‘Imagining Communities’ and‘Imagined Community’ of the Uzbek SSR:Post-1917 Debates on the Uzbek Nation

• Published in: 중소연구, 40(3) pp. 373 - 400
• Main Author: 신보람
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 아태지역연구센터 01.11.2016
• Subjects: 지역학
• ISSN: 1012-3563; 2508-5425
• DOI: 10.21196/aprc.40.3.201611.011

When Karl Marx’s doctrine with Bolshevik footnotes arrived in Central Asia, it was reinterpreted by the local people who learned to use the language of both ‘class’ and ‘nation’ to build their own political platform and to legitimise their own visions of Central Asia’s future post-Russian colonisation. This paper explores the ideas and activities of the original cast who exerted significant influences on shaping Central Asia’s future after the Russian empire’s collapse. This cast included the Bolshevik leadership, Russian settlers, Central Asian Jadids, native ulama class, and bosmachi insurgents. These groups sometimes collaborated and other times contended to win the power to write a new history of post-colonial Central Asia. When the Uzbek SSR was established, they—especially the Jadids and the native Bolsheviks—deliberated over what qualities and markers were to be rejected or incorporated into the new Uzbek identity. The legacies of these original thinkers/actors have been a popular theme in Uzbek history and their roles in shaping the Uzbek nation have been reassessed and reinterpreted whenever the context of history writing change. KCI Citation Count: 0