Sergei Abashin, Senior Researcher, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
These days it is rather banal to state that the world as a whole, and Central Asia in particular, is experiencing a vibrant ‘growth in ethnic consciousness’, a rise in nationalism in its most extreme and radical forms, and an increase in inter-ethnic disputes, which often result in conflict between states or separatist movements. Yet, consensus has not been reached on the reasons behind these processes. Nor are there any reliable predictions of how they will develop in future.
Different theories and concepts are being assessed in various academic fora in an effort to explain the current transformation of ethnic identity. Discussions are heated. Two interpretations are prominent among ethnologists. One group of specialists – which comprises a relative majority in Russia and an absolute majority in Central Asia – maintains that modern Central Asian ‘ethnos’ as a collective group has been in existence for at least 1,000 years. The past millennium, according to advocates of this perspective, has witnessed a battle between different ethnos for influence, territory and control. Many experts view all recent twentieth-century events through this prism, including the delimitation of Central Asian nations and the present political configuration of states in the region. This approach has been dubbed primordialism.
Criticism of primordialism has started to manifest in the past decade. A new group of specialists – currently a minority in Russia – believes that contemporary Central Asian ethnos is the result not of ancient conflicts and population movements but of reforms that began in the middle of the nineteenth century when Russia colonised Central Asia and which continued in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Ethnologists know this as constructivism.
The original and fundamental thesis behind the constructive approach to analysing Central Asian history is the assertion – confirmed by numerous analytical sources – that, before Russians arrived in the region, the population of Central Asia did not possess ethnic self-consciousness as we know it today. The basic cultural frontiers in pre-Russian Central Asia were not shaped along ethnic or ethnic-national lines. The main divides used to differentiate ‘one of us’ from someone ‘foreign’ were based on position in the social hierarchy, religious separation into Sunni, Shi’ite or Ishmaelite, membership of different Sufi brotherhoods, economic-cultural categorisation between settled, mountainous, nomadic or semi-nomadic groups, family or tribal distinctions, or by regional classification. To describe oneself as being from Bukhara, Khiva, Margila or Tashkent was far more important than a ‘functional’ characteristic like language. Every state structure that emerged in Central Asia had its own list and order of categories for distinguishing between members of the population – that is, each had its own prestigious and less influential groups and there were conflicts over supremacy. No categories or identities were common to the whole of Central Asia.
Members of the population were mixed in cultural and linguistic terms. There was a very large stratum of society (in some regions, constituting the majority of people) that spoke two languages – Turkic and Iranian. These people could not be classified as being of one single cultural or language type – what we now refer to as an ethnic group. Cultural or linguistic distinguishing features were not permanent, but fluid, and a person could easily move from one category to another. In this period, such ‘transparency’ in relation to cultural and social boundaries was a necessity of life. Otherwise, a small group, insulated by strict self-consciousness, would have been unable to survive. It needed to have the capacity to absorb new members from outside, as well as the ability to join a new stronger grouping. Transparent cultural and social boundaries can be explained, furthermore, by the fact that weaker and more amorphous state structures did not have powerful instruments and institutions for ‘producing’ widely-recognised ‘categories’ and for introducing them into people’s consciousness and then maintaining their stability.
There is not the space here to discuss all of the arguments in favour of this position. However, I will quote Vasily Barthold, a famous Russian Orientalist whose authority on this issue is beyond doubt. At the beginning of the last century, he wrote that ‘A settled inhabitant of Central Asia feels he is first a Muslim and second a resident of a specific town or location; he does not think of himself as belonging to a specific nation or people. Only in more recent times under the influence of European culture (through the agency of Russia) did a striving for national unity emerge’.[i]
So, according to the constructivist point of view, which rests on the authority of Russian–Orientalist academics, the need for more or less stable and simple divisions into groups only appeared once Russia had taken control of parts of Central Asia. These categories were necessary to count and register members of the population and to structure local government. A pre-prepared system for determining identity was imported from outside (from Russia). The Russian authorities and academics in Turkistan krai tried to classify the groups known to them and thus establish a shorter list of ‘named groups’. Nonetheless, the basis of classification was not determined by a person’s ethnic or national (cultural-linguistic) traits; such criteria were, as mentioned above, vague and blurred in Central Asia. However, it was precisely this characteristic of ethnicity (based on cultural or linguistic identity) – already dominant in Europe – which was artificially brought into the new Central Asian milieu by Russian academics and government officials.
The most controversial issue in establishing ethnic and national categories at the time was not ‘the Uzbek–Tajik question’, although contemporary arguments between Uzbek and Tajik researchers and politicians might give that impression. Rather, the main dilemma was: how should the ‘Sarts’ or ‘settled people’ be classified? To a significant extent, the Sarts were a bilingual group belonging to the Sunni faith.[ii] In Tashkent and Ferghana, where groups with different origins were most frequently merged, the Sarts accounted for 50–60% of the population. There was debate as to whether they could be considered a separate nationality or whether they should be classified as Turks or by another Turkic name, such as Uzbek. In fact, they were registered as Uzbeks in the 1917 census – a politically motivated decision by local authorities under the influence of the Turkic caliph of the Ottoman Empire.
Political and even economic factors also played a key part in the national and state delimitation process of 1924. In addition, the process was based on ‘the rights of nationalities’ and the necessity of ‘national liberation and development’. In practice, people had to swear allegiance not to a specific culture or language (which at the time did not exist) but to one or another state or political grouping. The rich and varied palette of cultural and social categories and ‘named groups’ that existed in Central Asia was artificially and administratively reduced to an extremely limited range of ‘nationalities’ or ‘national groups’. All regional inhabitants were included in one of these ‘national’ categories.
In determining these ‘national groups’, the hierarchy principle was introduced – that is, some were declared main nationalities and some subordinate nationalities. It was on the basis of this hierarchy that territory, resources, and administrative status were conferred. During the national and state delimitation process of 1924 and in the 1926 census, therefore, a ‘super nation’ of Uzbeks was created that became the ‘pivot’ of the region, or in the words of Mikhail Kalinin, the ‘leader’ nation in Central Asia. All of the minor groups, except the Sarts, were ‘handed over’ to, or included in, this super nation. The main territorial groups were also included irrespective of their cultural or linguistic characteristics, including people from Bukhara, Ferghana, Khiva, Samarkand and Tashkent. This explains why many people call themselves ‘Uzbeks’.
In the 1920s, the predicament of the Sart–Uzbeks was resolved and a new dilemma came to the fore – that of the Uzbek–Tajiks – mainly due to a struggle within the Central Asian political élite itself. Each leader and every grouping within the authority structure wanted to have its ‘own’ territory and sphere of influence. Former ‘Turkists’, who found themselves in a subordinate position when responsibilities and privileges were distributed, wanted to use the rather marginal (until that time) national category of ‘Tajik’ as a way of improving their rank. This clearly had potential as an ideological resource. There was also an obvious foreign-policy aspect to their decision to play the Tajik card. Moscow became alarmed about a powerful ‘Turkic state’ and pan-Turkic sympathies, which, in fact, the central authorities had facilitated from the start, and decided to raise the status of a Tajik state as a counterweight to ‘Turkism’. Furthermore, the Tajik state could be used for inciting national-liberation movements in Afghanistan and Iran.
Consequently, the process of delimiting nations and states was a contradictory phenomenon. On the one hand, in practice and in essence, it was a matter of allocating an identity to citizens and strengthening the feeling of belonging to one’s own state or Soviet republic (which the people of the colonies of the Tsarist Russian Empire had not had). On the other hand, in discourse on national and state delimitation, the predominant understanding of a nation was based on cultural-linguistic (or ethnic) characteristics. As mentioned above, the people of Central Asia had to choose between different cultural-linguistic ‘traditions’ from a limited selection of ‘ethnic and national’ categories decided by administrative decree. It is this discourse that became a long-term factor in the forming of a new identity for the people of Central Asia.
Over seven decades, Soviet power was responsible for huge changes in people’s self-consciousness. Moscow mobilised all of the instruments and resources necessary to achieve this: a national state, a national culture, national language and literature, national education and national media (particularly television). Among the most powerful tools for introducing ethnic self-consciousness to the masses were internal passports and the census, which, in effect, was a survey of the population’s ethnic-national allegiance. Every person had to be formally registered as a specific ‘nationality’, which he/she could not change later, even if he/she wished to. Education also contributed to this socialisation process. Thus, in the Soviet period, a citizen’s consciousness, the sense of belonging to the Uzbek or Tajik state, came increasingly to resemble ethnic self-consciousness, as in identifying with a certain culture, language and history.
A secondary outcome of the distinction between one’s identity as a citizen of the Soviet Union and one’s ‘ethnic’ identity was the rise in the self-consciousness of those groups whose nationality did not correspond with the ‘main’ national group of the Soviet republic where they lived. There were minorities in all of the Central Asian republics, such as Uzbeks in Tajikistan and Tajiks in Uzbekistan. Furthermore, a paradoxical situation emerged: the core population of many regions, whose ancestors had lived there for centuries, suddenly found themselves effectively on ‘another nation’s land’. It was impossible to ignore the rights of these groups. But if their demand to be equal with the main ethnic group were met this would weaken the structure of the state, which was built on the foundation of a national characteristic, and it would make managing the state far more challenging for the authorities.
Even now, many anomalies are evident in Central Asia as a result of the contradictory nature of how nationalities and states were delimited in the region. Many people feel that they were classified in the ‘wrong’ ethnic group. Discussions regarding who a person is continue today. Debate on a person’s ‘real’, ‘hidden or closet’ ethnic identity often provokes comments about the betrayal of a nation. Historians and politicians in Central Asia (and, interestingly, outside of the region, too) interpret any political decisions taken by leading officials from the standpoint of whether or not he is acting in the interests of his own ethnic group. Hence, a whole constellation of current Tajik politicians have been dubbed ‘closet Turks’, accused of promoting the interests of another state – that is, Uzbekistan.
A new stage in the transformation of ethnic identity in Central Asia began after the republics became independent nation states in 1991–92. ‘Nation’ or national was understood as meaning ethnic. Rhetoric about ‘ethnicisation’ increased and, in essence, was transformed into official state doctrine.
New methods of characterising identity were added to those adopted in the Soviet era. This occurred, for example, after new state frontiers came into existence and a stricter passport regime was introduced (plus the establishment of numerous new customs posts; prior to 1992, a person only had to affirm his/her national identity and confirm his/her loyalty to the state at the border). In recent history, furthermore, ‘national rivalry’ was, to some extent, restricted by official internationalist ideology and the arbitration role of the centre. Now, the national intelligentsia and authorities have discovered in ethnicisation a way of fighting for political and other dividends. Increased conflict between the region’s states can be explained by this: today, Uzbeks and Tajiks are not ‘brotherly nations’ in the ‘friendly family’ of the Soviet Union, but competitors, rivals for influence, economic resources and capital investment.
It is still possible to distinguish between different kinds of national ideologies and ethnic-national identities in Central Asia. Uzbekistan established its own version of a national ideology soon after gaining independence. According to this ideology, Uzbek ethnos gradually developed in the Middle Ages but then came the period of Russian conquest and colonialism, which continued in Soviet times. This was followed by the period of liberalisation and finally the return to ‘normal’ national development. Uzbek ideology (backed up by powerful political, financial, intellectual and international resources) does not take any notice of anyone outside of the country, but nor does it take issue with any other version of Central Asian history – it is actively and energetically ‘privatising’ its own account of history. Nearly all leading academics and politicians who lived in Central Asia are christened ‘ancestors of the Uzbeks’ or ‘Uzbeks’. Of course, this is ill-received by Uzbekistan’s neighbours; such an interpretation of Uzbekistan’s history is obviously provocative.
Tajikistan has been late in formulating its own national ideology. Initially, ethnicisation was used to explain the country’s civil war, since the opposing groups accused each other of being ‘not ethnically pure’. Once peace was established, the Tajik leadership began to employ ethnicisation in order to consolidate the position of the state and to tackle the ramifications of a period of destabilisation, during which Tajik society was divided into many regions and other groups and clans.
Tajik ‘national’ ideology rivals and contradicts Uzbek ideology. The Uzbeks declared that the Tajiks were their ‘historic rivals’; the history of Tajikistan is presented in school textbooks and monographs as an alternative to the Uzbek account of Central Asian history. The Tajik version of Central Asian history is as ambitious as the Uzbek one in so far as they have aspirations throughout the entire region. Nevertheless, such grand ambitions are not matched by opportunities to pursue them. Tajik consciousness is acquiring a complex about this. This is particularly apparent in regard to the ostensibly Tajik towns of Bukhara and Samarkand which are located in Uzbekistan. Officially, Tajik President Inomali Rakhmonov has not made any territorial claims to these towns and only talks about ‘pernicious people from other states’ (easily understood to mean Uzbeks) repressing the Tajiks. Nevertheless, Tajikistan’s ideology is such that Bukhara and Samarkand are still as much Tajik towns as they always were. The official history of the Tajiks, as noted in school texts, academic writings, national anniversary celebrations, and even on banknotes, is connected with Bukhara and Samarkand even though they are on Uzbekistan’s territory. Thus, a public sense of feeling hard-done-by is actively being developed, which, sooner or later, will inevitably become a political and foreign-policy problem.
What are the advantages of the constructivist perspective that I have tried to outline and substantiate?
1. Experts and politicians now feel less need to quarrel over ancient history. As a rule, these arguments are endless and futile.
2. Experts analysing Central Asia are being at least partially neutral and are not taking sides in discussions in Central Asia itself.
3. There are now no references to people as being of ‘pure’ ethnic origin or not; nor are comments made regarding ‘the betrayal of national interests’.
4. Experts are primarily discussing the process, the role of contemporary institutions and bodies, and the function of the state and media. They are not focusing on unnamed natural or biological forces, which nationalist ideologues are using to appeal to psychologically unbalanced people who are prone to violence.
I hope and believe that, in the near future, the constructivist perspective will become the basic methodological means of studying identity in Central Asia.
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[i] Barthold, V., Sochineniya; vol. 2, part 2, (Moscow: Nauka 1964), p. 528.
[ii] The Sarts were Turkic peoples who settled in eastern and western Turkistan, taking their name from the River Yaksart, now known as the Syr Darya.
