>Background #4: National Delimitation

The national-territorial delimitation (which is a rather academic description; name it demarcation of borders if you like) of the southern tier of the Soviet Union was a major watershed in Central Asian history. Between 1924 and 1936, today's five states of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan) were brought into being and gained constituent status as ASSRs (Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republics) within the Soviet Union.

The Soviet nationalities dogma: "One ethnic group - one territory" turned out to be difficult to apply; ethnic boundaries were ‘not always clearcut and in many places mostly indeterminable'. Sadly, this is where the observation of many contemporary authors ends. They then go on to interpret that the whole idea behind the 'creation of nations' was to create ‘artificial divisions’ in order to ‘quell unrest’. It is worth quoting at length a typical argumentation on this point:

At the beginning of the Soviet era, residents of Central Asia did not readily identify themselves as belonging to an ethnic group eponymous with these republics, nor could they readily discern by language to which group one should belong. A continuum of closely related languages (including a norm of multi-lingualism) and a diversity of primary associational loyalties (to city, to religion, to ethnic group, to tribe, etc.) made delineation of the region a largely arbitrary undertaking (from: Sievers, Eric W.: The Post-Soviet Decline of Central Asia: Sustainable development and comprehensive capital).

Many Cold-War-dated dogmas have attained somewhat 'common sense status' and remain relatively unchallenged in their appropriate academic hemisphere. However, by only briefly linking deeply-rooted problems like ethnic tensions in Central Asia with the 'arbitrary undertaking' of national delimitation, many popular scholars seem to surrender their analyses to a far too simplistic version of the truth. In a quite dangerous way, this leads to a flawed perception of recent developments in the region:

Most of the [Central Asian] republics were created by Joseph Stalin, who paid no attention to each area’s population mix – a legacy that continues to fuel conflict between the many ethnic groups of the region.

But is it really necessary to argue against these conceptions? Well, in a way it might all sound like theoretical acrobatics. However, with a closer look at the events taking place in the early days after the October Revolution, it becomes clear that this mainstream line of debate virtually takes away the attention from underlying causes of political instability in this volatile region today. National delimitation acts as a key-reason for potential conflict in the region, especially in 'ethnological' hotspots like the Ferghana Valley. Therefore, it is necessary to tackle these reflections of typical (and outdated!) Cold-War thinking, in which Joseph Stalin himself was equated with all terrible things that happened in the Soviet Union. Sometimes, the truth is rather multi-layered. Here are some starters:

Was the territorial reorganisation necessary?

To evaluate the imperatives for national delimitation, it is essential to immerse oneself in the Communist Party structure of the early 1920s. The civil just won, an obvious problem in treating the Middle Asian region turned imminent: As the Bolsheviks inherited the old Tzarist borders and administrational divisions, their shortcomings became too visible: Demarcations based on military, political and strategic considerations. They overrode the existing ethnographic divisions and cut across areas of homogenous ethnicity. It prove tremendously difficult to apply sound and even economic, judicial and educational policies. Many spoken languages and different cultures in one adminstrational unit (like the 1919-proclaimed Turkestan ASSR) led to considerable chaos among the new leadership.

In the early 1920s, ethnic clashes between Kazakhs and Turkmen raiders broke out in the Khorezm ASSR (the former khanate of Khiva). Central Asian dwellers did not live together in total harmony as it is often claimed. These upsurges of violence could have foreshadowed an even more 'unplacid' society if the southern territories were left unaltered.

Pan-Turkic/Islamic threat

Of course there were strategic considerations for the accelerated process of border demarcation. In the early 1920s, Kemal Atatürk succeeded in bringing about the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. After all, as most of all Central Asian ethnicities are of Turkic origin some intellectuals felt that the only act of border drawing should be uniting all Turks of Central Asia under one territory rather than disuniting them by creating several units. Nevertheless, this has never been of an imminent threat to Moscow, though it might have been perceived as such. Ryskulov and other Jadids (Muslim reformers) could never convince a necessary majority of their ideas when the idea of Moscow's delimitation plans became apparent. Moscow did not simply overrule the strive for unification of all Turks (or all Muslims as some other figures intended to). There were more obvious symptoms of rivalry between the national groups: Chicherin, a very prominent Bolshevik figure and the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR between 1923 and 1930 wrote in a letter to 'Comrade Stalin' that ‘[i]t is becoming clear that the main initiators of the national delimitation — the Uzbek commercial bourgeois — hope to get rid of poor areas and create a large cotton-producing region, which would provide them with commercial opportunities.’

The Basmachi uprising

Another perception of a threat for Moscow was the Basmachi uprising. Here we are at one of the main arguments for contemporary authors to point at the arbitrary character of the national delimitation process: ‘Whilst the Basmachi revolts were still simmering across Central Asia, Stalin decided that the best way to quell unrest was to isolate the rebels. He consequently redrew the map of Turkestan, dividing the region into five socialist republics and demarcating the borders not along geographical or ethnic lines but in ways that seemed likeliest to suppress dissent’ (Rashid, 2002: p.36). However, the fight against the Basmachi revolt was never the reason for the national delimitation. The main battles over them were already won in 1922, although some remaining insurgents continued to attack Soviet authorities from bases in Afghanistan until the early 1930s. They increasingly lacked support from the Central Asian population as the New Economic Policy ‘permitted a rapid recovery in the (…) material situation’ (Allworth, 1994: p.253). Bereft of its popular support, the movement grew weaker without entirely disappearing. ‘After 1923, though, the problem presented by the rebels was resolved in a manner satisfactory enough to allow the Soviet government to begin the work of integrating Central Asia with the Union’ (ibid.). Therefore, the victory over the rebels was more of a precondition to start with the territorial readjustment, which stands in contrast to Rashid, who sees the revolt as the direct cause of the creation of nations.

The Ferghana Valley

The map shows the complex border situation in present-day Ferghana valley. It is clear that the planning of national delimitation proved the most difficult here, as the valley was highly heterogenic and not only inhabited by the major national groups, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz, but also by considerable minorities like Kara-Kalpaks, Tartars and Uighurs. The National Delimitation Commission prepared a paper drafting a border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which led to a heated conflict between the National Commissions of the two states. It seemed as if it neither satisfied the Uzbek nor the Kyrgyz side and the issue remained controversial even after the territorial adjustments were put into practice in October 1924. Most of the disputes were carried out at the expense of minorities. The Kyrgyz Commission seemed to deny ethnic indicators when the Uzbek side was the recipient of disputed areas which were inhabited by minorities (Koichiev, 2002: p.51).
In addition, sizeable Turk populations in the Bulak-Bashi, Markhamat and Kulu volosts (territorial subdivision) became subject to a rather symbolic argument between the two National Commissions. The Uzbek leadership registered them as Uzbeks whereas the Kyrgyz thought them to be rather Kyrgyz: ‘Turks are related to Kyrgyz by their mode of life and have nothing in common with Uzbeks’ (Koichiev, 2002: p.52). Ironically, the census data from 1926 does not show numbers for Turks in the Ferghana oblast anymore. This brief example of the Ferghana Valley can show that local Bolsheviks are responsible for some of contentious border issues. These élites were willing to fight for their case and thereby widening their influence, though it was not always alongside the Soviet ideological principles.

The Tajik experience

The Tajik AO, as created in 1924, was subordinated to the Uzbek SSR. Many traditional Tajik areas were incorporated in the Uzbek SSR, such as the Khujand, Samarkand and Bukhara volosts. The National Commissions which were set up to elaborate the scheme for national delimitation were not equally able to champion for their national cause. The Uzbeks, forming the most sizeable population in Central Asia had also a very influential Commission. What is more, some of those Tajiks who were officially appointed to delimit the Tajik territory were ‘Uzbekified’ – culturally assimilated (Akiner, 2001: p.14). They mainly came from the plains and considered themselves rather being closer to the Uzbeks than to their own people’s mountain-dwellers in the East. This is explained by a ‘unique fusion of Turkic and Iranian cultures’ (ibid.) - the Tajiks occupied ruling posts in the governing bureaucracies of the khanates. Therefore, many of the educated and urbanised Tajiks saw a brighter future for them inside Uzbekistan rather than being cut off from their intellectual and historical links. Furthermore, many Tajiks had been familiar with the Jadids and preferred to think in pan-Islamic terms.
This pro-Uzbek stance of leading Tajiks changed in the mid-1920s, when it became far too obvious that the Uzbek leadership was not interested in respecting the Tajik’s minority rights. Tajik schools and publications were closed and some alleged that the Uzbeks withheld parts of the Tajik budget and used it for their own ends (Akiner, 2001: p.15). This led to an increasing national self-consciousness among the Tajiks and eventually, a new demarcation was worked out and Tajikistan subsequently upgraded to a constituent republic. Nevertheless, a huge bulk of the Tajik population found itself outside the borders of the newly founded SSR. Therefore, many shortcomings of the Tajik nation in terms of its physical boundaries can be traced back to missing engagement by their own supposed advocates.

Conclusion

The question whether the national delimitation can be regarded as a success has been largely discussed. Other examples in the world would rather support a favourable judgement of the Central Asian experience. Africa, which was mainly subdivided during a conference in Berlin in 1885, is not directly comparable but may be the most appalling example of an artificial border demarcation. Entirely ignoring ethnic setup, the borders were drawn to divide the continent between the colonial powers. A look on the map shows the extensive use of a ruler in order to balance each Western power’s influence almost mathematically.

The examples brought forward confirm the difficulties within the process of national delimitation in Central Asia. However, they should make obvious that a comparatively big effort was made to work out quantitative schemes and principles to unite the main indigenous groups within eponymous administrative units (for further points on that, download the complete paper further below). For the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Uzbeks, this division was comparatively satisfactory – ‘as (…) 80-90 percent of these peoples were included within the boundaries of their titular republics’ (Akiner, 2001: p.13). The reasons why the Tajiks did not successfully gain a relatively homogenous republic were described earlier above and relate to problems within the national groups rather than to ‘Stalin’s arbitrariness’.

Posted by Ben at April 27, 2004 07:16 PM