Moscow: Sotsial'no-politicheskaya MYSL, 2003, 416 p. (in Russian)

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the severance of scientific ties caused the most valuable documentary materials stored in the archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg to become almost inaccessible to Central Asian researchers, who were mainly engaged in the history of their homeland, and in part in the history of the Soviet Union.

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for this reason, the number of published works on this topic remains very small. However, in recent years, Russian historians have increasingly turned to the events that took place in Central Asia in the first quarter of the XX century. [Litvinov, 1998; Kudelya-Odabashyan, 2003; Pylev, 2005], and one of the most prolific researchers of this period is V. L. Genis, the author of two monographs and a number of scientific articles on the history of Turkestan, Bukhara, Khiva, and Persia [Genis, 2000; Genis, 2001; Genis, 2004; Genis, 2004].

The reviewed book, like all previous works of the author, is devoted to the period of revolutionary turmoil on the southern borders of the empire and is written in an entertaining genre of documentary chronicles, which focuses more on its heroes than on historiographical or methodological issues. V. L. Genis relies on the richest archival and printed sources stored in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI), as well as for periodicals of those years. However, when accompanying his narration by quoting archival documents that serve as the most obvious proof of the reality of the plots and characters described, the author tries not to impose his point of view on the reader.

Formally, the book by V. L. Genis is a biography of an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire Pavel Petrovich Vvedensky (1880-1938), a graduate of the Moscow Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. It was his command of Persian, Arabic and "Turkish-Tatar" languages that allowed P. P. Vvedensky to enter the diplomatic service, and soon after graduating from the institute, in 1906, he was appointed dragoman to the Consulate General in Tavriz, where he worked for 10 years, receiving in 1914 the position of vice-consul in Urmia. This was the peak of his diplomatic career. However, at the end of 1915, due to accusations of "extortion", which were not confirmed, P. P. Vvedensky was transferred to Bukhara, to a small Russian political agency, which was, in fact, the only official intermediary between the Emir of Bukhara and the metropolitan authorities.

The political agency was located in the town of New Bukhara, located near the capital of the Bukhara Khanate - Old Bukhara. It was one of the Russian enclaves, a sovereign territory of the empire, a significant part of the population of which consisted of Russians and "Russian-subjects". Having joined their social life and established a food supply for the population of Bukhara, P. P. Vvedensky quickly gained a good name for himself, which, combined with his knowledge of the Persian language, allowed him to gain the trust of the emir and his entourage.

With the fall of the autocracy, the far-flung colonial fringe was in a state of deep crisis, and all aspects of relations between Russia and the indigenous population of Central Asia, including the Bukharians, required a radical revision. Although the Provisional Government intended to force the emir to implement progressive reforms, he, like the Russian Foreign Ministry, was wary of any innovations in the khanate, believing that they could lead to an explosion of popular religious "fanaticism", political instability and a diminution of Russia's authority not only in Bukhara, but throughout Central Asia. However, the Young Bukharians, representatives of the Russian Muslim movement and the revolutionary organizations of Samarkand demanded immediate reforms in Bukhara and exerted pressure in this direction both on the emir's government and on the authorities of the metropolis.

As a result, the Political Agency, which was renamed the Residency after the February Revolution of 1917, found itself at the epicenter of the dramatic events that unfolded in Bukhara, with which the fate of P. P. Vvedensky was closely connected. After the October revolution, the functions of the Residency were briefly transferred to the Board of Bukhara Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the Turkestan Republic, and then to its Plenipotentiary Representation in Bukhara. From October 1917 until the arrival of the Turkkommission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR in November 1919, the policy towards Bukhara was determined by Tashkent, which all this time acted virtually independently of the Center. Thus, at the beginning of 1918, the Regional Council of People's Commissars under the leadership of F. I. Kolesov tried to solve the Bukhara problem by military means and, after the successful liquidation of the autonomous government of Turkestan proclaimed in Kokand, made an armed attack on Old Bukhara. However the emir managed to repel this provoking-

* During the First World War, the food situation in Central Asia deteriorated dramatically, causing the indigenous population to starve to death in many places [see Buttino, 2003].

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The invasion was a terrible bloodshed, and the military defeat of Tashkent left it with no other option than peaceful coexistence with Bukhara, which in 1918 - 1920 served as a source of food for Soviet Turkestan.

Moscow was able to start restoring its control over the Central Asian outskirts only when the members of the Turkcomission arrived there. Since the Bolsheviks were very concerned about the presence of British troops in Northern Persia and the possible alliance of the emir with the British, the leaders of the Turkkommission condescended to pay a" friendly " visit to Old Bukhara and, publicly branding Kolesov a "colonizer" there, returned the guns he had taken from the Bukharians. But in the end, the Bolsheviks chose the same violent way of solving the Bukhara problem, and as a result of the military operation carried out in August-September 1920, the emir lost his throne, and Bukhara became the "people's Soviet republic".

Although after the February Revolution of 1917, P. P. Vvedensky was elected a member of the New Bukhara Executive Committee and regional commissar of Russian settlements, local revolutionaries, including the Young Bukharians, regarded him with hostile suspicion as an old-regime official who hindered the development of reforms in the khanate. Therefore, in December, he was arrested and sent to Tashkent, where he was released due to the lack of accusatory materials. After the failure of the" Kolesovsky campaign", it was P. P. Vvedensky, who was again arrested the day before, went as a parliamentarian to the emir and, risking his own life, achieved an end to the bloodshed and the conclusion of a peace treaty with Bukhara. The Emir invited Vvedensky to become the manager of his cotton gin factory in New Bukhara, but in April 1919 P. P. Vvedensky was abducted by the Bolsheviks and taken to Tashkent, where he was held in prison for eight months without charge. However, the Soviet authorities again needed the former diplomat's knowledge and experience, and in December he was sent to Bukhara as an employee of the Turkcomission.

His service at the Russian embassy in Bukhara continued until the overthrow of the emir, when Vvedensky was again arrested on charges of "espionage" and "political unreliability." Having learned about his release, the new plenipotentiary envoy V. V. Kuibyshev wrote:: "I know the value of Vvedensky as an orientalist, and I agree that he should not be shot, but on the contrary, should be used. But this should be done away from the place of his treacherous activity and exclusively in desk scientific work" (p.211). In the following decade, P. P. Vvedensky served as an economist in various economic institutions of Central Asia, including the State Planning Committee of the Uzbek SSR, and during this period was repeatedly subjected to short-term arrests. He was arrested for the eighth time in November 1931, accused of "sabotage" in irrigation and "active actions against the revolutionary movement in the former Bukhara Emirate" (p.213). He was even escorted to Moscow, but there, in the absence of any evidence of sabotage, he was released, after which he taught Persian and Arabic at the Institute of Oriental Studies. The last time P. P. Vvedensky was arrested was in April 1938. on charges of spying for French, British, Afghan and Iranian intelligence services, and on September 15, he was shot...

The work of V. L. Genis goes beyond a biographical sketch about one of the Russian diplomatic officials, and it can be quite attributed to the category of those rare works that provide much more extensive information than their name promises. The book sheds light on many aspects of both tsarist and Soviet diplomacy in the East and is rich in valuable information about Russia's relations with Turkestan (the" inner "colony of the empire), Bukhara (a supposedly independent state under the" protection " of the mother country) and Persia (a formally independent state, the northern part of which, however, was part of the Russian Empire). the Russian "sphere of influence"). Although several valuable works have been published in the last 20 years that analyze Russian-Bukharian relations in 1917-1920 [Aizener, 1994; Khotamov, 1997], V. L. Genis ' book surpasses them in terms of the breadth of use and richness of archival sources, which allowed the author to reconstruct the history in detail and trace the fate of the participants in the events described.

The author made a significant contribution to the study of the history of the revolution in Central Asia, destroying the last remnants of the" Soviet " style of retelling events. Instead of the triumphal march of the Soviet government, led by the ubiquitous Communist Party, we see specific people involved in turbulent events and forced to act when faced with an unforeseen political and social situation.-

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a social situation. The events in Bukhara were not the result of historical regularity, but of revolutionary adventurism and the specific conjuncture of the prevailing conditions. In other works, V. L. Genis even defines the revolutions in Bukhara, Khiva, and Gilan as "fake" (Genis, 2000; Genis, 2001), i.e. they were carried out forcibly, by external forces, and almost without any positive response from the majority of the local population.

The work of V. L. Genis relates mainly to the Russian post-Soviet perception of the past, so it would be unfair to accuse the author of ignoring the Central Asian interpretation of the events described. However, this single drawback may seem very significant for a historian of Central Asia, and in general, the role of the Bukharians themselves in what happened in 1917-1920. it is still poorly understood. What concerns did the population of Central Asia have after the revolution? How did the Bukharians react to the promised changes? Why was the Emir so afraid of reform? These issues need to be investigated and are not fully covered by the author, which, however, does not in any way diminish the importance of his work. Of particular interest are the notes to the book (p. 335-402), as well as detailed biographies of 40 officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry (p.217-290) who served in Persia and Bukhara, and 12 Turkestan figures (p. 291-334) who were related to the Bukhara events. Illustrated with unique archival photographs, the book by V. L. Genis is a fundamental work on the history of Russian diplomacy in the Muslim East, the Bukhara "revolution" and Central Asia in general in the early Soviet period.

list of literature

Aizener R. Bukhara in 1917 - East (Oriens). 1994. N4. p. 131-144; N 5. p. 75-92.

Genis V. L. Red Persia: The Bolsheviks in Gilan. 1920-1921. Documentary Chronicle, Moscow, 2000.

Genis V. L. " With Bukhara it is necessary to finish...": To the history of fake revolutions. Documentary Chronicle, Moscow, 2001.

Genis V. L. " One of the pillars of the Commissariat...": Arseny Voznesensky (1881-1937). Bibliographic essay / / Neizvestnye stranitsy otechestvennogo vostokovedeniya [Unknown Pages of Russian Oriental Studies], Issue II, Moscow, 2004.

Genis V. L. Overthrow of the Young Khiva government in 1921 II Voprosy istorii [Questions of History]. 2004. N 1.

Genis V. L. "The Fake Revolution", or the Russian trade mission in Khiva in 1920. 2000. N 2.

Kudelya-Odabashyan M. L. Turkestan as part of Soviet Russia. Problems socio-economic and political development (October 1917-October 1920). Moscow, 2003.

Litvinov P. P. State and Islam in Russian Turkestan (1865-1917). Yelets, 1998.

Pylev A. I. Political situation of the Bukhara Emirate and Khiva Khanate in 1917-1920: a choice of development paths. St. Petersburg, 2005.

Khotamov N. Overthrow of the Emir regime in Bukhara. Dushanbe, 1997.

Buttino M. La Rivoluzione Capovolta: L'Asia centrale tra it crollo dell' impero Zarista e la formazione dell'URSS. Napoli, 2003.

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