Beyond Colonialism?

: Agency, Power, and the Making of Soviet

Central Asia

Moritz Florin

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 18, Number

4, Fall 2017, pp. 827-838 (Review)

Published by Slavica Publishers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2017.0051

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/673308

Access provided by Tulane University (17 Dec 2018 04:54 GMT)

Review Essay

Beyond Colonialism?
Agency, Power, and the Making of Soviet Central Asia

Moritz Florin

Sergei Abashin, Sovetskii kishlak: Mezhdu kolonializmom i modernizatsiei (The

Soviet Kishlak: Between Colonialism and Modernization). 720 pp. Moscow:
Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2015. ISBN-13 978-5444802199.

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan.

272 pp. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. ISBN-13 978-
0822964193. $ 28.95.

Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the

Early USSR. 414 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. ISBN-13
978-0801454097. $ 39.95.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions of colonialism keep coming up in

scholarship on the history of Central Asia. In fact, only few authors outside
Russia doubt that tsarist rule in Central Asia was colonial, and we can thus
hardly escape the question as to whether Soviet rule was colonial, too.
Douglas Northrop, for example, has argued that “the USSR, like its Tsarist
predecessor, was a colonial empire. Power … was expressed across lines of
hierarchy and difference that created at least theoretically distinct centers
(metropoles) and peripheries (colonies).”1 To Adeeb Khalid, in contrast,
this appeared to be “a world turned upside down,” because unlike “modern
overseas colonial empires,” the Soviet state did not attempt to perpetuate
I would like to thank Ulrich Hofmeister and Liudmila Novikova for their comments on an
earlier version of this review.
 1
  Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2003), 22–23.

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 18, 4 (Fall 2017): 827–38.
828 MORITZ FLORIN

differences but instead sought to “homogenize populations in order to attain

universal goals.”2
The three new books under review contribute to the ongoing debates
about Soviet colonialism. At the same time, they remind us of the futility
of any attempt to accept or deny unequivocally the colonial nature of Soviet
rule in Central Asia. Botakoz Kassymbekova argues in her new book on
Soviet Tajikistan that all rigid attempts to classify the Soviet case as a “modern
state” or “colonial empire” are “somewhat misleading, since they treat both as
separate and unrelated systems of governance, as if they developed historically
on opposite premises” (15). According to Abashin, it is precisely the fact
that many Central Asians did not perceive the Soviet Union as a Red Empire that
should make us wonder about the colonial content: “Looking at colonialism
not so much as a sum of certain selected traits but instead as a particular
type of narrative and even identity leads to the question why a notable if not
predominant part of Central Asian society did not (and does not) think of
itself as (post)colonial” (44). Even Adeeb Khalid somewhat softens his earlier
argument in his new book, arguing that Soviet attempts to engineer society
“have no parallels in the colonial empires of the era” (emphasis mine) and that
the Soviet state could never “completely vanquish the habitus of empire” (10).
Although the three authors remain ambivalent about the nature of Soviet
rule in Central Asia, their books do reveal the relevance of issues of coloniality
and power in writing histories of Central Asia. Arguably, the most defining
characteristic of colonial rule does not lie in its antiuniversalism or tendency
to perpetuate differences but instead in its foreignness. According to one
definition, under colonialism the fundamental decisions about the lives of
an indigenous majority are made and implemented by a foreign minority.3
Questions about the cultural foreignness of colonial rule are crucial not only
in colonial studies but also for the three books under review. From where
did local elites in Central Asia derive their power to influence the course of
events? Did it arise from their own society or from the center, from Moscow?
How much power did convinced reformers such as the Jadids derive from
the support and “enthusiasm” of the local (indigenous) population? And how
significant is the cultural gap between rulers and ruled for our interpretation
of Central Asian history?

 2
  Adeeb Khalid, “Backwardness and the Quest for Civilization: Early Soviet Central Asia
in Comparative Perspective,” Slavic Review 65, 2 (2006): 231–51, here 232–33; Khalid,
“Introduction: Locating the (Post)Colonial in Soviet History,” Central Asian Survey 26, 4
(2007): 465–73.
 3
 See, e.g., the definition in Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview
(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2010), 16.
BEYOND COLONIALISM? 829

Questions about the modernity of Soviet rule and about its homogenizing
impact should continue to preoccupy historians of Central Asia and the Soviet
Union. But the books under review also show that this debate should be
disentangled from the attempt to answer the question of whether Soviet state
building in Central Asia was colonial or not. The significance of the study
of Soviet Central Asia does not lie in assigning labels such as “empire” or
“colonialism,” but instead in adding a new perspective to debates on continuity
and change in Soviet history, as well as on the disrupting effects of Bolshevik
and Jadidist attempts to transform, “modernize,” and “civilize” supposedly
backward regions and peoples.4 The study of Central Asia highlights that
the Soviet state could draw on a range of seemingly contradictory strategies
of rule, somewhat paradoxically combining anti-imperialist and civilizatory
discourses, repressive and mobilizational practices of governance.
The following review cannot do complete justice to three books that all
promise to become classics in their fields. They are all based on an extensive
reading of sources in the Turkic (Chagatai/Uzbek), Persianate (Tajik), and
Russian languages; cover a wide range of controversial topics; and engage
with not only the literature on Central Asia but the extensive literatures on
(multiple) modernities, the histories of revolution, Bolshevism, the Soviet
system, colonialism, and empire. They raise important themes defined by the
region of study, including questions about the foreignness (or coloniality) of
Soviet rule, the cultural differences between rulers and ruled, perpetrators and
victims of violence, and the role of the geographic distance between center and
periphery. Most important, by focusing on these issues in the context of Central
Asia all three authors express a shared conviction that Central Asian history is
never Soviet or colonial history only but always inseparable from both.
 

Adeeb Khalid’s new book is a thoughtful attempt to provide an interpretation

of the eventful and complex history of Central Asia and Uzbekistan during

 4
  The debate about the modernity of the Soviet experiment is ongoing, in part because of
the difficulty of defining the term and in part due to some scholars’ insistence on making
binary divisions between exceptionality and modernity and between tradition and modernity.
However, neither the difference (exceptionalism) of the Soviet state nor the persistence of
tradition (or backwardness) seems to justify the exclusion of the Soviet case from the broader
history of global (or multiple) modernities. For a recent discussion, see Michael David-Fox,
Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), 9. On the modernity of tradition, see the classic text:
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012).
830 MORITZ FLORIN

and after the 1917 revolutions. While we have excellent new studies of the
making of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan,5 recent
historiography of Central Asia has only touched upon selected aspects of
the history of early Soviet Uzbekistan such as ethnic conflict, antireligious
campaigns, filmmaking, the movement for women’s emancipation, or the
history of one particular locale.6 Khalid, in his turn, tries to provide an up-to-
date overview covering a wide range of crucial issues, including the Central
Asian rebellion of 1916, the revolutionary events of 1917, the short-lived
autonomy in Kokand, and the Bukharan Socialist Republic, as well as the
national-territorial delimitation in 1924, collectivization, and Stalinist terror.
Some authors have argued that the Bolsheviks succeeded in asserting
their power over Central Asia because they had the military means to subdue.
The Bolsheviks quashed local resistance, including the attempts to create
autonomous governments in Kokand and Bukhara. Their campaigns to
“liberate” and “unveil” women and the creation of new state structures and
systems of knowledge have been interpreted as the imposition of power of

 5
 Paul Bergne, The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic
(London: Tauris, 2007); Adrienne Edgar, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Benjamin Loring, “Building Socialism in
Kyrgyzstan: Nation-Making, Rural Development, and Social Change, 1921–1932” (PhD
diss., Brandeis University, 2008). On the origins of the project of a Kazakh nation, see Steven
Sabol, Russian Colonization and the Genesis of Kazakh National Consciousness (Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Most recent scholarship on the early Soviet history of Kazakhstan
has focused on the years of collectivization, sedentarization, and famine; nevertheless, the
books also contain valuable information on the making of the republic. See Niccolò Pianciola,
Stalinismo di frontiera: Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi e costruzione statale in Asia
Centrale (1905–1936) (Rome: Viella, 2009); Isabelle Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs
dans l’URSS de Staline: Collectivisation et changement sociale, 1928–1945 (Paris: Maisonneuve
& Larose, 2006); Sarah Cameron, “The Hungry Steppe: Soviet Kazakhstan and the Kazakh
Famine, 1921–1934” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2010); and Robert Kindler, Stalins Nomaden:
Hunger und Herrschaft in Kasachstan (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2014).
 6
 Important works include Northrop, Veiled Empire; Marianne Kamp, The New Woman
in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling under Communism (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2006); Shoshanna Keller, To Moscow, Not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign
against Islam in Central Asia, 1917–1941 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001); Cloé Drieu, Fictions
nationales: Cinéma, empire et nation en Ouzbékistan (1919–1937) (Paris: Éditions Karthala,
2013); Marco Buttino, La rivoluzione capovolta: L’Asia centrale tra il crollo dell’impero zarista
e la formazione dell’URSS (Naples: L’ancora del Mediterraneo, 2003); Jeff Sahadeo, Russian
Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); and
Christian Teichmann, Macht der Unordnung: Stalins Herrschaft in Zentralasien, 1920–1950
(Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2016). The last attempt to write a comprehensive history
of the revolutionary events in Turkestan (Uzbekistan) dates back to the 1950s. See Alexander
G. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan: 1917–1927 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957).
BEYOND COLONIALISM? 831

a foreign minority onto an indigenous minority.7 In his new book, Adeeb

Khalid attempts to deconstruct such a binary division, arguing that local
society was far more diverse and divided. Local elites who chose to ally with
the Bolsheviks were not simple “collaborators” but rather independent actors
with their own goals and vision of the future of Central Asia. Khalid, an
expert on the history of the so-called Jadid movement, argues that many
Uzbek intellectuals witnessed the revolution as a time of opportunity that
gave them the chance to realize their ideas about radical cultural reform and
“modernization” of a supposedly “backward” and “stagnant” Muslim society.8
Their ideas about reform did not originate in Bolshevism but in ongoing
debates about reform within the wider Islamic world. Nevertheless, the Jadids
and the Bolsheviks shared a cultural radicalism that would facilitate their
collaboration during the years of revolution.
Khalid interprets the revolution in Central Asia, first and foremost, as
a struggle within local societies. Jadids (respectively, “Muslim intellectuals”)
were only one out of many heterogeneous groups of actors, and they initially
faced more opposition from within Central Asian communities than from
European outsiders. For example, in discussing the postrevolutionary unrest
in the Ferghana Valley (quickly labeled the “Basmachi rebellion”), Khalid
interprets it not in terms of an ethnic conflict but as “a struggle against
the power cities cast over the countryside.” The rebellion was directed not
only against Bolsheviks or Russians but also against the Jadids. From this
perspective, the Basmachi rebellion was not an anticolonial uprising but
rather an integral part of an internal “Central Asian civil war.”
Despite emphasizing the complexity of internal social and political
conflicts, Khalid divides indigenous actors in his story of the revolutionary
Uzbekistan into two broadly defined groups. On the one hand, there were
Muslims “who shared an orientation to the future and who were at home with
the ideas of progress and civilization,” and on the other hand, “traditionalist
conservatives … who anchored their authority in the past and its traditions,
whose inheritors they claimed to be” (10–11). As the progressives were more
willing to collaborate with the Bolsheviks than the conservatives, they were
more likely to implement at least some of their ideas under the new conditions

 7
  For such an interpretation, see Northrop, Veiled Empire, 21; and Paula A. Michaels, Curative
Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
2003), 4.
 8
  For that earlier work, see Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in
Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
832 MORITZ FLORIN

created by the revolution. Therefore, it seems legitimate that Khalid mainly

focuses on this relatively small but active group of progressive elites.9
In fact, this approach allows Khalid to fundamentally revise the history
of the making of nations in Central Asia. Instead of emphasizing the role
of outside actors such as ethnographers or Bolsheviks, Khalid focuses on
indigenous actors, who seized the moment to realize their dream of a Turkic
nation in Central Asia.10 Their project was based on a celebration of the
Turko-Islamic tradition of statehood embodied by Timur, the founder of
the Timurid Empire, and on an imagined dividing line between sedentary
and nomad, Turkic- and Persian-speaking populations in Central Asia.
In this interpretation, the creation of Uzbekistan was not the result of a
conscious Bolshevik strategy of divide and rule but instead the fulfillment
of “a prerevolutionary project of the national intelligentsia carried out in
Soviet conditions and reshaped by them.” Just like other nations, the Uzbek
nation was “imagined and constructed in modern times through the complex
interaction of intellectuals, state power, the classificatory grid of science, and
much else” (286).
Although ultimately the Bolsheviks were able to impose their rule on
Central Asia, it was never irrelevant for the direction of reform whether the
ideas were rooted in indigenous or Bolshevik debates. For example, based
on his knowledge about the discussions among Uzbek intellectuals, Khalid
questions the argument that the creation of the Tajik republic was a top-down
process, designed to counter pan-Turkism.11 On the contrary, Tajikistan
came into being as a result of the rise of Turkism. From the perspective of
modernist intellectuals, Tajiks were the “predominantly rural population
of the mountain fastnesses of eastern Bukhara, the only place with a self-
contained Persian-speaking population in Transoxania” (292). The creation

 9
  Some critics have argued that Khalid excessively focuses on a small minority of actors,
ignoring or even debasing other groups. See the polemics in Devin DeWeese, “It Was a Dark
and Stagnant Night (’til the Jadids Brought the Light): Clichés, Biases, and False Dichotomies
in the Intellectual History of Central Asia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the
Orient 59, 1–2 (2016): 37–92; and Paolo Sartori, “Towards a History of the Muslims’ Soviet
Union: A View from Central Asia,” Die Welt des Islams 50, 3–4 (2010): 315–34. In my opinion,
it would certainly be desirable to have more research on other political actors beyond the small
group of radicals, but this does not diminish the significance of Khalid’s book and of the Jadids
in shaping the course of events during the revolutionary era.
10
 On the role of ethnographers, see Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic
Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
On the role of Bolshevism, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and
Nationalism in the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
11
  See Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations (London: Tauris,
2007), 67–69; and Kassymbekova, Despite Cultures, 66–67.
BEYOND COLONIALISM? 833

of the Tajik Republic was not the result of a conscious strategy of rule but
instead a byproduct of the Uzbek national project.
Khalid underscores the importance not only of indigenous actors but also
of ideologies and ideals during an era of revolutionary changes. He even goes
so far as to argue that the intellectuals did not necessarily adapt their political
positions because of Bolshevik ideological pressure but because of an ongoing
internal process of radicalization. For example, he emphasizes the role of
indigenous “activists” in mobilizing “enthusiasm” for so-called korenizatsiia or
for the campaign to unveil women (165). Khalid also reveals how widespread
“anticlericalism” was in Central Asia (just as it was in other parts of the
Russian Empire) before and during the revolution. The perception of ulama
and the Sufis as corrupt and backward was not necessarily a product of the
Bolshevik propaganda but was instead rooted in the ideas of Muslim cultural
reform (256). Khalid also argues that such an influential Jadid intellectual
as Abdurauf Fitrat did not start to propagate atheism because he was forced
to, but because under the revolutionary circumstances he reconsidered and
radicalized his thinking (256).12 While this reading of the sources is often
innovative, it may also cause some controversy in the light of studies such as
Kassymbekova’s or Abashin’s, which tend to treat ideological pronouncements
as strategic tools in struggles for power and survival on the Soviet periphery.
 

Botakoz Kassymbekova focuses on the strategies of Soviet state builders

in Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. Discussing the period after the
revolutionary upheaval, Kassymbekova concentrates not so much on ideas as
on the mechanisms of governance in the remote Soviet periphery—Tajikistan,
in particular. She argues that the Soviet system there was based on a network
of individuals, whose loyalty to communism was monitored through a
chain of command that stretched from Moscow via Tashkent to Dushanbe/
Stalinabad. By personalizing its rule, the Stalinist regime was able to bypass
local networks and implement its decisions despite the geographic and
cultural distance from the center (hence the book’s title “despite cultures”).
Kassymbekova’s book is an important contribution not only to the history
of Central Asia and Tajikistan but also to the historiography on such diverse

12
 This directly contradicts the consensus among scholars according to which Fitrat’s
reconsideration of his views was a result of outside pressure. See Jeff Eden, Paolo Sartori,
and Devin DeWeese, “Moving beyond Modernism: Rethinking Cultural Change in Muslim
Eurasia (19th–20th Centuries),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59,
1–2 (2016): 1–36, here 17.
834 MORITZ FLORIN

topics as the Soviet judicial system, practices of denunciation, terror and

violence, Soviet governance and state building, the role of individuals and
their networks within Stalinism, and modern and (neo)traditional practices
in the Soviet system of rule.
Most of the actors in Kassymbekova’s book were members of the newly
created party and state apparatus. Their decisions and actions were not driven
by enthusiasm for the revolutionary project but were motivated by the desire
for material gain, by a thirst for power, and by local economic conditions
and their position within local networks. Even Soviet officials who had been
born in Central Asia usually arrived in Tajikistan as “consciously chosen
outsiders” (126). All of them understood their personal responsibility for
the outcome of the campaigns that they were supposed to implement, and
they constantly feared failure (87). Ultimately, however, it was Stalin who
acted as the “sole arbiter of the situation, centralizing power in his hands”
(93). This also means that no clear distinction between “colonizers” and
“colonized” seems possible: any group of actors was subjected to both
promotion and repression. Individuals responsible for initiating new rounds
of campaigns could easily be both heroes and scapegoats, perpetrators and
victims, of Stalinist campaigns.
In contrast to Khalid, Kassymbekova tends to interpret ideological
statements as mere strategies in local struggles for power. This can partly be
explained by the fact that she does not concentrate on the years of uncertainty
during the revolution, Civil War, and New Economic Policy (NEP) but on
the period of assault and upheaval associated with the Cultural Revolution
or the Great Break and on the actors who were empowered by Stalin.
However, the difference also lies in their approach. While Khalid often
takes the publications of his actors as genuine expressions of political views,
Kassymbekova interprets ideology as a strategic tool in struggles for power and
survival. Khalid’s actors usually mean what they say, while Kassymbekova’s
actors usually say what saves them.
For example, Kassymbekova regards the local officials’ statements of the
“backwardness” of local Muslims and their inability to understand Soviet
slogans and ideology as “mechanisms of adaptation” to the Soviet project.
In her opinion, frequent criticism of the persistence of backwardness and
the failure to civilize Central Asia was a “defense mechanism” of local elites
against purges and reprimands for not achieving plans (2) and should be
interpreted as a way of speaking Bolshevik on the Soviet periphery.
According to Kassymbekova, the difference between officials often
“did not lie in their identity as Muslim or European,” but instead in a
BEYOND COLONIALISM? 835

particular person’s position within the government and “whether it entitled

him (and it was usually a he) to carry a gun” (46). Issues of culture and
ethnicity became important political instruments in struggles for power and
resources, leading to an ethnicization of political debates. They were usually
subordinate to campaigns of collectivization or purges, economic planning,
or territorial defense (17). Ultimately, it was the remoteness from the center,
not the culture of Tajikistan, that determined the means and methods of
rule. Personal networks helped the regime to rule despite the cultural and
geographic distances involved, “yet it also became a problem for central rulers
to … rely on and force through one homogenous and transparent application
of decrees, rules, and orders” (203). This is also why anybody could enjoy
promotion but also be affected by violence and repression.
Kassymbekova’s book is about governance and about “Soviet officials’
understandings, strategies, and representations of the new system that they
were tasked with and entitled to install and represent.” Soviet rule in Tajikistan
resulted in violence as well as political, social, and cultural transformation.
Kassymbekova’s book tells us a lot about the limitations of the Stalinist system
of governance on a remote periphery but contains less information about
how the ideas and violent practices of Bolshevism were transmitted to the
societies of Central Asia. We must read Abashin’s book to better understand
how the contradictory effects of the revolution and Sovietization were felt at
the grassroots level throughout the 20th century.
 

Sergei Abashin’s book is a study of Oshoba, one “Uzbek” village or kishlak

(original meaning: winter settlement) in a part of the Ferghana Valley that
nowadays belongs to Tajikistan. From this local perspective, Abashin analyzes
the nature of tsarist and Soviet rule in the region, the transformation of
traditional life, and various attempts to change and “modernize” a village
community in Central Asia. Abashin’s opus magnum is the result of more
than 20 years of ethnographic research and reflection. The subjects covered
are diverse and range from the conquest of Oshoba in 1875 and imperial
practices of rule through the revolutionary events of 1917 and the rebellion of
the so-called Basmachi to the reproduction of Stalinist hierarchies at the local
level and collectivization. Separate chapters deal with the history of a local
hospital, the “practical logic” of Islam, and wedding customs under socialism.
Abashin’s book is unique in the context of not only Central Asian studies but
also Soviet history in offering an interpretation of continuities and changes in
836 MORITZ FLORIN

the social life of one village and in engaging with the most recent scholarship
on the Soviet era as a whole.13
Abashin analyzes how tradition, modernity, Soviet identity, and
colonialism intersected in one specific place (he uses the word “locality,”
lokal´nost´ ). He focuses on how “practices of localization” changed and
how local communities produced and reproduced themselves in different
historical periods. In his book, social and cultural forms are never stable but
instead constantly being challenged, destabilized, and renormalized. The local
approach allows Abashin to identify those historical influences that became
dominant and those that were marginalized and lost their importance.
Like Kassymbekova’s study, Abashin’s microhistory of Oshoba reveals that
there was little “enthusiasm” from below for greater ideological change.
However, Abashin’s actors are not solely driven by their personal networks
and dependencies within the apparatus of rule but also by local interests,
identities, networks, and values.
According to Abashin, many of the conflicts that erupted immediately
prior to and after the revolution were rooted in local conditions. Even the
1916 rebellion, which might seem like an archetypical anticolonial revolt,
was not entirely centered on issues of ethnicity or colonialism. For example,
in the Ferghana and Asht regions it was not the Russian colonizers who
usually suffered but rather native representatives of the local administration
and their relatives. Violence quickly turned into an “everyday practice,” a
means of solving problems and accumulating social and material capital
(131). Still, even during the “Central Asian civil war,” “Basmachi” rebels had
to define their goals, taking into account local environments, interests, and
stereotypes (146). Even when the insurgents did see their rebellion as a part of
a larger, united struggle of the people of Ferghana against Soviet power, they
nevertheless had to translate their views into a language that was accessible to
the local population of Oshoba (135).
The study of Oshoba reveals what the revolution meant to people in
a remote rural region. Some activists took advantage of the new political
circumstances and gained certain privileges for their community or for
themselves. They supported Soviet power in the kishlak, learned Russian
and the ideological language of the state (269). Other inhabitants of Oshoba
13
  Abashin himself mentions the prehistory of this genre in Soviet ethnographic research and
the so-called kolkhoz monographs of the Soviet era. On the history of the genre, see also
Sergey Abashin, “Ethnographic Views of Socialist Reforms in Soviet Central Asia: Collective
Farm (Kolkhoz) Monographs,” in Exploring the Edge of Empire: Soviet Era Anthropology in the
Caucasus and Central Asia, ed. Florian Mühlfried and Sergey Sokolovskiy (Münster: Lit, 2011),
83–98. Nevertheless, taking his inspiration from a wide range of scholarship on Soviet and
post-Soviet history and ethnography, Abashin lifts this genre to an entirely new level.
BEYOND COLONIALISM? 837

followed a conservative agenda to keep their immediate environment intact.

Some local actors used the new circumstances to settle old scores, while others
feared expulsion from their communities.
In what may well be the most impressive chapter of his book, Abashin
analyzes the role of Ortyk Umurzakov, the “little Stalin” of Oshoba, who was
still alive when Abashin conducted his research during the 1990s. Abashin
tells the story of the head of the local sel´sovet, who, according to some of
his respondents, was a “criminal” ruling the village on his own and only
in his own interests. However, other members of the community justified
Umurzakov’s actions, arguing that his cruelty was a result of circumstances:
“Umurzakov was an honest person, and he was a good leader, very brutal,
but good. There was order. He ruled like Stalin.” This leads Abashin to the
question: “Who were these little Stalins? In whose name did they rule and
what did they want? Were they the rulers or the ones through whom the
state ruled?” (247). Abashin concludes that, on the one hand, individuals
and groups used Soviet institutions and symbols to further their local goals,
and sometimes even went into opposition against those in power. The
Soviet rulers, on the other hand, exploited conflicts among local groups to
implement new rounds of reforms. The final result was the strengthening of
outside influences on the local community (311).
At the same time, despite the antitraditionalism of Bolshevik ideology,
Soviet rule resulted not only in the destruction but also in the transformation
of tradition (if sometimes in unintended ways). Perhaps not surprisingly,
institutions such as the mahalla, local wedding customs, or traditions
associated with Islam still played central roles in the lives of the inhabitants of
Oshoba when Abashin started his field research after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. On the whole, instead of being colonized by outsiders, Oshoba was
remade and reinvented as a “Soviet kishlak” by a range of different actors, not
only from outside but also from within the community. Abashin’s book thus
captures the overlaps and intersections of identities in a remote locale that
was reshaped by both colonial and Soviet practices of rule.
 

Taken together, the three books remind us that the history of Soviet rule in
Central Asia cannot be explained in terms of a clear-cut conflict between
center and periphery, between colonizers and colonized. In fact, phenomena
often described as “colonial” in the Central Asian context can also be found
elsewhere, even in the Soviet “center” itself. Civilizatory discourses, the (neo)
traditionalism of Stalinist practices of personalized rule, the persistence of
838 MORITZ FLORIN

clan-like networks, the high degree of political centralization, and the cultural
distance between rulers and ruled were by no means confined to (former)
colonial contexts.
At the same time, it is worth emphasizing that in all three books the most
important decision makers ultimately derived a significant part of their power
to act from the center. The Jadids could only act as long as their political
aims did not openly contradict those of the Bolsheviks. Local officials derived
their power from their personal connections to higher officials and ultimately
from Stalin. Even ordinary villagers had to adapt constantly to new political
circumstances and conditions. Thus, although the borders between rulers and
ruled often blurred, local people hardly had a chance to influence the most
fundamental decisions about their lives, which were made in a geographically
and culturally distant metropole. This also helps explain not only why
historical actors often likened Soviet rule to colonialism, but also why it still
makes sense to use Central Asia as a testing ground for the exploration of
issues of coloniality within the Soviet context.

Department Geschichte
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Bismarckstr. 12
D-91054 Erlangen, Germany
moritz.florin@fau.de