History, Memory and Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Colonial Space

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taras Kuzio
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
State Building ◽  
National Identities ◽  
National State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Past ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Colonial Legacies

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991 led to the de-colonization of the world's last remaining empire. Taking this into account, this article seeks to argue two points. Firstly, many of the imperial policies imposed by the imperial core in the Soviet empire were similar in nature to those imposed by imperial powers in Ireland, Africa, and Asia. Secondly, the nation and state building policies of the post-Soviet colonial states are therefore similar to those adopted in many other post-colonial states because they also seek to remove some—or all—of the inherited colonial legacies. A central aspect of overcoming this legacy is re-claiming the past from the framework imposed by the former imperial core and thereby creating, or reviving, a national historiography that helps to consolidate the new national state. All states, including those traditionally defined as lying in the “civic West,” have in the past—and continue to—use national historiography, myths, and legends as a component of their national identities.

Kharkiv: The Past Lives On

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-351
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Kravchenko
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Local Population ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
Hybrid War ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
The City

Why was Kharkiv assigned the role of an alternative political capital of Ukraine during the Euromaidan revolution of 2014? Why did this plan fail? In this article the author tries to answer these questions by exploring Kharkiv’s role and place in the regional context of ongoing Ukrainian nation-state building in the historical perspective, focusing on the period after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Issues of regional geopolitics on the Ukrainian-Russian border as well as the changing symbolic landscape of the city are explored. The proactive role of the central authorities as well as specific local traditions and identity played their roles in keeping Kharkiv on the sidelines of the “hybrid war” that engulfed the Donbas. The modernization matrix that promoted Kharkiv’s growth from a provincial town into a regional leader prevailed over the rhetoric of Russian nationalism employed by Putin’s regime during the annexation of the Crimea. At the same time, social apathy and national ambivalence, so typical of a borderland zone, also prevented the local population from falling into political extremes. Kharkiv’s cultural space continues to be a battlefield of competing discourses, each of which has been projected into the past and the future.

A Comparative Study of Kazakhstan and Estonia During and After the Nation-Building Process

2014 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Cemile Asker
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
State Building ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Historical Processes

This chapter discusses Kazakhstan and Estonia's Russian minorities after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These two particular states were chosen for their importance within the Central Asian and Baltic region. Both states have significant Russian minorities and state building processes were affected by them. This chapter contains information about the historical processes of these states during the dissolution of Soviet Union, theoretical background of state building processes and finally national laws of particular states after the beginning of the 1990s. In the last part of this chapter, there is a comparison between Kazakhstan and Estonia in terms of Russian influence.

The Global Rise of Diaspora Institutions

2019 ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Alan Gamlen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
State Building ◽  
First Century ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
And Diffusion

Chapter 2 provides a descriptive overview of the data. It defines the forms and functions of diaspora ministries, departments, extra-territorial voting provisions, and discretionary consular functions. The chapter charts the rise of these and other diaspora institutions over the course of the mid-twentieth century and into the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It identifies three phases in their spread: one associated with the acceleration of post-colonial nation-state building projects beginning in the wake of World War II and culminating in the disintegration of the Soviet Union; a second associated with the coalescence of the EU and similar regionalization schemes as templates for globalization from the mid-1990s; and a third phase characterized by the standardization and diffusion of ‘models’ and ‘best practices’ for engaging diasporas as part of global migration governance dynamics from the mid-2000s.

scholarly journals Nomads under arrest: The nation-building and nation-destroying of Kalmyk nomads in Russia

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-385
Author(s):  
Saglar Bougdaeva ◽  
Rico Isaacs
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Hierarchical Model ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
Dalai Lama ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Imagination ◽  
Cultural Strategies ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Intellectual Milieu

Nomads are positioned outside of the modern conception of nations, which is based on a traditional or modern hierarchical model (Kuzio, 2001) which tends to “dehistoricize and essentialize tradition” (Chatterjee, 2010: 169). Using an analysis of the narrative construction of nomadic Kalmyk nationhood, particularly through historiography and culture, this article demonstrates that in spite of nation-destroying efforts from the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, the Kalmyk nation has been flexible with reinventing cultural strategies in charting the nomadic national imaginary from Chinggis Khan to the Dalai Lama. It argues that nomadic nationhood contains a deeply imaginary response to nomads’ cultural and intellectual milieu which provided a way of freeing itself from Tsarist and Soviet modular narratives of national imagination, demonstrating how nomadic nationhood exists as a non-modular form of nationhood.

Reliability of the Plot Related to the Conversation with Deng Xiaoping on the Sino-Soviet Territorial Issues in the Memoirs of E. Shevardnadze

2021 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
History Of ◽  
Territorial Claims

In 2009, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and President of Georgia E.A. Shevardnadze published his memoirs in Russian, which contain an “explosive” plot: while visiting China in February 1989, during his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, a lengthy dispute over border and territorial issues occurred. At that time, Deng allegedly expressed his point of view that vast lands of the Soviet Union, from three to four million square kilometers, belonged to China. Chinese can wait patiently until someday the lands return to China. This content is cited in scientific works by many historians from different countries as an argument. However, there is no other evidence which can prove this recollection. Many details in it contradict the well known historical facts or are completely illogical. There is a good reason to believe that the plot in the memoirs of Shevardnadze is an incorrect recollection. It could even be considered as a made-up story. Moreover, it is possible that it was fabricated for some reasons. Hence, the plot is not worthy of being quoted as a reliable source. At the Sino-Soviet summit Deng Xiaoping did have expressed the point of view that in the past Russia and then the Soviet Union cut off millions of square kilometers of land from China, but at the same time he promised the leader of the Soviet Union that China would not make territorial claims. Since the mid-1980s Deng Xiaoping actively promoted the settlement of the Sino-Soviet border issues through negotiations, which led to the result that 99% of the border between Russia and China was delimited on a legal basis in the last years of his life. At present, the problems of the Sino-Russian border have been finally resolved long ago. There is no doubt that the scientific research and discussions on issues related to territory and borders in the history of Sino-Soviet relations can be made. However, such research and discussions should be based on reliable sources.

Out of Empire into Socialist Modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Steffi Marung
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this article the Soviet-African Modern is presented through an intellectual history of exchanges in a triangular geography, outspreading from Moscow to Paris to Port of Spain and Accra. In this geography, postcolonial conditions in Eastern Europe and Africa became interconnected. This shared postcolonial space extended from the Soviet South to Africa. The glue for the transregional imagination was an engagement with the topos of backwardness. For many of the participants in the debate, the Soviet past was the African present. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, three connected perspectives on the relationship between Soviet and African paths to modernity are presented: First, Soviet and Russian scholars interpreting the domestic (post)colonial condition; second, African academics revisiting the Soviet Union as a model for development; and finally, transatlantic intellectuals connecting postcolonial narratives with socialist ones. Drawing on Russian archives, the article furthermore demonstrates that Soviet repositories hold complementary records for African histories.

Agwan Dorjiev’s Questions about the Past and Future of Mongolian Buddhism

2020 ◽  
pp. 416-437
Author(s):  
Matthew W. King
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
British Raj ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
Letter Exchange

This chapter translates a 1924 letter exchange between two luminaries of the final years of prepurge Buddhism in Mongol and Buryat lands: the Khalkha polymath Zava Damdin Luvsandamdin (1867–1937) and the diplomat, reformer, and abbot Agvan Dorjiev (1854–1938). Both figures were deeply engaged with revolutionary intellectual currents circulating between China, the British Raj, Russia, Siberia, Tibet, Japan, and Mongolia in the early decades of the twentieth century. Both sought an advantage for Buddhist monastic life in competing models of revolutionary development and emancipation being debated in the Soviet Union and Mongolian People’s Republic. In the exchange translated here, these two tragic figures debate topics as diverse as the prehistory of the Mongolian community, the whereabouts of the fabled “land of Li,” and how best to counter the threat of scientific empiricism.

Soviet Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Justine Buck Quijada
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Religious Actors

Chapter 2 presents the Soviet chronotope embodied in Victory Day celebrations. Victory Day, which is the celebration of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, presumes the familiar Soviet genre of history, in which the Soviet Union brought civilization to Buryatia, and Buryats achieved full citizenship in the Soviet utopian dream through their collective sacrifice during the war. The ritual does not narrate Soviet history. Instead, through Soviet and wartime imagery, and the parade form, the public holiday evokes this genre in symbolic form, enabling local residents to read their own narratives of the past into the imagery. This space for interpretation enables both validation as well as critique of the Soviet experience in Buryatia. Although not everyone in Buryatia agrees on how to evaluate this history, this genre is the taken-for-granted backdrop against which other religious actors define their narratives.

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