Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations

Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations PDF Author: Alfrid K. Bustanov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131769838X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Orientalism – the idea that the standpoint of Western writers on the East greatly affected what they wrote about the East, the "Other" – applied also in Russia and the Soviet Union, where the study of the many exotic peoples incorporated into the Russian Empire, often in quite late imperial times, became a major academic industry, where, as in the West, the standpoint of writers greatly affected what they wrote. Russian/Soviet orientalism had a particularly important impact in Central Asia, where in early Soviet times new republics, later states, were created, often based on the distorted perceptions of scholars in St Petersburg and Moscow, and often cutting across previously existing political and cultural boundaries. The book explores how the Soviet orientalism academic industry influenced the creation of Central Asian nations. It discusses the content of oriental sources and discourses, considers the differences between scholars working in St Petersburg and Moscow and those working more locally in Central Asia, providing a rich picture of academic politics, and shows how academic cultural classification cemented political boundaries, often in unhelpful ways.

Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations

Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations PDF Author: Alfrid K. Bustanov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131769838X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Orientalism – the idea that the standpoint of Western writers on the East greatly affected what they wrote about the East, the "Other" – applied also in Russia and the Soviet Union, where the study of the many exotic peoples incorporated into the Russian Empire, often in quite late imperial times, became a major academic industry, where, as in the West, the standpoint of writers greatly affected what they wrote. Russian/Soviet orientalism had a particularly important impact in Central Asia, where in early Soviet times new republics, later states, were created, often based on the distorted perceptions of scholars in St Petersburg and Moscow, and often cutting across previously existing political and cultural boundaries. The book explores how the Soviet orientalism academic industry influenced the creation of Central Asian nations. It discusses the content of oriental sources and discourses, considers the differences between scholars working in St Petersburg and Moscow and those working more locally in Central Asia, providing a rich picture of academic politics, and shows how academic cultural classification cemented political boundaries, often in unhelpful ways.

Central Asia in Art

Central Asia in Art PDF Author: Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838608133
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In the midst of the space race and nuclear age, Soviet Realist artists were producing figurative oil paintings. Why? How was art produced to control and co-opt the peripheries of the Soviet Union, particularly Central Asia? Presenting the 'untold story' of Soviet Orientalism, Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen re-evaluates the imperial project of the Soviet state, placing the Orientalist undercurrent found within art and propaganda production in the USSR alongside the creation of new art forms in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. From the turmoil of the 1930s through to the post-Stalinist era, the author draws on meticulous new research and rich illustrations to examine the political and social structures in the Soviet Union - and particularly Soviet Central Asia - to establish vital connections between Socialist Realist visual art, the creation of Soviet identity and later nationalist sentiments.

Russian Orientalism

Russian Orientalism PDF Author: David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300162898
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Here, the author examines Russian thinking about the Orient before the Revolution of 1917. He argues that the Russian Empire's bi-continental geography and the complicated nature of its encounter with Asia have all resulted in a variegated understanding of the East among its people.

Empire of Nations

Empire of Nations PDF Author: Francine Hirsch
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories. Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.

Legal Pluralism in Central Asia

Legal Pluralism in Central Asia PDF Author: Mahabat Sadyrbek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351375482
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Legal Pluralism in Central Asia reports on historical, anthropological and legal research which examines customary legal practices in Kyrgyzstan and relates them to wider societal developments in Central Asia and further afield. Using the term legal pluralism, the book demonstrates that there is a spectrum of approaches, available avenues, forms of local law and indigenous popular justice in Kyrgyzstan’s predominantly rural communities, which can be labelled living law. Based on her extensive original research, Mahabat Sadyrbek shows how contemporary peoples systematically address challenging problems, such as disputes, violence, accidents, crime and other difficulties, and thereby seek justice, redress, punishment, compensation, readjustment of relations or closure. She demonstrates that local law, expressed through ritually structured communicative exchange, through dictums and proverbs with binding characters and different legal practices or processes undertaken in specific ways, deem the solutions appropriate and acceptable. The reader is thereby enabled to see the law in people’s deepest assumptions and beliefs, in codes of shame and honour, in local mores and ethics as well as in religious terms. In this way, the book reveals the dynamic, changing and living character of law in a specific context and in a region hitherto insufficiently researched within legal anthropology.

Russian Practices of Governance in Eurasia

Russian Practices of Governance in Eurasia PDF Author: Gulnar T. Kendirbai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429515723
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This book analyses the role of the mobility factor in the spread of Russian rule in Eurasia in the formative period of the rise of the Russian Empire and offers an examination of the interaction of Russian authorities with their nomadic partners. Demonstrating that the mobility factor strongly shaped the system of protectorate that the Russian and Qing monarchs imposed on their nomadic counterparts, the book argues that it operated as a flexible institutional framework, which enabled all sides to derive maximum benefits from a given political situation. The author establishes that interactions of Russian authorities with their Kalmyk and Qazaq counterparts during the mid-16th to the mid-19th centuries were strongly informed by the power dynamics of the Inner Asian frontier. These dynamics were marked by Russia’s rivalry with Qing Chinese and Jungar leaders to exert its influence over frontier nomadic populations. This book shows that each of these parties began to adopt key elements of existing steppe political culture. It also suggests that the different norms of governance adopted by the Russian state continued to shape its elite politics well into the 1820s and beyond. The author proposes that, by combining key elements of this culture with new practices, Russian authorities proved capable of creating innovative forms of governance that ended up shaping the very nature of the colonial Russian state itself. An important contribution to the ongoing debates pertaining to the nature of the spread of Russian rule over the numerous populations of the vast Eurasian terrains, this book will be of interest to academics working on Russian history, Central Asian/Eurasian history and political and cultural history.

The Afghan-Central Asia Borderland

The Afghan-Central Asia Borderland PDF Author: Suzanne Levi-Sanchez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317430948
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Based on extensive, long-term fieldwork in the borderlands of Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan, this book explores the importance of local leaders and local identity groups for the stability of a state’s borders, and ultimately for the stability of the state itself. It shows how the implantation of formal institutional structures at the border, a process supported by United Nations and other international bodies, can be counterproductive in that it may marginalise local leaders and alienate the local population, thereby increasing overall instability. The study considers how, in this particular borderland where trafficking of illegal drugs, weapons and people is rampant, corrupt customs and border personnel, and imperfect new institutional arrangements, contributed to a complex mix of oppression, hidden protest and subtle resistance, which benefitted illicit traders and hindered much needed humanitarian work. The book relates developments in this region to borderlands elsewhere, especially new borders in the former Soviet bloc, and argues that local leaders and organisations should be given semi-autonomy in co-ordination with state border forces in order to increase stability and the acceptance of the state.

The World beyond the West

The World beyond the West PDF Author: Mariusz Kałczewiak
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800733534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
No matter how one defines its extent and borders, Eastern Europe has long been understood as a liminal space, one whose undeniable cultural and historical continuities with Western Europe have been belied by its status as an “Other” in the Western imagination. Across illuminating and provocative case studies, The World beyond the West focuses on the region’s ambiguous relationship to historical processes of colonialism and Orientalism. In exploring encounters with distant lands through politics, travel, migration, and exchange, it places Eastern Europe at the heart of its analysis while decentering the most familiar narratives and recasting the history of the region.

Work Flows

Work Flows PDF Author: Maya Vinokour
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501773682
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Work Flows investigates the emergence of "flow" as a crucial metaphor within Russian labor culture since 1870. Maya Vinokour frames concern with fluid channeling as immanent to vertical power structures—whether that verticality derives from the state, as in Stalin's Soviet Union and present-day Russia, or from the proliferation of corporate monopolies, as in the contemporary Anglo-American West. Originating in pre-revolutionary bio-utopianism, the Russian rhetoric of liquids and flow reached an apotheosis during Stalin's First Five-Year Plan and re-emerged in post-Soviet "managed democracy" and Western neoliberalism. The literary, philosophical, and official texts that Work Flows examines give voice to the Stalinist ambition of reforging not merely individual bodies, but space and time themselves. By mobilizing the understudied thematic of fluidity, Vinokour offers insight into the nexus of philosophy, literature, and science that underpinned Stalinism and remains influential today. Work Flows demonstrates that Stalinism is not a historical phenomenon restricted to the period 1922-1953, but a symptom of modernity as it emerged in the twentieth century. Stalinism's legacy extends far beyond the bounds of the former Soviet Union, emerging in seemingly disparate settings like post-Soviet Russia and Silicon Valley.

Iconic Places in Central Asia

Iconic Places in Central Asia PDF Author: Jeanne Féaux de la Croix
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839436303
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Jeanne Féaux de la Croix maps three iconic places as part of Central Asians' 'moral geographies' and examines their role in navigating socialist, neo-liberal and neo-Islamic life models. Dams provide most of Kyrgyzstan's electricity, but are also at the heart of regional water disputes that threaten an already shrinking Aral Sea. Mountain pastures cover much of Central Asia's heartland and offer a livelihood and refuge, even to urban citizens. Pilgrimage sites have recovered from official Soviet oblivion and act as cherished scenes of decision-making. Examining how iconic places, work and well-being can mesh together, this book moves debates about post-Soviet memory, space and property onto fresh terrain.