The dissolution of the Soviet Union generated a large academic debate about the meaning and transformation of the Soviet state and potential implications for nation-states emerging out of the collapse of the USSR. It is therefore important to situate the path of Central Asian republics to national sovereignty within their historical context. The history of Central Asia is important, as it enables us to understand the functioning of these independent states today. The case of Central Asia, as Deniz Kandiyoti (2002, p. 286) notes, is particularly interesting as it carries a dual trajectory as it was first colonised in the expansion of the Russian empire in the late 19th century and then exposed to new forms of rule by a non-capitalist regime after the victory of the Bolsheviks.
Central Asia was conquered in the context of imperial competition with other European powers and coincides with the ‘Great Game’—the geopolitical competition between Russia and Great Britain. In the 19th century, Russian military expeditions gradually brought the countries of Central Asia under tsarist occupation. The years of tsarist occupation changed regional politics, economics, state society relations and culture tremendously. The Russian colonisation in Central Asia shows many similarities with the conduct of other empires. However, the integration of Central Asia into the tsarist empire was regarded as highly problematic, as the Russian state had neither the desire nor the capability to integrate the indigenous population under its rule (Khalid, 2006, p.236).
Under the tsarist rule, the main concern was securitisation and stabilisation in the region (Haugen, 2003). Hence, strategies for the integration of Central Asia gave way to segregation and non-intervention (Haugen 2003, p. 49). As a result, Central Asian people did not become full subjects of the empire and the empire-wide systems of social classification (Khalid, 2006; Geiss, 2003). Yet, increasingly, the tsarist occupation resembled the character of European colonial rule. For instance, under the tsarist occupation, the population of Central Asia was given the judicial status of inorodtsy (aliens) or tuzemtsy (natives). With such differentiations in place, Central Asian people were given different rights in comparison to the remaining population of the empire (Khalid, 2006; Geiss, 2003; Haugen, 2003). As Khalid notes (2006, p. 237) “the state recognized the native population as different and institutionalized that difference in legal practice”. The tsarist occupation further introduced colonial economy: Tsarist railways funnelled the development of a cotton economy and helped the large scale resource exploitation at the expense of local food crops. As Haugen (2003, p. 50) writes, “the strategy of segregation and non-interference enabled the tsarist ruleto achieve maximum control at minimum cost”.
The tsarist rule came to an end with the February Revolution and the arrival of the Bolsheviks. However, as Northrop (2004, p. 17) observes, in Central Asia instead of diminishing colonial control, the presence of Bolsheviks only increased patterns of colonial style rule. In his book Unveiled Empire, Northrop writes, unlike their predecessors who saw Central Asia in terms of military security and tax revenue, Bolsheviks considered this region as ‘primitive’ that needed to be “wrested from its timeless past and thrown headlong into the modern (Soviet) era” (Northrop, 2004, p. 19). While under the tsarist regime local practices were tolerated, they were now dismissed and replaced by a universal vision of a socialist society alongside with the centralised economic planning. The ultimate aim was to homogenise society and attain universal goals (Khalid, 2006, p. 233). Such aims led to a complete social, cultural, political and economic transformation of the states of Central Asia. New family codes, including the emancipation of women, the modernisation of state agricultural policies, literacy programmes accompanied by the secularisation of religion and socio-cultural practices were introduced (Khalid, 2007; Roy, 2000). As Khalid (2006) observes, there was a need to impose sudden change and more importantly a revolution of the minds. To achieve these aims, the Bolsheviks did so through the means of nationality. Soviet states institutionalised nationality as a major organisational principal of Soviet totalitarian
strategy aiming at a universal nation (Haugen, 2003; Roy, 2000). Such strategies also worked towards integrating non-Russian territories into a Soviet state (Hirsh, 2005, p. 65). Hence, beyond territorial occupation, the Soviet regime under the Bolsheviks propelled the multi-ethnic populations of Central Asian states into a particular type of nation-building project. The emerging states became the titular nationalities of the various Union Republics with the notion of Soviet identity attached to it.
Consequently from 1924, the map of Central Asia and its institutional political structures were completely redesigned. To distance themselves from imperial rule, Bolsheviks organised the territoriality of the Soviet Union into 15 Union Republics and nominally divided autonomous regions, further organised into: republic, rayon, oblast, orkug and krai. The Unions were organised according to ethnographic, administrative and economic criteria (Haugen 2003, p. 13; Hirsh, 2005, p. 186). The Soviet regime fostered the emergence of national cultures that were compatible with the overall Soviet communist ideology. The Russian language was the lingua franca of all the Republics’ nations in order to achieve “ideological fusion”. As Marc Beissinger (2002, p. 52) notes, Russian was viewed as the “main medium for fostering a common political identity that was to be overlaid on the individual's fixed attachment to ethnicity”. In fact, any other expression of national pride was discouraged or harshly persecuted during Stalin’s reign (Beissinger, 2002; Hirsh, 2005; Martin, 2001).
The Union’s configuration of political, economic and social structures in the Republics followed a top-down centralised approach, with Moscow being at the top. Such an approach allowed to replicate power structures in each of the Soviet Republics (Collins, 2006, p. 81). In fact, each Republic had its own Communist Party that paralleled the central Soviet system. Republics were further organised into a hierarchy of controlling administrative territorial units with attached forms of collectivisation, such as kolhoz (collective farms) or sovkohs (state farms). Such institutions were the centre for the Soviet economic, social and political regionals. Subsequently, they were the basis for Soviet state control and the vehicle for the consolidation of Soviet power. As Oliver Roy (2000, p. 87) observes, such institutional settings produced a category of leaders whose role was to serve as an interface between the Soviet state and regional and local communities. Accordingly, the function of the Communist party was then to represent the Soviet state apparatus and Soviet control as well as to guarantee circulation between the upper and lower reaches of society (Ibid).
As Alexander Stringer (2003, p. 158) observes, the ability to impose the Bolsheviks project in a highly traditional society, divided from Russia by its language, culture and religion, demanded the recruitment of Central Asian natives into the Communist Party acting as a bridge between the centre (Moscow) and the various peripheries. Therefore, the state actively intervened in society and created new cadres that helped carrying out its work on modernisation and socio-cultural transformation. Through policies such as korenizatsiia (indigenisation), native leaders come to dominate political leadership and gained formal representation in the Moscow party apparatus (Collins, 2006). It was principally through these cadres that the Party received information about regional and rural development, and it was also through these cadres that Soviet decrees were carried out (Ibid, p. 92).
The use of such practices, as Bhavna Dave (2007, p. 19) notes, allowed the Central Asian population to transform “their purported ‘backwardness’ into a subaltern consciousness”, which formed the roots for preferential treatment and a culture of clientelism. As Critchlow (1988 p., 145) states, “party leaders whose ability to do their jobs to Moscow's satisfaction earned them long terms in office” (Critchlow, 1988, p. 145). The conquest of the Soviet project was further characterised by material and ideological recompense for the once complying with and implementing its rule but by coercion for the once that did not. As Terry Martin notes (2001, p. 350), during Stalin’s rule the concerns that individual nationalisms triggered could not be disarmed by ‘korenizatsiia’—nationalities policy7but would remain a permanent danger and necessitated periodic purges and terror campaigns. Martin here highlights an important dynamic: There were tensions between ‘Soviet’ and the ‘national’ that would outlast the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, as noted further by Brubaker (1996), nationhood was given without national consciousness; nationhood was promoted in terms of its forms but not content.
The Bolshevik concerns over self-sufficiency and security resulted in the creation of a planned and centralised national economy. In doing so, the Soviet presence revolutionised the economic landscape of the Central Asian states by turning them from agrarian and pastoral economies into industrialised nations. This meant that regions would specialise in the production deemed important by the core (Stinger, 2003; Kandiyoti, 2002). As such, the Soviet extraction of natural resources and cultivation of resources, such as
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translated as “indigenization”, the objective was to make Soviet power seem more “indigenous” to the non-Russian periphery in order to achieve the Soviet state-building project.
cotton, transformed the region into an extractive source. The economic relationship was best described as Moscow being the ‘hub’ for all economic activities. As, for instance, in the sector of natural resource extraction, all oil and gas resources travelled through Russia (Cummings, 2012).
Pauline Jones Luong observes (2004a, p. 13) that such processes further fostered the development of interregional political competition and the development of patronage networks. Dave (2007, p. 25) further argues that the rents from resource extractions were not accumulated by the Russian Federation but rather by the Communist Party nomenclature, the elites at the core and its peripheries. Therefore, paradoxically as Oliver Roy (2000, p. 85) observes, the Soviet system created a two-level political system: One defined by the conformity and homogenisation of the Soviet cultural project, and the second characterised by the subversion of that project to coercive practices (elimination of all forms of opposition movements) and clientelism. The systematic territorialisation and collectivisation systems of kolkhoz (collective farm) and districts further intensified these trends (Roy, 2000).
In the literature, however, some would argue that the Soviet system was not the only engine behind the emergence of such patron-client relations. Others attribute the features of patron-client relationships to the tribal and clannist nature of Central Asian societies that was conserved and adapted itself to new societal factors. The historian Francine Hirsh (2005) in her book Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union, for instance, observes that under the Soviet Union the traditional clannist or tribal structures of Central Asian societies were integrated into the Soviet national identities and the Union state apparatus. As such, proponents of such claims argue that the Soviet system helped to exacerbate informal practices that were already present in Central Asian societies. Olivier Roy (2000, p. 85) further argues that Central Asian societies have organised themselves around the elements that were thought to destroy it. The Central Asian societal structures such as awlad, mahalla and triable segments were, according to Roy, reincarnated in the kolhoz structures and its sub-divisions (Roy, 2000, p. 87). Hence, in his view, the Soviet system and collectivisation provided a recomposition or re-adaptation of old traditional tribal lineage structures and solidarity groups defining Central Asian society. Collins also supports these claims and argues that clans and tribal lineage were often integrated in the kolkhoz and sovkhoz as well as in cadre policy further fostering the preservation of clan structures (Collins, 2006, p. 87). As she (2006, p. 106) further states, “Moscow understood interclan norms, but the party may
have been conscious of the necessity to preserve an interclan and regional balance of power as well, since top Party posts in each Central Asian republic were often filled with representatives of different clans”. Anderson (1997, p. 36) also points out that “in many areas, traditional regional and tribal alliances underlay the internal politics of republican party organisations”. Therefore, the practices of Soviet governance policies were increasingly entangled with informal politics and traditional tribal clan relations that only intensified throughout the years of Soviet rule.
The last years of the Soviet Union were characterised by social unrest and crippling corruption. By the Gorbachev era, Central Asia acquired the shape of hybrid colonial- like, federal structures (Cummings, 2012). During the post-Stalin years, the five Central Asian Republics were acting with relative autonomy. The centre’s policy towards the Republics allowed freedom of action as long as the Republics would ensure regional stability and meet economic targets (Anderson, 1997, p. 55; Collins, 2006). In many areas, as Anderson (1997, p. 36) notes, traditional regional and tribal alliances were entangled with the internal politics of Republican Party organisations. Informal practices came to dominant Party politics and access to state resources (Collins, 2006). Increasingly, as Anderson (1997, p. 36) further observes, the disruptive nature of such practices meant that the loyalty of local Russians could not be taken for granted as people were co-opted or bribed for supporting these modes of rule. Huskey (1995, p. 816) observes in his analysis of Kyrgyzstan that although Moscow retained an upper hand in appointing key positions, at the level of the local nomenclature increasingly power was exercised under the personal control of the party ruled by informal politics of patronage and co-optation. The use of such practices reached its pick during the Breznev’s era and the ‘cotton scandal’ (Collins, 2006). The cotton scandal involving the Soviet Union's first deputy interior minister and Brezhnev’s son-in-law is the typical example of Breznev era corruption. The incident signalled endemic corruption and patronal relationship between centre and periphery. After the death of Brezhnev, the significance of corrupt networks between the centre and the local prompted the centre to intervene in local politics and law enforcement (Huskey, 1995, p. 816).
By the end of the USSR, Central Asian states had undergone a profound transformation bringing about a particular formal and informal institutional reconfiguration and balance of power that would dramatically shape the very elites managing the transition (Collins, 2006, p. 117). By the Gorbachev era and under its reform policies of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’, Central Asia undeliberately was set on a path of disintegration (Ibid). The
critical decline of the Soviet economy by the mid 1980s fuelled social injustice and popular discontent leading to intensified concerns about social justice and corruption (Ibid). By the late 1980s the Soviet state’s failure to provide for its people let alone to keep up with technological advancement with the West made the need for radical change obvious (Roy, 2000).
Despite the introduction of political and economic reforms, tensions with Moscow increased. In Central Asia, political and social unrest occupied the political agenda. As many analysts note, very quickly Moscow realised the volatility of Central Asian Republics (see Collins, 2006; Cummings, 2012). For the last time, Moscow reshuffled the Party leadership in Central Asian Republics (Roy, 2000). These appointed leaders (with the exception of Kyrgyzstan) took power in the years following independence. It is therefore against the backdrop of these specific Soviet dynamics that the newly independent Central Asian states emerged in the 1991. The dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the entry of the Central Asian states as independent sovereign states into the arena of world politics after decades of Communist party and Moscow colonial-like rule. Processes of regime change or decolonisation (if one perceives Soviet rule through the lens of colonialism) marked the Soviet transition. However, in sharp contrast to other colonially ruled countries (like, for instance, in Latin America), independence came without a violent struggle. Neither society nor elites played a significant role in breaking with the Soviet regime, independence, as Collins (2006, p. 136) notes, “were de facto consequences of the exogenous shock of the Soviet collapse”. Despite Russian colonial style rule and decades of Soviet oppressions and coercive politics, in Central Asia there was no strong mobilisation of national opposition movements. As several authors note the revolts that emerged in Central Asia were not characterised as revolutionary nationalist mouvements. The 1986 Jeltoqsan revolt in Alma-Ata (today renamed as Almaty) directed against Gorbachev’s dismissal of First Secretary Dinmukhamed Konayev, an ethnic Kazakh, and the appointment of Gennady Kolbin, was mainly the expression of anger against Moscow’s interference in domestic affairs (Collins, 2006). As Laruelle (2015) further notes in her analysis, the Jeltoqsan protests and the emergence of nationalist parties were seen as opposition movements to the Communist regime, however, they were not nationalist. In Central Asia, a spirit of nationalism was weakly developed providing a weak foundation for the emergence of strong nationalist movements against the Soviet elite in power, but also the success of the Soviet indoctrination showed in these Republics. Central Asian countries were to a great extend
created by Soviet rule. Individual nationalist feelings were therefore weakly developed. The few nationalist or ethnic movements that emerged (see Edgar, 2006) were too weak to mobilise the population and galvanise a mass movement. Social counter-movements protesting against the overthrow of the Communist Party and the Soviet elite emerged in many parts of the USSR (particularly in what is now Eastern and Central Europe as well as the Southern Caucasus). In Central Asia, as Mark Beissenger (2002) writes, the level of social mobilisation was lower than in any other parts of the USSR. In the same vein, Victor Zaslavsky (1992, p. 108) notes that “the virtual absence of separatist claims has been one of the most intriguing features of the situation in Soviet Central Asia”.
The explanation for such a puzzle can largely be found in how Central Asian leaders perceived Moscow. The leaders of the Central Asian Republics all opposed separation from the USSR. In the Unions’ last referendum (17 March 1991) on the future of the Soviet Union, all the five countries largely (by 90 per cent of the vote) expressed their solidary for retention of the Union (Pravda.Ru.,2016)8. As Zaslavsky (1992, p.108) points out, “throughout the years of perestroika, the Central Asian republics remained staunch supporters of Gorbachev’s efforts to save the Soviet Union with its strong central state”. As he further demonstrates in his analysis, Central Asian state elites feared the proposed markets reforms, as they were hindering local state-dependent groups and redistributive policies of the central state seeking to secure internal stability. As such, one can note that in the absence of dissident movements independence in Central Asia was unexpected and to a great extent unwanted unlike in other parts of the Soviet Union (see Beissinger, 2002; Cummings, 2012).