From hero worship to organized oblivion: representations of the People’s Front in Tajikistan’s national memory

The People’s Front of Tajikistan (PFT), one of the parties to the country’s civil war, was instrumental in bringing the government of President Emomali Rahmon to power. The article examines the official strategies of memorialization of the PFT from the early 1990s to the present. It discusses the emergence of a canon of the PFT heroes and martyrs and locates it within the nascent national mythology after independence. It argues that the maintenance of this canon was rendered impossible by the imperatives of consolidating presidential authority and securing national reconciliation following the 1997 peace deal. It concludes with an examination of the growing tension between the official line of historical amnesia on the one hand and resurgent social memory on the other. People in Tajikistan are increasingly interested in revisiting the events and protagonists of the war to develop a sense of the past, and remembering the PFT forms an essential part of their search for shared history and a sense of identity.     

“Imagining community” in Soviet Kazakhstan. An historical analysis of narrative on nationalism in Kazakh-Soviet literature

Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, the field of literary and cultural analysis of the origins of current national symbols and texts in this region is yet not fully acknowledged and discovered. This article tries to shed light onto the literary construction of an ethnic identity and its historical background in Soviet Kazakhstan and its influence on the post-Soviet ideology in this multicultural country. In doing so it investigates the ways and the time when most of the important historical epics were “re-written,” brought back by the Kazakh writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century. The importance of investigating this period and this phenomenon is twofold. First, it provides further contribution to the Soviet creation of binary approaches to the formation of ethnic identities and the continuous attack on local nationalisms. Following the arguments of some scholars in the field (e.g. [Adams, Laura. 1999. “Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan's National Culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 2; Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity and Power. London: Routledge]) this asserts that the local cultural elites found ways of bargaining and re-structuring such identity contributing to its “localization” through the usage of pre-Soviet and pre-Russian historical symbols. In a way, they were able to construct their own “imagined community” and resistance to the past and existing (according to them) colonialism within the given framework of Kazakh-Soviet literature. Secondly, the historicity that became a leitmotif of most important literary works and later on a main focus of national ideology in post-Soviet Kazakhstan must be viewed not just as an instrument of legitimation in this post-colonial state but also as a strong continuity of cultural and ethnic identity lines. The very fact that a detailed and continued genealogy of Kazakh medieval tribes and rulers was the main focus of major works by such famous Kazakh writers as Mukhtar Auezov or Ilyas Yessenberlin demonstrates the importance of the “continuity” and kinship and family lines for Kazakhs. The paper raises the questions of how national and elitist these movements were before the independence and how the further post-independent projects of using and re-establishing these links and continuity formed more questions than answers for the nation-builders in independent Kazakhstan.     

Responsibility and National Memory: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem

How are Israelis to incorporate the Palestinian refugee problem in their national memory? Scholarly historical accounts of the 1948 period can play an important role in this regard. Benny Morris's account allows them to take responsibility while maintaining the integrity of their national identity. Shabtai Teveth's account allows them to avoid responsibility, but at the cost of ignoring mountains of evidence. Nur Masalha's account in contrast, burdens them with a responsibility that jeopardizes their national bond. It is reasonable to expect them to adopt the first and reject the second, but it is unreasonable to expect them to adopt the third, irrespective of its scholarly merits.     

The Religious Dimension of Post-Communist “Ethnic” Conflict

1 This paper is a result of the ongoing research project, “Transnational Politics in the Black Sea Rim: Religions, States, and Minorities” (April 2009–March 2012) financed by the Japan Ministry of Education. The draft of this paper was presented at the international conference, “The Modernization of Russia and Eurasia: Challenges and Opportunities,” held at National Chengchi University (Taipei) 13–14 November 2010. View all notesThe collapse of socialist regimes resulted in tremendous regional realignments in the regions surrounding the heartland of Eurasia. Remarkably, not only states, but also transnational actors have played significant roles in this process. This study highlights transnational ethnicities (Mingrelians, Armenians, and Muslims) in Abkhazia, and tries to describe how the involvement of transnational religious organizations (such as the Armenian Apostolic Church and Turkey's Diyanet) affected the politics around these minorities. In the Black Sea rim, interstate and transnational politics are rather autonomous from each other. For example, when scores of powerful countries, such as the United States and European Union member states, desperately tried to ignore Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, regarding it as a lawless act, Turkey's Diyanet admitted that Russia's recognition of Abkhazia created a new legal situation and began to fulfill its long-dreamed-of desire to help the Abkhazian Muslims. According to political conjuncture in Abkhazia, the same Gali population changes from Georgians to Mingrelians and back. This demonstrates how ethnic categories are used in a constructivist way in the Black Sea rim.     

Slovene commercial diplomacy in the Western Balkan countries

The aim of the article is to present activities of Slovene commercial diplomacy in the Western Balkan markets. The result of the analysis proves that Slovene commercial diplomacy in the Western Balkan markets followed enterprise preferences. Thus, in the first decade of transition (1991–2000) commercial diplomacy focused only on ex-Yugoslav markets, while non-ex-YU (Western Balkan) markets became interesting only after the year 2000. The article argues that this can be explained by the reactiveness (instead of proactiveness) of Slovene enterprises, which stems from the Slovene national character.     

The Quality of Annual Reporting by Italian Museums: An International Comparison

We study the quality of disclosure and the level of accountability of Italian museums using MPADI2 index (Wei et al. 2008; Botes et al. 2013) on a sample of 13 annual reports which, given the legal status of some entities, encompasses the activity of 93 Italian public and private museums, many of which are within the most visited in Italy and worldwide. The results allow for an international comparison with the annual reports of a panel of USA, UK and European museums which have undergone the same MPADI2 analysis, giving an interesting insight about museum different disclosing practices across countries.     

Those Who Remain

ABSTRACT

Kashmiri Pandits are a minority ethnic group from the Kashmir Valley in northern India. In 1989, the separatist movement to free Kashmir from India culminated in widespread violence against members of all communities, and initially against Kashmiri Pandits in particular. There was a mass exodus of nearly 95% of the Kashmiri Pandit community during the early 1990s. Sixteen years later, there are approximately 7,000 Kashmiri Pandits who permanently reside in Kashmir. These “non-migrants” have remained in Kashmir due to economic constraints, familial circumstances, and/or a deep attachment to the land, to name a few reasons. They face grave problems today, including lack of employment opportunities, government corruption and complacency, and inadequate monetary and moral support from the Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora.     

Teaching silence in the schoolroom: whither national history in Sierra Leone and El Salvador?

This article addresses the divergent cultures of silence and memorialisation about the civil wars in Sierra Leone and El Salvador, and examines the role that sites of remembering and forgetting play in crafting post-war citizens. In the formal education sector the ministries of education in each country have taken different approaches to teaching the history of the war, with Sierra Leone emphasising forgetting and El Salvador geared towards remembering war history. In both countries nongovernmental actors, particularly peace museums, are filling the memory gap. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in each country, the article documents how the culture of silence that pervades Sierra Leone enables a progress-driven ‘looking forward’ without teaching the past, while El Salvador is working on weaving a culture of memorialisation into its democratisation process. The article argues that knowledge about civil war history can raise young people’s awareness of the consequences of violence and promote civic engagement in its deterrence.     

Turkish nationalism at its beginning: Analysis of Türk Yurdu, 1913–1918

Turkish nationalism became an element of the Ottoman political scene in the late nineteenth century. Although its roots can be traced back to the Hamidian period (1876–1909), Turkish nationalism emerged as one of the most important political ideologies during the Constitutional Regime. Wars that the Ottoman State participated in from 1911 to the end of the empire in 1918 resulted in population and land losses. Especially, following the Balkan Wars, most of the lands that were populated by non-Muslim and non-Turkish subjects were lost. Within this context, Turkish nationalism came to be seen as the most dominant ideological tool intended to save the Empire. This article argues that Turkish nationalism emerged as a reactive ideology that addressed Ottomanism and Islamism, which were the two other dominant state ideologies during the late Ottoman State, due to the changing political context. In this article, Türk Yurdu, a well-known and influential periodical, is used as the primary source of reference to demonstrate the basic features of Turkish nationalism in its infancy.     

Between a Scientist and a Government Employee: Analyzing the Occupational Identity of National Research Institute Researchers in Korea

ABSTRACT

This study, using the data from the questionnaire survey of researchers working for Korean national research institutes, investigates the consequences of conflicting occupational identities. Those researchers may have two different occupational identities: as a scientist and/or a civil servant. Those with a strong scientist identity support individualist values (self-development for research capabilities, pro-incentive, and information sharing) more solidly than those with a strong civil servant identity; for public-social values (altruism, trust in other organizational members, and organizational commitment), vice versa. The study casts practical implications for balanced alignment between self-recognized occupational identities and managerial strategies (incentive, performance evaluation, and training).