Uzbekistan's Tsarist Turkestan: The Governorship That Remade Central Asia

Konstantin von Kaufman, the first Governor-General of Russian Turkestan, arrived in Tashkent in 1867 with orders to pacify and modernize a region the size of Western Europe. Over fifteen years, he abolished slavery, built telegraph lines and cotton gins, and imposed a legal code that sidelined Islamic courts — all while fighting a guerrilla war against the Khanates of Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand. This episode follows Kaufman's 'civilizing mission' through the lens of his most controversial reforms: the 1873 abolition of the slave trade across Turkestan, which freed perhaps 50,000 people but sparked a backlash from Khivan nobles; the introduction of Russian-language schools that drew a handful of Uzbek pupils but alienated the Jadid reformists; and the brutal suppression of the 1875 revolt in Kokand, where Kaufman's troops killed over 10,000. We also trace the unintended consequences — how Russian railway construction linking Orenburg to Tashkent in 1906 transformed Central Asia's economy and set the stage for the cotton monoculture that later devastated the Aral Sea. Drawing on Kaufman's own memoirs and the accounts of Russian officers, this is the story of an empire builder whose legacy still shapes Uzbekistan's borders, languages, and grievances.

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