ABSTRACT
In the context of earlier chapters, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s imperative of voracity is deeply disturbing. Russia’s experience of Central Asia is a centuries-long tale of massive repression in two senses; Moscow suppressed a “zero-Islam” it needed for self-definition, only then to invade and inhibit Islam. Russia ignored itself in order to invade itself, all to no apparent benefit. Joseph Schumpeter once asserted that all empires are affectively atavistic (i.e., driven in the present by experiences of the past) and paradoxically, “defensively aggressive.” Empires generate reasons to protect themselves from “probable” invasion and thus occupy terrain on their periphery. Yet that just creates a new periphery. This sounds exhausting and certainly was so for Moscow: “It may be argued that adding Turkestan to the empire sapped, rather than strengthened Russian security” (Keller, 5). As assaults upon Islam became nasty in the late 1920s, it was impossible to have or define a limit. This was either because imperial expansion in Schumpeter’s terms is an “attitude” and wolfing things down is a modus operandi (not a plan) or because the best exponents of the Party line, that is, the most vigorous, were often criticized explicitly by Moscow for “excess,” for violating the same Party guidelines (ibid., 250).
