CHAPTER VII
Transcaspia in 1898
The intense activity displayed in railway construction did not imply neglect of the primary duty of a civilised state towards subject peoples—that of giving them peace and order. The problem before the Russian administration bristled with difficulties, for lawless habits were ingrained in the population of Turkomania. The lesson taught by Geok Teppe was the first step in the civilising process, for it inspired the Tekkes, who outnumber all other tribes combined, with a wholesome dread of the white man.[654] Their marauding instincts were controlled by overwhelming military forces cantoned near the Persian and Afghan frontiers in posts connected by the line of rail which traverses the heart of the conquered territory. Thus the Turkoman tribes had to choose between starvation and honest labour. They unwillingly adopted the latter alternative, and their good resolutions were strengthened by the immense demand for unskilled labour entailed by the construction of the Transcaspian Railway. The erstwhile robbers may now be seen toiling at cotton-presses, and tilling their fields as assiduously as Indian peasants. But the demeanour of the elder men show that they have not been effectually tamed; and until the generation which harried Persia and defied the “Great White Tsar” has passed away, the old leaven will still prevail in Turkoman breasts. The influence of the hereditary chieftains was the great obstacle in the path of reform. The Russians resolved to suppress the tribal organisation with its general councils, and make the village the administrative unit. In other respects the Whig watchword, the “Government of the People by the People,” is that of the Russian Government.
Transcaspia, for so the land of the Turkomans is officially styled, is bounded on the north by the Khivan and the Kirghiz steppes. Southwards it is separated by mountain ranges from Persia and Afghanistān; while the Amū Daryā and the Caspian define its limits on the east and west. In length it averages 600 miles, in breadth 350; the area being 230,000 square miles, or rather more than that of France. It is a land of startling contrasts. The northern portion, amounting to four-fifths of the whole, is a trackless desert; the remainder is made up of the oases of Akkal and Merv, and the highlands watered by the Atrak and Gurgan. The only minerals hitherto discovered are rock-salt, sulphur, and naphtha, and the latter alone has any commercial importance. The south-east corner of the Caspian is a region of geysers, petroleum springs, and hills of asphalt, which may in time rival the wonderful tract surrounding Baku on the western shore. At present, attempts at exploration are confined to Cheleken Island, in the Bay of Krasnovodsk, and have met with indifferent success.[655] In the absence of mineral wealth, local industries are restricted to agriculture and stock-raising. Heavy crops of barley, juwārī (sorghum), and cotton are produced by irrigated land everywhere, and the exports of the latter to Russia are enormous.[656] The bulk of the live stock belongs to the nomad tribes, and it is rising in value. The Turkomans owned £5, 7s. worth per head of the population in 1890; £7 worth in 1896. This growth has taken place in spite of epidemics due to the terrible winters of the northern steppes. The Mangishlāk peninsula, embracing the Ust Urt Desert, so fatal to Bekovitch’s expedition, lost 40 per cent. of its cattle and sheep from cold and starvation in 1890. Horses, on the other hand, are decreasing in number and quality, for the repression of raids by the strong arm of the law has destroyed the demand for them. The deterioration has engaged the serious attention of the Russian. A committee appointed to inquire into the cause recommended that the Turkoman breed should be encouraged by prize competitions and the introduction of English and Arab blood. But the law governing supply and demand cannot be long evaded, and we are within measurable distance of the extinction of this incomparable strain. Domestic industries, as in old times, are confined to the women, for their lords and masters disdain sedentary labour. The manufacture of carpets heads the list. Three-fourths of these are still made at Merv, where the variety of designs, handed down from long-past generations, and never committed to paper, is bewildering. Here, too, the Russian conquest has brought with it a blight, for the hideous aniline dyes exported from German chemical works are supplanting the beautiful and durable colours extracted from indigo and other vegetable substances. Exports have fallen considerably during the last seven years,[657] and the case is the same with the embroidery, shawls, and dress fabrics once produced in thousands by the deft fingers of Turkoman maidens. The nomads, who constitute the vast bulk of the population, have not yet taken kindly to commerce. The people of Merv, indeed, accompany the caravans which still ply between the oasis, Persia, and Khiva, but 3 per cent. only of the merchants and shopkeepers of Transcaspia are Turkomans.[658]
GENERAL KURAPATKINE
Until 1890 Transcaspia was a province of the Caucasus, but in that year it was constituted a government, and intrusted to the care of General Alexis Kurapatkine.
No living soldier has had a more brilliant career. It began at the storming of Samarkand in 1868, when, as a sub-lieutenant of the Turkestān Rifles, he won the Orders of St. Stanislaus and St. Anne for special gallantry. Three years later he was promoted lieutenant-captain, and entered the Military Staff College for a course of special training, which lasted till 1874. Then, having attained the rank of captain, he was posted to the Turkestān Staff. In the following year he was despatched on a special mission to Germany and France, in the course of which he took part in an expedition from Algiers into the Sahara, and became a Knight of the Legion of Honour. Returning to his old love, Turkestān, he was employed in 1876 in the reduction of Tashkent, and gained the crosses of St. George and St. Vladimir. In the same year he was sent as envoy to Ya`kūb Beg, a Mohammedan chieftain who had wrested Kāshghar from the Chinese, and obtained the cession of the town and district of Karashara. In 1877 came the Russo-Turkish War, and the Tsar needed the help of his best and bravest soldiers to hold his own against the stubborn Nizams. Kurapatkine became lieutenant-colonel and chief of the Staff under General Skobeleff, commanding the 16th Division. He covered himself with glory at Lovsha, in the expedition to the Green Mountain, and at Plevna; and gained the rank of colonel, with more of those baubles so dear to the military heart. In 1879 he exchanged the sword for the pen, and became professor of Military Statistics at the Staff College. But he pined, as all true soldiers must, for active service, and his wish was speedily gratified. He was appointed commandant of his old corps, the Turkestān Rifles, and in 1880 commanded as brigadier-general in the reduction of Kulja. Towards the close of that year he was sent in charge of reinforcements to General Skobeleff, then engaged in a death-struggle with the Tekkes of the Akkal oasis. His prowess in that memorable campaign has been already noticed. In the next eight years he was attached to the St. Petersburg Staff, and was employed in framing schemes for mobilisation and the defence of the western frontier of the empire. He also gained the Tsar’s special thanks for his services on a commission for settling the system of government in Turkestān. As governor and commander-in-chief of Transcaspia he showed that he possessed a rare combination of the qualities which adorn civil life as well as win battles.
His methods were based on an intimate knowledge of native character, and a keen appreciation of its noble qualities; and on his translation, in the beginning of 1898, to the great office of Minister of War, he left behind him the reputation of a firm but sympathetic ruler.[659] The charge for which he had laboured so strenuously then became a province of Turkestān, and was placed under the control of the governor-general residing at Tashkent.
Transcaspia is divided for administrative purposes into five districts—Mangishlāk and Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian littoral; Askabad, which includes the Akkal oasis; Tajand, watered by the river of that name; and Merv. At the head of each is a military officer, termed the district chief, who is responsible for the executive and fiscal administration. The districts are parcelled out into pristatvos, or subdivisions,[660] created in order to facilitate police work, and again into groups of twenty-five villages for judicial purposes. The village, which, as we have remarked, is the administrative unit, is called, if permanent, volost; and if inhabited by nomads, aül. It is governed by a mayor, on the old Russian model, termed volostnoi, or aülnoi, as the case might be, but more commonly starshina.[661] The village chiefs who replaced the Khāns of old time are elected by the inhabitants, subject to the governor’s veto. General Kurapatkine’s attention was, at an early stage, directed to the defects of the judicial mechanism, which was wholly independent of the executive power, and directed by a professional lawyer sent out from St. Petersburg. The Supreme Court sat at Baku, and appellants had then to face a journey of 200 miles across the stormy Caspian.
In 1892 General Kurapatkine formed a Supreme Court, which sits at Askabad and disposes of appeals from the decisions of the lower tribunals. It consists of five judges, and observes the rules of procedure and evidence current in Revision Courts. In causes involving native law and custom, popular judges from the Courts below are summoned to attend as assessors; while Kāzīs, natives versed in Mohammedan law, are called in as experts when questions of marriage and inheritance are concerned. The sentences in cases of gravity, such as murder, are subject to the governor’s approval. Next in order to the Judicial Commission, as that body is called, are the District Courts, consisting of the chief aided by five “popular judges” selected from the personnel of the lower Courts. These latter hold session weekly at the headquarters of each group of twenty-five villages. They are comprised of five “candidates,” judges elected by the inhabitants of every village, who sit in rotation. These Courts of first instance bear a strong resemblance to the panchayat system of ancient India, which has been so cruelly shorn of its powers for good by a mistaken policy of centralisation. Their capacity in criminal cases extends to the infliction of fines of 100 roubles and three weeks’ “imprisonment.” On the civil side they try, without appeal, cases in which the value of the subject-matter is less than 200 roubles. Further reforms are in contemplation. The jurisdiction of the lower Courts will be extended—Kāzīs will be excluded, and local experts summoned in cases of marriage and inheritance. But, such as it is, the Russian system has worked with remarkable smoothness. It recognises the innate capacity for self-government which every Eastern race possesses, while the village organisation remains intact; and has thus gained the entire confidence of the people. The duty of preserving order and execution of the Courts’ decrees vests in the district chief, the pristatvos and the starshinas in their several degrees. In the quinquennial period ending with 1895 they brought 3436 offenders to justice, a proportion of nearly 25 per cent. of the population. It is undeniable that in the eastern districts crime is far more rife than on the Caspian. Merv had 1450 offenders during the five years, as compared with 419 convicted at Krasnovodsk. The classification of crimes affords curious results. The offences against person and property nearly balanced each other in the Caspian districts, while the contrary is the case at Merv. Charges of theft constituted the great bulk of Transcaspian crime; cattle-lifting came next in order of importance, followed by wounding and murder.[662] Capital punishment has been abolished throughout the empire, except in cases of treason. Murderers are transported by rail and steamer to the Russian penal settlements on the North-West Pacific.[663] As is the case in India, the volume of crime varies directly with that of population. The tract in the Caspian is sparsely inhabited, while in Merv the population is comparatively thick. Broadly speaking, the numbers rise with the distance from the barren seashore. The total population of the province was 235,600 in 1890, and 300,769 in 1895, showing an increase of 65,169, or nearly 26 per cent. The growth of the Kirghiz community during the same period was no less than 60 per cent. The Tekke Turkomans are still the most numerous class of the population;[664] then, at a long interval, the Sariks and the Yomuds, a large proportion of whom roam over Persian as well as Russian territory. Persistent attempts have been made of late years to encourage Russian immigration, but with indifferent success. Each family of new-comers is allowed a subsidy of 100 roubles, besides seed-corn and land rent free. But the climatic conditions are unfavourable, and the water-supply is unsuited to the European constitution. In 1892 one-fifth of the immigrants succumbed to cholera, and they suffer terribly from malarial fever.[665] As traders the Russians cannot compete successfully with the astute Armenian and Persian exploiters of Transcaspia. The Russian immigrants, who are mostly railway servants, are 3452 in number, not reckoning labourers who arrive at the beginning of winter and return home before the fearful tropical heats set in. The rest are scattered in the mountains south of Askabad on the Afghan frontier and the Caspian shore. There are ten colonies of agriculturists, and three of fishermen, with a total strength of 2174 souls. The besetting curse of these little settlements is drunkenness. General Kurapatkine, who strove during his whole term of office to foster Russian colonisation, endeavoured to check this vice by prohibiting the sale of spirits; but it is to be feared that enforced abstinence has only made the exiles’ lot more forlorn, and their periodical outbursts more bestial. A semi-tropical climate and a soil either barren or saturated with malarial poison is not, and can never be, adapted to the children of the icy north.