Neither before nor after the Russian Revolution of 1917 were the nationalist aspirations of the Muslims of Central Asia compatible with the interests of the Russian state or those of the European population of the region. This was demonstrated once and for all when the troops of the Tashkent Soviet crushed a short-lived Muslim government established in Kokand in January 1918. Indeed, the Soviet authorities in Central Asia regarded the native intelligentsia, even the most “progressive” of them, with lively and (from their point of view) justifiable apprehension. At the same time, there was the problem of an active resistance on the part of conservative elements, which was anti-Russian as much as anticommunist. Having extinguished the khanate of Khiva in 1919 and that of Bukhara in 1920, local Red Army units found themselves engaged in a protracted struggle with the Basmachis, guerrillas operating in the mountains in the eastern part of the former khanate of Bukhara. Not until 1925 did the Red Army gain the upper hand.

Thereafter, Central Asia was increasingly integrated into the Soviet system through the implementation of planned economy and improved communications, through the communist institutional and ideological framework of control, and, for young males, through compulsory service in the Red Army. The economy of the region became further distorted to meet the needs of the central planners. Traditional religion, values, and culture were suppressed, but in such areas as education, health care, and welfare Central Asians benefited to a degree from their forced participation in the system.

Eventually the Soviets developed an ingenious strategy for neutralizing the two common denominators most likely to unite Central Asians against continuing control from Moscow: Islamic culture and Turkish ethnicity. After a protracted period of trial and error, their ultimate solution was the creation of five Soviet socialist republics in the region: the Kazakh S.S.R. (now Kazakhstan) in 1936, the Kirgiz S.S.R. (now Kyrgyzstan) in 1936, the Tadzhik S.S.R. (now Tajikistan) in 1929, the Turkmen S.S.R. (now Turkmenistan) in 1924, and the Uzbek S.S.R. (now Uzbekistan) in 1924. The plan was to will into being five new nations whose separate development under close surveillance and firm tutelage from Moscow would preempt the emergence of a “Turkistani” national identity and such concomitant ideologies as Pan-Turkism or Pan-Islamism. To some extent, this ethno-engineering reflected colonial conceptions of the peoples of Central Asia dating back to tsarist times.

Thus the Kazakhs, whose absorption into the Russian Empire had been a gradual process extending from the early 18th to the early 19th century, were perceived as wholly separate from the Uzbeks south of the Syr Darya, whose territories had been annexed during the mid-19th century. As speakers of an Iranian language, the Tajiks could be clearly distinguished from their Turkic-speaking neighbours, while the Russian perception of the nomadic Turkmen, whom they had conquered during the closing years of the 19th century, set them apart from the sedentary Uzbeks. Similarly, the Kyrgyz of the Issyk-Kul region (whom the Russians of tsarist times had confusingly designated “Kara-Kirgiz,” while applying the name “Kirgiz” to the Kazakhs) were declared to be distinct from their Kazakh neighbours.

The colonial experience and 19th-century Russian ethnological and anthropological fieldwork were, then, when appropriate, enlisted by the Soviets to serve very different ideological ends. Inevitably, the boundaries of these artificial creations willed into being by Soviet fiat did not reflect the ethnic and cultural patterns of Central Asia, and all five republics contained substantial minority populations (among them, immigrants from European Russia), a situation which, with the coming of independence in 1991, was fraught with the likelihood of future conflicts. To ensure the success of this design for stabilizing Central Asia under Soviet rule, school textbooks, scholarly research and publishing, and cultural policies in general were devised to stress, on the one hand, the particular and unique experience of each republic and, on the other, the enduring benefits of the Russian connection, which paradoxically required that the tsarist conquests and their consequences be represented as an overwhelming boon to Central Asians. Great significance was given to language policy, with strenuous efforts being made to emphasize the linguistic differences among the various Turkic languages spoken in the republics, clear evidence of intent to divide and rule.

During the last two decades of Soviet history, the remoteness and economic backwardness of Central Asia meant that this region felt less intensely the winds of change beginning to blow through metropolitan Russia, Ukraine, or the Baltic republics, although from 1979 Soviet intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan produced ripple effects across the frontier. Historians, however, may conclude that the most significant aspects of the history of Central Asia under the Soviets were the extent to which its peoples managed to retain their traditional cultural heritage under the most debilitating circumstances.

Now that all five are independent sovereign states, their future destinies will be of more than regional significance. Central Asia will no longer be the backwater that it became when the age of European maritime discovery brought to an end the centuries-old transcontinental caravan trade.