Svetlana Gorshenina describes the intellectual and administrative genesis of Central Asia in the XIXe And XXe centuries: since the “ invention » of Central Asia by geographers, administrators and intellectuals of the tsarist era, until the upheavals in Central Asian territorial structures that occurred during the XXe century.
Svetlana Gorshenina’s work offers a description of the intellectual and administrative genesis of a territory, that of Russian and then Soviet Central Asia in the XIXe And XXe centuries. He approaches this creation from the angle of the borders which defined this space, both internally within Tsarist Russia then the Soviet Union and externally on the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and of China. Such an approach is a priori doubly interesting. On the one hand, it allows us to compare two usually disjointed processes, the formation of the external borders of the Russian and then Soviet Empire and the definition of its internal territorial articulations. On the other hand, through the proposed concept of “ border makers », she is interested in the individuals who contributed, on the Russian and Soviet side, to the genesis of this space.
In her introduction, Svetlana Gorshenina sets herself the objective of deconstructing the geographical and political concept “ from Central Asia » by showing its historical formation and to challenge the idea of a colonial progression « fortuitous » (p. 21) from Russia to the south, as it has been defended by certain Russian historians. The work generally provides valuable information, even if some of its conclusions or approaches can be debated.
Central Asia, a tsarist colonial construction
In the first part of her work, Gorshenina offers a history of the invention, to use a now classic term, of Central Asia by geographers, administrators and intellectuals of the tsarist era. This construction took place in parallel with the advance of the Russian Empire in the region. This begins at XVIIIe century and accelerated in the second half of the XIXe century, with the conquest of Tashkent in 1865 then the capture of Gök-Tepe in 1881 by General Skobelev. The author underlines that the Russian progression in Central Asia comes up against the difficulty of conceiving the conquest of a space which seems to lack clear borders, due to the nomadism of the populations of the steppe and the multiple allegiances of certain communities. To respond to this challenge, Russian intellectuals are developing geographical and cultural theories which legitimize the belonging of this space defined as “ Central Asia » to a Russian empire conceived more generally as “ middle world », to use the expression proposed in 1892 by the pan-Slavist Vladimir Lamanskii.
Beyond this cultural history of Central Asian representations, Svetlana Gorshenina provides two examples of how borders are developed in the region. She gives a precise case study on the occupation in 1871 of the Kuldzha region (Yíning in Chinese), in Xinjiang, by the tsarist troops. The regional administration, under the authority of the governor-general of Turkestan, Kaufmann, played a central role in this conquest. She managed to convince the ministers and the tsar of the usefulness of controlling this city located on the cross-border Ili river. This annexation is one of the rare cases of subsequent territorial retreat of Tsarist Russia, since the region was returned to China by the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1881, when it no longer appeared to be of strategic importance.
A second insight is provided by the description of the border negotiations carried out between Russia and the British on the subject of the Afghan border. This example reveals how the concept of “ natural borders » is used by the Russians to leave the door open to an extension of their territorial domination up to the Hindu Kush mountain. Through the study of these negotiations, it is also a question of showing the existence of at least two different conceptions of Central Asia by the Russians, reflected by two terms which distinguished themselves during the years 1840-1870. The concept ofMiddle Asia (Srednjaja Azija) applies to territories effectively controlled by the Russians, while that ofCentral Asia (Tsentral’naja Azija) embraces Xinjiang, Afghanistan and northeastern Iran, revealing tsarist ambitions in the area.
Soviet power and Central Asian borders
The second part of the work concerns the interwar period and describes the upheaval of territorial structures in Central Asia, which led to the creation of the five current republics, which became independent in 1991. A contribution of the work is to resituate this work of “ delimitation » (razmezhevanieaccording to period Soviet terminology) in the context of the tsarist heritage. Gorshenina underlines the diversity of statuses which prevailed until the end of the tsarist era. It shows how certain territories found themselves disputed at the end of the XIXe century between the governorate of the Steppes and that of Turkestan, on the basis of ethnic, economic or geopolitical arguments put forward by the tsarist administrators. The maintenance of officially autonomous entities such as the Emirate of Bukhara or the Khanate of Kokand is a complex legacy for Soviet power.
Gorshenina provides a useful summary of the many institutional developments in Soviet Central Asia during the 1920s-1930s. Changes to administrative statutes are accompanied by divisions decided within commissions ad hoc established by the Bolsheviks in the region. These bodies bring together both Russian and local experts and political figures. To establish their divisions, they attempt, for example, to delimit coherent linguistic areas, relying on socio-ethnic categorizations or economic analyses. Gorshenina shows that, if the Bolshevik leaders did invent new territorial frameworks in Central Asia, they did so by resuming previous forms of expertise and in interaction with local elites. In the concrete production of borders, expertise is linked to regional power relations. The book thus gives the example of Tashkent, whose surrounding districts are disputed between Uzbeks and Kazakhs, against a backdrop of rivalry between sedentary and semi-nomadic people and the struggle for control of the city’s water supply.
Borders that are too abstract ?
Despite its factual richness, the book sometimes leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction. The succession of chapters does not really correspond to a logical evolution, as when we pass without transition, in the first part, from a very general cultural history of the concept of Central Asia to a specialized study on a detailed point of the colonial conquest.
In some of its conclusions, the work only partially convinces, such as when it rejects the “ peculiarity of Russian progression » (p. 183). We can only agree with the author that the conquest of Central Asia was not “ natural » and noted the combined influence of global geopolitical issues and the play of regional actors. In this regard, it is normal to place the Russian Empire within the framework of a comparative history of colonialism. Refusing the thesis of Russian exceptionalism should not, however, make us forget the main particularity of Russian colonial conquest, its continental dimension. It is a shame that a work devoted to borders does not sufficiently evoke the problem of the pioneer front and the border forms that it implies in Central Asia.
Likewise, reflection on “ border makers » probably does not go far enough and, beyond a happy formula, the epistemological contribution is hardly clear. We would like to follow more precisely some of these intellectuals, administrators or soldiers who are involved in the definition of Central Asian borders. If the play of actors is finely explained in the case study on Kuldzha, the role of local Central Asian elites participating in the delimitation work during the Soviet era could have been explored in greater depth, especially since the preface of the work highlights their importance.
Finally, we can regret that the borders referred to in the title of the book remain quite abstract. A reflection on the invention of borders is difficult to do without paying attention to the local level and the influence of political, administrative or economic delimitation processes on pre-existing forms of territoriality. To extend the research, it would be necessary to develop the interaction between the “ border makers » and local populations in order to better understand the interplay of scales in the production and functioning of these new Central Asian borders, whether domestic or international.