Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T11:20:27.144Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Timur Dadabaev
Timur Dadabaev*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 as Russi assimilados (Russian-speaking Sovietophiles). However, in everyday life, relations between the assimilados and 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.

Keywords

Soviet ethnic policycollective memoryCentral Asia
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 41 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 1026 - 1048
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abashin, S. 2008. Natsionalizmy v Tsentral'noi Azii: V Poiskah Identichnosti. Aleteya: Sankt-Peterburg.Google Scholar
Abashin, S., Arapov, N. Yu., Bekmakhanova, N. E., Boronin, O. V., Brusina, O. I., Bykov, A. Yu., Vasil'ev, D. V., et al. 2008. Tsentral'naia Aziia v Sostave Rossijskoi Imperii. Moskwa: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.Google Scholar
Adams, Laura. 2005. “Modernity, Postcolonialism, and Theatrical Form in Uzbekistan.” Slavic Review 64 (2): 333–354.Google Scholar
Alimova, D. A., and Khan, B. C., eds. 2011. Etnokul'turnye Processy v Sovremennom Polietnicheskom Gorode: Na Materialakh Tashkenta. Tashkent: Institut Istorii Akademii Nauk Uzbekistana.Google Scholar
Baločkaitė, Rasa. 2011. “Pleasures of Late Socialism in Soviet Lithuania: Strategies of Resistance and Dissent.” Journal of Baltic Studies 42 (3): 409–425.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1998. “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism, the State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism.” In The State of the Nation, edited by Hall, John, 272–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse?. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Chislennost’ i Sostav Naseleniya SSSR: Po Dannym Vsesoyuznoi Perepisi Naseleniya. 1984. Moscow: Finansy i Statistika.Google Scholar
Dadabaev, Timur. 2004. “Post-Soviet Realities of Society in Uzbekistan.” Central Asian Survey 23 (2): 141–166.Google Scholar
Dadabaev, Timur. 2007. “How does Transition Work? Central Asian Survey 26 (3): 407–428.Google Scholar
Dadabaev, Timur. 2008. “Introduction to Survey Research in Post-Soviet Central Asia.” Asian Research Trends: New Series 3: 45–69.Google Scholar
Dadabaev, Timur. 2010. “Power, Social Life, and Public Memory in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.” Inner Asia 12: 25–48.Google Scholar
Dave, Bhavna. 1996. “National Revival in Kazakhstan: Language Shift and Identity Change.” Post-Soviet Affairs 12 (1): 51–72.Google Scholar
Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
De Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. 1999. “The Discursive Construction of National Identities.” Discourse and Society 10 (2): 149–173.Google Scholar
Denison, Michael. 2009. “The Art of the Impossible: Political Symbolism, and the Creation of National Identity and Collective Memory in Post-Soviet Turkmenistan.” Europe-Asia Studies 61 (7): 1167–1187.Google Scholar
Fierman, William. 1981. “Uzbek Feelings of Ethnicity. A Study of Attitudes Expressed in Recent Uzbek Literature.” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 22 (2/3): 187–229.Google Scholar
Fierman, William. 2006. “Language and Education in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Kazakhmedium Instruction in Urban Schools.” The Russian Review 65 (1): 98–116.Google Scholar
Forest, Benjamin, Johnson, Juliet, and Till, Karen. 2004. “Post-totalitarian National Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia.” Social and Cultural Geography 5 (3): 357–380.Google Scholar
Gammer, Moshe. 2000. “Post-Soviet Central Asia and Post-colonial Francophone Africa: Some Associations.” Middle Eastern Studies 36 (2): 124–149.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 2006. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gorenburg, D. 2006. “Soviet Nationalities Policy and Assimilation.” In Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine, edited by Arel, D. and Ruble, B., 273–303. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Francine. 2005. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Inkeles, Alex, and Bauer, Raymond A. 1959. The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. 2007. “The Politics of Gender and the Soviet Paradox: Neither Colonized, Nor Modern?” Central Asian Survey 26 (4): 601–623.Google Scholar
Kobyl, R. 2007. “Russkie v Uzbekistane: Ne zavoevateli.” BBC News, August 2. http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/in_depth/newsid_6919000/6919539.stm.Google Scholar
Kosmarskaya, Natalya. 2006. Deti imperii’ v postsovetskoi Tsentral'noi Azii. Adaptivnye praktiki i mental'nye sdvigi (russkie v Kirgizii, 1992–2002). Moscow: Natalis Press.Google Scholar
Kozlov, V. I. 1977. Etnicheskaya demografiya. Moskwa: Statistika.Google Scholar
Kuzio, Taras. 2002. “History, Memory and Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Colonial Space.” Nationalities Papers 30 (2): 241–264.Google Scholar
Levada, Yu. A., ed. 1993. Sovetskij Prostoi Chelovek. Moskwa: Mirovoi Okean.Google Scholar
Martin, Terry. 2001. Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Murtazaeva, Rakhbarkhon. 2010. Tolerantnost kak integriruyuschiy factor v mnogonatsional'nom Uzbekistane. Tashkent: Uzbekistan.Google Scholar
Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR, Statesticheski Ezhegodnik. 1970. Moskwa: Finansy i statistika.Google Scholar
Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR, Statesticheski Ezhegodnik. 1979. Moskwa: Finansy i statistika.Google Scholar
Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR, Statesticheski Ezhegodnik. 1983. Moskwa: Finansy i statistika.Google Scholar
Naselenie SSSR: Spravochnik. 1983. Moskwa: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury.Google Scholar
Ozkirimli, Umut. 2005. Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2008. “Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries: Language Revival, Language Removal, and Sociolinguistic Theory.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 11 (3–4): 275–314.Google Scholar
Ryan, Michael, and Prentice, Richard. 1987. Social Trends in the Soviet Union from 1950. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sahadeo, Jeff. 2007. “Druzhba Narodov or Second-class Citizenship? Soviet Asian Migrants in a Post-colonial World.” Central Asian Survey 26 (4): 559–579.Google Scholar
Saidbaev, T. S. 1978. Islam i Obschestvo: Opyt Istoriko-Sotsiologicheskogo Issledovaniya. Moskwa: Nauka.Google Scholar
Shlapentokh, V., Sendich, M., and Payin, E., eds. 1994. The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Slezkine, Yuri. 1994. “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism.” Slavic Review 53 (2): 414–452.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. 1984. “Ethnic Myths and Ethnic Revivals.” Journal of European Sociology 25: 283–305.Google Scholar
Tokhtakhodjaeva, Marfua. 2001. Utomlyonnye Proshlym: Reislamizatsiya Obeschestva i Polozhenie Zhneschin v Uzbekistane. Tashkent.Google Scholar
Tranum, Sam, ed. 2009. Life at the Edge of the Empire: Oral Histories of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek: Sam Tranum & Co.Google Scholar