The great German painter Max Beckmann once noted in his diary: “Storm clouds are brewing over Europe. And yet we behave with history as if it were a fly: we feel its buzzing, and unconcerned, we chase it away with our hand without looking at her, too busy with our petty business.”[1] Max Beckmann was writing from Amsterdam, where he had gone into exile in 1937 following accusations by the Nazi regime of being a “cultural Bolshevik” and a “Degenerate Artist”. Chased by the Gestapo and living in fear, Beckmann conducted a secluded life absorbed in self-portraits, and obsessed over denunciations by his neighbours. Even though written in a state of depression, Beckmann’s words may sound like something familiar to us. In fact, they reverberate like a warning alarm: when people become disillusioned and unable to imagine a future, they tend to embrace nihilism and abdicate their beliefs. Complacency inheres in silence. It is for this reason that we should appreciate and commend all those around us who with great courage raise their voices to expose the emperor’s new clothes, i.e., the pernicious idea of Russia’s so-called imperial “innocence,” and contribute to the current conversation about the decolonisation of the Russian history curriculum.

Some among the most vocal advocates of decolonising the field of Russian history come originally from Central Asia: and this is for good reasons. There is a whole set of stubborn beliefs surrounding the Tsarist and Soviet past, which gloss nonchalantly over the violence endured by Central Asians; said beliefs are no doubt the product of Tsarist- and Soviet-era historiographies which have engulfed all the trauma originating from colonial-type of violence in a deathly silence. It is of course undeniable that more than a century after the fall of the Romanov empire and thirty-odd years on from the demise of the USSR, the consequences of the ways in which how regions such as Central Asia have been represented in and by Russia still weigh heavily on us. We must live with these consequences, but perhaps we can do something better in a fuller knowledge of their nuances and complexities.

Every historian of course has a professional duty to tell the truth about the world that she or he studies: and the historian of 19^th-century Central Asia under Russian rule thus has a duty to acknowledge and highlight the colonial character of the Russian administrative project. But proceeding thus only takes us just so far: To explain that the Russian empire wasn’t inoculated from the sins of colonialism and that it was as cruel as any other colonial state formations like, say, Japan or Italy, is no doubt a laudable undertaking, for it is a way do justice to the oppressed and alert ourselves and the broader public to the episteme of oppression informing our commonsensical assumptions about Russia, Central Asia or any other region under Russian rule. History matters because of its intrinsic significance for the present in which we live. We have learnt in the recent past that collecting and amplifying stories of dispossession can trickle down a domino effect leading to an act of restitution of rights in land such as in South Africa.

And here’s the rub. At this point one could legitimately ask how an historian interested in, say, 19^th-century Central Asia should proceed from the acknowledgment that the coloniality of power has affected how knowledge on the region has been produced so far, take action and design her future research accordingly. What are the good topics for a history curriculum of colonial Central Asia? Even framing the question in this manner―pondering a wrong vs a right theme―can mislead us, for the question is in fact premised upon a rather moralistic view of the historical craft, one which is driven by a thesis (the Russian empire was a colonial empire) and confers significance on themes exclusively by dint if their functionality: “Violence? Good! Education? Less so! What about the economy and property relations? Mmmm, that’s boring anyway!”, one could say.

Where does this discussion leave us? With regard to colonial history of the Russian empire, I must confess I have resolved to follow the wise lead of Sean Pollock who during the last instalment of our summer school in Vienna reminded us that historians are not activists and that their job is to produce knowledge about the past, and to do this in the most honest possible way. I believe this is a very capacious way of approaching the historical craft, for it alerts us that the past is far richer, more contradictory, and less predictable than we might expect.

In speaking of surprises, I recently spent a couple of months in Tashkent scrolling feverishly through hundreds of files while working on a new book project. Among the many unexpected stories of colonialism, I have stumbled upon one which offers insights into interactions between Slavic settlers and the local population and how things could take an unexpected twist. The story is about a Russian by the name of Nikita Yakushov who travelled to the Ferghana Valley in the mid-1890s in search of a fortune. What happened next is quite incredible. Having reached the village of Ketmen-To’be, today situated in the Jala-Abad province in Kyrgyzstan, he spent the night at the house of the canton administrator, one Sadyk, most probably because he did not have anywhere else to stay. The next day, Sadyk’s deputy, one Isembay, offered Nikita shelter for another night. This is when the troubles for Nikita began. Isembay took him to his yurt where he met a Russian peasant who had apostatised from the Russian Orthodox Church to Islam. The latter “ordered” Isembay and his men to imprison Nikita and persuade him convert to Islam; if he didn’t, he would be murdered by torture. Nikita converted to Islam, but stayed in fetters for several years, suffering starvation and violence, as he tells us, until May 1898 when once again something unexpected happened. Nikita found out that Isembay and another former county administrator (Bakhtiyar Ryskulbekov) were among the followers of Dukchi Eshon, a Sufi sheykh who famously led an uprising against a Russian military garrison in late May 1898. Nikita witnessed the preparation of the attack: he mentions to have seen one among Dukchi Eshon’s disciples distributing leaflets, which most probably called for a jihad against the “White Emperor”. Interestingly, Nikita offers a completely different narrative about the assault against the military garrison in Andijan. He claims that most of the people involved in the attack against the Russians came away unscathed and hid themselves together with other followers of Dukchi Eshon. While celebrating the Russians’ defeat, these men broke into parties which began to fight against each other for supremacy, most probably to claim political authority over the local population. The group of Isembay went so far as to denounce the opposing party to the Russians and they did so successfully because the colonial authorities were able to apprehend and exile them to Siberia. Famously, Isembay’s and Ryskulbekov’s false accusations led to the imprisonment of the Kyrgyz bard (akyn) Toktogul Satylganov who returned from exile only in 1905.[2] Isembay and his men were ready to undertake another attack against the Russians, tells us Nikita, who meanwhile was sentenced to death because he refused to join the Isembay and his group. What is remarkable about Nikita’s account is that Russians appear to be far from having the situation under control in the aftermath of the uprising and that Muslims are adamant about the need to overthrow the colonial government. Not only does he refer, though obliquely, to the fact that he had been explained that to wage war against Christians is a duty for every Muslim, but he also gestures at the fact that locals have gained the support of the Ottoman empire where Dukchi Eshon had found shelter. That the Russians could not apprehend the latter and arrested mistakenly another Sufi is an incorrect story that circulated widely in Turkestan. Luckily, Nikita was able to get hold of a rifle and a sabre and free himself. With the help of a county administrator, he was finally able to make it to the city of Ferghana. And here is where our story ends: uninterested in his insider knowledge about the uprising led by Dukchi Eshon, the Russian authorities jailed him for having converted to Islam. Readers will have to decide for themselves what is colonial about this record.

[1] Maria Caterina Cicala, La collezione Gurlitt (Torino, Acquario Libri, 2024).

[2]Ketmen-Tiube. Arkheologiia i istoriia, ed. V.M. Ploskikh and D.F. Vinnika (Frunze: Ilim, 1977), p. 184.