Botur,

I was anticipating a well-thought out reply from you but got only nonsense in return. Please leave your chauvinism at the door and use your common sense, instead of reverting to the same tired old drivel about Russians and our supposed ‘cultural aspects’. Not that I would expect any different from a Western-funded NGO website such as this one.

You accuse Russians of racism towards people of ‘darker skin colour’, but have spent the whole of your post of proving that you are the true racist here. I would be surprised if you even speak Russian, or have any knowledge of my people or my country; and with such an attitude as yours it would certainly be of no suprise to me that Russians don’t like you much.

Now to address the individual points in your post, one at a time; let’s examine how true they really are.

I would rather define a nation/people, not so much by their language, as by how Berdyev put it:

“Наиболее правы те, которые определяют нацию как единство исторической судбы. Сознание этого единства и есть национальное сознание”

What this means is that actually, a people are defined by their perception of a common fate with each other. And a common fate, is created by putting people in the same situation and with the same problems. History has deemed that Tajikistan is now a seperate and independent country, with its own unique set of circumstances and challenges. This binds the people of it together. Therefore don’t worry, the Tajik people are going to be around for a while yet, as is the language, not that it was in any danger of disappearing either then or now.

Sure Tajik deserves a central role, I’m not going to argue. But in this globalised world a secound-language can’t do any harm. That you view Russian as such a threat, which must be thrown out of the country by all means and replaced with ‘Japanese’ (contrary to your later claims that Tajik must be the exclusive language), does speak volumes to the power of the Russian-speaking world which you seek to deny has any attractivness whatsover.

‘Although, there were some technological and scientific improvements brought to present-day Tajikistan during the Soviet times, the harm that they caused to the language, traditions, culture, and self-respect of our nation cannot be weigh on the same scale and so, 70 years of communism is much greater loss than gain for us in terms of strengthening our national identity and consciousness.’

Please elaborate; self-respect? Your language – what would you rather have, a Persian alphabet which 1-2% of your population can read, or a Cyrllic alphabet which 98-99% of your population can read. The former was the situation before the Bolsheviks took power, and I would argue that the Tajik culture is on a far greater level now that everyone knows the written language, than before when only a tiny cadre of people could participate in intellectual development. It’s good that you have such a love for your people and your Iranian brothers, but perhaps instead of focusing on the purely superficial and aesthetic parts of your nations development, you can listen to the concerns and needs of your people, and advocate a pragmatic course instead for your country. A romanitisist view of pan-Iraniasm may sound good to your message board buddies, but really it puts you on the same level as the pan-Turkic movement, and the pan-Slavic movement which Russia tried to promote 150 years ago and achieved very little with. Imagine a world where everyone would be divided by their ethnicity, or their religion, rather than by their beliefs. I would rather not.

‘If you’re Russian you won’t understand the point here as you have admitted correctly. You would understand it some 400 years ago if you personally wanted to get rid of Tatar-Mongol influence at that time. The talk is about revival and strengthening of national language and cultural values as a primary requirement for unity, growth, and prosperity of any nation. It is far any contemplations of replacing one foreign language influence with another. May God forbid!’

We got rid of the Tatar-Mongol yoke far longer than 400 years ago. Mainly, our princes rose against it because they got tired of the tribute that was expected from them. Russia is not exacting tribute from Tajikistan, and for most of the last 80 years was subsidising its development.

‘The fall of Soviets was a natural ending for such a faulty system. It is not because of nationalists, but because of contradictions with human nature and behaviors that their system collapsed and even if you’ve wished thousands times such a state would not economically and politically last for long.’

The contradiction with human nature is a myth. It doesn’t contradict with my human nature. Perhaps with those of others, I’m sure. I agree however, that it’s time had come; the nationalist uprisings were the symptom and not the cause; the USSR failed to modernise its economy sufficiently during the 70′s and when gas and oil prices fell in the 80′s the curtains started to close.

‘You may care about yourself and your nation, but Tajiks care about their homeland and the future of our people. There’s nothing bad about it and every nation should pursue its own national interests with humanistic approach and universally accepted means. Not by illegally intruding to territory of another small country like Georgia with unjustified reasons or threatening with cutting natural resource supplies to other neighbors like Ukraine, Belarus, and Baltic states for their desires to be more aligned with developed, democratic region and its people.’

Why do you insist on writing this dogma and rubbish in a serious conversation? You and other ‘fighters for democracy’ are beggining to sound like the very Soviet apparatchiks that you so despise; repeating the same thing over and over again regardless of whether anyone is listening or not. You sound like an intelligent man, and I’m sure that if you take a balanced view on things, you can see that the Georgian war didn’t start and end with Russia ‘illegally intruding on its territory’ and that the trouble with national resources in Eastern Europe is more a business dispute with a political charge than the other way round. The fact that you mention this stuff does not lend to a balanced conversation; it only makes me think that you are a rabid nationalist with a bone to pick against Russia.

‘It’s exactly the Soviet minded and Russian oriented fools that we have in the country who are ruining it right now and because they have lost sense of self-determination, national values and pride during the Soviets that they have been incapable of understanding core values and principles of building a strong and powerful state as our ancestors have done.’

It’s exactly the sell-outs to the Western world that would ruin and corrupt your country and its culture more than you could ever imagine.

‘You may have your own views, but Tajik is the only language that should and will be there to bind the population in our country. For communication with other outside nations it is much effective and efficient to gradually shift into English as the rest of the world as the accepted primary lingua franca. We do not certainly need Russian to serve as intermediary from English and other major languages in gaining access to modern knowledge and achievements in business, technology, science, art, and other spheres. You should realize by now that we as Tajiks certainly know better than Russians or others what is an urgent and important issue for our nation and what is not.’

Of course not, but you do need Russian to get gain access to the modern knowledge and achievements in Russian-language business, technology, science, art and other spheres. Yes it’s not as big as the Western equivelent, but it’s probably 2nd place or so owing to the fact that the USSR was after all a superpower and everything. Either way, knowing Russian couldn’t hurt; I really don’t see why you think Tajiks would be better off without it. Surely, the more languages the better?

‘Soviet experience and integration with a bogus organization of CIS is very insignificant compared to our common roots, history, language, and culture with other Persian-speaking nations and the importance of further integration with people of Iran and Afghanistan as well as more direct and intensive partnership with the developed nations in the West and East. Only in this scenario we Tajiks will be able to create a strong, dynamic, developed and democratic country or confederation of Persian speaking countries that will enable us better represent and lead our interests in international arena as a respectable power.’

Tajikistan needs a pragmatic policy. What you are advocating is an alliance with everyone BUT Russia, and I don’t know why. I think many Tajiks would disagree with you, especially the multitudes of them that are earning money and supporting their families, purely by working in Russia. I agree that it’s not an ideal situation, but nontheless it’s the reality, and it’s not our (Russians) fault – you have nothing to be bitter about against us. Your confederation of Persian speaking countries doesn’t exist yet. When/If it does, perhaps it will become a viable alternative for development. For now though, don’t screw over your own people with fairytales and make believe, be rational and reason about what’s best for them. If Russia is where there are perspectives for development, than be friends with Russia. With Russia, we have a lot of legacies and ties; the Slavic-speaking world, the Orthodox world and the Commie/Former Commie world. And we value our ties as much as with our comrades in Cuba and Vietnam, as with our brothers in Slovakia. We have plenty of ties with both, what we developed in the last 80 years can only aid us, it can never hurt us – we have made friends in parts of the world, that our former ethnic and religious perspectives could never have introduced us to. And guess what – we are only the stronger because of it, not weaker.

Turgai,

My concept of a ‘colonial empire’, aside from that of colonisers and the colonised, is also that of the ‘core territory’ so to speak, and the exploited territories. The exploited territories are relatively self-explanatory; foreign lands which have been brought under the rule of the empire, and from which more is taken and less is given back. That’s not to say that the colonised terrirories don’t benefit neccesserily; in India railroads and other infastructure were developed, that probably wouldn’t have been in that time period were it not for the British. However the pure fact of the matter is that the colonies are exploited and that their own resources ultimately end up benefiting the home territories more than them. Of course in real life, the people of the core territories were exploited as well; Britain managed the achievement of ruling a 1/3rd of the world while oppressing its own English working class population as well. That’s capitalism for you.

By the end of the USSR, the republics with the highest standards of living (albeit not neccesserily the most developed ones) were the Baltic States and the Southern Caucasian republics (Georgia and Armenia principally). Should we therefore take that to mean, that the Baltics and Caucausus were colonising the rest of the USSR? No, that would be ridiculous. Keep in mind that it was also in the Baltic States and Georgia where the anti-Soviet and seperatist movements were among the strongest. In contrast, the republics with the lowest levels of development in Central Asia, had among the highest public approval of the USSR and its continued existence. According to the classic model of a colonial empire; the Central Asian republics were the poorest and least developed, therefore they were the ones that were being exploited the most – yet I have never heard of an exploited colony that actually wanted to remain part of the empire which was oppressing it. The answer to that riddle, is that people were and still are largely pragmatic – the Central Asian republics benefited from the USSR and were subsidised by it, and there were few other alternatives to development and their people realised this.

The poorest republic both then and now, is Moldova. It was the only republic to only be associated with one industry – wine. Yet nationalism was much higher there than in Central Asia. In this case it was because there was a different avenueof development – being as it is that Moldova is located in Europe, plus there are the historical controversies as well. Now about the centre-periphery relations – actually you can add another republic to your list of exceptions – Armenia had a diverse processing industry, including high-tech products I believe. I propose to you that the reason why the southern republics were not developed was not out of any motives of colonism or as a consenquence of Russian chauvinism. The USSR had a planned economy, and it was assumed that it would always stay together as one big country. Therefore it didn’t really matter – what industry was where, as long as all of its citizens could achieve the same sort of standard of living and oppurtunities; something that the USSR managed quite well. What republics focussed on what was decided based I believe on various factors, for example Azerbaijan had plenty of oil reserves which was needed to fuel the rest of the USSR, so that’s exactly the industry that was developed there, rather than trying to develop a diversified industrial production base that could be set up in a part of the USSR more appropriate. Such as for example the Ukraine, which not only had the most fertile land in the USSR and was therefore tasked with feeding the entire country, but also already had plenty of development, urban centres, educated people, etc… from Tsarist days, and also had plenty of coal reserves which were neccessery for heavy industry; and it made sense to develop heavy industry next to where the fuel source for it would be. Belarus, a fellow Slavic republic, didn’t actually have much of anything but swamps, and consenquently didn’t have that much industry developed in proportion to Russia and the Ukraine; it’s biggest claim to fame was the Minsk Tractor Factory. Compare that to Tajikistan and its Aluminium plant; not much difference.

About the role of Russia as a big brother – understand that Russia was by the far the largest republic, of course due to its size and sheer diversity, it was bound to end up with the most diversified economy out of all the USSR countries. I have heard before, of the so called ‘fraternal’ relations between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Together these 3 republics formed the vast majority of the USSR and its population. But really, what did they do together, besides jointly sign on the dotted line to end the USSR?

If you compare the starting points of Russia/Ukraine/Belarus to lets say the Muslim republics from 1917 to 1991; you can see that the Slavs had a huge head start in the form of Tsarist development. It was of course true that 90% of the Russian population were illiterate peasents, but there were still huge metropolises such as St.Petersburg, Moscow, Vladivostok, Ekaterinburg, etc… together with intelligencia, education establishments, etc… Before 1917 the only Central Asian cities with such structures were in what became Uzbekistan. By 1991 these republics, while still behind, had caught up in these measures and had their own multi-ethnic cities with diverse economies, and were nearly equal in terms of things like literacy levels. Going back to Chechnya (can’t say how much immigration there was during those years), Grozny before it became the ‘bright star in the sky’ of international terrorism and banditry, was one of the most developed and beutiful cities in the North Caucasus. All people as individuals were more or less equal in the USSR; in that they were all citizens. As groups, some had it better than others, more education in their languages, etc… unfortunetly, such equality wasn’t perfected, but show me a country of 300+ different native ethnic groups that did and did it better than the USSR.

About the creation of the ‘elites’. Well I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘compradore’ so I will have to give you a miss there. What I can tell you, is that the elites of all the ex-Soviet countries, were created in pretty much the same place, have the same background, etc… their political views are pretty similar too, if not neccesserily in terms of foreign policy, than definetly when it comes to how to run a country and its people. The people that have by now become the modern oligarchs, boyars, khans and sultans of the ex-USSR, are far from ideal, yet far better than nothing at all, and certainly preferable to the sort of Tribal or Religion-orientated elite present in places like Afghanistan and Iran respectively.

Well I think you should ask the Tajiks themselves; and by Tajiks I don’t mean the perfect-english speaking elite here but rather the common people. Unless I’m sorely mistaken Central Asians tend to be quite proud of their contribution to Soviet victory in WW2, and many view the ex-Soviet states as more or less different parts of the same society. I think that this recent history, however brief, does in fact compare quite favourably to the ancient persian links.

I think that pro-Russian and pro-Iranian political views, are on about an equal footing in Tajikistan.

The shared legacy you mentioned as a whole could not stand a simple comparison with Tajiks’ Persian legacy. No matter what your concerns are about, but unfortunately to Russians, their cultural influence in the region is waning away. And Tajiks will get back to the Perso-Arabic script and re-join their native Persian sphere.

Botur, thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic.

It does not matter who is aimed at or not in discussion. If you have a point, you can share and you did which I am grateful to you for. Your position is clear and I agree with most, but not all of it, obviously.

We can argue whether it was a colony, an alliance, an invasion or something else, but the importance is not in that. It is about the fact that language is the key to national self-determination and as we say in Tajik “Zabon hastii millat ast” (Language is a proof of nation’s existance). So, supporting Tajik, protecting and strengthening it as well as integrating more with other Persian dialects, is a major issue for us in developing a strong country with prosperous people.

Best regards.

The point in this discussion should be clear to anyone that Tajikistan will inevitably further minimize the influence of Russian language and Soviet heritage and cultivate more on its national values, ideas, and connections with its brotherly Persian speaking nations in its path to becoming more developed country and a stronger nation. Just want to shortly address a few issues raised here earlier.

First, I specifically pointed out that Tajikistan with USSR can not be compared as Britain with India or Spain with its South American colonies for that matter. Tajiks are part of major cultural and linguistic world of Persian-speaking nations which had been greatly influencing and dominating other cultures such as Turks, Arabs, Hindus, Georgians, Armenians and etc. for over thousand years. Therefore, with deepening self identification as Persian-speaking nation we cannot have Russian or any other language besides our own to play a role in our governing and state building process.

As for Russians, it is clear that they came to the region to control our country and resources, and later, spread out the faulty ideas of communism borrowed from German philosophers Marx and Engels to our minds and lives, so they will be viewed as occupiers and destroyers of national languages, ideas and heritage of different peoples that were eventually forced into USSR.

Although, there were some technological and scientific improvements brought to present-day Tajikistan during the Soviet times, the harm that they caused to the language, traditions, culture, and self-respect of our nation cannot be weigh on the same scale and so, 70 years of communism is much greater loss than gain for us in terms of strengthening our national identity and consciousness. And there should be no illusions about being treated differently at times even during the Soviets for people who knew little Russian and were of darker skin color.

If you’re Russian you won’t understand the point here as you have admitted correctly. You would understand it some 400 years ago if you personally wanted to get rid of Tatar-Mongol influence at that time. The talk is about revival and strengthening of national language and cultural values as a primary requirement for unity, growth, and prosperity of any nation. It is far any contemplations of replacing one foreign language influence with another. May God forbid!

The fall of Soviets was a natural ending for such a faulty system. It is not because of nationalists, but because of contradictions with human nature and behaviors that their system collapsed and even if you’ve wished thousands times such a state would not economically and politically last for long.

You may care about yourself and your nation, but Tajiks care about their homeland and the future of our people. There’s nothing bad about it and every nation should pursue its own national interests with humanistic approach and universally accepted means. Not by illegally intruding to territory of another small country like Georgia with unjustified reasons or threatening with cutting natural resource supplies to other neighbors like Ukraine, Belarus, and Baltic states for their desires to be more aligned with developed, democratic region and its people.

It’s exactly the Soviet minded and Russian oriented fools that we have in the country who are ruining it right now and because they have lost sense of self-determination, national values and pride during the Soviets that they have been incapable of understanding core values and principles of building a strong and powerful state as our ancestors have done.

You may have your own views, but Tajik is the only language that should and will be there to bind the population in our country. For communication with other outside nations it is much effective and efficient to gradually shift into English as the rest of the world as the accepted primary lingua franca. We do not certainly need Russian to serve as intermediary from English and other major languages in gaining access to modern knowledge and achievements in business, technology, science, art, and other spheres. You should realize by now that we as Tajiks certainly know better than Russians or others what is an urgent and important issue for our nation and what is not.

Soviet experience and integration with a bogus organization of CIS is very insignificant compared to our common roots, history, language, and culture with other Persian-speaking nations and the importance of further integration with people of Iran and Afghanistan as well as more direct and intensive partnership with the developed nations in the West and East. Only in this scenario we Tajiks will be able to create a strong, dynamic, developed and democratic country or confederation of Persian speaking countries that will enable us better represent and lead our interests in international arena as a respectable power.

On the final note I can say that each nation has its own unique path and Tajiks will decide for themselves how to best help their language and state governing matters, despite long, fruitless discussions we may have here and which I won’t like to go on. Personally, I envision that role of Russia and its language will continue to diminish and shrink due to various factors, but most of all because of lack of long-term vision of its elite, improper handling of ethnic minorities, and some underlying cultural aspects of its people. Nothing to be worried about, it’s just how things supposed to turn out in about 50 years from now.

My last sentence on the post tells exactly why we need emphasis on protecting and upbringing our language right now: “Lastly, for anyone who thinks that the issue of language is not a priority in paving the way out from the current desperate situation the country is in right now, I can say that until we learn and master our language we will not be able ever to stand up, ask, and demand for our rights and choices in a civilized, organized, and effective manner.”

One characteristic of a colonial empire that was certainly there, I think, were the sheer centre-periphery relations: the economies of the southern peripheral republics (with the exception of Georgia wit its diverse agriculture and high living standard and North Kazkahstan with its defense and machine industry) were focused on the production of one or two raw materials (e.g. cotton in Turkestan and later the Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen SSR) which were treated in the industrial centres in the USSR’s core (Western Russia, Belarus and the Ukrainian industrial basins that is) while most finished goods and indeed most economic and political cadres (at least in key positions) went from the centre to the periphery.

Another factor is that of the creation of native compradore elites during the korenizatsiya process in the 60s and 70s (also earlier but the process gained impetus during that time). To various extents, this happened also in the various European colonies.

“in the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, the ethnic Russian population which until the 60’s made up the large majority of the population of Grozny and Northern Chechnya, was largely descended from the Terek Cossacks”

Wasn’t there a later wave of non-Cossack Russian settlement during the deportation years (1944-53)?

Anyway, regarding the Russian population settlement (already ongoing in imperial Russia e.g. to the Terek basin, North Kazakhstan, Semirechie… ), here the European colonizers had different policies. For example, there were never more than 80,000 Belgians in the Belgian colonies on a total population of 13 million (0.6%). It was only for selected cadres, for an elite group. In contrast, there was a large French population settlement in Algeria: 800,000 on a pop. of a bit more than 10 million (ca. 8%).

I agree that officially all peoples were equal in the USSR. Many European colonizers didn’t even bothered to pretend this and in some cases even enshrined discrimination in the law. But wasn’t it de facto a such, that ideologically, Sovietism had an element of Great Russian chauvinism that put Russia in the role of a big brother and assumed that most ‘Oriental’ subject peoples (in particular native Siberian peoples, Mongols and Muslims) were too backward to civilise themselves (cf. Belgian paternalism, French export of the Ideals of the Revolution, … )?

“the trouble is that in different territories it took place with different peoples; sometimes even the same ethnic group was favored as being more loyal to socialism in one area, and was less trusted in another region. (…) In the USSR, which people, etc… were trusted in which region was largely decided on the basis of how loyal they were perceived as being towards Socialism and the Soviet state, and little else – i.e. again evidence of an ideological rather than colonial structure.”

Hm, but you see, Max, you had a pretty similar mechanism or diversity in approaches in the European colonies too. With only one difference, that the desired or expected loyalty was for the British or Belgian crown, to the French republic or considered ‘receptive to European civilization’-not Socialism. A regular pattern in European colonies was to favor ‘more reliable’ local Christian communities (e.g. in the French Sahel colonies) or certain local ethnic-racial groups that were considered superior to others (e.g. Hamito-Semitic peoples in Rwanda which the Belgians considered superior to the Bantu populations). In British India, they had parts that were left as internally autonomous princely states or tribal frontier provinces (about 40% of the colony), while other parts (about 60%) were annexed and put under the colonial administration in Delhi.