Uyama, Tomohiko. “A Particularist Empire: The Russian of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia.” In Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, edited by Uyama Tomohiko, 23-64. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007.
Summary
This chapter serves as an illustration of how ingrained stereotypes — orientalism, more specifically — directly led to a self-defeating, or at least ineffective, brand of imperial particularism, both in terms of Christian proselytizing and military conscription in Central Asia. In a feedback loop between government and academia (aka “group think”), 19th century Russian administrators and scholars developed a system of classification do clearly distinguish between ethnicities (61).
For Orthodox Christian proselytizing, this led to policies that were a) constantly changing and / or indeterminant, and b) specific to ethnicities. For instance, the Kazakhs / Kyrgyz were thought to be more prone to Shamanism and not well disposed toward Islam, and therefore easy to convert (27). While there was some truth in this notion, since the Kazakhs often equated religion with national identity, the relatively weak conversion efforts had very little effect. In sedentary Turkestan, where the locals were thought to be “extremist” and officials feared insurrections, the efforts of Russian Orthodox missionaries were severely restricted (37).
By Uyama’s account, military conscription policy fared little better. Primarily because officials believed Central Asians to be untrustworthy and alien, there was never any concerted universal conscription effort (49). Again, however, this policy was not uniform across time or ethnicities. For example, the Turkmen had a reputation as fearless warriors, and consequently had their own irregular brigade (50). In contrast, the Kazakhs were seen as less reliable fighters, and the sedentary population of Turkestan prone siding with the Ottoman Empire (53).
Context
Uyama identifies pretty clearly what crowd he is writing against (24-25): 1) Those who argue that Russian policy was uniformly against proselytizing (Sebastien Peyrouse), 2) Those who see Russian policy as part of a uniform nation-state construction process (Joshua Sanborn), 3) Those who see Russian policy as “divide and rule” (less clear who he is referring to there). Like any good academic, he does of course concede that there is truth to all these views.
Interesting Gems
Chokan Valikhanov makes an appearance in his chapter (though spelled as Shoqan Walikhanov); as a Russified intellectual, Valikhanov had some rather critical views of Islam, but Uyama doesn’t get into the content (27).
Almost as an afterthought, Uyama does address the limits of the obvious parallels between Soviet and Russian Imperial policy, worth quoting at length here:
In the Soviet Union, ethnic boundaries were made clear and ethnicities were given territorial autonomies, but the system of ethnoterritorial formation (Union republics – autonomous republics – autonomous oblasts) was common throughout the country, and peculiar ethnic characters were not used, at least explicitly, as reasons for privileging or discriminating some ethnic groups. In the Russian Empire, ethnic boundaries were confused and ethnoterritorial autonomy was not acknowledged, but there was no common policy for integrating diverse ethnic groups, and peculiar ethnic characters were extensively cited as reasons for adopting particularistic policies. (63)
Some Questions / Further Inquiry
The term “Cossack” seems to be very broad. It would be useful to gain a better understanding of the many definitions and connotations of the word.
Uyama identifies one “Sultan Vali-Khan” as “apparently a descendant of the Kazakh khan, Wali”) (47). Is this the same person as the “Walikhanov” he references earlier? Adding to the confusion, UNESCO has in their bio: “Чокан Валиханов родился в семье, где традицией, начиная с деда Вали…” Warrants further investigation.
