Paper short abstract:

Western, primarily Russian travelers and officials left many records, memoirs, and reports, the essence of which is exoticism, orientalization, and otherness to what was accepted in their countries. My paper deals with bazaars of Russian Turkestan in 19th - early 20th centuries

Paper long abstract:

Bazaars of Russian Turkestan or where the West encounters the East

The East has always been a mystery to Westerners. This is especially evident when it comes to the oriental bazaar. Bizarre architecture, a variety of races, unusual goods for sale - all this existed in the imaginary world of Western peoples and adventurers, artists and merchants, and at the same time, these attributes were and are the most recognizable attributes of the bazaars of Russian Turkestan in the 19th - early 20th centuries.

Western, primarily Russian travelers and officials left many records, memoirs, and reports, the essence of which is exoticism, orientalization, and otherness to what was accepted in their countries.

In our study, we will try to identify the most recognizable clichés and stereotypes of "orientalism" of local bazaars, traders, practitioners, etc. Let us find out how much, starting from the 1870s, the imaginary East with its irrational value system forced the colonial administration to take inadequate measures and decisions to transform the region's trading activities. We will try, on the basis of archival documents and information from the works of Russian and Western authors, to analyze the consequences of attempts to reform traditional bazaars in the manner widely known as "civilizing mission" met hidden and sometimes open protests.

Using the example of adventurers of all kinds, who received the nickname "Gospoda Tashkentsy", we will try to draw a "portrait" of such seekers of fortune, for whom Turkestan was like Klondike during the gold rush. In the following decades, their example was followed by ordinary landless and deprived peasants from the central provinces of European Russia, who by hook or by crook moved to the indigenous regions of Turkestan.