Frontiers of Violence: State and Conflict in Semirechye, 1850-1938

Abstract

In August 1916, the native nomads of southern Semirechye rose in a popular rebellion that reduced the colonial presence in the region to several beleaguered towns and settlements. While the rebellion claimed over 3,000 victims in the settler society, the punitive actions of the authorities led to a far greater loss of life among the native communities. Beyond the loss of life, the uprising had much broader implications. The decimation of the nomadic population, which had shrunk to less than two thirds of its pre-rebellion level, and the plans of the government to resettle the remaining nomads in the geographically isolated and resource poor area of Naryn suggest that the administration came to view the rebels as a potential threat not only to the well-being of the settlers, but also to the integrity and security of the colony at large. The rebellion had in effect engendered long-standing concerns among the Russian military and statesmen about the ability of the metropole to protect its borderlands and maintain sovereignty in the ethnically and religiously “alien” regions. Indeed, the then military governor of Semirechye, General Fol’baum, framed the rebellion in the strictly state-centred terms: “the situation” he said of the rebellion “could change so suddenly that the entire Russian enterprise will come to ruin in Semirechye.”

Placing the uprising of 1916 and the region of Semirechye, where the uprising was at its most violent, at the heart of the broader political history of Russian imperialism, this thesis examines the forms and strategies of state-building in the colonial context. Semirechye’s frontier position – on the border with the Qing Empire – and its ethnic diversity make it an ideal region from which to study the relationship between the centre and the periphery. At the same time, treating the uprising of 1916 as a point of rupture, which had ushered in the “continuum of crisis” that engulfed the Russian Empire during World War I and determined, to a considerable extent, the course and content of the early Soviet policies in the region, allows us to understand how certain conceptions of nationality became central to questions of state security and sovereignty.

Substantively, this study traces the political history of Semirechye from the early years of conquest and colonization in the second half of the 19th century until the beginning of World War II, which the region entered as a part of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. Organized around the cross-cutting themes of empire, state, and nation, this thesis advances the key proposition – that sovereign power is predicated on the control of territory and population. Crucially, this study demonstrates that both the imperial and later Soviet state sought to impose and consolidate its power over the region’s landscape and peoples through the establishment and use of institutions, policies, and practices targeted at the management and supervision of Semirechye’s natural and human resources. Furthermore, by arguing that both governments sought to fashion popular loyalties, create a productive labour force, and develop the economy for the purposes of national defence, this thesis highlights the critical continuities between the imperial and Soviet practices and ideas in governing the region.

By examining Semirechye as a zone of state formation, this thesis also illuminates the critical nexus of state-building and control over natural resources and foregrounds the relationship of asymmetry and dependence between the centre and the periphery accomplished through the seizure of the region’s vital resources – namely agricultural land and livestock.

In order to develop these arguments, the thesis draws upon approaches from history, political science, and anthropology. Based on archival research, this study contributes to current debates on colonialism and state formation.

Drawing attention to the security rationale of the state-sponsored programmes of nation-building, such as the national delimitation and the policies of indigenization, implemented by the Soviet administration, this study offers a departure from the long-standing view of ideology as the primary engine of the state-led national construction in Central Asia. Instead, this thesis argues that the “affirmative action” principles of the early Soviet regime were grounded in the efforts of the government to mobilize resources of the region to maintain the regime’s internal and external security. Consequently, the harmonization of the Soviet and ethnic affiliations under the rubric of Soviet nations allowed the Bolshevik leadership both to enforce the boundaries of the state and to mobilize the indigenous population for the task of nation and state-building. Show more