Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [238]
The story of Russia’s expansion into Muslim central Asia can be briefly told, since by this time Russia had cast itself very much in the same mould as the other great powers of Europe, anxious to guarantee as high a degree of control as possible within their ‘spheres of influence’. This vast area, which was always predominantly Muslim, seemed to have a different, more distant status than any other part of the empire: the Russians called its inhabitants inoródtsï, ‘aliens’. The conquest of the steppe-land of Kazakhstan,* begun under Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century, was completed in 1848: it was thus opened up to settlers, rather on the same model as the American West that was being colonised at the same time.
In principle, linguistic (and religious) toleration was a feature of the Russians’ approach to this part of the empire. Whether the Tatars accepted the Christian faith (the Bible and catechism were available in Tatar in 1803) or remained with Islam, Tatar (i.e. Chagatay Turkic) was authorised as the administrative language for the steppes. In dealing with Muslim nomads, the Russians had to keep in mind that they always had the option of decamping over the border, or, more worryingly, that they might become a fifth column for the Ottomans. In general, therefore, they endeavoured to offer them an attractive option if they accepted Russian rule. Catherine II’s Holy Synod Act of 1773 established a religious directorate for Muslims in Russia, the muftiyya. She also decreed transit rights for Sunni Muslims who wanted to avoid Shia Iran on their pilgrimages to Mecca. And she even financed a Muslim religious school, a madrasa, in Bukhara. Muslims attended Russia’s military academies, had their own (volunteer) regiments, and even served as officers in ordinary Russian regiments—something very different from the contemporary practice of the British or French empires.50
But for all this, the steppes did become effectively Russified. It was the incidence of European settlers which really changed the linguistic picture: 20 per cent in 1887, 40 per cent in 1911, 47 per cent in 1939.51 Khrushchev’s ‘Virgin Lands’ Policy of the 1950s added a further 1.5 million. (The number of native Russian speakers in Kazakhstan according to the 2000 Ethnologue is now 6.23 million, 38 per cent.)52
In 1854, Russia was defeated in the Crimea by its imperial peers, Britain, France and the Ottomans. Perhaps seeking some consolation, Russia immediately proceeded to the conquest of central Asia, due south of the Kazakh steppes. Colonial wars against natives without modern weapons were far easier to win, and somehow heartening for Europeans, as the opening quote from Dosteyevsky shows us.
The principal remaining powers in this area were the emirates of Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand. Despite the technical advantages of the incomers over the residents, the war took twenty-two years, and ended in 1876. Kokand, in the east, was annexed, but the other two emirates, Bukhara, which had contained the legendary Samarkand, and Khiva on the Caspian shore, were largely left as dependent powers. ‘Turkestan’ was created as a provincial envelope to hold these new acquisitions. Russia’s main concern came to be the development of intensive cotton cultivation in the Ferghana valley, and this attracted large numbers of settlers into the area, which is part of modern Uzbekistan. Nevertheless, settlement in these areas never reached levels comparable to those of the steppes to the north: the four corresponding modern states are (from west to east) Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and their population of 39 million embraces only 9 per cent native Russian speakers.53
The status of Russian
This completes our brief review of how Russian was spread by the Tsar’s empire. It remains to consider why it never became a prestige language: why, unlike all the other imperial European languages that established themselves far from Europe, it did not come to symbolise the conquered