Endurance of the Soviet imperial tongue: the Russian language in contemporary Georgia

This article will examine the role of the Russian language on the periphery of the post-Soviet space by using multiple sources of data, including original matched-guise experiments, to examine the language situation in contemporary Georgia. This is one of the former Soviet republics in which the use of the titular language was most intensively institutionalized and that most ardently resisted Russification, and one that today for various reasons is most eager to escape the legacy of its Soviet past and to embed itself in the global community. In Georgia the cultural and political influence of the former imperial centre has been greatly reduced, and Russian has been challenged in functional roles by the new international lingua franca of English. The direction that the Russian language takes in a place like Georgia may be a useful bellwether for such transformations elsewhere in the post-Soviet periphery.     

History writing as agitation and propaganda: the Kazakh history book of 1943

The reconstruction of the Soviet recent past is a controversial issue in the post-Soviet republics. In Kazakhstan, the reconstruction of the past has gradually rehabilitated leading Kazakh communists, such as Zhumabai Shaiakhmetov. One of the main rationales of this rehabilitation is his support for Kazakh historical writing, which resulted in a textbook published in 1943. This work has been seen as an endeavor by ‘patriotic’ Kazakh officials and historians to defend Kazakh national heritage against the ‘Soviet colonial empire’. By presenting a broader view of the war period in Kazakhstan from the archives, this article argues that this history textbook was in fact merely an agitation-propaganda product of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Shaiakhmetov and others had mostly secured their career by remaining loyal to the Soviet system during the collectivization, the Great Famine and the Great Terror. Therefore, their encouragement of the publication of a national history in 1943 for propaganda purposes does not qualify them as suitable predecessors of the current generation of Kazakh rulers.     

Report on the conference on the Baltic area in World War II

Time and space serve as key identity markers of a nation. This article focuses on the construction of historical space in Estonian history textbooks. The aim of this analysis is to follow the trajectory of post-Soviet understanding of Estonia’s location on the European map. Rejecting the Soviet idea that Estonia belongs to the Russian Civilization, the post-Soviet Estonian national elite has offered the Baltic Sea region as a plausible alternative regional identity. The present analysis suggests that the last two decades are marked by an increasing tendency in Estonian history textbooks to present the Baltic Sea region as the nation’s historical space.     

The Battle of Gökdepe in the Turkmen post-Soviet historical discourse

The Battle of Gökdepe (1881) is considered to be a turning point in Turkmenistan's contemporary historiography. It led to the then independent Turkmen (Akhal Tekke in this case) tribes coming under Russian control. Almost immediately after the event the battle became a controversial point of interpretation starting from Turkmen sources (rarely known to us), an immense number of Russian (mostly military) sources, up to the Soviet historians. The post-Soviet official Turkmen historiography of the event came from these foundations, but used its own mythological approach. As a result, the contemporary narrative of the Gökdepe defeat turned into a victory for the Akhal Tekke (and broadly Turkmen) nation. Additionally, this paper argues that the first and partly the second presidents of Turkmenistan incorporated the battle into their own personality cults, a fact which is still specific to the Central Asian context, albeit not unique in world history. In particular, the first president usurped the myth and connected it with his own historical narrative. The second president continues this in the frames of the already settled political culture in the country, adapting the Gökdepe myth to create his own ideological story. Therefore, the appropriation of the historical event in Turkmenistan represents a specific (albeit not unique) case of this kind and shows the way of thinking about the leader in current Turkmenistan.     

无处不在的身影——东正教介入俄罗斯社会政治生活试析

东正教在俄国远不只是一种宗教,而是俄罗斯文化传承的重要载体,在后苏联成为俄联邦重构的重要社会资源、政治力量和精神动力,被视为是标示俄罗斯民族精神的最重要标志。在后苏联到来过程和重建过程中,东正教扮演了极其重要的角色,而且这种角色源于俄国的历史进程。其实,无论是就基督教神学理论还是就俄国史而言,缺少了对东正教因素的考虑,就无法描述俄国社会进程。近20年来,俄国社会进程和东正教紧密相关,因此,当代俄国人能基于东正教信仰,去批判性地面对后苏联社会变革所带来的各种重大问题。除此之外,东正教还积极介入俄罗斯的对外事务,成为影响俄对外关系的一个不可忽视的重要因素。     

主观性很重要——重新思考俄罗斯与西方关系

在后苏联时代,俄罗斯外交政策的典型特征是情境性前后矛盾的重复出现,即立场的不对称变化以及与参与政策形成巨大反差的行为。这种不合逻辑的外交政策行为突出表现在2008年俄格冲突、北约东扩和美国计划在西欧部署导弹防御系统的过程中。传统理性主义国际关系理论都是以行为体为中心,都假设行为体的政策偏好不是易变的,所以对俄罗斯这种让人困惑的外交政策行为时缺乏解释力。外交政策受到行为体对世界的主观解读和情绪的影响。俄罗斯不被西方尊重的感觉导致了两者的冲突,俄罗斯的"愤怒"是不被尊重的感觉导致的情绪化判断,是为了显示自身的重要性而非起破坏作用。分析俄罗斯外交政策中的主观性因素,为更好地理解俄罗斯与西方关系提供了一个新的理论和分析的角度。     

Bandits,warlords, national heroes: interpretations of the Basmachi movement in Tajikistan

The history of the Basmachi movement has occupied a prominent place in the construction of a collective past in Soviet and post-Soviet Tajikistan. This article traces the evolution of its representations in the dominant narrative from the 1950s to the present day. It argues that official discourse in contemporary Tajikistan situates the Basmachis in the mould of a national struggle against Turkic oppression, rather than portraying them, in the manner of earlier prevalent models, as part of a class-based or anti-colonialist resistance. Among many public counter-narratives, the one focusing on the local appeal of the Basmachi leaders has the greatest potential to challenge the government-sponsored reading of Tajikistan's past and thus the image of a unified nation it seeks to support.     

通过市场关系走向社会主义——对布哈林几个经济理论问题的再认识

列宁逝世以后,布哈林继续坚持和捍卫列宁的新经济政策思想,并结合俄国的实际,针对当时苏俄国民经济发展中出现的一系列问题,总结过去经济建设中的经验和教训,系统地阐释自己的观点,从而形成了关于过渡时期的经济理论.这些理论观点可以简单概括为:社会主义革命和建设的发展因各国的社会历史条件不同而具有不同的"民族类型";只有实现工业化,才能消除二元经济之间的差距;要使国民经济持续健康发展,必须重视市场调节的作用,使国民经济各部门之间保持综合平衡.     

Dependence and opposition. Problems in Soviet Estonian historiography in the late 1940s and early 1950s

Abstract

Soviet rule was established in Estonia by late autumn 1944. By that time only two historians with a PhD degree from the University of Tartu remained in the country, one of whom was Professor Hans Kruus. Until World War II, neither of the two had published any work that interpreted history from the viewpoint of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology. Thus, as far as Estonia was concerned, this type of ideologically based reinterpretation of the past did not exist, and had to be organized from scratch. The main aim of this article is to examine Estonian historians' dependence on the official Soviet interpretation of history after 1945 and during the early 1950s. How were they guided and controlled through the Stalin era, i.e. until 1953? What happened in this respect between Stalin's death and the XX CPSU Congress at the beginning of 1956? And how did the results of that Congress influence later writing of history? The article also examines the possibilities for opposition among professional historians to the official Party interpretation of history. In what context did this opposition arise, how did it manifest itself, and in what ways might it possibly have influenced Soviet Estonian society?     

Russia’s image of China and Russian-Chinese relations

Views of China in today's Russia are characterized by great diversity. There are those who stand for strengthening ties with China to counterbalance the West; those who prefer Russia balancing between various power centers; and those who fear China as a growing geopolitical rival with a potential of expanding at the expense of Russian territory. Russia's government for the foreseeable future can be expected to advocate closer ties with China. However, the real question now is not whether a future Russian leadership will advocate a more hostile or more friendly course toward China, but if it will be able to support its wishes (whatever they may be) with the real resources necessary to pursue any consistent policy. Alexander Lukin received his first degree from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations and a doctorate from Oxford University. He worked at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Soviet Embassy to the PRC, and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. From 1990 to 1993 he was an elected deputy of the Moscow City Soviet (Council), where he chaired the Sub-Committee for Inter-Regional Relations. He is the author of Russian Democrats: A Study in Political Culture (to be published by Oxford University Press in 1999) and numerous articles on Russian and Chinese politics and Russian-Chinese relations which have been published in Russia, the PRC, the U.S., the UK, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In 1997/1998 he was a visiting research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is currently a research fellow at the Center for International Studies of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Foreign Ministry (MGIMO-University) and an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.     

苏维埃制度崩溃原因的初步分析

苏联解体的轻率和突然令人震惊,但官方的苏联历史是神化的.并非国有制过度这种所谓的恶疾导致了苏维埃体制的崩溃.苏联经济落后及其被军备竞赛所耗尽只是意识形态的神话.石油价格波动同样未在苏联解体过程中发挥重要作用.后苏联时期俄罗斯相当长时期内的危机,不是从苏联延续下来,而是在拆解苏联时形成的.只有极少数公民有意识地否定苏维埃制度的主要基础.厘清苏联解体的原因,需要我们应打破教条和陈词滥调以及意识形态语言的藩篱.应区分苏维埃构想和其在实践中的具体表现--苏维埃制度.苏维埃构想并没有消灭自己,也没有退化或自我毁灭,而只是在成长中出现了疾病,其一系列制度无法适应苏联社会和苏联人发展的新形势.苏联体系的主要特点,或者说斯大林主义,是在 1905-1917年革命、内战、20 世纪 20 年代的新经济政策、30 年代的集体化和工业化、卫国战争期间形成的.当时的环境导致苏共在具体的制度设计上选择的范围很小,只能基于现实的威胁、资源潜力和历史上造就的具有惯性的文化环境.二战结束后,苏联的领导层未能妥善解决摆脱"斯大林主义",摆脱动员发展状态这样的复杂问题,进而导致了一系列的政治危机并由于冷战而深化其严重性.苏联既是被冷战的对手所扼杀,更死于自己的双手.苏联合法性的危机酝酿了 30年才成熟.苏维埃制度早期的合法性源自对群众对社会苦难的记忆.伴随着城市化的发展,至 20世纪 60-70年代,苏联社会从根本上发生了改变.但城市化给对苏维埃的不满制造了客观的前提条件.一种隐性的危险日益增大,即以前的苏维埃制度的思想基础迅速急剧地衰弱乃至消失.苏联短期内有两代感觉自己毫无生活保障的年轻人被改革、公开性、集会以及文化多元论弄得神魂颠倒.精英阶层的反苏部分的行动利用了这种世界观危机并使之加剧.而新一代领导人既无法迅速揭示也无法预防社会上已经出现的矛盾,而且无法找到有效的方法解决成熟的问题.党的高层与苏联社会现实的脱离令人震惊,他们自以为掌控着国内进程,但实际上底层的干部掌握着形势.这使得戈尔巴乔夫日益激进的改革导致雪崩式的后果.从这一意义上讲,苏联的解体是文明和世界观危机的结果.其实质在于,苏联社会与国家没能胜任在代际更替的过程中更新社会制度合法性手段的任务;无法保障文化历史类型嬗变的延续性,这种递嬗发生在现代化和城市化过程中并和整个社会走出20世纪20至50年代的动员型发展状态的危机相吻合.     

Russia,the death penalty,and Europe: the ambiguities of influence

Studies of capital punishment worldwide investigate how international influence affects the death penalty. We analyze European influence on the death penalty in Russia over the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, using two parameters: the changing mechanisms of influence in each period and the death penalty's significance in the broader spectrum of punitive violence. On the first parameter, in the tsarist period, European influence on Russian policy was “productive” – exercised through prestige, moral suasion, and “diffusion.” In the Soviet period, European influence was blocked. In the post-Soviet period, European influence is coercive, as the Council of Europe has unsuccessfully sought to compel Russia to abolish its death penalty. On the second parameter, the death penalty in Russia has always been only one of many forms of state-sanctioned punitive killing. In consequence, the Council's involvement in Russia's death penalty has produced an incoherent policy outcome and has entangled the Council in Russia's authoritarian politics. Russia thus exemplifies the hazards of external involvement in death penalty abolition.     

The Politics of Citizenship Policy in Post-Soviet Russia

Russian citizenship policy has evolved in puzzling ways from the 1990s, when all former Soviet citizens were entitled to simplified access to Russian citizenship, to the 2002 citizenship law, which put an abrupt end to this policy, giving few but those born on the territory of Russia the right to citizenship. Since 2002, the right to Russian citizenship has been extended to some additional categories of former Soviet citizens, but without a return to the expansive policy of the 1990s. Drawing on legal and governmental sources and the scholarly literature, this article looks at elite debates over citizenship rules to analyze Russian citizenship politics and policies, focusing on citizenship rules affecting former Soviet citizens. These are examined to uncover the causes of legislative zigzags and ascertain the applicability of existing citizenship theories to Russian realities.     

Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography

Interest in the violence of the Soviet regime has been a concern primarily of more conservative historians, while those on the Left have either been discomforted by the excessive brutality of the Russian Civil War and Stalinism or have looked for rationalizations for the necessity of violence. One tendency in the historiography has been to see violence as deeply embedded in the Bolshevik project, part of the Marxist or Leninist effort to transform the world or perfect the human being. Revolutionary and Stalinist violence are seen as similar or intimately linked, and differences between them have been largely effaced. This essay argues that the violence and terror of the Civil War years is best understood as part of wartime exigencies as well as choices made by the Bolsheviks and their enemies, while Stalinist violence was much more the product of the will of Stalin and his closest collaborators in their consolidation of autocratic power, and was far more gratuitous and irrational than the violence of the fledgling Soviet regime.     

Russia and the Kurds: A Soft-Power Tool for the Kremlin?

Russia has been the Kurds’ patron for more than two centuries, motivated primarily by the cynical desire to use them against adversaries in broader great-power games while casting itself as a champion of the Kurdish cause. Russia's longstanding and multifaceted relationship with the Kurds demonstrates that when it comes to geopolitics, the United States has more than brute force to contend with. The Russian state also utilizes soft power as an authoritarian state defines it: a tool of pragmatic leverage. While the Kurds are not a monolith, they are anxious about the trajectory of US politics and feel they cannot rely on anyone. The Russian state has opportunities to undermine American interests in places such as Syria and Iraq through its connections with Kurdish groups. This article reviews tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet policies toward the Kurds, including Kurdish communities in Russia. It concludes with a discussion about implications for the United States, given that Moscow will not let go of its Kurdish card, including in the context of the Ukraine invasion.     

The titularization of Latvian secondary schools: The historical legacy of Soviet policy implementation

Abstract

Few would deny that the Soviet occupation has had an effect on post-restoration policy making and implementation in Latvia. Indeed, many commentators of post-Soviet politics insist that we must come to terms with the Soviet to understand the post-Soviet. In our view, the effects of the Soviet legacy on the policy process are clearly apparent in post-restoration Latvia, specifically in the area of language education policy. This article argues that both Soviet and post-Soviet policy making and implementation can be characterized in three ways: duplicity, a Soviet ethos, and “professionalization”. In what follows, we first engage with the Soviet policy process in general and the 1958–59 education reforms specifically. Based on interviews with education professionals, teachers and parents, we then analyze Latvian education laws and their implementation in 2004, highlighting the legacy of Soviet governance.     

Reflections on Putin and the Media

A political scientist investigates the extent to which, under Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin consolidated control over the Russian media. Conceptually, a contrast is drawn between the Soviet and post-Soviet systems of media control. Data-bases are used to illuminate imbalances of television coverage of presidential candidates and public officials as well as the evolution of popular distrust of the media. Comparisons are drawn with President Alberto Fujimori's defunct regime in Peru and speculation is offered as to the fragility of the Kremlin's control over the media.     

‘How can I be post-Soviet if I was never Soviet?’ Rethinking categories of time and social change – a perspective from Kulob,southern Tajikistan

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Kulob region of southern Tajikistan, this paper examines the extent to which the existing periodization ‘Soviet/post-Soviet’ is still valid to frame scholarly works concerning Central Asia. It does so through an analysis of ‘alternative temporalities’ conveyed by Kulob residents to the author. These alternative temporalities are fashioned in especially clear ways in a relationship to the physical transformations occurring to two types of housing, namely flats in building blocks and detached houses. Without arguing that the categories ‘Soviet’ and ‘post-Soviet’ have become futile, the author advocates that the uncritically use of Soviet/post-Soviet has the unwanted effect of shaping the Central Asian region as a temporalized and specialized ‘other’.     

What price access to the open seas? The geopolitics of oil and gas transmission from the Trans-Caspian republics

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was the world's largest hydrocarbon producer. The landmass over which these resources are distributed is vast and the reserves mostly landlocked. To convey these hydrocarbons to refineries and to market, the Soviets constructed the largest integrated pipeline networks in the world. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new competing national interests have produced tensions over these energy resources and transmission corridors, with economically detrimental and often irrational consequences. In Central Asia, the post-Soviet Republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan produce significant amounts of hydrocarbons and export their oil and gas to or through Russian Federation territory. Russian government policy aims to continue exercising political control over these resources and to maximize Moscow's share of profits from their export. This paper examines oil and gas transmission issues in Central Asia, against a backdrop of emerging new relationships between the Russian Federation and the three post-Soviet republics, the resurgent strategic competition between Russia and the United States, China's developing power base in the region and Iran's potentially key geographic position for channelling Caspian energy supplies towards the Persian Gulf.     

Sewing to satisfaction: craft-based entrepreneurs in contemporary Kyrgyzstan

This article focuses on the reassembling of apparel production in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. We contribute to this special issue on well-being in Central Asia by examining how individual craft-based apparel producers (a subset of producers in the apparel industry) describe the process through which they built upon their Soviet past and reoriented their professional trajectories in a new competitive market environment. These producers locate professional satisfaction in their ability to draw upon and creatively re-employ local knowledge and experience learned in Soviet institutions, ultimately – as they articulate and perceive – deriving pride and well-being from the process of selling highly regarded ethnically inspired apparel products both at home and abroad.