Send message to Author

Abstract

The period of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries, which coincides in the world history with the era of Colonialism, is referred to as the "semi-colonial" period in the history of Uzbekistan. Scholars researching this period in the history of the peoples of Central Asia must adopt a specialized and critical approach, given the complex political and ideological influences of the time. In historiographical literature, sources from the colonial or semi-colonial period are classified in various ways. Based on my research into the religious history of this era, I propose a general classification into two categories: primary sources (original historical materials) and secondary sources (historical interpretations and analyses).

Primary sources include:

• Historically significant works by local authors who lived during the period in question;

• Memoirs, diaries, and travel accounts written by visitors to Central Asia at the time;

• Archival documents and contemporary periodicals.

Secondary sources include:

• Historical and academic publications from the Soviet era;

• Works produced after the dissolution of the USSR, during the independence of Central Asian states;

• Foreign scholarly studies and literature.

When utilizing these sources to produce objective, scholarly research on the period, several important factors must be considered:

• The influence of the political regime on the creation and interpretation of historical materials;

• The author's personal perspective, including subjective interpretations and ideological biases;

• The impact of time on the source itself, including changes made through copying, editing, or reprinting, which may affect authenticity and originality.

Thus, the source studies and historiography of the Central Asian khanates during the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries exhibit many distinctive features. This article aims to provide a general overview of these features, grounded in sound academic methodology.

Send message to Author

Abstract

The proposed paper examines the overlooked role of former exiled Populists (Narodniki) in shaping Soviet nationalities policy through their continued ethnographic study of the Sakha (Yakut) people of Northeast Siberia. I argue that the former Populists’ late imperial research laid the groundwork for the Yakutization campaign of the 1920s, marking the subset of Indigenization (korenizatsiia) in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (YaASSR).

Focusing on their contributions to the 1925–1930 Complex expedition to the YaASSR, the work demonstrates that these Populists-turned-ethnographers were among the first Russian revolutionaries to extend their class-based rhetoric to Indigenous communities, anticipating Bolshevik attempts to promote Native languages and cultures under socialism. It also traces the transformation of the Sakha-Yakut heroic epic, Olonkho, from an oral tradition into a written folkloric record under the influence of the former exiles, contributing to the formation of a modern Sakha national identity. By placing Populists’ ethnographic and folkloric studies within a broader framework of colonial knowledge and statecraft, this study explores how these intermediaries mediated between imperial legacies and Indigenous agency, ultimately influencing Bolshevik policies toward ethnic minorities in the North. 

Send message to Authors

Abstract

The Right to Labor: Informal Justice and Survival Strategies in Soviet Kolkhozes

This article examines how Chinese Muslim migrants—including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Dungans—who settled in Soviet Central Asia between the 1950s and 1970s developed practical strategies to survive within the constraints of kolkhoz (collective farm) life. Drawing on hundreds of oral history interviews, it highlights the creative and morally grounded responses of these communities to the material and institutional limitations of the Soviet agricultural system. In the kolkhozes, where formal wages were often symbolic or insufficient, survival frequently depended on one’s ability to navigate the blurred boundaries between formal structures and informal practices. Migrants quickly learned to operate within these unwritten systems, where community norms and shared understandings of fairness played a central role in shaping access to resources. The absence of reliable monetary compensation meant that work was often valued through alternate moral logics: labor itself conferred a degree of entitlement to the fruits of production. These informal arrangements were rarely codified but were widely understood and respected. Workers, for instance, might retain a portion of what they helped produce—not out of defiance but as a practical, community-endorsed means of survival. This form of subsistence was shaped by a locally accepted moral economy in which people were expected to take only what was necessary for their families, maintaining a balance that would not trigger conflict or accusations of greed. Such practices were tolerated by kolkhoz administrations, provided boundaries were observed. When limits were respected, these survival strategies were seen as legitimate rather than deviant. They illustrate a parallel economy grounded in mutual recognition, communal consent, and informal justice—particularly among minority communities adjusting to a foreign and often inhospitable system. The study suggests that for many migrants, adaptation to Soviet rural life was not merely about laboring under a rigid regime, but about learning how to survive within its margins. Through everyday practices rooted in collective moral norms, these communities built systems of resilience that were neither fully state-sanctioned nor entirely underground. Their stories offer a nuanced understanding of how informal economies functioned as critical survival mechanisms for locally embedded groups under late socialism.

Keywords: survival strategies, informal economy, kolkhoz, oral history, Soviet Central Asia, migrant adaptation, moral economy

Send message to Author

Abstract

This paper explores the interrelation between Empire and Nation from the late Tsarist to the early Bolshevik periods in the imperial borderland of the Caucasus. It does so through the case of the Museum of the Caucasus, which was repurposed as the Museum of Georgia under the Mensheviks and later as the Georgian State Museum following the Bolshevik seizure of power.

The first part examines the Museum of the Caucasus and the imperial agents involved in making and claiming the region through practices of collecting and exhibiting. In this way, I set the context for the museum’s transformation under Soviet rule.

I begin by introducing Gustav Radde (1831–1903), a German naturalist from Danzig who was dispatched to Tiflis by the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Embedded in imperial structures, Radde ventured into the wild to gather plants, animal specimens, and ethnographic objects. However, it was also his practice as a naturalist that shaped the way he imagined and divided the region, which was subsequently put on display. By incorporating tropical plants and exotic animals into natural history exhibits, the Tsarist empire defined itself through its borderland - figured here as a miniature model of imperial diversity, albeit framed in universalist terms. I further argue that the museum was part of a broader global context.

The analysis of these displays engages with the Tsarist logic of conquest, which portrayed highlanders as static and frozen in time, while communities such as the Kurds were depicted as primitive yet receptive to modernization. Georgian-speaking subgroups also appeared in ethnographic dioramas, but their presentation intersected with the archaeological section of the exhibition, establishing a temporal link between an ancient, glorious past and the present. This sense of historical continuity was denied to highlanders and Muslim communities. Christian Georgian-speaking populations thus came to occupy a central place in Russia’s Orient - in this case the Caucasus imagined as a unique blend of 'Orient' and Occident.

Drawing on archival sources, travelogues, visual materials and museum ethnography, the paper then demonstrates that the museum in the early Soviet period, curated by Georgian scholars, actively engaged with the imperial framework of diversity and modernization. In particular, it transformed 'Russia’s Orient' into its 'own Orient', sunstituting the frame of the Caucasus as a distinctive civilizational blend with that of Georgian civilization.