much absent
Nov. 19th, 2008 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI've been (unusually) hugely busy at work and trying to keep up with the reading in my course. My apologies if I've missed anything I really ought to have replied to. Hopefully I'll be back here soon. I the meantime I'll foist off on you this
We were supposed to discuss this week the success and failures of Russification in Central Asia, both in the region in general and then more specifically at one country or group. Of course, success and failure look different depending on one’s vantage point; one presumes the point of view is that of the Russians, and the success or failure is that of their efforts. But one might well also ask what was the success or failure for the Central Asians themselves.
Soucek (in Chapter 15) and Roy (in Chapter 2) discuss the negative economic effects for the Central Asians of the Russian expansion into and absorption of their territories. By arrogating much of the area’s fertile land to Russian settlers and devoting it to production of raw materials for Russian industry (rather than food and fodder for herd animals), Russia sapped the area of its base economic self-sufficiency and tied its economy to that of European Russia. Not only did this cause hardship and dislocation in the short term, it did so again during the Revolution when communication and trade with Russia were interrupted, and it had the potential to do so again when the republics became nominally independent after 1991 and were no longer intrinsically part of the Russian economy. So economically one has to rate Russification as a success for Russia and the Soviet Union but a failure for Central Asia.
Soucek (in Chapter 15) and Roy (in Chapter 2) also agree that in most places the tsarist Russian government did not interfere in Central Asian religious or social systems except to outlaw slavery. Only a limited number of Central Asians received Russian/modern education, but these became the leaders in the native reformist movement, both through coming into contact with Russian and western ideals in Russia and through greater contact with members of pan-Islamist and pan-Turkish movements in other parts of the Islamic world. This reformist element, along with more traditional Islamists, formed the post-tsarist political movements that attempted, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with the Bolshevik government of Russia as, if not equals, at least partners. They were, however, rebuffed and eventually superseded (crushed where necessary) by Moscow-approved Bolshevik groups whose main local constituency consisted of revolutionaries of European Russian extraction who sought to maintain the balance of ethnic power seen under the tsars (European Russians in charge, Asian locals following orders). (see Soucek Chapter 16 and Roy Chapter 3).
Both Soucek (in Chapters 16 and 17) and Roy (Chapters 4-6) discuss at length the efforts of the Soviets to remake the Central Asian area in political terms, creating nations out of ethnic groups that were, in turn, more or less manufactured by academics in Moscow. Taking broad linguistic groups and decomposing them, for the most part artificially, into specific ‘ethnic languages’ in ways that did not correspond to the subjects’ experiences of their own language and culture, the Soviets formed the basis for a series of separate ethnic identities, and therefore homelands, where no such definite and distinct groups had existed, or across the boundaries of such groups as did exist. By then using these notional linguistic differences to identify ethnic territories, the Soviets created a series of nation-states that were likewise outside the experience of their notional countrymen. The existence of the states was, in any case, more or less a sham, intended only to describe races that had an existence only as constituent elements of the greater Soviet whole—nationalities, in effect, created only to give up their nationhood so as to participate in international socialist solidarity.
In creating these unreal nations, the Soviets also created frameworks within which traditional elites could be co-opted to create structures of authority. These structures took the outward form of national governments, but their effect was to mirror and support the central Soviet government’s policies and decision making, giving the central government’s decisions the surface appearance of participation and consent by local populations. This would have, like the other elements of Russification, to be scored as a success for the Russians/Soviets but less successful for the local people. During the period of Russian rule, this system prevented real participation by Central Asians in decision making at the truly national level (even local elites were severely circumscribed in their participation in policy making at higher levels). On the other hand, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these ready-made national governments, complete with security apparatus, provided an element of stability in the somewhat rude and unexpected transition to independence.
As to the effects of Russification in one area or group, the Tajiks seem to have been among those most victimized by the process, especially under the Soviet Union with its ‘language creation supports homeland redefinition’ program. As Roy observes (Chapter 4), what became treated as the Tajik language was in fact a variant dialect of Farsi/Persian but became, under the Soviets, a language divorced by the arbitrary assignment of a point of historical split and visually and functionally apart by the imposition of the Cyrillic alphabet and a newly created ‘Tajik’ alphabet to replace the use of an Arabic-Persian lettering. Roy also highlights the way in which Soviet efforts to replace traditional local identity groups with Soviet collectives caused population relocation. The Tajiks, because of their distribution, also suffered a common aftereffect of the creation of nationalities from language dialects. Where the use of one dialect or another by a group might have been a matter of chance, local tradition, temporary displacement, or intermarriage, once these dialects were treated as languages and the languages used to draw national boundaries where there had not been formal boundaries before, those who were functional minorities in these new areas became treated as if out of place, pressured to take up a ‘different’ language, identify with the new majority population, or become a sidelined minority in an area that was suddenly identified as being of another ethnic group altogether. This was particularly acute an issue for Tajiks, as their most educated classes as a group had traditionally been located in Samarkand and Bokhara, areas defined by the new system as outside the Tajik homeland and thus a less than fitting source for the construction of a national intelligentsia. This played into the hands of the Soviets, who wanted to decouple Tajiks from their true traditional ties to Iran and create a false ‘traditional culture’ for them which would be ‘safe’.
We were supposed to discuss this week the success and failures of Russification in Central Asia, both in the region in general and then more specifically at one country or group. Of course, success and failure look different depending on one’s vantage point; one presumes the point of view is that of the Russians, and the success or failure is that of their efforts. But one might well also ask what was the success or failure for the Central Asians themselves.
Soucek (in Chapter 15) and Roy (in Chapter 2) discuss the negative economic effects for the Central Asians of the Russian expansion into and absorption of their territories. By arrogating much of the area’s fertile land to Russian settlers and devoting it to production of raw materials for Russian industry (rather than food and fodder for herd animals), Russia sapped the area of its base economic self-sufficiency and tied its economy to that of European Russia. Not only did this cause hardship and dislocation in the short term, it did so again during the Revolution when communication and trade with Russia were interrupted, and it had the potential to do so again when the republics became nominally independent after 1991 and were no longer intrinsically part of the Russian economy. So economically one has to rate Russification as a success for Russia and the Soviet Union but a failure for Central Asia.
Soucek (in Chapter 15) and Roy (in Chapter 2) also agree that in most places the tsarist Russian government did not interfere in Central Asian religious or social systems except to outlaw slavery. Only a limited number of Central Asians received Russian/modern education, but these became the leaders in the native reformist movement, both through coming into contact with Russian and western ideals in Russia and through greater contact with members of pan-Islamist and pan-Turkish movements in other parts of the Islamic world. This reformist element, along with more traditional Islamists, formed the post-tsarist political movements that attempted, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with the Bolshevik government of Russia as, if not equals, at least partners. They were, however, rebuffed and eventually superseded (crushed where necessary) by Moscow-approved Bolshevik groups whose main local constituency consisted of revolutionaries of European Russian extraction who sought to maintain the balance of ethnic power seen under the tsars (European Russians in charge, Asian locals following orders). (see Soucek Chapter 16 and Roy Chapter 3).
Both Soucek (in Chapters 16 and 17) and Roy (Chapters 4-6) discuss at length the efforts of the Soviets to remake the Central Asian area in political terms, creating nations out of ethnic groups that were, in turn, more or less manufactured by academics in Moscow. Taking broad linguistic groups and decomposing them, for the most part artificially, into specific ‘ethnic languages’ in ways that did not correspond to the subjects’ experiences of their own language and culture, the Soviets formed the basis for a series of separate ethnic identities, and therefore homelands, where no such definite and distinct groups had existed, or across the boundaries of such groups as did exist. By then using these notional linguistic differences to identify ethnic territories, the Soviets created a series of nation-states that were likewise outside the experience of their notional countrymen. The existence of the states was, in any case, more or less a sham, intended only to describe races that had an existence only as constituent elements of the greater Soviet whole—nationalities, in effect, created only to give up their nationhood so as to participate in international socialist solidarity.
In creating these unreal nations, the Soviets also created frameworks within which traditional elites could be co-opted to create structures of authority. These structures took the outward form of national governments, but their effect was to mirror and support the central Soviet government’s policies and decision making, giving the central government’s decisions the surface appearance of participation and consent by local populations. This would have, like the other elements of Russification, to be scored as a success for the Russians/Soviets but less successful for the local people. During the period of Russian rule, this system prevented real participation by Central Asians in decision making at the truly national level (even local elites were severely circumscribed in their participation in policy making at higher levels). On the other hand, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these ready-made national governments, complete with security apparatus, provided an element of stability in the somewhat rude and unexpected transition to independence.
As to the effects of Russification in one area or group, the Tajiks seem to have been among those most victimized by the process, especially under the Soviet Union with its ‘language creation supports homeland redefinition’ program. As Roy observes (Chapter 4), what became treated as the Tajik language was in fact a variant dialect of Farsi/Persian but became, under the Soviets, a language divorced by the arbitrary assignment of a point of historical split and visually and functionally apart by the imposition of the Cyrillic alphabet and a newly created ‘Tajik’ alphabet to replace the use of an Arabic-Persian lettering. Roy also highlights the way in which Soviet efforts to replace traditional local identity groups with Soviet collectives caused population relocation. The Tajiks, because of their distribution, also suffered a common aftereffect of the creation of nationalities from language dialects. Where the use of one dialect or another by a group might have been a matter of chance, local tradition, temporary displacement, or intermarriage, once these dialects were treated as languages and the languages used to draw national boundaries where there had not been formal boundaries before, those who were functional minorities in these new areas became treated as if out of place, pressured to take up a ‘different’ language, identify with the new majority population, or become a sidelined minority in an area that was suddenly identified as being of another ethnic group altogether. This was particularly acute an issue for Tajiks, as their most educated classes as a group had traditionally been located in Samarkand and Bokhara, areas defined by the new system as outside the Tajik homeland and thus a less than fitting source for the construction of a national intelligentsia. This played into the hands of the Soviets, who wanted to decouple Tajiks from their true traditional ties to Iran and create a false ‘traditional culture’ for them which would be ‘safe’.
