RUSSIANS ENTER CENTRAL ASIA

RUSSIANS MOVE INTO CENTRAL ASIA

The Russians began making moves into Central Asia in the 18th century. Among their goals were expanding their empire, establishing a buffer zones between them and hostile neighbors, checking British ambitions in South Asia, and possible gaining access too warm water port on the Indian Ocean. After the Crimean War—a debacle for Russia—Russia began shifting its attention westward.

The khan of Khiva agreed to be a vassal of Russia under Peter the Great in the early 18th century in exchange for help fighting Turkmen and Kazakhs. The Russian came, looked for gold, and tried to set up a trading post for Indian commerce, but in the end were forced out after many Russian troops were killed. There were also ill-fated attempts to move into Uzbekistan—in part to check British ambitions in the region—in the early 1800s and the 1840s.

In the nineteenth century, Russian interest in Central Asia increased greatly, sparked by nominal concern over British designs on Central Asia; by anger over the situation of Russian citizens held as slaves; and by the desire to control the trade in the region and to establish a secure source of cotton for Russia. When the United States Civil War prevented cotton delivery from Russia's primary supplier, the southern United States, Central Asian cotton assumed much greater importance for Russia. [Source: Library of Congress, March 1996 *]

Under the same “secure frontier” policy that was used to expand into the Ukraine and the Caucasus, Imperial Russia gradually absorbed Turkestan (Central Asia): Kazakhstan first, then Kyrzgzstan. Both of them were manipulated through political and diplomatic maneuvers. In Uzbekistan, the Russian military stepped in. Summing up his philosophy on warfare in Central Asia, the Russian commander General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev said, "I hold it as a principal that in Asia the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict upon your enemy. The longer you hit the longer they stay quiet afterwards."

Russia Advance Into Central Asia

Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer wrote: “In the eighteenth century, as Russia became a rapidly growing centralised land empire, it began to take an interest in expansion to the south, and took the bulk of the Kazakhs and Karakalpaks under its suzerainty between 1731 and 1742. The khanates of Turkestan, however, remained for the time being beyond the scope of Russia’s imperial ambitions. The situation changed dramatically in the mid nineteenth century after Russia had suffered a number of setbacks in its European policy and, more importantly, lost its role as a major supplier of manufactured goods to world markets in competition with the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. The share of grain and other primary produce in Russian exports to Europe reached 96 per cent, while textiles, machinery, metals and other processed goods made up 60 per cent of its sales to Central Asia. [Source: “Tajikistan” by Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer, Australia National University, 2013 ]

“In addition, Russia’s nascent modern industry desperately needed raw materials, cotton in particular, which Turkestan could provide in large quantities. Such considerations induced the Russian authorities to conduct a more aggressive foreign policy in regards to the khanates of Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand. Russian expansion into Turkestan in the nineteenth century was ‘a process apparently planned, logical and inexorable’26 and so differed in this sense from the rather spontaneous mastering of Siberia. Adventurous expeditions, such as the Cossacks’ raid on Urgench in 1603 and Bekovich-Cherkassky’s mission to Khiva in 1717, gave way to a methodical advancement, based on thorough planning, which could be divided into three stages.

“Between 1856 and 1864, the Russians strengthened their military presence in border areas and carried out three major reconnaissance missions in the region. While dismissing any large-scale aggressive actions, the imperial government sought to encourage Russian trade in Turkestan, to prevent the United Kingdom from inserting itself into Central Asian affairs and to foster closer ties with the Emir of Bukhara—‘the most reliable and strong ruler in Central Asia’—in order to exploit the animosity among the khanates.

“Between 1864 and 1884, systematic conquest was launched and successfully completed. Even facing the threat of ultimate annihilation, the rulers of Bukhara and Kokand could not overcome mutual antagonism. In 1867, the General-Governorship of Turkestan (GGT) was established, with its centre in Tashkent. It embodied all the territories of Kokand and Bukhara occupied until then by the Russian Army. In 1868, Kokand became a vassal of the Russian Empire and Bukhara ceded its northern cities of Khujand, Uroteppa, Panjakent, Samarkand and Qatta-Qurghon to the GGT and acknowledged its status as a Russian protectorate. Khiva followed suit in 1873 and the majority of petty principalities in eastern Bukhara (roughly corresponding with contemporary southern Tajikistan) were subjugated between 1870 and 1875. In 1876, Alexander II formally abolished the Khanate of Kokand, and in 1884, when the Turkmen city of Mary (Merv) surrendered, the whole of Turkestan was included in the Russian realm. In Hélène Carrère d’Encausse’s adroit phrasing, ‘despite initial anxieties as to the supposed strength of existing Muslim states and English opposition, the conquest of Central Asia had been, in the final analysis, rapid, and, on the whole, not very bloody, at least for Russia’.

Russia Begins Its Conquest of Central Asia

As soon as the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was completed in the late 1850s, the Russian Ministry of War began to send military forces against the Central Asian khanates. Three major population centers of the khanates — Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarqand — were captured in 1865, 1867, and 1868, respectively. In 1868 the Khanate of Bukhara signed a treaty with Russia making Bukhara a Russian protectorate. Khiva became a Russian protectorate in 1873, and the Quqon Khanate finally was incorporated into the Russian Empire, also as a protectorate, in 1876. [Source: Library of Congress, March 1996 *]

In the 1860s, Uzbekistan was divided by intra-tribal feuding that made the fragmented principalities easy prey for the Russian tsarist armies. The Russians slowly advanced towards Afghanistan and India by capturing the khanates of Kokand, Bukhara, Khiva and Merv with military forces. The British tried to slow the Russian advances by persuading the local leaders to do as they wished. There were no direct military battles between the Russians and British.

The kind of Russians that came to Central Asia were not unlike the English and Scottish who went to India. Many sought adventures and fortune and hoped the wouldn’t have to stay any longer than necessary, and hoped to achieve things they couldn’t do back home. Among these were Captain Vitkevich, who was sent from Lithuania to exile in Central Asia at the age of 17 for his involvement in the Black Hand Polish Plot of 1824. He was involved in campaigns against the Kyrgyz and worked as a spy and in Tehran and Kabul. Upon his return to Russia he was widely ignored and ended up killing himself.

Russians Capture Tashkent and Samarkand

In 1864 and 1865 Russian forces captured Kokand and laid siege to and captured a Kokand-controlled fortress at Tashkent. They cut off the water supply, were attacked by a Kokand force that outnumbered them four to one and captured the fortress after two days of street fighting. In one particularly memorable incident, a Russian priest led a charge armed only with a cross.

Tashkent was taken by one General Chenniayeff who acted against orders from the tsars, it seems, for his own personal glory. After the fall of Tashkent, mullahs in Bukhara issued a fatwah for jihad against the Russians. In April 1868, a Russian force of 3,500 men, including a contingent of Cossacks, under the German General Kaufmann, captured Samarkand. The Emir of Bukhara had reportedly assembled an army to take Samarkand themselves but they were gone by the time the Russians arrived.

Some inhabitants of Samarkand fired upon the Russians. For this Gen. Kaufman took his revenge and began executing civilians for the city’s “treachery.” The Emir of Bukhara was impressed enough by what he saw to sign a treaty that recognized Russian conquests thus far while preserving his rule over his kingdom. Bukhara was made a Russian protectorate.

Capture of Khiva

In 1873, Khiva was captured by the Russians and made a protectorate. Gen. Kaufman was again the leader of the operation. He arrived at Khiva in the summer of 1873 with three separate columns: one from Orenburg, another from Kazala and the third from the Caspian Sea. They met virtually no resistance and were able to set the terms for surrender by the khan. Some Russians were not so pleased with the easy way in which the city was captured; they needed a little combat to get medals. Just as Gen Kaufman was being welcomed with full state honors at the front gate, Some glory-hungry Russians attacked through the back gate with rockets and bayonets and caused enough mayhem to get their medals and then retreated.

For the conquest of Khiva in Central Asia in 1874 was achieved with 5,000 Russian soldiers supplied 8800 camels. The capture of Khiva had been a goal of Imperial Russia for some time because of the practice of taking Russian captives and selling them as slaves there. One of the main obstacles with taking Khiva was simply getting there since it was surrounded on all sided by unforgiving deserts. A Russian expedition in 1717 resulted on the capture and massacre of all but 40 its members, Three earlier expedition had also resulted in failure. An expeditions in 1839 turned back after winter snows in the desert caused men to freeze to death, and hundreds of camels starved because they were unable to scrape away the snow to get their food.

After Khiva fell in 1873, six “sotnias” of Cossacks were let loose on the civilian population, They set fire to villages and dispatched those who ran out with swords and American beech-loading rifles. In 1877, the last Kokand stronghold were defeated and all of their territory was annexed by the Russians. With that all of present-day Uzbekistan was under Russian control.

Turkmen Versus Russians

The conquest of Central Asia was regarded as complete when Merv, the last stronghold of the Tekke Turkmen, was captured in 1882. The conquest began after a 10-year war in the early 19th century, when Persia (Iran) lost Baku, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Dagestan and other territories to Russia, which managed to hold on to them long enough that they became part of the Soviet Union. After another war, Persia lost territory in what is now Turkmenistan.

Turkmen were the last of the Central Asia people to be absorbed into the Russian empire and are considered among the least Russified. Although they were eventually subdued they put up a much tougher fight than the other Central Asian groups. The Tekke, the largest Turkmen tribe, held out longer against the Russians than the Uzbeks, Kazakhs or Kyrgyz.

For many years the Russians feared traveling into Turkmen territory, which they called Trans Caspia, out of fear of being captured and enslaved. When they did enter they were often captured and sold at the slave markets in Khiva and Bukhara. At one time in the mid 19th century there were believed to be 3,000 Russians slaves in Bukhara alone.

After some period of time, the Russians concluded something had to be done. They began by launching a series of attacks from the Caspian port of Krasnovodsk (now Turkmenbashi) in 1877, after the slave markets in Khiva and Bukhara had been closed down.

Russians battled Turkmen tribes for four years between 1877 and 1881. The Tekke, were defeated by the Russians at Kyzyl-Arvat (Gyzylarbat) but managed to massacre a Russian force that attacked at the fortress at Geok-Tepe, near Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, in 1879.

Geok-Tepe

Between 1871 and 1879, the Russians launched a series of harassing attacks on the Turcomen from their base on the Caspian Sea. The largest, a considerable operation in 1877, might have spelled doom for the Teke if not for the sudden recall of the Russian troops to fight in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. The Teke, despite their losses, were encouraged to see the Russians retreat after each skirmish, and came to consider them a cowardly foe. Nonetheless, the Teke people were cleared from the 130-mile long swath of desert between the Caspian and Geok-Tepe, site of their great fortress. [Source: turkmen.traveler.uz]

Geok-Tepe, which means "green hill" or "green fortress" in the Turkmen language, was a fortified city of about 30-40,000. Next to the reinforced-mud houses of the town sat a huge fortress made of mud-brick, enclosed in two rings of walls. Several streams ran down from the nearby Kopet Dag Mountains and through the area, a boon on the southern fringe of the scorching Kara Kum (Black Sands) Desert. This was the Teke's great stronghold.

The Russian troops returned to Turcomen lands in 1878, flush with their triumph over the Ottoman Empire. Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania had all been pried loose from the Ottomans, and the Russians felt more than capable of handling the riffraff Teke cavalry.

On September 9, 1879, a force of 4,000 cavalry and infantry under General Lomakin marched across the desert to attack the Teke at Geok-Tepe. The Russians had small stocks of food and water, and not enough horses to carry a lot of artillery or supplies. They were opposed by nearly twice as many Turcoman defenders within the fortress; the Teke, however, had few guns and no artillery. The Russians had brought four light field-pieces, and bombarded the mud-built walls. Eager for victory, though, the Russians called off the artillery-fire too soon, and made a frontal assault with their infantry.

In response, Teke warriors leapt down from the fort and soon routed the Russian troops, who began the long retreat to the sea as fast as their legs could carry them. Armed with captured weapons, the Teke jumped onto their horses and chased the fugitive Russians. A New York Times article from September 24, 1879 states that at least 700 were killed outright. Others were made captive. The proud Russian Imperial Army had been humiliated by the Teke; it was their most disastrous Central Asian campaign since the crushing defeat at Khiva in 1717. The European media called it "The Lomakin Massacre", and the Russian general soon was recalled to St. Petersburg in disgrace.

Revenge for Geok-Tepe

After the slaughter of Russians at Geok-Tepe, the tsar vowed to get revenge and subdue the Turkmen once and for all. He recruited the infamously brutal General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev to do the job. Skobelev had a lot blood on his hands from other campaigns for the tsars. He was also it turns out was a homosexual who lived apart from his wife after a single day of marriage and died of a heart attack in a male brothel.

In December of 1880, just over a year after "The Lomakin Massacre," Russian soldiers set out once more for Geok-Tepe. The Teke were better prepared for this assault, having redesigned the fortress defenses at Geok-Tepe to their advantage. In addition, the Turcomen now had 10,000 troops armed with 2,000 breech-loading rifles captured from the Russians. (The civilian population of Geok-Tepe was about 40,000 by this time.) The Russians under the command of Skobelev were far stronger now, as well. Skobelev had 7,000 cavalry and infantry troops at his disposal, along with 60 big guns. [Source: turkmen.traveler.uz]

In 1881, a large Russian force was assembled outside Geok-Tepe. Russian soldiers used gunpowder to blast holes in the fortress walls and charged: slaughtering 7,000 Tekke-Turkmen inside and another 8,000 as they attempted to flee across the desert. Some say as many as 150,000 Turkmen were killed.

Fighting at Geok-Tepe in 1881

In early January of 1881, the fighting began. The Russian artillery rained down death inside of Geok-Tepe fortress, but the walls were unscathed. Skobelev began to worry that the rumored reinforcements from Merv would come in on his eastern flank if the seige went on too long. The Russians decided to tunnel under the wall and plant a mine, which would blow a huge breach into the Teke defenses. [Source: turkmen.traveler.uz /=]

For a couple of weeks, the Russians patiently bored their way closer and closer to the walls of Geok-Tepe. Finally, they reached their target. Sappers set two tons of explosives at the end of the tunnel, underneath the fortress walls. At mid-day on January 24, the Russian artillery opened up a furious barrage. At the same moment, the mine was ignited. A fountain of sand and rubble shot into the sky with a deafening roar, killing several hundred Teke instantly. The Russian infantry swarmed through the breach, hacking at the stunned Turcomen defenders. Soon the Turcomen realized that Geok-Tepe fortress had become a death-trap. Those that could jumped onto their horses and fled into the desert. Many of the civilians of Geok-Tepe town ran, as well. /=\

Describing the action Edmond O’Donovan, a reporter with “The Daily News”, wrote: “With my double field-glasses I could easily make out the lines of the Turcoman fortress, and the general position of the besiegers...I could plainly see, by the smoke of the guns, that the attack had begun in earnest, and I watched the result with intense anxiety...after what was apparently a desperate conflict it was evident that [the Russians] had forced their way. A crowd of horsemen began to cause confusion from the other side of town, and spread in flight over the plain. Immediately afterwards, a mass of fugitives of every class showed that the town was being abandoned by its inhabitants. The fortress had fallen and all was over with the Akhal Tekkes.” /=\

Slaughter at Geok-Tepe

After the fortress fell, Cossacks and Russian soldiers were set loose to pursue the Tekkes fleeing from Geok Tepe. Skobelff said later: “I hold it as a principal in Asia that the duration of a peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict upon the enemy. The harder you hit them they longer they will be quiet after. We killed 20,000 at Geok Tepe, and the survivors will not soon forget the lesson.”

The Russian soldiers were thirsty for revenge; British sources say that most were drunk, as well. The battle turned into a slaughter. Many of the Teke who had not yet taken to the desert were slashed to pieces, from the elderly to tiny infants. The Russians raped, looted, and massacred the inhabitants of Geok-Tepe. [Source: turkmen.traveler.uz /=]

The next day, General Skobelev ordered all the remaining women of Geok-Tepe, (about 15,000 in all), to surrender their gold and silver jewelry as a "war contribution." Each Teke woman, no matter how poor her family, is expected to get married wearing a load of jewelry so heavy that she cannot stand up unassisted under its weight. Skobelev told the surviving women that he would turn them over to the soldiers to do with what they pleased, if the jewelry was not delivered. Soon two large carpets were piled with gold and silver more than six feet high. /=\

At the end of three days, about 6,500 Teke fighters lay dead in Geok-Tepe fortress. Another 8,000 warriors and civilians were massacred in the plains around Geok-Tepe. Russian casualties, which the victors probably underestimated, were put at 268 killed and 669 wounded. Author Peter Hopkirk recounts the horror and disgust of one Armenian translator who accompanied the Russians. The interpreter was appalled by the rape and slaughter visited on the Teke. /=\

Aftermath of Geok-Tepe in 1881

With the Tekke-Turkmen defeated the Russians claimed Merv and Ashgabat in 1884 and the Pandjeh oasis near the Afghan border in 1885 with little resistance. By this time the Turkmen had been largely subdued although some holdouts continued to fight the Russians and Soviets until 1936. The take over of Geok Tepe also marked the end of the Russian expansion into Central Asia. Their ambition of taking over Afghanistan and attacking India was not realized.

The Teke were humbled and pacified by their crushing defeat at Geok-Tepe. With so many of their warriors killed, and so much of their wealth stolen, it would be a long time before this once-fearsome tribe would have the power to trouble their neighbors. [Source: turkmen.traveler.uz /=]

For General Skobelev and the Russians, though, the Battle of Geok-Tepe was not an unqualified success. Media reports by O'Donovan and other journalists of the "slaughter of innocents" caused a huge outcry across Europe. The Tsar recalled Skobelev, and sentenced him to serve in Minsk (a harsh punishment). Some sources believe that Skobelev was acutally being demoted because of his political ambitions. The general died within a year of the Battle of Geok-Tepe, at the age of 39. Officially, he died of a heart attack. /=\

These days, Geok-Tepe is a sleepy little village in Turkmenistan. The inhabitants grow grapes, raise the famous Akhal-Teke horses, and worship at the second-largest mosque in Central Asia, (a marvelous aquamarine and white structure). Just outside of town, the remains of the fortress can still be seen. A small museum next to the walls houses the cannonballs, weapons, and other artifacts of the battle that turn up fairly regularly under farmers' plows in this area. Human and horse bones are also found sometimes. /=\

Image Sources:

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated April 2016


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