A selected, annotated bibliography on

Issues of Ethnonational Identity in Central Asia

(This list will be updated in the future with several more articles from western sources)

Akiner, Shirin, 1995, The Formation of Kazakh Identity: From Tribe to Nation-State, The Royal Institute of International Affairs. (105 pp)

Akiner addresses her study in the introduction and conclusion directly to the issues of ethnic harmony / tension and ethnonational rights in Kazakhstan. She takes a historical approach which gives good overview, but essentially takes the position that there was no idea of political 'nationhood' in the pre-Soviet period for the Kazakhs, therefore the modern idea of 'Kazakh nationhood' is a Soviet "creation." Akiner does not explicitely state the implications of her treatment, but essentially she takes a 'Western Modernist' perspective and ultimately undermines the claims of Kazakhs to preeminate ethnocultural, language and land rights in Kazakhstan. She thereby attempts to add political pressure to the Kazakh government to move toward pluralistic ideas of Western democratic nation-statehood.

Armstrong, John, 1982, Nations Before Nationalism, Chapel Hill, NC: University of NC Press. (123 pp)

Connor, Walker, 1983, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (589 pp – 122 pp = 467 pp)

Connor offers a thorough treatment of his subject, starting with a look at original Marxist ideals of 'nation' and 'nationality' (which were predominantly negative for Marx because of his association of 'nationhood' with Western capitalist democracy) and traces their modified development in the ultimately pragmatic and exploitative ideals and practices of Lenin and Stalin in the early Soviet era. These ideals were founded upon "the right of self-determination of nationhood" and summed up in the phrase "national in form, socialist in content" (202), which meant that "the keystone of Leninist national policy has been... a plenary distinction between form and substance" (206). He builds from this base to discuss historically the outworking of this ideal in the "Soviet proto-type" as well as five other communist states, namely China, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovokia, Rumania and Vietnam. Essentially Lenin, Stalin and company exploited ethnonational identity and the independence movements arising in the face of de-colonization which were based in those identities in order to win allegiance from various national groups for the Bolshevik cause. However, after gaining their allegiance and stabilizing the Soviet empire (by 1929), they never followed through on their promise to grant complete independence to the nations who joined their cause on the basis of that promise, stringing them out for nearly 60 years in a continual tug-of-war and ongoing tension between affirming and making minimal contributions to their ethnonational aspirations for independent nationhood while continuing to seek the integration of the those selfsame nations into the one new 'Soviet man' and its empire, which was predominantly Russian-based, just as the previous Tsarist empire had been. The entire vision was self-contradictory from the start and wound up strengthening the ethnonational identities of the various peoples by arranging the entire Empire according to those identities. The national aspirations never died out and Connor predicted in this 1984 work that the Soviet Union would eventually collapse because of the ongoing and increasing energy of the ethnonational movements within the Soviet Union.

Conquest, Robert, 1991, Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York: Penguin Books.

DeLorme, R. Stuart, 1999, Mother Tongue, Mother's Touch: Kazakhstan Government and School Construction of Identity and Language Planning Metaphors. (PhD dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania) Ann Arbor, MI: UMI. (220 pp)

DeLorme contributes a very important overview here of the drafting process of the Kazakhstan State constitution in chapter 2. He goes on from there to discuss in ch. 3 the actual drafting and essence of the Kazakh State language law in regard to the status of Kazakh versus Russian. He then uses this as the base upon and against which he evaluates the results of his field work in which he examines how the language law is applied in the case of one particular Kazakh school in a small town which was founded in response to that law. He offers interviews with teachers and students of their perceptions, emphases and efforts to make the school successful. He includes evaluations of how the Kazakh school developed and interacted with the longer-standing Russian school of the community as well as how it modified its original ideals in light of the practical linguistic realities of long years of colonial domination with its deep roots of Russian among even the Kazakh population. He attempts to offer suggestions for how to achieve ethnic harmony and mutual respect for both groups and their languages amidst the pains of the newly forming Kazakh nation.

Gilbert, Steven, 1999, The Kazakhs Under Stalinism. (Unpublished paper). (47 pp)

Gladney, Dru C., 1991, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic. London / Cambridge, MA: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies. (337 pp)

Golden, Peter B., 1992, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz (483 pp; Otto Harrassowitz, Taunusstrasse 5, D-65174 Wiesbaden, GERMANY).

Hunter, Shireen T., "Nationalist Movements In Soviet Asia." In Current History, Oct., 1990, pp. 325‑339.

Khalid, Adeeb. "Representations of Russia in Central Asian Jadid Discourse." In Brower, Daniel R. and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds., 1997, Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917, Indiana University Press. (pp 188-202)

Khalid, as the title indicates, discusses various social, historical, religious and political factors which affected the perception of Russians and the Russian State as held by the 'Jadidist (i.e. modernist) Islamic reformers of Central Asia who drew from Western modernist ideas of national rights and Islamic heritage to supplement their ethnonational identity and fortify their distinction between and resistence of Russian colonialism.

Erturk, Korkut A., ed., 1999, Rethinking Central Asia: Non‑Eurocentric Studies in History, Social Structure and Identity. NY: Ithaca Press.

Kozibaev, Manash K., 2001, Ult zhane Orkeniet [Ethnicity and Development / Modernization], Almaty: Sozdik-Slovar. (367 pp)

Gunbaev offers a compilation of articles drawn mainly from the national political newspapers of Kazakhstan in the last decade, especially 1997 onward, which address issues of ethnicity and the development of the Kazakh nation. Discussions of ethnic rights and the relation of ethnic groups, especially the Kazakhs to Kazakhstan, as well as discussion issues of economic development (and ethnicity) in the post-communist era, are central.

Lenin, V.I., 1956, The National and National-Colonial Question, Moscow.

Murphy‑O'Connor, Jerome. "Nationalism and Church Policy: Reflections on Gal 2,1‑14." In Communion et reunion, p. 283‑291. (9 pp)

Naby, Eden. “Ethnicity and Islam in Central Asia.” Central Asian Survey 12 (1993) : 151-67.

Nahaylo, Bohdan and Victor Swoboda, 1989, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR. New York: The Free Press.

Naumkin, Vitaly V., ed., 1994, Central Asia and Transcaucasia: Ethnicity and Conflict, Westport, CT / London: Greenwood Press. (220 pp)

Rakowska‑Harmstone, Teresa, 1970, Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia. John Hopkins.

Roy, Olivier, 2000, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, New York University Press. (220 pp)

Sapargaliev, G., 1957, The Soviet State in the Struggle for the Development of Socialist Culture in Kazakhstan, Alma-ata, Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, Philosophy and Law Section.

Simon, Gerhard, 1991, Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society, transl. by Karen Forester and Oswald Forester, Boulder / San Francisco / Oxford: Westview Press. (369 pp + 50 pp of stat. tables)

Slezkine, Yuri. " Naturalists versus Nations: Eighteenth-Century Russian Scholars Confront Ethnic Diversity." In Brower, Daniel R. and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds., 1997, Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917, Indiana University Press. (pp 27-57)

Slezkine gives us a highly technical, social-scientific analysis of how Russian scholars, primarily Orthodox Christian missionaries, with the help of German ethnographers called in by Peter the Great, reasoned about and handled the new and increasing dynamics ethnic diversity in the Russian Empire as the Church moved with the State in expanding and establishing the mpire. The articles are highly Western modernist in outlook and, thus, critical of the 'Biblical-Christian' approach and paradigm on ethnography employed by the Russians (and Germans). Slezkine is attempting to undermine contemporary claims of historically-rooted nationhood for many of the non-Russian peoples / nations, implying that their (ethno)national identity is a product, not of organic historical identity, but Russian (and German) romantic ethnography. Nonetheless, highly insightful and useful for working through (ethno)national identity issues in historical perspective.

Smith, Graham, 1990, "Nationalities Policy from Lenin to Gorbachev." In idem., ed., 1990, The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union, Harlow: Longman. (20 pp)

Soucek, Svat, 2000, A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (320 pp)

Soucek treats the larger comparative context of 'Inner Asia', primarily the Soviet Central Asian nations with northwestern China and Mongolia. He reaches back to the beginnings of CA Steppe history and covers the various tribes and cultures and dynamic development of the region. It is very helpful, relevant, well-done and up-to-date, with a refreshing approach that respects the titular nations and peoples and their policies of nationhood in the midst of struggle in the modern era.

Stalin, Joseph V., 1952, "The National Question and Leninism" and "Marxism and the National Question." In Works, vol. II, Moscow.

Svanberg, Ingvar. 1990. "Kazakhs." In Graham Smith, ed., 1990, The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union, Harlow: Longman. (11 pp)

Taimanov, G.T., 1956, The Development of Soviet Political Organization in Kazakhstan, Moscow.

Tsamerian, Ivan Petrovich and S.L. Ronan, 1962, Equality of Rights Between Races and Nationalities in the USSR. The Netherlands: UNESCO. (103 pp)

Tsamerian and Ronan are Russian scholars of the 1960s who attempt to provide a demonstration of how Soviet ideals and practice has essentially "solved the national question" and created a world of ethnic-national harmony and 'communal' cooperative interaction between all races and peoples of the Union, based upon the principles of communism which Lenin (and Stalin) set forth regarding 'national policy'. The book is a very interesting read in light of Walker Connor (above).

Zhang, Yongjin and Rouben Azizian, eds., 1998, Ethnic Challenges Beyond Borders: Chinese and Russian Perspectives of the Central Asian Conundrum. Oxford: St. Anthony's College. (233 pp)

A unique collection of essays drawn from political scientists, most of whom are engaged in policy making

in Russia and China, and translated from the original Russian and Chinese into English for publication.

The editors note the fact that most studies of Central Asia today almost entirely ignore the significance of

Chinese and Russian policies toward the region. The writers of the articles ultimately provide those

perspectives, albeit from a typical pro-communist / colonialist view which aims to undermine the claims of

the various ethnic groups who form the core of the nations to their rights of nationhood. The solutions,

therefore, encourage pluralism which ultimately aids the Russian citizens in increasing their political power.

Smith, Anthony D., 1973, "Nationalism and Religion: The Role of Religious Reform in the Genesis of Arab and Jewish Nationalism." In Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 18 no 35 (1973), p. 23-43. (21 pp)

Verkuyl, Johannes, 1973, Break Down the Walls: A Christian Cry for Racial Justice (ed. and transl. by Lewis B. Smedes from original Dutch edition, Breek de muren af! Om gerechtigheid in de rassenverhoudingen, 1971, Baarn, The Netherlands: Bosch & Keuning n.v.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. (165 pp)

Verkuyl passionately sets out to provide a Biblical basis for 'Racial Justice', with Ephesians 2:14, 17 as his

theme passage of Scripture. His primary focus and application is the apartheid struggle of South Africa.

He provides a Biblical foundation and discussion of racial issues, including racial origins, in the first

section of the work, moving in the second to a discussion and application of his insights in the second

section to the racial problems (still) plaguing South Africa in apartheid. His cry is for an end to apartheid

based upon a vision of multi-ethnic unity in the Church. The work is highly useful, in combination with

Waliggo (just below), for understanding how Christianity in South Africa has contributed to establishing

ideals of multi-ethnic democracy there.

"Approaches to the Study of Soviet Ethnic Conflict." In the Journal of Ethnic Studies, 19.4 (Win 1992), pp 113-6. (4 pp)

A brief article providing helpful discussion of various perspectives involved in the study of 'Soviet Ethnic Conflict'.

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