Elements of European Political Culture in the Central Asian National Outskirts of the Russian Empire: Perception Specifics of Foreign Cultural Innovations (late 19th – early 20th)

The article considers the main results of political modernization in the Central Asian national outskirts of the Russian Empire taken place in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The concept “Central Asian national outskirts” includes Stepnoy and Turkistan Governorate Generals, the two administrative-territorial entities founded in the 1860s as a result of a complete joining of the Kazakh camping grounds of the Junior, Middle and Elder zhuzhes; after the Kokand and Khivinsk khanates inhabited by nomads ( the Kirghiz, the Kara-Kalpaks) as well as the settled population (the Uzbeks) were conquered. The analysis of the sources and materials conducted by the authors asserts that the political modernization of the Central Asian national outskirts proposed by the Russian Empire was carried out in line with the fundamental characteristics of West European civilization and the basis of its political culture. Thus the system of local government was established and the democratic electoral system was introduced by means of expanding the voter’s base, with the region’s population participating in social and political life. The principles of bourgeois ideology based on such concepts as “equality”, “freedom”, “self-determination” were also formed. However, the political modernization of the Central Asian national outskirts should not be considered as complete. Up to 1917 the political sphere of the region’s population was characterized by the predominance of traditional mores, values and laws, whereas clan ideology, tribalism and Muslim ethno-consciousness were characteristic of the social sphere. All these factors affected the process of adapting to western political culture. The institutionalization of the new structures did not go along with the de-institutionalization of the traditional ones, and so resulted in the combination and coexistence of the traditional and modern structures