Closed circle: Exhibitions that need politics and politics that require exhibitions

The Russian expansion project in Central Asia can be seen as a historical “impulse” to preserve the status of the Great Russian Empire as well as the desire to reach, establish, and secure the frontiers with the Russian orient by boosting their civilizing mission in Central Asia. Apologists for empire acknowledged the importance of the national line, recognizing the investment opportunities: raw materials; the markets; and handling of Central Asia, but more commonly they traded in euphemisms masquerading as concepts – imperial destiny, state responsibility, the mission of civilization, the progress of modernity, and industrial growth. This habit of mind arose from a faith in a providentially decreed Russian objective to regenerate the Turkestan world, accompanied by an equally fervent belief that the Central Asian world desired regeneration.

With colonization, Central Asian history, culture, and life, in general, was investigated in more detail by the Russians. Army officers, colonial officials, members of the scientific elite, and artistic circles became keen observers, explorers, and ethnographers or, at the very least recognized the rare value of the culture that was sent to Russia. As the collecting mood expanded with territory, the museum collections progressively expanded. At the time of its relocation from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1861, a large part of the Rumiantzev Museum was dedicated to non-Slavic art and artifacts. The entire notion of unification and questions of co-existence of the smaller and bigger Russian nations found a remarkable expression in the exhibition format.