ABSTRACT
By 1873 St. Petersburg’s limited aims in regard to the Central Asian khanates had been achieved. A defensible frontier had been secured —a frontier, moreover, which placed Russia in a commanding strategic position over Bukhara and Khiva through the possession of Samarkand and the right bank of the lower Amu-Darya. The governments of both Bukhara and Khiva were effectively under Russian control, so that no further hostility was looked for there. Legal discrimination against Russian traders had been abolished, and Russian captives freed. St. Petersburg was satisfied and wished to preserve the status quo: Bukhara and Khiva would gladly be allowed to manage their own affairs and thus save Russia the cost and trouble of ruling them directly. Tashkent, however, regarded the position of the khanates as temporary, to be followed by annexation in the near future. Although St. Petersburg’s views took precedence over those of Tashkent, the success of the imperial government’s policy depended on the ability of the native regimes to preserve order within their states. Political instability and domestic disorder in the khanates would again disturb the tranquillity of Russia’s frontiers and provide a temptation to Britain to interfere. Russia’s first task, therefore, was to restore the authority of the native rulers over their subjects, which had been shaken by their defeat at the hands of the Russians. Kaufman had recognized this need in 1868, even if St. Petersburg had not, and had helped Muzaffar defeat the combined opposition forces led by Abd al-Malik. A similar task awaited Russia in Khiva after the conquest, where the deep-seated nature of the problem posed a more serious challenge to St. Petersburg’s policy of nonintervention.
