The classic study of resistance to Tsarist Russian colonialism, the genocide that followed, and its connection to the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1916, Tzar Nicholas II began drafting Russian subjects across Central Asia to fight in World War I. By summer, the widespread resistance of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks turned into an outright revolt. The Russian Imperial Army killed approximately 270,000 of these people, while tens of thousands more died in their attempt to escape into China. Suppressed during the Soviet Era and nearly lost to history, knowledge of this horrific incident is remembered thanks to Edward Dennis Sokol’s pioneering Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia. This wide-ranging and exhaustively researched book explores the Tsarist policies that led to Russian encroachment against the land and rights of the indigenous Central Asian people. It describes the corruption that permeated Russian colonial rule and argues that the uprising was no mere draft riot, but a revolt against Tsarist colonialism in all its dimensions: economic, political, religious, and national. Sokol’s masterpiece also traces the chain reaction between the uprising, the collapse of Tsarism, and the Bolshevik Revolution.

The 1916 Revolt was a key event in the history of Central Asia, and of the Russian Empire in the First World War. This volume is the first comprehensive re-assessment of its causes, course and consequences in English for over sixty years. It draws together a new generation of leading historians from North America, Japan, Europe, Russia and Central Asia, working with Russian archival sources, oral narratives, poetry and song in Kazakh and Kyrgyz. These illuminate in unprecedented detail the origins and causes of the revolt, and the immense human suffering which it entailed. They also situate the revolt in a global perspective as part of a chain of rebellions and disturbances that shook the world’s empires, as they crumbled under the pressures of total war.

A compendium of original essays and contemporary viewpoints on the 1917 Revolution The Russian revolution of 1917 reverberated throughout an empire that covered one-sixth of the world. It altered the geo-political landscape of not only Eurasia, but of the entire globe. The impact of this immense event is still felt in the present day. The historiography of the last two decades has challenged conceptions of the 1917 revolution as a monolithic entity— the causes and meanings of revolution are many, as is reflected in contemporary scholarship on the subject. A Companion to the Russian Revolution offers more than thirty original essays, written by a team of respected scholars and historians of 20th century Russian history. Presenting a wide range of contemporary perspectives, the Companion discusses topics including the dynamics of violence in war and revolution, Russian political parties, the transformation of the Orthodox church, Bolshevism, Liberalism, and more. Although primarily focused on 1917 itself, and the singular Revolutionary experience in that year, this book also explores time-periods such as the First Russian Revolution, early Soviet government, the Civil War period, and even into the 1920’s. Presents a wide range of original essays that discuss Brings together in-depth coverage of political history, party history, cultural history, and new social approaches Explores the long-range causes, influence on early Soviet culture, and global after-life of the Russian Revolution Offers broadly-conceived, contemporary views of the revolution largely based on the author’s original research Links Russian revolutions to Russian Civil Wars as concepts A Companion to the Russian Revolution is an important addition to modern scholarship on the subject, and a valuable resource for those interested in Russian, Late Imperial, or Soviet history as well as anyone interested in Revolution as a global phenomenon.

A comprehensive diplomatic and military history of the Russian conquest of Central Asia, spanning the whole of the nineteenth century.

Modern Central Asia: A Primary Source Reader is an academic resource that discusses the basic political, social, and economic evolution of Central Asian civilization in its colonial (1731–1991) and post-colonial (1991–present) periods. Among other aspects of Central Asian history, this source reader discusses resistance and accommodation of native societies to the policies of the imperial center, the transformation of Central Asian societies under Tsarist and Soviet rule, and the history of Islam in Central Asia and its role in nation and state-building processes. This primary source book will be instrumental for familiarizing students with the nationality policies of imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet governments as well as the effects produced by these policies on the natives of the region. The documents collected in this reader challenge the traditional approach, which has viewed Central Asians as passive recipients of the policies imposed on them by central authorities. Modern Central Asia: A Primary Source Reader demonstrates the active participation of the indigenous peoples in contact with other peoples by examining the natives’ ways of organizing societies, their pre-colonial experience of contact with outsiders, and the structure of their subsistence systems. The source book will also help students situate the major events and activities of Central Asia in a global context. In addition to the value of this collection to the Central Asian historical record, many of the included texts will be essential for comparative analyses and cross-disciplinary approaches in the study of world history.

The central argument of this book is that the half-century of Russian rule in Central Asia was shaped by traditions of authoritarian rule, by Russian national interests, and by a civic reform agenda that brought to Turkestan the principles that informed Alexander II's reform policies. This civilizing mission sought to lay the foundations for a rejuvenated, 'modern' empire, unified by imperial citizenship, patriotism, and a shared secular culture. Evidence for Brower's thesis is drawn from major archives in Uzbekistan and Russia. Use of these records permitted him to develop the first interpretation, either in Russian or Western literature, of Russian colonialism in Turkestan that draws on the extensive archival evidence of policy-making, imperial objectives, and relations with subject peoples.

Empire and Belonging in the Eurasian Borderlands engages with the evolving historiography around the concept of belonging in the Russian and Ottoman empires. The contributors to this book argue that the popular notion that empires do not care about belonging is simplistic and wrong. Chapters address numerous and varied dimensions of belonging in multiethnic territories of the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union, from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. They illustrate both the mutability and the durability of imperial belonging in Eurasian borderlands. Contributors to this volume pay attention to state authorities but also to the voices and experiences of teachers, linguists, humanitarian officials, refugees, deportees, soldiers, nomads, and those left behind. Through those voices the authors interrogate the mutual shaping of empire and nation, noting the persistence and frequency of coercive measures that imposed belonging or denied it to specific populations deemed inconvenient or incapable of fitting in. The collective conclusion that editors Krista A. Goff and Lewis H. Siegelbaum provide is that nations must take ownership of their behaviors, irrespective of whether they emerged from disintegrating empires or enjoyed autonomy and power within them.