1910 Bolshev / Kondazhevsky Topographic Map of Central Asia

Railways, Settlers, and Resenments in Russian Central Asia.

This is an 1892, updated to 1910, Russian-language map of Central Asia, prepared by the Military Topographic Department of the Main Staff of the Imperial Russian Army. Focusing on the area between Bukhara and the Ferghana Valley, it provides exceptional topographic detail of the region, which had only come under Russian rule in the preceding decades. In the wake of Russian conquest came railways, settlers, and increased ethnic tensions, which would cause the region to explode as Russia's empire collapsed during the First World War.

A Closer Look

This map covers an area covering from Bukhara in the west to the Ferghana Valley in the east, and from Shymkent (here as Чимкентъ) in the north to Bamyan (here as Баміанъ, famous for its long history and Buddhist art) and Charikar (Чарикаръ, near Kabul) in the south, focusing on an area corresponding to today's eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, and western Kyrgyzstan. At the time, these lands were ruled as part of the Russian Empire as Samarkand Oblast, Ferghana Oblast, the southern part of Syr Darya Oblast (including Tashkent), and the Protectorate of Bukhara, which maintained a degree of nominal internal autonomy. The map also covers part of what later became eastern Turkmenistan (then Transcaspian Oblast), a sliver of today's northern Pakistan around Chitrāl (Читрал, the Kingdom of Chitral being a princely state of British India), and a portion of northern Afghanistan (the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Мазар-и-Шариф, is visible towards bottom-left; in the 1980s, it was a major base and transit point for Soviet troops during the Soviet-Afghan War).

The Amu Darya (Oxus) River is prominent at left, while the Syr Darya can be seen towards top, running to the west of Tashkent. Cities and settlements are labelled throughout, with Tashkent (Ташкентъ), Bukhara (Бухара), and Samarkand (Самаркандъ) easily identifiable. Other names are less recognizable, such as Skobelev (Скобелев) at right. Originally called New Margelan, this placename was adopted in 1907 to honor the first Russian military governor of the region ('the conqueror of Turkestan,' Mikhail Skobelev, 1843 - 1882, perpetrator of the massacre of Turkmen at Geok Tepe in 1881, for which he was relieved of his command); in the 1920s, the Soviets changed the city's name to Ferghana as a gesture towards the local population.

Aside from settlements, waterways are traced and labelled, as are railways, roads, paths, and administrative divisions. Shading and color are used to denote topography, demonstrating the dramatic variation throughout the region, from arid and sparsely populated lands in the north (now southern Kazakhstan) to the great population density of the Ferghana Valley, to the stunning, ice-capped peaks of the Pamirs.

Historical Context

This map appeared in the aftermath of the 'Great Game' imperial competition between Russia and Britain in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Between the 1870s and 1890s, a series of border agreements and diplomatic arrangements confirmed the status and borders of Afghanistan as well as other contested borders in the region. Across the wider Inner Asian frontier, imperial intrigues continued, prompted by the vacuum created by a decaying Qing dynasty, drawing Russia, Britain, and China into a subtle triangular struggle. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 ostensibly settled these rivalries, as well as remnant unresolved questions in Afghanistan, and set the course for Anglo-Russian cooperation against a rising Germany.

As for Russian imperial rule in Central Asia, following the initial and generally quite violent period of conquest, St. Petersburg integrated Central Asia as an economic and strategic dependency. Though formally organized as oblasts composing Turkestan Krai (which excluded the protectorates of Bukhara and Khiva), Central Asia was effectively run by the military (the Turkestan Military District, уркестанский военный округ), with military figures dominating the higher echelons of the region's administration. The completion of the Trans-Caspian and Orenburg-Tashkent (Trans-Aral) railways, both marked here, accelerated resource extraction, turning the fertile Ferghana Valley into an intensive cotton monoculture to feed Russian textile mills, a colonial-style arrangement that would last until the end of the Soviet period. Simultaneously, state-backed Slavic peasant resettlement dispossessed nomadic Kazakh and Kyrgyz pastoralists of traditional grazing lands, stoking intense rural resentment. Eugene Schuyler (1840 - 1890), a Russia expert and the first American diplomat to visit Central Asia, traveled throughout the region in 1873 and found many parallels with the American West. This colonial pressure spurred intellectual resistance through the Jadid reform movement, which sought Islamic modernization through revised education and civic reform, as well as instances of armed resistance.

One of the largest uprisings between the period of conquest and the First World War occurred in 1898 in Andijan (Андижан), northeast of Ferghana at top-right here. Led by a Naqshbandi Sufi sheikh and composed mostly of Kyrgyz, the revolt was motivated by a perceived dissolution of morals and diminishment of Islamic practices under Russian rule. Though easily suppressed, the uprising was a shock to the veneer of post-conquest stability across Russian Central Asia and presaged much larger unrest that broke out in 1916 amid the pressures of the First World War. The 1916 uprising was also violently suppressed, but the Tsarist government was on its last legs. The region would thereafter witness an even more brutal and protracted ordeal as the Bolsheviks imposed their rule, instituting radical social and economic reforms in the process.

Publication History and Census

This map is based on the cartographic work of 'Col. Bolshev,' that is, Andrei Alexandreiovivh Bolshev, a military cartographer who spent two decades compiling a map of Russian Asia that appeared in 1884. The present map is noted as being revised in 1892 and further updated in 1910, with topographical work done by a topographer surnamed Kondazhevsky (Хондажевский), engraving by D. Rudnev (Д. Руднев), and revisions by civil bureaucrats surnamed Zemenitsky (Земеницкій) and Fyodorov (Ѳедоровъ). It is labelled at top-right as a 'Publication of the Military Topographic Department of the Main Staff,' the official cartographic and surveying branch of the Imperial Russian Army. The map is Sheet XIX of a much larger set titled 'Map of the Southern Border Zone of Asiatic Russia' (Карта южной пограничной полосы азиатской россіи).

The 1892 edition of this map is independently cataloged at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and as part of a larger group of maps from the set 'Map of the Southern Border Zone of Asiatic Russia' at Indiana University, the Library of Congress, and the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library. We have not been able to locate any other examples of this 1910 edition.

Cartographers

Andrey Alexandrovich Bolshev (Андрей Александрович Большев; 1828 – 1904) was a Russian surveyor, geographer, and cartographer who served as a Major General and headed the Topographic Department of the Imperial Army's General Staff. Born in Novgorod province, he studied at the Russian Empire's Military Topographic School (Военно-топографическое училище) and joined the Military Topographic Depot (Военно-топографическом депо). He is best known for overseeing the production of a massive 1884 map of 'Russian Asia' (Карта Азиатской России) that he and his team spent twenty years researching. He was deeply involved in the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (Русское географическое общество) and was considered one of Russia's foremost experts on the geography of Siberia and the Russian Far East. His younger brother, Colonel Loggin Alexandrovich Bolshev (Логгин Александрович Большев; 1834 - 1880), was also a military cartographer who made significant contributions to geographical knowledge of 'Russian Asia,' most notably leading an 1874 expedition to map most of the coast of the Sea of Japan and the Tatar Strait from Plastun Bay to Chikhachev Bay.   Further Details...

Russian Military Topographic Depot (Военно-топографическом депо; January 27, 1812 - October 16, 1863) was a Russian Imperial Army surveying, mapmaking, publishing, and archival institution based in St. Petersburg during the 19th century. Its predecessor, the Map Depot (Депо карт), was established in 1797 after the creation of an imperial drafting office in 1796 and centralized the collection, compilation, and publication of maps for military and government use. Reorganized in 1812 as the Military Topographic Depot under the war minister, the institution coordinated astronomical observations, geodetic measurements, topographic surveys, map compilation, engraving, and printing, while preserving maps, plans, statistical descriptions, and records of military operations. Its original organization comprised six branches responsible for special assignments, astronomical and trigonometric work, map compilation and drawing, archives, engraving and printing, and administration. During Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, it reissued existing maps for military use; after the conflict, systematic surveying expanded, particularly in the empire's western provinces and frontier territories. The Corps of Topographers, established in 1822, strengthened the personnel and technical training available for these operations. Fyodor Fyodorovich Schubert (1789 - 1865), a leading administrator of the corps and the depot's surveying work, promoted instruction in mathematics, geodesy, drawing, and topographic description. The depot thus connected field observations with centralized cartographic production and the preservation of military geographical information. Its responsibilities were not uniform across the empire: from 1854, the Military Topographic Department of the Separate Caucasian Corps headquarters concentrated military surveying and mapping in the Caucasus. On October 16, 1863, the depot was abolished and its functions transferred to the Military Topographic Section of the Directorate of the General Staff (управления Генерального штаба). In 1866, the former Corps provided the technical and personnel basis for the Corps of Military Topographers (Корпус военных топографов), which underwent several reorganizations and name changes throughout the 20th century. During the Cold War, it was known as the Military Topographic Directorate of the General Staff (Военно-топографическое управление Генерального штаба, often abbreviated as VTU). Even today, as part of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, it retains a similar name and function as in imperial times.   Further Details...

Condition

Excellent. Dissected and laid on linen. Original linen stable.

References

OCLC 1284860425 (1892 ed.); 1535211333, 1267529201 (entire series). Khalid, A., Central Asia : A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present, (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press) 2021, pp. 96 - 97.