American Views of Central Asia: From Tsarist Russia to Cold War

Introduction and Research Overview

The motivation for this proposal is rooted in a personal interest in the former Russian Empire. The proposed dissertation will consist of an introduction discussing the importance of the study, followed by three main chapters and a conclusion that summarizes the research and its principal findings. Each chapter covers a specific historical period characterized by a different set of American views, studies, and assumptions about Central Asia prior to the end of the Cold War. Ending the dissertation with the early Cold War era is also apt because it was a pivotal moment in the formal establishment of Central Asian Studies as a sub-discipline within Russian and Soviet studies.

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia comprised five of the fifteen USSR union republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The northern regions of these lands, together with the nomadic populations that inhabited them, were gradually integrated into the Russian Empire beginning in the 1730s. This amalgamation of different peoples came to represent a significant percentage of the Russian population. Abashin notes the "intensive annexation of settled lands including the protectorates," which "constituted about 8% of the population of the country" at one point and 17% by 1989. Although the nature of Central Asian Studies was historically tied to American relations with Russia during this period, it is clear that Russia — and later the Soviet Union — was not the monolithic entity conceptualized by many American scholars.

Early American Writings: Eugene Schuyler and Late Nineteenth-Century Observers

The first chapter examines early American writings about Central Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular focus on the writings and legacy of Eugene Schuyler. Hailing from New York, Schuyler was a consul general and commissioned diplomatic agent in the U.S. Foreign Service. From 1867 onward, he served as an early U.S. consul in Moscow and subsequently published his experiences, including memoirs of a week spent with Tolstoy. Schuyler's interest in Russia began early in his career, and his years of intimate involvement with the otherwise-reclusive country produced valuable first-hand accounts of life in mid-nineteenth-century Russia.

During mid-1863, the Russian Imperial fleet arrived in New York harbor at the height of the U.S. Civil War. Although the precise goal of the visit remains unclear, there is some indication that the Russian government intended to provide moral support for the North's abolitionist cause. As Wilkinson and Walden report: "A young American just graduated from Columbia Law School, a man of real literary and future diplomatic ability, made the acquaintance of several officers of the Russian flagship. His name was Eugene Schuyler, and he felt an immediate kinship with the Russians."

Although not as prominent as Schuyler, other writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries published works on Central Asia, largely drawing on Russian and European sources.² When analyzing these works, the dissertation will examine the reasons these manuscripts were produced and how their authors approached the subject. To better contextualize the American perspective of the period, some comparative analyses will also be made with respect to contemporary European and Russian writings on Central Asia. While Americans were influenced by the writings of British colonials in India, the Hungarian Turkologist and traveler Ármin Vámbéry, and Russian Orientalists, Schuyler and other Americans nevertheless offered their own empirical perspective on events unfolding in Central Asia under Russian rule.³

Footnote 2: John Bookwalter, Siberia and Central Asia (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1899); Alexis Sydney Krausse, Russia in Asia: A Record and a Study, 1558–1899 (New York: H. Holt, 1901); Frederick Wright, Asiatic Russia (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902).

Footnote 3: There is a large body of British publications on Central Asia from that era, many of which are freely available at Google Books and would have been accessible to American readers at the time. Some of Vámbéry's works were also translated into English: Ármin Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia (London: J. Murray, 1864); Ármin Vámbéry, Sketches of Central Asia (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1868); Ármin Vámbéry and F. E. Bunnett, Central Asia and the Anglo-Russian Frontier Question: A Series of Political Papers (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1874).

The Interwar Period: African-American Intellectuals and Soviet Central Asia

The second chapter examines the interwar period, paying particular attention to the writings of Socialist-leaning African Americans who viewed the newly established Bolshevik Russia as a land building "a national identity putatively free of class, gender, and racial bias," as Kate Baldwin has described it.⁴ Because the Russian Revolution exerted a tremendous influence on the political consciousness of many left-leaning individuals in the United States, some — most notably poet and writer Langston Hughes — traveled to Soviet Central Asia in search of a solution to inequality and racism at home.⁵

Footnote 4: Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 22.

Footnote 5: In addition to contemporary newspaper publications, Hughes's recollections of his travels to Central Asia appeared in both a dedicated travel monograph and his autobiography: Langston Hughes, A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia (Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934); Langston Hughes, Hugh H. Smythe, and Mabel M. Smythe, I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey (New York: Rinehart, 1956).

References

Baldwin, Kate A. Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002.

Bookwalter, John. Siberia and Central Asia. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1899.

Carew, Joy Gleason. Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Davis, Raymond, and Andrew Steiger. Soviet Asia: Democracy's First Line of Defense. New York: The Dial Press, 1942.

Hudson, Alfred. Kazak Social Structure. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938.

Hughes, Langston. A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia. Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934.

Hughes, Langston, Hugh H. Smythe, and Mabel M. Smythe. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. New York: Rinehart, 1956.

Jochelson, Waldemar. Peoples of Asiatic Russia. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1970 [1928].

Krausse, Alexis Sydney. Russia in Asia: A Record and a Study, 1558–1899. New York: H. Holt, 1901.

Mandel, William. The Soviet Far East and Central Asia. New York: The Dial Press, 1944.

Roman, Meredith L. Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928–1937. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

Wallace, Henry, and Andrew J. Steiger. Soviet Asia Mission. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock Publishers, 1946.

Wright, Frederick. Asiatic Russia. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902.