retained their nomadic life style and status asiasakpeople well into the nineteenth
century.
Russia was less able to subdue the Kazakhs in the eighteenth century. As Russia
sought to safeguard caravan traffic across the Central Asian steppe into western
Siberia, the most pressing challenge it faced was Kazakh attack. Pushed by the
Dzhungars in thefirst third of the eighteenth century, two groups of Kazakhs
moved from Central Asia into the Caspian steppe. In 1731 the Small Horde, which
had taken up the left bank steppe of the Iaik between the Caspian and Urals,
created a treaty alliance with Russia, as did the Middle Horde in 1740 (it had
settled the steppe south of western Siberia).
As they began to interact with the Russian empire, Kazakhs presented a classic
Central Asian nomadic society. They were Turkic speakers, Islamic since the time
of the Mongol empire. Their religious practice, however, was syncretic. Nomadic,
they did not maintain mosques and Islamic schools; they did not learn Arabic; their
Muslim practice was complemented by shamanistic rituals around cults of ances-
tors and animism, revering spirits of sun and moon, earth and animals,fire and
water. Typical of nomadic peoples, they practiced oral tradition, preserving clan
genealogies and martial achievements in epics that celebrated the perils and tradi-
tions of nomadic life. They practiced typical steppe nomadism, moving from
summer to winter pastures in regular circuits, described in Chapter 3. Kazakhs
grazed sheep, goats, horses, and, in the south, camels, subsisting on a traditional
diet of milk products, mutton, and horse meat; they were renowned as falconers.
Treaties established only a tenuous stability between the Kazakhs and Russia,
generally honored in the breach. Many Kazakhs participated with rebellious Iaik
Cossacks and Bashkirs in the Pugachev rebellion (1773–5); in 1791–4 a Kazakh
rebellion broke out against Russian in-migration whose unrest simmered well into
the next century. Russia constantly renegotiated relations with the Kazakhs, often
foiled by the intrinsic disunity of the widespread Kazakh tribes. The Small Horde
fell under Russian control somewhat earlier than did the Middle Horde. When
Catherine II’s administrative reforms were brought to the steppe frontier in the
1780s, Kazakh lands were still not a part of the empire. But a court was created in
Orenburg in 1784 to mediate disputes between subjects of the Russian empire and
Kazakhs of the Small Horde, with six elected representatives from each side. It used
Russian law but heeded natives’concerns. Russia also tried to abolish the Small
Horde’s khan-based government, which efforts met with the same opposition that
similar meddling had sparked among the Kalmyks. Russia backed down, allowing
the Small Horde to keep its khanate, but asserting more oversight. The Middle
Horde remained outside of formal structures of Russian control such as governor-
generalships into the nineteenth century.
CURTAILINGTHEMIDDLEGROUND
As in the seventeenth century, Russia depended upon Cossacks on its various
steppe frontiers to play the role of intermediaries, fending off nomadic attack and
94 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801