Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan [Paperback]

Adrienne Lynn Edgar (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691127999 | ISBN-13: 978-0691127996 | Publication Date: September 5, 2006

On October 27, 1991, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Hammer and sickle gave way to a flag, a national anthem, and new holidays. Seven decades earlier, Turkmenistan had been a stateless conglomeration of tribes. What brought about this remarkable transformation?

Tribal Nation addresses this question by examining the Soviet effort in the 1920s and 1930s to create a modern, socialist nation in the Central Asian Republic of Turkmenistan. Adrienne Edgar argues that the recent focus on the Soviet state as a "maker of nations" overlooks another vital factor in Turkmen nationhood: the complex interaction between Soviet policies and indigenous notions of identity. In particular, the genealogical ideas that defined premodern Turkmen identity were reshaped by Soviet territorial and linguistic ideas of nationhood. The Soviet desire to construct socialist modernity in Turkmenistan conflicted with Moscow's policy of promoting nationhood, since many Turkmen viewed their "backward customs" as central to Turkmen identity.

Tribal Nation is the first book in any Western language on Soviet Turkmenistan, the first to use both archival and indigenous-language sources to analyze Soviet nation-making in Central Asia, and among the few works to examine the Soviet multinational state from a non-Russian perspective. By investigating Soviet nation-making in one of the most poorly understood regions of the Soviet Union, it also sheds light on broader questions about nationalism and colonialism in the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This expertly written volume . . . describes its shift from an obedient Soviet republic to an independent Turkmenistan with its own flag, national anthem, and problems. -- Choice



Adrienne Lynn Edgar has filled a significant gap in the scholarship with this engaging new book on the history of Soviet Turkmenistan. There is really nothing out there quite like it. -- Michael G. Smith, Slavic Review



The book is one of the most important of the regional studies that are currently enhancing our knowledge of nation-building in the interwar Soviet Union. Its fluent and easy style, and Edgar's disposition not to take for granted an acquaintance with Soviet history, make it a very good introduction to Soviet nationalities policy through case study, and a book also suitable for undergraduate courses. -- Niccolò Pianciola, International Review of Social History



As the first English-language monograph to analyze the complexity of Turkmen life and identity within the context of Soviet policies, the book superbly reviews the compromises between the central Soviet authorities in Moscow and the European and Turkmeni communists in Central Asia. -- George O. Liber, Europe: Early Modern and Modern



Professor Edgar covers the period of Soviet Turkmenistan since its creation in its more constructive formative period until the time of the Great Terror. She has researched her subject admirably well and presents her discoveries in thorough yet readable detail. -- Albrecht Rothacher, Asian Europe Journal



One of the most exciting new works of central Asian history in recent years. . . . This book richly illustrates the Turkmen 1920s and 1930s, but it loses none of its salience in a diagnosis of central Asian life today. An ideal length for teaching and a pleasure to take up: Edgar's book is a must-read for anyone engaged in central Asian history, ethnography, and comparative politics. -- Bruce Grant, Journal of Modern History

Review

This is a beautifully written, extremely well researched, and very well argued investigation of nation-making in Soviet Central Asia. Edgar's work goes much further than that of many of her contemporaries and moves in an important new direction. Rather than simply look out from Moscow, from the top down, she begins from Turkmenistan, from the local, and argues that the actual shapes that nations took were the result of a complex negotiation between local traditions and the plans of the Soviets themselves. This is an extraordinarily important refinement of the existing literature.
(Ronald Suny, University of Chicago, author of "The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States" ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691127999
• ISBN-13: 978-0691127996
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #353,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars needed something more, August 27, 2005

By 

J. Martin-Williams - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Hardcover)

This book was decent for what it was. The author explores how the Soviets created Turkmenistan back in the 1920s and 1930s, and she did a great deal of research and used many good sources. However, I was hoping for more. She basically talks about this creation occuring in the 1920s and 1930s throughout the entirety of a not-very-lengthy book, and then has one 5 page chapter where she suddenly fast-forwards up to present day. I found this very disappointing, since it would've been interesting to know what happened between then and now, especially considering the fact that a second world war occurred, the cold war occured, and the USSR collapsed between then and now. I would imagine at least some of that had an effect on the creation and continued building of Turkmenistan as a country.

4 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful original work on Central Asia, March 6, 2005

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Hardcover)

This new and original contribution to texts on Central Asia under the Communist empire is necessary, original, insightful and typically liberal. The irony of the liberalism here is that in the 1930s and 1970s the same liberalism was used to describe how Soviet Communism would triumph over western capitalism. Then the academics heralded the progress in central asia, whereby women were no longer stoned for adultery, whereby women could actually show their faces in public, whereby women could go to school and, worst of all perhaps for the touchy `culture' women might actually speak their minds, vote, enroll in the military and get divorces.

Today those liberal triumphs are condemned by the same liberals for being against the culture. One thing can be sure, if you read through the lines of this book, Communism did reform the backward cultures, it brought light to people who only 40 years before had never had Veils, but had created a Veil in response to Sufi missions, and then Communism came and removed the degrading Veils. It was an assault on a fake culture that had never existed. The communist obsession with finding tribal identities amongst the many turko-mongolian peoples of Central Asia is perhaps more interesting and less biased. And for these two topics this is worth reading, but be careful not to be taken in by the idea that wearing a veil is somehow liberating to a women, because actually it just makes women into objects.

Seth J. Frantzman