Republics of Soviet Central Asia

Статья посвящена Политике Политбюро ЦК КПСС в отношении населения советской Центральной Азии в последнее десятилетие существования Советского Союза. Методологическая и теоретическая неразбериха, эклектика, откровенный субъективизм, скрытый догматизм стали характерными чертами современной историографии, которая уводит все дальше от реального исторического процесса, который происходил тогда в этом регионе под влиянием различных факторов. Характеризуется экономика и уровень жизни населения этого региона в канун перестройки, перспективы Центральной Азии, духовная жизнь, национальное самосознание, замыслы Ю.А. Андропова, действия М.С. Горбачева и республиканских руководителей в условиях начавшейся перестройки, сильные противоречия в высшей партийной номенклатуре. The article is dedicated to the Central Committee Politburo’s policy towards the population of Soviet Central Asia in the last decade of the U.S.S.R.’s existence. The methodological and theoretic chaos, eclecticism, open subjectivism, and concealed dogmatism became characteristic traits of contemporary historiography, which leads us farther and farther away from the real historic process that took place in the region, unraveling under certain factors. The article characterizes the region’s economy and the population’s level of life at the dawn of the Perestroika, Central Asia’s perspectives, its spiritual life, national self-awareness, Y. Andropov’s plans, M. Gorbachev’s and the republican leaderships’ actions during the Perestroika, as well as the strong inner contention in the Communist Party’s top nomenclature.

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780190652104.003.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Eren Tasar

Keyword(s):

Central Asia ◽

Soviet Period ◽

Soviet Society ◽

Church State Relations ◽

Soviet Central Asia ◽

State Relations ◽

Previous Scholarship

This introduction describes the main arguments and historiographical interventions undertaken in the present work. The majority of previous scholarship on Islam in Soviet Central Asia has treated the Communist anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s as representative of the entire Soviet period. By contrast, this book argues that Stalin’s normalization of church-state relations in 1943–1944 allowed a permanent space for Islam to exist in Soviet society. This space rapidly became the site of an accommodation between Islam and Communism for many Central Asians. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of the sources employed throughout the book.

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Recollections of emerging hybrid ethnic identities in Soviet Central Asia: the case of Uzbekistan

Nationalities Papers ◽

10.1080/00905992.2013.774340 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 41 (6) ◽

pp. 1026-1048 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Timur Dadabaev

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Central Asia ◽

Senior Citizens ◽

Adaptive Strategies ◽

Ethnic Identities ◽

Social Spaces ◽

Soviet Central Asia ◽

Ethnic Policy ◽

Depth Interviews ◽

Do So

This paper is a contribution to the debate about how people in Central Asia recall Soviet ethnic policies and their vision of how these policies have shaped the identities of their peers and contemporaries. In order to do so, this paper utilizes the outcomes of in-depth interviews about everyday Soviet life in Uzbekistan conducted with 75 senior citizens between 2006 and 2009. These narratives demonstrate that people do not explain Soviet ethnic policies simply through the “modernization” or “victimization” dichotomy but place their experiences in between these discourses. Their recollections also highlight the pragmatic flexibility of the public's adaptive strategies to Soviet ethnic policies. This paper also argues that Soviet ethnic policy produced complicated hybrid units of identities and multiple social strata. Among those who succeeded in adapting to the Soviet realities, a new group emerged, known asRussi assimilados(Russian-speaking Sovietophiles). However, in everyday life, relations between theassimiladosand their “indigenous” or “nativist” countrymen are reported to have been complicated, with clear divisions between these two groups and separate social spaces of their own for each of these strata.

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