Paper short abstract:

My paper examines how the Sino-Soviet cross-border exchange of ideas and personages and political vicissitudes along the Soviet-Xinjiang border from the 1950s till the 1980s shaped the ways Chinese and Soviet Central Asianists researched the two countries’ Central Asian borderlands.

Paper long abstract:

My paper tells a two-sided story of transnational knowledge production revolving around Chinese and Soviet Central Asia. I examine how the Sino-Soviet cross-border exchange of ideas and personages and political vicissitudes along the Soviet-Xinjiang border from the 1950s till the 1980s shaped the ways Chinese and Soviet Central Asianists researched the two countries’ Central Asian borderlands. I also show how scholars and scholarship, in return, took an active part in borderland politics.

When Chinese communists took over Xinjiang in 1949, they had little expertise in the region. In contrast, Soviet scholars, who inherited Russian imperial scholarly legacy, had a more solid knowledge base of Inner Asia, including Xinjiang, which Stalin considered a Soviet sphere of influence in the 1930s and 1940s. During the Sino-Soviet honeymoon of the 1950s, the Soviets assisted the Chinese in the earliest communist academic establishments in Xinjiang. What the Chinese learned from Soviet experts was a nationality-centered approach to studying multiethnic borderlands. However, the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s physically cut off the transnational scholarly contact, resulting in a divergence in borderland studies between the two countries. In the Soviet Union, the legacy of Russian ethnography and Soviet nationalities policy conditioned the institutionalization of Soviet uigurovedenie (Uyghur Studies). Soviet uigurodedy (Uyghur specialists) found in the Uyghurs an exploitable agent in Sino-Soviet ideological battles over Xinjiang. In China, academic de-Sovietization after the Sino-Soviet split, Sino-Soviet territorial disputes, pre-1949 Chinese intellectual traditions, and post-1978 liberalization merged with the lingering influence of Soviet ethnography and nationalities policy, giving birth to Chinese Borderland Studies (Zhongguo bianjiang yanjiu), institutionalized in 1983.

In this way, I hope to reveal the linkages between two academic schools that have been previously examined partially and separately. I demonstrate how domestic politics and foreign policy of the two countries intertwined in a way that affected both countries’ academic establishments. My study provides a new perspective to examine the Sino-Soviet relations other than the “impact-response” paradigm of the 1950s alliance and the political split in the Cold War context. Moreover, the departure of Chinese borderland studies from the Soviet model reflects a substantial discrepancy between Soviet and Chinese understandings of nationalities, territories, and borderlands, which may have contributed to the two countries’ different historical paths: The Soviet Union collapsed along national lines, while China has consolidated its control over its less ethnicized Central Asian borderland.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation is dedicated to the analysis of the role that Central Asian women were playing in the work of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in the 1960s-1970s.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation is dedicated to the analysis of the role that Central Asian women were playing in the work of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in the 1960s-1970s. The WIDF was created in 1945 in Paris and openly supported politics of the "Soviet bloc". The anti-colonial struggle and creation of the newly independent states in Asia and Africa in 1950s-1960s made the WIDF to make efforts in order to bring influential women from the newly independent countries and liberation movements to the organization; it was a part of the cultural Cold War competition with the "West". In order to do it, the WIDF transformed its leadership structures, organized conferences, workshops and studytrips for women from Africa and Asia. In this context, women from the Central Asia were seen as a particularly important resourse due to their status of the former colonial subjects who were "emancipated" by the Soviets. The aim of my presentation is to question the official Soviet and WIDF's presentation of the encounters between the Soviet Central Asian women and postcolonial female activists from Asia and Africa. In particular, I show how contradictions of the Soviet "emancipation", including Russification and double burden, were made invisible for the non-European guests. In order to do it I analyze WIDF's official journal - Women of the Whole World - and archival materials from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, collection of the Committee of Soviet Women (Moscow). The archival materials, in particular, the classified letters between the Soviet representatives in the WIDF headquarters (in Paris and later in East Berlin) and in Moscow allow to understand the work of the WIDF behind the smiling faces and words on solidarity that can be found in the WIDF journal.

Paper short abstract:

The international dimensions of a Soviet republic and its peculiar connections with India and Afghanistan

Paper long abstract:

Uzbekistan was a crucial republic in the Soviet agenda for the Third World. During the Cold War, the republic was promoted as a modern and emancipated model of political, economic, social and cultural development for newly independent countries emerging from decolonization. This international dimension of the Soviet periphery was kept until Perestroika when the Cold War was ending, the system of international relations changed, and Uzbekistan was shocked by the Cotton Affair. However, also in the 1980s, Tashkent played an essential role on the Southern front, promoting a series of economic, social and cultural initiatives with India and becoming the military hub and one of the main cogs of the Afghan sovietization. This form of cooperation would have set the basis for the new diplomatic line of the independent Republic of Uzbekistan. This paper aims at assessing, through new archival sources, the international dimension of a Soviet periphery, evaluating the level of subjectivity and the internal debate of the Uzbek party and the republic's government in these regional initiatives.

Paper short abstract:

The Soviet experience of the "Lamour Army" in Kazakhstan during the War II

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of the article is to analyze the phenomenon of the labor army in Kazakhstan in order to clarify its nature, features of formation, function and a special place in the system of the military mobilization economy of the USSR. Therefore, one of the main tasks is to establish the causes and stages of the use of the labor army; determination of the social and national composition of the Labor Army. the main trends, scales and consequences of the Labor Army in Kazakhstan are studied. During the study of the problem, the principles of historicism, scientific objectivity, and integrity were used. At present, the people of Kazakhstan, as well as the entire post-Soviet space, are experiencing a spiritual awakening and a return to traditional origins. In the current geopolitical situation and the growing self-awareness of the nation, it is important to understand the importance of preserving the historical memory of past years. Particularly important in this regard is the awareness of the tragedy of the 30-50s of the twentieth century, one of the striking examples is the functioning of the "camp economy", the creation of camps - Karlag, Steplag, ALZHIR, etc. on the territory of Kazakhstan, where the state used forced labor of various categories of the repressed population, including the Kazakhs in the development of the country's economic potential. Therefore, the history of the "Labor Army" should become a historical lesson for the future, contributing to the spiritual and cultural development of society, a deeper understanding of the significance of the mobilization economy of the USSR.