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 Soviet Union as a Work-in-Progress: Ethnographers and the Category Nationality in the 1926, 1937, and 1939 Censuses

Slavic Review ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francine Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Central Statistical ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Divine Order

The All-Union Congress of Soviets ratified the Constitution of the USSR on 31 January 1924 and, according to traditional narratives, brought the formation of the Soviet Union to a close. The very same day, a group of leading ethnographers met at the Academy of Sciences in Petrograd to discuss a directive they had received from the Soviet of Nationalities: define nationality, determine “rational criteria” for classifying the population in the first All-Union Census, and notify the Central Statistical Administration as soon as possible. The legal formation of the Soviet Union had been completed, but the state-building process, which involved “re-imagining” the former Russian empire as a socialist federation of nationalities, was just getting under way. This essay argues that the classification of Soviet citizens by nationality in the All-Union Censuses of 1926, 1937, and 1939 was a fundamental component of the creation of the multinational state. The very establishment of the census category nationality marked a critical break with the tsarist regime, which had categorized its subjects on the basis of religion and native language. Ethnographers, statisticians, and linguists from Minsk to Vladivostok who formulated questionnaires and drew up lists of nationalities for all three censuses used their expertise to divine order out of chaos and create a new definitional grid. Not only did they have to decide which tribes, clans, and peoples belonged to which nationality, they also had to figure out what “nationality” meant.

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.

Central Asia since the Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Economic Reforms and eir Impact on State-Society Relations

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 313-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Pomfret
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The Common ◽  
Autocratic Regimes ◽  
Central Asian Republics ◽  
Sudden Collapse

AbstractIn late 1991, with the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the five Central Asian republics became independent countries. The completely unexpected challenges of nation-building were superimposed on the transition from a centrally planned economy. Within the common bounds of resource-based economies and autocratic regimes, the five countries gradually became more differentiated as their governments introduced diverse national strategies for transition to a market-based economy. This article describes the different economic polices adopted by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan and analyzes the outcomes.

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.

scholarly journals National narration and Politics of Memory in post-socialist Georgia

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-240
Author(s):  
Salome Dundua ◽  
Tamar Karaia ◽  
Zviad Abashidze
Keyword(s):  
Historical Memory ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
State Building ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Future State ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The Rose

Abstract The article is dedicated to analyse the politics of so called “historical memory” during the state-building and nation-building process in post-socialist Georgia After the Rose Revolution 2003, the new government that aimed at building the “new Georgia,” implementing radical changes in many key spheres, including institutions, readdressing the totalitarian past, faced number of problematic manifestations in political and cultural life in this post-Soviet country. The “politics of memory” became one of the key factors of reconstructing of “new, democratic, western Georgia”. This process can be evaluated as leading toward state nationalism. Analyzing the politics of memory, symbolism is the most notable attitude and that is why former President Mikheil Saakashvili used commemorative ceremonies continuously. The authors argue in favour of approach, that the so called “memory politics” is the integral part of one’s legitimacy building, but at the same time, it can be used as tool for reconsidering of Polity’s future and mobilization of population under the “citizenship” umbrella towards the strong loyalty to the actual and future state-building.

scholarly journals RUSSIAN FEDERALISM AND TATARSTAN’S ETHNIC PEACE

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Barker
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Religious Aspects ◽  
Crises Management

This article focuses on cooperation between Muslims and Christians inTatarstan and illustrates how federal arrangements operate to diffuse ethnopolitical crises. Management of ethnic and national conflicts has importance within Russia and its immediate neighbourhood as well as globally. Using news reports, secondary sources, and interviews from fieldwork in Russia, the article identifies ways in which the two communities are working together to ensure stability and peace in the region. It examines the religious aspects of cooperation, as well as economic and political dimensions of cooperation. The article identifies lessons for the rest of Russia, particularly Chechnya as well as the central Asian states formerly part of the Soviet Union. Even though federalism has got negative publicity in former communist countries, particularly following the collapse of communism, the case of Tatarstan suggests ways through which federal institutions enable cooperation between Russians and Tatars. In addition, the article considers recent pitfalls the two sides have had to overcome and broader implications for federalism and reconciliation studies in general.

scholarly journals “Identity through difference”: Liminal Diasporism and Generational Change Among the Koryo Saram in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-72
Author(s):  
Matteo Fumagalli
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Central Asian Republic ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Boundary Maintenance ◽  
Korean Youth ◽  
Internal Variation

This article examines the case of the Koryo saram, the ethnic Koreans living in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, to reflect on how notions of diasporas, community, and identity have changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It contends that the Koryo saram are best understood through the lenses of diasporic conditions rather than as bounded communities, as such an approach allows for greater recognition of heterogeneity within these communities. While many Koryo saram continue to claim some form of Korean-ness, how they relate to issues of homeland-orientation and boundary maintenance evidences internal variation and growing in-betweenness. The community’s hybridity (“hyphenization”) and liminality (“identity through difference”) stand out when examining generational differences and are especially evident among the local Korean youth.

Contacts, Collisions and Relationships

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Baeza Ruz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
State Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The World ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Independence Era

This is a study on the relations between Britain and Chile during the Spanish American independence era (1806–1831). These relations were characterised by a dynamic, unpredictable and changing nature, being imperialism only one and not the exclusive way to define them. The book explores how Britons and Chileans perceived each other from the perspective of cultural history, considering the consequences of these ‘cultural encounters’ for the subsequent nation–state building process in Chile. From 1806 to 1831 both British and Chilean ‘state’ and ‘non–state’ actors interacted across several different ‘contact zones’, and thereby configured this relationship in multiple ways. Although the extensive presence of ‘non–state’ actors (missionaries, seamen, educators and merchants) was a manifestation of the ‘expansion’ of British interests to Chile, they were not necessarily an expression of any British imperial policy. There were multiple attitudes, perceptions, representations and discourses by Chileans on the role played by Britain in the world, which changed depending on the circumstances. Likewise, for Britons, Chile was represented in multiple ways, being the image of Chile as a pathway to other markets and destinations the most remarkable. All these had repercussions in the early nation–building process in Chile.

Faith and Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 303-314
Author(s):  
Atola Longkumer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Traditional Medicines ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Global Christianity

Of the two Asian regions, socio-economically, South Asia presents both prosperity and abject poverty, embedded in varying traditions. Central Asian states are well-endowed with natural resources and sustain a diverse cultural heritage against a backdrop of Islam. The indigenous shamanic cultures that have sustained myriad indigenous people (often described by terms such as tribals, Adivasis, minorities) for generations across South Asia need to be recognised along with its globalisation. Healing, use of traditional medicines, the position and role of women, caste hierarchy and the relationship with the other are incorporated into South Asian Christianity. ‘Anonymous Christians’ have also contributed to concepts such as ‘insider movements’ to discuss embedded followers of Jesus. In Central Asia, Charismatic Christianity is finding particular resonance. The relative freedom of religious expression has given opportunities for Christians to witness to the gospel. The potential ecumenical relationship with the existing Orthodox Church presents an opportunity for global Christianity. Christianity has received fresh interest in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of the nation-states of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Theological creativity along with prophetic proclamation will be needed to balance these challenges of culture and faith in the region.

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