The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, Fred Richard Belk, 1976

irit, a merchant adventurism, and a messianism derived from Moscow's Byzantine Orthodox heritage.?! Many churchmen thought it their duty to spread their faith and they traveled with merchants and soldiers. Russian trade grew from its small beginnings in the sixteenth century and by the 1860s was still increasing steadily. Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent were involved in trading cotton goods for metal from Russian factories.” As trade increased, so too did the desire for conquest. In fact, Russian conquest of Central Asia was achieved in a relatively short period of time with but a small number of troops. In 1864, an eastern Siberian Frontier Army joined its western counterpart, called the Orenburg Frontier Army. This combined force began preparing to push into Central Asia. The following year the city of Tashkent was stormed by fewer than two thousand soldiers, even though it was defended by thirty thousand men. On June 15, 1865, near daybreak, a Russian Orthodox priest was the first man to climb the gates of the Sart fortress at The Province of Turkestan 69 Turkoman Kirghiz CENTRAL ASIAN TYPES 70 The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites Tashkent, thus winning him a military cross because of his valiantly urging the troops to storm the gates for Christ while he waved an ecclesiastical cross over his head.*? This courageous act was praised by the attacking soldiers because they believed Turkestan must be opened to Russian Christians. Prior to this battle no Chris- tian community had ever existed in this Muslim city.™ As one visitor at this time wrote, the lust for conquest of the Russians was cloaked in the garb of furthering Christian missions; they used conversion of the infidel as a pretext for extending their power.” No other people were more convinced of their cultural superi- ority than the Russians, and in no other Muslim country had a_non- Muslim encroachment been carried out on such a wide scale. The khanates joined forces to drive out the invader but were soon de- cisively defeated, and all Turkestan came under Russian dominance during the latter years of the nineteenth century. From tiny Kiev in the ninth century to a continental empire in the nineteenth century, Russia had become the largest nation on the globe. Russian Provincial System With the transformation of Turkestan into a colonial province of the Russian Empire, the people of the territory had not only to en- dure the oppression of local native exploiters but also the national and social oppression of a czarist provincial administration. When the Mennonites entered the province in 1880 they formed only a small part of the total colonization program of the Russians.” It must be clearly understood, however, that during their ad- vance southeastward the Russians did not directly annex all of the Central Asia territories in order to avoid provoking the animosity of Britain, their greatest rival in Asia. It was main