A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

204 A history of Inner Asia
extent the natives, essential to the base of the productive process,
remained excluded on the executive and profit-taking level.
On the cultural and spiritual level, the Russians were fairly benevolent
and tolerant colonizers.Although convinced of the superiority of
their own civilization and religion, they had less of the condescending
or downright contemptuous attitude toward the natives characteristic of
most colonizers from Western Europe.Islam, the sharia, waqf, religious
practices and education, and the general way of life were not interfered
with unless in direct conflict with Russia’s interests and with the exception
of slavery, which the Russians suppressed in imitation of similar
measures taken by other colonial powers in their possessions (and not
long after the 1861 suppression of serfdom in Russia).Proselytism by the
Orthodox Church, despite the participating priest’s role at the storming
of Tashkent, received no encouragement from the authorities.This attitude,
however, was a result not only of Russian tolerance, but also of the
changed intellectual and spiritual climate in Europe, and it presented a
sharp contrast to the earlier, sixteenth-century conquest of Kazan,
where forced conversion or expulsion of those who refused to convert,
in addition to other forms of persecution, wrought havoc among the
Tatar population; in the same manner, for example, the effects of the
1830 French landing at Algiers differed from those of the Spanish
Reconquista, despite the participating French bishop’s exuberant exclamation
about Christianity’s return to North Africa.Central Asia’s
natives, having lost their political and economic independence, thus
retained their spiritual freedom, and most remained staunchly Muslim
in their religion, culture, and way of life.This also meant, however, that
the bulk of the population received little of the already vertiginous intellectual
and scientific progress in which Russia had taken part since the
time of Peter the Great.
Aside from the military occupation itself – about 40,000 troops are
estimated to have been stationed in the two provinces, which had a population
of about six million souls and an area of some 1,277,000 square
kilometers (493,000 square miles) – the construction of railroads and of
a telegraph network proved an effective means of controlling the colony.
Especially the railroads facilitated this control and would later play a
crucial role in the preservation of Turkestan as Russia’s possession
during the turbulent years of the Bolshevik Revolution.The first line,
opened to traffic in September 1881, connected the Caspian port of
Uzun Ada – to be shifted in 1894 to Krasnovodsk – with the Turkmen
city of Kizil Arvat; the location of the earliest railroad line in this part