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The Uighurs of the Kazakstan Borderlands: Migration and the Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Sean R. Roberts
Sean R. Roberts*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, U.S.A.
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Extract

One of the most important characteristics of the newly independent republic of Kazakstan is the multinational nature of its population. In addition to the members of the titular Kazak nationality, numerous Slavic, Turkic, and other peoples have made, or have been forced to make, Kazakstan their home. Most of these peoples, with the exception of the Kazaks, could be characterized as diasporas. However, the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people living in Kazakstan, are not a standard example of a diaspora. Unlike many of Kazakstan's diasporic communities, such as the Russians, Koreans, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Germans, who can rely on outside support from recognized nation states to protect their rights, the Uighurs are a stateless people whose claims to sovereignty are not internationally recognized. Furthermore, unlike other stateless diasporas in Kazakstan, such as the Tatars, the Chechens, and the Mesketian TurksM whose homelands are clearly located outside of Kazakstan, the Uighurs’ “homeland” in China's Xinjiang province borders on the former Soviet republic, which raises the question of whether or not many Uighurs are indigenous to the territory of Kazakstan.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 511 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of State. I would also like to thank the Institute of Uighur Studies under the Kazakstan Academy of Sciences for serving as my host institution during my research. In addition, I would like to thank the participants of Professor Soo-Young Chin's “Migration and Culture Change” seminar at the University of Southern California during the Fall of 1995 and Professor Azade-Ayse Rorlich for valuable feedback on many of the ideas expressed in this article. None of these organizations or individuals is responsible for the views expressed. In emphasizing this point, the political scientist Martha Brill Olcott has gone as far as to call the newly independent state a “republic of minorities.” See Martha Brill Olcott, “Kazakhstan: A Republic of Minorities,” in Bremmer, Ian and Taras, Ray, eds, Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2. Xinjiang, meaning “new dominion” in Mandarin, is the name given to this area by the Chinese. Uighurs themselves usually prefer to call the area either Uighurstan, justifying Uighur control of the region, or Eastern Turkestan, which reflects the common Turkic roots of most of the region's population. For convenience, I have chosen to refer to the area here using the internationally recognized title of Xinjiang. However, in doing so, I do not refute the Uighurs’ right to call their “homeland” by their own name.Google Scholar

3. Other Uighur diasporas that do not border on Xinjiang, however, do exist in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Australia, western Europe, and the United States. None of these communities of Uighurs approaches the size of the one in Kazakstan.Google Scholar

4. According to Soviet census figures, 185,301 Uighurs lived in Kazakstan in 1989. The figure of 200,000 is projected for the population today according to scholars at the Institute of Uighur Studies under the Kazakstan Academy of Sciences. Neither of these figures, however, reflects the unknown number of Uighur sojourners from China who presently work and live temporarily in Kazakstan.Google Scholar

5. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Uighurs of the Ili valley on both sides of the Sino-Russian frontier were referred to as Taranchi. The etymology of this ethnonym is from the Mongol word for “wheat”—taran and the Turkic suffix chi which denotes the profession of people. This designation of “wheat farmer,” which was used to describe only the Uighurs of the Ili valley both in China and Russia, was replaced by the more encompassing name of “Uighur,” adopted during the Soviet period to refer to all of the native Turkic-speaking Muslim agriculturists and traders from Xinjiang. The ethnonym “Uighur” has its origins in an ancient Turkic empire of the same name that existed on the territory of present-day Xinjiang from 744 to 840 A.D. (For more about the ancient Uighurs, see Mackerras, Colin, The Uighur Empire According to T'ang Dynastic Histories: A Study in Sino-Uighur Relations, 744–840 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1973)). The readoption of the name “Uighur” was spearheaded by a movement of Uighur intellectuals on the Russian side of the border at the turn of the century and was realized by Uighur communists who officially claimed the name at a meeting in Tashkent in 1921. For evidence of Uighur intellectuals’ use of the ethnonym prior to Soviet rule, see Abdusemätov, Näzärghoja (Uyghur Balisi), “Bizning Turmush” in Yoruq Sahillar: Tarikhiy Materiallar, Sheirlar, Proza (Almaty: Zhazushy, 1991). For a discussion of the 1921 conference, see Kaidarov, Abdu-Ali, Razvitie Sovremennogo Uigurskogo Literaturnogo Iazyka (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1969).) While a public debate continued in the Uighur community over the appropriateness of a single “Uighur” ethnic identity and language for roughly a decade, most Uighurs in the Soviet Union eventually recognized the name and their shared identity by the early 1930s (see Kaidarov, , op. cit., pp. 320–335; and Malov, S. E., “Uyghurlaning Ädäbiy Tili,” Kämbäghällär Avazi, 12 April 1930, p. 2). On the Chinese side of the border, the Uighur ethnonym and the unified national identity it represented were only officially accepted in 1934 when a resolution adopting the name was passed by the Provincial Government of Xinjiang (see Owen Lattimore, Pivot of Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian Frontiers of China and Russia (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1950), p. 125).Google Scholar

6. Russians and other European travelers have described the relative ease with which they were able to cross this border in their writings (for examples, see Radlov, V. V., Ot Sibiri: Stranitsa Dnevnika (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), originally published in 1893; Schuyler, Eugene, Turkistan (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1876)). The Kazak ethnographer Chokan Valikhanov even noted having had trouble finding the Chinese border post during his trip to Kuldja in 1856 (see Valikhanov, Chokan, Izbrannye proizvedenia (Moscow: Izdat Nauka, 1987)).Google Scholar

7. This treaty between the Chinese and Russian imperial governments returned the Kuldja area of Xinjiang to China after having been under Russian jurisdiction for ten years. The Russians had annexed the region in 1871 in order to quell a successful Muslim rebellion against Chinese rule in the area, which they feared might spread to their neighboring Muslim territories. See Gurevich, B. P., “The History of the Ili Crisis,” in Chapters from the History of Russo–Chinese Relations, 17th–18th Centuries (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985), pp. 301–326; Kabirov, Malik Niiazovich, Pereselenie Iliiskikh Uigur v Semirech'e (Alma-Ata: Izdat. AN Kaz. SSR, 1951), pp. 38–62.Google Scholar

8. The treaty stipulated that any residents of the Kuldja area who wished to emigrate to Russian territory before the Kuldja region was returned to Chinese rule should have the right to do so. See “Dogovor Mezhdu Rossiei i Kitaem ob Iliiskom Krae S. Peterburg, 12/24 Fevralia 1881 g,” in Sbornik Dogovorov Rossii s Drugimi Gosudarstvami: 1856–1917 (Moscow, 1952); Kabirov, , Pereselenie Iliiskikh Uigur v Semirech'e, p. 82.Google Scholar

9. See Afanas'ev-Kazanskii, A., “Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Zapadnogo Kitaia,” Novyi Vostok, No. 3, 1923, pp. 114–121; I. Gabit-Gabitov, “Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Kitaiskogo Turkestana,” Novyi Vostok, Nos 8–9, 1925, pp. 26–39.Google Scholar

10. An unknown, but significant, number of Uighurs and others fled the Soviet Union for Xinjiang during the 1930s. This migration was similar to that which anthropologist Audrey Shalinsky has described in her account of the Uzbeks who left the Soviet Union for Afghanistan during the same period. See Shalinsky, Audrey, Long Years of Exile: Central Asian Refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994).Google Scholar

11. This subject has been addressed elsewhere both directly in writings about the Uighurs (see Gladney, Dru C., “Transnational Islam and Uighur National Identity: Salaman Rushdie, Sino–Muslim Missile Deals, and the Trans-Eurasian Railway,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1992, pp. 1–21; “The Muslim Face of China,” Current History, September 1993, pp. 275–280; Rudelson, Justin, “The Uighurs and the Future of Central Asia,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1994) and indirectly in work on Chinese – Central Asian relations (see Harris, Lillian Craig, “Xinjiang, Central Asia and the Implications for China's Policy in the Islamic World,” The China Quarterly, No. 133, March 1993, pp. 111–129; Martin, Keith, “China and Central Asia: Between Seduction and Suspicion,” RFE/RL Research Reports, Vol. 3, No. 25, 24 June 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. See Gladney, Dru C., “The Ethnogenesis of the Uighur,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1990, pp. 1–28; Helly, Denise, “The Identity and Nationality Problem in Chinese Central Asia,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 53, No. 4, 1986, pp. 241–254; Rudelson, Justin, Bones in the Sand: The Struggle to Create Uighur Nationalist Ideologies in Xinjiang, China, PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. The boundaries referred to here are the social lines of separation that groups of people form between each other and should not be confused with the physically delineated political boundaries that states create between each other. For more on the construction and maintenance of ethnic boundaries, see Fredrik Barth, “Introduction,” in Barth, Fredrik, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1969), pp. 7–38.Google Scholar

14. Foster, Robert, “Making National Cultures in the Global Ecumene,” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, 1991, pp. 239–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. These designations are fluid, as group identification is determined through oppositional relations. Even today, for example, the kegänlär are often referred to as khitailiklär by the local yerliklär and as sovetliklär (Soviet) by the khitailiklär sojourners. In turn, they all often refer to themselves and each other as Uighurs or as Muslims when encountering those of different ethnic or religious groups. These complex shifts in self-identification have long been common in Central Asia, where local, religious, tribal, and national identities are conflated and often in conflict. Hence, self-identification is usually expressed situationally. See, for example, Shahrani, M. Nazif, “‘From Tribe to Umma': Comments on the Dynamics of Identity in Muslim Soviet Central Asia,” Central Asian Survey, Vo. 3, No. 3, 1984, pp. 27–38.Google Scholar

16. In addition to my observations and in-depth interviews, I have used information gathered from a survey questionnaire given to Uighurs in Kazakstan who migrated from China in the 1950s and 1960s. I would like to express my gratitude to Khadiia Akhmetova of the Institute of Uighur Studies under the Academy of Sciences of Kazakstan for helping me to write and distribute this questionnaire and Sahinur Dautova of the same Institute for aiding in the transcription of my interviews. The identity of all interviewees and questionnaire respondents cited in this article has been kept anonymous.Google Scholar

17. This video documentary looks at the experiences of three kegänlär Uighurs in Kazakstan who now make a living trading Chinese goods. It addresses many of the issues in this article by looking at the personal experiences of migration and the changing Uighur identity and culture in Kazakstan which are emerging from the trade between China and Kazakstan. In fact, many of the citations from interviews that appear here are taken from the video.Google Scholar

18. Shämsidin Abdurehim-Ughli, “Yeqin Otmushing Qanliq Khatirsi,” Yengi Hayat, 28 May 1994, p. 7. The estimate offered in this source should be questioned given that the official population figures for Uighurs in the Soviet Union as a whole according to the 1989 census was only 285,000. Furthermore, the author, who offers his information in an impassioned nationalist-inspired newspaper article, does not cite any primary source for his claims. Most Uighurs in the former Soviet Union, however, do agree that slightly more than half of the Uighurs in post-Soviet Central Asia came to the region from China during the 1950s and 1960s.Google Scholar

19. Many of those who left for political reasons were also participants in the government or army of the Eastern Turkestan Republic (ETR), a Soviet-backed semi-autonomous state that governed the three vilayäts surrounding the city of Kuldja from 1944 to 1949. While the Chinese communists had originally recruited local cadres from the ranks of the ETR's government, these cadres were soon looked upon with suspicion by the authorities in Beijing, who feared their connections to the Soviet Union and their nationalist aspirations. For more about the ETR, see Benson, Linda, The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang, 1944–1949 (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990).Google Scholar

20. See McMillen, Donald H., Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949–1977 (Boulder: Westview, 1979), pp. 85–87.Google Scholar

21. The protest apparently resulted from a rumor that the border with the Soviet Union was to be closed. As the number of protesters grew, Chinese soldiers arrived to disperse the crowd. In the frenzy that followed the conflict between the protesters and Chinese soldiers, many were killed and some 60,000–80,000 Uighurs, Kazaks, and others fled to the Soviet Union across the Ili valley border crossing at Khorgus, which had been opened by Soviet officials. See June Teufel Dryer, “Ethnic Minorities in the Sino–Soviet Dispute,” in McCagg, William and Silver, Brian D., eds, Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979), pp. 208–209; Harris, , “Xinjiang, Central Asia and the Implications for China's Policy in the Islamic World,” p. 115; Moseley, George, A Sino–Soviet Cultural Frontier: The Ili Kazakh Autonomous Chou (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 109; Silde-Karklins, Rasma, “The Uighurs Between China and the USSR,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. 19, 1975, p. 344.Google Scholar

22. During World War II, a stronger notion of a multinational Soviet patriotism was forged by the Soviet government. The danger of betraying this patriotism was demonstrated by the Soviet state's post-war mass relocation of entire nationalities, such as the Koreans, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars, who were accused of collaboration with Axis forces (see Conquest, Robert, The Soviet Deportations of Nationalities (London: Macmillan & Co., 1960)). While the early Khrushchev years were marked by a more relaxed attitude towards non-Russians, by 1961, Khrushchev had announced the increased sblianie, or rapprochement, of nationalities which was occurring in the Soviet Union under socialism and the eventual slyanie, or merging, of nationalities which could be expected in the near future (see, for example, Hodnett, Grey, ed., Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Vol. 4: The Khrushchev Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974)). Given the recent history of the relocation of “disloyal” nationalities, the growing anti-Chinese propaganda in the Soviet Union, and Khrushchev's articulation of the ideal of a merging Soviet nation, one can understand why yerliklär Uighurs would have emphasized their “Sovietness” in the 1950s and 1960s.Google Scholar

23. One yerliklär woman now in her thirties told me that the emphasis on the Soviet Union as the only rodina, or homeland, of Soviet citizens was especially strong at her school in Kazakstan's Uighur raion, which borders on China. She even remembers two of her male classmates in the sixth grade running away from home to launch their own “secret mission” against the Chinese. The two young “patriots” were returned home by soldiers who found them before they had reached China.Google Scholar

24. “1.5 generation” is a term used widely in literature about Asian American immigrants to describe those people who moved to their host country after birth and before adolescence.Google Scholar

25. This liminal condition fostered by life in a borderland region has been eloquently evoked by the Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua, who, in reference to the U.S.–Mexican borderlands, calls this the condition of “the new mestiza.” See Anzaldua, Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987).Google Scholar

26. Ironically, however, both groups also evoke Leninist revolutionary strategies. “The Association for a Free Uighurstan” has a Central Committee, and the “United Revolutionary Front of Eastern Turkestan” claims to have ties with an underground paramilitary nationalist group in Xinjiang which they call Iskra.Google Scholar

27. Kabirov's most controversial work on this subject was a short book that he finished writing in 1987 called The Uighurs—An Indigenous People of Semirech'e: A Sketch and Essay. After submitting this book to the state publishing house, however, he was reprimanded by the Central Committee of Kazakstan for fomenting ethnic conflict. The book was never published, but parts of it did appear in the now defunct controversial Kazakstan newspaper Birlesu. See Kabirov, “Prava Uigurov v Semirech'e dolzhny byt’ zaschischeny zakonom,” Birlesu, No. 78, 1992, pp. 18–31.Google Scholar

28. This is the Turkic version of kafir, an Arabic term denoting non-Muslims.Google Scholar

29. The word “Barakholka” comes from the Russian word for junk or old things—barakhlo. During the late Soviet period, “barakholkas” were places where old goods were bought and sold. Since the opening of the former Soviet Union to international trade of all sorts, however, they have become the central marketplaces for small-scale merchants who travel to other countries on tourist visas to buy inexpensive consumer goods and then resell them. The importance of this trade to Kazakstan was recently illustrated by an article in Kazakstan's most popular newspaper, Karavan, which cited Alimzhan Seidamarovich, director of the Almaty Center for Standardization, as saying, “we do not have a market economy; we have a barakholka economy.” See Bazilevskaia, Lolita, “Poddel'naia Zhizn', ili Duraki—Nemy! My—ne Duraki?” Karavan, 16 March 1995, p. 8.Google Scholar

30. Donnon, Hastings and Wilson, Thomas, eds, Border Approaches: Anthropological Perspectives on Frontiers (New York and London: University Press of America, 1994), p. 12.Google Scholar

31. This is an argument made most eloquently by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso Press, 1991).Google Scholar

32. Fox, Richard, ed., Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures (Washington: American Ethnological Society, 1990), p. 4.Google Scholar

33. For more on the increasingly deterritorialized nature of national identity, see Hannerz, Ulf, “Notes on the Global Ecumene,” Public Culture, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1989, pp. 66–75; Appadurai, Arjun, “Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology,” in Fox, Richard, ed. Recapturing Anthropology (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 1991), pp. 191–210; Foster, Robert, “Making National Cultures in the Global Ecumene,” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, 1991, pp. 235–260; Basch, Linda, Shiller, Nina Glick and Blanc, Cristina Szanton, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Basch, Linda et al., Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States, p. 30.Google Scholar