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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uzbekistan
Index
In the nineteenth century, Russian interest in the area 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.
As soon as the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was completed in the
late 1850s, therefore, the Russian Ministry of War began to send military
forces against the Central Asian khanates. Three major population centers
of the khanates--Tashkent, Bukhoro, and Samarqand--were captured in 1865,
1867, and 1868, respectively. In 1868 the Khanate of Bukhoro signed a
treaty with Russia making Bukhoro 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.
By 1876 the entire territory comprising present-day Uzbekistan either
had fallen under direct Russian rule or had become a protectorate of
Russia. The treaties establishing the protectorates over Bukhoro and Khiva
gave Russia control of the foreign relations of these states and gave
Russian merchants important concessions in foreign trade; the khanates
retained control of their own internal affairs. Tashkent and Quqon fell
directly under a Russian governor general.
During the first few decades of Russian rule, the daily life of the
Central Asians did not change greatly. The Russians substantially
increased cotton production, but otherwise they interfered little with the
indigenous people. Some Russian settlements were built next to the
established cities of Tashkent and Samarqand, but the Russians did not mix
with the indigenous populations. The era of Russian rule did produce
important social and economic changes for some Uzbeks as a new middle
class developed and some peasants were affected by the increased emphasis
on cotton cultivation.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, conditions began to change
as new Russian railroads brought greater numbers of Russians into the
area. In the 1890s, several revolts, which were put down easily, led to
increased Russian vigilance in the region. The Russians increasingly
intruded in the internal affairs of the khanates. The only avenue for
Uzbek resistance to Russian rule became the Pan-Turkish movement, also
known as Jadidism, which had arisen in the 1860s among intellectuals who
sought to preserve indigenous Islamic Central Asian culture from Russian
encroachment. By 1900 Jadidism had developed into the region's first major
movement of political resistance. Until the Bolshevik Revolution (see
Glossary) of 1917, the modern, secular ideas of Jadidism faced resistance
from both the Russians and the Uzbek khans, who had differing reasons to
fear the movement.
Prior to the events of 1917, Russian rule had brought some industrial
development in sectors directly connected with cotton. Although railroads
and cotton-ginning machinery advanced, the Central Asian textile industry
was slow to develop because the cotton crop was shipped to Russia for
processing. As the tsarist government expanded the cultivation of cotton
dramatically, it changed the balance between cotton and food production,
creating some problems in food supply--although in the prerevolutionary
period Central Asia remained largely self-sufficient in food. This
situation was to change during the Soviet period when the Moscow
government began a ruthless drive for national self-sufficiency in cotton.
This policy converted almost the entire agricultural economy of Uzbekistan
to cotton production, bringing a series of consequences whose negative
impact still is felt today in Uzbekistan and other republics.
Data as of March 1996
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