Fate of Russian Central Asia if Russian Empire survives?

[rjd1997]

I've been wondering about this. Forgive my ignorance of the details, but wasn't Russian Central Asia basically a colony of Russia akin to the European empires in Africa? A large native population living under the rule of a European empire that viewed them as inferiors? If so, in a scenario where the Russian Empire (the monarchy) survives (I'll let you guys choose the scenario for how that happens), would Russia lose the territory during decolonization the same way that other European empires lost their colonies (the Russians would probably still have a huge amount of influence in the newly independent country(ies), but still)? Or could Russia keep Central Asia as part of the Russian Empire. How would the region evolve in either scenario?

Please know that I have no idea how the Soviets kept Central Asia until their fall, and know very little about the actual "facts on the ground" there, I was just curious.

I put this in before 1900 in order to give breathing room for a POD.

 

[Lalli]

Probably Russian Empire will integrate Central Asia to Russia on some point like French did with Algeria, if it wasn't by WW1. But I think that it would be easy to keep Central Asia.

But what would then happen for Central Asia? It would depend pretty much politics of Russian Empire but there will be probably some russification and I guess that pretty underpopulated CA will be nuclear test area and probably good space program area. There might be some separatism.

 

[Fredrick II Barbarossa]

Depends if you mean Kazan and Astrakhan probably not. If you mean Kokland and Bukkhara yes they were colonies. In otl post. Soviet union Russia did lose most of central Asia. The rest of central asia was either sparsly populated which meant its loss was not possible or already russified such as Astrakhan or Kazan.

 

[rjd1997]

Depends if you mean Kazan and Astrakhan probably not. If you mean Kokland and Bukkhara yes they were colonies. In otl post. Soviet union Russia did lose most of central Asia. The rest of central asia was either sparsly populated which meant its loss was not possible or already russified such as Astrakhan or Kazan.

I meant the area of OTL Kazakhstan and south of that. The area of OTL central Asian SSRs.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

I imagine that one if the biggest changes "on the ground" will be a more reactionary Central Asian population. For all of their faults, it was the Bolsheviks that smashed the old ways of rule through client khans, as well as promoting women's rights and basically making it a better place to live as a woman than Afghanistan. The Russian Empire is also likely to continue ruling through local elites as opposed to creating new ones, which will entrench existing inequalities. All in all, I think that Communism was largely successful in improving the standards of living in Russian/Soviet Central Asia, in a manner unlikely to be seen with perpetual Tsarism. Best case scenario, some Central Asians who studied at the Imperial University of Petrograd come back and modernise their homelands, albeit with a lot of resistance.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

I've been wondering about this. Forgive my ignorance of the details, but wasn't Russian Central Asia basically a colony of Russia akin to the European empires in Africa?

In some ways yes, but also fundamentally different in that Central Asia was contiguous with eastern Russia. Russian settlement spreading to the east between 50 and 60 N latitude overlapped with non-Russian areas like Tatarstan (which is actually in Europe), Kalmykia (around the lower Volga), Kazakhstan, and Mongol areas of Siberia. These areas remain part of Russia, and are very similar to Central Asia, while Kazakhstan is about 50% ethnic Russian; there is no clear line between "Russian" and non-Russian territory.

Another difference is that Central Asia has some of the world's oldest civilizations, which is very different from the African colonial areas (south of the Sahara, of course - Egypt is among the oldest civilized countries).

Places like Khokand, Bokhara, and Samarkand were formal states, not much different from Iran, which managed to enter the Westphalian system. There were no such states in sub-Saharan Africa, except Abyssinia.

Thus Russian Central Asia was more like conquered territory in Europe than colonized territory in Africa.