This paper will explore the course of the Revolution of 1905 in the Russian Empire's most colonially separate periphery, the Governor-Generalship of Turkestan. While the capital of Tashkent saw significant demonstrations, one of which was violently suppressed outside the City Duma, the focus of Social Democrat and Social Revolutionary agitation was the military garrisons and railway workers of the region. Although it was not a purely "Russian" revolution, as Armenians and Jews played a disproportionately prominent role, they remained curiously indifferent to the revolutionary potential of the local Muslim majority. This meant that the story of 1905 in Turkestan largely played out along narrow railway corridors, where hectographed pamphlets that might have been written in Tver or Tambov rather than Tashkent were scattered along the platforms, in the workshops and barrack blocks. This is all the more striking given the emergence of the Swadeshi movement and a wave of anti-British terrorism following the partition of Bengal in the same year, and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which clearly demonstrated Asian revolutionary potential. Indian nationalism had strong connections with both Irish nationalism and the Metropolitan British Left. This paper will also consider why similar links do not appear to have existed between Muslim reformers in Central Asia (the so-called Jadids) and the Russian socialist and revolutionary parties.
