Central Asia—Russia Relations
Political, cultural, and military clashes have strongly affected Central Asia–Russia relations. In the nineteenth century, Russia tried to put the territories of today's Central Asian states under its control in order to benefit from the region's natural resources and fertile agricultural lands. Russia also hoped thereby to play an active role in the Middle East and South Asia. The Central Asian states strongly opposed Russian policies and fought to preserve their national identities and economic and political autonomy.
The Czarist Period
Until the 1860s, czarist Russia occupied the entire Kyrgyz Steppe (in present-day central Kazakhstan). Turkistan was under the political control of three Turkish khanates, Bukhara, Khiva, and Quqon (Kokand). These khanates had simple social, military, and administrative organizations, and they were often in conflict with one another. To gain a commercial advantage by controlling the historic Silk Road, at that time the main commercial link between Europe and Asia, the Russians attacked the Quqon khanate. In 1865, they occupied the city of Tashkent in the Bukhara khanate and then created a separate Turkistan province, whose area included today's Kazakhstan and parts of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The emir of Bukhara asked the Russians to leave Tashkent, but the Russians defeated the Bukharans and seized the cities of Khojend (present-day Khudzhand) and Uroteppa.
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