Suchergebnisse

First published in 1992.

Introduction: I survived. I speak -- "If you are interested in this kind of detail, I have remembered for all these years the smell of the perfume she was wearing and the color of her blouse": Aleksandr Yudelevich Zakgeim -- "And we began to live there in twenty-six square meters; there were thirteen of us": Inna Aronovna Shikheeva-Gaister -- "I, you understand, for my generation,...we have the psychology of persons devoted to society. we can't separate ourselves from society": Andrei Ivanovich Vorobyov -- "I would ride as far as Karabas Station, but then, I don't recall, I had to go about fifty-sixty kilometers on foot": Valentin Tikhonovich Muravsky -- "Silence was salvation. That's what I knew": Irina Andreevna Dubrovina -- "I was so overjoyed that I had found you": Vera Mikhailovna Kostina/Vera Yulyanovna Skiba -- "The feeling of loneliness has stalked me always": Tamara Nikolaevna Morozova -- "I had a completely non-Soviet worldview": Aleksandr Nikolaevich Kozyrev -- "I have dreamed my entire life, for me this would be a great joy to find my relatives": Maya Rudolfovna Levitina -- "Well, probably, essentially, they destroyed my life, of course": Vladimir Valerianovich Timofeev

AbstractThis article shows how the Soviet government perceived higher birth rates in Central Asia as a threat to national identity and the stability of the USSR. The issue of demographic change was complex, and concerns about differential fertility between republics were not informed solely by prejudice. Rather, prejudice and racism mingled with practical concerns about labor surpluses and shortages. The Central Asian Republics had low labor mobility because people were unwilling to leave their cultural community, had a low level of Russian, and tended to not to be trained in the kind of heavy industries that required workers elsewhere in the Soviet Union. I argue that rather than aiming to change these factors, the government misdiagnosed economic problems as demographic ones. They placed primary emphasis on changing patterns of reproduction to remedy the situation by changing the population itself, portraying Slavs and Central Asians as distinct groups who had a predetermined role and place in life. In doing so, Moscow elites failed to address the structural and operational issues of Soviet socialism and inflamed tensions with local leaders who saw demographic campaigns as an attack on their culture.