Suchergebnisse

SUMMARY:
Addressing the factor of post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia, Adeeb Khalid argues that for decades Islam was envisioned as an archetypical opposition to communism, while the study of Central Asian societies was the prerogative of nationalities studies as a subdiscipline of Sovietology. Despite the emergence of several profound studies of Islamic societies in the (former) USSR, the view that automatically ascribes political meaning to Islam still predominates, now turning it from a victim of Communism into a major threat to regional security.

Arguing against a view of Islam as a rigid system independent of local context, Khalid maintains that responsible research into Islamic societies of Central Asia must take into account Soviet history: as the USSR fell apart, the re-Islamization of the region proceeded along with the persistence of ethno-national identities in a way specific to the early 21 st century.

According to Khalid, during the Soviet period Islam and tradition were attacked, Islam was provincialized, and Soviet Muslims were cut off from the rest of the Muslim world. At the same time, the transmission of religious knowledge was limited. Nevertheless, the authorities established the Central Asian Spiritual Administration for Muslims (SADUM), quite in disregard of Islamic tradition, in 1943. SADUM did help train a small number of theologians and maintain a minimal presence of Islam in Central Asia, while the Soviet-promoted national intelligentsia focused on developing and sustaining ethno-national identities.

Soviet authority did not mean the annihilation of local communities, which often assumed a Soviet form as collective farms or other institutions. It was through these communities that Islam was often transmitted. Sufism became widespread for it was well suited for informal existence. As a result, Islam became a marker of local and national identity, without requiring a Muslim to subscribe to religious rules and regulations.

Khalid stresses that this situation was widespread among premodern societies. In Central Asia, the Jadid movement attempted to reform and reinvigorate Islam in the 19 th century. Yet, the Soviet "localization" of Islam was not just a return to the pre-Jadid situation: during the Soviet period Islam became part of the cultural heritage of the nation.

Adeeb Khalid sees the Soviet experience of intervening in Islamic life and tradition as part of a broader context (although the Soviet case was unique in its longevity and fortitude). The author notes that discussions of post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia are conducted in the context of a "return" to original national culture, of which Islam is a part. Discussions of Islam demonstrate that references made to it are possible only in the context of some other topics (progress, education, culture, etc). The disintegration of the Soviet Union saw the persistence of party nomenklatura riding the national rhetoric. Khalid briefly surveys the role played by Islam in contemporary Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, describes these regimes' struggle against various Islamic movements, and concludes that ethno-national identities in contemporary Central Asia appropriated Islam as their own.

SUMMARY:
In their coauthored article Elena Zdravomyslova and Olga Tkach explore the fashion for genealogical research and family history among various strata of Russian society after the collapse of communism. The authors interpret this quest as part of the search for alternative history in postcommunist societies, i.e., filling the blank spots of official historical narrative and rehabilitating the human and personal dimension of history. The article offers a sociological perspective on the specificity of biography and family history as instruments of forging and suppressing memory in Soviet society and the transition to a period of flourishing genealogical research, which was accompanied by the "privatization" of history and the involvement of civil society and commercial organizations in creating "alternative" historical memory.

SUMMARY:
In his guest editor's introduction Sergei Markedonov presents an account of historiographic and historic discussion on the concept of Cossackdom. He criticizes the tendency of Russian historians to take this category for granted and thus reify the ontological reality of this socially and culturally heterogeneous group. Moreover, Markedonov suggests that the historiographic evolution of the concept of Cossackdom is part of the historic process of identity formation and reflects the vicissitudes of political and national contexts of construction of Cossack historical memory. Markedonov also suggests that further work is needed for arriving at a comprehensive typology of Cossack communities. However, the crucial aspect of this research is taking seriously the heterogeneity of the imperial space (and the space framed by interacting continental empires) that conditioned the variety of Cossacks' identity, social and political organization.

SUMMARY:
Mark von Hagen's article offers an interpretation of the changes that occurred in the study of Russian and Soviet history, and suggests the concept of "Eurasia" as an anti-paradigm facilitating the description of the region that combines the legacies of multinational empires and of Soviet-style socialism. At the same time, "Eurasia" is an anti -paradigm because it points to a variety of ways to revise many assumptions about Russian, Soviet, and Eurasian histories.

For von Hagen, three separate processes heralded the arrival of new historiographical approaches. First, there is the increasingly prominence of works interpreting the history of Russia and the USSR not as that of a national state, but rather stressing its multinational and imperial character. Second, historians are constantly paying a greater attention to borderlands in the context of the prevailing view of boundaries as porous and fluctuating. Third, diasporas – including émigrés and exiles – have been "rediscovered" and their works are now returning to their countries of origin.

Von Hagen also analyzes what he considers as "two paradigms" of the historical perception of Russia and the USSR. The first, "Russia as Orient", attempted to present the Russian-Soviet historical experience as essentially rooted in centuries long Oriental and despotic traditions of Russia. Using Edward Said's concept of Orientalism, von Hagen argues that this perception of Russia as Orient helped sustain a Western "occidental" identity. It often walked hand in hand with a belief in the unique experience of Russian history, a belief that von Hagen terms "neo-Slavophile".

The second paradigm is that equates the Soviet Union with modernization. According to von Hagen, this paradigm was partly rooted in the liberal tradition of the Russian "state school" of historiography, which saw the privileged role of the state led by an enlightened bureaucracy as the driving force of Russia's path to modernization. Opposed to attempts to "essentialize" Russian history within the "Russia as Orient" paradigm, the modernization paradigm attempted to "normalize" the Soviet experience. Assumptions of the inevitable ethnic and national homogenization of the Soviet Union became prevalent in the modernization paradigm.

Von Hagen then explores the legacy of Eurasianist thinkers, a group of Russian émigrés who offered their vision of Eurasia as a space of interaction between the Russians and the Turkic and Finnish peoples. Their vision of Eurasia also implied a positive evaluation of the Mongol presence in Russian history and a critical approach to Eurocentric assumptions. Von Hagen asserts that, in his view, the new Eurasian anti-paradigm avoids problematic apects of the Eurasianist legacy, such as the political views of the Eurasianist thinkers and their geopolitical views. The new Eurasian anti-paradigm retains their critique of "essentializing" approaches to such concepts as Europe and Asia in order to offer an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the complex pasts of Central and Eastern Europe and Northern Asia.

For von Hagen, the Eurasian anti-paradigm has been profoundly impacted by the current "decentralization" of historical narratives, which is the result of interaction between historians and linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, etc. Eurasia allows one to part with the dominance of national narratives while accepting the importance of modern nationalism in historical processes. According to von Hagen, Eurasia does not coincide with the former Russian Empire or the former Soviet Union or with any other particular state. Its chronological boundaries are also not rigidly determined. In the age of globalization, von Hagen argues, it is important to remember that the great continental empires constituted an important element of global history.

In the last part of his article, von Hagen surveys literature that he believes attests to the emergence of the Eurasian anti-paradigm in Russian-Soviet history. According to the author, the Eurasian anti-paradigm does not preclude any specific approaches to the past; even less is it meant as a judgment about the likelihood of one or another country of joining the European Union, NATO, or for that matter any of the Asian organizations. It is meant as a concept that opens up new horizons in the study of history and signifies a return of the Eurasian space into global history after almost a century of isolation.

SUMMARY:
В исследовании Эне Кёресаар анализируются биографии эстонцев в контексте воспоминания о сталинском периоде. Применяя различные теоретические модели, концептуализирующие взаимоотношения личного воспоминания биографии и социально-культурных рамок коллективной памяти, Кёресаар исследует конструирование эстонской истории и эстонских частных биографий. По мнению исследователя, ключевым элементом этого конструирования является тема "разрыва", прерывности национальной истории и частных биографий. По мнению авторов воспоминаний и респондентов, эти разрывы национальной истории лишили эстонцев "естественной" истории нации и сделали невозможным постоянный доступ к "национальным ценностям". Разрывы национальной истории в коллективной памяти и частных биографиях функционируют как структурирующие элементы, придавая нарративный характер воспоминанию, одновременно являясь идеологически нагруженными элементами восприятия прошлого. Исследователь обсуждает взаимосвязь частных биографий и коллективной (национальной) памяти и ставит вопрос о практическом совпадении в эстонском случае "нарративных моделей" памяти индивидуальной и памяти коллективной.

SUMMARY:
The article examines the initial forging of Russian image in the West. This process is referred to in the literature as "the discovery of Russia by Europe." The author contends that Western perceptions of Russia in the 15 th and 16 th centuries were conditioned not by information received from Russia, but from inner-European discursive practice. In other words, the formation of a Russian image in Western ideology depended not only on Russia – this ideology served specific inner-European needs. The West's opening of Russia at the end of the 15 th century is chiefly a manifestation of Europe's own creation – Christendom's search for its own historical-cultural identity in the Renaissance. The origins of this perception of Russia are linked with earlier-formed perceptions of Eastern Europe. From the end of the 15 th century through the first third of the 16 th , a positive perception of Russia with hope for its integration into Western Christendom dominated. European authors discussed the means of that integration and the advantages of this process for Europe. However, in the mid-16 th century the opinion that Russians were "fundamentally different" from Europeans became firmly entrenched. Russia came to be seen as "anti-civilization." This became the dominant approach beginning in the second half of the 16 th century under the influence of the Livonian War. This approach remains powerful in European political discourse.

SUMMARY:
In this article the author attempts to survey various implications of the Soviet past in modern Ukraine. The author points out that in Ukraine no radical break with the Soviet past occurred. In Ukraine, a national identity with its particular interpretation of the past, was formulated by the end of the 19th century. However, it soon gave place to a more complex Soviet identity, which combined Russian imperial elements with some national Ukrainian ones. Nevertheless, many Ukrainians preserved historical memories related to a specifically Ukrainian national identity. The survival and persistence of many identities in today's Ukraine led many observers to question the model of nationalizing state as applied to the former Soviet republic. According to the author, the majority of Ukrainian population today remains essentially, Soviet, while a minority is divided into a pro-Western and consciously nationalist group and a "Soviet Creole group" opportunistically hanging on to power and ready to assume any identity for that purpose.

As the country became independent, the nationalist vision of the past prevailed and implied a break not only with Russia, but also with the immediate Soviet past. Perception and internalization of that break by the broad masses of the population proved to be problematic. As a result, Ukrainian symbols and toponyms combined Soviet and Ukrainian national references, while Ukrainian history textbooks offered perspectives meant to satisfy those who cherish the Soviet past and those who desire to institute a radical break with it. According to the author, it proved ultimately impossible to present the Soviet past as nationally and culturally alien to the Ukrainian population, as it happened in the Baltic States. The last years even witnessed a marked return of the Soviet past to Ukraine's symbolic space. This situation was replicated in the post-Soviet Ukrainian historiography, which tended to focus on state history and to universalize the Communist and totalitarian experience. A minority of nationalist minded historians, nevertheless, see totalitarianism through the national prism, stressing particular Ukrainian grievances. Most historians focus on "filling the gaps" of historical knowledge about the 20th century, publishing archival evidence. Given the presence of a broad array of alternative sources, the author believes that varying interpretations of Ukraine's Soviet past will remain.