ABSTRACT
For a comparison of Russia’s situation in Central Asia from the beginning of the nineteenth century with the British position two paragraphs from Aziatskaya Rossiya (Asiatic Russia) (St. Petersburg 1914) afford a convenient starting point. This was the last official history of Russia in Asia to be published under the Tsarist régime. It describes Russia as holding a fortified line in Central Asia on three sides of a parallelogram, with the southern side still uncompleted. In particular the history said: ‘Gradually the Kazakhs1 became more and more bold. The Muslim world with every generation became more hostile to Russia. The Khans of Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand, believing that Russia was not in a position to get at them, constantly spurred the Kazakhs on to hostile action. Fortunately, however, there was constant internal dissension among the Kazakhs whose popular masses were hostile to the Khans. But the local Russian authorities were not able to take advantage of this dissension; usually they supported the Khans who with oriental cunning shifted the responsibility for keeping the people quiet onto the Russians and Russia. In addition the Russian government acted in such a way that the influence of Muslim organisation among the Kazakhs increased: from the time of Catherine II we tried to educate the Kazakhs in the belief that by this means they would be weaned away from their brigandish way of life. But for this purpose we sent into the Steppe Tatar Mullas from Kazan who merely preached hatred towards the Russians’.
