Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies) by Michael Khodarkovsky

Author:Michael Khodarkovsky [Khodarkovsky, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780253108777
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2002-02-21T23:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 10. Kazakh horseman. From Aleksei Levshin, Opisanie Kirgiz-Kazach’ikh ili Kirgiz-Kaisakskikh ord i stepei (St. Petersburg: Tip. Karla Kraia, 1832), pt. 3, p. 42.

The failure of the two expeditions was only a temporary setback for Russia’s ambitions in Asia. Upon his return from the unsuccessful military campaign in Persia in 1722, Peter realized once again that “even though the Kazakhs were nomadic and unreliable people, they were both the key and the gates to all of Asia,” and he urged his lieutenants to spare no effort and cost in making the Kazakhs Russian subjects.43 Peter appeared no less interested in the Oirats, and in the same year he dispatched an envoy, Captain Ivan Unkovskii, to the Oirats. Russia’s overtures to the Kazakhs and Oirats were only a logical continuation of its imperial ambitions and the empire’s renewed attempts to project its geopolitical interests farther into Inner Asia.

St. Petersburg’s search for closer ties with both the Kazakhs and Oirats was frustrated by the simple fact that the two were implacable enemies. In desperate need of help against the Oirats, the Kazakhs sent numerous embassies to the Siberian governors, offering to field 20,000 to 30,000 Kazakhs, who could join the Russians in an assault on Yarkand, the principal city of the Oirat ruler. The Russian response was a cautious one, and the officials were instructed to find out more about the Kazakhs’ intentions.44

In the meantime, the Kazakhs continued to suffer devastating defeats at the hands of the Oirats. A few attempts to unite the dispersed Kazakh clans and to launch a counteroffensive inevitably ended in the Kazakhs’ defeat. The worst debacle occurred in the winter of 1723. One year after the death of the Chinese emperor K’ang Hsi, the Oirats sent a large force against the Kazakhs, forcing them to flee west across the Syr-Darya River. There, at what they considered a safe distance, they were taken completely by surprise when the Oirats overran them later that year. Having lost the towns of Tashkent, Turkistan, and Sayram and having found no safe haven from the Oirat raids, the Kazakhs fled in panic farther west, approaching Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarkand. Many people and herds died during the exodus; many more people were taken captive. The year 1723 and those that followed would become known in Kazakh history as the time of the “Great Calamity.”45

The arrival of desperate and destitute Kazakhs spelled disaster for the Central Asian khanates. The inhabitants of Samarkand and Khiva deserted the cities, Bukhara was besieged, and farmland and gardens were trampled by the Kazakhs’ herds. More Kazakhs were compelled to move to the pastures along the Emba and Yaik rivers, thus putting themselves in direct confrontation with the Kalmyks and, once again, in the orbit of Russian interests.46

While the mutual raids between the Kazakhs and Kalmyks were not a new development, the news of the internal turmoil among the Kalmyks prompted the Kazakhs to move closer to them and undertake even larger campaigns. In 1726, as many as 30,000 Kazakhs camped two days’ journey from the Yaik.

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