Havighurst Center for Russian & Post-Soviet Studies, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Conference on Eurasian Empire: Literary, Historical, and Political Responses to Russian Rule in the Twentieth Century October 26-29 , 2006 DRAFT PAPER, NOT FOR CITATIONS Elites, Reforms and Power Institutions in Soviet Kyrgyzstan and Outer Mongolia in the 1920-1940s: a comparative historical analysis by Dr Irina Morozova International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden University, the Netherlands) Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute of Asian and African Studies (Moscow, Russia) Introduction In cold war historiography a model of Western colonial maritime empire often was the key to approach the USSR as a case of Soviet (and/or Russian) empire. The pattern metropolis–colony was applied to Moscow-Republics relationships. Sometimes southern Soviet Republics were viewed as less developed or underdeveloped Asia in opposition to the concentrated capital coming from the European part of the USSR or as provinces subordinated to the great capital city if comparison was made with the Roman Empire. The establishment of Soviet power in the east was regarded as formation (or re- figuration) of colonial (Russian) administration. The disintegration of the USSR was perceived as a part of the general and unavoidable post-World War II decolonization process. However, even at first glimpse at the USSR’s economic history one can see that the European ‘core’ of the Soviet Union could not profit from the new economic reorganization and trade in the way the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British or French had built national wealth. The investments into the great constructions in Siberia and Central Asia (and donations to Mongolia) exceeded the benefits, especially at the first stages of the projects. This fact pushed some scholars, like Immanuel Wallerstein, to write on the 1 systemic course of disintegration of the USSR: Moscow had not developed the proper schemes of exploiting its southern peripheries and, thus, became unable to prolong its existence as the core. However, Wallerstein’s parallel with capitalist core-periphery scheme also was not entirely satisfying: there was too little, practically none, concentrated capital in the European part of the Soviet Union and consequently, no form of capitalist exploitation of the eastern parts. The proposition that an empire minimally involves a non-native domination of a native society1 can be hardly accepted without fare criticism, especially from anthropological perspective. Confusion, firstly, derives from defining native and non- native: do the native really identify themselves as natives; aren’t they also a result of an earlier migration or conquest; how fast their identities change, so that they form a new supra-national identity or identity of imperial citizen, or a new social identity of belonging to the ruling elite (nomenklatura in the Soviet Union presents such case), for instance, or other social strata. The perception of Moscow elites as a core has also proved to be a simplification. As nowadays-available Soviet archives have shown, the republican elite recruited from the locals had more influence upon the decisions in Moscow than previously believed. Another myth about the Soviet empire created during the cold war and reinforced by the ‘parade of sovereignties’ that followed the disintegration of the USSR, was on the existence of Russian and russified core elite. Nevertheless, the times of shared perception of the USSR as a case of empire organized along ethnic lines and in the end disintegrated along these lines in the same way as the Habsburgs or Ottomans2, passed away. The recent scholarly literature on Soviet Central Asia suggests a careful revision of the works by Carrère-d’Encausse, Alexandre Benningsen, Enders Wimbush and Yaacov Ro’i, who contributed a lot to the general perception of ‘imperial’ Soviet policy towards nationalities and religions3. Some scholars have set up new definitions to characterize the Soviet Union, as affirmative action empire. According to Terry Martin, affirmative action empire is a paradoxical sort of multiethnic state that supported national territories, languages, elites, and even identities and, in fact, created new indigenous nationalities (korennye narody)4. Indeed, it is hard not to concur with Martin that any association of the USSR with an empire was strictly non acceptable by any Soviet leader. The Lenin’s concept of Imperialism as the forceful impose of uneven capitalist relations upon weaker nationalities was taught to all Soviet students and scholars, as the struggle of oppressed 1 Motyl, Alexander J. Imperial Ends. The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, p. 13. 2 Dawisha, Karen & Parrot, Bruce (eds.) The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective. Armonk, N.Y., 1997; Barkey, Karen & Hagen, Mark von (eds.) After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building. The Soviet Union and the Russia, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Boulder, Colo., 1997. 3 Saroyan, Mark. “Rethinking Islam in the Soviet Union” in Minorities, mullahs, and modernity: Reshaping community in the former Soviet Union. Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 1996, pp. 1-42; DeWeese, Devin. “Islam and the legacy of Sovietology: A review essay on Yaacov Ro’I’s Islam in the Soviet Union” in Journal of Islamic Studies, 13(30), pp. 298-330. 4 Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. pp. 1-27. 2 minorities against imperialists was cultivated and propagandized to all the people of the USSR. Thus, the theory of Martin comes from an attempt to analyze the views and activities of Soviet policy-makers in their own terminology. The term affirmative action is itself a translation of a rather vague words’ combination polozhitel’naya deyatel’nost’, which simply means positive activity in dealing with national questions. The book by Martin by all means provides us with many interesting insights on the national policy in the USSR, particularly as the author bases his research on extensive archival material, and being influenced by these massives of documentation he mainly focuses on the policy of the Bolsheviks in their communications with nationalities. It is hard to disagree with Eisenstadt notice on empires as political systems5. However, the essential differences and variations of political systems in modern European empires, medieval Asian empires and Eurasian (nomadic) empires make this definition open to obvious objections. The relationships between the core elite and the periphery within an Empire may not differ from any pattern of the same structural redistribution of authority functions between capital and province in any state. The interdependency of peripheries in relation to each other on the core sounds like a better, although not entirely sufficient feature that may distinguish imperial structures from a state6. It could be said about the USSR that although its economy was supposed to function as a gigantic plant with its internal demand, production, production chains and consumption, there was limited opportunity for bilateral agreements between the supplier of raw material and a factory to purchase this resource. If on a small scale such relationships were possible (in a later period of Soviet history), they were still regulated from the center via the fine-year plans and fixed norms of production prescribed by the state to both the supplier and the consumer. In analysis of empire I find it important to overcome the state-oriented approach. Not all empires constituted a state in the classical definition of this term (the Mongol Empire, - formed as a result of conquest of societies that had already established ramified bureaucracy systems, like China, by people without such firm traditions of statehood as Mongolian tribes, - would be the most illuminating example). In no way the USSR was a nation-state. A supra national Soviet identity was solely declarative, and no practical policy was directed to real construction of any. The supra-national in the Soviet Union was the ruling strata – nomeklatura that above functioning in official Soviet bodies dispersed its rule throughout non-legitimized or half-legal structures of emergency powers, such as GK ChP, NKVD, KGB, etc. The rule of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was not fully legalized: the party did not legally secure its rights over property. At the same time, the high echelons of the CPSU constituted the super-legal organ in the Soviet Union. As some would argue, the super legality of Russian communism resulted from the Russian autocracy that in its turn had been the continuation of Moscovy knights’ and Golden Horde rule7. Thus, the USSR presented the case of Eurasian empire; and in order to understand its foundation 5 Eisenstadt, S.N. The Political Systems of Empires (Glencoe, N.Y.: Free Press, 1963). 6 Motyl, Alexander J. Imperial Ends. The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 7 Fursov, A. “Central Eurasia: Historical Centrality, Geostrategic Condition and Power Model Legacy” in Morozova. I. (ed.) Towards Social Stability and Democratic Governance in Central Eurasia: challenges to regional security. IOS Press, Amsterdam. pp. 23-39. 3 excurses should be made into the history of the Great Mongol Empire. Whatever hypothetical this approach might be, it, nevertheless, suggests