I chose these two images because they display Imperial Russia’s emphasis on the production of industrial crops over food crops. Approximately 80% of the trade section in the Turkestan album is dedicated to industrial crops while only 20% displayed food crops. I think this highlights the debate that persisted throughout the entirety of Imperial Russia’s presence in Turkestan: Is Russian presence in Turkestan economically profitable, or even profitable enough to justice Russian presence on the basis of Turkestan’s strategic location?
When Senator F.K. Girs inspected Turkestan in 1882, he found that listed revenue from 1868 to 1881 was roughly 55,000,000 rubles while expenditures sat at nearly 141,000,000 rubles – a deficit of roughly 86,000,000 rubles. In contrast to this, Konstantin Von Kaufman, the first governor-general of Russian Turkestan claimed that local revenues provided a surplus of nearly 8,000,000 rubles a year. This massive variance in numbers only served to encourage more debate. This debate influenced Russia’s decision to focus so heavily on industrial crops rather than food crops which ultimately led to devastating results (as already identified by albertca).