CROSSING THE RELIGIOUS DIVIDE

For instance, the region of Jetisu (Semirechye) initially became part of Turkestan, then was transferred to the Governor-Generalship of the Steppe. Later, it was returned to Turkestan when Transcaspia — mainly modern Turkmenistan — was added to the province in 1899. The resulting territory was enormous: contemporaries noted that it exceeded the combined size of France and Germany.

Its population was exceptionally diverse. Russians made up a relatively small minority; around the turn of the century, there were roughly ten times more indigenous Central Asian inhabitants than Russian settlers.

The Orthodox Church in Turkestan was a highly complex institution. It cannot be described as a single, uniform entity. There was the establishment of the Diocese of Turkestan and Tashkent in 1871, which included a bishop sent to the region and the higher administrative bodies of the Orthodox Church. Alongside this were the settlers who moved to Turkestan from across the empire and practiced their everyday religious life.

The colonial administration deliberately encouraged the migration of Orthodox settlers, rather than Protestants or Old Believers, assuming they would be more loyal to imperial authority. As a result, the majority of newcomers from Siberia, Ukraine, central Russia, and other regions were Orthodox.

When all of these settlers came together in Turkestan, the authorities realized that not everyone understood Orthodoxy in exactly the same way. There were slight variations in practice, which in some cases led to conflicts among the settlers themselves. Moreover, many Old Believers — whom Church authorities labeled ‘schismatics’ — also arrived in the region, further complicating the diocesan administration’s efforts to maintain cohesion among Orthodox Christians.

What was distinctive about Central Asia is that it became part of the Russian Empire relatively late. Throughout the empire’s history, the Church had functioned as a central symbol of the Tsar’s authority. In many conquered territories, the Orthodox Church was granted a relatively privileged position: it was protected by the state and allowed to establish itself institutionally, including through access to property and land.

By the time the Russian Empire expanded into Central Asia, however, the imperial project had begun to diverge from the Church’s missionary ambitions. Some officials in the Russian government worried about antagonizing the large Muslim population they sought to govern. As a result, the Orthodox Church was not permitted to engage in extensive missionary activity in the region.

In fact, when the Most Holy Governing Synod informed Turkestan’s first Governor-General, Konstantin von Kaufmann, that it intended to establish a Diocese of Tashkent and Turkestan with its seat in Tashkent, he refused. Although Tashkent was the administrative capital of Turkestan, von Kaufmann’s response was unambiguous: he did not want an Orthodox bishop based in the province’s main city. Instead, he urged the Church to locate the diocese in Semirechye, in Verny (Almaty), where the Russian population was larger and where there were fewer monumental centers of Islam.

In that setting, an expanded Orthodox presence was, in his view, less likely to provoke offence. As a result, the diocesan “capital” of Turkestan and Tashkent was, for a long period, effectively Verny rather than Tashkent — a situation that lasted until 1916. Thus, a degree of mistrust and tension developed between the Orthodox Church and the colonial authorities of Turkestan.

Was there interaction between Muslim and Orthodox holy sites? Yes, certainly. Kazakhstan, and Central Asia more broadly, has a fascinating history of diverse religious traditions, with Islam as the dominant faith and sacred sites scattered across the landscape. The interaction of these different religions and holy places involved both conflict and cooperation.

The colonial authorities were concerned about provoking conflict and mistrust. At the same time, some members of the administration actively promoted the establishment of Orthodox holy places as a way to entrench Russian identity in certain parts of the empire. The logic was straightforward: if a monastery is founded here, if a shrine is established there, then — in the eyes of what we might call Orthodox Russian traditionalists — territory is not merely governed but symbolically claimed, making it part of the imperial Russian realm. This ambition created points of tension within the broader imperial project, yet it could also align with administrative aims under certain conditions, producing moments of cooperation alongside conflict.

In my research, I came across numerous examples of reciprocal hospitality between Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Part of the reason lies in the sheer scale of the territory. Orthodox communities were often scattered far from one another, and the Church struggled to supply all of them with enough clergy. Priests therefore moved between settlements and parishes, traveling long distances, often on horseback, across the steppe to reach one community after another. In many cases, these journeys depended on help from local nomadic groups. Priests would be sheltered during their journeys by nomadic communities.

In a number of cases, Muslim merchants even contributed to the construction of churches. They did so partly as a way to signal loyalty to the authorities and partly as a practical strategy to reduce the risk of conflict.

One example I found in the archives comes from outside Turkestan proper, in the Steppe Governor-Generalship, in what is now Astana (then Akmolinsk). The city’s oldest church, the Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helen, was built in part by a Muslim carpenter. It is a small detail, but a revealing one: it points to a lived religious landscape in which boundaries could harden into conflict, yet could also be crossed through everyday forms of cooperation. In that sense, the short answer is that the relationship contained both tension and collaboration.

There were certainly cases, and for different reasons. In many instances, however, conversion was precisely the point at which tensions flared. When officials learned that a local Central Asian resident — whether Kazakh, Sart, Kyrgyz, or from another community — had converted to Orthodoxy, the surrounding Muslim community often reacted defensively. The colonial administration viewed this as one of the most dangerous flashpoints: conversion could easily become a catalyst for wider conflict. This is one reason the authorities so often pursued policies of separation and restraint.

There were also cases moving in the other direction, with Orthodox settlers converting to Islam. Often, these conversions were tied to marriage: a settler might marry a local woman, or a local man might marry into a settler community, and one spouse would adopt the other’s faith as part of forming a household.

But not all conversions were familial. I encountered one case in which a settler fell on extremely hard times. He was destitute, unable to secure support from his own community, and was ultimately taken in by Kazakhs. He then declared, in effect, that he was now Muslim. When stories like this circulated, they could become minor public scandals. Newspapers would portray the episode as alarming and urge action, often drawing an uncomfortable conclusion for the Orthodox establishment: charitable provision needed to be strengthened, because it appeared, in this instance at least, that Muslims were caring for the poor more effectively than the Church.

This kind of rivalry could be constructive, at least in one sense: it created incentives to “outdo” one another in charitable work — to provide more assistance, more visibly and more consistently, to those in need. Yet the same dynamic also carried obvious risks. When religious competition was understood as a struggle over loyalty, identity, and authority, it could quickly become volatile and, under the wrong conditions, tip into violent conflict.