Customer Reviews

The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia

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The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia corrects a serious error in Western scholarship about the formation of the Soviet republics. Previous works have reduced the process to simply a "fabrication of nations" (Roy 2007:vii--originally written in 2001). This included the assertion that the history of the nations in question was also fabricated by Soviet historians and ethnographers. While there were certainly instances of just such fabrication, the full story is more complex, and local elites had more to do with the creation of "nations" and republics (or Autonomous Oblasts or ASSR, as the case may be) than has previously been recognized in the West. Haugen's thorough research of the archives of the Central Asian Bureau of the Russian (and later All-Union) Communist Party's Central Committee conclusively demonstrates the role of local elites in the process.
There is one significant omission in this book, namely the 1922 attempt by Kyrgyz leaders to create an autonomous oblast for the Kyrgyz. Given the limitations of Haugen's sources (centralized Soviet records), it is not surprising that this event passed unnoticed by him. It both supports and challenges his thesis: it supports in that it is clear evidence of an attempt by local elites to take initiative in the formation of national entities in Central Asia; it challenges it in that this local attempt was quashed by higher authorities, and when the same authorities decided in 1924 to create a Kyrgyz oblast, they declared that in 1922 the conditions had not been suitable. Even with this omission, Haugen's work stands as a significant contribution, so I still give it four stars.
Haugen's work is important because it will help to bring Western scholarship more in line with the views of local scholars in the former Soviet republics.
Finally, The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia is well organized, clearly written and pleasant to read.