Because my “questions” are a little ambiguous, I’ve underlined what topics I think discussion in class could address.
Khalid
This reading did a fantastic job of demonstrating the complex interrelated and competing ideas before and after revolution that shaped Central Asian mentalities toward modernity, nationality, and liberation. Some of such ideas, which it may be helpful to tease out their meanings and changing relationships to one another, are ‘patriotism,’ ‘nationalism,’ (those appear to be different, especially see 157) anti-colonialism, love, modernism, pan-Islamism, pan-Turkism and of course, Bolshevism. There are probably more!
I found it interesting how Bolshevism and intellectual thought and mentality in many ways agreed or overlapped throughout the reading. For example, they held some version of “a vision of the world divided into nations that could be objectively denned and demarcated” (159), or they “sought to define an identity for the people of Central Asia rooted in ethnicity, as well as in history” (158). Toward the beginning, they both conflated Islam, revolution, and anti-colonialism (154) and their alliance was ‘natural’. Once it became more and more apparent that the Soviet Union was going to work in an imperial manner, I wonder if the Islamic intellectuals realized it and called the Bolsheviks out publically, or if due to repression all of the forms of resistance had to happen in the subaltern ways described in Veiled Empire. (The january 1920 resolutions for an autonomous Turkestan is one place to look, pg 155-6.)
I remember Hirsch’s of turning people into nations necessarily involved the violence of unifying and homogenizing, as she gave the example with France, and argued the Soviet Union was late in its efforts of doing so, which led to a lot of its issues. Khalid here gives examples of an indigenously originating nationalization (at least calls for it) and you can see instances where, even though it comes from people of their own agency rather than from orders from an empirical power, you see the same sort of actions and viewpoints. For example, by 1917, Jadidism had evolved to claim that “all inhabitants of Central Asia were “really” Turks; if they did not speak Turkic, it was because they had forgotten it” just like in the Kresy some people were “really” Polonized Ukrainians or vice-versa (157). In this case, cultural elites are deciding what nationality is for their own region instead of foreigners, but does the fact that this nation formation is indigenous make the process any more moral or less arbitrary?
Kamp
The amount that Saodat was moved around for jobs by the Soviet Union reminded me of Brown’s argument that one of the aspects of a modern individual in the Soviet Union was that they became uprooted from a spiritual space and constantly moved around so that movement demonstrated modernity.
In her interviews and explorations of otins’ private social and religious positions, Kamp offers an illustration of Central Asian women’s agency that adds a lot of important information for the understanding of veiling as an issue, as well as how agency can demonstrate itself under intense societal restrictions and pressures. I think that it would be worthy to explore how East Asian women’s freedoms were affected (both positively and negatively) by the modernization of the schooling system and by the Hujum. Girls’ education under an Otin was mainly seen as an intrinsic benefit that made women more prepared and valued for marriage, but the position of otin allowed for a woman in a highly patriarchal society to gain social and religious status. On the other hand, ‘modern’ education allowed women to gain economic independence (as Saodat’s story tells, by her ability to leave her husband and hold jobs that support her family), appropriated or shunned the otin, and came with coercion to unveil. I found it interesting that Kamp claims unveiling in Egypt and Iran was an actual display of agency and will, because unveiling was not state-sponsored. The Hujum forced women to be pressured either to remain veiled or unveil, displaying state or religious power over them.
“Obidova”
Firstly, I wanted to say that the reading really did a good job of making me admire Jahon Obidova. The reading argues that “she became reality because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union engineered a social revolution in Central Asia” (315). I appreciate how this reading complicated the issue of unveiling and Soviet imperialism by demonstrating a case study of someone who greatly benefited from Bolshevik reforms, while not neglecting to mention that Obidova “had been at the forefront of political actions that brought change, turmoil, and anguish to many” (315). This reading demonstrated a clear example of Kamp’s claim that women who did not have the the social and ideological environment that would enforce veiling would be more likely and able to follow and live up to Bolshevik ideologue.
When I read Obidova’s quote at the beginning of the chapter, I was skeptical of how genuine her words were. They fit nicely in Soviet propaganda, claiming Russian women and the idea of the Party lead Uzbek women’s liberation. Being how Obidova’s life was shaped by the party, it makes sense that she’d believe in the Party’s message. It’s interesting to me how she and her serves Soviet Propaganda so well, and how it seems the policy and specific actions of hiring, promoting, giving her power, etc. are all actions that could be construed serve propaganda purposes. (That’s not to say that she did not wield real power in her many positions, nor that her work for the Cheka didn’t prove her to be a real badass.) The many writers and politicians can portray her story as emblematic of Soviet success when such life-stories seem so far to really only apply on the margins of Uzbek society. This issue of framing her into a propagandistically convenient story, when she defied Uzbek and even Soviet gender roles explains the “ambivalence” toward her. Perhaps y’all can help me figure out what’s happening here, as I have some feeling that there’s still an issue with the propaganda appeal of her life conflicting with understandings of her agency.
Hope y’all didn’t find this way too long.
I feel like women’s spaces in Uzbekistan- like in any patriarchal society- allow women freedom in socialization/expression between each other. To me the role of otin seems to be at least in part to pass on familial knowledge and a continuity to social + cultural production from previous participants in that social sphere (like the poetry).
Basically, I’m stressed that the role of the otin probably involved a lot of philosophizing and moral discussions and incredibly valuable mentoring relationships but was so disrupted by Soviet intervention.
Like you said Teo, the Soviet individual doesn’t have spiritual roots, but what does it mean when those spiritual roots were also intertwined with every other aspect of that individual’s social life?
Northrop, I think gives one answer to your question whether Soviet programs affected the freedoms of Central Asian women: he argues that the hujum was adopted as Soviet policy only after other previous campaigns had failed to make an impact on Uzbek life. In fact, I’d argue in general that Soviet campaigns could only impact the lives of women when they were as intrusive as the hum: look at Kamp’s claim that social environment determined veiling and unveiling before the hujum – she observes that a women who unveiled had a social circle that involved the Party. (149)
This raises the question of what real impact the other “arch-modernisers” in our story, the Jadids, had on Central Asian society. Although Kamp argues that their prescription of Uzbek revolution did have an affect on the Soviet idea of Uzbekistan, she still didn’t make it clear to me what influence they had on wider Uzbek society. (Perhaps Kamp only evokes the Jadids because they play into the Soviet vision of Uzbek society, which then becomes hegemonic?)
Here’s one extra thing Kamp made me notice: look how A Thousand and One Nights is exotic to both Saodat and a Comintern delegate, but for opposite reasons. To Saodat, it gives her unveiled role models, and encourages her to run away from an arranged marriage (124); to the Comintern delegate, it illustrates the “melancholy of the harem”! (142) Exoticism, it seems, can simultaneously be desirable and the object of rejection.
I know this goes slightly outside the scope of the reading, but I wonder if there was any interaction between the Bolsheviks, or other revolutionary forces, and the Jadids before the revolution. We commonly think of Bolshevism as a phenomenon that took place mainly in St. Petersburg, and then, through force of will, spread to the rest of the former Russian Empire, but that is not entirely true. I think this is most pointy show by the Baku Commune, in which the Bolshevik Party in Baku (another majority Muslim city in the Russian Empire) took power of the city, not as a mere extension of the seizure of power in Petrograd, but working under completely different situations complicated by the factors of religion and international involvement in the region. I link below an article about the Baku Commune.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/baku-commune-october-revolution-lenin-bolsheviks
Teo, I find your question about Jahon Obidova’s agency interesting in light of the historiographical debate between Kamp and Northrop. Rather than framing Uzbek people as reactionaries to the exertion of state authority, it seems to me that Kamp in her book is much more invested in portraying the agency of women during the unveiling campaign, and this argument even carries over to the Obidova piece. I do think you have a point about the propagandistic value of what we know about her, since Kamp even goes so far to say that “Jahon Obidvoa probably never thought of herself as a subject of empire.” (Russia’s People of Empire 315) But Kamp also takes care to mention that even after the Zhenotdel was disbanded in 1930, Obidova continued to actively center women’s issues in her activism. (Russia’s People of Empire 314) Kamp’s inclusion of this detail signals to me that even though Obidova was committed to the expansion and consolidation of Soviet power in Central Asia, she was also capable of operating outside the Party’s expectations.
Reading your prompt about the terms of the A State of Nations reading, I seemed not to remember how nationalism became tied to pan-Islamism and anti-colonialism. Page 149: “Jadid rhetoric held out a highly positive view of Europe (or ‘The West’).” Continuing: “By Autumn 1917, however, the mood had begun to change… coincid[ing] with anguish over Ottoman defeat,” which was, “the most powerful Muslim state and symbolic of much more than a dynasty” (150). It seems the Jadid’s pan-Islamist, anti-imperialist nationalism was borne out of an existential threat of there being no culturally and religiously unified force that could defend the supposed interests of Muslims, not so much that anything quite so intolerable as described on page 150 had been occurring regularly enough to justify rebellion. I’m trying to understand the real psychology behind their political ambitions.
Teo, I find your questions on the Khalid reading to be particularly interesting, in specific: “In this case, cultural elites are deciding what nationality is for their own region instead of foreigners, but does the fact that this nation formation is indigenous make the process any more moral or less arbitrary?” In this reading, I was struck by how Khalid framed the issue of autonomy and self-identification. It was very different than Doug Northrop did in our readings last week. Northrop focused on the Uzbeck loss of agency and loss of the ability to self-identify and define their culture. Khalid this week emphasizes on the autonomy of a community that is not Soviet officials. While the jadids are considered the cultural elite, it seems like they are definitely closer to the community than Soviet officials. But are they? I think this is what you are getting at, Teo. Do these cultural elite really understand the preferences of the non-elite, even though they are from the same community? It seems like the agency of the cultural elite wouldn’t be arbitrary if they truly represented the beliefs of the culture they are speaking for. However, in trying to reconcile this reading with Northrop’s reading, it seems that the jadids did not represent the culture at large. We can see this with the evidence that many women did not want to unveil and the choices associated with that. In some ways, the elites of any culture or society may be out of touch with the culture they are claiming to be elites of. Elites ideally should reflect and advocate for the beliefs of the people they are a part of. After reading from different authors about Central Asia, it seems like the elites do not represent the culture of the non-elite; there is a disconnect. This is why I believe that both the Soviet Union and the cultural elite do not completely understand ideas of Uzbeck, etc nationality; it seems arbitrary to me.