Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire by Daniel Brower (review)

556 Рецензии/Reviews Michael ROULAND Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003). Xv + 213 pp. Maps. Plates. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 0-41529744 -3. The study of Russian imperial expansion and the development of imperial institutions have emerged as significant areas of academic exploration since the opening of new archives in CentralAsia.Armed with a preponderance of documents from the (fatefully fleeting) liberalization of archives in Tashkent, Daniel Brower offers a sweeping view of Russian imperial attitudes and some local responses to Russian rule in Turkestan. Filling a number of important gaps in the English-language discourse on Central Asia, Daniel Brower’s Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire provides a solid new introduction to Russian imperial policy and its struggles and failures inTurkestan. Brower presents a clear narrative drawn from broad sources by illuminating life beyond Moscow that reacts to its decisions and debates. Brower focuses on the intellectual , cultural, and bureaucratic aspects of the creation of Turkestan, the incorporation of Turkestan to the Russian Empire, the religious questions of Russian rule, and the settling of Turkestan. Following a thematic rather than chronological narrative of the colonial experiment in Turkestan, Brower centers his work on the question of how the colonial failure in Turkestan signaled the imminent collapse of the Russian Empire. In fact, Brower begins with the idea that the Russian Empire was a “failed colonial endeavor.” For Brower, the Turkestan rebellion of 1916 represents the harbinger of the Russian revolution; and, he argues that the imperial bureaucracy’s inability to handle the complexities of colonial administration revealed deeper problems within the Tsarist government. Brower asserts, “The fall of the empire a few months after the Turkestan uprising did not proceed in any direct manner from the colonial troubles. An understanding of this crisis does, though, reveal in microcosm, the flaws of the Russian regime itself” (153).Although these events reveal a notable portent of revolution (particularly attractive to those engaged with the margins), the Russian revolution is far too complex to be linked solely to an examination of the imperial bureaucracy and crisis of imperial identity. Brower establishes Turkestan as a unique case of Russia’s imperial project where the Russian bureaucracy treated the region as a separate territory distinct from contiguous expansion (as in Siberia). Here, the Russian Empire experimented with 557 Ab Imperio, 1/2004 its own interpretation of European imperialism. Certainly, Poland and Finland represent other exceptional imperial territories within the Russian Empire, but Brower maintains Turkestan’s distinctiveness as a category of imperialism with all its implicit racism. Following this line of thought, Brower presents Turkestan as a singular example in the formation of a Russian imperial consciousness. Its failure represents a collapse of the Empire’s internal logic and identity. In order to establish the uniformity of Russian imperial consciousness , Brower seemingly contradicts himself by expounding the divergent theories that conceptualize the Russian Empire as it expanded eastward. These ideas were intensely debated in the second half of the nineteenth century within the highest levels of the Russian government. Through this, Brower brings the personalities and rival ideologies of Russian imperialism in Central Asia to life: Konstantin von Kaufman, Alexei Kuropatkin, Nil Lykoshin, Nikolai Kryzhanovsky, among others. Brower characterizes the debate within the imperial bureaucracy as a conflict between the reform agenda set during Catherine II’s rule (and extended by the emancipation and reforms of Alexander II) and a conservative attitude set by the military and those believing in centralization to maintain securityandtoprotectRussiansettlers. The uncontrolled migration of settlers from southern Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia provided a challenge for both sides of the debate . The debate centered on the extent settlers could create a sense of grazhdanstvennost’ (civic pride, citizenship ) that would unite the Empire or conversely alienate the local Turkic and Persian populations. Brower identifies grazhdanstvennost’ as the key to understanding Russia’s civilizing mission in Turkestan. Brower would benefit from drawing the concept of grazhdanstvennost’ away from imperial rhetoric and seeing it as a civilizing mission. Furthermore, the limits of central authority through an understaffed bureaucracy and a local military administration led to a tremendous diversity in the supervision and execution of...