”Lost in the Revolution“: Bukharan waqf and Testimony Documents from the Early Soviet Period

2010 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Reichmuth

AbstractAfter the conquest of the Emirate of Bukhara by the Red Army in August and September 1920 and the proclamation of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic (Buxarskaja Narodnaja Sovetskaja Respublika, BNSR) on 20 September, Islamic institutions in the former emirate were subjected to considerable political, institutional and personal changes that continued throughout the first half of the 1920s, when the BNSR was first declared a Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) in September 1924 and then integrated into the newly-formed Uzbek SSR in November of the same year. The institution of pious endowments (waqf) was no exception to these changes. In this article, we shall take a document-centered approach by giving an overview of early Soviet waqf documents from Bukhara kept in the Central State Archive of Uzbekistan in Tashkent (CGA RUz). Research on waqf in Soviet Turkestan has focused mainly on the ASSR and not on the former protectorates with their longer heritage of Islamic statehood, and it does not look on waqf documents themselves. Since these documents represent one end of the trajectory of the development of Islamic chancery practice before the abolition of the institutions that produced such documents, their study can add to our understanding of the diplomatics of Persian-language private documents in general. This article will give an overview of the collection of post-1920 waqf documents in the CGA. It then illustrates the basic structure and content of documents for newly-established endowments, finally comparing them with documents of testimony for existing awqāf. For this analysis a specific structural model is developed and applied to these documents.

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Alexey A. Kapliyev

The article presents an analysis of the formation and activity of the People’s Commissariat for Health Care of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belarus at the beginning of 1919. The basic structure of the Commissariat was worked out on the basis of various sources. It was found that, due to the outbreak of the 1919–1921 Polish-Soviet war, the efficiency of the Commissariat during its time in Vilnius was limited. The relative stabilisation of the health-care management system was achieved after the Commissariat was evacuated to Minsk, and later to Bobruisk, away from the front line. It has been proven that at the beginning of the Polish-Soviet war, military and civil medical care was combined in a single system, and all medical professionals in the Lithuanian-Belarusian Soviet Republic were required to do military service. The worsening of the military situation for the Red Army in Lithuania and Belarus determined the split of the Health Care Commissariat into two separate divisions: the field division for medical care for Soviet troops near the front line, and the civil division for helping civilians.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Blauvelt ◽  
Giorgi Khatiashvili

In 1929, local officials in the mountainous region of upper Ajara in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) pursued aggressive policies to force women to remove their veils and to close religious schools, provoking the Muslim peasant population to rebellion in one of the largest and most violent of such incidents in Soviet history. The central authorities in Moscow authorized the use of Red Army troops to suppress the uprising, but they also reversed the local initiatives and offered the peasants concessions. Based on Party and secret police files from the Georgian archives in Tbilisi and Batumi, this article will explore the ways in which local cadres interpreted regime policies in this Muslim region of Georgia, and the interaction of the center and periphery in dealing with national identity, Islam, gender, and everyday life in the early Soviet period.


Author(s):  
D. V. Repnikov

The article is devoted to such an important aspect of the activities of the plenipotentiaries of the State Defensive Committee during the Great Patriotic War, as conflicts of authority. Contradictions between the plenipotentiaries of the State Defensive Committee and the leaders of party, state, economic bodies at various levels, as well as between the plenipotentiaries themselves, that were expressed in the emergence of various disputes and often resulted in conflicts of authority, became commonplace in the functioning of the state power system of the USSR in the war period. Based on documents from federal (State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Russian State Archive of Economics) and regional (Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic, Center for Documentation of the Recent History of the Udmurt Republic) archives, the author considers a conflict of authority situation that developed during the Great Patriotic War in the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which shows that historical reality is more complicated than the stereotypical manifestations of it.


Kavkaz-forum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Е.И. КОБАХИДЗЕ

В статье предлагается анализ Конституции Северо-Осетинской АССР 1978 г., отразившей этап развития ее государственности в советский период. Научное осмысление правовых аспектов истории Северной Осетии в статусе автономной республики, анализ ее места и роли в системе советской государственности во многом объясняет противоречия в реализации органами государственной власти республики функций политического самоуправления в эпоху «застоя» и «кризиса социализма». Анализ показывает, что декретированный ранней советской властью национальный суверенитет народов, населяющих советскую Россию, не нашел правового подтверждения в Конституции СССР 1977 г., на основе и в соответствии с которой были разработаны и приняты Конституции РСФСР и входящих в нее автономных республик, в том числе и СОАССР. Фиксация статуса автономной республики в качестве государственного образования без признания ее государственного суверенитета ограничивало пределы компетенции республиканских органов власти и управления и ставило их в фактическую зависимость от вышестоящих властно-управленческих структур даже в решении вопросов, отнесенных к ведению автономной республики. Все это вместе взятое превращало автономную республику в «квазигосударственное образование», высшие государственные органы которой действовали в режиме «местной власти». Противоречивые конституционные положения 1977-1978 гг., закрепленные в Основных законах СССР, РСФСР и СОАССР, стали одним из факторов деструкции советской власти и социалистической системы и последующего затем «парада суверенитетов» бывших автономных образований в пределах РСФСР. The article analyzes the 1978 Constitution of the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which reflected the stage of development of its statehood relevant to the Soviet period. Scientific comprehension of the legal aspects of the history of North Ossetia in the status of an autonomous republic, an analysis of its place and role within the system of the Soviet statehood largely accounts for the contradictions in the implementation by the republican state institutions of the functions of political self-government in the era of "stagnation" and "crisis of socialism". Analysis shows that the national sovereignty of the peoples inhabiting Soviet Russia, that was decreed by the early Soviet government, did not find legal confirmation in the USSR Constitution of 1977, on the basis and in accordance with which the Constitution of the RSFSR and its autonomous republics, including NOASSR, were elaborated and adopted. Fixing the status of the autonomous republic as a state entity without recognizing its state sovereignty limited the competence of the republican authorities and made them in fact dependent on the higher power structures even in resolving issues attributed to the jurisdiction of the autonomous republic. All this taken together turned the autonomous republic into a "quasi-state entity", the highest state bodies of which operated in the regime of "local power". Contradictory constitutional provisions of 1977-1978, enshrined in the Fundamental Laws of the USSR, RSFSR and NOASSR, became one of the factors of the destruction of the Soviet power and the socialist system and the subsequent “parade of sovereignties” of the former autonomous entities within the RSFSR.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liutauras Nekrošius

The trends in Palanga architecture of the second half of the 19th – first half of the 20th century are represented in the National Cultural Heritage List by 10 villas, 14 residential houses, two hotels (Kurhauses of Nemirseta and Palanga), a pharmacy, a spa building, a ship rescue station and a bus station. But such heritage objects reflect the stages in the town development only partially. If the cultural heritage list of Palanga town is treated as a coherent and continuous collection reflecting different stages in architecture and culture of this town (as it should be), it would be relevant to add a few more samples of the mid and second half of the 20th century architecture to the list. Taking into consideration the presence of exclusive Soviet period architectural objects on the list (made according to recommendations of different professional and social communities), and recommendations of the list founders, the following two educational institutions realized less than 50 years ago that these may as well be enrolled as examples of specific historic period and acknowledged artistic style or trend, and as most progressive and/or artistic architectural solutions of the time, to be protected for public information and use purposes: the music school designed by architect I. Likšienė,1981, (Maironio St.8; see Fig. 1) and former Pioneers’ Palace designed by I. Likšienė and G. P. Likša,1985, (now the elementary school, at the address Virbališkės Takas 4; see Fig. 2). These buildings are distinctive examples of contemporary architecture development. At present managed by the local municipality, they are in good physical state, with retained initial qualities of space and volume structure, use of materials, environment and purpose. In the category of accommodation buildings the following may be marked out: the early architectural design works by A. Lėckas, namely, the Žilvinas hotel (Kęstučio St. 34; see Fig. 4, a.), designed and implemented in 1968 as a rest house for 45 guests (21 apartment) on commission of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania and the Žilvinėlis apartment building for 24 guests implemented in 1970 (Birutės al. 44; see Fig. 4, b.). These objects still owned by the state have been prepared for privatization. Before privatization it is suggested to enroll them on the Cultural Heritage List, identify their valuable qualities, character and level of significance and perform any other required procedures. It is also recommended to make agreements for protection of cultural heritage objects with the new owners of such buildings. The initial protection is also needed for the Rąžė book shop and café building (Vytauto St.84; see Fig. 5) designed by R. V. Kraniauskas in 1967 and considered mature in the artistic sense. The building has retained its small scale, which is characteristic for the resort town, and thus enriches the spatial perspective of the street. Considering its physical shape, functional and aesthetical qualities and the use character, it is also highly recommended to grant the heritage protection status to the administration building Komprojektas (Gintaro St.30,30A; see Fig. 6) designed by G. P. and I. Likša in 1988. The collection of Palanga architecture may also be enriched by the conserved pavilions of the summer reading hall of the National Martynas Mažvydas Library (Vytauto St.72, (1968); see Fig. 7) and Kupeta (S.Daukanto/ S.Dariaus and S.Girėno St., (1969); see Fig. 8) designed by architect A. Čepys; an example of the original concrete plastics, the coffee shop Banga (J. Basanavičius St. 2; see Fig. 10) designed by G. J. Telksnys in 1976–77 and realized in 1979. The present shape and use character of these buildings cause serious threat to their preservation. There is little probability that within the context of the on-going reconstructions traditional acts for enrollment on the heritage list could somehow contribute to the conservation of values of the Vanagupė resort center, the laureate (1984) of prestigious prize by the USSR Council of Ministers (architects A. Lėckas, S. Šarkinas and L. Merkinas; see Fig. 3); the resthouse Guboja implemented only partially in 1976 (in Šventoji, Jūros St 65A., architect. R. Buivydas); resthouse Auska (presently, hotel, Vytauto St.11; architect J. Šipalis, 1977); and the resthouse Šiaulių Tauras (Vytauto St.116, architect G. P. Likša,1983). Nevertheless, the identified architectural, urban, landscape and engineering values of objects and analyzed possible forms for their conservation (ex-situ and in-situ) could become a basis for scientific study of contemporary architecture and urban planning in Palanga resort. Based on their design material, the initial concepts of such objects should be identified and their present as well planned for the future transformations should be analyzed. Such study to be presented publicly (for example, on the National Cultural Heritage List database) could ensure conditions for better understanding of past and present values of the objects, for both, specialists and public at large, and be a highly valuable source of information describing the architecture of the time to be used for information, scientific and professional purposes. Such study may also become a stimulus for preparation of complex regeneration design projects of objects and landscapes, which would comprise the conservation and development needs and add new artistic values. Santrauka Dėl pakitusių politinių, ekonominių ir kultūrinių sąlygų XX a. II pusės architektūros ir urbanistikos kūriniai dažnai nebeatitinka šiandienos naudotojų poreikių ir keliamų reikalavimų. Todėl apleidžiami, griaunami ar reikšmingai kinta. Dėl to ryškėja iniciatyvos siūlyti į KVR įtraukti kuo daugiau šio laikmečio kūrinių. Tačiau XX a. IX dešimtmetyje kultūros paminklais tapę naujosios architektūros kūriniai dėl neraiškios saugojimo strategijos, žmogiškųjų ir finansinių išteklių tvarkybai stokos vis tiek nyksta. Todėl kyla abejonių ar registro plėtra bus veiksminga. Straipsnyje Palangos miesto pavyzdžiu nagrinėjamos galimybės sudaryti vėlyvojo modernizmo architektūros kolekciją. Manoma, kad sistemingas kultūriškai vertingų architektūros objektų rinkinys formuojamas apjungiant skirtingus saugojimo metodus gali paskatinti atsakingas institucijas, vietos ir profesines bendruomenes susitelkti atsakingam architektūros paveldo puoselėjimo ir tvaraus naudojimo procesui.


2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhy Yekelchyk

In February 1944, as the victorious Red Army was preparing to clear the Nazi German forces from the rest of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a surprise official announcement stunned the population. The radio and the newspapers announced amendments to the Soviet constitution, which would enable the union republics to establish their own armies and maintain diplomatic relations with foreign states. While the Kremlin did not elaborate on the reasons for such a reform, Radianska Ukraina, the republic's official newspaper, proceeded to hail the announcement as “a new step in Ukrainian state building.” Waxing lyrical, the paper wrote that “every son and every daughter of Ukraine” swelled with national pride upon learning of the new rights that had been granted to their republic. In reality, the public was confused. In Ukraine's capital, Kiev, the secret police recorded details of rumors to the effect that the USA and Great Britain had forced this reform on Stalin and that Russians living in Ukraine would be forced to assimilate or to leave the republic. Even some party-appointed propagandists erred in explaining that the change was necessitated by the fact that Ukraine's “borders have widened and [it] will become an independent state.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Ruslan G. Bimbasov

This author examines the activities of Soviet party-state bodies in the field of propaganda among the population in the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (North Ossetia) during the Great Patriotic War. Propaganda is effective when its message is deeply rooted in the consciousness of the population group to which it is addressed. For this reason the media and the organizations of oral propaganda of North Ossetia sought to get the most accurate information on the particular group that was called upon to fulfill wartime tasks. The author used various types of sources, including documents from the Central State Archive of the Republic of North Ossetia that are here first introduced into scientific circulation. The paper identifies the directions of party-state bodies in organizing propaganda on the territory of the republic in 1941-1945, and it assesses the degree of their effectiveness. While the outbreak of the war led to an expansion of propaganda, there was an acute shortage of specialists in various fields of life, including in propaganda work among the civilian population. The paper reveals the main methods of forming the image of the enemy by propaganda bodies and the media. The author concludes that the activities of the propaganda apparatus in the republic during the War had a direct impact on public consciousness and contributed to the consolidation of the region's population in the fight against the enemy, and to overcoming the difficulties of the War years.


Author(s):  
O. Iliin

The work researches essential reasons for spreading anti-Soviet public sentiments among local inhabitants of Izmail Region, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the post-war period, describes their specific features and forms of counteraction to Soviet reformation and Communist totalitarian regime. Source basis of the said research is represented by documents of the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine and the State Archives of Odessa Region. General reports and statements of activities from Regional Attorney Office Fund, SAOR, as well, as statistics data, reports and accounts in cases of special jurisdiction of Regional Attorney Office. Furthermore, reports of Soviet Administration and Communist Party figures, special notifications referring to armed force censorship, reports by PCHA about local inhabitants' sentiments, documentation describing the course of operation of kulaks' deportation. Documentation of Organization and Instruction Section of Communist Party of Ukraine Central Committee, CSAPO fund was also used: reports about the activities of military section of Communist Party Regional Committee, internal memoranda, statements of completed work. Special attention has been paid to review of display of discontent in matters of religious policy, particularly, activities of underground religious associations. Author also describes resistance of the local population to mobilization to Soviet industrial enterprises, specified number of deserters from enterprises of military industry. Author also revealed and described social and political sentiments in the first months of Soviet power implementation and changes in such sentiments which occurred due to drop in social standards and housing problems. It was discovered also that illegal actions of local Communist Party and Soviet Administration and individual public figures formed additional factors, which contributed to popular discontent.


Author(s):  
Adrian Brisku

Arguably, an account of modern Georgia is one about the country’s emergence as a political nation (independent republic and nation-state) in the region of the Caucasus—geographically straddled in between the Eurasian landmass—and the challenges of redefining, developing, and preserving itself. It is also about how it was forged under and often against its powerful neighbors, most notably the tsarist Soviet and Russian state, and about its equally uneven interactions with other neighboring nations and nationalities within its political borders. And while one cannot put a precise date on the cultural and political processes as to when this modern Georgia emerged, the late 19th century is that period when people within the two tsarist governorates of Tbilisi and Kutaisi interacted more intensively among themselves, but also within the imperial cultural and political centers of St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as beyond the imperial confines, in Central and Western European capitals. This in turn—following impactful events: the 1861 tsarist Emancipation of Serfs, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions of 1917, the brief making of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (1918)—led to a diffusion of and reaction to political, economic, and cultural ideas from European and imperial metropoles that on May 26, 1918, culminated with the establishment, for the first time, of Georgia as a nation-state: the Georgian Democratic Republic. A social democratic nation-state in its political content, the political life of this first republic was cut short on February 25, 1921, by the Red Army of a re-emerging Russian (Soviet) state. In the ensuing seventy years in the Soviet Union—initially, from 1922 to 1936, as a constitutive republic of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and then as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic until the implosion of the union in 1991—the republic and its society experienced the effects of the making and unmaking of the Soviet Marxist-Leninist modernization project. Especially impactful for the republic and its society was the period of the 1930s and 1940s under the hyper-centralized rule of the Georgian-born Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph V. Stalin: a period marked by implementation of a centrally planned economic model and political purges as well as a consolidation of the nation’s ethnocultural and territorial makeup. Also important was the late Soviet period, particularly that under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whereby thanks to the economic and political reforms undertaken in the later 1980s, calls for the recovering of the republic’s political independence were intensified and ultimately realized. This happened on April 9, 1991—with the first Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, declaring the independence of the Republic of Georgia before the Soviet Union’s dissolution on December 26, 1991—and its international recognition would come easily and fast. But what would prove difficult and slow, from the outset, was building a European-style nation-state—meaning a liberal democratic order based on the rule of law and a market society—as was the case in the brief presidency of Gamsakhurdia (1991–1992). The latter’s term was marred by an ethnopolitical war in the South Ossetian region and brought to an end by a civil war fought in the capital city of Tbilisi and the Megrelian region. It continued to be difficult during the long and interrupted presidency of the former Georgian Communist Party boss, Eduard Shevardnadze (1995–2003)—the 1995 Constitution established a semi-presidential system of government—in which an ethnopolitical war with Abkhazia started and ended (1992–1993), state institutions stabilized, and a pro-Euro-Atlantic as opposed to a pro-Russian foreign policy was articulated, but state corruption also thrived. A European-style republic appeared closer during the full-term “hyper-presidency” of the Western-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013), marked by concrete steps toward Euro-Atlantic integration (NATO membership and EU partnership/toward membership) and a distancing from Russia as well as top-down neoliberal domestic reforms. But the republic was scarred by a war with Russia in August 2008 and a growing authoritarianism at home. It remains so despite a shift, since 2013, from a presidential to a parliamentary republic with the last directly elected president being the first woman president, Salome Zurabishvili (2018–). Since 2012, the Georgian Dream Party—established by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili (prime minister, 2012–2013)—governs the republic by pursuing Western-oriented domestic reforms, EU and NATO integration, and a nonconfrontational position against Russia. The latter continues to undermine the country’s territorial integrity, having recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence in 2008 and maintaining its military bases there.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-365
Author(s):  
Mayhill C. Fowler

AbstractIn the Soviet Union theatre was an arena for cultural transformation. This article focuses on theatre director Les Kurbas’ 1929 production of playwright Mykola Kulish’sMyna Mazailo, a dark comedy about Ukrainianization, to show the construction of “Soviet Ukrainian” culture. While the Ukrainian and the Soviet are often considered in opposition, this article takes the culture of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic seriously as a category. Well before Stalin’s infamous adage “national in form and socialist in content,” artists like Kulish and Kurbas were engaged in making art that was not “Ukrainian” in a generic Soviet mold, or “Soviet” art in a generic “Ukrainian” mold, but rather art of an entirely new category: Soviet Ukrainian. Far from a mere mouthpiece for state propaganda, early Soviet theatre offered a space for creating new values, social hierarchies, and worldviews. More broadly, this article argues that Soviet nationality policy was not only imposed from above, but also worked out on the stages of the republic by artists, officials, and audiences alike. Tracing productions ofMyna Mazailointo the post-Soviet period, moreover, reveals a lingering ambiguity over the content of culture in contemporary Ukraine. The state may no longer sponsor cultural construction, but theater remains a space of cultural contestation.


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