Estudio de electro-actividad

As already indicated, the propagation of a civic nationalism super-ordinating Soviet citizenship over ethnic identities aimed at brushing over discontent and grievances stemming from the Soviet republics’ territorial delimitation, but succeeded in doing so mostly in times of relative economic prosperity, if at all. As a counter perspective, there are already multiple analyses of the significant role of ethnicity in life during the Soviet Union and the institutional racism and chauvinism experienced especially by Central Asians in relation to their ‘European’ counterparts, and amongst each other (Sahadeo 2007, Igmen 2012). In Kyrgyzstan, dynamics of social change and spatial restructuring of both urban and rural areas gave rise to a particular ethno-political legacy standing in palpable tension with the ‘peoples’ friendship’ discourse throughout the Soviet and much of the post-Soviet periods. This trajectory was especially pronounced the southern part of the Kyrgyz SSR.

With the increased urbanisation and partial industrial restructuring of the southern city of Osh from the 1960s onwards, more Kyrgyz started moving to the city whose central areas had been inhabited by a sizeable Uzbek population (Megoran 2017: ch. 4, Liu 2012). The city administration shifted began restructuring Osh into a modern industrial town, in which the traditional Uzbek mahalla neighbourhoods were supposed to give way to multi-storey residential buildings and urban infrastructures such as parks, boulevards and squares (Harrowell 2015). The assertion of Kyrgyz interests also led to the increased staffing of administrative and intellectual posts with Kyrgyz at the expense of Uzbeks, who had been strongly represented in

this area due to their high educational attainments (Megoran 2013). Despite these changes forcing them to retreat into farming and other professions, Uzbeks managed to maintain their relative wellbeing as perceived by large swathes of poor and needy Kyrgyz coming to Osh from the country side (ibid.). With the Soviet economic model stagnating more and more in the 1980s, increasing numbers of people from rural Kyrgyzstan migrated to the urban centres and tensions in the competition for jobs, state-provided housing and scarce land erupted into deadly clashes in and around Osh and Uzgen in the year 1990 (Tishkov 1995). Since independence, the marginalisation of Uzbeks and other national minorities intensified due the increasingly precarious economic situation and the perception that Uzbeks, traditionally more successful in trade and business, were generally better off than Kyrgyz (Bond and Koch 2010).

The first president of the newly independent Kyrgyz Republic, Askar Akaev, attempted to mitigate these tensions and conflicts by promoting an agenda of ‘interethnic unity’ (Ru. mezhdunarodnoe soglasie, lit. international, meaning between different nationalities or ethnicities) by emphasising the multi-ethnic and multicultural nature of a tolerant Kyrgyzstani society under the slogan ‘Kyrgyzstan is our common home’ (Kyrgyzstan – nash obshii dom) (Marat 2008: 14). His initiatives included the creation of a ‘People’s Assembly’ (Assambleia narodov Kyrgyzstana, Assembly of the peoples of Kyrgyzstan) as a forum for the representatives of minorities and for the celebration Kyrgyzstan’s traditions and historical legacies (Omelicheva 2015: 81). The epos of Manas (see above) was made a bedrock of Kyrgyz national identity, as its poems and narrations became a mandatory part of school teaching and cultural life of the country (van der Heide 2015). With it, however, Akaev also started to embrace the idea of ethnogenesis and, drawing on the work of Lev Gumilev, a prominent

theorist during the 1960s, drew connections between the Manas epic and the ethnogenesis of the Kyrgyz (Gullette 2008).25

Neither Akaev nor his predecessor Kurmanbek Bakiev decided to draw on the ethno- nationalist register for mobilising support among the electorate and the elites, which led to its emergence as a strongly and increasingly accepted discourse among opposition politicians in the course of the 2000s (Laruelle 2012). Some politicians even went so far as to say that the Kyrgyz, being the majority or ‘titular’ ethnic group of the country, ‘are the masters of the house, the other nations and peoples [are] tenants [Kyrgyzy v strane khoziaeva doma, a ostalnye narody i natsii kvartiranty.]’ (cited in Gullette and Heathershaw 2015: 132-133). Different authors have argued that the 2010 clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan, which disproportionately led to the destruction of Uzbek properties, businesses and loss of Uzbek lives, have to be seen as expression of such sentiment and the feeling of Kyrgyz that their sovereignty as ‘titular’ ethnic group and majority was being ‘imperilled’ (Laruelle 2012, Wilkinson 2014a).26

The challenge for current research is that the topic of inter-ethnic relations and the ethno-nationalist sentiments is virtually banned from public discourse in Kyrgyzstan. Authorities have argued that compensation, re-construction and reconciliation since the ‘Osh events’ have been largely effective, while several authors have noted the ongoing discrimination and marginalisation of Uzbeks especially in the city of Osh (Harrowell 2015, Ismailbekova 2013, 2015, Ismailbekova and Karimova 2018, Megoran 2013, Isakova 2013,

25 _{While Akaev maintained that this legacy could be claimed regardless of ethnicity, making} Manas a hero for Kyrgyzstanis of all ethnicities, this civic, modern conception of nationalism was not appropriate for rallying more conservative and ethno-nationalistically inclined groups, especially from rural and southern districts of Kyrgyzstan (Laruelle 2012, 2008).

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Although, rather than portraying the Kyrgyz as perpetrators and reinforcing the perpetrator- victim division, of which international NGOs and the international community have been accused, some authors have pointed out that the fears and frustrations underlying this discourse, as well the mechanisms making them a legitimate political sentiment, have to be understood in their own right instead of being dismissed as irrational and uncivilised (Megoran 2017: ch. 4, 2013, Gullette and Heathershaw 2015).

2015). Such critical accounts are not only denied or relativised; but researchers and journalists trying to inquire such topics have recently been targeted by the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) (Mets 2015).27 Although none of the trials against foreign journalists or NGOs led to draconian jail sentences or fines, the logics behind these investigations appears to be one of securitising and monopolising the discourse on inter-ethnic relations in order to keep foreign researchers and organisations from criticising the situation the ground (Bekmurzaev et al. 2018). Peacebuilding and community security projects reflect these regimes which attempts to sanitise the post-Osh reality of Kyrgyzstan, as they do not explicitly or not exclusively focus on inter-ethnic relations, or, when it is unavoidable, only do so in cooperation with authorities.