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Russian Central Asia in the Works of Nikolai Karazin, 1842–1908: Ambivalent Triumph by Elena Andreeva

2022; Maney Publishing; Volume: 100; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/see.2022.0020

2222-4327

Roman Osharov,

Central Asia Education and Culture

Reviewed by: Russian Central Asia in the Works of Nikolai Karazin, 1842–1908: Ambivalent Triumph by Elena Andreeva Roman Osharov Andreeva, Elena. Russian Central Asia in the Works of Nikolai Karazin, 1842–1908: Ambivalent Triumph. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021. xiii + 369 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £64.99; £49.99; £51.99 (e-book). Elena Andreeva’s book on the Russian writer and artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Karazin (1842–1908) is more than 100 years overdue. Karazin’s work on Central Asia in the tsarist period stood out because he worked in a variety of genres, from travelogues and fiction to prints and paintings. But his legacy has been neglected for much of the Soviet period, when Karazin’s works depicting Central Asia did not conform to the ideological direction of the time. He [End Page 359] resurfaced in scholarly discussions on Russian history and culture after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Yet Karazin, who was popular in his day, has remained in the shadow of his contemporaries, whose artistic legacy from the imperial period lives on and is better known. Among them are Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–89), although his book, Gospoda Tashkenttsy (Lords of Tashkent), is not directly about Tashkent nor about Central Asia, and Vasilii Vasiĺevich Vereshchagin (1842–1904), whose Central Asian series of paintings was recently exhibited at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. To the Western public, Karazin and his literary and artistic works are virtually unknown, and only a few of his novels and essays have been translated from Russian into English, including one by Andreeva herself. Andreeva’s book is the first major examination of Karazin’s biography and legacy in Western scholarship. It builds, among other sources, on the recent edited volume by Larisa Deshko (Osnova. Karazini: zbirka statey, Kyiv, 2014), Eleonora Shafranskaia’s book (Turkestanskii tekst v russkoi kuĺture: Koloniaĺnaia proza Nikolaia Karazina, St Petersburg, 2016) and the personal archive of the Karazins in St Petersburg. Nikolai Karazin came from a prominent family—–his grandfather, Vasilii Nazarovich Karazin (1773–1842) founded the Kharkiv University, which still bears his name. Karazin’s career in the military is an example of the common overlap between the service in the imperial army in late nineteenth-century Russia and literary work, which was particularly prevalent among Russians who lived and served in Turkestan, or Russian Central Asia. But unlike some of his fellow officers who wrote about Central Asia or devoted their lives to the study of the region, often in parallel with their service as administrators of Turkestan provinces, Karazin did not pursue a military career, and he never served as an official in Turkestan. He instead opted to become a full-time writer and artist. To better illustrate Karazin’s overlapping interests and activities in Central Asia, Andreeva identifies several of Karazin’s life projects that she calls ‘military’, ‘civilian’ and ‘ethnographic’. Karazin’s ‘military project’ was exemplified by his participation in the 1868 Bukhara campaign during his service in the Fifth Turkestan Line Battalion and subsequently in the 1873 Khiva campaign. He used his first-hand experiences in battle to memorialize the conquest of Central Asia. For example, his series of drawings depicting the conquest was commissioned by the Imperial Academy of Arts and was displayed in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. But he also wrote essays documenting episodes from the 1868 campaigns of conquest in which he took part. His ‘civilian project’ was focused both on the Russians in Turkestan and on the native peoples of Central Asia, Andreeva argues. Karazin’s Russian characters ranged from those who believed in Russia’s positive role in Central Asia to those who were attracted to the region by the opportunities for self-enrichment [End Page 360] and corruption, or Tashkentskie rytsari (Tashkent knights), as Karazin put it, in parallel to Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Gospoda Tashkenttsy. Many of Karazin’s characters were native people of Central Asia and each of them told a broader story of the region. They ranged from simple old men such as Siarkei and Doshchak, who were loyal and supportive of the Russians in Turkestan, to native...