Relations between Russia and Great Britain have always been difficult. Since the transformation of the Russian Empire into a militarily strong power, expanding its territory and claiming influence in the regions of the Middle and Far East, Central Asia, Russia has become the main rival of Great Britain in the Asian direction. The British government was especially concerned about the revitalization of the Russian Empire in the Central Asian and Middle East directions. It is known that it was the British envoys who incited anti-Russian sentiments at the courts of the Iranian Shah, Bukhara Emir, Khiva and Kokand khans and other rulers of the Middle East and Central Asia. Exactly 130 years ago, in the spring of 1885, the Russian Empire found itself on the brink of a direct armed confrontation with the British Empire, which was facilitated by a sharp exacerbation of relations between London and St. Petersburg as a result of rivalry in the Central Asian region.
In the 1870s - 1880s. The Russian Empire very actively declared itself in Central Asia, which extremely worried the British, who felt a threat to their own domination in India and influence in the regions adjacent to India, primarily in Afghanistan and the mountainous principalities. The geopolitical confrontation between Great Britain and the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century was called the "Great Game". Despite the fact that it never came to a full-scale war between Great Britain and Russia, after the end of the Crimean campaign, the two powers literally teetered on the brink of open confrontation. Great Britain feared that the Russian Empire would gain access to the Indian Ocean through Persia and Afghanistan, which would undermine the dominance of the British crown in India. The Russian Empire, in turn, explained the strengthening of its military-political presence in Central Asia by the need to protect its own territory from the raids of its militant southern neighbors. Central Asia in the 18th-19th centuries was the object of geopolitical interests of three large states - Great Britain, which owned neighboring India, which included the territory of modern Pakistan, the Qing Empire, which controlled East Turkestan (modern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC) and Russia. But if Qing China was the weakest link among the listed powers, then Russia and Britain came together in a serious confrontation. For the Russian Empire, the Central Asian territories were of greater importance than for the British, since the lands of Central Asia inhabited by the Turkic and Iranian peoples rested on the southern borders of the empire. If Britain was at a colossal distance from India and Afghanistan, then Russia directly bordered on the Muslim East and could not but show an interest in strengthening its own positions in the region. In 1878, by order of Emperor Alexander II, a 20,000-strong army was concentrated in Turkestan controlled by the Russian Empire, in front of which, in the event of a further aggravation of the political situation in the region, the tasks were set to advance to the south - to Afghanistan.
Anglo-Afghan wars
Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire tried to consolidate its influence in Afghanistan, which caused the extreme irritation of the British government. In the first half of the 19th century, the political situation in Afghanistan remained unstable. The mighty empire of Durrani, created in 1747, had actually disintegrated by this time, because, as often happened in the East, and not only in the East, various branches of the ruling dynasty - Sadozai and Barakzai - collided with each other.
By the early 1830s. Dost-Muhammad, a representative of the Barakzaev branch, began to gain the upper hand in the internecine struggle. He was in power in Kabul, controlled Ghazni and gradually took over the whole of Afghanistan. The main opponent of Dost Muhammad and the leader of the Sadozaev clan, Shuja-Shah Durrani, by this time had emigrated to British India and in fact maintained his court only with British help. His nephew Kamran retained control of the Herat Khanate, but was unable to withstand the growing influence of Dost Muhammad. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, weakened by constant feudal strife, was becoming an increasingly tasty morsel for its neighbors - Persia and the Sikh state. The Sikhs sought to subjugate Peshawar to their influence, and the Persians saw their goal as mastering the Herat Khanate. In 1833 Shuja Shah Durrani, supported by the British, entered into an alliance with the Sikhs and invaded Sindh. Naturally, his main target was not Sindh, but Kabul, which he did not hide from his opponents. Dost Muhammad, believing that his capabilities to resist the combined forces of Shuja Shah and the Sikhs would not be enough, in 1834 sent an embassy to the Russian Empire. Only in 1836 the Ambassador of the Afghan Emir Hussein Ali Khan was able to reach Orenburg, where he met with the Governor V. A. Perovsky. This is how the history of Russian-Afghan relations in the 19th century began. In 1837, as a result of negotiations with Hussein Ali Khan, the embassy of Lieutenant I. V. Vitkevich. The very fact of the development of bilateral relations between the Russian Empire and Afghanistan frightened London to such an extent that Great Britain decided to act by military means - to overthrow Dost Mohammed and put the anti-Russian monarch on the Kabul throne.
On October 1, 1838, the Governor General of India, George Eden, declared war on Afghanistan. Thus began the First Anglo-Afghan War, which lasted from 1838 to 1842. The British command hoped to seize Afghanistan with the forces of the Bombay and Bengal armies, as well as Sikh troops and formations under the command of Shuja-Shah's son Teymur-Mirza. The total number of the British expeditionary forces was 21 thousand troops, of which 9, 5 thousand were in the Bengal army. The command of the expeditionary force, called the Indian Army, was entrusted to General John Keane.
The armed forces at the disposal of the Emir Dost Mohammed were much inferior to the British and their satellites in terms of armament, training, and even numbers. At the disposal of the Kabul Emir was an infantry detachment of 2,500 soldiers, artillery with 45 guns and 12-13 thousand cavalrymen. However, climatic conditions also played against the British - the expeditionary forces had to move through the endless deserts of Baluchistan, where up to 20 thousand heads of transport cattle fell, and the courage of the Afghans. Although Kandahar surrendered without a fight, the defenders of Ghazni, under the command of Dost Muhammad's son Gaider Khan, fought to the last. Nevertheless, at the first stage of the confrontation, the British and their satellites managed to "squeeze" Dost Mohammed out of Kabul. On August 7, 1839, troops loyal to Shuja-Shah Durrani entered Kabul. The British began the withdrawal of the main military units from the territory of Afghanistan and by the end of 1839 the 13,000th army of Shuja Shah, the 7,000th Anglo-Indian contingent and the 5,000th Sikh formation remained in Afghanistan. The bulk of British troops were stationed in the Kabul area. In the meantime, uprisings began against the British presence, in which the Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbek tribes took part in different regions of Afghanistan. They did not stop even when the British managed to capture Emir Dost Mohammed. More precisely, the emir, whose detachments operated very successfully in the province of Kugistan and even defeated the Anglo-Indian troops, suddenly arrived in Kabul himself and surrendered to the British authorities. Dost Muhammad was sent to live permanently in British India. The solution to the problem with Dost Mohammed, oddly enough, played against Shuja Shah, proclaimed the emir of Afghanistan. Considering Afghanistan a controlled territory, the British authorities began to allocate less money for the maintenance of the Kabul court, its army and support for the leaders of the Afghan tribes. Ultimately, the latter increasingly began to rebel and even rebel against the Kabul emir. On top of that, the dominance of the British in the political life of the country caused a negative reaction from the Afghan nobility, clergy and ordinary people. In September 1841, powerful anti-British uprisings began in the country. In Kabul itself, the British mission was massacred. Amazingly, the 6,000-strong British military contingent stationed near Kabul was unable to resist the popular uprising. The rebels proclaimed the new emir of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zeman Khan, the nephew of Dost Mohammed, who stood at the head of Jalalabad before the accession of Shuja Shah. There was a riot of soldiers - Afghans of the Kugistani regiment, who killed their British officers. The Gurkha regiment was exterminated, in Cheindabad the Afghans destroyed Captain Woodbourne's detachment.
In January 1842, General Elfinston, who commanded the British troops in Kabul, signed an agreement with 18 Afghan tribal leaders and sardars, according to which the British handed over all the money to the Afghans, all the artillery except 9 guns, a large number of firearms and edged weapons. On January 6, 16 thousand British moved out of Kabul, including 4, 5 thousand servicemen, as well as women, children, and servants. On the way from Kabul, the British convoy was attacked by Afghans and destroyed. The only Englishman managed to survive - Dr. Blyden. The rest of the British formations remaining on the territory of Afghanistan were withdrawn from the country by December 1842. Emir Dost Mohammed returned to the country after being freed from British captivity. So, with the actual defeat of Britain, the First Anglo-Afghan War ended, as a result of which the peoples of Central Asia and North India had the opportunity to fundamentally doubt the fighting efficiency and power of the British Empire. Back in the summer of 1842, in Bukhara, on the orders of Emir Nasrullah, British intelligence officers led by Captain Arthur Conolly were killed, who shortly before his death arrived in Bukhara with the aim of conducting anti-Russian agitation at the emir's court. Thus, by the middle of the 19th century, Britain's position in Central Asia was significantly shaken. However, the growing influence of Russia in Central Asia and Afghanistan continued to worry the British leadership. After the sepoy uprising in India was suppressed in 1858, the latter finally came under the control of Great Britain, and the Queen of Great Britain took the title of Empress of India.
In the summer of 1878, Emperor Alexander II gave an order to prepare an invasion of Afghanistan by the forces of a 20,000-strong Russian army concentrated in Turkestan. A military-diplomatic mission of General Nikolai Stoletov was sent to Kabul, whose tasks were to conclude a treaty with the Afghan emir Shir-Ali. In addition, the Russian Empire was seriously considering the possibility of an invasion of the northwestern mountainous Indian states located in the territory of the modern province of Jammu and Kashmir. Since the Afghan emir was inclined to cooperate with the Russian Empire more than to develop relations with Great Britain, London decided to repeat the armed invasion of Afghanistan. British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli gave the order to start hostilities, after which in January 1879 the 39,000th British Army Expeditionary Force was brought into Afghanistan. The emir was forced to sign a treaty with the British, but the situation of the First Anglo-Afghan War repeated itself - after the British stationed in Kabul began to be attacked by Afghan partisans, the situation of the British military contingent deteriorated. The setbacks in Afghanistan were reflected in the domestic politics of Great Britain. Benjamin Disraeli lost the parliamentary elections in 1880, and his rival Gladstone withdrew British troops from Afghanistan. Nevertheless, this time the efforts of the British leadership were not in vain. The Emir of Afghanistan was forced to sign an agreement in which, in particular, he pledged to coordinate the international policy of the Emirate of Afghanistan with Great Britain. In fact, Afghanistan was turning into a state entity dependent on Great Britain.
Russia in Central Asia
The presence of a significant contingent of Russian troops in Central Asia became a significant trump card in relations between the Russian Empire and the Afghan emir. In an effort to protect himself from the British colonialists, the Afghan emir demonstrated pro-Russian sentiments, which could not but worry London politicians. Russian policy in Central Asia was far less intrusive and oppressive than British policy in India. In particular, the Russian Empire kept the political systems of the Khiva Khanate and the Bukhara Emirate, the two largest Central Asian states, practically in an unshakable state. As a result of Russian expansion, only the Kokand Khanate ceased to exist - and that was because of the tough anti-Russian position, which could create many problems for the Russian state, given the strategically important position of the khanate on the border with East Turkestan. The first among the political formations of Central Asia, the Kazakh zhuzes entered the Russian Empire in the 18th century - in 1731 the Small Zhuz, and in 1732 - the Middle Zhuz. However, the lands of the Senior Zhuz formally remained subordinate to the Kokand Khanate. In 1818, a number of clans of the Senior Zhuz passed into Russian citizenship. In the first half of the 19th century, further development of the Kazakh lands began, on the territory of which Russian fortresses were built, which eventually turned into cities. However, the Kazakhs, as subjects of the Russian Empire, constantly complained about the attacks of the Kokand Khanate. In order to protect the Kazakhs, in 1839 the Russian Empire was forced to intensify its military-political presence in Central Asia, introducing significant military contingents first to the Zailiyskiy Territory, then to the more southern regions of Turkestan. Here the Russian Empire had to face the political interests of the Kokand Khanate, a large but rather loose state formation in Central Asia.
The Kokand Khanate was one of the three Uzbek states of Central Asia, on the territory of which Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uighurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz lived. From 1850 to 1868 The Russian Empire fought a war with the Kokand Khanate, gradually advancing south and conquering city after city. In October 1860, the twenty thousandth Kokand army was defeated at Uzun-Agach by the detachment of Colonel Kolpakovsky, consisting of three infantry companies, four Cossack hundreds with four artillery pieces. On May 15-17, 1865, Russian troops took Tashkent. On the territory of the occupied lands in 1865, the Turkestan region was created, which was transformed in 1867 into the Turkestan General Government. In 1868 the Kokand Khan Khudoyar was forced to sign a Commercial Agreement with the Russian Empire, which actually turned the Kokand Khanate into a state dependent on Russia politically and economically. However, the policy of Khudoyar Khan led to an increase in popular discontent and turned even the aristocrats closest to him against the Kokand ruler. In 1875, an uprising broke out against Khudoyar Khan, which took place under anti-Russian slogans. The rebels were led by the brother of Khan Khudoyar, the ruler of Margelan Sultan-Murad-bek, the son of the regent Muslimkul Abdurrahman Avtobachi and even the crown prince of the Kokand throne Nasreddin Khan. In the activities of the anti-Russian party in Kokand, the influence of British residents was traced, who nevertheless hoped to squeeze the Russian Empire out of the Kokand lands bordering on East Turkestan. However, the forces of the rebels did not allow them to seriously confront the Russian army. After rather stubborn battles, Russian troops managed to suppress the uprising and force Nasreddin Khan to sign the peace. General Kaufman managed to achieve the consent of the emperor for the complete elimination of the Kokand Khanate as a state entity. In 1876, the Kokand Khanate ceased to exist, and was included in the Orenburg Governor-General, and later - in the Turkestan Governor-General.
The Bukhara Emirate entered the orbit of the foreign policy interests of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 19th century. Back in 1820, an embassy of the Russian Empire was sent to Bukhara under the leadership of Negri. Since the 1830s. embassies and expeditions to the Bukhara Emirate are becoming more or less regular. At the same time, the Russian Empire is moving south, expanding its possessions in Turkestan, which causes discontent among the Bukhara emirs. However, an open conflict with the Bukhara Emirate began only in 1866, when Emir Muzaffar demanded the release of Tashkent and Chimkent occupied by Russian troops, and also confiscated the property of Russian merchants living in Bukhara, and insulted the Russian envoys. The response to the actions of the emir was the invasion of Russian troops into the territory of the Bukhara Emirate, which entailed a fairly rapid occupation by Russian troops of a number of large cities, including Ura-Tyube and Jizzak. In March 1868, Emir Muzaffar declared a "holy war" on the Russian Empire, but on May 2 of the same year, the Emir's troops were defeated by the expeditionary forces of General K. P. Kaufman, after which the Bukhara Emirate recognized its vassal dependence on the Russian Empire. This happened on June 23, 1868. In September 1873, the Bukhara Emirate was declared a protectorate of the Russian Empire, while the traditional system of internal control and even its own armed forces, consisting of two companies of the Emir's Guard, 13 battalions of the line and 20 cavalry regiments, were fully preserved in the emirate.
In 1873, the turn of the Khiva Khanate, the third Uzbek state in Central Asia, came. The Khiva Khanate, also created by the Chingizids, the descendants of the Khan of the Golden Horde, Jochid Arab Shah Muzzaffar (Arapshi), in the 19th century embarked on a dangerous confrontation with the Russian Empire, obviously not realizing the difference in the real power of the two states. Khivans robbed Russian caravans and attacked the nomadic Kazakhs who were under Russian citizenship. Ultimately, the Russian Empire, having established control over the Bukhara Emirate and the Kokand Khanate, launched a military offensive against Khiva. In late February and early March 1873, Russian troops under the general command of General Kaufman set out from Tashkent, Orenburg, Krasnovodsk and Mangyshlak. On May 27-28, they were already under the walls of Khiva, after which Khan Muhammad Rakhim surrendered. August 12, 1873The Gendemi Peace Treaty was signed, according to which the Khiva Khanate was declared a protectorate of the Russian Empire, and part of the Khanate's lands along the right bank of the Amu Darya went to Russia. At the same time, like the Bukhara Emirate, the Khiva Khanate retained a high degree of internal autonomy, but in foreign policy it was completely subordinate to the Russian Empire. Meanwhile, the subordination of the Kokand and Khiva khanates and the Bukhara Emirate played a huge role in the humanization of life in Central Asia. One of the conditions for concluding a peace treaty with Khiva was a complete ban on slavery and the slave trade on the territory of the khanate. The text of the Gendenmian peace treaty stated that “the announcement of Seyid-Muhamed-Rahim-Bogadur-khan, promulgated on the 12th of last June, about the release of all slaves in the khanate and about the eternal destruction of slavery and human trafficking remains in full force, and the khan's government undertakes to follow the strict and conscientious execution of this matter by all measures depending on it (Quoted from: Under the banner of Russia: collection of archival documents. M., 1992). Of course, these negative phenomena persisted in the life of Central Asia even after its incorporation into the Russian Empire, but could no longer be as obvious as in the pre-Russian period. In addition, a flow of migration of Russians and Tatars from Siberia, the Urals, the Volga region began to Central Asia, making a great contribution to the formation of modern medicine, education, industry, transport links in the Bukhara Emirate, Khiva Khanate and Russian Turkestan.
Military historian D. Ya. Fedorov wrote that "Russian rule in Central Asia acquired a tremendous charm, because it marked itself with a humane, peaceful attitude towards the natives, and evoking the sympathy of the masses, it became a desirable dominion for them." There was a massive resettlement of the Muslims of East Turkestan - the Turkic-speaking Uighurs and the Chinese-speaking Dungans - to the territory of modern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is obvious that the Uyghur and Dungan leaders considered the Russian Empire a much less dangerous state for their ethnic identities than Qing China. Naturally, the growth of the authority of the Russian Empire among the feudal and spiritual leaders of the peoples of Central Asia could not but worry the British, who, through bribery and psychological treatment, acquired supporters among the dissatisfied representatives of the local nobility, who were then supposed to be used against the Russian Empire - as “alternative "center of gravity of the masses.
Accession of Eastern Turkmens
The southwestern part of Central Asia was occupied by the warlike nomadic tribes of the Turkmens - the Ersari, Teke, Yomuds, Goklens, Saryks and Salyrs. During the Russian-Persian war of 1804-1813. Russia managed to conclude an alliance with the leaders of a number of Turkmen tribes against Persia. This is how the establishment of Russian influence in Turkmenistan began, although it was even more difficult than in other regions of Central Asia. The Turkmen actually did not know statehood and did not obey any of the regional states, but they regularly raided their settled neighbors with the aim of plundering and driving the rural and urban population into slavery. For this reason, Persia, the Khiva Khanate, and the Bukhara Emirate were in hostile relations with the warlike Turkmen tribes, but they were unable to subdue them or even force them to abandon the practice of raids on their territories. It was the Turkmens who for a long time remained the main slave traders in Central Asia and a source of new slaves, since they made periodic raids both on Iranian lands and on the sedentary population of the Bukhara Emirate and the Khiva Khanate. Therefore, the issue of protecting the southern borders of Russia in the light of the neighborhood with the warlike Turkmen was very acute. After the Bukhara Emirate and the Khiva Khanate became protectorates of the Russian Empire, and the Kokand Khanate ceased to exist and its lands became part of the Orenburg Governor-General, Turkmenistan turned out to be the only unconquered region in Central Asia. Accordingly, it was of obvious interest to the Russian Empire in the context of the further expansion of its political influence in the region. Moreover, Turkmenistan was also of strategic importance for Russia, being on the shores of the Caspian Sea and neighboring with Iran and Afghanistan. The conquest of control over the Turkmen territories actually turned the Caspian Sea into an “internal sea” of the Russian Empire, only the southern coast of the Caspian remained under Iranian control. Minister of War D. A. Milyutin noted that without the occupation of Turkmenistan, "the Caucasus and Turkestan will always be separated, for the gap between them is already a theater of British intrigues, in the future it may give British influence access to the shores of the Caspian Sea."
In 1869 the city of Krasnovodsk was founded, with which the active penetration of Russia into the Turkmen lands began. The Russian government managed to come to an agreement with the leaders of the Western Turkmen tribes rather quickly, but the Eastern Turkmens did not intend to recognize the Russian power. They were distinguished by increased freedom-loving and belligerence, and in addition, they perfectly understood that the subordination of the Russian Empire would deprive them of their usual and well-established trades - raids on neighboring territories with the aim of capturing people and then selling them into slavery. Therefore, the eastern Turkmens refused to submit to the Russian Empire and embarked on the path of armed struggle. The resistance of the eastern Turkmens continued until 1881. To pacify the Tekins, the most militant of all the Turkmen tribes, numbering 40-50 thousand people and living in the Akhal-Teke oasis area, the Russian military command launched the famous Akhal-Teke expedition. It was attended by about 7 thousand Russian soldiers and officers under the command of General Mikhail Skobelev. Despite the most difficult climatic and geographical conditions of desert Turkmenistan and great human losses (1502 people killed and wounded), the Russian troops on January 12, 1881, up to twenty-five thousand Tekins. As a result of the assault, the Turkmen lost 18,000 people killed and wounded. The control of the Russian Empire over the Akhal-Teke oasis, and in speed over all of Eastern Turkmenistan, was established. However, the territory inhabited by the Eastern Turkmen tribes remained very poorly controlled and while it was part of the Russian Empire, and after it became part of the Soviet state. The Turkmen tribes lived in accordance with their national traditions and were not going to retreat from them.
Battle on the Kushka
As the conquest of Turkmen lands, Russian troops moved farther and farther south. Now the task of the Russian Empire was to conquer the Merv oasis, which after the conquest of Akhal-Teke turned into the last hotbed of instability in the region. General Alexander Komarov, the former head of the Trans-Caspian region, which included the Turkmen lands, sent his representatives to Merv - officers of the Russian service Alikhanov and Makhtum Kuli Khan, who managed to convince the Merv leaders to accept Russian citizenship. On January 25, 1884, Merv became part of the Russian Empire. However, this event greatly agitated the British, who claimed control over the territory of neighboring Afghanistan. In fact, having conquered the Merv oasis, Russia reached the borders of the British Empire, since Afghanistan, which directly bordered the Merv region, was in those years under British protectorate. The need arose to define clear boundaries between the Russian Empire and Afghanistan, and Russia insisted on including the Panjsheh oasis in its composition. The main argument of St. Petersburg was the population of these territories by Turkmen tribes who were in kinship with the Russian Turkmen. But the British Empire sought to impede Russia's further southward advance by acting through the Afghan emir. Afghan troops arrived in the Panjsheh oasis, which caused a sharply negative reaction from the Russian commander, General Komarov. On March 13, 1885, Komarov promised the Afghan side that Russia would not attack Panjsheh if the Afghans withdraw their troops. However, the emir was in no hurry to withdraw his troops. Russian units concentrated on the east bank of the Kushka River, Afghan ones on the west. On March 18, 1885 (March 30, new style), Russian troops launched an offensive on Afghan positions. Komarov ordered the Cossacks to advance, but not to open fire first. As a result, the Afghans were the first to shoot, after which a swift attack by Russian troops forced the Afghan cavalry to flee. The foot units of the Afghan troops held on more courageously, but by the morning of the next day they were defeated and driven back. In the clash, Russian troops lost 40 people killed and wounded, while the Afghan side's losses amounted to 600 people. It is noteworthy that the actual command of the Afghan forces was carried out by British military advisers. The defeat inflicted on the Afghan troops by the Russian army significantly undermined the authority of the British Empire and its military specialists in the eyes of the Afghan emir and his entourage, since the latter relied on British specialists and were greatly disappointed.
The Battle of Kushka was the culmination of the Anglo-Russian confrontation in Central Asia. In fact, the Russian and British empires were on the brink of war. At the same time, the Afghan emir, realizing that in the event of a large-scale confrontation between the two powers, the worst will be for Afghanistan, on whose territory this confrontation will unfold, made efforts to smooth out the conflict, trying to pass it off as a minor border incident. Nevertheless, the British "war party" argued that any Russian advance into Afghan territory would sooner or later jeopardize not only the integrity of Afghanistan, but also British rule in India. The British authorities demanded that Russia immediately return the village of Penjde and its environs to Afghanistan, to which they received a categorical refusal. Russia motivated its right to own the occupied territory by the fact that it was inhabited by Turkmens, ethnically close not to Afghans, but to the Turkic population of Russian Turkestan.
The British began preparations for possible hostilities. The ships of the Royal Navy were put on high alert in order to immediately attack Russian ships in the event of a war. In the event of hostilities, the British fleet in the Pacific was ordered to occupy Port Hamilton in Korea and use it as the main military base against Russian troops in the Far East. Finally, the option of an attack on Transcaucasia by Ottoman Turkey was also considered. The Persian Shah also turned to Great Britain for help. The fact is that the Merv oasis, which was actually controlled by the Turkmens, formally belonged to Persia. Before the Russian troops occupied Merv, the Turkmen nomads constantly raided Persian territory, captured the Persians, since the latter were Shiites and there were no contradictions to religious canons in their captivity, and sold them in the slave markets in Bukhara. In the Bukhara Emirate, a special ethnic group "Ironi" has even formed, which exists in Uzbekistan to this day - these are the descendants of the Iranians, driven into slavery by the Turkmen and sold to Bukhara. However, for the time being, the Persian Shah was not worried about the current situation and he did not recall the formal affiliation of Merv to Persia, as well as the Persian citizenship of peasants and artisans who were captured and turned into slavery by Turkmen nomads. But the Russian advance to the south greatly worried the Persian elite, who saw in this a danger of losing their own power in the event of the occupation of Persia by Russian troops. The Shah of Persia begged Great Britain to intervene in the situation and seize Afghan Herat in order to prevent further Russian expansion and preserve the same balance of power in the Central Asian region.
However, neither the Russians nor the British dared to openly armed confrontation. As noted above, the Afghan emir took the news of the defeat of his troops in Panjsheh rather calmly. Contrary to the expectations of the British side, who feared that the emir would go to war with Russia and demand military assistance from the British, the Afghan ruler showed great restraint. Ultimately, the Russian and British diplomats managed to come to an agreement. Without the participation of the Afghan side, the state border between the Russian Empire and Afghanistan, which ran along the Kushka River, was determined. At the same time, the village of Penjde, later called Kushka, became the southernmost settlement of the Russian Empire.
But the official consolidation of the borders between Russia and Afghanistan by no means meant a weakening of British interest in the Central Asian region. Even after Central Asia became part of Russia and successfully developed in the orbit of Russian statehood, the British made numerous intrigues against the Russian presence in the region. The growth of anti-Russian nationalist sentiments among the Turkic population of Central Asia was largely provoked by Great Britain, which supported any anti-Russian forces. After the revolution and the outbreak of the Civil War, the British provided comprehensive support to the so-called "Basmachs" - armed groups of Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Kyrgyz feudal lords who opposed the establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia. After World War II and the proclamation of independence by India and Pakistan, the role of the main anti-Russian factor in the region gradually passed from Great Britain to the United States of America. Almost a century after the events described in the article, the Soviet Union nevertheless got involved in a military-political confrontation on the territory of Afghanistan. For a whole decade, the Soviet army participated in the Afghan war, losing thousands of soldiers and officers killed and wounded. Following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a spiral of violence came to the lands of former Russian and Soviet Central Asia - the civil war in Tajikistan, events on the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border, political instability in Kyrgyzstan. The geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the West in the Central Asian region continues, and in modern conditions it will only have an obvious tendency to become more complex.
