Kindling the Hearths of Culture: Kazakh Citizenship and Cultural Revolution on the Soviet Frontier, 1917-1937 Restricted; Files Only
Ramsay, Rebekah (Summer 2020)
Abstract
This dissertation examines the cultural integration of Kazakh nomadic communities into the Soviet Union in the first two decades of Soviet rule. During the process of “building socialism” in the 1920s and 1930s, Kazakh society was devastated by forced collectivization, mass famine, and political purges, and Kazakh communities faced a situation where the very foundations of their former way of life were not simply suppressed or rejected, but actively dismantled. Like other newly minted Soviet citizens, Kazakh people were supposed not only to live in a Soviet and modern way (on collective farms, working in industry, freed of class oppression) but also to act and think as modern Soviet people. Early Soviet ideology conceptualized these transformations as part of a larger “cultural revolution,” a concept encompassing everything from the cultivation of aesthetic taste to the reformation of domestic habits. For Kazakhs, this transition was made more urgent by the narrowing of alternatives in a particularly brutal situation.
In this context, this study explores the ways in which early Soviet “cultural revolutionary” campaigns among Kazakhs facilitated the construction of Soviet citizenship, and more broadly, considers the role of cultural difference in “cultural revolution.” The study is structured around two Kazakh concepts associated with the cultural revolution – adet-ghuryp (custom) and madeniet (culture). For each sphere, it examines associated Soviet initiatives for socio-cultural transformation. Drawing on archival and published sources, the dissertation argues that the Soviet “cultural revolution” established a framework for Kazakh Soviet citizenship in the midst of rapidly diminishing alternatives. A close examination of these cultural revolutionary campaigns uncovers their grounding in pre-revolutionary and transnational reformist ideals, their reception and negotiation in rural communities, and their importance for the construction of a mobilizational relationship between state and citizens that formed the basis for longer-term Kazakh participation in Soviet society.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations................................................................................................................................... vi
Key Terms...................................................................................................................................... viii
Transliteration.................................................................................................................................. ix
Introduction: Muslim Nomads as Soviet Citizens................................................................................. 1
I. Adet-Ghuryp: “Custom” and the Kazakh Soviet Household............................................................. 46
Chapter 1: From Customary Law to Customary Crimes.................................................................. 47
Chapter 2: Crimes of Custom in “Revolutionary Legalism”............................................................ 89
Chapter 3: Investigation, Suspicion, and the “Sovietization of the Awul”....................................... 133
II. Madeniet: Kazakh Culture and Soviet Culturedness..................................................................... 193
Chapter 4: Kul’turnost’ in the “Revolutionary East”..................................................................... 194
Chapter 5: Red Yurts as Nomadic “Hearths” of Soviet Culture...................................................... 267
Chapter 6: The “Liquidation of Illiteracy” in Rural Communities.................................................. 330
Conclusion: “The Born-Again Kazakh People”................................................................................ 383
Bibliography.................................................................................................................................. 395
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