Central Asian Ethnicity Compared: Evaluating the Contemporary Social Salience of Uzbek Identity in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
In this article, I utilise a contextual understanding of ethnicity and unique data to demonstrate that the ethnic Uzbek identity category is both widely available and frequently a useful means of making sense of the world in both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. While Uzbek ethnicity is generally salient in both states, the context in which it becomes so varies across space. In particular, there are significant urban–rural distinctions that affect when Uzbek ethnicity is utilised to interpret the world. In addition, compared to others, rural Tajikistani Uzbeks perceive that the boundary between Uzbeks and the titular groups is particularly permeable.
Identity, Symbolism, and the Politics of Language in Central Asia
THIS ARTICLE IS DEVOTED TO THE SYMBOLIC ASPECTS OF language and power in the four Turkic-speaking republics of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Much of the discussion will analyse what I will refer to as ‘reference points’ of identity represented in language. These include ‘Islam’, ‘Turkicness’, ‘Persian culture’, ‘nationality’, and two ‘international’ reference points—‘world international’ and ‘Soviet international’. In the very first years after the Bolshevik Revolution, ‘international’ referred to parts of the world beyond the former Russian Empire, especially the industrial states of Western Europe. In the 1930s, however, ‘international’ came to mean the USSR, and in particular, Russia. In the post-Soviet world, ‘international’ is once again acquiring a much broader and more global meaning. Following a brief discussion of these reference points, the essay will illustrate some of the ways in which they were embodied in Soviet language policy and language change during the Soviet era, especially the early years. This is critical background to understanding the manipulation of language since the late 1980s, the topic of the remainder of the essay. This essay will examine only a few of the most easily studied domains of language use, primarily education, mass media and government records. The analysis below will be limited to questions of alphabet, orthography, vocabulary and language status. It is critical to keep in mind that the Central Asian republics were themselves created by Soviet power. None of them existed as distinct entities until the 1920s. Likewise, the Communist Party supervised the creation of the nationalities that were associated with the established republics, as well as the standardised languages assigned to the republics and their titular inhabitants. This was a natural product of the Soviet approach to nationality issues which linked territory, population and language. The widespread popular belief in this link was an important element in Soviet policy, but it is arguably even more important as the underpinning for language policies in all postSoviet states, including those in Central Asia. The development of literary norms for Central Asian Turkic languages in the early years was far from smooth. Rather open debates about the languages continued until the end of the 1920s, and in some cases even into the early 1930s. In these years many of the voices that expressed conflicting views about language came from within Central Asia. From the mid-1930s onward, however, it was Moscow, with a very heavy hand, that determined language policy. This has important implications for the analysis EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Vol. 61, No. 7, September 2009, 1207–1228
The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World
The transition from communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy. Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the twenty-eight new states have abandoned communism, but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies. The remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated "transitional regimes." This article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule. In endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization, this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien régime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes. Situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule. In countries with asymmetrical balances of power, the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful. In countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage, democracy emerged. Conversely, in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage, dictatorship emerged. In between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal. Rather than producing stalemate, compromise, and pacted transitions to democracy, however, such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers. The regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated, unstable, partial democracies.