In the early twentieth century the Russian empire governed Central Asia south of the Syr Darya River as the province of Turkestan, but left the Khanate of Khiva and Emirate of Bukhara as autonomous protectorates. Khiva, located south of the Aral Sea, was a semi-desert kingdom of settled Uzbeks with a significant Turkmen semi-nomadic population. The khanate was neither free nor under Russian control, but was subject to Russian surveillance from the garrison town of Petro-Alexandrovsk (present day Toʻrtkoʻl), on the eastern side of the Amu Darya delta. In spring 1912 the garrison received a new commandant, Col. Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin. Lykoshin had served in Turkestan since 1880, and belonged to that category of colonial scholar-officers who dedicated themselves to learning everything they could about their government’s new possessions. He was fluent in Turki (Chaghatay) and Persian, and published his own historical research as well as translations of medieval Central Asian histories. He was astonishingly prolific, producing at least 766 works on the ethnography, history, and administration of Turkestan. When the Governor-General of Turkestan, Samsonov, needed a knowledgeable envoy to report on conditions in Khiva, Lykoshin was the ideal choice.

Khiva in 1912 was battered by internal political tensions and external economic pressure. Khan Isfandiyar was new and young; the real political authority in the khanate belonged to his vizier, Sayyid Islam Khoja. The rivalry between this vizier and another notable family was so hot that Islam Khoja would be assassinated in 1913. Meanwhile, Khivan Turkmen tribes were suffering from loss of access to water and arable land, partly from natural fluctuations of the Amu Darya and partly from Russian irrigation projects upriver. Khiva’s traditional trade routes were increasingly hemmed in by Russian and Cossack settlements around the Aral Sea.

The text presented here is Lykoshin’s first formal report to Samsonov, based on three inspection tours taken in the spring and early summer of 1912. The text is handsomely reproduced in its old orthography original and in a fluid English translation, with photographs of the major actors. My only regret is that there are no maps. Lykoshin was interested in everything he saw. His 72-page report includes notes on transportation, architecture, irrigation engineering, court ceremonies, taxation practices, and much more. He was unusually sympathetic to the Turkmen, whom many Russians and Uzbeks despised as wild raiders who sold captives into slavery. Lykoshin had studied the Turkmen tribes and their differing conditions, and provides a wealth of information on Turkmen leaders and social customs as well as on their economic life. He supported disarming robber bands, but also described how the Khivan government kept the Turkmen poor and disorganized as a matter of policy, using rivalries between tribes or with nearby Kazakh groups to divide them. Abdurasulov’s extensive notes are very helpful here, as he illustrates Lykoshin’s blind spots. Lykoshin routinely overlooked the role that Russian activity played in Khiva’s poverty and disorder, either from his own inclination or a need to please his superior. For example, he blamed the Khivan government for being unable to stop gun-running to the Turkmen, but Abdursaulov informs us that Tatar agents from Orenburg were the major smugglers.

Lykoshin hoped to move Khiva gradually away from its current state of despotism and poverty, either by the persuasive example of how Muslims prospered under Russian rule or by putting the khanate under direct governance. He does not emphasize the point, but his report makes clear that the biggest potential agent of change in Khiva was that it was inexorably being drawn into the Russian economic system. Settlements of Russian, Tatar, and Armenian merchants within Khiva demanded reliable postal and telegraph services; regiments stationed there needed European buildings, roads, and food. Khivans greeted their honorable visitor with ceremonial bread and salt, but also broke sugar with him obtained from Kiev. Had enough time passed, Khiva would have become a full part of the empire economically even if not politically, but of course by 1912 time was running out.

Editor and translator Abdurasulov has done a superb job of preparing the text, including writing an extensive introduction on Lykoshin’s background, the history of the text, and the intricacies of Khivan politics. The book is part of an excellent new series, “The Library of Central Asia,” being published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It is a fine contribution to our scholarship.