Yaacov Ro'i

The Soviet and Russian context of the development of

nationalism in Soviet Central Asia
In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 32 N°1. pp. 123-141.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Ro'i Yaacov. The Soviet and Russian context of the development of nationalism in Soviet Central Asia. In: Cahiers du monde
russe et soviétique. Vol. 32 N°1. pp. 123-141.

doi : 10.3406/cmr.1991.2268

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_0008-0160_1991_num_32_1_2268
Abstract
Yaacov Ro'i, The Soviet and Russian context of the development of nationalism in Soviet Central Asia.
This paper seeks to determine how far the various Central Asian nationalisms, which began to become
a vocal political force towards the end of the 1980's, were influenced by extraneous factors. The
national consciousness of the region's indigenous ethnic groups focused naturally on their cultural
heritage, the region boasting a long tradition of art forms of varying sorts as well as a host of
philosophers, thinkers and religious figures.
Their immediate allegiances tended to be to the region as a whole or to their specific locality rather than
to their union republics, and to their clan or tribe and Islam rather than the nationality as defined by the
arbitrary decision of Soviet administrative fiat. The political credo, terminology and atmospherics of the
Soviet regime, however, inevitably made their imprint on the Central Asian intelligentsias. So too, did, on
the one hand, the increasing nationalism of the Russians and the other European members of the
Soviet body politic and, on the other, the openness and democratization that were first the slogans and
then the driving impetus of the Gorbachev period and which among others provided the intelligentsias
with a broad basis among the local population.
The outcome has been a peculiar admixture, of nationalisms whose terms of reference have been
Soviet, Russian and European, but whose backbone has been their own cultural heritage and mores
which it is their aim to reassert as they endeavor to shake off at least the more humiliating aspects of
their subservience to Moscow.

Résumé
Yaacov Ro'i, Le contexte russe et soviétique du développement du nationalisme en Asie Centrale
soviétique.
Cet article se propose de déterminer dans quelle mesure les divers nationalismes d'Asie Centrale qui
commençaient à se faire entendre vers la fin des années 1980 étaient influencés par des facteurs
étrangers. La conscience nationale des groupes ethniques indigènes de la région était fixée, bien sûr,
sur leur héritage culturel, la région se targuant de posséder une longue tradition de moyens
d'expression artistique de toutes sortes, de même qu'une foule de philosophes, de peaseurs et de
personnalités religieuses.
Leurs allégeances immédiates allaient à la région dans son ensemble ou à leur voisinage spécifique
plutôt qu'à leur république de l'union, ainsi qu'à leur clan ou à leur tribu et à l'islam plutôt qu'à leur
nationalité telle qu'elle était définie par une décision arbitraire d'un décret administratif soviétique. Le
credo politique, la terminologie et le « climat » du régime soviétique, cependant, marquaient forcément
leur empreinte sur les intelligentsias d'Asie Centrale. Tout comme, d'une part, le nationalisme croissant
des Russes et des autres membres européens du corps politique soviétique, et, de l'autre, l'ouverture et
la démocratisation représentant les slogans, puis l'impulsion directrice de la période gorbatchévienne et
qui fournissait entre autres aux intelligentsias une large base parmi la population locale.
Il en résulta un mélange particulier de nationalismes dont les termes de référence ont été soviétiques,
russes et européens, mais dont l'épine dorsale a été leur héritage culturel et leurs mœurs propres qu'ils
cherchent à réaffirmer en s'efforçant de se débarrasser au moins des aspects les plus humiliants de
leur asservissement à Moscou.
 YAACOV ROI

THE SOVIET AND RUSSIAN CONTEXT

OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM
IN SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA

The nations of Soviet Central Asia, largely molded in their present form by the
Soviet regime, have acquired not only national cultures, but also national feelings,
identities and aspirations. While the acquisition of a national culture was in
accordance with the Kremlin's nationalities policy, the forms which the national
culture took and the directions in which it developed were not necessarily in line
with the directives of those who controlled that policy. Nor did the resultant
nationalism, which the national culture fostered, usually correspond to the party
leadership's conceptions and diktat either in its cultural expression or in the various
extra-cultural forms which it adopted.
This paper examines the development of the major Central Asian nationalisms
in order to decide how far they and their content were influenced by external or
local forces. The former refer in this instance to concepts superimposed on all of
the USSR's component ethnic groupings (or, at least those of them that have their
own union or autonomous republics with their concomitant constitutionally stipu
lated national rights), and particularly on their respective intelligentsias and bureauc
racies, under the banners of proletarian internationalism and the new historical
community of "the Soviet people." These concepts may or may not have been
adapted in the process to local circumstances and conditions. Extraneous forces
would also include ideas, doctrines and slogans pertaining to, or propagated by,
other nationalisms or national elites and socio-political movements and societies
within the Soviet Union. For several decades these were above all those of the
Great Russians, although as of approximately 1988, Baltic nationalism also became
an active leading force vis-à-vis the other non-Russian ethnic groupings. Local
influences encompass, on the one hand, features common to all or most of Central
Asia's indigenous ethnic groupings, specifically Turkic cultural traditions and
Islam; and, on the other hand, particularistic ones pertaining to the different group
ingsand their individual circumstances and characteristics.

Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique. XXXII (1), janvier-mars 1991, pp. 123-142.
124 YAACOVROI

1 . Soviet nationality policy and theory

Both the theory and practice of the regime's "Leninist nationalities policy"
have traditionally stressed several major points. The first of these has been the
connection between national rights and the territorial concentration of any given
ethnic grouping. There have been signs that this is changing under glasnosť and
the "restructuring" of the "Leninist nationalities policy," but the debate still seems
to be in process at the time of writing (fall 1989). The second has been that the
national culture, which can be allowed - and sometimes even encouraged to flour
ish- is one that is based primarily on language. Language was said to be the
form of a culture, its outward appurtenance as it were, which according to the
Stalinist formula, that dominated the theory on which the nationalities policy was
based until the latter half of the 1960's, was allowed to be nationalist, while the
content had necessarily to be socialist. (Every ethnic grouping that is sufficiently
large to have its own union or autonomous republic, and, at certain periods, even
smaller administrative units, is thus allowed to educate its young in its national
tongue; whether this is to be permitted in the first four grades only or beyond that -
in some cases up to and including university education - has been a question that
has been subject to change and varying constraints.) The rationale behind this
was that in order to mobilize "the toiling masses" to the cause of Bolshevism, they
had to be approached in their respective vernaculars. Yet, although the objective
was the eventual merger of all nationalities and ethnic groupings in a single "new
Soviet nation," the cultivation of national cultural rights inevitably led to the reten
tion of at least a selection of the works of each national culture and new creativity
within that same framework. However much the central authorities may have
striven to control and supervise the literatures, art forms and even history of the
numerous ethnic groupings that populate the Soviet Union, stories, poems, music
and legends that were anathema to Moscow could not mostly be banned for long
periods, especially when the party leadership was intent on recruiting the minority
nations for its general policies or was undergoing one of its more liberal phases.
The third general premise of Soviet nationalities policy has been that each
national unit must fulfil a given task in the national, all-Soviet, economy and be
somehow remunerated for its contribution by receiving a proportionately large
slice of the budgetary cake and of R and D. In other words, its rights and obliga
tions were not to be solely, or even principally, cultural or spiritual, but mater
ial. Finally, in their own territories, and at times also at the center, the country's
nationalities must have reasonable representation in the administrative
cadres. This usually meant that they made up the backbone of local management
personnel at all levels.
This, then, was the general context within which the Central Asian ethnic and
political identities formed. Instead of developing the anticipated new value sys
tem and behavior patterns, however, modernization - the development of mass
education and social communications, rapid urbanization and the creation of new
industrial centers -, the influx of Russian and other European settlers and the fo
rmation of an economic and bureaucratic base for the aggregation and accumulation
of group interests stimulated group cohesion and the growth of national self-
perceptions, since all three factors emphasized differentiated rates of social mobili
zation, making the ethnic elites feel relatively deprived.1 A similar result was
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 125

achieved by the attempt to substitute a secular belief system for the traditional,
religiously oriented culture. In recent years Central Asian nationalists have not
only had recourse to religion; they have complained at the mass introduction of
Russians into their republics. One lecturer in Marxism-Leninism at an institute of
higher learning in Kazakhstan declared that manifestations of nationalism in the
Soviet Union were a reaction to the central authorities' great-power chauvinism and
demanded that migration from one republic to another be stopped and the populat
ion of each republic made nationally homogeneous.2 Central Asians have also
complained at the authorities' artificial retention of their lower standard of liv
ing. In Uzbekistan, for example, intellectuals have complained at the tremendous
economic, social and ecological burden that has been imposed upon their republic
by exaggerated cotton-growing targets as part of the interrepublican division of
labor and Uzbekistan's "internationalist duty."3

2. Great Russian nationalism

If we follow the forces that have shaped Russian nationalism in the thirty or so
years since the post-Stalin thaw, that is since nationalism became a conscious and
active popular force in the Soviet political scene, we will get a pattern that shows
its ups and downs to be a function of a definite urge on the part of the Great
Russian majority to assert itself and its traditions and values and a reaction to pres
sures on the part of the central authorities and party leadership to blend the Russian
element in "the new Soviet people." At the same time, the Russian national
movement, evolving, or emanating, from different motives - ecological, social,
religious, cultural - has, in fact, taken varying forms and seems not to be in any
way cohesive, or even likely to consolidate, although there have been caases in
which the different components have cooperated. These causes have been the
preservation of Russian historical monuments, especially churches, concern for the
future of the environment of the RSFSR - notably opposition to the vast diversion
project to channel Russian rivers to the southern republics - and anxiety over the
fate of the ethnic Russians because of alcoholism and the low birth rate; as well as
a strong interest in Russia's prerevolutionary past and a feeling that the Russian vil
lage, that was disappearing under the onslaught of modernization, was the
"repository of salutary traditions and mores."4
The one major trend has fallen back on the traditional battle cries and foci of
Slavophilism: the Russian Orthodox Church; xenophobia, including antisemitism
and a strong disdain and fear not only of everything western but also of the USSR's
Caucasian and Central Asian peoples and everything they represent; and Mother
Russia (there has been a distinct call for a return to the land). The present-day
epitome of the activity of this grouping is the officially registered Russian nationali
st society Pamiať. Interestingly, Gorbachev has recruited some of Pamiat's most
vocal speakers, just as he took the celebration of the millennium of the
Christianization of Rus' under his wing, demonstrating his readiness to identify
even with the national Church.
The other trend is the one that has sought to find some sort of compromise with
the regime and its norms: it is secular, seeks to stress its birthright by emphasizing
the Russian language and the superiority of Russian culture in the effort to improve
technology and scientific know-how and hopes to impose it on the remainder of the
126 YAACOV ROI

Soviet population. This line has been adopted and fostered by successive memb
ers of the CPSU leadership and elite - Dmitrii Polianskii, Mikhail Suslov,
Aleksandr Shelepin, Mikhail Solomontsev, Egor Ligachev and Viktor Chebrikov -
and is close to the sentiment of some factions, at least, within the military
establishment.
When discussing the possibility of a Russian impact on the development of
Central Asian nationalisms, it should be borne in mind that it need not be
conscious and direct, but may well be oblique and unintentional. Thus, for
instance, Russian nationalism may have exerted influence without having intended
to serve as a model for Central Asians, or without the Central Asians necessarily
being aware of imitating their "elder brother." This is apparently less true for the
Baltic nationalism that has become the leading force among the non-Russian ethnic
groupings in the latter years of the 1980's. For the first time in the history of the
USSR, nationalist activists have sought cooperation with their counterparts among
other nationalities, first of all the three Baltic peoples among themselves and then
also further afield, in order to be more effective in attaining results. The leaders
of the Baltic national fronts, for instance, established contact with nationalist lead
ersin the Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Central Asia to help them initiate their own
national fronts. Without, however, denigrating in any way the contribution and
influence of the Baltic national movements in the recent period, in the broader his
torical perspective it is the Great Russians who have played the leading role.

3. Central Asian nationalism

Having looked briefly at the general framework within which nationalism in

the Soviet Union has been able, or has tended, to develop, i.e. as a reaction to, or in
interaction with, the party's nationalities policy and the way it influenced the
nationalism of the Veliko-Russians, the largest, central and most important of the
USSR's national groupings, let us examine the development of Central Asian
nationalism and its basic features.
Our first question in this context must be: can one talk of Central Asian nation
alism as a political or social phenomenon that has a lowest common denominator,
when referring to Uzbek, Turkmen, Tadzhik or Kirghiz national feeling, or must
one relate to Central Asian nationalisms, taking each ethnic grouping sepa
rately? Our second question will be: what are the distinctive characteristics of
Central Asian nationalism? Are they Islamic, religious ones, or those of other
historical and cultural traditions? Or, stated somewhat differently: is the collec
tiveconsciousness of Central Asians religious or secular, national, sub-national
(i.e. tribal or clannish) or supra-national (i.e. regional or pan-Turkic)? And
thirdly, is there, or can there be, a simultaneous awareness of, and identification
with, the tribal, national and supra-national community?
These questions have troubled scholars for the last decade or so. The late
Alexandre Bennigsen and his school have insisted that a supra-national Muslim
identity, a feeling of belonging to the umma (the Muslim community), dar al-lslam
(the land or world of Islam), and a Turco-Iranian millet have developed in the post-
Stalin era, as a result of which, for example, the Central Asians take a growing
interest in the political and spiritual evolution of the Muslim world outside the
USSR.5 The Central Asians, particularly their intellectual elites, are rediscover-
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 127

ing the region's traditional culture, which further attaches them to Islam as the lei
tmotiv of this literature and philosophy. (This movement is known as mirasism,
from the Arabic for "patrimony.") At the same time, Central Asians, in all the
region's republics, are imbibed with a tribal or clan consciousness, which has a
demonstrable influence on the area's economic, cultural and political existence:
kolkhozy are often based on clan kinship, while cadres are frequently selected for
local party and government positions, as well as posts in scientific and higher edu
cational institutions, by virtue of their tribal or clan affiliations.6 The influence of
the tribal connection in political patronage and the nomenklatura of the various
"social organizations" have been at the center of not a few of Gorbachev's personn
el turnovers in all four Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan.
Neither conclusion seems to be in doubt, that is that Central Asians, in addition
to feeling Uzbek, Kirghiz, and so on, also identify as Muslims and as Tekke, Laqay
or Manghyt. David Montgomery, who has written extensively on Uzbek litera
tureand the Uzbek intelligentsia, agrees that the Uzbeks, for example, identify as
Muslims.7 James
"homeland," showsCritchlow
that it is inused
a study
alternately
of the use
for of
allthe
three
termconcepts:
vatan, thethe
traditional
national
republic, a person's native locality, and a broader entity, sometimes even meaning
the entire Soviet Union, although he believes that mostly the reference is to the
first.8 Sometimes vatan is also used to denote Turkestan or Central Asia.9
The second, crucial, question is extremely difficult to address oneself to. if in
the view of Central Asians being a Muslim means being a member of the original
indigenous population (as against, say, a Russian or Ukrainian, or even a secular
ized Volga Tatar settler), then it denotes a symbiosis between a religious and
national self-identity. In theory one might well be an atheist and yet associate
with one's national Muslim heritage.10 Virtually all the literature on these topics
brings the adage that a non-Muslim cannot be a Turkmen, Uzbek or Kirghiz. The
Islamic component, then, seems to be a fundamental facet of all Central Asian
nationalisms, whether on the level of the association with the national heritage or
that of current religious practice. Although certain Central Asian writers and
poets tend to stress the secular rather than the religious aspects of their national tra
ditions and literatures, the Islamic factor is indisputable.
The connection by the establishment of religious and national customs and tra
ditions has long been an issue within the USSR." Igor' Beliaev in his May 1987
article "Islam and politics"12 attacks the approach that insists on the connection as
counterproductive. He contends that it plays into the hands of believers, since it
prevents any criticism or condemnation of religion for fear lest the ethnic grouping
in question might feel that their national sensitivities are being encroached
upon. Indeed, academic representatives of the establishment often stress that
national customs have nothing to do with religion and that those who are modernizi
ng Islam have sought to falsify its reactionary role in Central Asian history and to
conceal the fact that it has impeded the national progress of that region's ethnic
groupings. Be this as it may, Central Asian writers and intellectuals do hark back
to Islamic motifs when discussing their national traditions,13 as do nationalist
writers and intellectuals in other Soviet nationalities (and above all the Russians
themselves) regarding their specific religions.14 Chingiz Aitmatov has called
directly for "tearing down the wall between religion and culture" in general, which
he perceives as overlapping." It is, however, difficult to tell how far there is here
128 YAACOVRO'I

any direct influence or whether this is a natural inclination or orientation for

Central Asians, whose national traditions are undoubtedly, as we have seen, deeply
interwoven with Islamic customs and rites. This became increasingly blatant in
the demonstrations that took place in February and March 1989 in Tadzhikistan
and in May and June 1989 in Uzbekistan, where the green flag of Islam was waved
and pictures of Khomeyni carried in the streets. Soviet officials have stated that
the rioting in Uzbekistan was caused by the refusal of the Meskhetians to join a
movement to unite the Central Asian population under the banner of Islam.16 In
December 1988 at an Uzbek language festival held at Tashkent University, where
the demand was put for making Uzbek the republican state language, the central
banner hanging in front of the stage was a green one, while the fatiha, the first
chapter of the Koran and a component of the Muslim prayer ritual, was recited fo
llowing the reading of the petition that was the festival's culminating point.17
In the words of one scholar who has provided us with a great deal of insight
into Soviet nationalism, or ethnicity, as a whole, and in Central Asia in particular,
Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Islam is not the sole supranational identity with
which Central Asian nationalisms vie or which they imbibe. She insists that in
the perceptions of Soviet Muslim elites the appeal of "their new Soviet-developed
national identities (Uzbek, Turkmen, Azerbaijani) competes with two universalistic
supranational ideologies," that of Islam, which she calls "an integral identifying
component of their cultural cohesion and national identity," and that of Marxism-
Leninism, "the prism through which their knowledge of nationalism has been di
s eminated." This puts "the polycentric and natural law attributes of nationalism"
in potential conflict with the "universalistic beliefs" of two major and competing
ideological systems. Interestingly, while Marxist-Leninist ideology legitimizes
the flourishing of an ethnic culture insofar as it focuses on the "progressive"
aspects of its heritage, elements of Islamic culture have been allowed to prosper
within the Soviet
proscribed.18 There
federal
are also
structure,
indications
although
thatIslam
at least
- as some
a religion
Central
- wasAsians
necessarily
have
retained a Turkic, Turanian or Turkestani orientation.19
Official Soviet sources do not speak of nationalism - except with a pejorative
connotation - let alone of national liberation movements as such within the USSR,
although some social scientists have begun in the latter 1980's to use "nationalism"
in a neutral sense. Anything that extends beyond the limits of permitted or con
doned trends and developments has traditionally been condemned as national-
chauvinism, is, by definition, anti-Soviet and therefore does not require inclusion
in any exposition of Soviet society. This, too, seems to be changing in 1989, but
probably not very drastically; at the time of writing it is not yet possible to be cer
tain exactly how the establishment in conditions of increasing glasnosť will offi
cially address itself to manifestations and demonstrations of nationalism. It is
certainly interesting that the central authorities in their public references to the di
sturbances both in Eastern Uzbekistan and in Kazakhstan have attributed them to
bureaucratic shortcomings and inadequate social policies or, in some instances, to
Islamic extremism, rather than to national grievances.20 The Kremlin does, howe
ver, admit that national literatures or cultures are a phenomenon that has to be
explained and understood. The literature and culture of the Cental Asians are no
exception and there has been considerable discussion of their components and driv
ing forces and of the ways in which they enrich each other and help fulfil the
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 1 29

assignments of national literatures and cultures within the Soviet body polit
ic. This is no new phenomenon. Already under Stalin, Central Asian (and other
Muslim) intellectuals put up a stiff resistance to the central authorities' campaign
against the Turkic peoples' national epics, which they considered the core of their
national cultures. Although temporarily defeated, these dastan were rehabilitated
under Khrushchev and their opponents stigmatized as "cosmopolitan nihilists and
zealots of the cult of personality."21
In the 1970's a Soviet Uzbek scholar insisted that "the international and the
national" in Soviet Uzbek literature are inextricably interwoven, not only in its te
rminology and thought forms, but also through the message imparted by its heroes
and its portrayal of Uzbekistan's historical development. Uzbek literary works
serve to bring together the nationalities of the USSR, to stress general human val
ues and emotions. They bring home the social progress achieved by the regime
(for instance in the changed status of women), the devotion to the ideas of the revo
lution of the workers of all peoples and their common class interests. These val
ues and Soviet patriotism are paramount - above the specifics of the nation and its
fate.
The real rapprochement of Soviet nations and nationalities entails, according to
this same source, the rapprochement of national cultures, developing and strength
eningtheir ideological and artistic unity and reinforcing their international
pathos. Just as Russian literature has produced many talented works on themes
connected with other nations, so the artists of other nationalities have turned on a
large scale to Russian themes, for example, such Uzbek writers as Aibek,
M. Ismail', Sh. Rashidov, N. Safarov and I. Sultanov, and the poets, G. Guliam,
Kh. Alimdzhan, M. Sheikhzade, Uigun, Zul'fiia, Mirtemir, Kh. Guliam and
A. Mukhtar. All these artists write of Russian Bolsheviks carrying Lenin's truth
to the toiling people, uniting in the path of the October revolution workers and
dekhkan (i.e. peasants), teaching them how to build a new life.22 In fact, the very
gist of the argument here tends to beg the question for, insofar as it corresponds to
reality, these writers speak of Soviet themes, not Russian ones. These were the
lip-service demanded of all Soviet writers. Most of the writers on lakubov's list
are known for their use of national, Uzbek thematics.
An example of the way Central Asian intellectuals use the slogans of Soviet
official ideology was given in 1984 by Abdurrahim Pulatov, who wrote a lengthy
article entitled "Historical consciousness: its national and international aspects" in
an effort to redefine the place of Uzbek nationality and culture within the frame
work of sblizhenie (the rapprochement of the USSR's various ethnic compon
ents). True, he said, the Uzbeks were not a nation in the strict sense of the word
prior to 1917, yet they were one of the most ancient peoples in the world. The
Uzbek people had "preserved its own history and national environment" through a
"conscious struggle." It had defended its "national existence and given clear
expression to its national spirit through its labor and its word, and sometimes by
arms."
taking up
Pulatov went on to insist that socialist internationalism did not contradict the
national feelings and pride of the USSR's "socialist nations." Despite the relation
ship between nations and classes, their historic fate remained different. Even the
ultimate aim of merging these nations would not put an end to these differences
because it did not aim to cast aside the various nations' "spiritual
«30 YAACOVROI

wealth." Pulatov cautioned against an excessively guarded attitude toward

national pride, which even bordered on indifference toward the national cultures;
he took issue specifically with incorrect ideas put forward in different writings that
encouraged such indifference, referring to a book that had appeared shortly before
in Tashkent.23 In Pulatov's opinion, negative elements could appear only where
nations' socialist self-awareness had not fully developed or where there was no
active struggle against relics of the past in the minds of individuals. (Here the
author simply uses the party's terminology with what seems to border on pure cyni
cism.) The self-awareness of socialist nations, he went on, is a part of their cul
ture and a significant indicator of the success of socialism. He thus called for the
"profound study of the history of the Uzbek people and the notable great works of
our ancestors in every field of life." The "rich history" of the Uzbeks should be
used "to contribute to strengthening socialist self-awareness."24
If traditionally Central Asian national movements have not been political
movements - both Bennigsen and Rakowska-Harmstone in their above-mentioned
papers insist that at the end of the seventies they were not yet political - this seems
to be changing in the second half of the 1980's. The first indication of this new
trend in the Central Asian context was perhaps the rioting that took place in Alma-
Ata in December 1986 that followed the replacement of Dinamukhamed Kunaev
as the Kazakh SSR party's first secretary by the Russian Gennadii Kolbin, in which
Russians were attacked physically and the windows of public buildings
broken. This was not the first Central Asian uprising with a nationalist mes
sage. As early as 1969 in the "Pakhtakor riots" that broke out on the occasion of
a football match between a local and a Russian team in Tashkent students had
brandished banners with slogans "Russians, go home!"25 But this was the first
attention.26
time such events were discussed in the media and given publicized top-ranking

Anti-Russian feeling is apparently one of the delicate issues that even in the era
of glasnosť are not fully discussed in the media. At the same time, it continues to
run strong. One candidate of philosophy at the Tadzhik SSR Academy of
Sciences, Mirbobo Mirrakhimov, has publicly blamed the Russians for all that is
wrong in that republic: environmental pollution, the housing shortage, the high
crime rate and the high level of infant mortality. He was reported to have told
voters in one raion not to elect a Russian deputy, as he would bring in more
Russians, who would then squeeze out the Tadzhiks. According to the press
office of the republican KGB, Mirrakhimov also went on record as saying that
within a decade not a Russian would remain in Tadzhikistan and then "we can
build our Islamic republic." (There has been a general outmigration of Russians
and Ukrainians from Central Asia since the mid-1970's, and in the first six months
of 1989 no less than 10,000 "people of non-indigenous nationalities" were reported
to have left Dushanbe alone, those leaving giving as their basic reason the fact that
the state language has been declared to be Tadzhik.)27 Referring to Mirrakhimov,
the Tadzhik SSR's KGB press office noted that "certain strata of the population
were particularly responsive to this type of argument."28 Indeed, when in 1987,
Kommunist Tadzhikistana had sought to rebut Mirrakhimov's arguments, which
had been published by the Tadzhik-language Komsomol newspaper (whose editor
was duly fined), it remarked that in so doing, it was going against public opin
ion.29 In summer 1989, the press reported that a worker, who had been assaulted
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 131

by two Europeans, had put up homemade posters at a bus-stop with the slogans
"Get the Russians!", "Beat the Russians'.1" for which he had been fined one thou
sand rubles.30
While there seems little doubt that from Gorbachev's point of view Kunaev's
dismissal was no less justified than that of other Central Asian party chiefs and
officials accused of corruption and excessive use of patronage, it had been an
unwritten rule since the late 1950's that the republican first secretaries at least
would be members of the titular nationality. In this sense, the Kazakh "nationa
lists"were, therefore, acting within the framework of rules of thumb laid down by
the central authorities, even if never specifically spelled out, and which Moscow
was itself now violating. When Gorbachev told the Central Committee plenum
that convened in late January 1987 that the nationality problem was basically one
of a proportionate representation among cadres, as well as a fair share in both the
economic burden and profits,31 he was clearly addressing himself to this very prob
lem, insinuating, however, that since there were more Russians than Kazakhs in
Kazakhstan, its party boss should in fact be Russian. Interestingly, in contrast to
the three previous censuses, which had shown the larger number of Russians (the
only union republic with more Russians than members of the titular nationality),
the 1989 census has shown that the Kazakhs with their greater fertility have
redressed the balance - and the party secretary has been changed once more,
Kolbin being replaced by a Kazakh national. Also in January 1987, at a meeting
of the Kazakh central committee bureau, chief of the national relations sector and
deputy chief of the agitprop section V.A. Auman explained that it was necessary to
terminate
"the unseemly practice whereby posts seem to be assigned to representatives of a partic
ularnationality. (After a leader has left a post, a successor of the selfsame nationality
has frequently automatically taken over.(...J This has meant that it is not professional
and political qualities which have been foremost, but national allegiance.)"
It was stressed at this same session that "an orientation toward parochial,
departmental or localistic sentiments is fraught with the risk of sliding onto the
path of favoritism and nepotism." The economic and social progress of all the
nations and nationalities had "led to the growth of their national self-
awareness. At the same time, pride in successes [...] has nothing in common with
national arrogance or conceit."32
The politicization of Central Asian nationalism became evident again two years
later when Tadzhik intellectuals and artists conceived the idea of forming a popular
front, similar to those formed in the Baltic republics, under the tentative name
"Friends of perestroïka? The idea, which can hardly perhaps be called Soviet,
although it emanates from other ethnic groupings in the Soviet Union, was for
mally floated at a meeting of Tadzhikistan's creative unions in September
1988. This was followed by an invitation to the general public to submit proposa
ls for the group's structure and program in one of the republic's literary newspap
ers.The paper pointed out that similar organizations existed in the Baltic republ
ics,which "deserve our attention. But to copy them in (their) entirety in our
republic would not be especially desirable because of differences in conditions of
work, lifestyle, psychology and customs." One of the group's principal organi
zers, Tadzhik poet Askar Hakim, said that no definitive platform had yet been
132 YAACOV RO'I

elaborated - uwe are still gathering people together and defining the issues" - but
he presumed, for instance, that the front would take up the issue of the status of the
Tadzhik language, as the intelligentsia was already involved in a struggle for its
"further development and strengthening." The meeting that had raised the issue
originally had included in the front's aims ensuring social justice, improving educa
tionand knowledge of the legal system, preserving the environment and historical
monuments - this had been a widely accepted cover in the Soviet Union since the
1960s for preserving and reviving the treasures of the national culture - and serv
ing"as a moral defender of the people."33
In Uzbekistan a national front, Birlik (Unity), came into being in November
1988. The formation of an avowedly national grouping with specific demands
and a declared program was a clear sign of politicization. Demonstrations were
not long in following, in some of which Birlik occupied a central role. On March
19, 1989, "students, workers and intellectuals calling for official recognition of
Uzbek as the state language, held a general demonstration in Lenin Square in the
center of Tashkent," an Uzbek journalist told Radio Liberty. The demonstrators,
approximately 12,000 in number carried slogans, including "State status for the
Uzbek language;" "We should study the old alphabet;" "Birlik should be recog
nized." Speakers included the writer Kenzhabaev, Pulatov - now chairman of
Birlik - and the poet Gulchara Nurullaeva, who read a poem entitled "An
appeal." The demonstration had been organized by Birlik, which then proceeded
to stage a further demonstration on April 9, in which it requested official recogni
tion and asked to be allowed to publish its own newspaper. Some estimates put
the number of participants at this second demonstration at 100,000. Apart from
the recognition of Birlik, slogans included the demand to remain in Uzbekistan
(i.e. protesting outmigration), protests against the republic's "bureaucratic leaders"
and the area's ecological problems ("There will be no Central Asia without the
Aral Sea"). Perhaps most interesting (and for the central authorities most omi
nous) were two slogans in Kazakh, there having been a significant Kazakh element
in the crowd. One of them declared the support of Uzbekistan's Kazakhs for
recognizing Uzbek as that republic's state language; the other stated that the state
language in Kazakhstan should be Kazakh. Another sign of Central Asian soli
darity was a statement by Birlik's deputy chairman, Akhmad Azam, that Stalin had
split up "the single Turkic people" of Central Asia,34 although this may also be
interpreted as an example of an Uzbek tendency to regional hegemonism.
As is well known, nationalist demonstrations in Central Asia in 1989 were not
all peaceful. Some of them propagated what is known in Soviet terminology as
"interethnic strife." Nor was this directed necessarily against Russians. It has
included the fanning of xenophobic feelings against other Soviet nationals, who
were alleged to have deprived the indigenous population of much-needed housing
facilities and job opportunities. In Novyi Uzen' in Kazakhstan, Caucasiaas of
undefined nationality were attacked by angry crowds, while in Eastern Uzbekistan
Uzbeks carried out actual pogroms against another Muslim grouping, the
Meskhetian Turks, in May and June 1989.
Nationalism is not restricted to the eponymous population of the Central Asian
republics. The problems of the various Central Asian peoples in neighboring
republics have aroused the interest of their fellow nationals, particularly perhaps
those of Tadzhiks in Uzbekistan, who number about 700,000, or approximately
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 1 33

20 % of the total population of Tadzhiks. (This number does not include

Tadzhiks who are officially regarded as Uzbeks and who are estimated at another
80,000 or so.'5) Tadzhik SSR First Secretary Kakhar Makhkamov pointed out to
the 19th АН-Union party conference in July 1988 that for many years there had
been friction in adjacent areas of the two republics.46 This seems to have
become an actual issue in view of the public discussion of the Nagorno-Karabakh
controversy. Politburo member and CPSU Central Committee Secretary
Aleksandr Iakovlev noted in an interview also in July that agreement to transfer
Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian SSR could lead to similar demands for bor
der changes on the part of other republics, citing as an example the Tadzhik
demand for Samarkand.37 (Gorbachev himself made two references to Tadzhiks
living in Uzbekistan in the Supreme Soviet debate of this problem in the same
month.38
Yet the essence of Tadzhik claims does not seem to focus on territorial difficult
ies.Earlier in the same year, the editor of the Tadzhik-language Komsomol
newspaper was sacked after publishing "civicly immature, ideologically damaging
articles, in particular on questions of interethnic relations." The Tadzhik party
Central Committee set up a commission in response to protests at the dismissal
which found that the paper had launched a discussion about the situation of the
Tadzhiks living in the Uzbek SSR "in a tone unacceptable for such delicate ques
tions and wholesale accusations had rung out against supposed opponents in the
republic and beyond its borders for scorning the past of the Tadzhik people and its
culture, belittling the Tadzhik nation, and so on."39 Members of the Tadzhik intel
ligentsia have been complaining that the Uzbeks have closed some of the schools
and classes with instruction in Tadzhik, that the demand for certain publications in
Tadzhik was not being met and that Dushanbe television programs could not be
received in Bukhara and Samarkand oblasti. They also complained that Uzbek
scholars had coopted the philosopher Ibn Sina and regarded as Uzbeks Persian-
Tadzhik poets of the eleventh to sixteenth centuries on the grounds that they had
lived and worked within the frontiers of present-day Uzbekistan.40
A series of high-level meetings between senior party officials of the two republ
ics have sought to give redress. Agreement was reached for the academies of sci
ences of the two republics to conduct joint research on regional problems and dis
cussions on the history of Central Asia. Another agreement specified an expans
ionof cultural exchanges between the two republics, joint publications of the two
republics' State Publishing Committees and increasing the availability of Tadzhik
books in Uzbekistan. Unquestionably the more than one million Uzbeks living in
Tadzhikistan - where they account for 23 % of the population - will also benefit
from these concords. In June 1988 Tadzhikistan hosted an Uzbek delegation
composed of First Secretary Rafik Nishanov, the chairman of the republic's council
of ministers and supreme soviet and the party's second and ideological secretari
es. At discussions held with the Tadzhik party Central Committee attention was
paid to
"further deepening cultural links, the development of joint scientific studies in the field
of the historical and cultural heritage, ethnography, economics and ecology of the
region, and also satisfying more fully the demands of the multinational population of the
two fraternal republics."41
»34 YAACOVRO'I

Similar meetings have been taking place with increasing frequency between
other Central Asian leaders to discuss inter-republican problems and sometimes
also common difficulties. Thus, the first secretaries of the Central Committees of
the Communist Party of Turkmenia and Uzbekistan, Saparmurad Niiazov and
Islam Kerimov, met in August 1989 to discuss the sanitary and ecological situation
concerning the Amu-Daťia River, whose water is becoming heavily polluted, and
the Aral Sea. They also participated in the opening of the 79th school in
Turkmenia in which teaching is conducted in Uzbek.42
Altogether, Soviet scholars and publicists have, under Gorbachev, been advo
cating the flourishing of national literatures, cultures and self-awareness, claiming
that this is essential to the success of glasnosť and perestroïka. Academician
Dmitrii Likhachev wrote in favor of nurturing national cultures in the journal
Druzhba narodov, while I. Dedkov in Kommunist called the suppression of
national expression under the slogan of "internationalism" socialism's "greatest
miscalculation and stupidity."43 In this context, head of the Uzbek SSR Writers'
Union and member of an official commission on nationality issues set up in
Uzbekistan in early 1988, Adyl Iakubov, calls for "respect" from his fellow Soviet
citizens, in place of the stereotypes created by the negative portrayal of Uzbeks in
the Soviet press. "A people which is guilty of nothing [...] needs understanding,
sympathy, warmth and assistance from all other fraternal peoples." Implying
apparently that Soviet citizens are too prone to accuse Uzbeks of nationalism, he
says: people complain that Uzbek names have an Islamic tint, but do not certain
Russian names have a Christian one? He also proposes that Soviet law should
define precisely what is meant by the terms "internationalism," "nationalism" and
"chauvinism." Accusations of nationalism had led to the prohibition of meetings
in the native language and even of the traditional skullcap. Iakubov suggests pun
ishment for those who condemn a natural love of one's own people as
"nationalism."44
Similarly, Uzbek writer Kamil Ikramov calls for an end to unjustified accusa
tionsof nationalism in literature by suggesting that Soviet historians and comment
ators cease focusing on "bourgeois falsifiers" but rather investigate the "home
grown" ones who wrote the slanderous articles and dissertations that helped ruin
the poet Cholpan and the writer Fitrat, Jadidists who wrote in the 1920's and
1930's, whose writings were deemed fit for republication only in 1987, and a dozen
other Uzbek writers.45
Similar efforts to reevaluate, rehabilitate and republish writers of the prerevolu-
tionary and early Soviet periods have been made by other Central Asian intellectu
als. At least on two occasions in 1987, First Secretary of the Kirghiz SSR
Communist Party Alsamat Masaliev said he could not support the reassessment of
the works of Moldo Kylykh Shamyrkan-uulu and Kasym Tynystanov. They had
been charged, among other things, of adhering to "a counterrevolutionary and
nationalistic line in their works," of distorting the Kirghiz language and blocking
the introduction into it of "Soviet internationalist terms."46
Masaliev favored the rewriting of history without "blank spots," but not at the
expense of "class and party positions."47 Subsequently (in March 1988), a com
mission was formed to examine the legacy of the two writers - it included repre
sentatives from Kirghizia and specialists from Moscow - which recommended
republication (with commentaries if needed) and a systematic investigation into
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 1 35

their creative legacy and that of other Kirghiz writers who had not yet been given a
"scientific assessment."48
Although the party leadership continued to stall, suggesting, for example, that
any final decision should be made "objectively, with due deliberation, and without
going to extremes,"49 Kirghiz intellectuals went on pressing for the work of the two
writers to be returned to the people. Articles favorable to Moldo Kylykh and
Tynystanov continued to appear in the Kirghiz press. One of these, written by
Abdygany Erkebaev, director of the Kirghiz Academy of Sciences Language and
Literature Institute and a member of the special commission, pointed out that both
in Moscow and in Central Asia the status of formerly banned literary figures like
Cholpan and Fitrat in Uzbekistan and the poets Shakarim Kudaibcrdiev and
Magdzhan Dzhumubaev in Kazakhstan had recently been revised. (The first publ
icappeal for the republication of the works of these two poets, who had written in
the early 1930's, seems to have come from Olzhas Suleimenov, first secretary of
the Kazakh SSR Writers' Union in April 1987. This was taken up by the promi
nentKazakh prose writer Abdidzhamil Nurpeisov in an interview he gave to
Literaturnaia gazeta, Feb. 24, 1988.) Erkebaev suggested a similar and less sub
jective approach to the life and work of Moldo Kylykh and Tynystanov. Most of
the works of the former were needed by the reading public, with the exception of
two lengthy poems which had a reactionary character, lamenting the neglect of
Islam, longing for and idealizing the past and lacking hope for the
future. Tynystanov had also made errors, which he himself had acknowledged -
romanticizing the past and demonstrating the influence of Kazakh nationalism -
but on the whole he had served Soviet power with all his heart both in his work in
developing the Kirghiz literary language and in his strictly literary activity (he had
written poetry, prose and drama).50
The commission's findings, not apparently disclosed for four months, noted that
an instructor of the CPSU Central Committee, A. A. Mikhailov, wrote a letter to
that body's Ideological Department complaining that the Kirghiz party authorities
had been unable to elaborate a correct position regarding Moldo Kylykh and
Tynystanov. The commission insisted that the republican party had the authority
to eliminate the obstacles hindering their reinstatement (particularly by revoking
the decrees of May 14, 1958 and January 5, 1960 that had banned publicat
ion). The commission agreed that in Moldo Kylykh's poetry there were traces of
"an idealization of tribal -patriarchal relations" among the Kirghiz and of "dogmatic
religious thinking." Yet, it contended, conceptions no less alien to the present day
ideological outlook could be found in the works of Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky. Moreover, Moldo Kylykh's attraction to religion was connected with
his desire for social justice, while his largely negative attitude to the Russians
referred specifically to tsarist colonialism, was based on social and religious reser
vations (namely that they were oppressors and infidels) and not nationalist ones,
and despite his criticism, he acknowledged the Russians' economic and technical
achievements, as well as intelligence and strength. Finally, the commission saw
in Moldo Kylykh the first and most outstanding representative of Kirghiz written
literature directly descended from the oral tradition.
The commission did not deny that Tynystanov had been influenced by the
Kazakh nationalist Alash-Orda movement, but noted that his ideological evolution
was progressive, moving from admiration of the patriarchal past to a clear under-
136 YAACOVROI

standing of the importance of the struggle between antagonistic classes. The

basic reason for the accusations against him had been his cycle of plays Akademiya
kecheleri (Academy evenings) but these accusations had lost whatever foundation
they may once have had.51
Similar discussions went on in other republics. When Olzhas Suleimenov
told a Kazakh party Central Committee plenum devoted to nationality relations on
June 4, 1988 that a proposal was being prepared to create a commission to study
the works of writers and scholars who disappeared in the 1930's, director of the
Institute of Party History Baidabek Tulepbaev warned against an emotional
approach to the question of rehabilitations. He noted that attempts to restore in a
new guise individuals from the historical past who had opposed the party and
Soviet power had lately become more frequent. One person, in his opinion, who
should not have been rehabilitated was Muhametjan Tinishbaev who, as leader of
clerical-nationalist circles, became premier in November 1917 of the government
of the counterrevolutionary Kokand Autonomy, "the first political base of the
Basmachi movement." Later, as deputy leader of the Kazakh nationalist Alash-
Orda government in 1918-1919, he formed units to assist the White general
Kolchak and ordered the annihilation of many Kazakh communists. After Alash-
Orda became disillusioned with the Whites and threw in its lot with the
Bolsheviks, it was disbanded in January 1920, upon which Tinishbaev was
appointed commissar for his birthplace Semirech'e. As of 1922 he devoted him
self completely to scholarly activity, writing on Kazakh history, including recent
developments.32 In 1989 a round-table discussion was published which sought to
conduct an objective, even-handed analysis of the activities of the Alash-Orda
government and of the prerevolutionary Alash party.53
First secretary of the Kazakh SSR Writers' Union Olzhas Suleimenov is also
author of Az i ia, in which he indicated that the influence of a dynamic Turkic cul
ture on the medieval Russian epic "The lay of the host of Igor"' had long been
ignored. He is not only interested in filling in some of "history's blank spots," as
they are presently called. He has also demanded a rewrite of textbooks, noting
that when he was in school in Alma-Ata in the 1950s he studied the history of
Greece and Rome but not that of the Kazakhs. Proceeding to lament the fate that
befell the Kazakhs in "the black days of wholesale collectivization" as a result of
the "genocide organized by zealous bureaucrats," he asked: "Who knows that there
were six million Kazakhs in their territory at the end of the 1920's, but only three
million after collectivization?" Suleimenov's comments included references to
language as well. He recalled that when he began going to school there had been
no schools in Alma-Ata that taught in Kazakh; although the situation had improved
in the republican capital, the problem persisted in certain regions. Nor was
Suleimenov's call for national self-consciousness restricted to Kazakhs and their
own affairs. He believes that the various nationalisms should be concerned with
each other's affairs, specifying particularly the "misfortune" of the Crimean Tatars,
the Meskhetians and the Kurds.54
Another attempt to fill in "history's blank spots" was made in late summer
1989, when the historian M. Khasanov, presumably an Uzbek, told the editor of
the Uzbek pioneer newspaper Lenin uchkuni - who published the interview - that
although all textbooks told how Central Asia had joined tsarist Russia voluntarily,
it had in fact been conquered. Khasanov suggested that as of September 1989,
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 1 37

the truth should be taught both in schools and in institutes of higher learning.55 A
lecturer at the Kirghiz State University similarly complained that the second
volume of The history of the Kirghiz SSR was founded on error in that it was based
on the assumption that lay behind the Kirghiz party resolution of 1963 on
Kirghizia's voluntary entry into Russia.56 A similar contention was made by the
secretary of the Turkmen SSR Komsomol Central Committee regarding the falsif
ication of Turkmenian history.57
Other debates that are of relevance to our topic concern the reform of the
Central Asian languages. In January 1986, for instance, the Kirghiz poet Aaly
Tokombaev published an article advocating the reform of Kirghiz orthography and
supporting the purity of the language.58 And, of greater interest, the controversy
concerning the Kirghiz epic, the Manas. The poet Aaly Tokombaev wrote a letter
to First Secretary Masaliev and Second Secretary Kiselev in 1986 objecting to the
version of the Manas recited by the bard (jnanaschi) Sagymbay Orozbakov. He
recalled that at a scientific conference in 1952 on the Manas, Orozbakov's version
had been condemned for referring to campaigns of conquest against the Russians
and because it was full of pan-Islamic sentiment and nationalism. Tokombaev
complained that the published version, begun in 1978, with Chingiz Aitmatov as
editor-in-chief, still contained "errors of a political character:" in parts Chinese ter
ritorial claims on the USSR were supported; elsewhere the hero Manas slaughtered
innocent Tadzhiks. At a meeting of the party aktiv of the Kirghiz Writers' Union
in May 1987 and again at the Kirghiz Academy of Sciences, Tokombaev accused
those who opposed him on this issue of nationalism. In August at a Kirghiz party
Central Committee plenum (devoted to economic development) he accused the
"rotten" intelligentsia among the Kirghiz of nationalism, pan-Turkism and other
harmful "isms." This led to a denunciation of his campaign and a flood of critical
letters from the general public. In an authoritative article in the literary-cultural
Kyrgyzstan madaniyati (Dec. 10, 1987) Tokombaev was accuse- 1 of resorting to the
methods of the 1930*8; it was also pointed out that in the past he, too, had been
charged with ideological and political errors. At a further plenum of the Kirghiz
party Central Committee in January 1988, deputy chairman of the Kirghiz Writers'
Union Jolon Mamytov stated that the discussion of the Manas had been halted;
Aitmatov and Tokombaev were instructed to find a compromise, but nothing seems
to have been done before Tokombaev's death in June 1988.59
Another theme that has recurred among Central Asian intellectuals has been the
severance of the population from its literary past as a result of their ignorance of
the Arabic script. (Indeed, one of the reasons for switching from the Arabic to the
Latin script in the 1920's was to bring about a break with a literary tradition that
had been characterized by a strongly Islamic influence and with literary activity in
other Islamic countries.) In December 1986 the Uzbek language literary and cul
tural newspaper Uzbekistan adabiyati va san"ati published an article on contempor
ary Uzbek literature. Its authors, three specialists in literary studies, claimed that
most of the students graduating from language and literature departments in
Uzbekistan's universities and scientific institutions could not read the Arabic script
and were ignorant of their literary heritage, that had been written in Persian and
Arabic. Moreover, there are almost no young people with an interest in, or
knowledge of the literature written in the classical Central Asian Chagatay or "Old
Uzbek." If this situation persisted, they maintained, in a few years there would be
138 YAACOVRO'I

no one left working on the history of the language, classical literature or old
manuscripts.
In summer 1987 at a round-table discussion on restructuring and issues con
cerning the study of the region's literary heritage, philologist Begali Qasimov
sounded a second note of alarm. Plans for training specialists able to study
Central Asian classical literature at Tashkent State University had not been fo
llowed up. Qasimov recommended that a group be formed under the auspices of
the university's Philology or Oriental Studies Department to train such
experts. Another participant at the discussion, Artiqbay Absullaev, went even
further. He felt that changes at the level of higher education were not sufficient
and that it was necessary to begin training at the secondary school level, namely
introducing the study of the Arabic script as a subject in the high school curricu
lum. He insisted that this was necessary not only for the study of literature, but
also for history and other branches of science and culture.60
Writer Nadir Narmatov took up this same idea, claiming it was vital to prepare
a textbook on the old script in Uzbek schools. True, there might be opposition, as
had been aroused by a teacher in Surkhandaria Oblast' who had been accused by
his fellow teachers of promoting religion and the old ways when he tried to teach
students the old Uzbek writing system out of class. Narmatov argued the exact
contrary, that if the Arabic alphabet were taught in school, it could not be used to
teach religion surreptitiously, as happened currently when some believers took on
as pupils young people interested in learning the Arabic script and then proceeded
to teach them religious practices as well. Narmatov pointed out that the Uzbek
SSR Academy of Sciences' Oriental Studies Institute possessed over 80,000 manus
cripts of which only 3-4,000 had even been described in catalogues. At the
present rate of publication of these manuscripts - one or two every five or six
years - several centuries would pass before this treasure would be available to the
public.61
It is surely of interest that at a nationalist demonstration held in Dushanbe early
in 1989, demands included not only the recognition of Tadzhik as the republic's
official language - similar to the status afforded to the titular language in the Baltic
and Transcaucasian republics - but also a return to the Arabic script. At least one
Uzbek, the poet Mukhammad Salikh, secretary of the Uzbek Writers' Union, has
even urged the study of the ancient Turkic "runic" script that had been prevalent in
Turkestan before the Arab conquest, insisting that the origins of the present-day
Uzbek cultural heritage were Turkic.62
The issue of making the language of the eponymous nationality the state la
nguage of the republic - that we have mentioned in connection with nationalist
demonstrations and the formation and activity of Birlik - has become a political
issue in all four Central Asian union republics (Turkmenia was last to join battle in
fall 1989) as well as in Kazakhstan. In June 1989 a draft law was published that
was to make Uzbek the state language of Uzbekistan. By the time the Uzbek SSR
Supreme Soviet passed the law on October 20, 1989, Birlik was demonstrating in
Tashkent to have Uzbek as language of interethnic communication as well. In
August the Kirghiz introduced a draft law on the gradual introduction (over the
course of ten years) of Kirghiz as the state language in that republic. The time
period was so protracted because the use of the language had become very
restricted, the urban youth having virtually no knowledge of their native Ian-
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 1 39

guage.63 For some of the bitterness that accompanied the struggle in

Tadzhikistan, one has only to read the apology of Mukhammadzhan Shukurov in
Literaturnaia gazeta (July 19, 1989), who went to great lengths to show that any
other solution would inevitably lead to the total disappearance of Tadzhik in face
of the superior status and momentum of Russian in the country as as whole.

In conclusion, I think we can make the following points:

1. The concepts underlying Soviet nationalities policy as it has been tradition
ally expounded and practiced, have provided the thought framework within which
Central Asian nationalism has evolved and the terminology which it has
used. This is true whether we are talking of the cultivation and encouragement of
the local languages, literatures and cultures, the social well-being of the indigenous
population and its role and integration in the all-union economic system or the
nomination of personnel in the local and central party, government and scientific
administrations. It is also valid for tendencies to homogenize the population of
the local administrative unit, whether the outsiders be Russians, other Muslims
(such as the Meskhetiaas) or whatever.
2. The development of Great Russian nationalism has often been the conscious
or unconscious model and example for that of the Central Asians. If the motto of
the former has been "preservation and revival" (to quote John Dunlop), so has that
of the Central Asian nationalists, who have sought first and foremost to return to
their roots and prevent the erosion and extinction of their traditions and way of
life. They, too, have had recourse to their historical religion and local patriotism
and have stressed the intrinsic worth of their respective cultures.
3. There does not on the whole seem to be a regional, Central Asian national
ism although there are a number of significant exceptions. On the contrary, a
number of the ethnic groupings we have been discussing continue to be antagonist
ic to each other both on the old, tribal and new, national level. At the same time,
the forms the various nationalisms have adopted are largely similar both in their
expression and in their final goals. As they begin to politicize, it can perhaps be
expected that some of their leaders, who are mostly intellectuals, may reach a
conscious decision that just as the Baltic republics have joined hands for the first
time and seem to be making a much greater impact as a result of this - indeed, have
even created a framework of cooperation with national movements and nationalist
groupings of other union republics - it might be worth their while to emphasize
their own common objectives and bury some of their longstanding animosities and
conflicts. In this way they would be internalizing some of the lessons the CPSU
has been claiming to have taught them concerning the "mutual enrichment" of
national cultures and ways of life, although, paradoxically, using them to gore the
central authorities. Perhaps, Central Asian nationalism will thus become
"socialist in form and nationalist in content."

Tel Aviv University, 1989.

140 YAACOV RO'I

1. T. Rakowska-Harmstone, "Soviet Moslem nationalism in comparative perspective," in Ch.

Lemercier-Quelquejay, G. Veinstein, S.E. Wimbush, eds, Passé turco-tatar, présent soviétique/Turco-
Tatar past, Soviet present, Paris- Louvain, 1987 (henceforth Turco-Tatar past), pp. 469-480.
2. Kazakhstanskaia pravda (Feb. 4, 1988) and Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, henceforth RL, 81/
88 (Feb. 18, 1988).
3. Yash leninchi (Feb. 25, 1988), quoted RL 209/88 (May 18, 1988); see also Pravda vostoka
(May 6, 1988) and protocol of the Congress of People's Deputies (June 9, 1989), FB1S-SOV-89-166
(Aug. 20, 1989).
4. J.B. Dunlop, The contemporary Russian nationalist spectrum," in Russian nationalism today,
RL, special ed. (Dec. 19, 1988).
5. A. Bennigsen, M. Broxup, The Islamic threat (London: Croom Helm, 1984).
6. A. Bennigsen, "Soviet Islam since the invasion of Afghanistan," Central Asian Survey, 1, 1 (July
1982) : 65-78; Ch. Lemercier-Quelquejay, "From tribe to umma," ibid, 3, 3 (1984): 15-26.
7. D. Montgomery, "The Uzbeks in two states: Soviet and Afghan policies toward an ethnic minor
ity," in W.O. McCagg, Jr., B.D. Silver, eds, Soviet Asian ethnic frontiers (New York: Pergamon,
1979): 154; Ch. Lemercier-Quelquejay, art. cit.
8. J. Critchlow, "Vatan and the concept of 'homeland' in the Muslim Soviet Republics," in Turco-
Tatar past: 48 1-488.
9. Mukhamad AH, "Let us know our inheritance: get to know yourself," Yash leninchi (Aug. 1988),
reproduced in adaptation in AACAR Bulletin, 2, 3 (1989); A. Hetmanek, "National renascence in Soviet
Kazakhstan: the Brezhnev era," in G. W. Simmonds, éd., Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe
in the era of Brezhnev and Kosygin (Detroit: University of Detroit Press, 1977): 295-305.
10. M.B. Olcott, "Soviet Islam and world revolution," World Politics, 34, 4 (1982): 487-504.
11. Yaacov Ro'i, "Religion as an obstacle to sblizhenie: the official perception," Soviet Union, 14, 2
(1987): 163-179; id., "The task of creating the new Soviet man: 'atheistic propaganda' in the Soviet
Muslim areas," Soviet Studies, 36, 1 (Jan. 1984): 26-34.
12. I. Beliaev, "Islam i politika," Lite raturnaia gazeta (May 13 and 20, 1987).
13. Chingiz Aitmatov, The day lasts more than a hundred years (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1983); I. Beliaev, art. cit..
14. Y. Ro'i, "Religion...," art. cit.
15. RL, 47 1/86 (Dec. 16, 1986).
16. Y. Ro'i, "Iran's Islamic revolution and the Soviet Muslims," in D. Menashri, éd., The Iranian
revolution and the Muslim world (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1990).
17. Yash leninchi (Jan. 13, 1989), quoted in RL, Report on the USSR, 1, 8 (Feb. 24, 1989).
18. T. Rakowska-Harmstone, art. cit.
19. H.B. Paksoy, "Central Asia's new dastans," Central Asian Survey, 6, 1 (1987): 75-92; A.
Hetmanek, "Aesop and the Turkestanian idea," in E. von Mende, éd., Turkestan als historischer Faktor
und politische Idee (Cologne: Studienverlag, 1988): 59-80.
20. Pravda (Aug. 22, 1989); TrudOunc 15, 1989).
21. A. Bennigsen, "The crisis of the Turkic national epics, 1951-1952: local nationalism or interna
tionalism?", Canadian Slavonic Papers. 17, 2-3 (1975): 463-474.
22. Kh.I. Iakubov, "Natsional'noe i internatsional'noe v uzbekskoi sovetskoi literature," in
TorzHestvo leninskoi natsional'noi politiki KPSS (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1973) : 468-472.
23. V. Ten', Rukovodstvo KPSS protsessom sblizheniia natsii v usloviiakh razvitogo sotsializma
(1959-1975 gg.): na materialakh respublik Srednei Azii (Tashkent, 1981).
24. Sovet Ozbekistoni (Jan. 4, 1984), quoted RL, 85/84 (Feb. 24, 1984).
25. B. Kamenetskii, Rusifikatsiia i natsional'noe vozrozhdenie v Uzbekistáne (Tel Aviv: private éd.,
1987).
26. Radio-Moscow (Dec. 25, 1986)/FBIS III (Dec. 29, 1986); Uteraturnaia gazeta (Dec. 31, 1986);
Kazakhstanskaia pravda (Jan. 1987, passim).
27. Sovetskaia molodezh' (Sept. 22, 1989)/FBIS-SOV-89-137(Oct. 13, 1989).
28. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (Sept. 16, 1989).
29. RL, 163/88.
30. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (Aug. 19, 1989).
31. Pravda (Jan. 28, 1987).
32. Kazakhstanskaia pravda (Jan. 18, 1987).
33. RL. 498/88 (Nov. 16, 1988).
34. RL Report on the USSR, 1, 17 (Apr. 28, 1989).
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA 141

35. RL, 366/88 (Aug. 11, 1988).

36. Pravda (July 2, 1988).
37. II Manifesto (July 10, 1988), quoted RL, 366/88.
38. Pravda (July 20, 1988).
39. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (Mar. 5, 1988).
40. Pravda vostoka (June 26, 1988), and RL, 143/88 (Mar. 17, 1988).
41. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (Mar. 15, May 13, June 19, 21, 22, 1988).
42. Moscow Television (Aug. 24, 1989)/FBIS-SOV-167 (Aug. 30, 1989).
43. Druzhba narodov, 6 (1988); Kommunist, 8 (1988).
44. Pravda vostoka (May 6, 1988) ; Literaturnaia gazeta (Mar. 9, June 22, 1988).
45. RL, 28/88 (Jan. 18, 1988).
46. Sovetskaia Kirgiziia (May 24, 1988).
47. Ibid. (Dec. 6, 1987); also RL, 98/87.
48. Kyrgyzystan madaniyati (Aug. 11, 1988), quoted RL, 141/86, 8/87.
49. Sovetskaia Kirgiziia (May 25, 1988).
50. Sovettik Kyrgyzystan (June 9, 1988).
51. RL, 405/88 (Aug. 31, 1988).
52. Kazakhstanskaia pravda (June 8, 1988) and RL, 266/88 (June 16, 1988).
53. Ibid. (July 19, 1989).
54. Ibid. (June 3, 1988).
55. Pravda (Sept. 18, 1989).
56. Sovetskaia Kirgiziia (May 24, 1989).
57. Yash kommunist (Jul. 29, 1989) quoted Sovset.
58. Kyrgyzystan madaniyati (Jan. 16, 1986), see RL, 141/86 (Mar. 21, 1986) and 8/87 (Dec. 31,
1986); Sovetskaia Kirgiziia (Feb. 4, 1988).
59. RL, 284/88 (June 22, 1988); Sovetskaia Kirgiziia (Feb. 4, 1988).
60. Uzbekistan adabiyati va san"ati (Dec. 5, 1986; Jul. 10, 1987).
61. Ibid. (Jan. 1, 1988).
62. RL, 554/88 (Dec. 5, 1988).
63. TASS in English (Aug. 24, 1989)/FBIS-SOV-89-167 (Aug. 30, 1989).