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date: 12 February 2025

National Identities in Soviet Central Asia, 1940s to 1991locked

National Identities in Soviet Central Asia, 1940s to 1991locked

  • Vincent FourniauVincent FourniauDepartment of Empires and Societies in Central Asia, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Summary

When conceived and implemented by the Bolshevik leaders, the nationality policy, or policy of nationalities, toward the many non-Slavic and non-Russian peoples of their new entity was a novelty in the state policies known at that time in the field of addressing ethnocultural diversity by central governments.

This policy was based on the creation of a new status, that of nationality, which applied to all citizens of the USSR, in parallel to Soviet citizenship. The status of nationality created new rights, compared to the previous political order, in the areas of language and culture for non-Russian peoples. It was also accompanied by a territorial component, which can be said to be the foundation of the Soviet state, since the latter was created as a federal state and remained a federation throughout its history.

This important feature of the Soviet state continued until the end of its existence in December 1991. The nationality policy has certainly undergone inflections throughout its seventy-year history, depending on political, geostrategic, demographic, and economic factors, but it has continued to structure the functioning of the state and the Soviet societal mosaic. From 1945 onward, there was a long period during which the nationalities increasingly appropriated this “national status” by broadening its contours and trying to make it more and more a tool for autonomy, whereas it had been designed to be a tool for integration within the Soviet order.

A double process of integration–autonomization has actually dominated the period since 1945. It has varied greatly in intensity among the nationalities, and of course, the nationalities enjoying the existence of a republic that bears their name experienced the most dynamic facets of this dual process. On the whole, it is mostly observable in the field of practices and, on local scales and environments, no doubt the reason why it has remained understudied. This double process deserves today to be really taken into account in the field of Soviet studies.

As the period 1945–1991 immediately precedes the present one, it is essential to examine more closely what can thus be called “national history” within Soviet history, not as a study of the fate of each nationality taken separately during the seventy years of the Soviet era but as an intrinsic and distinct part of Soviet history with its own rules.

Subjects

  • Central Asia
  • Cultural

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