The Many Ways of Being Soviet: Urban Elites, People's

Friendship, and Ethnic Diversity in Postwar Soviet Frunze

Moritz Florin

Ab Imperio, 4/2018, pp. 147-170 (Article)

Published by Ab Imperio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2018.0096

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/720027

Access provided at 23 Apr 2019 08:42 GMT from University of Sussex

 Ab Imperio, 4/2018

Moritz FLORIN

THE MANY WAYS OF BEING SOVIET:

Urban Elites, People’s Friendship, and
Ethnic Diversity in Postwar Soviet Frunze*

When I went to Kyrgyzstan in the summer of 2010 to conduct oral his-

tory interviews with members of the former Soviet republican elites, most
of them were preoccupied, even horrified by what they called the recent
“revolution” that had been accompanied by unrest, interethnic clashes, and
expulsions of Uzbeks in Osh. During that year’s fateful spring and summer,
“chaos” had spread, and there was little hope left that the situation would
improve anytime soon. Many interviewees were worried that interethnic
conflicts might further escalate, thereby affecting other minorities besides
the Uzbeks.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this mood also shaped the narratives about the
past that I recorded in 2010 and 2011. In fact, almost all fifty interviews
revolve around a similar theme. Most respondents, whether part of the for-
mer elites or not, reflected on the ways that ethnic differences had mattered
during their lives. Their views on such issues seemed to be in a state of flux,
the recent calamities having forced them to reconsider and adapt their nar-
ratives of the Soviet past. But the interviews also contained a surprisingly

*
The author acknowledges the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and
suggestions.
147
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
uniform message: “Back then,” most respondents would argue, people with
diverse ethnic backgrounds used to be good neighbors, husbands, and wives
and almost always were “friends.” The crisis of the system only began when
individuals started to question the friendship of the peoples, and when na-
tionalists began exploiting problems that had by no means been incorrigible.
It seems obvious that my respondents constructed an idealized past
as a foil for their critique of the present.1 Nevertheless, I argue that their
narratives also contained identifiable traces of specifically Soviet ways of
speaking about ethnic differences. In combination with other sources – such
as memoirs, Soviet proclamations, newspaper articles, archival reports and
protocols – the interviews reveal processes of individual appropriation of
Soviet categories and narratives about what it meant to be Soviet and national
at the same time.2 In fact, Soviet official language was never unambigu-
ous, often contradictory, and open to interpretation. Alexei Yurchak, for
example, has pointed out that depending on the speaker the same foreign
cultural influences could be deemed negative or positive, “cosmopolitan” or
“internationalist,” and sometimes also “bourgeois” or “proletarian.”3 Soviet
socialism itself provided speakers with the language to express criticism or
approval without transgressing the boundaries of the authoritative discourse.4
Arguably, this also holds true for debates on tradition, national identity, and
belonging: depending on the perspective, the same cultural practices of ethnic
groups can be depicted either as “remnants of the past” or “tradition,” as
“backward” or “authentic.” In fact, being Soviet was not only about valu-
ing “civilization” and (European) modernization but also about rootedness,
1
This tendency is intimately related to what has been labeled post-Soviet “nostalgia.”
On the different types of nostalgic references in Central Asian political discourses, see
Natalia Kosmarskaia. Deti imperii v postsovetskoi Tsentral’noi Azii. Adaptivnye praktiki
i mental’nye sdvigi (russkie v Kirgizii). Moscow, 2006. Pp. 369–390. Asel Murzakulova
and John Schoeberlein. The Invention of Legitimacy. Struggles in Kyrgyzstan to Craft
an Effective Nation-state Ideology // Europe-Asia Studies. 2009. Vol. 61. No. 7. Pp.
1229–1248. Damira Umetbaeva. Paradoxes of Hegemonic Discourse in Post-Soviet
Kyrgyzstan. History Textbooks’ and History Teachers’ Attitudes toward the Soviet Past
// Central Asian Affairs. 2015. Vol. 2. No. 3. Pp. 287–306.
2
On the methods used for conducting and interpreting such interviews, see: Paul Richard
Thompson and Joanna Bornat. Voices of the Past: Oral History. New York, 2017. Pp.
23–70; Julia Obertreis and Anke Stephan (Eds.). Erinnerungen nach der Wende. Oral
History und (post)sozialistische Gesellschaften. Essen, 2009. Pp. 3–19.
3
Alexei Yurchak. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. The Last Soviet
Generation. Princeton, 2006. P. 14.
4
On the concept of “Bolshevik” (or Soviet) speech, see Stephen Kotkin. Magnetic
Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley, 1995.
148
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
nativity, and respect for ethnic and Soviet traditions. This indeterminacy of
Soviet concepts also helps to highlight the many possibilities for connecting
to the languages of Soviet and ethnic identity and belonging.
This article analyzes the ways in which people in Kyrgyzstan were Soviet,
and how former elites could use different narrative tropes about what it meant
to be Soviet to define their position within a highly differentiated social and
cultural environment. Postwar Frunze (today Bishkek), the capital of the
Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, lends itself as a useful case study of the
many possibilities for appropriating the language of Soviet patriotism and
belonging because of the diversity of its inhabitants’ backgrounds. Some
of my interviewees had arrived in the city as wartime evacuees, others had
come as labor migrants or because they wanted to escape politically moti-
vated persecutions elsewhere. Many inhabitants, and especially those who
were born in the Kyrgyz Republic, arrived in Frunze from the countryside.
Thus, most of my interviewees were newcomers to the city who in one
way or another had to adapt to an unfamiliar environment. But they were
also social climbers who aspired to jobs within the party apparatus or in
cultural institutions such as the university or the writers’ union.5 In their
new positions, they had to redefine their social identity, thereby connecting
to distinct, often mutually contradictory conceptualizations of being Soviet.
In this sense, the narratives point to the making (and sometimes the un-
making) of more or less permeable boundaries between imagined groups.6
Two types of narratives seem particularly relevant. First, these are modernist
Bildung narratives of becoming Soviet. Often they were tied to an idea of
assimilation, for instance, when the formerly “backward” Kyrgyz nomads
learned to read and write, to live in urban apartments, and to lead their
republic on its way into the common socialist future. By becoming more

5
The term “elite” is used in a broad sense here, encompassing not only political deci-
sion makers but also the members of the cultural elites such as writers, filmmakers,
and university professors. Both groups – the cultural and the political elites – shared a
common career path, were usually party members, and aspired toward jobs within the
Soviet apparatus. They were part of the state structure, and unlike the dissidents usually
did not attempt to step outside the established discursive or institutional structures. As I
argue below, they imagined themselves as belonging to a common milieu with a shared
cultural impetus to guide the rest of the population on its way toward socialism. On the
roles and functions of cultural elites in Central Asia, see Laura Adams. The Spectacular
State: Culture and National Identity in Uzbekistan. Durham, 2010. Pp. 1–20.
6
On the making and unmaking of ethnic boundaries as social practices, see Andreas
Wimmer. The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory
// American Journal of Sociology. 2008. Vol. 113. Pp. 970–1022.
149
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
“cultured” or “civilized,” these individuals developed into better citizens.7
At the same time, this modernist logic could also be employed to draw social
boundaries, such as when urban elites wanted to distinguish themselves from
newcomers arriving from the countryside.8 The second type of narratives are
based on a (neo)traditional logic of being Soviet. They usually appealed to an
imagined common past and shared experiences. For example, the Great Patri-
otic War played the role of a consolidating tradition for all citizens, thereby
excluding those who had betrayed the fatherland as members of stigmatized
groups – the deported Volga Germans or Chechens. Although the boundary
between “patriots” and “traitors” was relatively clear and stable, the stigma
could be relativized by participating in common rituals of belonging (e.g.,
the May Day parades) or by changing narratives of the past (e.g., instead
of emphasizing Chechen “collaboration” with the Nazis, highlighting the
bravery of Chechen soldiers during the war). Since the state supported both
interpretations, the republican elites came to play the decisive role in priori-
tizing one or another narrative, either reproducing or erasing the intergroup
boundaries. Thus, the question of whether the Soviet state was “modernist”
or “neotraditional” becomes irrelevant from the vantage point of this article,
since both tropes were used to define Sovietness in different circumstances.9
The ambivalence of potentially available strategies for defining Soviet-
ness was by no means restricted to postwar Frunze, as has been demonstrated
for different periods in Soviet history and in different regions by authors
such as Yuri Slezkine, Terry Martin, and Arne Haugen. The official formula
“national in form, socialist in content” clearly prioritized universalist so-
cialism over ethnic particularism as the essence of being Soviet. However,
by embracing a primordialist understanding of ethnicity and promoting the
upward social mobility of members of the “formerly oppressed” nations,
the Soviet state also created and perpetuated ethnic particularism.10 Another
7
For a comprehensive analysis of this trope, see Igal Halfin. From Darkness to Light:
Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia. Princeton, 2010.
8
The idea of self-enhancement was deeply ingrained in Stalinist discourses and practices.
Cf. Jochen Hellbeck. Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin. Cambridge,
MA, 2006.
9
See Michael D. Fox. Multiple Modernities vs. Neo-Traditionalism. On Recent Debates
on Russian and Soviet History // Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 2006. Vol. 55.
No. 4. Pp. 535–555.
10
Yuri Slezkine. The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted
Ethnic Particularism // Slavic Review. 1994. Vol. 53. Pp. 414–452; Terry Martin. The
Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939.
Ithaca, 2001. On the republics of Central Asia see: Adeeb Khalid. Making Uzbekistan:
150
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
significant factor was the steady return of Russian patriotism and national-
ism, and the promotion of the idea of friendship of the peoples as a way to
reconcile the orthodoxy of Soviet internationalism with increasing Russo-
centrism.11 The results of this development were potentially divisive. From
a Central Asian perspective, for example, it was no longer deemed correct
to label Russia’s historic role as “colonialist”; instead, the official narrative
referred to the “Great Friendship” of nations that reached back into the
imperial past.12 While the ideology of peoples’ friendship promoted social
inclusion,13 World War II brought about new dividing lines, now between
patriotic citizens and the alleged traitor nationalities.14
By focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, the present study sheds light on a
period in the history of the Soviet peripheries that has received less schol-
arly attention than the periods before World War II or after the end of the
Soviet Union.15 The 1960s and especially the 1970s were characterized by

Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Ithaca, 2015; Arne Haugen. The
Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia. Basingstoke, 2003; Adrienne
L. Edgar. Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan. Princeton, 2004; Ali F.
Iğmen. Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan. Pittsburgh,
2012. On ethnic primordialism in the Soviet Union see: Terry Martin. Modernization or
Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism // Sheila Fitzpatrick
(Ed.). Stalinism. New Directions. London, 2000. Pp. 348–367.
11
David Brandenberger. National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Forma-
tion of Modern Russian National Identity. Cambridge, MA, 2002. On local adaptations
in Ukraine and Armenia see: Serhy Yekelchyk. Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-
Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination. Toronto, 2004; Maike Lehmann.
The Local Reinvention of the Soviet Project: Nation and Socialism in the Republic of
Armenia after 1945 // Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 2011. Vol. 4. Pp. 481–508.
12
See: Lowell Tillett. The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians on the Non-Russian Na-
tionalities. Chapel Hill, 1969. On the Kyrgyz case, see also Moritz Florin. What Is Russia
to Us? Making Sense of Stalinism, Colonialism and Soviet Modernity in Kyrgyzstan,
1956–1965 // Ab imperio. 2016. Vol. 3. Pp. 165–189.
13
Brandon Schechter. “The People’s Instructions”: Indigenising the Great Patriotic War
among “Non-Russians” // Ab Imperio. 2012. No. 3. Pp. 109–133; Boram Shin. Red
Army Propaganda for Uzbek Soldiers and Localised Soviet Internationalism during
World War II // The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review. 2015. Vol. 42. Pp. 39–63.
14
See: Roberto Carmack. A Fortress of the Soviet Home-Front: Mobilization and Eth-
nicity in Kazakhstan during World War II / PhD Dissertation; University of Wisconsin-
Madison, 2015; Moritz Florin. Becoming Soviet through War: The Kyrgyz and the Great
Fatherland War // Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 2016. Vol. 17.
No. 3. Pp. 495–516.
15
In recent years, a number of works on early Soviet Central Asia have been published,
including: Iğmen. Speaking Soviet; Khalid. Making Uzbekistan; Edgar. Tribal Nation.
151
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
unprecedented political stability during rapid social transformations. Suffice
it to look at the demographic dynamics: over the three decades from 1959 to
1989, the population of Frunze had expanded almost threefold (from 220,000
to 620,000), while the share of ethnic Kyrgyz among the city residents had
increased 6.6-fold (from 21,000 to 139,000).16 It was during this period of
quick expansion of the city that most of my interviewees came of age and
started their careers in the Soviet apparatus.17 Unlike the older generation,
they experienced the structures of the Soviet multinational state as familiar
and stable. Nevertheless, they also had to adapt to a constantly evolving
social and cultural environment that was dominated by Russian-speakers,
as well as increasingly being shaped by newcomers from predominantly
Kyrgyz rural areas.18 In this sense, the period after the political turmoil of
On the other end of the chronological spectrum, anthropologists and political scientists
have conducted research on the dynamics of the post-Soviet era. Important contributions
on post-Soviet Kyrgyz history include: David Gullette. Kinship, State, and “Tribalism”.
The Genealogical Construction of the Kyrgyz Republic / PhD Dissertation; University
of Cambridge, 2007; Philipp Schröder. Bishkek Boys: Neighborhood Youth and Urban
Change in Kyrgyzstan’s Capital. New York, 2017; Morgan Liu. Under Solomon’s Throne.
Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh. Pittsburgh, 2012. Only recently has the period between
1945 and 1991 received more attention. Important new contributions include: Artemy M.
Kalinovsky. Laboratory of Socialist Development. Cold War Politics and Decolonization
in Soviet Tajikistan. Ithaca, 2018; Sergei Abashin. Sovetskii kishlak. Mezhdu kolonializ-
mom i modernizatsiei. Moscow, 2015; Julia Obertreis. Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton
Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860–1991. Göttingen, 2017.
16
The numbers are based on: Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1959 goda, Kirgizskaia
SSR. Moscow, 1963. Pp. 130–137; Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda. Vol.
4: Natsional’nyi sostav naseleniia SSSR. Moscow, 1973. Pp. 284–289; Itogi Vsesoi-
uznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda. Minneapolis, 1993; Alfred Eisfeld (Ed.). Iz istorii
nemtsev Kyrgyzstana, 1917–1999. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Bishkek, 2000.
Pp. 88–93. To be sure, the seemingly exact census data raise many questions because of
their obvious omissions (e.g., before 1989, Chechen, Ingush, and Crimean Tatars were not
mentioned), and because they tell us little about the different meanings attached to such
categories. Nevertheless, these categorizations are also relevant because the Soviet state
and its citizens usually assumed that ethnic groups were distinct and identifiable entities.
17
The oldest interviewee was born in 1935, the youngest in 1969, with the average born
around 1945.
18
Not all the newcomers were Kyrgyz, and the rural areas of the Kyrgyz Republic were
also inhabited by former deportees, settlers, and migrants from all parts of the Soviet
Union. Similarly, the division between “Kyrgyz” and “others” can be problematic because
it tells us little about the social, political, or cultural position of each individual citizen.
Other potentially relevant distinctions include the difference between native Russian-
speakers and others, between “Muslims” or “indigenous” people and others, between
citizens with urban or rural backgrounds, between former victims and perpetrators of
152
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
the first half of the twentieth century helps to show how the different ideas
about what it meant to be Soviet congealed into cultural norms and practices
that remained relevant beyond the 1991 divide.19

Republican elites as a common milieu

The notion of “republican” or “urban” elites as used in this study does
not imply any homogeneous and coherent group. Those identified as “elites”
in the article belonged to various ethnic groups and fulfilled different so-
cial functions. Some of the elites worked in the cultural sphere as writers,
filmmakers, and university professors. Others were party functionaries,
members of the Central Committee, and officials at republican ministries.
But despite all the differences, these elite members had important common
characteristics: they shared a standard Soviet career path and educational
background (many of them profited immensely from the postwar education
boom).20 Even more important, these elites imagined themselves as belong-
ing to a common milieu with a shared cultural impetus to guide the rest of
the population on its way toward socialism.
The self-perception of these elites was closely tied to a shared under-
standing of what it meant to be socialist. According to some interviewees,
among the elites ethnicity was a less relevant marker than their common
ethos. Aleksandr Katsev, a journalist born in Frunze, recalls: “I grew up
in the time of Khrushchev’s thaw. ... Back then we – I and my friends –
judged other people by their intellect. A wise man is wise, regardless of the
respective nationality. Idiots remain idiots. That was the central principle
of my existence and of my relationships with others.”21 In this ideal world
as recalled by Katsev, it was insignificant that his passport identified him
as “Jewish,” insofar as ethnic differences played no decisive role in social
inclusion or exclusion, unlike common intellectual interests, level of educa-
tion, and personal sympathy.

Stalinism, and so on. While each such attempt to define a boundary can be problematic,
such distinctions are important in making sense of individual situations or interactions.
19
Cf.: Bruce Grant. Recognizing Soviet Culture // Joachim Otto Habeck and Brian
Donahoe (Eds.). Reconstructing the House of Culture. New York, 2012. Pp. 263–276.
20
According to the official statistics, in 1939 the number of inhabitants of the Kyrgyz
Republic with higher education had been as low as 3,250. This number had risen to
27,194 in 1959 and 73,100 in 1970, thus pointing to the quick expansion of the educa-
tional system during these years. Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda. Vol.
3: Uroven’ obrazovaniia naseleniia SSSR. Moscow, 1972. P. 359.
21
Aleksandr Katsev. Pozhalei sebia // Literaturnyi Kirgizstan. 1991. No. 9-10. Pp. 197–201.
153
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
Similarly, some interviewees also remember that in the past they con-
sidered themselves to be part of a pan-Soviet culture without borders. The
Russian poet and translator, Svetlana Suslova, recalled in an interview with
the author:
You know, in those years the cultural contacts between – as you
say – “center and periphery” were already so close that everything
good or bad going on in Moscow quickly became known here, and
this happened despite the fact that the television or the newspapers
reported only fragmentarily. But we went through the bookstores and
then we also found the books, about which we had heard from our
fellow students or friends from Moscow.22
The quote suggests that Russian-speaking elites living in Frunze aspired
to take part in Soviet-wide debates, and not just republican ones. Books pub-
lished in Moscow were sometimes hard to acquire, but it was this deficit that
also infused the activity of searching for books with cultural significance. Of
course, Suslova also argued that there was a national “specificity” (kolorit) in
Central Asia, but that the distinction between national (Kyrgyz or Russian)
and Soviet cultures was not a significant concern to her. 
The narratives thus suggest the existence of an imagined cultural com-
munity based on common interests that existed beyond the boundaries of
any republic. However, such evidence is also contradictory. Although many
interviewees argue that a multicultural community of Soviet people did exist
in the past, some implicitly assume that ethnic and Soviet ways of belong-
ing were interrelated and implicitly hierarchical. Döölötbek Saparaliev, a
Kyrgyz historian born in 1953 in Naryn, recalls: 
To be honest, in Soviet times, I considered myself to be more Soviet
than Kyrgyz. Why? Because I went to a Russian school in Naryn. This
school was and is considered to be very good. ... Then I graduated
from the National University and my main teacher was Jewish. In the
National University, there were Kyrgyz and Russian-speaking groups.
I always had good relationships with Russian students, there were also
many excellent Russian teachers. ... Then I worked in the Academy
of Sciences. ... There were many Russian-speaking colleagues, for
example, Konstantin Petrov, Sapelkin, Deriev, Goriacheva, Ploskikh.
... And after that I also went to Moscow, into the center of our Soviet
historical science. And there my scientific supervisor was Jewish again.
Therefore, I never had to think about my Kyrgyzness, I never had an
22
Interview with Svetlana Suslova (b. 1949). Bishkek, September 17, 2010. Transcript
Page (TP) 8.
154
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
inferiority complex (nikogda ne kompleksovalsia). I mastered Russian
at a satisfactory level, I even occasionally wrote academic lectures
for leading scientists, professors. … Afterward, I also worked in the
Foreign Policy Archives of Russia [sic] and therefore felt even more
like a Soviet person.23
From this historian’s perspective, Soviet identity was closely connected
to his knowledge of Russian and his membership in a multinational col-
lective. On another level, the quote reveals a hierarchical understanding of
the relationship between Soviet and Kyrgyz identities: Saparaliev consid-
ered himself to be more Soviet than Kyrgyz (bol’she sebia videl sovetskim
chelovekom). In this sense, there was a normative quality to being Soviet:
because he was so Soviet, Saparaliev did not feel an “inferiority complex”
because of his Kyrgyz background. In other words, if he had not mastered
the Russian language so well, or if he had not been so well-educated, he
might have felt somehow less Soviet.
In fact, the self-image as a culturally united milieu did not protect the
elites from ethnic biases and from seeing ethnicity in those who did not be-
long to the same milieu. In interviews, I repeatedly heard people saying that
Russians often called Kyrgyz “sheep.” Urban elites would sometimes mock
rural Kyrgyz for “not knowing how to behave” by saying: “Have you just
come down from the mountains, or what?” (tol’ko chto spustilsia s gor, chto
li?).24 In Kyrgyz, elites sometimes derided the rural population as “myrk,”
a word probably referring to myrkymbai, an Ivan-the-fool-like character
from a series of poems written by the Kazakh author Beimbet Maili.25 The
word myrk was associated with cultural and social backwardness: illiteracy,
the inability to speak Russian, a darker or tanned skin resulting from hard
work outdoors, and more generally the signs of poverty (shabby clothes,
dirtiness, and rude behavior).26
23
Interview with Döölötbek Saparaliev (b. 1953). Bishkek, November 11, 2010. TP 4.
24
It is unclear when this derogative phrase was coined, but there is evidence of its us-
age in the 1960s and 1970s. See Stenogramma V s”ezda pisatelei Kirgizii za 1971 god,
14.5.1971 // Central State Archive of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan (TsGAKR). F. 1465.
Op. 1. D. 284. L. 86. See also Rasma Karklins. Ethnic Relations in the USSR. The Per-
spective from Below. Boston, 1990. P. 53.
25
See Obraz Myrkymbaia // http://kaz-lit.kz/literatura-20-veka-s-1917-goda/obraz-
mirkinbaya. All Internet resources last consulted May 13, 2016.
26
Cf. Kto takoi myrk? // Azattyk TV. 2012. June 26. http://rus.azattyk.org/media/
video/24627081.html. In official documents and literature of the late Soviet era, the word
“myrk” is rarely mentioned, but for example Aitmatov used it in his prose. See: Chin-
giz Aitmatov. Burannyi polustanok (I dol’she veka dlitsia den’). Moscow, 1981. P. 36.
155
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
Stereotyping, however, is not usually a one-sided process. In Frunze, the
shortage of housing primarily affected ethnic Kyrgyz from the countryside
migrating to the cities. In a song recorded in Frunze in 1972, a shepherd
thus addressed a Russian urbanite:
Herding cattle is my lot,
An apartment you have got.27
The song expressed widespread frustration over the difficulties of obtain-
ing an apartment in Frunze. However, it also hints at an ethnic divide: cattle
herding was the occupation of a predominantly Kyrgyz rural population.
In other cases, ethnic implications are more obvious. For example, when
thinking about signs of interethnic conflict during the Soviet era, many
interviewees recall that Russians and Ukrainians in Frunze were regularly
derogatively called “pigs” or that they were asked to go home. It is worth
mentioning, however, that such stereotypes were not only directed at “Rus-
sians” in the narrow sense. Rather, the rural population’s resentment was
often directed against the multiethnic Russified elite. Interviewees sometimes
considered it necessary to explain the difference between “Kirgiz” and “Kyr-
gyz”: “Kirgiz” (Киргиз) is the Russian spelling of the Kyrgyz ethnonym,
associated with a Russian accent. “Kyrgyz” (Кыргыз), on the other hand,
is the Kyrgyz spelling, associated with native speakers. The Kyrgyz elites
in Frunze were perceived as so Russified that they could not (or would not)
pronounce the Kyrgyz ethnonym correctly.28 The different pronunciations
thus reflected the perception that “Sovietization” and “Russification” were
one and the same thing. At the same time, the example shows that rural
Kyrgyz could position themselves as “real” or “authentic” Kyrgyz, and their
resentment of urban elites was translated into resentment of those who were
perceived as assimilated and rootless.
Such narratives point toward a specific way of connecting with others
that was shaped by a sense of belonging to a common milieu. Within this
imagined group of equals, friendships were based on mutual understanding
that crossed ethnic boundaries. While egalitarian in an ethnocultural sense,
this social imaginary was built on the premise of belonging to the same so-
cial stratum with a higher cultural level (higher kul’turnost’). The narratives

The term “myrk” remains a frequent curse against migrants who come to Frunze. Cf.
Schröder. Bishkek Boys. P. 9.
27
In Kyrgyz: “Koi bagarga men ėptüü - Üj salarga sen ėptüü.” Quoted in Tügölbai Sydyk-
bekov. Men miṅ zhyl zhashadym. Aian, aṅgemeler, maekter, kattar. Bishkek, 1998. P. 379.
28
Aleksandr Tuzov and Viacheslav Shapovalov. Kyrgyzstan – serdtsem i razumom //
Druzhba narodov. 2010. Vol. 1. http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2010/1/tu12.html.
156
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
communicated by the interviewees even suggest that ethnic boundaries had
become irrelevant among the urban elites encompassing not only those who
were deemed “European” but also “Asians,” such as Saparaliev. Perhaps,
one could even argue that this Soviet elite was deterritorialized, in the sense
of belonging to the pan-Soviet social milieu that was present in Frunze as
in other urban centers. This did not necessarily mean that the elites were
completely detached from their surroundings, however. On the contrary,
interactions with the local population played a key role in the self-perception
of the elites as a distinct entity.

Civilization, authenticity, and social status

Frunze’s elites could fully experience their special status only through
interaction with those who did not belong to their virtual community. The
notions of backwardness, progress, and civilization helped to draw a distance
from the common people, but they also played a role in demarcating internal
divisions within the elitist milieu itself. While some would assume the role
of civilizers or modernizers, others presented themselves as guardians of
authenticity or rootedness. These differing strategies could have profound
political implications, but it is important to stress that both were used to
claim elite status, and both could be fully accommodated by the narrative
of multiethnic Sovietness.
Identifying with one or another strategy often correlated with real social
differences, which thus overlapped with perceived cultural or ethnic differ-
ences. The instrumentalization of ethnicity had already been made possible
by the Soviet nationalities policy, which had created a precedent for subse-
quent reevaluation of one’s social capital on the grounds of demographic or
even geographic factors. Thus, in the Kyrgyz Republic, the Kyrgyz were rec-
ognized as the “titular nation,” which automatically reserved priority rights to
assuming positions of political leadership for ethnic Kyrgyz. Statistics point
to the success of the affirmative action policy among the Kyrgyz.29 Within
the cultural and educational spheres, Kyrgyz-speakers had relatively good
chances of making a career, particularly in humanities-related areas (in the

29
For example, among the Kyrgyz the so-called participation rate (i.e., the ratio of Kyrgyz
with university education in relation to the total population) rose fast during the 1960s.
Brian Silver. Levels of Sociocultural Development among Soviet Nationalities. A Partial
Test of the Equalization Hypothesis // American Political Science Review. 1974. Vol.
68. No. 4. Pp. 1624–1625. Also see: Ellen Jones and Fred W. Grupp. Modernization and
Ethnic Equalization in the USSR // Soviet Studies. 1984. Vol. 36. No. 1. P. 163.
157
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
writers’ union, or in such university departments as ethnography, linguistics,
and literature).30 In most other occupations, however, a good command of
the Russian language was essential, and it was usually difficult for Kyrgyz
newcomers to Frunze (priezzhie) to overcome this hurdle.31 Ethnicity and
language thus played significant roles in shaping the social and political
profile within the elite.
The question of how to promote titular nationals without discriminating
against others was the subject of intense debates during the late 1950s and
during perestroika.32 Curiously, in the recollections of my interviewees, this
problem was often presented as an opportunity. The Jewish filmmaker Iuz
Gershtein, who had come from Kyiv to the Kyrgyz Republic as an evacuee
in 1941, mentions in his memoirs how he and his colleagues took pride in
“helping” their Kyrgyz students create their first films.33 Others “helped”
Kyrgyz newcomers in the city to finish their education, write a dissertation,
or obtain a job within the party apparatus.34 To some, this help became a
lifelong mission. In a long monologue about relations with his Kyrgyz col-
leagues, Viacheslav Shapovalov, a Russian author, recalled:
Shapovalov: We feel betrayed. Fate has betrayed us. We believed
in this whole thing, we wanted to unite this country with its many dif-
ferent peoples. There is a writer, J.M. Coetzee, and there is also Albert
Camus, writers who talk about how the Europeans left. Writers who
write from places where savagery (dikost’) has returned. And I am also
concerned with the departure of the Russians, with their motives for
their difficult separation from this soil. And it can only be like that. I
think that at present the Kyrgyz do not need European culture.
M.F.: Do you mean that they do not need it or that they do not want it?
Shapovalov: Do not need in the sense of not wanting, in the sense of
Russian culture as a guide (provodnik), as a European Kulturträger.35
Shapovalov’s narrative confirms Natalia Kosmarskaia’s observation that
Russian-speakers in Bishkek (formerly Frunze) often developed a sense of
30
Britta Korth. Language Attitudes Towards Kyrgyz and Russian. Discourse, Education
and Policy in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. New York, 2005. Pp. 85–102.
31
Ibid. P. 148.
32
On the debates during the Thaw, see Florin. What Is Russia to Us?
33
Iuz Gershtein. Oskolok imperii. Tel Aviv, 2015.
34
For a more comprehensive analysis of such narratives of mutual help, see Kosmarskaia.
Deti imperii. Pp. 428–443.
35
Interview with Viacheslav Shapovalov (b. 1947). Bishkek, January 17, 2011. TP 9.
Shapovalov uses the German word here.
158
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
belonging to the shared sociocultural milieu.36 What is more, the quote also
points to a specific way of delineating a boundary between the speaker and
his Kyrgyz colleagues. As a self-defined “European,” Shapovalov had a
responsibility to help non-Europeans become more cultured and civilized.
Only then could the different peoples of the Soviet Union be united. While
the boundary between “European” and “non-European” (in this case, the
Russian and the Kyrgyz) remained clearly defined, it could also be overcome
in an imagined future.
While normative, the Soviet civilizing discourse was not explicitly related
with Europeanness as such, so Shapovalov did not argue that in the future all
people should become European. In fact, he also mentioned that in the past
he also wanted to learn more about the culture of the locals (the Kyrgyz),
and that some Kyrgyz party members tried to prevent him from doing so:
Back then, when I began to learn Kyrgyz, the minister of education
said to me: “Listen, why do you want to learn Kyrgyz? What for? We
all will speak the language of Lenin soon, anyway.” “I do not think
that this is the correct attitude.” “Bullshit, you should be fired.” And
they almost fired me because I wanted to learn Kyrgyz.37
Highlighting his attachment to the Kyrgyz Republic, Shapovalov re-
ferred to the Soviet principle of the diversity of national forms, which did
not encourage complete assimilation. The global task of rising to a new
“cultural level” did not necessarily mean a complete eradication of national
differences. The protection of national cultural specificity also preserved
the structural situation of cultural hierarchy, since the Russian-language
culture was identified with the normative standard of Soviet modernity.
Accordingly, some interviewees argue that members of the Kyrgyz elite
were particularly eager to prove their socialist credentials through Russifica-
tion. They embraced a role as educators of the Kyrgyz people, sometimes
overcompensating by speaking only Russian and completely rejecting all
things Kyrgyz. Shapovalov described precisely this phenomenon when he
mentioned the Kyrgyz minister of education, who wanted to prevent him
from learning Kyrgyz.
Sometimes the desire to identify completely with the position of the
Russianized Soviet elite produced the perception that elites had actually
forgotten their native language. A. Topchuev, a professor of Russian language
and literature, complained during perestroika:

36
Kosmarskaia. Deti imperii. Pp. 18–40.
37
Interview with Viacheslav Shapovalov. TP 10.
159
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
Those who speak with sorrow and pain over the fate of the Kyr-
gyz language in the cities, especially in Frunze, are correct. And if
that would apply only to the cities! Most tragically, party leaders and
members of the urban intelligentsiia naturally spoke Russian when
they came to a village. … It was – and I am afraid it still is – perceived
as awkward to write and send a telegram in Kyrgyz. … I believe that
Kyrgyz party leaders should be blamed for such deviations from the
norm because they are deeply convinced that a speech in Kyrgyz would
impair their authority in the audience, even if this audience is almost
entirely Kyrgyz.38
Topchuev might have exaggerated the magnitude of the problem, but
nobody doubted its reality. Russification was associated with upward social
mobility and status. Russian schools were usually considered to be better
than Kyrgyz schools, and the language of administration was Russian.39 In
interviews, former functionaries of the Kyrgyz Communist Party mention
how important it was for them to be proficient in Russian.40
Doubtless, command of the Russian language was sine qua non for any-
one aspiring to a higher social status in the USSR. However, a demonstrative
distancing from the Russfication paradigm (but avoiding open politicization)
could also serve as a valuable source of social capital. During the 1970s
some Kyrgyz writers and filmmakers openly criticized their compatriots for
their supposed rootlessness and cosmopolitanism. Tügölbai Sydykbekov,
for example, was one of the few writers who preferred to speak Kyrgyz at
meetings, even when Russian-speakers were present. In a series of letters to
the Central Committee, he even openly criticized the political elites for their
unwillingness to uphold the traditions of the Kyrgyz, their hostile attitude
toward the nomadic way of life, and their lack of knowledge of Kyrgyz
history and language.41 At about the same time, the writer Chingiz Aitma-
tov lamented the loss of traditional handicrafts, the replacement of Kyrgyz
yurts with manufactured tents, and the growing ignorance about historical
knowledge and values of an idealized nomadic past.42 In his famous novel

38
A. Topchuev. Uvazhat’ iazyk, uvazhat’ cheloveka // Sovetskaia Kirgiziia. 1989. Feb-
ruary 2.
39
Korth. Language Attitudes. Pp. 18–23.
40
Among others, I interviewed the former politicians Kazat Akmatov, Ömürbek Abdra-
khmanov, Tendik Askarov, and Osmon Ibraimov, who are all fluent in Russian.
41
Stenogramma V s’’ezda pisatelej kirgizii za 1971 god. L. 77–78. See also Sydykbekov.
Men min zhyl zhashadym. P. 380.
42
Florin. Kirgistan und die sowjetische Moderne. Pp.138–140.
160
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (published in 1980), he coined
a name for assimilated elites: mankurt. The mankurt appears in the context
of an old legend about a kidnapped boy who has become an underling of his
new masters. Since his masters have brutally erased all his memories, the
mankurt does not even recognize his own mother, and in the end willingly
executes her. Although a mankurt was a figure of the mythical past, Aitma-
tov’s readers immediately understood its allegorical meaning: a mankurt
was the negative version of the socialist “new man,” a perfectly assimilated
person, who had completely forgotten about the values and traditions of his
own (national) past.43
By presenting themselves as guardians of Kyrgyz authenticity under
attack, intellectuals like Aitmatov and Sydykbekov could also redefine
their roles within the multiethnic environment of Frunze. They used the
established cultural hierarchies to their advantage because, formally, the
Soviet project aimed at erasing such hierarchies, and those working toward
elevating national cultures to the level of Russian norms earned official praise
and popular recognition. The collected interviews reveal the significance
of both the Europeanized (Russified) version of modernity and the national
cultural authenticity. Each speaker generally tended to emphasize one or the
other aspect, thereby positioning him- or herself within the complex social
and cultural field of late Soviet Frunze.

Friends – despite all differences?

The seemingly incompatible alternative scenarios of elite Sovietness in
Frunze significantly correct the stereotypical understanding of what it meant
to be a Soviet. In the post-Stalin USSR, virtually all citizens were deemed
Soviet – granted that they demonstrated political loyalty – because they
were born in the Soviet Union, shared a common past, present, and future.
Moreover, given the high cultural diversity of the country, fully recognized
officially, the Soviet norm appeared in practice even more inclusive and
flexible. In this sense at least, cultural and ethnic differences were an asset,
not a problem.44
43
Katerina Clark. The Mutability of the Canon: Socialist Realism and Chingiz Aitmatov’s
I dol’she veka dlitsia den’ // Slavic Review. 1984. Vol. 43. No. 4. Pp. 573–587; Chingiz
Aitmatov. Burannyi polustanok (I dol’she veka dlitsia den’). Moscow, 1981.
44
This can be seen as the basis of the peoples’ friendship myth. See Edgar. Marriage,
Modernity, and the “Friendship of Nations.” On postwar ideological revisions, see also
Gerhard Simon. Nationalismus und Nationalitätenpolitik in der Sowjetunion. Baden-
Baden, 1986. Pp. 356–385.
161
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
The relative inclusiveness of the late Soviet norm by itself did not guar-
antee equality. Along with the changing politics of the center, variations in
the regimes of exclusion or social advancement were also produced locally.
The available alternative scenarios of Sovietness allowed regional elites and
their respective constituencies to redefine the meaning of civic patriotism as
deemed necessary in their specific situation. These variations were permis-
sible within mainstream narratives of unconditionally Soviet patriotism.
One of these cornerstone narratives was the shared history of the Great
Patriotic War. It remained an important point of reference for most of my
interviewees when they reflected on their Soviet identity. Some mentioned
their fathers who had fought during the war. But the war did not belong
solely to history, it remained relevant for everybody regardless of family
story, not least because it was constantly reenacted in public rituals. Thus,
the patriotic social identity was discursively linked to the imagination of
the common past, present, and future.
Similarly, the sense of belonging to the Soviet society was confirmed by
taking pride in the achievements of the country, regardless of one’s ethnic-
ity. M. Zholdosup, a historian born in 1960, recalls: “Back then, we used
to believe that we were living in a great country (velikaia strana). That the
strongest country in the world is the Soviet Union and that we were citizens
(grazhdane) of this country.”45 Abylabek Asankanov, a Kyrgyz ethnographer,
makes a similar but more complex point, arguing:
Identity was always situational in the Soviet Union. For example,
in Kyrgyzstan you always considered yourself to be Kyrgyz, but at the
same time there was an awareness that you were a Soviet person. That
is, there was a sort of hierarchy and in your consciousness different
identities coexisted. ... If, for example, you left the Soviet Union, and
if you were for example in Germany or France, then you always con-
sidered yourself to be a citizen of the Soviet Union. As Mayakovsky
had said: “Envy me – I am a citizen of the Soviet Union” (zaviduite,
ia – grazhdanin Sovetskogo Soiuza).46 And when you were in Moscow,
you would usually see yourself as Kirghiz, because your home was
still Kyrgyzstan.47
According to Asankanov, the relative importance of the Kyrgyz and
all-Soviet identities depended on the circumstances and specifically on
45
Interview with M. Zholdosup (b. 1960). Bishkek, 22.9.2010. TP 4.
46
English translation: Vladimir Mayakovsky. Selected Poems / Transl. James H. Mc-
Gavran III. Evanston, 2013. P. 145.
47
Interview with Abylabek Asankanov (b. 1954). Bishkek, October 27, 2010. TP 3.
162
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
one’s location. Ėdilbek Sarybaev, a former screenwriter, highlighted the
other aspect of this spatial dimension of Sovietness, namely, its global-
izing effect. He recalls how he used to have friends from all corners of the
Soviet Union: in the Baltics, Russian Federation, Ukraine, “everywhere.”
To him, this seems remarkable in comparison to the present, when such
supranational communication (obshchenie) has ceased to exist.48 Mar
Baidzhiev, a bilingual author from Frunze, had a more multifaceted view
of what people’s friendship entailed. Back in 1968, at a meeting at the
writer’s union he argued:
I consider myself a member of a younger or middle generation of
writers who do not only drink cognac and koumiss [fermented mare’s
milk] on the same evening, but also sometimes drink cognac and eat
bacon. ... I often meet with friends in Moscow and not only with Rus-
sians but also with Georgians or Armenians. We all have common
problems, common issues, which we want to discuss. I do not only
want to describe how the Kyrgyz people build communism and how
they peacefully reach communism. Others write about such topics, but
I want to deal with other problems that affect all of us. This is why I
have written my piece as it is, even if it would have been easier to cling
to something of my “own,” to some “national factors.” I could have
written my story in such a way that the girl is purely Kyrgyz ... and my
heroes could think in a purely Kyrgyz way. ... However, I wanted to
choose a different direction to discuss with a wider circle of readers.49
For Baidzhiev Soviet identity was presentist: being Soviet was about
belonging to an entirely new globalized community that transcended one’s
individual national roots. Within this community of Soviet people, interethnic
interaction, including personal friendship, was an everyday reality. Baid-
zhiev’s quote is also of interest in another sense. He mentions the expectation
that he was supposed to write and act like a Kyrgyz because – according
to others – he was Kyrgyz, and his critics also wanted him to act like a
Kyrgyz. Baidzhiev, however, disagreed with any restricted and normative
understanding of his Kyrgyzness. Insisting on his right to act like a Soviet
citizen, he revealed a new understanding of what it meant to be a Soviet:
sharing a common culture while translating vernacular experiences into it
(of Kyrgyzs, Georgians, or Armenians).
48
Interview with Ėdilbek Sarybaev (b. 1951). Bishkek, November 30, 2010. TP 4-5.
49
Stenogramma ob”edinennogo zasedaniia sovetov po dramaturgii po kirgizskoi litera-
ture, January 26, 1968 // Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). F. 631.
Op. 42. D. 501. L. 101–102.
163
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
Thus, the Soviet notion of peoples’ friendship could mean different things
to different interviewees. It could be openness to embracing and even cel-
ebrating ethnic differences of each other, or making a connection between
like-minded members of the supranational common culture of modernity.
Either way, this intercommunal cooperation was not restricted to the sphere
of “high culture” and the milieu of social elites. It could also be based on a
common knowledge of basic social practices (such as the ritual of toasting)
or a taste for the multicultural or just a random mix of foods and drinks
(cognac, koumiss, and bacon in the quote above). The scope of shared
experiences might include a common list of favorite films, books, radio
broadcasts, or tourist destinations. These elements belonged to the domain
of the all-Union public sphere from the very beginning or could be recent
imports from vernacular cultures, such as koumiss mentioned by Baidzhiev
(a drink popular among the steppe herdsmen, including the Kyrgyz).
The readiness to embrace someone’s ethnoconfessional otherness within
the “peoples’ friendship” paradigm implied the persistence of ethnic stereo-
types and propensity to ethnic profiling, even if with good intentions. The
content of such stereotypes could vary. Often, they were related to imag-
ined traditions, such as when the Kyrgyz were depicted as cattle herders,
the freedom-loving but backward nomads drinking fermented mare’s milk
or celebrating lavish life-cycle events.50 Other stereotypes were products
of recent political campaigns. My interviews revealed stable stereotypes
about former deportees, such as the Chechen, Ingush, or Koreans, who were
sometimes depicted as “defiant,” “wild” (culturally backward), and also
“unpatriotic” and thus “unintegrated.”51 Once accepted, the mental habit of
ethnic profiling could not be limited to social and cultural outsiders and was
directed with equal ease to members of the cultural elite itself. Despite their
neat integration into the ranks of Frunze elites, Jews also faced stereotyping
and discrimination. Rebecca Manley and Zeev Levin have shown how anti-
50
On such stereotypes also see: Moritz Florin. Faites tomber les murs! La politique
civilatrice de l’ère Brežnev dans les villages kirghiz // Cahiers du monde russe. 2013.
Vol. 54. No. 1-2. Pp. 187–211.
51
On the stigmatization of deported peoples see Aurélie Campana. Les Tchétchènes
et Ingouches, entre résilience et résistances passives, 1956–1991 // Aurélie Campana,
Grégorie Dufaud and Sophie Tournon (Eds.). Les Déportations en heritage. Les peuples
réprimés du Caucase et de Crimée hier et aujourd’hui. Rennes, 2009. Pp. 97–116. On
interethnic relations in Central Asia after the rehabilitation: Michaela Pohl. The “Planet
of One Hundred Languages”. Ethnic Relations and Soviet Identity in the Virgin Lands //
Nicholas B. Breyfogle (Ed.). Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization
in Eurasian History. New York, 2007. Pp. 238–262.
164
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
Semitic stereotypes arrived in Central Asia including the Kyrgyz Republic
with evacuees and demobilized soldiers during the war. Jews were accused
of hiding in the rear, of cowardice and a lack of patriotism.52
It is impossible to measure how widespread such stereotypes were in
the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, but judging by the frequency with
which they are evoked in memoirs and interviews, they were quite popular.
The habit of ethnicizing reality even in situations unrelated to any cultural
specificity was revealed most vividly in connection with a scandal that
shook the republic in 1961. As part of the all-Union assault on illegal entre-
preneurship, the KGB identified a group of “speculators” in Frunze. These
“trikotazhniki” used scraps from state factories to produce and illegally sell
their own merchandise. Out of the twenty-one textile workers sentenced
to death by a Soviet court, nine were Jewish.53 Although the press did not
emphasize the ethnicity of the convicts, the KGB and the court internally
labeled it the “Goldman” or “Jewish” case.54 It is unclear, whether party
officials including Nikita Khrushchev himself were actively exploiting the
stereotypes about the Jewish propensity to making shady commercial deals,
and why so many of the trikotazhniki sentenced to the capital punishment
were Jews. The campaign was thus directed against the practices that had
been widespread and legal just several years earlier within the developed
economic sector of Soviet cooperative enterprises (artels) that employed
1.2 million workers.55 After nationalization of the artels in 1960,56 those
continuing their entrepreneurial activities (including recycling scraps from
state industries57) were unequivocally branded as “speculators” showing
remnants of “capitalist consciousness,” regardless of nationality.58 Neverthe-

52
Rebecca Manley. To the Tashkent Station. Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union
at War. Ithaca, 2009. Pp. 196–238; Zeev Levin. Antisemitism and the Jewish Refugees
in Soviet Kirgizia 1942. Introduced and Annoted by Zeev Levin // Jews in Russia and
Eastern Europe. 2003. Vol. 1. Pp. 191–213.
53
Evgeniia Evel’son. Sudebnye protsessy po ekonomicheskim delam v SSSR. Shestide-
siatye gody. London, 1986. P. 345.
54
Chinara Zhakypova. Konfiskatsiia zhizni. Bishkek, 1999. P. 142.
55
Ivan Bondarev. Razvitie legkoi industrii SSSR (1959–1972). Moscow, 1974. P. 31.
56
The joint decree of the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers no.
474 from April 14, 1956, “On Reorganization of Producing Cooperatives” mandated the
complete liquidation of artels by the end of 1960. See Codex Database // http://docs.
cntd.ru/document/901704896.
57
Bondarev. Razvitie legkoi industrii SSSR (1959–1972). P. 376.
58
Marianna Zhevakina. Das System der Schattenwirtschaft und die staatlichen Gegen-
maßnahmen in der UdSSR unter Chruščev / Unpubl. thesis. Hamburg, 2012. Pp. 24–76.
165
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
less, judging by oral history interviews collected by Chinara Zhakypova,
it was common knowledge in Frunze that many of the convicted “specula-
tors” were Jewish. Furthermore, rumors quickly spread about the gold that
they allegedly hid in their backyards. Contrary to the official propaganda
that presented private commerce as a relic of the prerevolutionary era, the
Jewish “speculators” were perceived as a very modern phenomenon. This
could be explained by their profound “foreignness” and inability to adapt to
the “realities of Soviet life.” According to one of Zhakypova’s interviewees:
The trikotazhniki came from the West, and the psychology of the
Westerners was different from ours. … Western Jews had a special
relationship with Soviet Jews and with Soviet reality. They said that
Soviet reality was confined to a way of life, where the husband comes
home only to find out that his wife has already left for the second shift.
And they always underlined that we were only happy because we did
not know how bad our lives were. ... In other words, there were western
Jews and there were Soviet people, who were called Jews.59
To this interviewer, belonging to the Soviet community was defined
by common upbringing and “psychology.” Accordingly, the anti-Soviet
person must have been literally foreign. The trikotazhniki were perceived
as alien to the historic community of modern Soviet citizens forged by the
Russian Revolution and World War II. They were seen as unable to adapt
to Soviet cultural norms and habits, while their own history of persecution
and victimization was not represented in heroic narratives of Soviet history.
The ethnicization of the trikotazhniki trial and perpetuation of a certain
stereotype about Jews was prompted by the shock experienced by the local
society. Jews were a tiny minority among the nearly 150 people arrested in
connection with this case. Simultaneously, some 70 people were prosecuted
in two separate trials in Frunze: of the republican’s prosecutor’ office (proku-
ratura) and the police. Among those sentenced to death and executed were
the head of the republican State Planning Committee (Gosplan) and the head
of the Investigative Department of the Prosecutor’s Office, a Kyrgyz and a
Russian. The first secretary of the republic’s Communist Party, Iskhak Raz-
zakov, was fired and demoted to a position as a clerk in Moscow.60 This was
a devastating blow to the relatively compact political elite of Kyrgyzstan,
unprecedented in scale since the infamous “Leningrad Affair” in the late

59
Zhakypova. Konfiskatsiia. P. 98.
60
Karpek Kurmanov. Ispoved’ iurista: Avtobiograficheskii ocherk. Bishkek, 2017. Pp.
61–86.
166
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
1940s. By singling out the Jewish victims of this massive, politically moti-
vated purge, Kyrgyz public opinion attempted to reconcile its own identity as
Soviets and the inevitable “foreignness” of hundreds of their fellow citizens
sentenced for alleged anti-Soviet behavior. It was easier to think of them
as Jews, fostering negative ethnic stereotypes, than as Kyrgyz or Russians.
An example of more purposeful operationalization of Jewish ethnic pro-
filing can be found in the following story from 1966. The Kyrgyz Central
Committee tried to ban a documentary on the history of the Kyrgyz Republic
because it supposedly “denigrated” the Kyrgyz people, presenting them as
backward cattle herders. The problem was that the hour-long film produced
for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution was hailed by critics
and authorities in Moscow for its “realistic depiction” of the past. They fully
embraced as legitimately Soviet the film’s narrative of European newcomers
spreading the revolution to Central Asia and moving Kyrgyz society toward
socialism. Turdakun Usubaliev, appointed Kyrgyz first secretary after the
purges of 1961, found that the only way to compromise this version of the
“peoples’ friendship” was to point out the film’s anti-Soviet character. The
Kyrgyz were presented in the film with sympathy and through popular ethnic
stereotypes, so Usubaliev identified non-Soviet otherness in the figure of the
film’s director, the Jew Iuz Gershtein. Usubaliev claimed that Gershtein had
overemphasized the role of “Jews” in the Sovietization of the Kyrgyz – such
as the former first party secretary Moris Belotskii.61 Neither Belotskii nor
Gershtein had anything to do with Judaism or Zionism (which could be seen
as politically subversive by the authorities), and Jewishness was not a crime.
In his memoirs, Gershtein recalled that he considered himself to be more
Soviet than Jewish.62 Nevertheless, in the dominant model of the friendship
of the peoples, Jews symbolized problematic Sovietness. Unable to openly
challenge the exaggerated role of Russians (Europeans) in the film, Usub-
aliev recoded his criticism in the more acceptable anti-Semitic invective.
To be sure, the Gershtein case does not prove a persistent pattern of dis-
crimination against Jews in the Kyrgyz Republic. Nevertheless, this story
highlights a specific understanding of what it meant to be Soviet and how

61
The story appears in various memoirs: Nadezhda N. Krupp. Lestnitsa. Vol. 4. Chapter
3: Moi VGIK // http://lit.lib.ru/k/krupp_n_n/text_0150.shtml; Iuz Gershtein. Oskolok
imperii. Vol. 2. Pp. 250–259. Turdakun Usubaliev’s memoirs contain a whole chapter
aiming to refute all charges of anti-Semitism in this context: Turdakun U. Usubaliev.
Ėpocha, sozidanie, sud’by. Bischkek, 1995. Pp. 293–314. For a more thorough analysis
of this case, see Florin. What Is Russia to Us. Pp. 185–186.
62
Gershtein. Oskolok imperii. Vol. 2. P. 97.
167
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
one’s Sovietness could be challenged. While Gershtein believed that he was
Soviet because he shared the modernist and emancipatory ideals of socialism,
others could refer to Soviet patriotism to argue that his film was somehow
unpatriotic. Anti-Semitism was not an officially recognized strategy, but in
the ethnicized social thinking of the “peoples’ friendship” paradigm, it was
used as a marker of questionable patriotism, insufficient rootedness, cos-
mopolitanism, or excessive internationalism, thereby perpetuating dividing
lines that continue to show up in memoirs and interviews.

* * *
Of course, the trope of the peoples’ friendship did not exhaust the mul-
tilayered system of social identification and communication in the postwar
Soviet Union. It was shaped by the state’s policies and ideologies as well as
by socioeconomic differences, cultural stereotypes, customs, and practices
that had deep historic roots. There were also significant regional variations
and temporal dynamics. However, these were universal factors at work in
any society, whereas the dialectic of social inclusion and exclusion through
the recognition of ethnocultural particularity in the peoples’ friendship model
was a distinctively Soviet phenomenon.
In the Soviet Union, people were highly constrained in their choice of
ethnic belonging, but the practical meaning of similarly rigid ethnic identities
and differences was contextual. It depended on specific social interactions
and situations as well as on the understanding of what it meant to be Soviet.
Judging by the oral history narratives, in the Kyrgyz capital, political and
cultural elites (writers, journalists, and filmmakers) actively participated in
reshaping, trespassing, and reproducing intergroup boundaries. The official
ideology and narratives were aimed at deflecting interethnic conflicts by
promoting positive images of ethnocultural groups tailored to correspond to
the Soviet canon. This policy perpetuated national stereotypes and intergroup
boundaries, and also relativized the understanding of normative Sovietness.
Individuals or ethnic groups could be perfectly “modern,” “civilized,” and
loyal to the Soviet project, and still be discriminated against because of
perceived “disloyalty,”, “treachery,” “rootlessness,” or “cosmopolitanism”
of the ethnic groups they were associated with. Likewise, Soviet citizens
could be “backward,” “uneducated,” and in this sense unassimilated, but
still considered patriotic, and thus well-integrated. This dualism may help
to explain why my interviewees so often emphasized their complete Soviet-
ness in the past, which faded away only when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Being Soviet could mean very different things, as the seemingly normative
168
 Ab Imperio, 4/2018
concept was capable of accommodating a broad variety of individual and
collective (cultural) scenarios.
The trope of friendship of peoples was one of the key mechanisms em-
ployed to coordinate this diversity and accommodate it into the common
Soviet society. This trope was also instrumental in setting the limits of Sovi-
etness itself, whenever it encountered difficulties with a group’s integration
through one of the two main strategies: the discourse of assimilation into
Soviet (Russianized) modernity or the salvaging of vernacular cultural tradi-
tions for the declared goal of their subsequent adaptation to Soviet society.
This mechanism of coordinating diversity into a single social and political
space could function more or less efficiently only under the ideological Soviet
regime. De-Sovietization removed the key component of the “friendship of
peoples” model, leaving many people, even those indifferent to or skeptical
of communism in the past, nostalgic for the Soviet period in the face of the
unchecked forces of sectarian nationalisms.

SUMMARY

The article analyzes ideas and concepts of belonging among cultural and
political elites in the capital of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Frunze (now Bishkek)
as a late Soviet multiethnic city. The author argues that local elites availed
themselves of various concepts of being Soviet in order to redefine their
social position within a highly differentiated social and ethnic environment.
Even if these elites identified themselves with the Soviet project, they could
refer to a range of different, sometimes mutually exclusive ideologies and
notions of citizenship. In this sense, they not only belonged to diverse urban
milieus but also were Soviet in many different ways.

Резюме

В статье исследуются идеи и представления культурных и поли-

тических элит столицы советской Киргизии – Фрунзе (современного
Бишкека), как позднесоветского многонационального города. Автор
показывает, как местные элиты примеряли к себе различные версии
советскости, стремясь переопределить свой статус внутри крайне
разнообразного в социальном и этническом отношении городского
общества. Ассоциируясь с советским проектом в целом, эти элиты
могли выбирать из общего репертуара различных, подчас взаимопро-
169
Moritz Florin, The Many Ways of Being Soviet
тиворечащих идеологий и концепций гражданства. В этом смысле они
не только принадлежали к разным стратам городского общества, но и
воплощали разные версии советскости.

170