Introduction: Muslim Nomads as Soviet Citizens (original) (raw)

2020, Kindling the Hearths of Culture: Kazakh Citizenship and Cultural Revolution on the Soviet Frontier, 1917-1937

Abstract

This dissertation examines the cultural integration of Kazakh nomadic communities into the Soviet Union in the first two decades of Soviet rule. During the process of “building socialism” in the 1920s and 1930s, Kazakh society was devastated by forced collectivization, mass famine, and political purges, and Kazakh communities faced a situation where the very foundations of their former way of life were not simply suppressed or rejected, but actively dismantled. Like other newly minted Soviet citizens, Kazakh people were supposed not only to live in a Soviet and modern way (on collective farms, working in industry, freed of class oppression) but also to act and think as modern Soviet people. Early Soviet ideology conceptualized these transformations as part of a larger “cultural revolution,” a concept encompassing everything from the cultivation of aesthetic taste to the reformation of domestic habits. For Kazakhs, this transition was made more urgent by the narrowing of alternatives in a particularly brutal situation. In this context, this study explores the ways in which early Soviet “cultural revolutionary” campaigns among Kazakhs facilitated the construction of Soviet citizenship, and more broadly, considers the role of cultural difference in “cultural revolution.” The study is structured around two Kazakh concepts associated with the cultural revolution – adet-ghuryp (custom) and madeniet (culture). For each sphere, it examines associated Soviet initiatives for socio-cultural transformation. Drawing on archival and published sources, the dissertation argues that the Soviet “cultural revolution” established a framework for Kazakh Soviet citizenship in the midst of rapidly diminishing alternatives. A close examination of these cultural revolutionary campaigns uncovers their grounding in pre-revolutionary and transnational reformist ideals, their reception and negotiation in rural communities, and their importance for the construction of a mobilizational relationship between state and citizens that formed the basis for longer-term Kazakh participation in Soviet society.

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References (51)

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  15. Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 33. Boym also makes the interesting suggestion that Soviet ideas of a "new byt" echoed older ideas of a distinction between "everyday" and "spiritual" life (byt versus bytie).
  16. Vadim Volkov, "The Concept of Kul'turnost': Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process," in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge, 2000), 210-30. See also Chapter 3: "Socialism in One Apartment: Byt Communes" in Andy Willimott, Living the Revolution: Urban Communes & Soviet Socialism, 1917- 1932, Oxford Studies in Modern European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a growing number of historians focused on the Soviet "peripheries" as important locations in their own right, where earlier studies tended to relegate these areas to a more supplementary role. 71 While the latter approach saw policy and transformation developing at the "center" and radiating outward, works that ground themselves in "peripheral" localities have the potential to tease out a better understanding of the multidirectionality of these power dynamics.
  17. Adrienne Edgar's Tribal Nation, which seeks to correct what she sees as a general lack of attention to "the crucial contribution of local elites in shaping Soviet nations," and Adeeb Khalid's more recent Making Uzbekistan, which adopts a similar philosophy, serve as good models for this framework. 72
  18. Botakoz Kassymbekova's analysis of the early Soviet project in Tajikistan further contributes valuable attention to the networks and interconnections linking central, regional, and local dimensions of Soviet state-building. 73 Other work has focused on the development of mass culture and mass literacy in Soviet Central Asia, similarly highlighting the imperative of attention to local distinctives. 74 Such analysis from "Third World," although some exciting new directions in scholarship have begun to address this question. For example, the recent edited collection James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovsky, and Steffi Marung, eds, Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020). For Central Asia's role in Soviet outreach to the Muslim "Third World" more specifically, see Artemy M. Kalinovsky, "Not Some British Colony in Africa: The Politics of Decolonization and Modernization in Soviet Central Asia, 1955-1964," Ab Imperio 2013, no. 2 (August 28, 2013): 191-222; Masha Kirasirova, "Building Anti-Colonial Utopia: The Politics of Space in Soviet Tashkent in the "long 1960s,"" in The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties: Between Protest and Nation-Building, ed. Chen Jian et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018); for earlier precedents in Soviet-Turkic connections see Samuel J. Hirst, "Anti-Westernism on the European Periphery: The Meaning of Soviet-Turkish Convergence in the 1930s," Slavic Review 72, no. 1 (2013): 32-53; Khalid, "Backwardness and the Quest for Civilization: Early Soviet Central Asia in Comparative Perspective." 71 Studies from the "peripheral" perspective include Steven Anthony Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011);
  19. Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004);
  20. Edgar, Tribal Nation; Paula Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003);
  21. Kamp, The New Woman in Uzbekistan; Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender & Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004);
  22. Matthew J. Payne, Stalin's Railroad: Turksib and the Building of Socialism (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001);
  23. Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent: 1865-1923 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007).
  24. Edgar, Tribal Nation, 5. Khalid, Making Uzbekistan.
  25. Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016).
  26. Ali Igmen, Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), examines the significance of Soviet "Houses of Culture" (clubs) for Kyrgyz Soviet culture construction in the 1920s and 30s, analyzing for the Kyrgyz case many of the themes that are central for Kazakhstan as well. Claire Roosien, "Socialism Mediated: The Soviet Mass Public in Uzbekistan, 1928-37" (PhD. dissertation, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago, 2019), examines the related subject of the creation of a "Soviet mass public" in Uzbekistan in this period. Clement, Learning to Become Turkmen, which spans a broader period but includes work State: Settlement of Nomadic Kazakhs, 1928-1934," in Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet Historiography, ed. Golfo Alexopoulos, Julie Hessler, and Kiril Tomoff (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2011), 59-86; Kindler, Stalin's Nomads; Cameron, The Hungry Steppe; Alun Thomas, Nomads and Soviet Rule (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018).
  27. On the pre-revolutionary Kazakh intelligentsia, see Pete Rottier, "Creating the Kazak Nation: The Intelligentsia's Quest for Acceptance in the Russian Empire, 1905--1920" (Ph.D. dissertation, Wisconsin, The University of Wisconsin -Madison, 2005);
  28. Ian W. Campbell, Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017);
  29. Balgamis, "Origins and Development of Kazakh Intellectual Elites"; Sabol, Russian Colonization of Central Asia and the Genesis of Kazak National Consciousness; Tomohiko Uyama, "The Geography of Civilizations: A Spatial Analysis of the Kazakh Intelligentsia's Activities, from the Mid-Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century," in Regions, a Prism to View the Slavic-Eurasian World : Towards a Discipline of "Regionology," ed. Kimitaka Matsuzato and Hokkaido Daigaku. Surabu Kenkyu Senta (Sapporo, Japan: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2000), 70-99.
  30. D.A. Amanzholova, Sovetskii Proekt v Kazakhstane: Vlast' i Etnichnost', 1920-1930-e Gg, Historia Russica (Moscow: IRI RAN, Tsentr gumanitarnykh initiativ, 2019). See also D.A. Amanzholova, Formirovanie sovetskosti: Natsional'nye men'shinstva v etnologicheskom landshafte SSSR, 1920-1930-e gg. (Moscow: Sobranie, 2010);
  31. Dina Amanzholova, "Formirovanie Kazakhskoi Sovetskoi Biurokratii v 1920-e Gody: Bol'shevizatsiia Ili Etnizatsiia?," Res Historica, April 27, 2016, 195. Significant studies of early Soviet subjectivity among Kazakh political actors include Maria Blackwood's dissertation on the first generation of Kazakh Communists (Maria Aleksandra Blackwood, "Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1917-1953" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2018).) and Xavier Hallez's dissertation on Central Asian political intellectuals' quests to define the new Soviet state (Xavier Hallez, "Communisme National et Mouvement Révolutionnaire En Orient: Parcours Croisé de Trois Leaders Soviétiques Orientaux (Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, Turar Ryskulov et Elbekdorž Rinčino) Dans La Consultation d'un Nouvel Espace Géopolitique 1917-1926" (Ph.D. dissertation, Paris, EHESS, 2012)).
  32. Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature: Elites and Narratives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017) takes a broader chronological perspective, but includes thoughtful chapters on Soviet Kazakh writers, while Zhanat Kundakbaeva's recent monograph explores the gender dimensions of early Soviet subjectivity in Kazakhstan (Zh.B. Kundakbaeva, Modernizatsiia rannei sovetskoi epokha v sudʹbakh zhenshchin Kazakstana, 1902-1930 gody (Almaty: Qazaq universiteti, 2017)).
  33. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat. Shoshana Keller, To Moscow, Not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign Against Islam in Central Asia, 1917-1941 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), discusses these issues in the context of broader Soviet interwar policy towards Islam.
  34. Kamp shifts the focus from the state to Uzbek women's subjectivity and agency, and "sees Uzbeks not as objects of Russian colonialism, but as the primary actors in a multisided struggle" (The New Woman in Uzbekistan, 8).
  35. Northrop, on the other hand, views the Soviet women's unveiling campaign in Uzbekistan as a colonial project, and focuses on cases where Uzbeks responded with tacit or explicit resistance and "subverted Soviet legal and moral spaces" (Veiled Empire, 278).
  36. Adrienne Edgar, "Emancipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women under Soviet Rule, 1924-29," The Russian Review 62, no. 1 (2003): 132-149.
  37. On Soviet cultural evolutionism, see Chapter 6 of Hirsch, Empire of Nations. For a brief discussion of difficulty of placing Kazakhs in the "Soviet five-stage development paradigm," see Kudaibergenova, Rewriting the Nation, 24- 25. 2009): 387-405;
  38. Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Toward Nationalizing Regimes: Conceptualizing Power and Identity in the Post-Soviet Realm, Central Eurasia in Context (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
  39. On the idea of a "borderland" becoming a "Soviet heartland," see Brown, A Biography of No Place. 111 For broader theoretical context of this approach to nationalism, see Brendan Karch, "Instrumental Nationalism in Upper Silesia," in National Indifference and the History of Nationalism in Modern Europe, ed. Maarten van Ginderachter and Jon Fox (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
  40. Peter A. Blitstein, "Nation-Building or Russification? Obligatory Russian Instruction in the Soviet Non-Russian School, 1938-1953," in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 253.
  41. This distinction is important, as changes associated with the Soviet period -particularly those associated with the cultural revolution (usually identified as education and women's emancipation) -continue to be viewed favorably in Central Asia, accompanied by nostalgia generally rooted in a sense of having a place in the world, of order and purpose, of fraternal connection to other republics, of stability and predictability. Some earlier Central Asian articulations of Soviet nationalism were even explicitly anti-Russian (Botakoz Kassymbekova, "Helpless Imperialists: European State Workers in Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s," Central Asian Survey 30, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 21-37). In fact, one of the Soviet Union's most influential legacies was as a model of 'alternative' modernization for non-European, postcolonial countries. So, arguably, the postcolonial Asian "peripheries" of the former Soviet Union are at the heart of its historical significance. Particularly relevant is the framing (articulated by Lenin himself) of Marxist revolution as a movement of decolonization as much or more than of class warfare, which was prevalent among Turkic and Muslim Central Asian reformers of the early Soviet period (including Kazakhs). 114 While these reformers themselves were ultimately repressed, the framing continued to be globally relevant. 115 Even in the Soviet Union, this early emphasis on building a modern, postcolonial state, rather than simply a socialist state, continued to structure citizens' understanding of the state. That this continued all the way to perestroika is evident in comments by Kazakh delegate Olzhas Suleimenov at the First Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 that "the principal aspect of perestroika for me is the continuation of the decolonization process which was suspended in the twenties. It is now exhibiting all the features characteristic of decolonization." 116 Looking at Soviet state-building from the "periphery" helps us to identify key strains in the Soviet project that were more relevant for these non-European constituents. For this purpose, it is useful to consider the conceptual and ideological projects that were emerging in the non-European parts of the early Soviet Union as items in their own right, in order to avoid the temptation to view them as simply deviations or distortions of an outflow of Marxism/Leninism centered in Moscow and Europe.
  42. The most in-depth recent discussion of this is in Khalid, Making Uzbekistan; also Hallez, "Communisme National et Mouvement Révolutionnaire En Orient: Parcours Croisé de Trois Leaders Soviétiques Orientaux (Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, Turar Ryskulov et Elbekdorž Rinčino) Dans La Consultation d'un Nouvel Espace Géopolitique 1917-1926." On Lenin's framing of the colonial countries as a sort of global proletariat, see Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 51.
  43. See Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010);
  44. Martha Brill Olcott, "Soviet Islam and World Revolution," World Politics 34, no. 4 (1982): 487-504;
  45. Ronald Grigor Suny, "Don't Paint Nationalism Red!': National Revolution and Socialist Anti-Imperialism," in Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then, ed. Prasenjit Duara (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 194-216.
  46. Oleg Glebov and John Crowfoot, eds, The Soviet Empire: Its Nations Speak Out: The First Congress of People's Deputies, Moscow, 25 May to 10 June 1989 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1989), 147. On Suleimenov himself, see Harsha Ram, "Imagining Eurasia: The Poetics and Ideology of Olzhas Suleimenov's AZ i IA," Slavic Review 60, no. 2 (2001): 289-311. Decolonization seems to have bubbled up as a key theme for Central Asians during the earlier reevaluation of the Soviet state in Khrushchev's thaw as well; Moritz Florin argues that "in Central Asia, de-Stalinization was about decolonization" (Moritz Florin, "What Is Russia to US?: Making Sense of Stalinism, Colonialism and Soviet Modernity in Kyrgyzstan, 1956-1965," Ab Imperio 2016, no. 3 (December 22, 2016): 166, focusing on ideals of Soviet citizenship, rather than on practical realities, runs the risk of whitewashing the suffering described above and of flattening the complexities of Kazakh society at the time. On the other hand, however, this focus can help us to gain a deeper understanding of this historical moment and its longer-term influence, as it allows us to see Soviet state-building more generally as an entanglement of colonizing and decolonizing impulses, of modernization and repression. In assessing the Soviet "cultural revolution" in a Kazakh context, this dissertation attempts to live in the tension of (post)colonial cultural reformism --between
  47. Steve Biko's caution that "the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" and Chinua Achebe's admonition to "let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it." 117 Structural Overview To explore what it meant to be both Soviet and Kazakh, this dissertation is structured around two Kazakh concepts associated with the cultural revolution -adet-ghuryp (custom) and madeniet (culture). The Kazakh word adet is most often translated as "habit" or "custom." It is derived from the Arabic for "customs," 'ādāt, which ultimately became a generic term for customary law in Muslim societies from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Adat is an inherently syncretic construct, referring as it does to the space in Islamic cultures for regionally specific norms to inform and supplement religious law (discussed further in Chapter 1). 118 It often had to do with laws governing kinship and marriage practices. Under
  48. Steve Biko, "Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity," in Essays on Black Theology, ed. M. Motlhabi (Johannesburg: University Christian Movement, 1972), 17-27, 21 (as cited in David J. Bosch, "Currents and Crosscurrents in South African Black Theology," Journal of Religion in Africa 6, no. 1 (1974): 1-22);
  49. Chinua Achebe, "Colonialist Criticism," in Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents, ed. Dennis Walder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 271-79. 274 (as quoted/cited in Michael Gardiner, Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). Parallels with Achebe's vision can be seen among Kazakh intellectuals (Diana T. Kudaibergenova, "'Imagining Community' in Soviet Kazakhstan. An Historical Analysis of Narrative on Nationalism in Kazakh-Soviet Literature," Nationalities Papers 41, no. 5 (September 2013): 839-54).
  50. On Islamic legal structures, see Wael B. Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
  51. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).