CESR
Central Eurasian Studies Review
Publication of the Central Eurasian Studies Society
ISSN 1538-5043 (Print)
ISSN 1543-7817 (Electronic)
Contents of this
issue
Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 2002
Perspectives
Research Reports and Briefs
Reviews and Abstracts
Conferences and Lecture Series
Educational Resources and Developments
Editors - CESR Vol. 1 No. 2
Editor-in-Chief: Virginia Martin (Huntsville,
Ala., USA)
Section Editors:
Perspectives: Robert M. Cutler (Ottawa/Montreal,
Canada)
Research Reports and Briefs: Laura Adams
(Boston, Mass., USA), Jamilya Ukudeeva (Riverside, Calif.,
USA)
Reviews and Abstracts: Shoshana Keller (Clinton,
N.Y., USA), Resul Yalcin (London, England)
Conferences and Lecture Series: Peter Finke
(Halle, Germany), Cengiz Surucu (Bloomington, Ind., USA)
Educational Resources and Developments: Daniel
C. Waugh (Seattle, Wash., USA)
Production Editor: John Schoeberlein (Cambridge,
Mass., USA)
Web Editor: John Schoeberlein (Cambridge,
Mass., USA)
[Contents]
Perspectives
The "Barnaul School" of Central Asian Studies: A Brief
Review of Scientific Research in Barnaul concerning Central Asian
Politics and International Relations
Vladimir Boyko, Associate Professor of Modern Asian Studies
and Research Director of the "Russia and the East" Laboratory,
Center for Regional Studies, Barnaul State Pedagogical University,
Barnaul, Russia, boyko bspu.secna.ru
Barnaul is the metropolis of Russian Altay. It was founded as
a settlement in 1730 and with the passage of time became one of
the main administrative and industrial centers of Asiatic Russia
with a population of about 700,000 and many universities. From
the very beginning, the city developed multinationally with local
indigenous Turkic groups. It became a primarily Slavic city during
the Stalin period, as a result of the population transfer policies
of the time, but since the Virgin Lands campaign of the 1950s,
and especially in the 1990s, in-migration from across the former
USSR and from overseas has again made it much more multinational.
Its ethnic situation has been basically quiet and without conflict.
The study of interregional interactions in the Great Altay [Bolshoi
Altai] and adjacent territories, both in its concrete specificity
and in the formation of conceptual frameworks, including their
historical connections, builds upon longstanding traditions of
scholarly research in Asian Russia in general, and is, in Barnaul,
contextualized by the interdisciplinary field of inquiry in particular,
which is here called "research on Central Asia." Although
it is difficult to periodize precisely the development of those
scholarly traditions, a necessary reference point is the 1860s,
the decade when Vasilii (Wilhelm) Radlov, future member of the
Academy of Sciences and future director of the Asian Museum in
St. Petersburg, began his professional and scientific career in
the field of Turcology and related subjects. It was nowhere else
but Barnaul, where this young German scholar of the humanities
spent the first twelve years of his life in Russia. It is unfortunate
that neither Radlovs research nor that of other enthusiasts, be
they serious scholars or amateurs, found anyone to continue them
towards the end of the nineteenth century, or even during the
entire first half of the twentieth. The only exception to this
would be the great ethnographer Leonid Petrovich Potapov, author
of numerous works written during the Second World War on the history
and ethnography of the peoples of southern Siberia, and of Altaics
in the first place.
In the 1960s Alexei Pavlovich Umanskii developed scholarly research
on problems of international relations in Central/Inner Asia.
He concentrated on state formations in southern Siberia and adjacent
regions, and further undertook fundamental analysis of these states
interrelations (and the state of the Teleuts especially) with
their Turcophone neighbors (West Siberian Tatars, Oyrots and others),
and also Mongols from the seventeenth century through the first
quarter of the eighteenth (see, e.g., Umanskii 1995).[1] Lacking an adequate academic environment,
Umanskii nevertheless became a high-caliber researcher in Barnaul
due to his personal qualities and collection of numerous archival
sources on subjects he investigated. Characteristically, he did
not found his own scholarly school having graduate students, group
projects, and so forth. For this, he was reproached by certain
colleagues who were unaware of the specific scientific situation
in Barnaul (personnel, source material, etc.) and whose method
of work required proper concentration on, for example, the development
of special skills (such as the decipherment of handwritten archival
documents) as well as deep historico-ethnological knowledge. Nevertheless,
Umanskii was the first humanities specialist in Barnaul who made
the transition to science, broadly construed, and he became an
enthusiastic example for subsequent generations of archaeologists,
foreign affairs specialists and others. One of Umanskiis first
followers was Aleksei Dmitr'evich Sergeev, who became a specialist
on the Barnaul region, easily and frequently transcending disciplinary
frameworks in his studies of local history, and who made essential
contributions to research having broad implications for how questions
should be framed in Central Asian studies.
The field of "Asian Russia and the Asian Near Abroad"
considerably developed and expanded thanks to studies by Vladimir
Anisimovich Moiseev (a native of the Altay Territory) concerning
the policies of the Qing Empire towards the Saiano-Altaic peoples.
Moiseevs professional training synthesizes the traditions of several
schools of Oriental studies and international relations, including
the Moscow and Almat schools in the first instance.[2] Moiseev carried out intensive research
in institutes in Almat, Kazakhstan prior to 1991. However, he
returned home due to political and scholarly disagreements with
certain colleagues, and thanks to his efforts the Altay State
University founded its Faculty of Oriental Studies in 2000. Its
basic orientation is towards Central Asian studies, in particular
the mutual relations between Russia and the countries bordering
it to the east (China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia). Moiseevs work is
distinguished by deep knowledge of historical sources and a polemic
approach. Moving to Barnaul seems to have been fruitful for Moiseev.
Since his arrival, he has published two single-authored monographs
in addition to collections of articles.[3] His work has recently taken a new
turn with the sponsorship by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (Taiwan)
of a large-scale project on the history of Russian-Chinese relations
in Xinjiang from the beginning of the nineteenth through the first
third of the twentieth centuries.
Moiseevs students (Oleg Valer'evich Boronin, Andrei Iur'evich
Bykov, Konstantin Viktorovich Khakhalin, Oksana Anatol'evna Omel'chenko
and others) work successfully in the field, and the majority of
them have already defended dissertations. Thus Boronin has considered
in detail the important question of dual tributary obligations
[dvoedannichestvo] and dual subject relations [dvoepoddanstvo]
of the Turkic peoples of south and southwest Siberia from the
seventeenth century through the 1860s. Boronin believes this phenomenon
of geopolitical history originated in the utter defeat of Jungaria
by Qing China in the 1850s, the relative balance between Russia
and China in Central Asia, and the Russian governments unwillingness
to damage favorable trade with China. However, by the 1860s, the
change in the balance of forces in Southern Siberia and Central
Asia put an end to dual subject relations in Altay, and the demarcation
of the frontier between these two great empires began (Boronin
2002). Khakhalin, probably the best Barnaul expert on the Chinese
language, has investigated the differentiation of the Russian
and Chinese spheres in Central Asia (1864 Chuguchak Protocol and
other source documents).
In the early 1980s, work by Vladimir Nikolaevich Vladimirov (see,
1984a, 1984b, et al.)[4]
concentrated on foreign factors in the social and economic development
of the Southern Altay in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
including the modern and historical demography of Russian Siberia
and its transborder regions. Bykovs potential as an expert steadily
increases thanks to his success in grant-seeking and contacts
with Moscow academic circles. His sphere of interests includes
characteristics of the foreign policy of Siberian authorities
in the mid-nineteenth century and their autonomy in decision-making
on international problems. With Moiseevs help, Bykov has moved
from Kazakhstan and is, accordingly, an expert on the realities
of the place. He is developing a special course for the university
on the Commonwealth of Independent States. Omel'chenkos life has
taken a similar course: she has a unique background, thanks to
scholarly-vocational training in the St. Petersburg School of
Sinology. Her interests concentrate on modern Xinjiang, and she
has a good knowledge of both Chinese and Japanese (see Omel'chenko
2002).
The professional fate of Valerii Anatol'evich Barmin has likewise
subjected him to remarkable peregrinations. Beginning with a critique
of the bourgeois historiography of US policy in China during the
interwar period (a traditional theme of the Americanologists at
Tomsk University, where Barmin did graduate work in the early
1980s), he switched to the study of US policy in the Philippines
from 1898 to 1946. This road, however, led to an impasse because
of the inaccessibility of sources and literature and the absence
of a conducive environment, among other reasons. Moiseevs move
to Barnaul solved his problem. Moiseev, sensitive to the choice
of themes in relation to the present-day situation, has suggested
the theme of Soviet policy in Xinjiang from 1918 to 1949, which
even solid scholars and entire institutes in Moscow long ignored
for political reasons.
New opportunities to use archival documents have crowned this
bet with success: with Moiseevs full support, Barmin prepared
two monographs within several years, and has defended a thesis
for the doktor nauk degree at Tomsk University (Barmin
1998, 1999).[5]
The basic value of Barmins works resides in his use of a significant
quantity of documents from the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and other departments playing a key role in implementing policy
in Xinjiang. The extreme topicality and complexity of these problems
attacked by Barmin in this most laudable initiative in fact requires
further efforts not just on his part, but on the part of whole
teams of qualified Sinologists, ethnologists, and others, both
in the region itself and in Moscow. Barmins work confirms that
modern Xinjiang can no longer remain a blind spot, hidden in Russian
scholarly research between Sinology on the one hand, and the complex
of disciplines that constitute Central Asian research, on the
other.
The theme of Russian-Chinese relations in Xinjiang will probably
remain popular in Barnaul in the foreseeable future, given the
propinquity of the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to
the Altay Territory, through the Altay Republic. Access to archival
collections remains a precondition of the analysis of such historical
subjects. The Barnaul specialists have such an opportunity in
principle, but there is not yet any real cooperation between researchers
from Altay and the XUAR. Only incidental visits from the Chinese
side have occurred, and only discussion of possible joint projects
has yet been achieved.[6] So far, only the most popular historical
sources have been traced regarding the development of contemporary
Xinjiang, including regional interactions between Russia and China.
Research themes are far from exhausted on the historical features
of Russian Altays interregional and frontier relations with transborder
areas in Central Asia. Umanskiis analysis of such aspects of Russian-Chinese
relations is not the only example. Another is the history of Russian-Mongolian
trade and economic relations from the second half of the nineteenth
century to the beginning of the twentieth. Aleksandr Vladimirovich
Startsev, one of the leading experts on the history of Siberias
foreign economic relations with transborder Asia, works on the
history of business in Altay (see, e.g., 1999a, 1999b). Startsev
is not only a thoroughly knowledgeable expert on the pertinent
historical sources, but also a serious analyst. However, he should
recognize his membership in the community of researchers on Central
Asia in addition to that of the Siberianists; the latter is an
old complex of serious local researchers with broad profiles and
knowledge of fontology (i.e., the science of evaluating and using
primary historical sources).
Another Siberianist who could "objectively" be considered
a Central Asian specialist is Tat'iania Kirillovna Shcheglova,
who throughout the 1990s has scrupulously researched economic
relations between Western Siberia and Northeast Kazakhstan from
the second half of the nineteenth century through the beginning
of the twentieth. She has particularly examined economic data
concerning the basic forms taken by fairs and their historical
role as a mechanism of exchange between the adjacent regions (2000,
2001). The serious interest evoked by Shcheglovas work among business
circles is indicative of her great expertise and insight. The
basic aspect of Shcheglovas scholarly originality lies in her
treatment of historical-economic connections, problematizing them
through interdisciplinary focus in a way that connects them with
studies of Central Asia. Her way of framing the questions to be
investigated and her use of primary historical sources especially
contribute to that problematization. But even this does not encompass
all of Shcheglovas activity. There is also an organizational-managerial
component to her work relating to the ethnology of Altay and adjacent
territories. This is expressed institutionally by and given shape
within the Oral History Section of the Barnaul Pedagogical Universitys
Laboratory of Historical Regional Studies, regular ethnographic
field trips and an overflowing archive of written, audio and video
materials.[7] Shcheglova coordinates all of this
work, based on the activities of students who are performing both
educational and scholarly tasks. One such former student, Konstantin
Vadimovich Grigorichev, in fact is the initiator, within the Barnaul
research community, of the study of modern social-demographic
processes in Altay. His interests, as they have developed under
the influence of the great Kazakhstani demographer Aleksandr Nikolaevich
Alekseenko, have focused more and more on transborder migrations
in Central Asia itself.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Demin is Director of the Laboratory of
Historical Regional Studies and Dean of the Historical Faculty
in the Barnaul State Pedagogical University. The disciplines he
practices have led him to gravitate towards Central Asian studies
in recent years as well. The strongest feature of his individual
scholarship is his historiographic approach. Indeed, his research
is devoted to the historiography of the native peoples of Siberia,
and it discusses many problems of a cultural-civilizational nature
regarding Russian immigrants to the region, interregional interactions,
and so forth (1995). Demin also gives much attention to training
scholars, on both the doctoral [doktor nauk] and candidate
[kandidat] levels, as well as to the conducting of archaeological
expeditions. He is himself a student of the great Siberian archaeologist
Alexei Pavlovich Okladnikov.
One of Demins most capable students, Arkadii Vasil'evich Kontev,
has carried out research on many problems in the recent history
of Barnaul. He heads the Altay Regional Studies Association. In
recent years Kontev participated in scholarly undertakings on
Central Asian themes in tandem with V. B. Borodaev (1999, 2000).
These materials are distinguished by their professional maturity
and originality, modern research techniques, and a special taste
for the historical document. Borodaev, for his part, displays
rare erudition concerning the broadest range of problems in the
history, archaeology and ethnology of Central and Inner Asia.
However, he has more difficulty making this knowledge available,
for in terms of his formal career, he is a skilled editor, publisher
and movie-director, as well as an organizer of activities for
children and young people.
The Barnaul intellectual community owes a great deal to the remarkable
career of Solomon Grigor'evich Livshits (1922-1994), the first
scholar in Altay with advanced training ever to teach the history
and international relations of the Orient; he inaugurated courses
on these subjects in the early 1960s. With a solid university
education from Moscow, Livshits found himself compelled by his
move to Barnaul to modify the sphere of his earlier research interests
(British policy in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries), and turned, for example in the 1970s and 1980s, to
original research on the Siberian factor in Japanese policy during
the years following the First World War (1991). Being the recognized
authority in both teaching and research activities, Livshits neither
sought nor used the sort of special protection that ministerial
officials could grant, and he never obtained professorial rank.
Nevertheless, his talent as a lecturer and teacher created great
interest in Barnaul about the Orient (and even created illusions
about the ease of studying it). As the only, indeed unique, Barnaul
authority, and under conditions of almost complete isolation from
the academic community even of Soviet Orientalists, his work was
distinguished by subjectivity, weaknesses in methodology, and
narrowness of subjects. Still, it was due to Livshits that the
idea of the opportunity and desirability of deep study of the
modern East took root in Barnaul and Altay. Following his death,
a small group of former students (Tamara Alekseevna Shemetova,
the aforementioned Barmin and Boyko) together with Moiseev, who
had arrived from Kazakhstan, founded the Barnaul Pedagogical University
Laboratory "Russia and the East," also known as the
Center for Regional Studies. On the initiative of this Center
the conference series "Russia, Siberia and Central Asia"
has been held since 1996, as well as a lecture series in Oriental
studies dedicated to Livshits memory and a series of interdepartmental
seminars entitled, "Russias Asian Frontier."
The author of the present article is also to be counted among
Livshits students. The particular features of my scholarly training
and subsequent career led to an essentially marginal situation
in the Barnaul university environment (with costs exceeding those
even of Livshits himself). During the Soviet period, the best
road to a scholarly career was a certain social background combined
with political activism, personal connections and special arrangements
with local officials. I succeeded in overcoming numerous formal
obstacles, including a position as teacher in a workers youth
school (which had a branch for the local prison), to do graduate
work at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy
of Sciences in Moscow, perhaps one of the few establishments that
still in those years retained the democratic and meritocratic
spirit that permitted competition for scholarly degrees without
recommendations from officials. The events and atmosphere of the
mid-1980s together with the ambitiousness of my chosen research
topic (Afghanistan) has accustomed me, from my first publications,
to work with original sources and serious scholarly literature,
including that in foreign languages. My principal teachers were
two outstanding Russian Orientalists, the political scientist
and historian Vladimir Fedorovich Li and the late Iurii Vladimirovich
Gankovskii (who was the simultaneous center of several schools,
such as those composed of Afghanists on the one hand, and specialists
on Pakistan on the other hand).
However, even a degree in Oriental studies from the largest Moscow
research center did not guarantee employment, so after returning
to Barnaul I continued as a teacher in a workers youth school
(the students were drivers, weavers, even prisoners), and then
later I replaced a teacher in one of the Siberian pedagogical
institutes. Only by the late 1990s did postdoctoral studies at
the same Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, along with active
scholarship and international contacts, permit me to teach the
modern and contemporary history of the East. My research and activities
now involve the current history and historiography of Afghanistan
and the Afghan diasporas, a history of Chinese and Korean immigration
to Western Siberia, the Xinjiang factor in regional politics,
the security problems of Asian Russia, directorship of the laboratory
"Russia and the East" (Center for Regional Studies),
the establishment and maintenance of international contacts and
communications of Barnaul Orientalists and specialists in the
humanities in general (Siberianists, etc.), the organization of
regional and international conferences, provision of expert services,
and editing of scholarship on Central Asia published by the Center
for Regional Studies (1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b).[8]
The basic achievements of the Barnaul community of researchers
on Central Asia and adjacent regions in the sphere of archaeology
are connected with the names of Iurii Fedorovich Kiriushin (rector
of Altay State University, who has motivated many scholarly initiatives,
including those focused on Asia), Aleksandr Borisovich Shamshin
and others. They and their colleagues analyze key problems of
the history of Turks and their neighbors in the ancient period.
The scope and depth of scholarly expertise is a distinguishing
feature of research of Barnaul geographers, ecologists and experts
of ancillary disciplines, such as Gennadii Iakovlevich Baryshnikov,
Boris Nikolaevich Luzgin, Viktor Semenovich Reviakin, Viktor Valentinovich
Rudskii, Mikhail Iur'evich Shishin, Iurii Ivanovich Vinokurov,
Irina Nikolaevna Rotanova, and others (Geomorfologiia Tsentral'noi
Azii 2001). These experts have researched problems of extreme
urgency, with an emphasis on practical issues and the special
responsibility that experts have in this regard, often giving
rise to sharp debates not only in the research community but also
within the Altay public. One such example arises in connection
with the discussion of a civil engineering design of a transport
highway connecting Barnaul and Urumchi: Barnaul and general Altay
archaeologists, ecologists and philosophers have acted as strong
opponents of this project under consideration. Their arguments
address how the prospective roadway may infringe upon the cultural-ecological
equilibrium in the region, particularly on the Ukok Plateau, which
UNESCO has listed as a protected natural site.
Another position on the roadway is found in the Altay government,
as well as among business and economic representatives, who advocate
developing interregional cooperation in light of existing cultural-ecological
factors. Sergei Iur'evich Nozhkin, advisor to the governor of
the Altay Territory for foreign trade activities and international
communications, spends much effort to develop arguments to support
such a view. He is directly involved in decision-making on these
questions and seeks to adapt the scholarly expertise already available
in Altay and in Barnaul so as to improve his own expert standing.
Nozhkin is one of the few enthusiasts who shapes and helps to
determine the analytical aspect of work on Altays Central Asian
"Near Abroad" (Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, China, Mongolia).
He is a proponent of the idea of coordinating all organizational
(including institutional) resources, and bringing to bear on Central
Asian topics all those intellectual forces that are pertinent
and professionally capable. Nozhkin has published many articles,
participated in many scholarly conferences and seminars on the
geopolitics and economic policies of the region, and participated
in international negotiations on these matters.
Nozhkins idea of collaboration among diverse fields is embraced
by the small, qualified and ambitious community of those who associate
themselves, or would like to do so, with interdisciplinary research
on Central Asia. Barnaul has many objective prerequisites (geographic,
geopolitical, not to mention scientific) for the creation of an
authoritative regional center for research on Central Asia and
related fields (Inner, North and Northeast Asia), that in time
would be able to match and cooperate with relevant researchers
in adjacent regions (Novosibirsk, Tomsk, etc.) as well as those
in Moscow, and finally to define and occupy a niche in the national
and international academic community, among those whose will choose
to make their careers in the field of Central Asian studies, in
its broadest connotation. The first and important step was taken
in late 2001, when the Altay Center for Oriental Studies an umbrella
non-profit organization for all those interested in Central Asian
studies was established under Moiseevs directorship. There is
no doubt that the history, features and forms of modern cultural,
economic and other interstate and interregional interactions of
the peoples of Russia and adjacent countries will become a key
direction of the work of Barnaul orientalists, foreign affairs
specialists, ethnologists and representatives of other subdisciplines
within the complex of Central Asian research.
Notes
[1] In 1983 Umanskii published another leading
work of research on the Teleuts and Russians. His work serves
as the basis for a scholarly portrait of mutual relations among
the small native peoples of Inner Asia with Russia and also Jungaria.
[2] His teacher was the well-known researcher
on Central Asia Boris Pavlovich Gur'evich, a significant part
of whose scholarly archive (copies of documents and books) he
managed to transfer to Barnaul.
[3] One of these publications (Moiseev 2001)
is a selection of his publicistic work, essays and scientific
articles published in various editions over the last ten years.
It is very polemical and has leading figures of the Kazakh academic
community as its opponents.
[4] Boronin (2002, p. 8) characteristically
sees contributions by Vladimirov and some other authors to the
study of approaches to examining interregional interactions in
Central Asia, as falling within the limits of Siberian studies.
[5]
The current relevance of these themes and richness of the historical
sources consulted have allowed Barmin to receive support from
the Chiang Ching-kuo Fund (Taiwan), thanks to which his 1999 monograph
was published.
[6]
The last such visit of scientists from the XUAR was held in autumn
1999, when they participated in a conference devoted to the fiftieth
anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.
See Guan' Shousin' 1999, pp. 62-64.
[7]
Research results from Barnaul ethnologists are discussed at increasingly
regular scientific-practical conferences that are more and more
becoming international forums, and are being circulated in serious
ethnological publications. See, e.g., Etnografiia Altaia,1998
& 2001.
[8]
International support received by Boyko includes grants from the
British Academy, CIAC AAS, Fulbright Program, OIS, IATP (Project
Harmony), inter alia for the creation of the website "Central
Asia: View from Siberia," which may be found at: <http://www.bspu.secna.ru/Faculty/History/orient/>.
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[Contents]
Research Reports and Briefs
Conceptions and Uses of "Victimhood" in Contemporary
Mongolia
Christopher Kaplonski, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies
Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and
Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA,
danzanrci.rutgers.edu
For the past five years or so, I have been engaged in research
on issues related to the legacy of political repression in Mongolia,
the former Mongolian Peoples Republic. The project itself grew
out of the circumstances surrounding my 1997 fieldwork in the
capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar. I had returned to Mongolia to
study the effects of collectivization and related issues on the
formation of a socialist Mongolian identity in the 1950s. But
people were not all that interested in the topic. It turned out
I had arrived in time for the 60th anniversary of the start of
the repressions of the late 1930s, when at least 22,000 people
were killed in a period of 18 months (other estimates put the
figure as high as 30,000, or higher). This also coincided with
the debate on the draft of the law to rehabilitate and compensate
victims of political repression that was taking place in the Ih
Hural (the Mongolian Parliament; see Kaplonski 1999 for this
debate). These were the topics people were talking about, and
so I began to study them as well.
Since that time, I have been focusing on a number of issues related
to the issue of repression, but a central theme to my current
research has been the concept of victimhood. I have been seeking
to understand how the idea of victimhood is constructed and used
in contemporary Mongolia in relation to the repressions of the
socialist era (1921-1990). In other words, I want to understand
how and why some people choose to identify themselves as victims,
while others do not. Given the scope of the repressions throughout
the socialist period, the oft-repeated Mongolian assertion that
no family was left untouched may be only a slight exaggeration.
The vast majority of people, however, choose not to employ the
label of victim.
Many of the issues taken up in my research would be familiar
to students of identity and nationalism. Yet the majority of the
literature dealing with political repression and its aftermath,
and issues of accountability and reconciliation take the identity
of victim to be self-evident and unproblematic (among others,
see Borneman 1997; Hesse and Post 1999; Minow 1998). There is
some recognition that matters in the Soviet bloc at least were
more complicated one thinks of Havels observation that all were
both victims of the regime and complicit in its maintenance (Havel
1991) but the concept of victim itself is still relatively unexplored.
The topic is fascinatingly complex. To cite one key example,
the relatives of people who were killed in the 1930s often see
themselves more as victims than people who were actually
arrested and sentenced to exile and/or labor camps later in the
socialist era. Yet according to the law on rehabilitating and
compensating victims (and their relatives), the latter group of
people are victims, while the former are not. To make matters
even more interesting, while there is a word for "victim"
in Mongolian, it is not used in such discussions. My explicit
attempts to use it were often met with puzzlement. Rather than
the term "victim," a number of different terms based
on the root "to repress" are used. Through this use
of language, relatives of those who fit the legal definition of
a repressed person place themselves on par with those that the
law consider repressed.
These differences highlight the disjuncture between social and
legal definitions of a victim of political repression. The different
claims of victimhood relate to certain overlapping but competing
conceptions of victims within the social sphere itself. In certain
contexts, the label of victim is invested with considerable symbolic
capital. It seems clear that these competing usages are linked
to a struggle over symbolic capital, and who is entitled to use
it. It is this tactical use of identity in post-socialist Mongolia
that I am most interested in exploring.
In this context there are two aspects of victimhood as identity
that I wish to outline briefly. The first point is that these
competing versions of victimhood point out the fundamental, but
too often overlooked, tactical aspect of identity. Identities
exist for a purpose. At the most basic, this is to tell others,
and ourselves, who we (think) we are. National identity, for example,
identifies us with a fairly large group of people based on certain
principles of who and what is thought to be important. It argues
that certain markers are more important than others, and we thus
are (or should be) bound to people who share these markers. People
deploy different concepts of national identity based on what they
feel to be important. This is not to say that such tactical uses
are necessarily consciously deployed, although at times it seems
clear that they are.
In looking at the case of "victim" in Mongolia, we
see a similar process taking place. One relative of a victim of
the 1930s repression whom Ill call "Dulmaa," once told
me that "Dorj," himself arrested in the 1960s as part
of an anti-party group, didnt really understand repression. The
implication, of course, was that she did, and, more importantly,
her voice should be given greater weight than his. Interestingly,
Dulmaa claims to have a broader concept of "victim"
than Dorj, although she also seems to guard her own claim more
carefully. "His organization is just for 10 people [i.e.,
the staff] not the 30,000 [repressed]," she told me once,
referring to the NGO Dorj had helped establish. And her inclusion
of herself and acquaintances who suffered through the repression
of parents or relatives of their parents generation is, we have
seen, a broader concept than that covered by the law. And at this
level, it is similar to Dorjs use of the concept, since he also
claims that relatives of the repressed were victims. Yet in her
oft-repeated statements that the repressions of the 1930s were
completely different from those of later periods, she is clearly
establishing a hierarchy within the category of victim.
It is also clear that various groups and individuals are using
the label of "victim" in a tactical sense vis--vis non-victims.
They have different goals Dorj takes a more combative stance towards
MAHN (the Mongolian Peoples Revolution Party, who held power during
the socialist period), while Dulmaa seems more interested in issues
of commemoration. But this should not disguise the fact that they
both claim (demand) for themselves a morally superior position,
and that they base this claim on their status as victims. In many
contexts, identity is seen as a limited good, a zero-sum game.
In other words, the benefit one person or group receives from
the use of the label must be balanced by a similar loss by another
person or group. This is again clear in Dulmaas use of the concept.
Underlying her distinction between the "real" repressions
of the 1930s and the later ones is the belief that if all were
recognized as equally deserving of the label, her own position
would somehow be diluted. There is only a certain amount of "morality"
to go around, as it were, and the more people share it, the less
each person gets.
There are a number of other issues related to the repressions
and the conception of victim that I am exploring. For example,
it was only after their sweeping victory in the 2000 parliamentary
elections that MAHN chose to offer what it called an apology for
the repressions of the socialist era. Many people I talked to
were singularly unimpressed with MAHNs acknowledgement that while
people had suffered under their watch, ultimately, MAHN itself
was also a victim, not a perpetrator. The long delay and reasoning
behind the timing of the apology bears further examination, as
does the apparent mutual exclusivity of the categories of victim
and victimizer. Despite the very real messiness of what actually
seems to have taken place, people have been fairly clear-cut in
drawing distinctions between the victims and the victimizers.
This is a topic that I have begun to explore (see Kaplonski 2000),
but that also bears further investigation.
Finally, through a combination of archival work and interviews,
I am trying to gather information to present a historical understanding
of the Mongolian gulag, through a case study of a particular "re-education
camp" in northern Mongolia. Despite having spent over two
of the past five years in Mongolia working on this topic, this
remains very much a work in progress. The more work I do on the
subject, the more questions I raise. As a result, I would be interested
in hearing from others with similar interests.
References
Borneman, John
1997 Settling Accounts: Violence,
Justice and Accountability in Post-Socialist Europe. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Havel, Vclav
1991 "The power of the powerless,"
In: Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1969-1990. Paul Wilson,
ed., pp. 125-214. New York: Vintage Books
Hesse, Carla and Robert Post (eds.)
1999 Human Rights in Political
Transitions: Gettysburg to Bosnia. New York: Zone Books.
Kaplonski, Christopher
1999 "Blame, guilt and avoidance:
The struggle to control the past in post-Socialist Mongolia,"
History and Memory, 11(2) 94-114.
2000 "Victims and Victimhood:
the Moral Legacy of Political Repression in Post-Socialist Mongolia":
Lecture given at University of Cambridge (March 2000).
Minow, Martha
1998 Between Vengeance and Forgiveness:
Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston: Beacon
Press.
[Contents]
Ongoing Archaeological Excavations in the Lower Don Region,
Russia
Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Executive Director, Center for
the Study of Eurasian Nomads (CSEN), Berkeley, Calif., USA, jkimballcsen.org
In 2000, a preliminary survey was made of the Chastiye [Chastye]
Kurgany, a series of burial mounds [kurgans] located in the lower
Don Region of southern Russia, between the Severskii Donets River
(a tributary of the Don River) and the Bystraia River. The site,
located about 65 kilometers northeast of Rostov-on-Don [Rostov-na-Donu],
consists of 26 visible mounds as well as an unknown number of
additional mounds that may have been razed by plowing (see map
in Davis-Kimball 2001). Archaeologists from Rostov State University,
Rostov-on-Don, Russia, led by Professor V. Ye. Maksimenko, conducted
the 2000 excavations in collaboration with V. V. Kliuchnikov.
Kurgan 1, considered a ritual locale, was excavated in 2000.
It revealed a rare burial type, dating to the early 4th century
BCE. Among the artifacts recovered were a bronze cauldron, a brazier,
various arrowheads, and pottery. Horse harness accoutrements in
typical Scythian animal style included uniquely stylized cast-bronze
images of fantastic animals. It is not clear, however, if these
were created by Scythians or Sarmatians.
In 2001, the collaborative expedition continued, organized by
Rostov State University; CSEN; and the journal Donskaia arkheologiia,
published in Rostov-on-Don. Six mounds were excavated: Kurgans
2, 3, 4, 8, 9, and 11. One kurgan belonged to the 4th century
BCE Early Iron Age nomadic period; three kurgans are attributed
to the 8th century CE Khazar culture; and two to the Polovtsy
culture from the end of the 12th century-beginning of the 13th
century CE.
The earliest of the kurgans, number 4, dating to the 4th century
BCE, revealed a male skeleton, aged 40-45, in supine position,
oriented to the south. An iron arrowhead was found in his hip
and a second was recovered near the femur. In addition, several
dozen arrowheads of various types and the remains of an iron sword
were recovered from the burial. Horse and sheep bones were also
mortuary offerings. The orientation and artifacts indicate this
to be an Early Sarmatian burial. Arrowheads found in the skeleton
reveal that skirmishes or warfare took place between nomadic groups
in the region, and could well have caused the death of this personage.
Next in the time frame at Chastiye Kurgany were three Kurgans,
2, 3, and 9, attributed to the Khazars. Khazar history is obscure
prior to the middle of the 6th century, but it is known they were
Turkic nomads originating in Central Asia. From ca. 550-630 CE
they were part of the Western Turkish Empire, ruled by the Celestial
Blue [Kk] Turks. In the middle of 7th century they asserted independence
but still maintained many aspects of the Kk Turks political systems.
Originally the Khazars spoke a Turkic language and their primary
belief system was Tengri shamanism. As they migrated north of
the Black and Caspian Seas, ultimately forming the Khazar Empire,
they became sedentary and with the aid of their strong trading
partner, Byzantium, they established a number of fortified cities,
including Sarkel, the remains of which are found north of Rostov-on-Don.
Over time, the learned became skilled in Hebrew and Slavic. Some
Khazar khagans [rulers] and nobility adopted Judaism, although
subsequent khagans embraced Islam as well as Christianity and
all three religions were practiced (Brook 1996 [2000]; Grousset
1970: 180-182).
The three excavated Khazar Kurgans (2, 3, and 9), dating to the
first half of the 8th century, are the most northerly burials
of this culture discovered to date. A ritual ditch surrounded
Kurgans 2 and 3. Although they had been robbed, the skeletal remains
indicate that both were males ranging from 25 to 40 years old
at the time of death. Remaining artifacts included silver and
bronze belt accoutrements, bone plaques belonging to a bow, and
a number of unidentified iron objects. Kurgan 9, also robbed in
antiquity, yielded two arrowheads, a gold earring, and ceramic
sherds; this may have been a female burial.
The two remaining excavated burial mounds belonged to a people
whom the Russians referred to as Polovtsy, but who were also referred
to as the Qipchaqs in Turkic languages, as Komanoi in Byzantium;
and as Cumans by the Arab geographer Idrisi. Originally the Polovtsy
were one of the nomadic tribes making up the Kimak Turks who lived
along the Irtysh and/or Ob rivers in Southern Siberia. Around
the middle of the 11th century, the Polovtsy split from the Kimaks
and began their migrations toward Europe. Russian chronicles first
noted their presence in 1054 north of the Black Sea, where they
soon became sole masters of the steppes until Chinggis Khans troops
invaded the region in 1222 (Grousset 1970:184-186).
The two Polovtsy kurgans excavated at Chastiye Kurgany, numbers
8 and 11, were distinctively covered with a layer of large stones.
In Kurgan 8, a horse skeleton lay on the floor of the entrance
shaft (dromos); the area that held the human burial in
a wooden sarcophagus was separated from the dromos by a wooden
partition. Mortuary artifacts included a bow, quiver, and arrows;
the extant arrow shafts revealed evidence of having once been
painted. Other remains indicated that a saddle and stirrups had
been placed on top of the sarcophagus. Kurgan 11 was also the
site of a similar ritual. Again separated by a wooden partition,
the skeleton of a horse lay in the dromos, but in this case two
burials, a male and female both in wooden sarcophagi, were in
the central mound. A quiver and arrowheads were found within the
males coffin while a saddle and stirrups had been placed alongside.
Artifacts in the female burial included an iron knife fragment
and fragments of rolled birch bark. These are unique Polovtsy
burials in the lower Severskii Donets.
Brief archaeological reports on the Chastiye Kurgany excavations
for 2000 and 2001, with illustrations, are available on the CSEN
website (see below).
In addition to the contingent of Russian students participating
in the Chastiye excavations, anthropology and archaeology students
as well as interested lay people from diverse countries including
the United States, England, Ireland, and France have gained knowledge
about the diverse populations that inhabited the steppes in this
region. They have also participated in educational programs that
include lectures on the history of the Don region as well as a
series of excursions. Among the destinations of these excursions
were: the excavations of the antique city, Tanais, and its associated
museum, located in the Don River delta; Starocherkassk, the old
capital of the Don Cossacks; the Rostov-on-Don Historical Museum;
and locales of natural beauty.
Excavations continue at Chastiye Kurgany between July 16 and
August 24, 2002. Information on the participatory programs is
available on the CSEN website at: <http://csen.org>.
References
Brook, Kevin Alan
1996 [2000] "An Introduction to the History
of Khazaria," <http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-history.html>.
Davis-Kimball, Jeannine
2001 "Chastiye Kurgany: 2001
Excavation Report," <http://csen.org>.
Grousset, Rene
1970 The Empire of the Steppes:
A History of Central Asia. Naomi Walford (Tr.). New York:
Barnes & Noble Books.
[Contents]
Negotiating Inside/Outside in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Footnotes
from Field Research
Cengiz Surucu, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Central
Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., USA,
csurucuindiana.edu
In this research note, I will follow a slightly unconventional
path and relate individual instances without advancing a coherent
story. I believe that in contrast to finished papers, research
notebooks contain unexplored paths, surprising anomalies, and
unruly footnotes, many of which are destined to die away somewhere
between the field and the final product. Such unexpected encounters
constitute silent testimonies to the incoherent, fragmented nature
of the social subject. While they do not completely defy what
we set off to see in the field, they at least resist pretensions
of smooth and admissive research sites. Anyway, field research
is a complex process and involves many unique contextual instances,
discontinuities, exceptions, negotiations, and compromises all
the way from the start to the end.
Case in point: at the beginning of my field research in May 2001,
I had to spend fifteen days in the registration and immigration
offices and three days in the halls of a courtroom in Almat as
a result of a legal controversy.[1] Immigration
rules in Kazakhstan require foreigners to register in their locality
of destination within three days of arrival. I violated that rule
and became a subject of the ensuing legal-administrative proceeding.
Naturally, being involved in a legal case in a post-Soviet country
has psychological effects; researchers are human beings and they
do experience humiliation, deprivation, helplessness and withdrawal
in the field. (How did I cope? Almost every night during that
period I watched the only DVD I had with me, "All the Presidents
Men."). I also developed small tactics to avoid the police
on the streets, although many of them proved to be of little help.
Since a radical Islamic insurgency is underway in some regions
of Central Asia, Kazakhstani law enforcement authorities seem
to have developed a handy definition of terrorist suspects: Middle
Easterners.[2] I am originally from Eastern
Anatolia and I have a facial appearance of a Middle Easterner,
so almost every time I came across a police officer on the street,
my appearance made me a suspect. Once I was detained on the Uzbek
border by three counter-terrorism agents of Kazakhstan and had
a two-hour long no-destination interrogation ride along cotton
fields.
Modern states have an undeniable interest in imposing overarching
national identities in the formalization, proceduralization, and
institutionalization of interpersonal relations. However, there
is a whole set of subnational and transnational social, economic
and political forces penetrating into this seemingly simple relationship
between the state and individuals. Different forces create hybrids:
incoherent and fragmented identities and identity practices. In
a country like Kazakhstan, where informal practices play a much
larger and more burdensome role than laws in individuals lives,
registration (OVIR) and immigration offices become good sites
to observe and participate in the practices of inclusion and exclusion.
OVIR not only handles visa and registration proceedings for foreigners;
they also deal with the internal movements of Kazakhstani citizens
across provinces. As a remnant of Soviet-era internal monitoring,
every Kazakhstani citizen who decides to change his/her permanent
residence has to obtain advance permission from his/her oblast
of departure and re-register at the destination point. Thus both
foreigners and Kazakhstani citizens from other provinces meet
in the same building for a brief period and become subject to
similar administrative practices.
On one of the days when I was pacing back and forth on the third
floor of the OVIR building on Baytursnov Street, I met an elderly
Tajik from Bukhara, Abdulrahim, who was brought there because
he did not have a visa stamp on his passport. He was in Almat
on the occasion of his son Suleimans marriage to a local Uyghur
girl. For Suleiman, Almat was a city of many opportunities that
they did not have in Bukhara; for Abdulrahim, it was a destination
of trouble with the police. Askhat, the migration officer handling
our cases, was particularly upset with Abdulrahim and Suleiman
because, in Askhats words, "Kazakhs do not like Uzbeks."
He said this in their presence. However, Abdulrahim was not an
ethnic Uzbek, though he was a citizen of Uzbekistan. He did not
use his ethnicity as a defense, probably knowing that being a
Tajik implies no better status in Kazakhstan.
Abdulrahim was denying the fact that he needed a visa for only
a short stay in Kazakhstan, but he acknowledged that he had crossed
a border since he had his passport with him. Kazakhstan was surely
a foreign country for him, but not so foreign that he would bother
to get a visa for a months stay. When Askhat reminded him that
he would be charged over a hundred dollar fine in court, Abdulrahim
laughed, the ignorance of a wise old man on his face: "Give
me my passport, I will return this afternoon." Askhat declined.
Abdulrahim did not insist and walked out of the building. He possessed
the power of the powerless: no money in his pockets, no influential
acquaintance in the country, but he did have cultural capital
accumulated over decades of living in the region. "They will
leave me alone after a couple of days," he told me at the
door, smiling. Abdulrahims external passport was an affirmation
of the post-Soviet reality, his lack of visa a conscious denial.
Abdulrahims behavior raises some interesting questions: Would
he set off for Russia without a visa? Where do the borders start
for him and where do they end? He seemed to draw comfort from
what he knew from his countless interactions with an arbitrary
state: to the degree that the states practices deviate from formal
rules, he has a fair chance of negotiating a suboptimal outcome.
In contrast, neither Dinara (a pseudonym) nor her sister had
passports or visas (or any other identification paper, for that
matter). They were in their twenties and reportedly doing temporary
business in that they were reluctant to disclose. As Askhat needed
further information for court proceedings, they registered themselves
as Tatars from Tatarstan. I had lengthy conversations with them
outside the immigration office in the following days. After I
made an effort at confidence building, they confided in me that
they had been living in for several years. Since they claimed
to be Tatar, a couple of times I asked them to converse in Tatar
a part of my plan to build trust and goodwill. At last they did,
but when they spoke I was unable to understand a single word.
I also noticed that they had an apparent hostility towards Russians.
So, the third day of our meeting, they disclosed that they were
not Tatars. They were in fact Ingush from . "Why do you hide
your ethnic origin?" I asked. "Because we are at war
with the Russians and nobody likes Chechens here," they replied.
They were living in one of the Chechen suburbs of Almat. In their
neighborhood they enjoyed the patronage and protection of their
close-knit community, but when they crossed the boundaries of
that neighborhood, they had to adopt a strategy of denial. Being
deprived of collective independence in their homeland, their refuge
was forcing them to a similar deprivation at the individual level.
However clear, well articulated, and strong they may seem to
the bearer, identities are incoherent, disorganized, and they
retain a gray area for compromise and adaptation. A particular
identity does not necessarily prompt a certain course of action;
it is up to political entrepreneurs to craft praxis out
of them. Ali was herding horses when I met him outside his village.
He was born in long after the deportation of his family from Caucasia
in the Second World War. When I told him that I was a Turkish
citizen, he began to speak in a fluent Anatolian Turkish.
"Are you a Turk from Ahiska?" I asked.
"No, I am a Kurd."
"How come you speak such a pure Anatolian Turkish?"
"I worked for a Turkish businessman in Almat."
"Do you know Kurdish?"
"No, I know Russian."
Apparently, in the midst of the Kurdish insurgence in Anatolia,
he became subject to a rather successful personal assimilation
project implemented by a nationalist Turk.
Borderlines are also gray zones witnessing micro-level cohabitation
of incoherent and fragmented identities. On the one hand, there
are nationalizing states trying to erect borders and impose border
restrictions; on the other hand, there is an enormous amount of
micro-level variation defying the raison dtre and legitimacy
of these formal procedures. While there is an observable trend
that movement from South to North is becoming harder and harder
as time goes on, still, the reality of borders poses a puzzling
problem for an outsider. The Uzbek-Kazakh border and the accompanying
practices surrounding it constitute a silent reenactment of a
belief from the colonial past that modernity moves North to South
and traditionalism, vice-versa. For many Kazakh intellectuals,
is qualitatively different from other Central Asian states in
that Russian modernization left a deeper imprint on the social
fabric of the country. In that sense, the magnificent gate between
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is meant to celebrate the demarcation
of these two realms. The border contains the traditionalism of
the South. At the micro-level, however, there is much room for
negotiation and compromise. A lively trade route from Tashkent
to Shmkent and Almat presents a wide gray area open to different
interpretations. On one hand it is a denial of the borders and
their impermeability, on the other it owes its existence to those
borders and disparate economic spaces contained within them. For
the foot soldiers of this dynamic trade zone, borders and regulations
are a matter of beseeching the goodwill of the enforcement officials
along the 14-hour trip. Crossing back and forth is a daily activity,
a matter of sharing some portion of their profits with the police
on checkpoints. Boundaries are not sites of exclusion yet; they
represent one of those moments when local people encounter the
ordering principles of states, which they subtly evade by various
strategies of co-optation and compromise.
Notes
[1] These observations
derive from my field research in Kazakhstan in May-December 2001.
During this period, I conducted interviews with the cultural and
political elite of Kazakhstan as part of my dissertation on ethnic
politics and political transition in Kazakhstan.
[2] It was interesting
to observe that a similar practice was de facto implemented
in the United States after September 11th.
[Contents]
Shifting Social Networks in Post-Socialist Kazan
Helen Faller, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., USA, hmfallerumich.edu
While inculcating in Soviet people of all nationalities the notion
that they have the right to education in their "own"
language and the blossoming of their particular national culture,
Soviet nationalities ideologies also put pressure on them to russify,
both linguistically and culturally, by punishing and provincializing
people who wanted to remain national. The tensions between russification
pressures, on the one hand, and the rights of national cadres
to local, albeit limited rule, on the other, contributed to both
the civil wars and small-scale inter-ethnic violence that occurred
during the Soviet Unions demise. These have not, however, happened
in Tatarstan, where there has been almost no hostility based on
ethnicity. Peace in Tatarstan is no accident, as my research reveals,
but rather the result of linguistic negotiations between Tatars,
Russians, and others at the level of both policy and practice.
Indeed, Tatarstans political, social, and relative economic stability
may perhaps provide a model for the kind of federalism that may
sustain Russia.
This report represents a summary of some preliminary findings
from my dissertation research. The research was conducted mostly
in Kazan, Tatarstan between September 1999 and July 2001. It concerned
the social effects of Tatarstans political movement for sovereignty
focusing locationally on language politics in the implementation
of bilingual education in Tatarstans schools. However, because
participant observation means that anthropologists do research
in all the domains through which they move, ideationally the findings
presented here have almost nothing to do with schooling. Instead,
they address the relations between linguistic knowledge and larger
processes of social differentiation in Tatarstan through the differentiation
of symbolic worlds based on language community, and through the
link between group affiliation and language choice.
Tatarstan society is developing into something different from
what surrounds it in Russia. In effect, a new Tatarstan nation
is being formed as the result of the relative prosperity Tatarstan
sovereignty has brought the region, the official promotion of
bilingualism, and a consequent pride of place. Society within
Tatarstan is diversifying such that divisions between communities
are occurring primarily along linguistic lines. That is, people
who live only in Russian language and bilinguals (usually in Russian
and Tatar) inhabit different symbolic worlds. Linguistic, and
implied cultural, differentiation from a russophone world is the
most salient barometer of social change in Tatarstan.
In my dissertation I demonstrate how bilingual Tatar-Russian
speakers lived worlds are different from those inhabited by people
who live their lives solely in Russian. I provide evidence of
difference from various sources, including observations of quotidian
interactions, purportedly equivalent television programs in each
language, and letters to the editor published in each of Tatarstans
two Communist Party newspapers between 1990-1993. Letters to the
editor reveal the non-equivalence of the worlds inhabited by Russian
and Tatar-writers, as well as how peace is maintained in Tatarstan.
Differences in how writers make their cases in letters to the
editor in each language arise in the devices used to legitimate
their opinions as somehow representative of other people; in how
they imagine homeland and its relationship to the polity in which
they live; and in whether they use alarmist tactics or selective
memory to represent their concerns.
While letters printed in different languages depict sometimes
irreconcilably different worlds, those published in the Russian-language
newspaper seem to accept the terms of a single debate, no matter
what the ascribed nationality of their writers. Indeed, the claim
can be made that by maintaining an inter-national dialogue, the
letters to the editor printed in the Russian-language Respublika
Tatarstan encourage peaceful social relations in Tatarstan.
For, even if readers disagree with letter-writers ideas, the government
sees to it that they are made aware of them: those ideas thus
have been made part of the public sphere. Moreover, the anti-Soviet
and anti-Russian opinions expressed in Respublika Tatarstan
are more mild than some of those printed in the Tatar-language
Vatanm Tatarstan; they do not exist outside of an ideological
framework recognizable to Russians. Moreover, although many of
the letters published by Vatanm Tatarstan represent an
extreme departure from received political institutions, Russians
do not have the linguistic ability or desire to read them. Additionally,
people trained in Tatar linguistic practices are trained not to
give in to expressions of anger, but rather to keep the peace
through persuasion. Thus, I would argue that, while the maintenance
of a dialogue in the Russian-language newspaper encourages feelings
of inclusive nationalism among Tatarstans inhabitants, the pressure
to use persuasion, as opposed to alarmism, among Tatarstans Tatar-speakers
helps the monophone Russian population to feel included in and
rewarded for participating in nation-building processes.
Another result of the social differentiation occurring in Tatarstan
is that people view the recent war in Chechnya differently, depending
upon the language in which they primarily live. Apparently reproducing
opinions expressed by their parents, Russian-speaking children
say that the war is a just struggle against terrorists and any
criticism of Russian troops, including articles in the foreign
press that are critical of Russias actions, is an insult to the
young men who are losing their lives in Chechnya. Tatar-speakers
in Tatarstan, by contrast, express no surprise that Russian soldiers
should be committing acts that violate decency; these adolescents,
like their parents, consider the war in Chechnya and general discrimination
against Chechens to be acts of violence by Russia against its
own people. However, not only linguistic ability, but also contexts
and patterns of language use, influence peoples attitudes. For
example, Tatar-speakers I talked to in Moscow and St. Petersburg,
who do not share Tatarstan Tatars fear of military invasion, express
little sympathy for the plight of Chechens. Their statements fundamentally
differ from those of one Tatarstan intellectual I know who explained:
"Before we felt like one Soviet people; now Chechnya has
made us realize that we are different. We continue to live with
Russians not because we want to, but because we have to."
The other thread of my research traces the ways in which post-Soviet
linguistic, ethnic, and religious communities are diversifying
according to changing identity markers and with respect to different
internal and external political-economic forces. If, for example,
knowledge of languages other than Russian during the Soviet period
was potentially dangerous, now knowledge of other languages has
become essential to economic survival. As a result of the ways
particular individuals are seeking affiliation with alternate
organizations and ideologies, social relations between members
of strengthened or newly emergent communities are being reconfigured.
Indeed, as post-socialist space becomes increasingly exposed to
divergent political economic forces, the potential subject positions
people can occupy are multiplied in unexpected and seemingly incompatible
ways.
For example, although a great many people seek out opportunities
to acquire foreign languages, as well as the freedom to travel,
different affiliatory inclinations mean that their efforts take
different concrete forms. So, religious Tatars may want to acquire
Arabic so they can read the Quran, or study in the Middle East,
or travel to Mecca for the Hajj. People of Volga German
ancestry, by contrast, need to acquire German in order to qualify
for immigration to Germany, while knowledge of Hebrew is not required
for Jews to emigrate to Israel. In the latter case, being able
to demonstrate Jewish ancestry is key. All the types of people
listed above, and others who may not feel especially strong ethnic
or religious affiliations, may nonetheless be inclined to want
to learn English, especially if they engage in any kind of business;
hope to travel abroad for pleasure or schooling; listen to Britney
Spears songs; or want to surf the internet. Because of Tatarstans
close business, cultural, and linguistic ties with the Republic
of Turkey, a lot of people, including Russians, are likewise interested
in studying Turkish language; in this regard, Tatars have a definite
advantage, but Russian students nevertheless make a valiant effort
to train themselves to work as translators. Although processes
of language acquisition related to fundamental shifts in peoples
positionality are occurring all across post-Soviet space, Tatarstans
official bilingualism creates a situation that encourages people
to inhabit lived worlds in more than one language. This model
presents intriguing possibilities for other potential problems
of Russian federalism.
[Contents]
Network Community Creation in Kazakhstan
Elena G. Gayevskaya, Internet Access and Training
Program (IATP) Coordinator for Kazakhstan, Almat, Kazakhstan,
iatpkzccfreenet.kz
The internet is a social phenomenon. Research on a social aspect
of the internet known as Network Communities is one of the newest
trends in Western sociology. Though the CIS countries have yet
to enter the era of widespread internet use, this research brief
gives preliminary evidence of interest in Network Communities
development in Kazakhstan. During an internship in the USA in
2000, I put together a presentation on "Distance Learning
in Kazakhstan" (<http://www.elenag.freenet.kz/>).
My professional activities are now closely connected with the
creation and development of Network Communities in Kazakhstan
as Coordinator of Internet Access and Training Program (IATP)
in Kazakhstan.
As part of the research on distance learning, IATP organized
educational events for school students (Summer Internet Camp)
and alumni of the US government programs (First Kazakhstani Virtual
Conference). One example of an IATP project related to Network
Communities is the "Girls Leading Our World" (GLOW)
Camp in the city of Qaraghand (known as Karaganda in Russian).
The camp endeavored to teach the girls many different life skills,
with internet skills being among those emphasized. After receiving
training from IATP, the campers created their own website (<http://www.geocities.com/glowcamp>)
which highlighted Camp GLOWs activities. If you are interested
in information about IATP Community activities, please find it
at the following addresses: <http://www.iatp.kz>
and <http://www.freenet.kz>
[Contents]
Reviews and Abstracts
Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistans Endless War: State Failure,
Regional Politics and the Rise of the Taliban. Seattle
and London: University of Washington Press, 2001. 264pp., maps,
tables, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN: 0-295-98050-8.
$22.50 paper.
Reviewed by: Resul Yalcin, London School of Economics
and Political Science, London, United Kingdom, r.m.yalcinlse.ac.uk
A country shaped and molded by its experience with more than
two decades of war, Afghanistan has been in the news for sometime
now and will probably remain so for a long time to come.
The Afghan War from 1978 to the 1990s was one of the deadliest
and most persistent conflicts of the second half of the twentieth
century. Millions of Afghanistans indigenous population became
casualties they were either killed, wounded, driven into refugee
status outside of Afghanistan or internally displaced. Every region
of the country has been touched by the war. The countryside was
ravaged, with widespread destruction of villages, fields, orchards
and irrigation systems. Large sections of major cities were reduced
to rubble, roads turned into dirt tracks and farms made unsafe
after being sewn with mines instead of seed. The economy collapsed.
The education system and other modernizing sectors of Afghan society
were completely disrupted. The country became home to deepening
ethnic tensions, drug traffickers, international terrorists and
bloody warlords. The struggle for control of Afghanistan not only
delayed efforts to improve the situation, but also deepened the
crisis.
Afghanistans strategic position, sandwiched between the Middle
East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent along the ancient
silk route, means that it has long been fought over despite its
rugged and forbidding terrain. It was at the center of the so-called
"Great Game" in the nineteenth century when Imperial
Russia and the British Empire in India strived for influence.
It became a key Cold War battleground after thousands of Soviet
troops invaded in 1979 to prop up a pro-Communist regime, leading
to a major confrontation that drew in the United States and Afghanistans
neighbors. However, the outside world eventually lost interest
after the withdrawal of Soviet forces while the countrys prolonged
civil war dragged on.
The emergence of the Taliban in 1994, the so-called group of
"Islamic students," formed a new elite with limited
governing capabilities and with qualifications often derived from
their gun barrels and misunderstanding and misapplication of Islamic
Law. They brought a temporary measure of stability after two decades
of conflict, but their extreme version of Islam attracted widespread
criticism. Even those who supported them soon recognized that
the Taliban were incapable of governing the country. Their leaders
were too inexperienced and uneducated in government and politics
to rule effectively and they were too committed to their ideology
to compromise. Until recently in control of about 97 percent of
the country, they were initially supported and assisted by several
countries including the U.S. However, they had been in dispute
with the international community over the presence on their soil
of Osama bin Laden, who has been accused by the U.S. of masterminding
the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998
and the attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. After the Talibans
refusal to hand over bin Laden, the United States initiated intensive
aerial attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001, paving the way
for opposition groups to drive the Taliban from power in December
2001. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 in the U.S. and
the American governments response to these have complicated the
situation further in Afghanistan, probably leading to another
major confrontation involving yet another superpower. It is as
if history is repeating itself in Afghanistan. What is wrong with
Afghanistan today is what was not right yesterday and what is
happening today seems to be a repetition of the past. Although
Larry P. Goodsons book Afghanistans Endless War: StateFailure,
Regional Politics and the Rise of the Taliban, provides us
with little information about the involvement of the U.S. with
the victorious Mujahidin, and disputes the United States initial
involvement with the Taliban, the book is an excellent study of
Afghanistan and its society in the last twenty years. It remains
an outstanding work on the range of transformations that more
than two decades of the enormously destructive Afghan war have
produced in that country.
Larry P. Goodson, a US scholar and an associate professor of
International Studies at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts,
has set forth to examine and explain what has been happening in
Afghanistan in the last twenty years. Goodson sees much of the
recent scholarship on Afghanistans modern period, which focuses
on one or a few factors at a time, as falling short in helping
us to understand Afghanistan. He thus views his book as an attempt
to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of how various
factors intersect and combine to shape that country today. Approaching
the topic from theoretical and empirical perspectives, Goodson
focuses his work from the 1980s to early 2001 with references
often made to the history of Afghanistan. In his opinion, the
Afghan war against the Soviets increased some powerful centrifugal
forces within Afghan society, even as it discredited and destroyed
the countrys governing institutions. The seeds of Afghanistans
state failure had been well planted by then. He believes that
the deepening of ethnic tensions, the rising of Islamist ideology
and the entrenching of a narcotics economy were all becoming the
defining characteristics of the country, and that all the features
that were emerging as problems during the 1980s caused the collapse
of the country in the 1990s.
According to Goodson, in order to understand Afghanistan and
the region it anchors, we must focus attention on six critical
factors: Afghanistans ethnic-linguistic cleavages, its social
structures, its religious ideology, its long and devastating conflict,
its geopolitical position and its limited economic development.
He then spells out how the relative weight of each factor in understanding
the country shifts with time, making it impossible and invalid
to suggest that one or several of them are sufficient to explain
the situation there.
Afghanistans Endless War is divided into six chapters.
The first chapter focuses, in some depth, on two of these six
factors, the ethnic-linguistic cleavages and the social structures,
and examines Afghanistans early history of inadequate state and
nation building. Chapter 2 is devoted to the historical factors
that shaped modern Afghanistan, namely the enormous social and
demographic transformations because of its geographical location.
The chapter gives an outline of Afghan history from the Anglo-Russian
competition in Central Asia in the nineteenth century to the Soviet
invasion of that country in 1979. In Chapter 2 Goodson also puts
in plain words that there developed an increased ethnic consciousness
in Afghanistan from the nineteenth century period of anarchy,
which laid the foundation for ethnic relationships in the country
today, but it was not an ideology of nationalism. The social changes
did not occur in a vacuum; there were tremendous political pressures
from outside sources. The Anglo-Russian competition in Central
Asia ultimately fostered the creation of the modern state of Afghanistan,
causing the demarcation of its ethnically divisive borders and
beginning the process that has culminated in the Afghan war. In
Goodsons view the combination of nineteenth century foreign infringement
and simultaneous internal anarchy created a state structure without
the concomitant development of an Afghan state.
The core of the study, Chapters 3 and 4, examines in detail how
the local, low-intensity rebellions of late 1978 evolved into
a war of national destruction that changed the course of world
history. Goodson analyzes the Afghan War in eight stages in Chapter
3, starting from the coup detat in April 1978, which overthrew
Mohammad Daouds nationalist regime and installed the Communist
Party in power, the rebellions against this and the Soviet invasion
in December 1979, leading to heavy fighting in all parts of the
country between the Soviet Army and the Mujahidin. This chapter
also deals with the emergence of the Taliban movement and its
rule over the country. In Chapter 4 Goodson explores the widespread
destruction of Afghanistans physical infrastructure and human
resources as well as the profound alteration of its ethnic-religious
balance, socio-economic system and sociocultural framework. It
also gives special attention to the ideological struggle within
Afghanistan which gave rise to the Taliban. His analysis tells
us that it is the physical destruction that underlies the rest
of the changes wrought by the war in Afghanistan. The physical
destruction in that country took two forms: destruction of population
and destruction of property. More than 50 percent of Afghanistans
population has been directly harmed by the war through death,
injury or displacement, and the destruction of property has been
multifaceted. Since 1978, virtually everything has been a target:
cities, towns, villages, houses, mosques and minarets, schools,
hospitals, industrial structures, other buildings, roads, bridges,
orchards and fields have all been damaged or destroyed during
the fighting. The war has destroyed the pre-war elites and the
social system that supported them, leading to the development
of new political elites the Mujahidin and the Taliban that are
founded on a newly prominent role for youth and Islamist ideologues.
The collapse of a functioning government and social institutions
made violence a more common means of settling disputes, and the
rise of the Taliban has sharpened the ethnic, linguistic, religious
and tribal divisions in Afghanistan.
In Chapter 5 Goodson analyzes Afghanistans multifaceted role
in regional affairs, a role that on the eve of the twenty-first
century has altered Afghanistans geostrategic significance. Goodson
describes how, as a linchpin country, Afghanistan connects Central
Asia with South and West Asia in the new geopolitics of the 1990s;
how its geographical location and cross-border ethnic ties can
play a critical role in trade between South Asia, Southwest Asia
and Central Asia; and how outside actors influenced Afghanistan
during the war years of 1980s and continued to do so in various
ways during 1990s. He also reminds us that numerous outside actors
have shaped previously isolated Afghanistan over the past twenty
years, and without them the Afghan War could never have occurred
and been maintained at such high intensity for so long. He stresses
that the overlapping of ethnolinguistic and religious identity
groups, permeable national borders, and weak state governments
throughout the region make possible ongoing ethnic conflicts.
Afghanistan has been and remains today a country that is significantly
affected by its neighbors, while affecting them significantly,
as well.
In the final chapter, acknowledging the difficulties of predicting
any positive future for Afghanistan, Goodson foresees a range
of possible scenarios: continued fragmentation, national disintegration,
state reconstruction under a Pushtun-led government and national
reintegration under a broad-based government. The state cannot
reassert itself, nor can there begin to be a reintegration of
the Afghan nation, so long as various ethnic militias refuse to
cede control over their local areas to a national government run
by members of another ethnolinguistic, religious or ideological
group. An alternative arrangement in his view would be for local
communities to govern themselves, which would require at least
the willingness of opposing ethnic-based militias to adopt a tolerant
attitude toward the customs and culture of other groups. Leaving
aside for a moment the motivations of regional actors, Goodson
concludes that for the vast majority of Afghans there is no longer
any acceptable reason for the fighting to continue. The reality
is that the battle is increasingly over ethnic identity and the
regional aspirations of neighboring states. Since significant
political fragmentation along ethnic-linguistic-religious lines
has already occurred, this will provide the foundation for long-term
dominance of the periphery over the center. Afghanistans current
international borders might or might not remain unchanged in the
short run, but the reality would be a state divided. However,
in the long run, a broad-based government that includes all the
major groups and actors, adequately represented and with sufficient
guarantees of local authority, is probably the only solution to
Afghanistans problems.
Afghanistans Endless War is certainly a welcome addition
to the study of Afghanistan as well as the study of state formation
and nation building. It is also a concise analysis of what state
failure means both for failed states themselves and for the stability
of the regions in which they are located.
[Contents]
Abstract
Transitions Online Annual Survey 2001 CD-ROM. Prague:
Transitions Online, Inc., 2002. $100.
Abstract prepared by: Rafis Abazov, Visiting Scholar,
Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA, ra2044columbia.edu
Annual surveys on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
published by the organization Transitions Online [TOL] (formerly
OMRI) have traditionally provided a brief, comprehensive and authoritative
review of political, economic and foreign policy developments
in this region. Unfortunately, the East-West Institute and M. E.
Sharpe stopped publishing hard copy editions in 1998, but the
annual surveys did not disappear. TOL began publishing them on
its website (<http://www.tol.cz>)
in 1999, and in 2002 it introduced the annual surveys on CD-ROM.
The TOL Annual Survey 2001 CD-ROM is a one-stop guide
to the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe,
the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. The annual surveys cover
the most important political, economic and foreign policy events
in post-Communist societies. The reviews of individual countries
(28 of them) also include maps, useful links and statistics. The
2001 edition made important changes from previous online annual
reports: the publisher added background analysis by including
the most important and interesting articles contributed by field
correspondents from the region.
The TOL Annual Survey 2001 CD-ROM is an invaluable resource
for all institutional and personal libraries. It is also a very
useful tool for undergraduate and post-graduate students who would
like to get quick and comprehensive comparative references to
recent developments in several former Communist countries. The
CD-ROM seems to be designed to compete with other sources available
on the internet, such as the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU),
and Business Eastern Europe (BEE).
The CD-ROM costs $100 plus shipping. More information can be
accessed at the newly launched TOL Store at: <http://www.tol.cz>.
[Contents]
Conferences and Lecture Series
The Ninth Annual Central Eurasian Studies Conference
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, April 13, 2002
Reported by: Kerry Cosby, Graduate Student, Department
of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington,
Ind., USA, kcosbyindiana.edu.
The Association of Central Eurasian Students (ACES) at Indiana
University hosted the Ninth Annual Central Eurasian Studies Conference.
Through the years this event has served as a forum for scholars
to introduce new research and for students to gain experience
in presenting academic papers. Participants came from all across
the United States and abroad for the full-day event, giving presentations
on topical subjects as diverse as political Islam in Central Asia
and the Mongolian Estrada as a part of national identity.
The organizers of the conference attempted to accommodate the
diversity of topics in nine panels split into morning, afternoon
and evening sessions. Presentations by noted scholars Dr. Thomas
Allsen from Trenton State College and Dr. David Sneath from the
University of Cambridge separated each of the sessions. Allsen
presented the lecture "Skilled Hands in Motion: Technician
Transfers in the Mongol Empire" and Sneath spoke on "Reciprocity,
Corruption and the State in Contemporary Mongolia."
Allsen discussed the dynamics of the massive mobilization of
artisans under Pax Mongolica. According to Allsen, the Mongolian
period of Eurasian history witnessed systematic and large-scale
transfers of scientists, ritual experts, merchants, administrators,
technologists and artists across the empire. From Chinese artisans
to Muslim engineers and architects, significant numbers of technicians
were relocated and employed by Mongolian rulers for military,
cultural and economic reasons. These long-distance cultural transactions
challenge widely-held assumptions that the nomads were passive
recipients in their dealings with neighboring sedentary peoples.
In contrast, Allsen argued that they were active and selective
appropriators of sedentary culture.
Sneath examined Mongolian perceptions of corruption in the past
and present and related this to the political and economic transformations
in what he termed "the age of market." He demonstrated
that throughout the pre-communist, state socialist and post-communist
periods the common perception of officials rights and duties went
through serious transformations. The boundary between gift giving
and bribery changed along with this perception, contributing to
the notion that corruption has become more rampant in recent years.
Thus he suggests that Mongolian notions of legitimate and illegitimate
gifts and payments can only be understood through the changes
in the networks of obligation and mutual aid.
The conference sessions accompanying Allsen and Sneaths lectures
were organized in thematic panels. The three morning panels covered
"Post-Mongol Central Eurasian History," "Politics"
and "Finance and Economic Transformations." In the discussion
on politics, Cengiz Surucu (Indiana University), in his paper
"Modernity, Nationalism and Resistance: Identity Politics
in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan," discussed contemporary Kazakh
"ethnonationalist" and "cosmopolitan" political
perspectives. He argued that nationalism and cosmopolitanism can
be understood as idioms that elites utilize in their struggles
for political and cultural power. These idioms help intellectuals
organize diverse political positions in two broad alliances. Blending
Eurasianist political thought and the Soviet version of modernization,
the cosmopolitan perspective perceives modernization and nationalism
as opposing categories of practice. Thus cosmopolitanism crosscuts
interethnic boundaries and provides a common stance against the
ethnonationalist policies of the government.
The afternoon panels were devoted to discussions on "Political
Behavior," "Pre-Mongol Central Eurasian History"
and "Geopolitics." The panel on political behavior held
a number of lively discussions among them Islamism in Tajikistan,
neopatrimonialism in Central Asia and national identity in Uzbekistan.
Shah Ahmad Mutalov (Institute of Averaged Languages and Language
Ortaturk in Uzbekistan), presenting his lecture "Two Ways
of Developing National Identity in Uzbekistan," brought out
the problem of defining the Uzbek nation. Dr. Mutalov focused
on the development of a campaign begun on April 6, 2000 in the
meeting of President Karimov with representatives from Uzbekistans
intelligentsia. The purpose of the gathering, Mutalov explained,
was to discuss the presidents book on the "national ideology,"
and the meaning of that term. The crux of Mutalovs argument rested
on the lack of a clear definition of the Uzbek word milliy
(national), which can imply a relation to an ethnic group or citizenship.
Consequently, he explained that the terms nation and national
tend to become muddled in Uzbek speeches and writings. In the
end, he offered two possible reasons why this confusion might
have come about: 1) the terms are deliberately mixed in order
to conduct "ethnic cleansing;" or 2) the terms
are used inaccurately and are in need of clarification for Uzbek
and international audiences.
Dr. Kamoludin Abdullaev, a visiting scholar at Yale University,
discussed post-civil war reconstruction in Tajikistan in his paper,
"Including Islamists in Legal Politics: Assessment of the
Tajik Model." He summarized the painful yet promising process
of integrating the Islamic Tajik opposition into mainstream politics.
According to Abdullaev, the entire peace process has been marked
by lack of trust and determined efforts to overcome it through
various institutional channels.
The last three panels of the day featured presentations on "Mongolia
and Buriatia: Then and Now," "Language and Linguistics"
and "Representations of Identity." One of the most interesting
presentations in the panel on "Representations of Identity"
came from two Indiana University students, Peter Marsh and Tristra
Newyear. The pair offered a multi-media presentation "Beyond
Estrada: Why Do We Need a National Sound?" As the title of
the presentation would suggest, Marsh and Newyear looked at the
new pop-rock music in Mongolia and Buriatia to examine the relationship
of music and national political parties. They argued that a close
relationship exists between popular music and the powerful economic
and political institutions in the nations, which, Marsh and Newyear
believe, raise questions about both Buriatia and Mongolias contemporary
nationalisms.
The conference schedule and other ACES events can be viewed online
at: <http://php.indiana.edu/~aces/>
[Contents]
Middle East Studies Association 2001 Annual Meeting
San Francisco, USA, November 17-20, 2001
Reported by: Marianne Kamp, Assistant Professor, |