A couple of years ago I took a look around in a bookstore in Delhi and found an English series titled ‘What if… ?’ The books, like a namesake history programme on BBC 4, elaborated on what would have happened and how the world would be today had certain historical events taken another turn than the one they did. How would Europe have been today, for example, if the Saracens had not been defeated at Poitiers in 732? Or how would the US have been like if the South had won the Civil War in 1865 ?

Some consider that sort of exercise mainly as a hobby for retired academics. If you’re in the humanitarian sector, however, scenario-building is not irrelevant. ‘What if’ becomes a question you often have to ask yourself.

Either case, I asked myself a similar question about Central Asia once: how would Central Asia have been without the USSR?

Scenarios are only limited by the limits of one’s fantasy of course. But assuming that the Russian advance into the Kazakh steppe, Central Asia and the Caucasus from the eighteenth century onwards was unavoidable due to a number of geographic, economic and political factors, much would have depended on what would have happened with and in Russia itself in and immediately after 1917.

In that respect, you can outline a quite realistic scenario basing yourself on the situation as it it was on the eve of the 1917 Soviet-Bolshevik takeover; the present situation in the Southern ex-USSR; and how things went in other colonial empires like that of of France and Britain. For the relations between Russia on one side, and Central Asia and the Caucasus on the other were definitely colonial. Unlike France and Britain, the colonies were not overseas. But the ‘sea’ that separated the Russian motherland from its colonies were the Caspian Sea and the South Russian and the Kazakh steppes.

Flashback to 1917.

Since the 1880s, Central Asia and the Caucasus are part of the Russian empire:

•a big part of present-day Uzbekistan, northern Tajikistan and the Osh and Jalal-Abad area form the General-Governorate of Turkestan;

•the emirate of Bukhara (which also includes southern Tajikistan) and the khanate of Khiva (the greater Urgench-Dashauz area) still exist as rump states and Russian protectorates;

•the whole area between Lake Balkhash and the Torugart pass is part of the Province of Semirechie;

•and the western half of what is now Turkmenistan is the Transcaspian Province.

World War I rages all over Europe. Social discontent in Western Russia and Ukraine grows. The Bolsheviks do try a coup but it’s quashed and Lenin, Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders are killed or forced to flee abroad in the process. With great effort, Russia succeeds to repel the German and Austro-Hungarian armies but loses Finland and Poland to nationalist rebellions there. But the German-Russian Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 1917 does not materialise and Russia keeps Ukraine and its Baltic provinces so that at the end of World War I, the territory of the Russian empire is about that of the Soviet Union in 1991.

To win World War I, Russia has to rely much more on resources from its Central Asian dependencies that it actually did: manpower; raw materials; cattle and produce. The confiscations and exploitation creates resentment in the colonies. Central Asian Muslim conscripts who return home from the front disgusted by the war and the treatment they received in the imperial army form the nucleus of the first modern Muslim nationalist groups there (something similar happened e.g. with soldiers from the French colonies in West Africa and Indo-China).

Despite ending up among the winners, the Russian tsar, whose position and credibility were already stained before the war, can not grasp the need for further reform. He is eventually forced to resign after a palace coup, yet the Romanovs are not massacred but sent into exile in Britain. Greater Russia becomes a presidential republic with a centralist administration and ‘colonies’.

Although pre-1917 Russia was still pretty feudal despite the abolishment of serfdom in 1861 and over 80 percent rural, it is often overlooked that it was also developing into a semi-modern capitalist society, at least in a number of urban-industrial centres in Western Russia, Ukraine and the Urals.

In Central Asia, pre-Soviet Russian colonialism brought railroads, mines and factories. It also co-opted local feudal and trading elites in the colonial system. These trends continue after the departure of the tsar, though the new republican government in Petrograd (as Sankt-Petersburg is called since 1914) carries out some reforms. In that respect, the powerless remains of the emirate of Bukhara and khanate of Khiva are dismantled and integrated into the General-Governorate of Turkestan and the Transcaspian Province somewhere in the late 1920s. The present, Soviet-created borders and republics never come to exist.

No Bolshevik takeover means no civil war as it was between 1917 and 1922, at least not on the same scale. It also means no Stalin, so no semi-genocidal collectivisation campaigns, no Great Purges, no Gulag death camps and no artificial famines in the Ukraine and Southern Russia. In turn, it means that the demographic map of Greater Russia is different. The number of Slavs (especially Ukranians) and Kazakhs (who suffered heavily of collectivization) are substantially higher. What is now the Ural-North Caspian area and North Kazakhstan is more intensively settled by Slavs and ’swallowed up’ in the form of provinces up into Russia proper by 1925, driving the increasingly landless Kazakhs in those areas south into Semirechie and east into Xinjiang.

Comes World War II.

Since there were no Great Purges, the Russian armed forces kept more of its competent cadres and are better able to fight off the German invasion. The Germans never make it as far as Petrograd, the Caucasus and the gates of Moscow though parts of western Russia and the Ukraine are devastated. German agents also infiltrate Central Asia to help organize smouldering separatist revolts there. Eventually Russia ends up among the winners again. But like Britain and France it is economically a too weakened to still sustain much of an empire. In the 1950s, the decolonisation waves in the French and British empires start and it is only a matter of time before it’s being felt in Russia’s possessions too, likely in the mid-60s.

And there it starts…

Muslim-nationalist and pan-Turkic groups are becoming more openly active, supported by the native bourgeoisie and by external powers (the US, Britain, newly independent Pakistan, foreign oil and mining companies) who see interest in the independence of Turkestan and Transcaspia and rolling back Russian presence in the region. By the late 1960s, we have two Muslim (which does not necessarily means Islamic) republics: a Republic of Turkestan, with its capital at Tashkent; and a Republic of Transcaspia with its capital at Urgench. Their independence is not obtained without several years of violence between Muslim-nationalist guerilla groups and the Russian armed forces or coups. Iran and Afghanistan, both under monarchies, take advantage of western support and of the confusion of decolonization to extend their sovereignity over the Merv area and Upper Badakhshan.

Semirechie, with its much higher Slav population, is another matter. A Kazakh and Uighur majority is ruled by Slav-Cossack landlords and settlers who came to Semirechie generations ago and consider this, and not Russia proper, their homeland. A Muslim anti-colonial uprising starts and the escalating violence between Alash Orda-like groups and Slav-Cossack militias bring Semirechie on the brink of civil war. To avoid escalation and another costly intervention like the one it had in Turkestan, the central government in Petrograd starts negociations with the Kazakh-Muslim nationalists about gradual transition to independence. Outraged Slav nationalists stage a coup in the capital Vernii (as Almaty would still have been called) and call an independent Cossack Republic of Semirechie.

In that case, Russia would have had has a situation like the British had in South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the ‘60s and ’70s. In the end, though, the Kazakh nationalists seize power in Vernii but, with external mediation, a power-sharing is being negociated with the Slavs who wield considerable economic power and continue to exerce that in an independent Semirechie.

Either case, from the late ‘60s onwards, Russia does its very best to keep influence over its ex-colonies, either by propping up pro-Russian regimes or rebellions, through military advisors, loans, through its industry and energy groups. Like the French in Djibouti, Russia keeps a large naval and military base at the Caspian port of Krasnovodsk (renamed Kyzyl Su after independence) in Transcaspia and uses an air force base near Taldykurgan in Semirechie. No Sovietism means no Cold War as we knew it between 1946 and 1991, but there is political and economic rivalry between Russia, the US and Britain in the region.

The economies of Turkestan, Transcaspia and Semirechie are based on agriculture (with large land estates), animal husbandry and trade. Some parts of Semirechie and Turkestan are actually quite prosperous even though overall relative poverty rates are high. Turkestan and the Urgench-Dashauz area in Transcaspia are so-called ‘cotton republics’ as was already the case in the colonial era, though the cotton monoculture is not pushed to such megalomaniac extremes as to finish off the Aral Sea. Much of the Turkestani and Transcaspian cotton is still bought and processed by Russian textile groups though its export destinations have diversified throughout the independence years.

Since most North Caspian oil and gas reserves are situated in Russia proper, oil plays less of a role in Central Asia even though there are oil and natural gas reserves in Turkestan and Transcaspia. The latter attract the interest of third powers and foreign oil and gas companies in the region. Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan play a quite large economic role in both Turkestan and Transcaspia, as their access routes to open seas and ports. Both Turkestan and Transcaspia lease parts of the ports of Karachi, Gwadar and Bandar Abbas. For its part, Semirechie’s trade is more oriented towards the region of Novosibirsk and Xinjiang.

Post-colonial Central Asia is not without its internal faultlines, or course. One example is the Republic of Transcaspia, where the Turkmen tribes in the centre and south of the country heavily resent the dominance in government and in the state gas company by the mainly Uzbek clans from the cotton region around Urgench. In the early 1980s, when Transcaspia’s gas exploitation starts in earnest, a brand new, pricey capital is built at Erbent much closer to the Turkmen areas.

But once it comes at the distribution of political power and gas revenues, rising discontent leads to Turkmen insurgency in the form of a separatist guerrilla from bases in Iran and the Kopet Dagh mountains. A situation similar to that in Chad at the same time. Russian military advisors assist the Transcaspian government in its repression but the situation gradually destabilises.

In terms of culture and society, neo-feudalism and clan politics remain influential factors as they do now. Islam, both in its orthodox and mystical-Sufi form, is much more visible and influential in society. The old bourgeoisie and urban nobility were not extreminated or suppressed. That would has its influence on urban culture as well: you also have a quite stark contrast between the lifestyle of the europeanised-russianised urban upper classes and the rest of the countries.

The old towns and villages kept much more of their traditional character and structure. Soviet and post-Soviet forms of architecture do not exist even though examples of ‘modern’ European forms of architecture have appeared in the capitals and major towns throughout the ‘70s. Despite unavoidable modernization, ‘old Russian’-colonial architecure (as you can still see examples in Almaty, Irkutsk, Dushanbe, Karakol etc…) and the traditional Central Asian courtyard style (as you can see it in the old parts of Ura-Tyube, Yazd, Bukhara or Margilan) are more prevalent. Many collective farm villages do not exist, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Some places, like Dushanbe and Kurgan-Tyube, did not developed into cities but remain small market towns. It is wrong to say that there was no urban and industrial development before the Soviets though: Tashkent had its new European-colonial quarters in the 1890s, Karaganda, Sülükta and Kyzyl-Kia were already coal mining centres before 1917 and the region’s major railroads were built during that period too.

Due ot its substanial Slav population, Semirechie is the most ‘European’ area in the region, at least in Vernii-Almaty and other towns. Parts of society in Turkestan and Transcaspia rather look like Afghanistan around 1975. At certain times, however, Muslim reformers, as they were active in Turkestan and Bukhara in the early ‘20s, have seized power in Turkestan and, inspired by what happened in Turkey, carried out a series of modernizations. Either case, traditional village structures and irrigation techniques are more widespread. Nomadism was already in decline around 1900. But without Stalin’s collectivization, more Kazakhs and Kyrgyz still live a semi-nomadic existence not unlike their cousins in Mongolia.

The state of social indicators like literacy, education, poverty, life expectancy, infant mortality, … depend on which part of Central Asia you talk about. But in the early ‘90s, the average regional literacy rate is around 60 percent (about that of Morocco), life expectancy is about 62 (like Yemen) and infant mortality is around 73 per thousand (like in Turkmenistan). In the colonial era, the Russian state, Russian orthodox church charities and Muslim waqf (foundations) operated educational and health care networks which had, however, no universal coverage. After independence, the state network was taken over by the new regimes and Muslim waqf and, in Semirechie, the Russian orthodox church, continue to operate theirs, with mixed success. At certain times, reformist-minded politicians go great lengths at universalizing primary education and basic health care but the efforts are hampered by financial and political contraints.

Only a minority of Central Asians have russianized family names ending on ‘ov’ or ‘ev’, even though the Russian administration introduced them during its first all-round census in 1897. Like in Iran and Afghanistan, for instance, Central Asians use their first name along with a patronim or a non-russianized name indicating a lineage, profession or geographic origin. Language-wise, the historical ties being what they are, Russian has kept a privileged role (and, at least in Semerchie and Transcaspia, also official status) in trade and education, also because a number of Central Asians continue to go to Petrograd, Moscow and Novosibirsk for business, employment and studies. The knowledge of Russian is not as widespread among the general population as it is in reality today though. And in Turkestan, the authorities have adopted and promoted Chagatai Turkish (written in Arabic or Latin script) as a national-cultural language, pretty much like Urdu in Pakistan.

All this may all sound surreal history these days. But somehow, *some* of the processes outlined above do bear certain similarity to what is actually happening in the Southern ex-USSR since 1991.