The proceeds of taxation are allotted to local as well as imperial purposes. Among the former, roads are of the greatest importance. The province possesses 458 miles of metalled roads, exclusive of one constructed in 1888 between Askabad and Meshed, the capital of Khorāsān. On this a waggon service plies daily, and every high-road has its line of telegraph wires. The latter are connected with 17 offices, which dealt in 1896 with 113,434 messages. There are 25 postal stations, connected by a series of hand vehicles, which in the same year cost nearly £50,000 sterling.[674]
The entire system of transport, however, is in a transition state, for the railway has already revolutionised the mechanism of commerce. Its length in Transcaspian territory is 663 miles, and an extension from Merv to Kushk, on the Afghan frontier, a distance of 192 miles, will be completed before the 1st June 1899. The old caravan roads southward lay through Persia and Afghanistān; but the insecurity which reigns there, and the transit duties levied, have driven merchants to adopt the longer but safer route by steamer and railway. Thus goods for China and India travel by way of Bombay, Batum, and Baku. The Caspian is traversed by steamer,[675] and at Krasnovodsk the railway is met with. The whole line was placed under the charge of General Kurapatkine in 1892; but on his transfer in the beginning of 1898 to the Ministry of War it passed under the control of the Minister of Ways and Communications.
This necessarily brief sketch of Transcaspian administration reveals an honest attempt on the part of the Russians to promote the material welfare of her former foes. It is too often repeated by writers who are blinded by political passion, or have no personal knowledge of Central Asia, that the subject peoples there are groaning under the heel of a ruthless military oppression. Englishmen who have visited the heart of the great continent, and mixed freely with every class of the population, agree in denying the truth of these charges. General Kurapatkine, when on the eve of laying down his high office, declared that Russian policy might be defined as the maintenance of peace, order, and prosperity in every class of the population. Those, he went on to say, who fill responsible positions are expressly informed by Government that the assumption of sovereignty over other nationalities must not be attempted without very serious deliberation, inasmuch as such become, on annexation, Russian subjects, children of the Tsar, and invested with every privilege enjoyed by citizens of the empire.[676] These noble words reflect the attitude of General Kurapatkine and his lieutenants. Many of the latter had a lifelong experience of native manners and mode of thought; and one at least, Colonel Arandarenko, district officer of Merv, is adored by the inhabitants of the oasis. That the forces of disorder have been rendered impotent is certainly not the case. The contrast between the prosaic present and the wild romance of that past which is fast fading into legend must be bitter indeed to the half-tamed Turkomans. Nature, we know, _nihil facit per saltum_; and governments, however despotic, are incapable of suddenly changing the trend of a nation’s instincts, the legacy of unnumbered generations. It may, however, be said with perfect truth that the Russians in Central Asia strive earnestly, and with a great measure of success, to promote the greatest good of the greatest number.