RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA This region may be considered as including that part of Asia which borders upon Siberia (including the steppe governments of Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk), Chinese Turkestan, the Pamirs, Afghanistan, Persia, the Caspian Sea, and European Russia. It has an area, including the semi-independent Khanates of Khiva and Bokhara, of over 1,000,000 square miles, and a population which is estimated to number 10,000,000.
Russian Central Asia varies greatly in its physical aspects. In the east it belongs to the region of the Pamirs and the Tian Shan, while in the west it passes into the plains of the Aralo-Caspian depression. The climate throughout is extreme, and is charac terised by cold winters, hot summers, and a very low rainfall. Hence, much of the land is desert or, at best, steppe ; and it is only in the vicinity of rivers, which are fed by melting snows on the mountains, that settlement is possible. Of these rivers, the most important are the Ili in Semirechensk, the Syr-Daria in Ferghana and Syr-Daria, the Zerafshan in Samarkand and Bokhara, the Murghab in trans-Caspia, and the Amu-Daria between Bokhara and Syr-Daria on its right, and trans-Caspia and Khiva on its left banks. Where the conditions are favourable, the inhabi tants of the districts bordering these rivers have developed an elaborate, if primitive, system of irrigation and settled down to agriculture, but on the steppes nomadism still prevails. In the
irrigated districts the soil is generally very fertile, and the crops grown include wheat (sometimes raised without irrigation), rice (where water is abundant), and other cereals, sesame, flax, and great quantities of fruit and vegetables. Most important of all, however, has been the extension within recent years of the area under cotton, which flourishes best in Ferghana, but is grown to some extent also in Syr-Daria and in Samarkand. During the three years 1908-10 the annual output averaged about 95,000 tons of ginned cotton. The seed used is American, and the product, the quality of which is fairly good, goes exclusively to European Russia.
Russian Central Asia is now connected with the European rail way system by a line which runs from Samara:through Orenburg to Tashkent. There it joins the trans-Caspian railway which connects Krasnovodsk on the Caspian with Mery (whence there is a branch to Kushk on the frontier of Afghanistan), Bokhara, Samarkand, and Andij an.