Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865--1923

3. Unstable Boundaries: The Colonial Relationship and the 1892 “Cholera Riot”

3. Unstable Boundaries: The Colonial Relationship and the 1892 “Cholera Riot” On June 24, 1892, a Central Asian crowd crossed the Ankhor canal into the Russian section of Tashkent. The crowd sought to prevent Muhammad Yaqub, Asian Tashkent’s chief administrator, from meeting City Commandant Stepan R. Putintsev. Muhammad Yaqub intended to report widespread defiance of tsarist anti-cholera measures, perceived to violate principles of local medicine and culture. The crowd was too late, encountering Putintsev and Muhammad Yaqub together. A few stones and fists flew at the city commandant after he refused demands to lift the measures. Most demonstrators, however, pursued a fleeing Muhammad Yaqub toward the municipal administration building, where they destroyed files used to rule Asian Tashkent. Russian settlers responded to the crowd’s actions with force. Clerks, veterans, and an Orthodox cleric joined arriving soldiers in cries of “brothers, beat them.” Soldiers and settlers pursued demonstrators trying to return to Asian Tashkent, and attacked any Central Asian they found in the surrounding area. Battered bodies were thrown into the Ankhor canal, with at least eighty dredged up the following day. Russian actions demonstrated their readiness to commit violence to enforce colonial power. Yet the cholera epidemic and riot also exposed interdependencies in imperial Tashkent. Muhammad Yaqub was one of hundreds of local administrators on whom the Russians depended to keep peace in, and deliver revenue from, Asian Tashkent. Significant numbers of Central Asians, from laborers to wealthy merchants, crossed the Ankhor canal daily. They played critical roles in the local and imperial economy. Russians crossed, albeit less frequently, into the Asian city, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent 80 not only to purchase goods from local bazaars, but to seek medical care from healers. Tensions between separation and interdependence, as well as between superiority and vulnerability, produced the climate that led to the violence of June 24. Central Asians themselves worked to navigate the complexities of a colonial relationship that encouraged the exploitation of their land and labor but offered political and economic opportunities. Conciliation maintained an outward peace from 1865 to 1892. Yet alliances across the Ankhor canal were shifting and unstable. A growing awareness of interdependency strengthened Russian efforts to present themselves as inherently different from, and superior to, the “backward” people that they were destined to civilize. Efforts intensified especially as Central Asians proved themselves superior in domains considered modern, including medicine and engineering. Russian demonization of the local population reached new heights following the 1892 riot, blamed on “intrinsic fatalists” who would never accept “civilization.”1 Yet even as the riot engendered harsher measures of rule, tsarist officials realized the necessity of cooperation with local leaders. Damaged nonetheless were Russian elites’ hopes that the transformative power of European civilization could make Tashkent Russians and Central Asians into leaders of a changing colonial world. Postconquest Asian Tashkent Central Asians sought to accommodate themselves to tsarist rule following the June 1865 conquest. Tashkent’s population was accustomed to outside control, being subject to the khanate of Kokand for decades before the appearance of Russian troops. As discussed in the prologue, local elites had sought to maintain traditions of autonomy under outsiders ’ rule by striking a deal with General Cherniaev to limit tsarist interference in matters of internal politics, society, and culture. Adjusting to Russian control, however, was not always a smooth process. Even as the urban economy thrived, Central Asian notables, artisans, and day laborers grew aware of growing inequalities between “Russian” and “Asian” populations and cities. Colonial imbalances increased pressure on Central Asian notables. Mediators, as we have seen in chapter 1, gained prominence through their presence at imperial ceremonies, but faced great challenges in simultaneously maintaining the favor of tsarist bureaucrats and wealth, power, and prestige within their own community. Central Asian mediators nonetheless kept a stability, albeit a tenuous one, that maintained outward peace in the city from the conquest to the “cholera riot” of 1892. Unstable Boundaries 81 Sharafii bai Zeinalgabidin, a Kazan Tatar with close connections to tsarist functionaries, directed efforts to design internal administration in Asian Tashkent that corresponded to the 1867 provisional statute enacted by St. Petersburg to rule Turkestan.2 Kaufman, despite his policy of “ignorance,” had already made important interventions in local politics, most significantly dissolving the position of chief jurist, the qazi-kalan. He also maintained the right to sack any Central Asian in a position of authority. Sharafii bai established an Organizing...