Abstract:

Nation-building and the creation of a linear idea of the history of one or another nationality of the USSR were based on the Eurocentric Marxist concept of social formations. At the same time, communities that, before the advent of Soviet power, were groups united on a confessional and/or territorial basis: minorities represented by European ethnic groups (Poles, Russians, Germans), who were often times relocated to Central Asia through settler colonial projects (voluntarily or involuntarily, as was the case with forced relocations and deportations), as well as groups that the Soviet government oftentimes referred to as "Eastern" (Uyghurs, Central Asian Arabs), who, as part of nation-building, received new socialist (or rather tooted in modernist, post-Enlightenment ideas of nation) foundations for consolidation.

The purpose of this study is a comparative analysis of the collective ideas of self of two distinct minority/subaltern communities, using in this case study Poles and Uyghurs in the Kazakh SSR during the first 20 years of Soviet power. Through the analysis of collective memories of said groups, their integration and recontextualization within the region, both through the lens of the Soviet state and their own perspectives and local perceptions of history we aim to analyze how self-identification was shaped by the context of being integrated in a national republic in the context of Soviet nation-building. We also aim to look at how the relationship between territorial (dis)affiliation and different modes of (sometimes forced) integration into the new state building project shaped self-identification of these two groups.