Abstract

This paper examines how Soviet history textbooks narrated Central Asia and the Caucasus across different stages of Soviet rule, focusing on the cases of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. While official Soviet ideology emphasized internationalism and the transformation of formerly “backward” societies, textbook narratives produced more complex, layered, and historically shifting representations of local populations.

The study analyzes Soviet history textbooks from the 1920s and 1930s as well as from the late Soviet period, with particular attention to the positioning of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan within broader Soviet historiography. The source base includes a selection of all-Union Soviet history textbooks from the 1920s to the late Soviet period, as well as republic-level textbooks published in the Azerbaijan SSR and the Kazakh SSR during the 1970s and 1980s. Using a discourse-oriented approach, the paper explores how these materials constructed the “other,” narrated the incorporation of these regions into the Russian Empire, and framed their historical development.

The analysis traces how representations of local societies evolved in relation to changing ideological priorities. In early Soviet narratives, the discourse was explicitly anti-colonial, portraying the Russian Empire as an oppressive and exploitative force. From the mid-1930s onward, however, this framing shifted: Russia increasingly appeared as a historically necessary agent of progress and, over time, as a benevolent and leading force in the development of “backward” peoples.

Particular attention is given to the positioning of local actors within Soviet historical narratives and to the extent to which their voices were incorporated into these accounts. The paper examines how these voices were mediated through broader ideological frameworks and how their narrative function changed across different periods. This question is approached in light of Spivak’s formulation—Can the subaltern speak?—while remaining attentive to the specific historical context of Soviet rule.

The findings suggest that the Soviet case cannot be adequately understood as either fully colonial or consistently anti-colonial. Instead, the analysis reveals a critical shift from the mid-1930s onward, as broader processes of political centralization increasingly positioned Russia at the core of Soviet historical narratives. This transformation involved both a gradual re-centering of Russia in historical narratives and a corresponding hierarchization around Russia, reshaping the representation of peripheral societies through the late Soviet period. In this sense, the paper approaches Soviet rule through the lens of coloniality, asking whether hierarchical modes of representation persisted beyond the formal end of the Russian Empire.