Russification and Sovietization—Central Asia

Russification and Sovietization—Central Asia

After capturing Kazan in 1552, the Russians, under Czar Ivan IV (1530–1584), took several hundred years to assimilate the Muslim lands of Central Asia. Before the nineteenth century, Central Asia was partly ruled by the Muslim khanates of Bukhara, Khiva, and Quqon (Kokand) and partly by uncontrolled and warring nomad tribes: Turkic- and Persian-speaking ethnic groups such as the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Tajiks. Between 1730 and 1855, Russian troops had gradually moved south, conquering northern Central Asia and part of the Kazakh-occupied steppe. This conquest was consolidated with the surrender of Shymkent in present-day Kazakhstan to the east of the Syr Dar'ya River in 1855 under Czar Alexander II (1818–1881) and his son Czar Alexander III (1845–1894) and came to an end with the subjugation of the Pamir Mountains region north of present-day Afghanistan in 1896 as the result of a Russo-British agreement. In 1865, under Alexander II, the Russian province of Turkistan was established, and the earlier system of independent khanates was gradually demolished: Bukhara in 1868, Khiva in 1873, and Quqon in 1875–1876. Following the battle of Geok-Tepe in present-day Turkmenistan in 1881, the Russians, under Alexander III, also annexed the lands of the Turkmen tribes to the czarist empire.

Read the rest of this Article with our Russification and Sovietization—Central Asia Access Pass.