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and was succeeded by her son,
PAUL I
, whom
she had tried to skip over in favor of her grand-
son, the future
ALEXANDER I
.
The coming of the
FEBRUARY REVOLUTION
of
1917 in Petrograd gave new life to the demands
of Central Asian Muslims. Activists based in
Tashkent began to advance demands for broad
autonomy within the framework of a future fed-
eralized state. This led to further tension with
local Russian colonists, and by September 1917,
the region had fallen into a civil war between
Russians and Muslims that continued until
1920. The
OCTOBER REVOLUTION
and civil war of
1917-21 took the issue of autonomy and nation-
alism in a different direction, leading to the for-
mation of the Soviet Union in 1922.
Central Asian Revolt of 1916
Although the largest internal insurrection in the
Russian Empire between the revolutions of 1905
and 1917, the Central Asian revolt of 1916, lost
in the carnage of World War I, remained virtually
unknown to contemporaries in Europe. Building
on long-standing animosities between local Mus-
lims and Russian colonial authorities, the revolt
was triggered by the wartime imperial decree of
June 15, 1916, which called for the draft of Mus-
lim youths to perform labor duties behind the
front lines. It spread quickly from the towns and
villages of Central Asia to include the nomadic
populations that covered the vast region between
Kirghizia and Kazakhstan.
The various political units of Central Asia (pres-
ent-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turk-
menistan, and Uzbekistan) had been annexed into
the Russian Empire between 1865 and 1885.
Until the early 20th century, the region had for
the most part received little attention from Rus-
sian bureaucrats and traders. By 1911, however,
its vast expanses had become the site for large-
scale cotton cultivation and the resettlement of
landless Russian peasants, who now made up
about 40 percent of the region's population. As
inorodtsy
(non-Russians), the local Muslim popu-
lation was accorded virtually second-class status.
It was, however, exempt from military service.
Although the June 1916 decree sought to draft
Muslim youths only for noncombat duties, it
offended the sensibilities of a population that
resented colonial Russian rule and felt besieged
by the onslaught of Russian settlers. The rebel-
lion caught local Russians by surprise and thou-
sands of Russian settlers were killed in the
summer, before the governor-general of Turke-
stan's troops was able to join the colonists and
restore order in late 1916. Precise numbers are
unavailable, but the estimates of those killed in
the army's reprisals have reached 500,000.
Chaadaev, Petr Yakovlevich
(1793-1856)
writer
After university studies, Chaadaev served as an
army officer in the prestigious Semenovsky regi-
ment in the Napoleon Wars (1812-15). Friendly
with many of the future
DECEMBRISTS
and sym-
pathetic to their ideas, he was admitted to their
secret society in December 1821, but by that
point Chaadaev had resigned his commission and
began a long sojourn in Europe. In 1826 he
returned to Russia, settled in Moscow, and began
work on his
Lettres philosophiques,
which he wrote
in French. When published in the journal
Tele-
skop
in 1836, the impact of the first letter was
described by contemporaries as a “shot in the
dark” night of the repressive regime of
NICHOLAS
I
. Chaadaev built on his unmitigated support of
Western European values and his wholehearted
condemnation of Russian culture to argue that
Russia's future salvation could lie only in a
reunion with the Roman Catholic Church. The
government's reaction was swift. The journal's
publisher was exiled to Siberia, the censor who
had approved publication was dismissed, and
Chaadaev was officially declared insane. In
response, Chaadaev wrote his
Apology of a Mad-
man,
a partial recantation of his views. His com-
plete rejection of any value in Russian culture
was one of the ideas that precipitated the division
between
SLAVOPHILES AND WESTERNIZERS
among
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