REFLECTIONS ON THE CAMPAIGNS OF TSARIST RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA

Turkestan is famous throughout the world as a paradise-like land, and Uzbekistan is the heart of this region. In particular, the Achaemenids held the land in subjugation for 200 years, the Greco-Macedonians for 180 years, the Arab Caliphate for 200 years, the invaders of Genghis Khan for 150 years, and the Russian Empire (the tsarist government) together with the Soviet state for 130 years. [H. Ziyoyev 2001, p. 6] The life of Turkestan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries corresponds to a complex socio-political and spiritual situation. None of the empires that have ever existed tried as hard as the Russian Empire and its successor, the red empire, to instill in the local population a belief in the rightness of their deeds. Even the great Mongols did not humiliate the religion of the local population as the Russian Empire and the Soviet state did.