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Uzbekistan
The Russian Conquest
In the nineteenth century, Russian interest in the area increased
greatly, sparked by nominal concern over British designs on Central
Asia; by anger over the situation of Russian citizens held as
slaves; and by the desire to control the trade in the region and
to establish a secure source of cotton for Russia. When the United
States Civil War prevented cotton delivery from Russia's primary
supplier, the southern United States, Central Asian cotton assumed
much greater importance for Russia.
As soon as the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was completed
in the late 1850s, therefore, the Russian Ministry of War began
to send military forces against the Central Asian khanates. Three
major population centers of the khanates--Tashkent, Bukhoro, and
Samarqand--were captured in 1865, 1867, and 1868, respectively.
In 1868 the Khanate of Bukhoro signed a treaty with Russia making
Bukhoro a Russian protectorate. Khiva became a Russian protectorate
in 1873, and the Quqon Khanate finally was incorporated into the
Russian Empire, also as a protectorate, in 1876.
By 1876 the entire territory comprising present-day Uzbekistan
either had fallen under direct Russian rule or had become a protectorate
of Russia. The treaties establishing the protectorates over Bukhoro
and Khiva gave Russia control of the foreign relations of these
states and gave Russian merchants important concessions in foreign
trade; the khanates retained control of their own internal affairs.
Tashkent and Quqon fell directly under a Russian governor general.
During the first few decades of Russian rule, the daily life
of the Central Asians did not change greatly. The Russians substantially
increased cotton production, but otherwise they interfered little
with the indigenous people. Some Russian settlements were built
next to the established cities of Tashkent and Samarqand, but
the Russians did not mix with the indigenous populations. The
era of Russian rule did produce important social and economic
changes for some Uzbeks as a new middle class developed and some
peasants were affected by the increased emphasis on cotton cultivation.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, conditions began
to change as new Russian railroads brought greater numbers of
Russians into the area. In the 1890s, several revolts, which were
put down easily, led to increased Russian vigilance in the region.
The Russians increasingly intruded in the internal affairs of
the khanates. The only avenue for Uzbek resistance to Russian
rule became the Pan-Turkish movement, also known as Jadidism,
which had arisen in the 1860s among intellectuals who sought to
preserve indigenous Islamic Central Asian culture from Russian
encroachment. By 1900 Jadidism had developed into the region's
first major movement of political resistance. Until the Bolshevik
Revolution (see Glossary) of 1917, the modern, secular ideas of
Jadidism faced resistance from both the Russians and the Uzbek
khans, who had differing reasons to fear the movement.
Prior to the events of 1917, Russian rule had brought some industrial
development in sectors directly connected with cotton. Although
railroads and cotton-ginning machinery advanced, the Central Asian
textile industry was slow to develop because the cotton crop was
shipped to Russia for processing. As the tsarist government expanded
the cultivation of cotton dramatically, it changed the balance
between cotton and food production, creating some problems in
food supply--although in the prerevolutionary period Central Asia
remained largely self-sufficient in food. This situation was to
change during the Soviet period when the Moscow government began
a ruthless drive for national self-sufficiency in cotton. This
policy converted almost the entire agricultural economy of Uzbekistan
to cotton production, bringing a series of consequences whose
negative impact still is felt today in Uzbekistan and other republics.
Data as of March 1996
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