The Chinese Question in the Russian Turkestan: A History of the Russian Administration in the Ili Region
The article aims to study the administrative system the Russian authorities established in the Ili region and to identify the main direction of these administrative transformations. To achieve these aims, the following objectives are solved: to clarify the ideology of administrative transformations in this part of Central Asia, to determine the degree of the Russian administration's familiarity with the local political tradition, to disclose basic principles that guided the power structures of the empire in establishing the new governance system. The sources of this study are archived legislative acts, as well as projects from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan on the formation of the Russian administration system for the newly annexed territories of the Turkestan region. Historical and logical methods, criticism and analysis of unpublished sources, a comparative legal study, institutional and comparative methods, as well as a civilisational approach are used in the article. The modern historiography of the question is rather limited. The article analyses legal acts which instituted the temporary administration system in the Ili region as a part of the Turkestan Gover-norate General of the Russian Empire in the 1870s-1880s. The variety of opinions among officers from different echelons of imperial power on the administrative organisation of the region is shown. The conclusion on the uniqueness of the local administration system, which combined a considerable preservation of traditional institutes with some elements of the all-Turkestan governance, is drawn. Starting to organise the governing of the region, Russian authorities proceeded from the uncertainty of the status of the region (the unresolved issue of whether to keep it in Russia or to subsequently transfer it to China) and the lack of sufficient information about its living conditions and former administration system. The analysis of documents fixing the Russian administration in the Ili region shows that the new administration did not affect deeply the existing social relations. The new administration was built on the basis of the main task to secure the region until its returning to the Chinese authorities. But, at the same time, some all-Turkestan administrative institutions operated in the Kuldja district. The author believes that no matter what contradictions occured in the Turkestan administration, all its activities were consolidated and analysed in the context of general political approaches set by the centre and implemented in Tashkent.