The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics

This essay works through some of the necessary preliminary questions in thinking about Soviet colonialism in the Baltics. It opens by tracing the prehistory of critical thinking about Soviet colonialism in the 1960s and considers why the topic of Soviet colonialism has not (or not yet) become a dominant way to understand Soviet history. The central question posed by the article is whether one can speak about the Soviet invasions of the Baltic States as ‘colonization’. It proposes that, initially, communist Russia did not in fact seek to colonize the Baltic States and instead ‘occupied’ them; however, this initial period of occupation later developed into a period of a colonial rule.     

From princely fiefdoms to Soviet nations: interethnic border conflicts in the North Caucasus and the village of Lesken

This article examines interethnic border conflicts that accompanied the Soviet division of the North Caucasus into ethno-territorial autonomous districts after the Civil War. It traces the tumultuous, and often violent, events that led to the transfer of the ethnically Ossetian village of Lesken from the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Oblast to the North-Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. The essay shows how the Soviet-sponsored ethnicization of territory exacerbated interethnic tensions in a multiethnic region that defied neat delimitation into coherent ethno-national administrative units. It highlights the ‘dual-assimilation’ that accompanied the introduction of the national principle and the delimitation of national borders. Ethno-national mobilization of populations in defence of their ‘national’ territory from neighbouring ethnic groups, though achieved for reasons of daily survival, represented an initial lesson in the importance of national identity in the modernizing Soviet state, as villagers learned to speak national and Bolshevik. In concluding, this paper seeks to understand the larger significance of Soviet border making in the North Caucasus by exploring issues of continuity and change, both in terms of imperial governance and the lived experience of ethnicity.     

From the Achaemenids to Somoni: national identity and iconicity in the landscape of Dushanbe’s capitol complex

This article focuses on the iconicity of contemporary Dushanbe’s capitol complex, with its state-sponsored architecture and memorial culture, part of the government of Tajikistan’s national identity construction. Dushanbe’s architecture post-independence is actant, a mnemonic and iconographical bridge between the present and favoured historical periods in a quest for national origins. A bricolage of historical symbols, including those of Achaemenid Iran and the early Islamic Samanids, is displayed here in a city with Soviet foundations. Together with pan-Iranian iconography is a desire by the government of Tajikistan for monumentality for its own sake. The capitol complex evokes the natural world, connected to a Central Asian conception of sacred space, suggesting an interlacing of power and religious authority. These monumental building projects are taking place against the backdrop of the destruction of Dushanbe’s ‘authentic’ Soviet architecture and built heritage in the capitol complex, itself a container for collective memory.     

Discourses of Russian-speaking youth in Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan: Soviet legacies and responses to nation-building

ABSTRACT

Research into post-independence identity shifts among Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking minorities has outlined a number of possible pathways, such as diasporization, integrated national minority status and ethnic separatism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people in Almaty and Karaganda, I examine how Russian-speaking minorities identify with the state and imagine their place in a ‘soft’ or ‘hybrid’ post-Soviet authoritarian system. What is found is that Russian-speaking minorities largely accept their status beneath the Kazakh ‘elder brother’ and do not wish to identify as a ‘national minority’. Furthermore, they affirm passive loyalty to the political status quo while remaining disinterested in political representation. Russian-speaking minorities are also ambivalent towards Kazakh language promotion and anxious about the increasing presence of Kazakh-speakers in urban spaces. This article argues that two factors are central to these stances among Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking minorities: the persistence of Soviet legacies and the effects of state discourse and policy since 1991.     

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.     

Gender and ethnicity in the Soviet Muslim peripheries: a feminist postcolonial geography of women’s work in the Tajik SSR (1950–1991)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the articulation and experience of Soviet gendered ideology regarding work in the Tajik SSR, one of the Muslim Soviet peripheries, during the post-war period ending with Perestroika. Central Asian women’s work was used for economic purposes, as well as being a key driver for fulfilling the ideological objective of emancipating Central Asian women from religion and tradition. Through a feminist postcolonial geography approach, attentive to questions of discourse and material lived experiences, this article explores the ways in which gender and ethnicity were co-produced by Soviet ideology. Analysis of scientific publications produced by Tajikistani female researchers, and of women’s magazines from the 1950s, is contrasted with ethnographic data on workers from various collective farms and semi-urban places, including ‘work heroines’ (peshqadam). Our findings illustrate the hybrid nature of the Soviet regime, advancing theoretical debates on the use of postcolonial theory in Soviet Central Asia.     

Unfolding the coverage of illicit drugs in Estonian print press

The aim of this article is to analyze the changes in the coverage of illicit drugs by the Estonian press in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restitution of Estonia’s independence. The article adapts Anthony Downs’ ‘issue-attention cycle,’ in which he proposes that public concern about certain issues follows a particular five-phase model. The author of this paper conducted a content analysis of 1523 press articles from 1993 to 2009. The analysis indicates that coverage of drug issues follows four of the five phases of Downs’ model, the exception being the fifth ‘post-problem’ phase.     

‘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’.     

Creating and contesting meanings of place and community in the Ylay Talaa Valley of Kyrgyzstan

Formal schooling was virtually non-existent before the Soviet power in nomadic Kyrgyzstan, as communal life and learning was organized informally at the household and clan level. During the Soviet period, however, educational success became an avenue to a new form of upward social and geographical mobility, and the school provided new and prestigious positions for local teachers and administrators. This paper explores how the externally imposed Soviet collectivization policies reshaped the understandings and meanings of place and community during the twentieth century, a reshaping that centrally involved redefining education and the importance of ‘the school’. In the post-Soviet period, the utility of secondary and higher education in local and national labour markets has diminished, as has the power and prestige of educators. Yet the appeal of education lingers on. The authors seek to document these claims using oral histories, ethnographic interviews and participant observations in the Ylay Talaa Valley of the Kyrgyz Republic.     

The cultural baggage of Khorezmian identity: traditional forms of singing and dancing in Khorezm and in Tashkent

After Uzbekistan gained its independence from Soviet rule, important political and economic changes took place. The mobility of the population has since then increased drastically and created new spaces for the negotiation of social identities as well as new strategies for identity politics among the culturally and regionally diverse population of Uzbekistan. This article aims to contribute to the discussions on social identity and its ‘contents’ in the light of migration processes. The main argument centres on the importance of what Barth called the ‘cultural stuff’ of social identities when maintaining boundaries during identification processes. The analysis focuses specifically on certain singing and dancing practices of Khorezmians. It shows how these practices survive, but are also transformed in the context of Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, where people from different regions reside together and are engaged in performing and presenting their own group identity in reference to ‘others’.     

‘On the outskirts of the Empire’: Joseph Brodsky and Lithuania

This article explores the role of Lithuania in Joseph Brodsky’s life and works before and after his exile from Russia in 1972. As a former Soviet republic, Lithuania represented an intermediary space for Brodsky both culturally and geographically, contributing to his realization that it was a ‘rehearsal’ for his actual emigration. However, Brodsky’s notion of Lithuania changes when, after 1972, instead of representing a simulacrum of the ‘abroad,’ the poet sees Lithuania as a ‘home’ from afar. Emigration, in Brodsky’s case, thus became a realization of the myth of exile implicit in his earlier texts about Lithuania.     

Contemporary art on the current refugee crisis: the problematic of aesthetics versus ethics

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on contemporary artworks outlining the current refugee flow from the Middle East to the West, namely to European countries together with the US and Canada. Drawing primarily on Jacques Rancière’s conceptualization of ethical art versus aesthetics, I explore how various journeys of refugees in its many forms have been represented in the contemporary art scene. My aim is to concretize the theoretical debate surrounding the ‘political’ engagement of critical art on the issue of refugee representation through various prominent artworks and art practices starting with the well-known image of Alan Kurdi’s and Ai Weiwei’s replication of this image in his artwork. I will analyse when and in which configurations aesthetics and ethics can be found in contemporary art on the issue of the ‘refugee crisis’. I argue that art on refugees can be grouped into two primary categories that I define as ‘human condition assessment’ and ‘agency empowerment’. As such, I demonstrate in practice how contemporary art on the current refugee crisis both employs and moves beyond the ethical subject matters by challenging abject victimhood as well as the ideal of egalitarian art for the underrepresented and thus assumingly voiceless, depoliticized refugees.     

Competing narratives and the social construction of reality: The GDR in transition

This article examines dominant ‘social constructions of reality’ which circulate in the world of ‘academia’. Its empirical case study is the former GDR in the transition from a Socialist state to a part of the Western democratic world, in general, and from a Soviet satellite to the smaller part of unified Germany, in particular. The article introduces the major narratives used to describe this process of transition, it shows the narratives’ ambivalent relationship to historical and empirical evidence and, finally, offers some conclusions about the impact of narratives on opinion formation and applied politics. It shows why certain narratives gained the ears of the ‘powerful’ whilst others were quickly and silently forgotten.     

Natural resource policies and standard of living in Kazakhstan

This paper evaluates Kazakhstan's natural resource policies and their impact on the standard of living of the Kazakhstan population within the framework of three determinative factors: globalization and international markets; Soviet legacy and ‘resource nationalism’; and Nursultan Nazarbayev and his authoritarian leadership. It argues that natural resource policies of Kazakhstan failed to improve the living standards of the majority of people in Kazakhstan, especially the poor and those living in oil-producing and rural areas, despite increasing oil prices and revenues. The argument will be supported with an analysis of Kazakhstan's oil wealth distribution in light of global initiatives as well as with evidence derived from official reports and statistical data to find out whether Nazarbayev's widely discussed ‘resource nationalism’ is ‘nationalistic’ enough to favour the whole nation.     

‘The highest flights of circumlocutory art’: Britain,Latvia and Recognizing the Soviet Annexation of 1940

The British Government never recognized the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States in June 1940, but almost did so early in 1942 and was ready to do so again in 1944, when it took at face value Stalin's revision of the Soviet constitution. The result was ‘trouble’ from the Baltic ambassadors in London, particularly the Latvian ambassador. The British Government changed its stance in autumn 1945 when the revisions to the Soviet constitution proved to be sham. Thereafter British policy amounted to procrastination, as the developing Cold War prevented a final post-war settlement.     

The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania: successes,challenges, perspectives

The article summarizes the history of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania and outlines the work it has accomplished to date. The author reviews the problems and controversies surrounding the Commission’s research into the post-1940 period of Lithuania’s history and describes the clashing perspectives inherent in the starkly different Lithuanian, Jewish, Western and Soviet wartime narratives.     

From the Bare and Arid Hills to Anatolia,the Loveable and Beautiful: Kemalist Project of ‘National Modernity’ in Anatolian Countryside

This article discusses how the discourse of ‘Anatolia, the loveable and beautiful’ was developed after the retreat of the Ottomans from the Balkans and how Anatolia emerged as the construction site of the Kemalist project of ‘national modernity’ and ‘Anatolian enlightenment’. Based on a meticulous reading of the ethnographies, histories and monographs on Anatolian cities and regions published between 1923 and 1950 as well as the journals of the local branches of People's Houses, the article demonstrates how the regime attempted to establish its legitimacy by incorporating the local elements into the ‘grand national narrative’ and nationalizing the Anatolian countryside.     

'… the state begins to wither away…': Notes on the Interpretation of the Paris Commune by Bakunin, Marx, Engels and Lenin

Bakunin (1871): ‘Revolutionary socialism has just attempted its first demonstration, both splendid and practical, in the Paris Commune …. I am above all a supporter of it because it was a bold and outspoken negation of the state.’ Marx (1871): ‘The Commune—that is the reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organized form of their suppression.’ Engels (1891): ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat … Do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’ Lenin (1919): ‘Only the Soviet organization of the State can really effect the immediate break-up and total destruction of the old, i.e. bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery which has been … the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch-making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second.’     

Soviet policy toward the two Koreas, 1985–1991: The new political thinking and power

This research explores the evolution of the Soviet Union’s Korea policy between 1985 and 1991, focusing on the correlation between Gorbachev’s shifting power position within the Soviet leadership and the development of the Soviet Union’s new policy toward the two Koreas. Soviet leaders utilized policy issues (foreign and domestic) to mobilize support in their internal power struggle. Conversely, they needed to establish a firm power base before launching new policies. Thus, power and policy in the Soviet political system often enjoyed a mutually reinforcing relationship, and foreign policy issues became entangled in the domestic political process. As Gorbachev’s power position improved and his reform policy (new political thinking) was refined, Soviet policy toward the two Koreas correspondingly evolved in three phases: (1) Gorbachev rising: the formulation of the new political thinking (March 1985–summer 1988); (2) Gorbachev ascendant: the implementation of new political thinking (fall 1988–summer 1990); and (3) Gorbachev in decline: the continuing momentum of the new policy (fall 1990–December 1991). In late 1990–1991, Soviet Korea policy was characterized by an undisguised tilt toward Seoul. Nevertheless, the Soviets did not consider Soviet relations with the two Koreas to be a zero-sum game. Moscow sought to establish a balanced relationship with both Pyongyang and Seoul, and hoped to play an active role in peace and security on the Korean peninsula.     

Inscribing the Arab Self: Butrus al-Bustani and Paradigms of Subjective Reform

This article attempts to understand Butrus al-Bustani's Nafir Suriyya as a foundational text in the creation of a new discourse of modern Arab subjectivity. More specifically, the study examines the epistemology that circumscribes al-Bustani's conception of the modern Syro-Lebanese Arab citizen. The article highlights the nomenclature fundamental to al-Bustani's formula for ‘concord and unity’ and ‘love of the nation’ in the wake of the inter-confessional violence, or civil war, of 1860 in Lebabnon and Damascus. In doing so, it reveals how conceptions of Arab self-hood are enframed by a binary of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. While identifying native ‘failure’, al-Bustani displaces it into several different agents in his attempt to salvage his conception of an ‘ideal’ native subject. Inevitably, the author demonstrates, this ideal national subject that Nafir narrates is mired in an inescapable Hegelian, master‐slave, struggle with the West.