Paper abstract:

Studies of national identity in the Soviet Union tend to either valorize local struggles for national liberation from an oppressive anti-nationalist state or portray the Soviet state as a creator of artificial national identities for its subjects. More recently, several scholars have highlighted the role of ethnic minorities themselves in defining their own nationhood. Among the most prominent of these is Francine Hirsch, who combines Benedict Anderson’s theoretical account of nationhood with rigorous empirical evidence. However, even Hirsch largely confines herself to the larger, “titular” nationalities. This paper extends her analysis to the Dungans, Chinese-speaking Muslim 19th century migrants to Russian Central Asia. Because the Dungans fit so poorly into Soviet definitions of nationhood, they are an important test case for Hirsch and Anderson’s theories.

This study seeks to determine to what extent Dungan nationality was imposed from outside or constructed by Dungans themselves. Sources include analyses of Dungan literature, petitions to Soviet authorities, reports by Party officials, and information contained in secondary literature. The paper first examines the creation of a standard Dungan vernacular language and the development of Dungan literature in light of Anderson’s ideas about “print capitalism.” The next part uses Anderson’s metaphor of “pilgrimage routes” to examine Soviet attitudes toward Dungan Islam and Dungans’ cultural connections to China, Moscow, and the rest of the Muslim world. The final part uses Anderson’s triad of Census, Map, and Museum to show how there were attempts to use each of these to create a Dungan national community. The paper concludes that while Soviet ideology limited the form that Dungan national identity could take, Dungans of all segments of society helped define its content. Everyone from intellectuals to unofficial imams to collective farmers helped imagine the Dungan nation as a unique community between China, the Muslim world, and the USSR.