Carrots and Sticks...and Demonstrations: Yuri Andropov’s Failed Autonomy Plan for Soviet Kazakhstan's Germans, 1976-1980 (Revised and Expanded Reprint Version) (original) (raw)
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Bulletin of the International Institute for Central Asian studies., 2024
This article is dedicated to the memory of Russian historian, historiographer, journalist V.A. Germanov. For many years, V.A. Germanov worked at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, headed the department of "Historiography and source studies". His scientific interests included the history of Russian oriental studies, the history of military education in Turkestan, and he also participated in the development of such projects as "The Presence of the Russian Empire in Central Asia (second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries)", "Russian colonial historical school" (second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries)", "Russian military historians in Turkestan" (second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries)", "Historians of Central Asia on the Eve and During the Great Terror (early 20th century - late 1930s)", "German presence in Central Asia (second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries)". Thanks to the active research work of V.A. Germanov, the names of prominent national historians such as P. Saliev and others were returned to the historical science of Uzbekistan.
During the 1970s, Soviet authorities began to confront growing dissident demands through a combination of repression and accommodation, what scholar Hanya Shiro describes as the “carrot and stick” approach to general protest activities and especially the nationalities problem. KGB chief Yuri Andropov in particular followed this policy course in the waning days of the Leonid Brezhnev regime. Besides cracking down on dissidents, Andropov oversaw plans for a German autonomous oblast near Tselinograd (now Astana), Kazakhstan, from 1976 to 1980. The regime considered it necessary to respond to the ethnic group’s emerging national protest movement, West Germany’s mounting diplomatic pressures, and the wider international community’s growing demands to protect emigration, human and minority rights. The USSR remained committed to the long-term integration and acculturation of its almost two million Germans, some of its most prized Soviet citizen-workers, with nearly half living in the Kazakh SSR. It sought to address domestic and foreign criticisms about the “German question” by formulating this new, but rather modest, nationality solution. The plan collapsed after June 1979, however, amid public demonstrations in the Kazakh SSR. Kazakh opposition at all levels revealed the complicated and troubling nature of Soviet nationality affairs and the limits of central authority over the periphery. The aborted plan’s legacy was the ethnic Germans’ continued lack of a national-territorial “container” when the USSR disintegrated in 1991. The proposal represented the regime’s first serious consideration of German autonomy since the group lost its remaining national districts and the Volga German ASSR between 1938 and 1941. Though it remains conjectural, the oblast could have established an embryonic national centre for Germans, from which they would have found themselves in a better political bargaining position during the dramatic Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras. It also could have helped reduce the dramatic mass migration of Germans from the former USSR to united Germany after 1990. Viewing circumstances from both “above” and “below,” this study incorporates various English-, German-, and Russian-language sources, including Soviet-era government documents and the handful of available memoirs and updated academic studies. Keywords: Yuri Andropov, autonomy, Dimash Kunaev, dissidents, ethnic Germans, Kazakhstan
2014
During the 1970s, Soviet authorities began to confront growing dissident demands through a combination of repression and accommodation, what scholar Hanya Shiro describes as the “carrot and stick” approach to general protest activities and especially the nationalities problem. KGB chief Yuri Andropov in particular followed this policy course in the waning days of the Leonid Brezhnev regime. Besides cracking down on dissidents, Andropov oversaw plans for a German autonomous oblast near Tselinograd (now Astana), Kazakhstan, from 1976 to 1980. The regime considered it necessary to respond to the ethnic group’s emerging national protest movement, West Germany’s mounting diplomatic pressures, and the wider international community’s growing demands to protect emigration, human and minority rights. The USSR remained committed to the long-term integration and acculturation of its almost two million Germans, some of its most prized Soviet citizen-workers, with nearly half living in the Kazak...
The National Council for Soviet and East European Research Title VIII Program
2002
Since the collapse of the USSR, the Crimean peninsula has been engulfed in what sometimes seems to be a never-ending cycle of crises. Political instability, repeated political confrontations with its parent state Ukraine, and signs of rising ethnic tensions, have led some to view Crimea as a potential powderkeg. Added to these internal tensions, Crimea has found itself at the center of a dangerous war of words between Russia and Ukraine as these two immense neighbors struggle to redefine their relationship. Given the multiple political, ethnic. and geopolitical tensions that have entangled the region, it may seem odd that the Crimea has not experienced the outbreak of violent conflict observed in other parts of the former USSR. In this paper, however, I argue that the absence of violent conflict is both predictable and understandable if one considers the interactions between Crimea's three levels of crises: ideological, ethnic, and geopolitical. The paper is divided into three sections. In Part I, I consider Crimea's unusual history and the ideological, ethnic, and geopolitical cleavages this distinctive historical path created in Crimean society. In Part II, I consider how Crimean politicians in the post-Soviet era have attempted to mobilize support based on these historical cleavages. Crimea's politicians have attempted to mobilize social constituencies along ideological cleavages (neo-communist, social welfare platforms versus market-oriented capitalist policies), ethnic divisions (Russian versus Ukrainian versus Crimean Tatar), and geopolitical lines (pro-Russia, pro-Ukraine, and proindependence). In Part III, I argue that while certain politicians hoped to mobilize society along a single deep and dominant cleavage-in particular, ethnic Russians with aspirations for reunification with Russia versus ethnic Ukrainians committed to Ukrainian affiliation-such a cleavage in fact barely exists in Crimean society today. In fact, this analysis shows that (l)commitments to ideological platforms are generally weak and malleable amongst most major constituencies; (2)ethnic divisions between Russians and Ukrainians are almost non-existent. with the exception of the 3.8% Ukrainian-language speakers on the peninsula; and (3)aspirations for independence or reunification with Russia are based almost entirely on economic considerations and, with the exception of the Sevastopol military population, do not reflect strong popular commitment. In addition, it should be noted that Russia's involvement in Chechnya has drastically curtailed Russian political interest in overt intervention in Crimea.