Establishment of Military Administration in Fergana Region
Military-Police Administration
As we can see, the ancient city at the beginning of Russian rule represented a Gordian knot of everyday and other problems. This, of course, highlighted the necessity for competent and effective governance. Let us take a closer look at its system. The Fergana Region, established on February 19, 1876, after the liquidation of the Kokand Khanate, was part of the Turkestan General Governorship and housed a dense network of military units within its territory. I would like to note that after the liquidation of the Kokand Khanate, the sizes of the new administrative units - districts - were initially determined by the borders of the former vilayets with their bekstvos and sarkerstvos. In particular, in the Osh district, the Bulak-Bashinskoye bekstvo and the Osh sarkerstvo initially remained, which were later replaced by volosts.
The general governorship was managed by the Military Ministry, unlike the Russian provinces, which were under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Thus, the colonial status of the lands and peoples, including the Kyrgyz, of the Central Asian-Kyrgyz region was administratively and legally established, formalizing their complete dependence on the metropolis - the Russian Empire. In the winter of 1878, on February 4, Emperor Alexander II approved the position of the Military Council, announced at that time in a military department order, regarding the establishment of military administration in the Fergana Region. Accordingly, commandant's offices were created in Osh and the regional center of Fergana - the city of N.-Margelan. The first commandant of Osh was Lieutenant Colonel P.G. Rodzyanko.
The administration of the city particularly vividly reflects the discriminatory and exploitative orientation of the tsarist government's policy in Turkestan towards the local, non-Russian population. Unlike other district centers of the Fergana Region, where the management of the city and its economy, including budget preparation, was entrusted to district chiefs with symbolic participation from city deputies, in Osh, where the majority of the townspeople were indigenous residents of the region, virtually all power in the city and district was entirely in the hands of the military-police administration. The tsarist authorities refused to grant any form of "self-governance" even to the prosperous local urban elite. This was particularly evident with the introduction of a new City Regulation in the empire in 1892, which provided limited "self-governance" for the property-owning layers of townspeople. Thus, the negative response of the Fergana military governor to the inquiry from the regional chief about the possibility of applying this regulation to Osh and other cities in the Fergana Region is very characteristic: given that there is "almost no Russian population there, except for a few individuals in government service, and granting the indigenous people the rights of urban self-governance conferred by this regulation is deemed 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 district chief in managing urban affairs, which was subsequently done for the Osh administration.
Construction and Improvement of "New" Osh
