Aristov Nikolai Alexandrovich
Aristov Nikolai Alexandrovich (1847—1910[2])
A Russian historian, orientalist, and ethnographer, he was one of the prominent representatives of Russian science in the late 19th century, a full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, and a researcher of the ethnic history of the Kyrgyz people. N.A. Aristov's historical works are dedicated to Anglo-Afghan relations in the late 19th century; his ethnographic works focus on the peoples of Central Asia and Afghanistan. His study "An Attempt to Clarify the Ethnic Composition of the Kyrgyz-Kaisaks of the Great Horde and the Kara-Kyrgyz" was published in 1894 in the journal "Living Antiquity"; in 1898, the same almanac featured his work "On Afghanistan and Its Population"; in 1897, his work "Notes on the Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes and Nationalities and Information on Their Numbers" was published in St. Petersburg; in 1900, in St. Petersburg – "Anglo-Indian 'Caucasus', 'Clashes of England with Afghan Border Tribes'"; "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography" – published in 2001 in Bishkek; in 2003, a second book of his historical and ethnographic studies under the general title "Works on the History and Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes" was published in Bishkek.
According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Vol. 2. – Moscow, 1970), Nikolai Alexandrovich Aristov was born in 1847 into a staff officer's family. He studied at Kazan University and graduated, receiving the title of actual student in the field of cameral sciences from the law faculty.
As a seventeen-year-old young man, on October 20, 1864, he was appointed to the staff of the Tobolsk provincial administration, where he received his first position as an assistant in the auditing department of the treasury chamber.
For his diligence and hard work, responsibility, and efficiency in various positions in the administrative management of Tobolsk province, N.A. Aristov was recommended for an award by the governor. In the summer of 1868, he was awarded the Order of Saint Stanislaus III class.
In 1868, N.A. Aristov was appointed as a clerk in the Semirechye regional administration and began to serve as a junior official for special assignments under the military governor. From this time on, all his further service was connected with the Turkestan General-Governorship.
It was a difficult but interesting time. For twelve years – from 1855 to 1867 – the tribes of the northern Kyrgyz, concerned with internal problems, and under pressure from external circumstances, gradually accepted Russian citizenship one after another. This process was mostly voluntary and occurred largely peacefully.
However… not always and not by all rulers was the oath of allegiance signed voluntarily. For example, the Saribash manap Umetaly, son of the famous Ormon-khan, only after long resistance, being surrounded on all sides by Russian troops, Russian subjects from the Bugins and Cheriks, was forced to accept Russian citizenship at the end of 1867.
A witness to the events, the Russian scientist-traveler N.A. Severtsov, comparing Kyrgyz baatyrs to the ancient heroes of Greece, wrote: "If Ormon was in some way the Achilles of Middle Tian Shan, then his son Umetaly resembled the cunning man Odysseus. The raids of this Kyrgyz Odysseus were always successful: he caught the enemies off guard, and he only surrendered… foreseeing the likely defeat of his ails, and not waiting for it."
N.A. Aristov also became actively involved in the colonial authorities' activities of the newly created Semirechye region within the Turkestan General-Governorship. Leading the Semirechye Prison Committee since April 1869, he, as a lawyer by education, evidently dealt with numerous complex issues regarding compliance with the laws of the Russian Empire and the regulation of disputed relations among rulers, at that time only in the Semirechye region.
In 1871, a military campaign against the Kuldja Khanate, captured by the ruler of the Uyghur state Yetişar Yakub-bek, began with the forces of the Turkestan General-Governorship. N.A. Aristov also participated in this campaign. By order of the military governor of the Semirechye region, he was assigned to the command of the troops G.A. Kolpakovsky to manage the field office.
Attached to the headquarters, N.A. Aristov nevertheless directly participated in military actions during the storming and capture of the fortress city of Kuldja. "For courage and bravery in actions against the Taranchis" during the Kuldja campaign, Nikolai Alexandrovich was awarded the Order of Saint Stanislaus II class.
Remaining in the position of head of the department of the Semirechye regional administration, N.A. Aristov from September 1, 1871, to February 22, 1872, headed the office for Kuldja affairs.
During this period, events unfolded that later led to the annexation of territories – Alaï and Fergana – to Russia.
Unlike the voluntary signing of the oath of allegiance to Russia by the northern part of Kyrgyzstan, the annexation of Southern Kyrgyzstan had a completely different character. The Kyrgyz and Kipchaks of the south, rising against the oppression of the Kokand khan Khudoyar, regularly appealed to the Russian authorities for help starting in 1871, seeking permission for migrations from Kokand territories to the land occupied by the Russians, as well as requesting to be accepted into Russian citizenship. However, when the Russian authorities, bound by a treaty with the Kokand Khanate, supported not the rebels but Khan Khudoyar (sending troops to his aid), the anger of the rebels turned against the Russians.
It is evident that N.A. Aristov was in the thick of the events. The head of the diplomatic department of the Turkestan region N.P. Stremoukhov reported to the governor-general K.P. Kaufman on July 31, 1873: "… these disturbances have taken a very serious turn and may lead to significant changes in the affairs of the khanate…
A change for the better, for peace can only occur when the khans abandon their cruel and entirely selfish and egoistic, all-suppressing and destructive policies and treat the Kyrgyz with more humane and just relations…". Only in 1876 did southern Kyrgyzstan become part of the Russian Empire.
At that time, the Russian authorities were developing projects for the administration of the territories annexed to Russia in the Turkestan region. A special commission was established to develop regulations for the administration of the Turkestan General-Governorship.
In June 1872, Nikolai Alexandrovich was sent to Tashkent to work as a clerk in this commission. In 1873–1874, he organized and held meetings of the biys to resolve land disputes in the Semipalatinsk and Sergiopol districts and the Semirechye region.
For almost 10 years, the first regulations for the administration of the Turkestan General-Governorship were tested and refined. From 1879, N.A. Aristov was confirmed as an indispensable member of the regional statistical committee, and soon he became the assistant chairman of the statistical committee.
In 1881, he actively participated in the work of the editorial commission established at the office of the governor-general K.P. von Kaufman to draft a new regulation for the administration of the Turkestan General-Governorship. An experienced lawyer and diligent clerk-statistician, N.A. Aristov quickly carried out the assignments of his superiors.
In June 1881, he was appointed acting assistant military governor of the Semirechye regional administration and… simultaneously performed the duties of the military governor of the Semirechye region.
The events occurring during this period of history, the relationships between Russian authorities and Kyrgyz rulers, and military duties did not allow N.A. Aristov to work in one place for long. In July 1882, that is, a year later, he was transferred to the Steppe General-Governorship, where he worked for six years.
"Due to health issues and personal circumstances," as recorded in his service record, in 1882, N.A. Aristov submitted a request for retirement. "The service record of the assistant military governor of the Semirechye region and chairman of the Semirechye regional administration, Collegiate Councillor Aristov" was evidently compiled after his retirement in 1888 in St. Petersburg. This record is the only biographical document, but not of a scholar, but of a colonial official.
In the order of the steppe governor-general – General of Infantry G.A. Kolpakovsky – it was noted that N.A. Aristov had served actively for 24 years, 1 month, and 6 days, and had participated in campaigns and battles for 7 days. After his dismissal, he went to his permanent place of residence – St. Petersburg. For his impeccable twenty-four years of service, Nikolai Alexandrovich was awarded five orders and noted with monetary awards.
According to the table of ranks of the Russian Empire, N.A. Aristov rose from collegiate secretary to actual state councilor. However, his scientific activity as an extraordinary scholar remained beyond the dry list of his service record, as he engaged in it only after his service. The publication dates of his main works – 1894–1909 – indicate that perhaps his request for retirement due to "personal circumstances" was a testimony to the need to summarize his observations made during his service into fundamental scientific works on the ethnic history of the peoples of Central Asia and Afghanistan.
In Vol. XI of the "Notes of the Eastern Department of the Russian Archaeological Society" for 1899, V.V. Bartold published a "Review of N.A. Aristov's work 'Notes on the Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes and Nationalities and Information on Their Numbers'." In it, the well-known scholar wrote: "Mr. Aristov's book undoubtedly represents one of the most gratifying phenomena in our literature on oriental studies. The history of Central Asia has so far been so little developed and so little known to our educated society that even in serious journals one can find an outline of the history of this or that Central Asian region, compiled by some traveler based on random stories and guesses, without any verification with sources. All the more respect is due to the work of a disinterested researcher (who is not even one of the official representatives of science), written with full knowledge of the literature on the subject and, evidently, requiring several years of painstaking work…".
And at the end of the review, V.V. Bartold noted: "Welcoming N.A. Aristov's book as a significant step towards this goal, we at the same time allow ourselves to express the hope that neither the author himself nor future researchers will stop at the point of view he holds in this book."
This review is also included in Vol. 5 of V.V. Bartold's works.
The most fundamental research on the history of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan, conducted by N.A. Aristov in the late 19th century, "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography," was published only in 2001 in Bishkek (100 years after its preparation for publication). The book was published from a photocopy of the typed author's copy of N.A. Aristov, presented by Academician of the National Academy of Sciences V.M. Ploskikh.
As noted in the book's annotation, "the publication represents a previously unpublished study on the history of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan by one of the prominent representatives of Russian science in the late 19th century, a full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society N.A. Aristov."
Jealous scholars – contemporaries – reproached N.A. Aristov, who wrote about the East – Central Tian Shan – for his ignorance of Eastern languages and for not using Eastern sources – Arabic, Persian, Chinese. In reality, he was proficient in Turkic languages, meticulously studied and utilized in his work all publications, even insignificant newspaper notes, and introduced into scientific circulation excerpts from the works of Western European authors.
N.A. Aristov himself, in the preface to his work, states that in presenting historical and geographical information, he tried to use the original expressions and texts of the sources, "not indulging in unnecessary comments and limiting himself, moreover, not everywhere, to the most important conclusions."
A quarter of a century ago, in 1977, V.M. Ploskikh, emphasizing the scientific significance of N.A. Aristov's work "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz…", which he became acquainted with in the archive of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg, noted: "In his extensive two-volume manuscript, conceived as a supplement to 'Geography of Asia' by K. Ritter… the author comprehensively covered the published literature by his predecessors, used numerous personal observations, and attracted ethnographic materials, biographical sketches, and memories recorded by him from Kyrgyz connoisseurs of antiquity."
Later, this assessment was supported by the authoritative Central Asian historiographer B.V. Lunin. Emphasizing the value of the yet unpublished work, he nevertheless noted "such a competent author as N.A. Aristov."
In 1999, I had the opportunity to visit the archive of the Russian Geographical Society and not only hold in my hands but also reread the typed author's copy of "a century old," which, undoubtedly, Nikolai Alexandrovich himself read after printing. And… among the pages on a small sheet – a handwritten review by N.I. Veselovsky, which played a "preventive" role for the publication of the book prepared for print at that time.
Thus… before the reader is the "fruit" of truly titanic labor by Nikolai Alexandrovich. On hundreds of typed pages, he was the first among researchers to "trace" the history of Tian Shan, going back two thousand years, starting with the Usuni, whom he considered direct ancestors of the Kyrgyz. Here he also proposed his version of the ethnogenesis of the Kyrgyz people, "a controversial version, but worthy of attention," his hypothesis about the relationship between the Tian Shan and Yenisei Kyrgyz, provided his interpretation of many historical facts, introduced new historical materials into scientific circulation, and proposed a historical periodization that was accepted by V.V. Bartold and adopted as the basis of Kyrgyz historiography.
In the "Essays on the History of Semirechye" in 1898, V.V. Bartold noted: "Based on the available printed and manuscript (emphasized by the author – V.V.) sources, we tried to gather into one whole the historical material known so far about Semirechye, paying special attention to the information about the living conditions in which the country found itself during various periods of its historical life." This "reservation" regarding "manuscript" sources can be fully attributed to the unpublished manuscript of N.A. Aristov's book, which was written five years before its discovery by V. Bartold and contains many times more historical and ethnographic information.
It was noted above that the "service record" does not provide any information about N.A. Aristov's scientific activity during his active career as a "servant." But… by turning to the Turkestan and central periodicals, one can find articles by N.A. Aristov, occasionally reporting on "local" events; these reports were related to the performance of N.A. Aristov's official duties as a Turkestan official. Since 1868, as a clerk and official for special assignments under the Semirechye military governor, he was involved in developing administrative restructuring and land regulation of the interests of the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz.
His first scientific publication appeared in 1873 in the annual materials for statistics of the Turkestan region and concerned the Kyrgyz's engagement in agriculture and livestock breeding, their participation in the Uyghur uprisings against China, and in the affairs of Eastern Turkestan. This publication was purely "statistical" – "The Namangan District of the Kokand Khanate"; in the same year, articles titled "Our Relations with the Dungans, Kashgar, and Kuldja" and "On Kuldja" were published there. In 1874, his historical and geographical essay "On the Land of the Polovtsians" was published in the "News of the Historical and Philological Institute named after A.A. Bezborodko in Nezhin."
V.M. Ploskikh, studying the scientific creativity of N.A. Aristov, suggests that it was from this time that the scholar's interest in geopolitics, the ethnic structure of Turkic peoples, and their origins began to awaken.
The central theme of his scientific activity became the history of the Kyrgyz – from the ancient Usuni to the end of the 19th century.
He was captivated by the works of the German classic of historical-geographical determinism K. Ritter and his followers in Russia – P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky and V.V. Grigoriev, gathering materials for a "supplement" to K. Ritter based on the history of the Usuni, Kyrgyz, and Tian Shan. At his request, in 1885, an autobiography of the Kara-Kyrgyz of the Saribash clan, military elder Shabdan Jantayev, was compiled, which he included in his work.
Only after retiring did he fully devote himself to scientific research. Living in St. Petersburg – the center of Russian Oriental studies, he now had the opportunity to work in the city's excellent libraries. At the same time, he responded to events occurring in Central Asia. In 1889, N.A. Aristov published an article "The Earthquake of June 30, 1889, in the Semirechye Region" ("Turkestan News." – 1889. – No. 30), in which he described "in fresh tracks" the earthquake that occurred in the Issyk-Kul area and in the Ili Valley.
The preparatory part of the research, which later entered his fundamental work, was a historical study of the journey of Xuanzang through Western Turkestan. N.A. Aristov's article "Western Turkestan in the 7th Century According to the Description of the Chinese Traveler" was published in "Turkestan News" in 1889 in issues No. 38–40.
Considering his research merely as a supplement to K. Ritter's "Geography of Asia," whose information on the history of Western Tian Shan was limited to brief fragmentary sketches, Nikolai Alexandrovich saw his main task only in "gathering as much as possible" all the data and information available on the history of Western Tian Shan and its population in European scholarly literature and in translations of Eastern sources into European languages.
Can we separate N.A. Aristov's scientific activity, which took place in St. Petersburg, from his service in Central Asia? Obviously not! His first major scientific work "Note on the Land Tenure System of the Semirechye Region" was written in 1871. It has not yet been published and is in the archive of the Turkestan General-Governorship. It was prepared for practical purposes, but a detailed reading of it indicates the scholar's views on the problems of land relations among the Kyrgyz.
Here is one of the fragments of N.A. Aristov's article: "The basis of land ownership is antiquity, but since not only small parts of clans but entire clans constantly moved from place to place, the antiquity of land ownership among the Kyrgyz is generally not great: no one ties a nomad to the land; there would be land and a piece of arable land, and this he finds across the expanse of the entire steppe. Nevertheless, the area where a certain clan grazes for at least one generation or several years is considered the property of this clan…".
Thus, from the study of land relations among the Kyrgyz – his contemporaries – N.A. Aristov later delved into the history of the ancient Usuni.
The point in Nikolai Alexandrovich's scientific research was set on February 16, 1893: the monumental work "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography" was ready for publication and submitted to the Russian Geographical Society for "consideration."
As required by publishing rules, the work was sent for review to the most authoritative professor of archaeology at the time, N.I. Veselovsky. Nikolai Ivanovich Veselovsky (1848–1918) was a connoisseur of the history of archaeology in Central Asia, conducted excavations of ancient cities, including Afrasiab – pre-Mongol Samarkand, and hundreds of burial mounds of nomads scattered across the southeastern part of Russia.
Distinguished by special "scientific rigor" (in the words of B.V. Lunin), N.I. Veselovsky approached the evaluation of N.A. Aristov's research only as a "supplement" to K. Ritter's works, and all deviations from the topic of "Geography of Asia," especially archaeological excursions (and N.A. Aristov did not conduct excavations himself), the strict reviewer did not perceive. N.I. Veselovsky believed that the work "suffers from vagueness, which in some cases harms the overall impression."
The review even touched on the report of local historian Dr. F.V. Poyarkov on archaeological excavations: "The report is worthless…". But today, F.V. Poyarkov's works are practically inaccessible even to specialists, as are the telegrams cited by N.A. Aristov about the discovery of ancient Semirechye inscriptions. Meanwhile, it was local historian F.V. Poyarkov who first discovered a number of early Christian and Buddhist monuments in the Chuy Valley and on Issyk-Kul. Today, we can glean this information and many others only from the already published work of N.A. Aristov "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz…".
Mildly speaking, the restrained, and in fact negative review by N.I. Veselovsky served as an obstacle to the publication of the years of monumental research by the remarkable scholar.
However, Nikolai Alexandrovich was not discouraged and continued to work on the history of Turkic peoples, including the Kyrgyz. In 1894, his article "An Attempt to Clarify the Ethnic Composition of the Kyrgyz-Kaisaks of the Great Horde and the Kara-Kyrgyz Based on Genealogical Legends and Information on Existing Clan Divisions and Clan Tamgas, as well as Historical Data on Beginning Anthropological Research" was published in the journal "Living Antiquity." In 1896, the same journal published N.A. Aristov's article "Notes on the Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes and Nationalities and Information on Their Numbers."
The article published in 1894 is accompanied by extensive bibliographic material in the notes, and for the 1896 study, a "Index of Clan Names – to the article by N.A. Aristov: 'Notes on the Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes and Information on Their Numbers'" was compiled and separately published by N. Bravin and I. Belyaev.
The index was published in the "Notes of the RGO on the Ethnography Section" in 1903 in St. Petersburg under the editorship of Professor P.M. Melioransky.
The historical and ethnographic theme of Turkic tribes and their ancestors was continued in the scientific study "Ethnic Relations in Pamir in Neighboring Countries According to Ancient, Mainly Chinese, Historical Data. Information from Ptolemy about the Comedians and Sakas, Their Country, and the Route through It to the Seres," published in the "Russian Anthropological Journal" in 1903. Academician V.M. Ploskikh believes that the article on Pamir was the last in the fruitful creative life of Nikolai Alexandrovich.
N.A. Aristov's publications generated keen interest and close attention from scholarly colleagues and… even a zealous attitude, especially from specialists in oriental studies. Ethnographer A.N. Kharuzin published a review in 1895 in the "Ethnographic Review" titled "On the Origin of the Kyrgyz People," in which he supports N.A. Aristov's hypothesis about the Usuni as ancestors of the Kyrgyz and the Usuni city of Chigu on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul.
Professional orientalist, representative of academic science, V.V. Bartold, acknowledging the selfless work of his former Turkestan colleague, welcomed the publication of N.A. Aristov's work and considered it a significant step towards filling the gap in world-historical literature. He expressed hope that neither the author himself nor his future followers would stop at what has been achieved and would continue their research.
N.A. Aristov's scientific research was recognized by the scholarly community of St. Petersburg. He was elected a full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and in 1895 was awarded a small Gold Medal by the ethnography section.
The outstanding work "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography," published in 2001, as well as "Works on the History and Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes," published in 2003, are a tribute to the respect and reverence for the scholar-researcher Nikolai Alexandrovich Aristov, whose name rightfully deserves to stand among the foremost names in the history of Kyrgyz studies – V.V. Bartold, A.N. Bernshteyn, S.M. Abramzon, and others.
Notes
1. The outline of N.A. Aristov is presented in the adaptation of V.M. Ploskikh's article "N.A. Aristov and His Fundamental Work on the History of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan" // N.A. Aristov. Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography. – Bishkek, 2001. – P. 3–10.
2. Aristov N.A. Works on the History and Ethnic Composition of Turkic Tribes. – Bishkek, 2003. – P. 417, 431.
3. In fact, the presented outline of Nikolai Alexandrovich Aristov was fully prepared based on the preface to his book "Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz…". The preface was written by Academician V.M. Ploskikh and represents a separate scientific study – "N.A. Aristov and His Fundamental Work on the History of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan."
4. Ploskikh V.M. Kyrgyz and the Kokand Khanate. – Frunze, 1977. – P. 21–22.
5. Lunin B.V. Central Asia in the Scientific Heritage of Domestic Oriental Studies. – Tashkent, 1979. – P. 127.
6. Ploskikh V.M. N.A. Aristov and His Fundamental Work on the History of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan // N.A. Aristov. Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography. – Bishkek, 2001. – P. IV.
7. Ploskikh V.M. N.A. Aristov and His Fundamental Work on the History of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan // N.A. Aristov. Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz… – P. VIII.
8. Aristov N.A. Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz: Essays on the History and Life of the Population of Western Tian Shan and Studies on Its Historical Geography. – P. 5.
9. Ploskikh V.M. N.A. Aristov and His Fundamental Work on the History of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan // N.A. Aristov. Usuni and Kyrgyz or Kara-Kyrgyz… – P. VII.
10. Information about N.I. Veselovsky can be found in B.V. Lunin's book "Central Asia in the Scientific Heritage of Domestic Oriental Studies." – Tashkent, 1979.
Voropaeva V. A.
