internecine strife between the Uzbeks, who ruled the khanate, and the Yomuts and Chovdur Turkmens, who disputed with the Uzbeks their rights to part of the power in the khanate. The well-known "field commander" Junaid Khan led the Turkmens, who acted very successfully. Russia, not very willingly, but helped the official Khiva khan. The actions of the Yomuts, therefore, were transferred to the Caspian regions of the Krasnovodsk district of the Transcaspian Territory. By January 1917 they were crushed. Junaid Khan went to Afghanistan, then returned, collaborated with the Reds, quarreled with them, until the early 1930s he was one of the most prominent leaders of the Basmachi in Central Asia.
Victims and consequences
Official historiography does not give the exact number of those who died as a result of this uprising. About 250 Russian soldiers and officers were killed in the battles. Total number Russian people who died a violent death during the massacre of 1916 can be estimated at 4000 - 4500 people.
The mobilization of the natives for rear work went poorly. In total, about 110 thousand people were sent. Many of them, having set off in the fall of 1916, did not even have time to arrive at their destination and stick their shovels into the ground. After waiting for several months in the regions of Penza, Syzran, Samara, they were returned back. Fearing punishment, about 300 thousand Kazakhs and Kirghiz, participants in the uprising, fled to China.
In 1917, a revolution took place in Russia, then a coup d'état. The country is gone. The victims of the uprising were forgotten. There are no signs that today, on the day of the centenary of the bloody massacre of Russians in Central Asia, the Russian authorities will remember them even in a word. Let's remember we.
Conclusion What I think we must do today is that the rulers of the country do not have the right to play "soldiers and territories". You can join and develop new territories. But it is categorically impossible to connect what is incompatible. Central Asia, which is still harboring a grudge against the “Russian colonialists”, has taken away from our state a lot of strength and resources that we needed so much for our own national development. No one got better than this. Russian - just did not. Instead of moving to Asia and the Caucasus, it was necessary, relying on culture and economy, to make Ukraine and Belarus a single national organism with Great Russia, to actively develop Siberia .
You can't take a word out of a song. Russian history cannot be rewritten. We need to at least know it. After reading this article, remember all the Russian people who died in Russian Turkestan during the ferocious massacre of 1916. About their souls, I'm sure, thought the Lord.
Igor Artyomov, orientalist, candidate of historical sciences
Photographer Carolyn Drake's long-term project, Rivers of Paradise, is not only about waterways. It is dedicated to the environment in general. Politics. culture. And change. Since 2007, Caroline has traveled 15 times to five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. During her visit to Central Asia, she wanted to know how the life and culture of Muslims was influenced by Soviet Union, and how they have changed since its breakup. At first, she photographed everything that caught her attention. She then became interested in the complex relationship between the five countries.
(Total 19 photos)
Post sponsor: PROMGADGET presents a mobile solution for sales agents, couriers and municipal services that allows you to avoid filling out forms "manually" and be always connected to a single database - barcode printers and mobile computers allow you to automate field teams.
1. Irrigation canal near. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
2. Spring in the Suusamyr Valley in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
3. Picking cherries along the Surkhob River in. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
4. House in the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
5. Pond over the Nurek dam in Tajikistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
6. Poachers cross the canal that separates the Uzbek and Kyrgyz sides in Karasu. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
7. Restaurant in Kokand, Uzbekistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
8. The main pool in "Garam Chashma" - sanatorium former USSR in the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
9. A cotton picker near Uzbekistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
10. Views of Khujand, Tajikistan, from the hotel "Leninabad". (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
11. Mountain stream near the sanatorium "Garam Chashma". (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
12. Gas crater Darvaz in Turkmenistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
13. Kyrgyz truck driver, moonlighting at home moving apartments and houses, near the Chinese border. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
14. Schoolchildren pick cotton in the city of Zhetysay, Kazakhstan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
15. The Syr Darya meanders through Uzbekistan to a canal that irrigates cotton and wheat fields. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
16. Dried delta of the Amudarya river. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
17. Uzbek, whose family professes Sharia law, posing in the courtyard of his house in Karasu. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
18. New fountain in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
19. The sisters came to swim at the pond in their village in Tajikistan. (Carolyn Drake/Panos Pictures and prospekt)
We invite you to take a look at what campaign posters printed in the Soviet Union for residents of the Central Asian republics. Given all the differences in national identity and faith, for local residents special posters were printed, which are waiting for you further.
“Dekhkanin, do not choose these people. They were and remain your enemies!” – 1920s.
"Strengthen labor discipline on collective farms! – 1933
“In a strong alliance of workers and peasants, we will destroy the oppressors!” – 1920s
“Life in the East was slow” – 1920s
The black clouds of capital that have shrouded factories, plants and fields are dissipating before the bright sun of socialism. 1919
Tatar club - 1935
“After giving birth, do not get out of bed before 7 days” - 1927
"Who does not work shall not eat!" – 1920
“Drink the earth with water. She will feed you” – 1920s
Poster calling for farmers to pick cotton - 1920s
“With powerful efforts we will create steam locomotives, restore transport, and destroy the devastation!” – 1920
“For the Soviet East! To the 10th anniversary of the Red Army" - 1928
Despite mechanization in agriculture, we will not part with the horse - 1933
“Workers and farmers! Don’t let what has been created in 10 years be destroyed!” – 1927
Poster with a statement by V. Lenin, calling for hard work - 1933
"Muslims! The king, beys and khans have made you powerless" - 1921
“Tatar woman! Join the ranks of all workers Soviet Russia. Together with the Russian proletarians, you will break the last shackles.