Russian Turkestan, West Turkestan

General Government of Turkestan, known from 1886 as the Turkestan Region; in Persian, ‘Land of the Turkic peoples’

A Central Asian province within the Russian Empire from 1867 to 1917; the north-western part of Turkestan in the broader sense, a historical region between the Caspian Sea and the Tarim Basin (China), which includes southern Siberia and northern Afghanistan (the term is no longer in use today).

Turkestan was situated in Central Asia, a region south of the Kazakh steppes, between the Caspian Sea to the west and the Tien Shan and Tarbagatai mountain ranges to the east. Geographically, Turkestan corresponds to the present-day republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the southern part of Kazakhstan.

The region is characterised by starkly contrasting semi-deserts and deserts in the north-west and high mountains in the south-east. The majority of towns and settlements are concentrated in the foothills.

The greatest cultural influence on the area that would later become Turkestan came from the Arab expansion and the associated Islamisation from the late 7th century onwards. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the region was conquered by various Mongol confederations. At the turn of the 14th to the 15th century, Central Asia became part of the Timurid Empire. Towards the end of the 16th century, the founding Uzbek dynasty established itself here; this dynasty played a decisive role in the development of the Emirate of Bukhara (in the centre of Central Asia), the Khanate of Khiva (south of the Aral Sea), which later became vassal states of the Russian Empire, and the Khanate of Kokand (in the south-east).

At the time of the Russian presence in the region, the towns and oases were inhabited primarily by Persian-speaking Tajiks and various Turkic-speaking ethnic groups, of whom the Uzbeks constituted the largest group. Agriculture was based on intensive, irrigated farming, whilst trade and crafts were well developed in the towns. In the arid steppes and foothills, Kyrgyz and Kazakhs in the east and Turkmen in the west practised extensive livestock farming.

From the mid-19th century, the Russian Empire began the annexation and conquest of Central Asia, which came to an end in 1895. In 1867, the General Government of Turkestan was established with Tashkent/Toshkent as its centre, and from 1897 onwards it comprised five administrative units: Semirechye, the Syr Darya region, the Samarkand region, the Fergana region and Transcaspia. Turkestan existed as a political and administrative entity until the end of 1924 (from April 1918 as the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), when, as a result of the formation of nation states in Central Asia, five Soviet republics were established within the Soviet Union.

The Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva were under the Tsar’s protectorate. In the rivalry with Great Britain for supremacy in the region (the so-called ‘Great Game’), the strategic interests of the Tsarist Empire in Turkestan initially prevailed. Economic development accelerated, particularly with the expansion of cotton cultivation from the late 1880s onwards, but especially with the construction of the railway line between Orenburg and Tashkent (1900–1906).

For a long time, the guiding principle of Russian policy in Turkestan remained one of non-interference. In response to the growing spread of pan-Islamic ideas in the region, the centre sought, at the beginning of the 20th century, to promote greater Russification in school education and local administration.

Due to a lack of so-called ‘free’ arable land – that is, land not used by nomads – the resettlement of peasants from Central Russia and Siberia to Turkestan was only possible with special permission. This led to the emergence of a large number of illegal settlements. From 1910 onwards, the central government ‘resolved’ the problem of ‘free’ land by confiscating the nomads’ pastures. The outbreak of the First World War exacerbated the tense situation on the periphery of the Empire and led to an uprising by Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Turkmen nomads, as well as oasis and town dwellers, in 1916.

The first Germans to arrive in Turkestan were military personnel and administrators, mainly Baltic Germans, who were in the service of the Tsar and came to Turkestan in the wake of the conquest. As the development of Turkestan progressed, scientists, specialists and entrepreneurs arrived here, including many people of German descent holding German or Russian citizenship.

The establishment of the first German farming settlements in the province in 1881 can be traced back to the efforts of the first Governor-General of Turkestan, Konstantin von Kaufman (1818–1882, in office 1867–1882). Driven by millenarian expectations, the Mennonites, mainly from the Volga region, settled near Aulie-Ata (Nikolaipol parish in the Syr Darya region), in the Khanate of Bukhara and in the Emirate of Khiva.

In the early 1890s, settlements inhabited mainly by Lutherans were established: Orlovka (near Aulie-Ata), Konstantinovka (the largest German settlement in Turkestan, near Tashkent), Saratovskiy and Krestoviy in Transcaspia.^[1] Despite restrictions on settlement and even after the government decree of 1903, which barred German farmers from settling there, German immigration to Turkestan continued until the outbreak of the First World War.

The growing number of Germans led to the establishment of the Evangelical Lutheran parish in Tashkent/Toshkent in 1885. The Evangelical Lutheran church in Tashkent was built in 1899, the Evangelical Lutheran church in Ashgabat in 1907, and the Catholic church in Ashgabat in 1909.

The number of Germans in Turkestan at the start of the First World War can be estimated at at least 4,000 in rural areas and approximately 5,500 in the towns, accounting for around four per cent of the European population in Turkestan who had migrated from Eastern Europe, Central Russia and Siberia. During the First World War, numerous refugees, prisoners of war and exiles of German origin from Volhynia arrived in Turkestan, a small number of whom remained in Turkestan after the war.

On the subject of ‘Turkestan’, which has as yet been little researched, it is still possible to observe differing approaches among Russian and ‘Western’ historians: Whilst the former tend to focus on the positive influence of the Russian presence in Turkestan (Abašyn), the latter seek to identify the colonialist traits of the Tsarist Empire (Fragner/Kappeler). Particularly in English-language research, ideas drawn from postcolonial studies are being utilised to describe and analyse hierarchical representations in Turkestan (e.g. Sahadeo).

The Germans in Turkestan have so far been addressed only in isolated studies (Krieger, Krongardt) and biographically oriented essays (e.g. Sorokina/Rhou)^[2] . Whilst these studies are informative, they do not establish sufficient links to cultural phenomena (values, symbols, modes of perception) or to other population groups and (imperial) structures outside the Germans’ sphere of life. Taking into account the questions raised by new cultural history, as well as comparative studies, could make a significant contribution to research on Germans in Turkestan and to the study of the Central Asian periphery of the Tsarist Empire. For example, the biographical approach offers the opportunity to examine the significance of colonial or ‘civilising’ ideologies as motivations for the actions of the actors involved.

• Sergei Abashin, Dmitry Yuryevich Arapov: *Central Asia within the Russian Empire*. Moscow 2008 (Historia Rossica).
• Bert Fragner, Andreas Kappeler (eds.): Central Asia, 13th to 20th Centuries. History and Society. Vienna 2006 (Edition Weltregionen 13).
• Viktor Krieger: The Rhine, the Volga, the Irtysh. From the History of the Germans of Central Asia. Almaty 2006, pp. 8–48.
• Gennadij Krongardt: Nemcy v Kyrgyzstane 1880–1990 [The Germans in Kyrgyzstan: 1880–1990]. Bishkek 1997, pp. 18–109.
• Richard Pierce: Russian Central Asia. 1867–1917. A Study in Colonial Rule. Berkeley 1960.
• Jeff Sahadeo: Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent. 1865–1923. Bloomington 2007.

[1] In addition to the exclusively German settlements, the Germans formed village communities together with Russians and Ukrainians.

[2] Marina Sorokina, Irina Rhou: Dr Hieronymus Krause and folk medicine in Russian Turkestan in the second half of the 19th century. In: Ingrid Kästner, Regine Pfrepper (eds.): ‘...thus natural science is the true international bond between peoples.’ Scientific Relations in Medicine and the Natural Sciences between Germany and the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Vol. 9: German–Russian Relations in Medicine and the Natural Sciences. Aachen 2004, pp. 101–112.

Marina Dause: Turkestan. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/55225.html (accessed 24 January 2022).