Police Administration in the City
City management particularly vividly reflects the discriminatory and exploitative orientation of the tsarist government's policy in Turkestan towards the local, non-Russian population. Unlike other county centers in the Fergana region, where city management and its economy, including budget preparation, were entrusted to county chiefs with symbolic participation from city deputies, in Osh, where the majority of the city's residents were indigenous to the region, virtually all power in the city and county was entirely in the hands of the military-police administration. The tsarist authorities refused to grant even the prosperous local urban elite any form of "self-governance." This was particularly evident with the introduction of a new City Statute in the empire in 1892, which provided a limited "self-governance" for the property-owning layers of the urban population.
For example, the negative response from the Fergana military governor to the request from the regional chief about the possibility of applying this statute to Osh and other cities in the Fergana region is very characteristic: due to the fact that there was "almost no Russian population in them, except for a few individuals in government service, and granting the rights of urban self-governance bestowed by this statute to the natives [he] finds harmful not only for the management of urban affairs but for Russian interests in general." The governor considered it necessary only to establish a secretary to assist the county chief in managing urban affairs, which was subsequently done for the Osh administration.
At the end of the 19th century, the county authorities consisted of the county chief, who had broad powers over the urban and rural population, his assistant-secretary, a clerk, and the so-called "written translator." However, judging by documents from the early 20th century, the city economic committee made up of wealthy citizens (an advisory and powerless body) was still considered a passive appendage to the county chief, serving as a facade for the military-popular (read: police!) administration in the city.
Particularly concerned were the Osh authorities about establishing the positions of two district police officers in the county and "for order" — a city police officer and a clerk. Not content with five messenger horsemen, the county chief, encouraged by regional authorities, demanded additional funding for six secret informants among the indigenous population and five horsemen to pursue "bandits."
The police officer of Osh, subordinate to the county chief, had 30 city guards, of which 21 were mounted. In addition, the citizens funded another 99 hired foot and mounted night watchmen. The city police officer was responsible not only for the city but also for the areas of nomadic and settled populations in the county. Subsequently (by 1910), positions for police officers in these areas were also established. The expenses for the police accounted for over a third of the city budget (in 1908 — 37.5%).
The Osh county authorities flirted with the Kyrgyz tribal nobility, strictly implementing a policy of the whip (for the working population) and the carrot (for the feudal representatives). An example of this is the suppression of the so-called Andijan uprising of 1898, when hundreds of rebels, including Kyrgyz who opposed the oppression of tsarism (among them the democratic akyn Toktogul Satylganov), were arrested and exiled (Toktogul — to Siberia).
An example of this is the honors and awards given to the "Queen of Alai" — Kurbandzhan-datka, one of whose sons had warned the Osh county chief in advance about the impending uprising of the people.