Erdman, Michael (2018) Divergent Paths : A Comparative Analysis of Soviet and Turkish Historical Narratives of Central Asia, 1922‐1937. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30298 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Divergent Paths: A Comparative Analysis of Soviet and Turkish Historical Narratives of Central Asia, 1922-1937 Michael Erdman Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD 2017 Near and Middle East Section, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS, University of London 1 Abstract The period between the end of the Russian Civil War and Turkish War of Independence (1922) and the start of the Great Terror (1937) was one of social and political upheaval, as well as state formation according to bold new patterns across Eurasia. As part of this dynamic, both the Turkish and Soviet governments sought to refashion the self-identification of their citizens through new national histories. These meta-narratives were intended to educate as well as indoctrinate, setting new rules and boundaries for inclusion and participation. Through my doctoral project, I problematize the role of state ideology (Gökalpian nationalism in Turkey; Stalinism in the Soviet Union) in the writing of the pre-Islamic history of Central Asia, with a particular focus on issues of nationhood and belonging. I seek to explain why the two narratives diverged sharply by the mid-1930s, despite having access to roughly the same body of primary sources and scholarly research. Turkish accounts stressed cultural and racial unity among Turkic-speakers, while Soviet histories emphasized miscegenation and the historically contingent nature of nations. They were articulated in school textbooks, conference presentations, monographs, popular histories and propagandistic publications, and were therefore available to all levels of society. By making use of a wide spectrum of all of these materials in Turkish, Russian, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tatar and Kazakh, I explore the development of the narratives, their content and language of enunciation from the consolidation of Soviet and Turkish statehood until the eve of the Second World War. In doing so, I demonstrate the manner in which history became a tool of the state and its efforts to influence a rigid and highly controlled worldview on Turkish and Soviet citizens respectively. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................ 2 Declaration on Plagiarism ...................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... 8 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 9 Literature Review ................................................................................................ 26 Interpreting the remote past ........................................................................................... 26 Soviet historiography ....................................................................................................... 27 Central Asian historiography ........................................................................................... 27 Turkish historiography ..................................................................................................... 28 Ancient History and Archaeology ................................................................................ 28 Nationalist Archaeology, the State and Ideology ............................................................ 29 Archaeology in Anatolia ................................................................................................... 32 Archaeology, Anthropology, Race and History ................................................................ 33 Nationalist Historiography ......................................................................................... 34 The Nationalists according to the Marxists ..................................................................... 36 Marxist Historiography .............................................................................................. 37 East Asia: a Fusion of Marx and the Ancient Nation........................................................ 38 Soviet Historiography ................................................................................................. 40 The Friendship of Peoples ................................................................................................ 41 A Soviet View of Soviet Historiography ........................................................................... 43 Central Asian Historiography ...................................................................................... 46 Kazakhstan ....................................................................................................................... 47 The Great Patriotic War and Kazakh History ................................................................... 48 Azerbaijan ........................................................................................................................ 50 Broader Trends ................................................................................................................ 51 Turkish Historiography ............................................................................................... 53 Behar on the Influence of the State................................................................................. 54 Turkish History in Context................................................................................................ 54 A Nietzschean View of Turkish Historiography ................................................................ 56 Alternatives to the Turkish History Thesis ....................................................................... 57 A Lone Comparison .................................................................................................... 58 History, Language and Archaeology ..................................................................... 60 Language and Proto-Language .................................................................................... 61 Language, Land and Culture ............................................................................................ 62 Ecologies and Economies of Language ............................................................................ 64 Endogenous Change......................................................................................................... 66 Family Relations ............................................................................................................... 68 Typologies and Mythologies ............................................................................................ 69 Alternative Attempts ....................................................................................................... 72 Sifting through the Evidence ............................................................................................ 75 Archaeology............................................................................................................... 76 Archaeology in the Era of Extremes................................................................................. 77 New Archaeology ............................................................................................................. 79 The Intangible versus the Material .................................................................................. 81 4 A Synthesis of Archaeology and Linguistics ..................................................................... 82 Museums, Exhibitions and Retinal Narratives ................................................................. 85 Post-Modernism and the Museum .................................................................................. 87 Anthropology............................................................................................................. 89 The Ecological Push .......................................................................................................... 91 Historical Anthropology ................................................................................................... 92 Postcolonialism in the Pre-colonial Era ........................................................................... 94 Bible Study ....................................................................................................................... 95 Israel Reboot .................................................................................................................... 97 Last Stand at Masada ......................................................................................................