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ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN KYRGYZSTAN Cholpon Chotaeva Tohoku University November 2004 ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN KYRGYZSTAN 4 CONTENTS Map of Kyrgyzstan………………………………………………………………. Map of provinces in Kyrgyzstan…………………………………………………. Acknowledgement..............................................................…………………. Introduction...............................................................................……………. PART 1. ETHNICITY Chapter 1. ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM: A THEORETICAL APPROACH………………………………….. Chapter 2. NATIONAL POLICY……………………………………………….. Chapter 3. INTERETHNIC RELATIONS……………………………………… PART 2. LANGUAGE Chapter 4. LANGUAGE AS A FACTOR OF ETHNIC IDENTITY………… Chapter 5. LANGUAGE POLICY………………………………………………. Chapter 6. ETHNO-LINGUISTIC SITUATION………………………………. PART 3. RELIGION Chapter 7. ISLAMIZATION OF CENTRAL ASIA AND KYRGYZSTAN… Chapter 8. ISLAMIC REVIVAL………………………………………………….. Chapter 9. ISLAM IN THE POLITICS………………………………………….. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………… Selected bibliography………………………………………………………………… ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN KYRGYZSTAN 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of individuals and institutions that offered me their generous encouragement and support. I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to my host researcher in Japan, the deputy dean of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Professor Yoshihiro Kimura, for his valuable advices and help in writing and preparing this book for publication. I am also grateful to the President of International University of Kyrgyzstan Asylbek A. Aidaraliev, who made an important contribution to the development of a Kyrgyz-Japanese academic cooperation and provided the ground for conducting research in Japan. Special thanks to the staff of the Center for Social Research, especially its director Nurbek Omuraliev, the scientific adviser Ainur Elebaeva and research fellows Azamat Seyitbaev and Urmat Kaleev, who rendered a considerable assistance in carrying out the ethno-sociological survey in Kyrgyzstan in 2003 and granted their permit to use the data of 1996, 1997 and 2000 sociological surveys in this book. This book was researched and published under a two-year fellowship of the Japan Scholarship for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). However, none of these individuals and organizations is responsible for the views expressed here. ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN KYRGYZSTAN 6 INTRODUCTION Two powerful, interdependent and often opposed motives animate the peoples of new states. On the one hand, the desire to build a modern state that promotes progress, a rising standard of living, more effective political order, greater social justice, on the other hand, the desire to retain peculiar ethnic, cultural and religious identity. The two motives stem from different sources and respond to different pressures. However, the tension between them is one of the central driving forces in national evolution of the new states and, at the same time, one of the greatest obstacles to such evolution.1 Kyrgyzstan is a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. The liberalization of the socio-political life in the late 1980s and the announced course towards democratization and observance of human rights stimulated the growth of ethnic self-consciousness of all ethnic communities in Kyrgyzstan and gave rise to national-cultural organizations that directed their efforts at the revival of native language and popularization of own ethnic history and culture. The establishment of different contacts with foreign countries and ethnic diasporas abroad also notably furthered the process of search for own ethnic and cultural identity. The processes of ethno-cultural and religious revival, provoked by nation and state building in former socialist countries, brought the issue of ethnicity to the fore. Scholars were faced with a difficult task to provide a new concept and meaning of ethnicity as well as to reveal factors that contribute to its actualization. The discussion of origins and forms of conflicting ethnicity became the most popular subject of post-Soviet researchers. This book presents another attempt to explore the problem of ethnicity. Its main object is to uncover the nature and essence of ethnicity and its particularities in Kyrgyzstan using a new theoretical and methodological approach. To achieve the object, a careful examination of published works of western, Soviet and post-Soviet scholars on the topic was made. At the same time, this study is not only about ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan, it is a complex approach to ethnicity and its integral elements such as language and religion. Language is an essential marker of ethnic identity, which preserves its ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN KYRGYZSTAN 7 symbolic function even after the decline of a communicative role of language. As to Islam, it is an important element of Kyrgyz ethnic identity. For Kyrgyzs, who obtained their ethnic identity under the Soviet regime, Islamic identity cannot be considered in isolation from ethnic category. Although many scholars investigated the issues of ethnicity, language and Islam in Kyrgyzstan individually, a complex research of these three factors was not undertaken until now. Another distinctive feature of the book is that it covers a broad historical period: from the early stage of formation of multiethnic society in Kyrgyzstan to modern ethno-linguistic situation, from the first years of Islamic colonization to present-day Islamic revival. The research is based on a wide range of materials, including official statistics, periodicals, books and other publications in both English and Russian. A special source of information is the results of the 2003 ethno-sociological survey, conducted by the author in 2003 to bring to light the actual ethno-cultural situation in Kyrgyzstan. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK The book consists of three parts. Each part includes three chapters. Part 1 ‘Ethnicity’, comprised of Chapters 1-3, focuses on theoretical and methodological aspects of ethnicity and nationalism, presents Kyrgyzstani policy on the question of interethnic relations and provides an overview of ethnic and interethnic situation in the republic after the independence. Chapter 1 through analyzing the publications of Western, Soviet and post- Soviet scholars on the subject of ethnicity proposes a new theoretical approach to the problem. The chapter discusses the issue of nationalism and reveals common and peculiar between both phenomena ethnicity and nationalism. Much attention is devoted to the political concept of ethnic nationalism as well as its origins, conditions and forms. Ethnic nationalism in post-Soviet countries in general and the Central Asian republics in particular are examined. Chapter 2 is divided into two main sections. The first section presents a historical background of the current national policy in Kyrgyzstan, especially the Bolsheviks policy on the national question and the implementation of the 1924 national-territorial delimitation in Central Asia. The second section addresses the national policy of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan with a special emphasis placed on the ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION IN KYRGYZSTAN 8 activities of the Assembly of the People of Kyrgyzstan. The materials of sociological surveys are used to uncover basic problems in the field of interethnic relations in Kyrgyzstan. Chapter 3 provides an overview of ethnic situation in the republic prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union and discloses factors that brought to the destabilization of interethnic situation after the independence. The topicality of ethnic problems and the conflict potential of Kyrgyzstani society as well as the mechanisms of self-identification among largest ethnic communities are defined by means of ethno-sociological surveys. Part 2 ‘Language’, comprised of Chapters 4-6, discusses language as a factor of ethnic identity, presents language policy of sovereign Kyrgyzstan and reviews linguistic situation in Kyrgyzstan after the declaration of independence. Chapter 4 regards language as important marker of ethnic identity but argues that the decline of language does not bring to the decline of ethnic identity. It distinguishes between two main functions of language: communicative and symbolic. Chapter 5 consists of two basic sections. The first section presents main phases of the Soviet language policy, including three language reforms of written Kyrgyz, and reveals motives that were behind it. The second section demonstrates how the contradictions of the Soviet language policy affected the policy of Kyrgyzstan after the independence, outlines two different stages in the post-Soviet policy and examines how the process of nation building as well as other factors helped to shape it. Chapter 6 provides a brief overview of the linguistic situation in Kyrgyzstan during the periods of the Russian Empire and the Soviet regime and through analyzing the data of a sociological survey characterizes the current language situation in the republic and determines the place of Russian, Kyrgyz and Uzbek in different spheres of public and political life of Kyrgyzstani society. Part 3 ‘Religion’, comprised of Chapters 7-9, addresses the expansion of Islam in Central Asia and Kyrgyzstan, outlines distinctive features of ‘Islamic revival’ in the country and determines the involvement of Islam into the state politics. Chapter 7 provides a historical review of Islamic spread in Central Asia and its periodization, beginning from the Arab conquest of the region till
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