Inner Lives of Cultures, The Page 13
Alena Ledeneva is an academic with a number of books on Russia’s informal economy, networks and patron–client relationships to her name (such as How Russia Really Works and Russia’s Economy of Favours). She now works in London as Professor of Politics and Society at UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and has taught at Cambridge University and Harvard University among others.
Glossary
beznal, beznalichnye den’gi – Literally ‘noncash’, money that serves purposes of financial accounting and bank transfers (no physical money involved)
bezpredel – Literally, beyond limits; a colloquial way of referring to breaching of all kind of norms, not just formal rules but also informal norms
blat – A colloquial way of referring to the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply or for circumventing formal procedures
chernyi nal – Abbreviation for nalichnost’ (black cash),
cash that does not appear in the accounting
delit’sia – Literally ‘to divide’, meaning to share profits through payouts for various favours and services
dopsoglashenie, dopolnitel’noe soglashenie – Literally ‘additional agreement’, a document specifying the terms
of the contract but that has no legal status
dvukhkhodovka – Literally ‘a two-step procedure’,
referring to a simple type of fraud in financial scheming
ekonomika neplatezhei – Literally, ‘an economy of nonpayments’, referring to a situation where every
economic subject is indebted to everyone else
fizicheskoe litso – An individual in legal terminology
iuridicheskoe litso – A firm or organisation in legal terminology
krutit’sia, also vykrutit’sia – Literally, ‘to rotate, to spin’, finding ways out of difficult situations, normally associated with hardship
krysha – Literally, ‘roof’, protection from above, can be of criminal, military, or security services origins
levye firmy – Literally, ‘left-hand firms’, referring to scam firms that do not exist as real firms but are used in financial schemes and fake accounting
martyshki – Literally, ‘monkeys’, referring to scam firms
that do not exist as real firms but are used in financial schemes and fake accounting
naezd – A request that often results in razborka or strelka, originally associated with racketeers but now widely used
in vernacular
nagliadka – Visual advertising, visual propaganda
nalogovoe osvobozhdenie – Literally, ‘tax liberation’,
referring to tax allowance given by the government to
those entitled to state subsidies that have not been paid
obnulit’ – Literally, ‘bring down to zero’, referring to asset stripping or minimisation of profits in order to avoid
financial responsibility
poniatiia – Literally ‘notions’, the unofficial code of norms
prikhvatizatsii – A pun from ‘privatisation’ and prikhvatit’, literally ‘to take more than was meant’, referring to insider dealing, corruption, embezzlement, and theft occurring during the privatisation campaign of the 1990s
proslushka – Equipment for bugging premises, also referring to a service one purchases for business or other forms of intelligence
prostoi vekse’ – Literally, ‘a simple promissory bill’, a document that can be exchanged for cash at a certain date
pustyshki – Literally, ‘empties’, referring to scam firms that do not exist as real firms but are used in financial schemes and fake accounting
rabotat’ po nuliam – To work with ‘zero’ profits, normally for the purposes of tax evasion
razborka – Equivalent to strelka but is used even more widely, for all kind of disputes including personal rows
raz’iasnit’ vopros – To clear up an issue, normally during razborka or strelka
siloviki – Literally, ‘forcers’, people of influence associated with the military, police or security forces, and related ministries
spetssluzhby, spetsial’nye sluzhby – Literally ‘special services’, meaning security services
strelka – Informal dispute settlement taking place at a particular location between ‘roofs’ of the conflicting parties, sometimes resulting in violent shoot-outs
tenevye skhemy – Literally, ‘shadow schemes’ referring to schemes that involve hidden operations and do not appear in the books
tolkachi – Literally ‘pushers’, engaged in activities of making ends meet in the planned economy by manipulating plan allocations, making up for shortage or nondelivery of supplies, and fiddling with insufficient funds
tolmachi – Those who speak and explain
vykolachivanie – Literally ‘beating out’, usually associated with debt recovery or extortion
vziat’ na poruki – To vouch for somebody, to bail someone out, or to take responsibility for somebody’s future behaviour
zachety, vzaimozachety – Offsets or mutual offsets, transactions that result in annulment of mutual obligations, calling it even
zadnim chislom – Backdating, used in fake accounting and many kinds of petty fraud
zakaznoi zhurnalism, zakazukha – Literally, journalism ‘produced on order’, referring to prepaid, and therefore biased, articles in the press that serve certain political or business clients
Notes
See William W Lewis, ‘Russia’s Survival of the Weakest’, The Asian Wall Street Journal, 5 November 1999; and other sources at the Global McKinsey Institute site (www.mckinsey.com)
K Hendley, ‘Legal development in post-Soviet Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 13, no. 3, 1997, pp. 228–251
According to Interfax, Vladimir Makarov, the deputy head of the Interior Ministry’s Economics Crime Department, said that up to 45 per cent of the country’s goods and services are part of the shadow economy. He also said that more than 40 Moscow banks are currently involved in what he called ‘serious’ shady deals. These comments were echoed by Duma Security Committee chairman Alexander Kulikov, who told RIA-Novosti the same day that the treasury receives only five per cent of taxes owed because of operations in the shadow economy (Quoted from RFE/RL, vol. 5, no. 28, part 1, 9 February 2001)
DC North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 3
Oxbridge unwritten rules are spelt out in FM Cornford, Microcosmographia Academica, Cambridge, MainSail Press, 1993
Edward Keenan, ‘Muscovite political folkways’, in The Russian Review, vol. 45, 1986, pp. 115–181
Some Moscow observers note that, under President Putin, law enforcement is just as selective and law enforcement agencies appear to be pursuing corruption allegations almost exclusively when they involve known opponents of the Kremlin. A variety of ‘official’ legal, administrative and economic sanctions can be levied against ‘selected’ victims. To start with, the fire brigade, tax police and sanitation department can be called upon to issue citations for tax irregularities or violations of fire, safety and public health codes on request. If necessary, this can be followed by further economic sanctions, informal arm-twisting, negative publicity in the press, etc. – a whole menu with legal changes for dessert
Svetlana Boym, Commonplaces: Mythologies of everyday life in Russia, Cornell University Press, 2000
Georg Simmel, ‘The sociology of secrets and of secret societies,’ American Journal Society, vol. 11, no. 4, 1906. Sharing a secret is often compulsive: when one cannot bear keeping a secret to oneself, one reloads the burden on another person to keep it
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971, pp. 7–14
See the discussion of the sociology of secrecy in Kim Lane Scheppele’s Legal Secrets: Equality and efficiency in the common law, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 3–23
Lesley Milne (ed.), Ref
lective Laughter: Aspects of humour in Russian culture, Anthem Press, London, 2004, Introduction. From the perspective of informal practices, I would not separate humour into official culture and unofficial culture that is co-opted in building socialism and the alternative anekdot. Both helped to reproduce the façade of socialism
Alena Ledeneva, ‘From Russia with Blat: Can informal practices help modernize Russia?’ Social Research, vol. 76, no. 1, 2009; Alena Ledeneva, ‘Telephone justice in Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 24, no. 4, 2008, pp. 324–50
The reason why satire works in the UK is because it never attacks the democratic system, rather it targets the failings of personalities, as seen,
for example, in Private Eye.
The Soviet system also failed to change individual needs, despite all its repressive potential and ‘experimental grounds of the concentration camps’ (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, San Diego, London, Harcourt, 1968)
These boundaries are shifting as the implications of ‘smiling’ in the 1930s are different from, say, the 1950s and 1980s, as are the implications of not smiling at the right times
Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 79
Griboedov, Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin quoted in Milne, Reflective Laughter
Simmel, ‘The sociology of secrets and of secret societies’, p. 442
See Kristin Roth-Ey, Soviet Culture in the Media Age (forthcoming)
Charles Tilly, Why?, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 19–20
Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Blat in Stalin’s time’, in Bribery and Blat in Russia: Negotiating reciprocity from the Middle Ages to the 1990s, ed. by Stephen Lovell, Alena Ledeneva and Andrei Rogachevskii, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, New York, Oxford University Press, 2000
Mikhail Zhvanetskii, ‘Nepevodimye igry’ in Izbrannoe, Moskva, Eksmo, 2009, pp. 131–33 (originally recorded at the 1986 New Year’s Eve performance)
Lev Gudkov, Negativnaya identichnost, Moskva, 2006
In contemporary Russia, for example, a simple reaction to success is to associate it with connections, corruption, or siloviki when it is really isn’t just about that. ‘You can blame it all on blat when in fact it’s not blat’
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste, London, Routledge, 1989
Goffman, The Presentation of Self, 1990 (1959)
Mayfair M Yang, Gifts, Favours and Banquets: The art of social relationships in China, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1994
Quoted in Iurii Levada, ‘Homo Post-Sovieticus’, Sociological Research, vol. 40, no. 6, 2001, p. 17
Quoted by Seth Graham, in ‘Varieties of reflexivity in the Russo-Soviet anekdot’, in Milne, Reflective Laughter, p. 176
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 458
Levada, ‘Homo Post-Sovieticus’, pp. 6–7
Cited in Giddens, ‘On rereading The Presentation of Self: some reflections’, Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 4, December 2009, pp. 290–95
Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours, p. 77
Now, viewing the Soviet system with the benefit of hindsight, with all these things coming to the fore, we can start seeing without worrying if it is going to upset those who were complicit in their own repression
Alena Ledeneva, Unwritten Rules: How Russia really works, London, Centre for European Reform, 2001, pp. 4–5
Levada, ‘Homo Post-Sovieticus’, p. 9
For example, when a survey shows that among Russians today only 11 per cent can say that they have ‘never lied to anyone’, and only 32 per cent can say that they ‘have never taken something that belonged to someone else without permission’, it attests to one of the simplest and most widespread types of human deception. This type is based on the diversity of normative fields themselves (social, group, role, and other fields), which determine the orientations and frameworks of each individual’s activity. What interests us, however, are the more specific types and structures of ‘deceptive’ behaviour that are linked to the specific functioning of social norms, in particular historical and nation-state conditions – for example, the evasion of civic obligations and disobedience to the traffic rules (Levada, ‘Homo Post-Sovieticus’)
Alena Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The informal practices that shaped post-Soviet politics and business, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2006
Levada, ‘Homo Post-Sovieticus’
The proposed analysis of open secrets and knowing smiles poses an empirical question of their universality/specificity. It is also worth pondering what forms of research might deepen our understanding of societies. Finally, one could pursue the line of analysis of the emotional content of corruption
11
Uzbekness:
From Otherness to Ideology
Hamid Ismailov
Once Khodja Nasreddin, a folkloric hero of Oriental
people, went abroad and when he was asked by a passerby:
‘Is today a night of a full moon, because as you see the moon
is full in the sky?’ – he replied: ‘Sorry, I’m a stranger in this city, so I don’t know…’
As an Oriental writer I spend the majority of my time and maybe efforts describing that ‘otherness’ or the particularities of mentality, and specifics of outlook of the Uzbeks, or Russians, or Soviets, or strangers in the West, so it’s not a strange theme for me at all. So here is an article about so-called ‘Uzbekness’, which was written in 1989 while Uzbekistan was still part of the Soviet Union. It’s useful to see also how this ‘Uzbekness’ of Uzbeks is changing or has changed in the 20 years which have passed since the article was written. In the second part of the paper I try to analyse how the concept of ‘Uzbekness’ was put as a cornerstone of the new state ideology and how the Uzbek authorities used its different parts for their political and pragmatic ends in different spheres of social life. Many of these observations could be applied not just to Uzbeks but also to their neighbours in Central Asia, though the ‘otherness’ of every ethnicity or nation in Central Asia and post-Soviet territories may differ from each other.
Uzbekness, 1989
Who are we, Uzbeks, and what do we think of the world?
In Uzbek the words and their order would have been: ‘We, Uzbeks, who are we and of the world what do we think?’ The sentence reflects a fragment of the language system. The verb (action) comes last, after those concerned and their misadventures have been described and all the other words said. Not until the end of the utterance can one tell whether what is being said is a question or a negation. There is also no morphological distinction of gender – a grammatical feature peculiarly echoed in Uzbek men’s complete disregard for woman (the veil for them!). However, with today’s equal rights, she has fully replaced him in the cotton fields. Besides, Uzbek word-building is agglutinative and progressive; words grow with assiduous consistency, like trees – from the roots upwards.
Such, in outline, is the Logos of the Uzbeks. When my friend, a French poet Jean-Pierre Balpe, saw today’s life of the scions of the great thinkers and conquerors like Beruni, Timur, Al Khoresmi, Babur, Navoi and Ulugbek, he said patience was the first feature of the Uzbek character and also its last.
We too shall patiently traverse the Road of the Uzbek Cosmos, but let us first deal with the small things.
1
An Uzbek legend begins: ‘In the land of the Body, ruled by Reason and Love, a child was born, and was called Heart.’ For the Uzbek the world begins as Home, Accord, and Family. Family means accord in the home and home in accord. The Uzbek homes in a makhallya, or a guzar, stand shoulder to shoulder as in a line of defence. The makhallya (also sometimes called guzar) is a family of homes with its own hierarchy and ethics, the foundation of peace and accord. The kishlak, or city, is a family of makha
llyas and guzars. The world is the Family and vice versa. This is what the Uzbek expects to see when he opens his eyes. But he finds he is in a bezhik (wooden cradle) bound hand and foot, and rocking violently. This initial commotion imprints itself to persist in his swaddled conscience for the rest of his life.
In the Family, Grandfather is the head, Grandmother controls, Father provides, Mother feeds, Brothers protect, Sisters foster, the Home stands, the Child grows. Generation follows generation and life builds up in the manner of Uzbek words – from the root upwards, to infinity.
The decay of the Home and the Family began long before we passed from the feudal to the socialist patriarchal home. In his novel, Night and Day, Abdulhamid Chulpon, a great Uzbek writer of the twentieth century, shows the stages of this destruction: the traditional house – house of rendez-vous – house of prostitution.
In many works, his counterparts Mahmudhodja Bekhbudi and Abdurauf Fitrat argued that patriarchal Uzbek life must be disrupted from within. The latter even believed that all our ills derived from the pillars of patriarchal family life: the desire to identify or replicate the social life with the family one and to observe etiquette. Be that as it may, the Home is falling, Accord is about to crumble, the Family is on the brink of decay – but we still have a long way to go to the end of the Uzbek sentence. We’ve just begun.
2
The Child grows and one day it takes its first steps, and at the very start of the Road it discovers a Garden. The World is like a Garden – this is what the Uzbek lives for in the midst of the two giant Deserts in the Oasis he has created. His language is a Garden of Words, his art a Garden of Ornaments, his philosophy a Garden of Contemplation, his paradise is a Garden with a River.
There’s no Home without a Garden, no Family without Children. To plant and to grow a tree is tantamount to giving birth to and fostering a child. The field is the exile of the garden, cotton its imprisonment.
Over the last century, after invasion by Russia in 1864, the area of the fields under cotton increased almost hundred-fold, as did the yields. Over the last 15 years, the areas allotted to gardens have shrunk to one-fifteenth of what they were – and today make up a mere one per cent of the arable lands of Uzbekistan.
Therefore, the Garden World is rather a Dreamland Garden. Actually, today the Uzbek sees the world as cotton. His language is technical cotton, his art its chaff, his philosophy: ‘cotton is the pride of the nation’, even his football team is Pakhtakor (Cotton-picker).
Two decades ago a famous Uzbek poet, Abdullah Aripov, appealed to the Uzbek to stand straight and take at least one look at the stars. Ten years ago another poet, Shavkat Rahmon, adjured the dwarf-tree itself to grow taller and bitterly surmised that spines could no longer unbend.
Today, the Aral Sea is drying up, the land salinating and turning into deserts, people are being poisoned (some figures of USSR Ministry of Public Health said the pesticide content in food has increased by 26 per cent). But the heraldic cotton-boll reigns supreme, shielding contemporary slavery from the eye with its whiteness. Meanwhile, discussions and sessions ramble on, as we continue formulating the Uzbek sentence, in which the verb (action), as we know, comes last.
3
The currently oft-referred-to expression, ‘feast in the midst of a plague’, is of British origin; but it is made for the Uzbek. Nothing can overcome his craving for the feast, or toi. The Child is hardly out in the Garden when the event is joyously celebrated in the cradle feast. The circumcision feast awaits him when he is back; the send-off feast when the boy leaves for the army; the kaitish feast to welcome him back home. (By the way, in accordance with the non-existent linguistic feminine gender there’s nothing similar for girls). Marriage is a sequence of small, larger and great feasts – the wedding ceremony. ‘When the Uzbek grows rich, he builds a house and calls a feast’, says the proverb, though this is not quite correct. The Uzbek will put a feast together even if he has been robbed of his last coin and his last shirt.
The vision of the world as a feast is profoundly philosophical. We are all guests here, but unfortunately, it has not been ordained that we see the Host. Ah, to take the Host’s place for a moment! Can there be greater bliss? And are any meats too good for the guests in this fleeting world?
Have you ever been to an Uzbek wedding? Songs, askiya (competition of wits), performers – all passers-by welcome. But the host is always in the background. Modesty will never permit showing off. His business is to arrange the feast, for there will always be others to manage it.
This situation is quite similar to what we had seen often in Soviet times: a ‘limited contingent of leaders’ hailed from Moscow to popular gatherings, with packages of ‘justice and honesty’ and a conductor’s baton to direct the national instruments.
However, Uzbeks say ‘a guest is dearer than one’s father’ and will sooner give up a parent’s life than hurt a guest’s feelings. An Uzbek writer of the beginning of the twentieth century, Makhmud-khodja Bekhbudi, speaks of this in his play Patricide, as does contemporary poet Khurschid Davron, in his poem of the same title. It reminds us of the readiness to renounce religion, customs, script, and to forget our origins for the sake of etiquette.
But the feast goes on.
4
There is a more quiet, ‘gastronomical’ version of the feast – the chaihana, or tea house (a Central Asian analogue of the pub); no obligations, no involvement.
A few kopecks to pay for the tea, an onion to go with the shared pilav, and one can ponder to one’s heart’s content the burdens and vanity of life hearkening to Khodja Nasreddin’s anecdotes in the company of one’s peers.
Afandi lost his purse and told his wife everyone was losing purses at the bazaar today.
‘Did you lose yours?’ she asked. ‘Yes. I was the first.’
Uzbeks like to laugh and poke fun, and they will spare no one, not even themselves. To witness a contest of wits, one need not travel to a special festival – suffice it to enter any chaihana. They make fun of each other and of themselves, and in this way gradually overcome and sublimate the ancient belligerence of the steppe, as well as today’s propensity to speak subversively. The famed epic, Baburnameh, by the founder of the Great Mogul empire, provides an excellent example of this disregard for authority in humour:
While at a game of chess, a famous Uzbek poet of the 15th century, Alisher Navoi, stretched his leg out. It touched his counterpart Binoi’s bottom. Navoi said, ‘You can’t stretch out a leg in Herat without touching a poet’s bottom.’ Binoi answered, ‘It’s the same if you fold it under.’
Speaking of poets. Rocked from side to side, since the cradle, from their very birth, these wits and quipsters write poetry and songs of such profound sorrow that, with the same Abdullah Aripov, one wonders: ‘If the song about this life is so impossibly sorrowful, how then could men endure the sorrow of life itself?’
Thus, set off by the rocking cradle, life in the chaihana moves or stands still in a tangle of the tragic and the ridiculous. Remember Roman Yakobson: ‘An utterance centred on itself breeds a poetic function in the language.’ In much the same way, communion centred on, and concerned with, itself is the chaihana. Hence the abundance of poets in ancient Herat and contemporary Uzbekistan.
5
All the above is but one scale in the balance of truth. The other is, of course, the Bazaar. An outstanding Uzbek writer and a poet of the twentieth century Gafur Gulyam’s most Uzbek work, ‘The Mischief-Maker’, shows that the path of the Uzbek proceeds from and returns to the Bazaar. He is an habitué of the Bazaar, which may easily cause the delusion that he is a profiteer. This is not so.
Today he only sells what he has harvested himself. He wouldn’t be able to buy fruit and vegetables even if he did want to make a profit on reselling. In Tashkent, a kilogram of apples costs six to eight rubles, in Moscow two to three rubles (NB Soviet prices of 1989). One needn’t be a Marxist to understand that trade is an agreement, just and equitable. On it rests civil l
aw, and hence the civic society we are to become. Marx’s commodity exchange theory is, for the Uzbek, nothing but materialised communication. Therefore, communication is intellectual exchange – exchange of information. Consequently, he is as fully justified in his formula, ‘The world is a bazaar’, as the Russian in his, ‘The world is bedlam’.
Trade is always an equation which brings extremes together (‘a newspaper article equals 1.5 ladies’ boots’ or ‘159 strokes of the weeding blade equal one kopeck’).
But Marx warned that value relations were between people, not commodities. A case in point:
‘Where do you grow your pomegranates, old man?’
‘Kuva. No better place in the world for pomegranates!’
‘So you’re from Kuva? Where do you live?’
‘Finkelstein’s plot.’
‘Then you must know Tolib the butcher, son of Ruzvan-bibi?’
‘Sure, I buy meat from him every day.’
‘Tell him you saw me – and all the best cuts are yours.’ (Putting aside the best pomegranates) ‘You and I are almost relatives, then. I’m not asking the price – here, three rubles. I’m off home. My kids adore pomegranates.’
‘Hey, what’s your name?’
Here is another.
‘How much are your dried apricots?’
‘Three rubles.’
‘How about three kilos for eight rubles?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Then five kilos for twelve, or six for fourteen, or rather eight for sixteen, even nine for seventeen. Could you weigh them by the kilo?… Good. Here’s the first 1.5. On second thought, one kilo will do. I’ll go see what other people have to offer.’
‘Phew, thank Allah, he’s gone.’
Alas, trade is always controlled by the buyer. One of the most important junctions of the Great Silk Route and the most ancient centre of world trade is currently in a state of paralysis. Indeed, who else sells cotton at half the world price? At a price that does not reflect those dried up seas and rivers, the 54 kilos of pesticides per hectare, the annual 300,000 cases of hepatitis, the 42,000 annually incapacitated, and the 82,000 born mentally handicapped (NB Figures of 1989). Some profiteers, these Uzbeks! They can’t even trade properly today. They’ve forgotten how, have been made to forget. The same in all things, not only the bazaar.
6
Can the Uzbek’s world be regarded as the world of the Great Mosque? Or, in other words, is it based on the idea of council, or assembly – what is known as sobornost in Russian? Is there an ‘Uzbek idea’ as such? To what extent does Islam cover what we spoke of above? After all, much of this also applies, say, to the Tadjiks.
The question would have been out of place before 1917. In Chulpon’s novel, Night and Day, a mullah and a jaded or a reformist argue about ‘nation’. The mullah says that for a true believer his nation is Islam, and when asked about his nationality he should reply, ‘Ibrahim Halilullakh’, which means, ‘I’m from the nation of Abraham’.
Theoretically, the Uzbek idea has always been part of the broad context of Islamic and/or Turkic unity. Later this idea acquired – not without outside help – the tinge of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism. Clearly, the addition of ‘pan’, which replaced the idea of unity with the threat of world conquest, was neither theoretically nor practically justified, whereas the idea of unification has as much right to existence as the idea of Pan-Americanism or a common European home.
By ‘outside help’ I do not refer to the remote 1917, when 26-year-old Fyodor Kolesov brought down Turkestan’s first democracy, the coalition government of the Turkestan Autonomy, which had been proclaimed by the region’s Muslim assembly. It was made up of representatives of local Muslims (95 per cent of the population) and of all the European parties and movements – from Zionists to Dashnaktsutyunites (Armenian nationalist party). The ‘help’ in question is the division by Russia’s Council for Religious Affairs of the Central Asian Muslim Board and that of Kazakhstan. To follow that line of reasoning, one can expect the opening of a Karakalpakian Directorate as compensation for the dried-up Aral. This, naturally, to meet the desires of the working faithful.
It is characteristic of the Uzbek to move forwards with his face turned backwards. Similarly, our hero, finding himself in the mosque and looking into the past, would have to admit that Turkestan’s Islam had its own deep and independent traditions. Suffice it to recall the great theologians Imam Bukhari, Imam Termesi, Burkhanitdin Marginoni, and the founders of the major orders of Sufism: Nadjimiddin Kubro of Kubravia, Ahmad Yassavi of Yassavia, and Bakhoutdin Nakshbandi of Nakshbandia.
A need unfilled keeps thought on the move and, as he thinks of the future, the Uzbek is in a state of perennial intermediacy, assigned to him as his main idea.
7
Alisher Navoi has a wonderful ghazal. In it he queries his Soul: where does his mortal suffering come from? The Soul blames the Body, the Body blames the Heart, the Heart accuses the Mind, etc… etc. Finally the poet exclaims, ‘Each has claimed it is not involved and gained pardon. Therefore, suffer till the hour of death, for they are all within you and such is your destiny.’ I’d suggest the ghazal as the epitaph for our hero’s gravestone.
Let us now consider ‘the world as an Assembly’. A great Uzbek writer of the twentieth century, Abdullah Kadyri’s Days Gone By, the most Uzbek of all books (the first novel of the Kadyri school), is essentially a sequence of assemblies of varied nature and composition. This feature determines the novel’s form.
The Uzbeks still have the tradition of the ‘assembly of the refined’ – both among men and among women. It is called gap (‘word’, ‘dialogue’). These are the gatherings where friends discuss poetry or arts, music or books and also entertain themselves with nice music, dances, food. Thus do Uzbek Logos and Psyche draw together. If one is consistent (Uzbek-wise) and returns to what caused this assembly of assemblies, then one can assume that the proposed Cosmos–Psyche–Logos can be narrowed or expanded (Eros, Ethos, etc.). However, just as the author is judged only by the laws of his own work, ethnoses can adhere to their own hierarchies of universalia, their understanding of the world can derive from their own notions of it, and they can count on being able to structure life in their own likeness.
The sacred Thought–Word–Action sequence proclaimed by Zoroaster, who lived where we live today, meticulously collected and drew in, before the final Action, a multitude of various Thoughts and Words. Today’s collection (assembly), blending Islam and vulgarised Marxism, Zoroastrian deification of entirety and Nils Bohr’s principle of complementarity, ideas of perestroika and the nomad tribe’s love of freedom, etc. – this assembly, or collection, is the Field of his Lot, not of Destiny, and on this Lot today’s Uzbek rushes around. The Place of Judgment between Hades and Paradise is called Arosat. Arosatda kolmok (‘to be stranded in Arosat’) signifies unresolvable intermediacy, perennial hesitation, a certain congenital unpredictability, an abruptly discontinued Uzbek sentence. The only way for our hero to leave Arosat is to arrive at the Verb. He’ll either be dead and in Paradise or alive and in today’s Hell, where only the Fire of the scorching sun and of his burning heart is eternal and immutable – since Water is gone, Earth killed by pesticides, and Air poisoned by chemical waste.
Where should the Uzbek turn his steps – where among the spiralling circle of stellar assemblies, glittering like cotton, like tears, like sand? This Cosmic question blends with the age-long query: ‘Or should he stand still forever…?’
From otherness to ideology
Writing about Uzbekistan, and especially about its ‘otherness’, is easy and difficult at the same time. Easy because, as in any country with a super-authoritarian rule, only the preferences, beliefs, knowledge and ideas of the state head – the President – play a role. At the same time it’s difficult because, as in the case of an iceberg, everything else of importance lies under the thick layers of water. Because of this paradox, Uzbekistan is a country which is predictable and unpredi
ctable at the same time. Predictable in the sense that you are able to calculate the President’s direction, meaning that you are able to guess where this very traditional, patriarchally organised, monolithic-conformist society is moving. The most obvious example is the outcome of two votes in 1992 on the preservation of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the year, in a referendum organised by Mikhail Gorbachev, then still in power, over 95 per cent of Uzbekistan’s population voted for the preservation of the USSR, since the leadership of Uzbekistan was for it; and at the end of the same year the same percentage of the population voted for independence and sovereignty, again just because of the Uzbek authorities’ U-turn. After these preliminary and rather schematic arguments, it’s easier to refer to what happens in the ideological sphere of the now independent and sovereign Uzbekistan.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has given such an unexpected independence to Uzbekistan, as well as other Central Asian republics, the key concept of identity, around which the new state was meant to be built, was the notion of Mustakillik – Independence. At the same time, in the ideological sphere after the discreditation of the Communist ideology, another key concept – Uzbekchilik, or Uzbekness – has been steadily introduced and a new ideology has evolved around this concept. Therefore it is interesting to relate this concept to various aspects of life in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan.
Uzbekness and the President
Now it is easy to explain why I have started from that relationship. The President himself has inherited the ideology of Uzbekness largely from the first informal grassroots movements of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika era – ‘Birlik’, ‘Erk’ and others, which were recently crushed as oppositional by the President himself. In turn, these national–democratic organisations have learned and, to some extent, developed the idea of Uzbekness from the Jadids – the liberal-reformist Islamist movement of the beginning of twentieth century.
(The Institute of Strategic Studies under the President quite ‘scientifically’ determines Uzbekness as: ‘a concrete reflection of national character and spirit of the common people, as expressed in moral and spiritual values, cultural heritage, historical continuity of generations and implemented in specific forms of tradition’.) The President himself, in his book Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the 21st Century, calls the resurgence of spiritual values and national identity the main precondition for stability and a guarantee of progress. Though the interpretation of the conditions of stability and guarantees of progress by the President, as they are reflected in his activities, is quite ambiguous: he turns one face towards the Uzbek domestic consumers, being not shy to appear in front of the indigenous nation as an inveterate nationalist; at the same time he is quite different towards the external audiences, as well as towards the internal Russian-speaking minority, talking about tolerance and international harmony.
Uzbekness and Uzbeks
It would be incorrect to assume that the revival of the Uzbekness ideology is only the whim of the President. It is rather a product of the president’s awareness of the reality itself. After all, the reality, calling itself now ‘the Uzbeks’ (about 20 million people just in Uzbekistan) consists of parts that have self-identified themselves 80 years ago as completely separate ethnic units. At the beginning of the twentieth century and before the creation of the ‘Uzbek’ socialist nation, there were disputes on how to name it. Among the options discussed were the names of Turks, Sarts, Kipchaks, Muslim, and finally Uzbek. In pre-revolutionary encyclopaedias for example the number of Sarts in Turkestan was 2.5 million, while the Uzbeks were only 1.5 million. And even now Uzbekistan can be divided into at least six ethnic–cultural habitats: Ferghana, Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Kashkadarya–Surkhan and Khorezm, not counting the Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic, the inhabitants of which differ widely in their understanding and implementation of Uzbekness. Hence there is the notorious parochialism, nepotism and cronyism, which play a significant role not only in the organisation of society, but in the power structure, and in its ideology.
Uzbekness and history
Uzbekistan first appeared on the world map under its current name in 1924 after the Leninist–Stalinist national demarcation, which followed the creation of new socialist nations. Prior to that, Central Asia was respectively configured according to the power of a ruler or conqueror. Before the Russian conquest of that territory in the late nineteenth century, the Uzbek territory consisted of two Khanates and one Emirate (kingdoms). This fact in particular explains the diversity of ethnic identifications in certain parts of Uzbekistan at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since gaining independence, when the concept of a socialist nation was cut at its root, it was necessary to look deeper than the length of 70 years. On the one hand, historians have been mobilised to create a new history of the Uzbek people, stretching back two and a half thousand years. The first sign of a new historical view was an article by two academics, challenging the fact of Uzbeks deriving from Turkic origins. On the other hand the Uzbek historiography, headed by the President himself, started to build up a new emblematic figure, similar to what Lenin was to the Soviet ideology. As an emblem of the new Uzbek independent nation the new historians chose a medieval ruler and conqueror, Amir Timur, or Tamerlane, known to the West since the days of Christopher Marlowe. It was him, and not, let’s say, Sheibani Khan, who brought the very ethnonym Uzbek to these parts of the Golden Horde in the fifteenth century, who was chosen as the key figure.
The capital of his vast Empire, stretching from India to Syria was Samarkand, the city where President Karimov himself was born. And yet, ethnically belonging to the Turkised Mongol Barlas tribe, Amir Timur could not be plotted on any of the above graphs, and therefore could be accepted by all sub-ethnicities. In addition, as a hard ruler he would have legitimised the authoritarian power of the President of the newly independent state. And finally, as the subject of attacks by Russian historiography, he became a key figure in the new anti-Russian, anti-Soviet history. In the book of wise sayings of President Karimov, which was published recently, none of the historical figures feature to the same extent as Amir Timur.
Uzbekness and development models
The great historical past is considered in Uzbekistan as a basis for the great future. ‘Uzbekistan is a country with a great future,’ says one of the most famous slogans of the Uzbek President. In choosing that future the President was flexible enough in the first years of independence, when he used to propose alternative models of development initially of Turkey, then South Korea, then Japan, and afterwards of China, parallel to his visits to those countries; and this gave enough food for his few critics beyond the borders of Uzbekistan. In the end, in one of his books the President proclaimed that Uzbekistan has its own way of development and progress, and by doing that he actually stimulated the development of the Uzbekness concept as a nation-state ideology.
Uzbekness and Islam
By creating the ideology of Uzbekness, of course, it is impossible to circumvent such an ideologically significant element of Uzbek consciousness and life as Islam. The same double standard of behaviour that differentiates the internal and external audiences is characteristic of Uzbek leadership in relation to Islam. On one hand the President not only took his Presidential oath on the Constitution and the Koran, but also visited the holiest place of the Muslims – the Kaaba in Mecca, an honour which is received by a rare Muslim. In nearly every speech which the President delivers in Uzbek, he appeals at the end to the Creator, the Almighty, with the request of support and patronage. And on the other hand, under his rule, rather than even during the Soviet atheistic times, dozens of thousands of clergymen or just ordinary Muslims were thrown into prison on false charges of possession of drugs or weapons, or expelled from the country. The so-called fight against Islamic extremism, fundamentalism and Wahhabism is one of the favourite bogeys of the Uzbek leader, willingly portraying himself as the sole bulwark opposing the Islamic onslaught from the South.
However,
there are features in Islam which the leadership of Uzbekistan love and even include into the Code of Uzbekness, and above all, these are: monotheism, with a practical distillation of unity of command, and obedience to God, with the earthly equivalent of obedience to authority. President Karimov emphasises in his wise sayings that the communal Islamic character of Uzbeks is their invaluable quality in the eyes of the leadership.
Uzbekness and community
The very communal character of Uzbek life in a traditional Uzbek makhallya (neighbourhood) was chosen by the leadership of Uzbekistan as a basis of social organisation of the population. The phenomenon of modern Uzbekistan’s makhallya became one of the most fashionable topics for Western academic research. Branches of self-government, which are increasingly used as transmission belts of government and ideology, penetrate to the lowest level – makhallyas; on the other hand, makhallyas, for example in the old town of Tashkent, were regarded as the citadels of religious opposition to the authorities, and therefore many of them were demolished and their population was scattered in urban areas.
Uzbekness and spirituality
In spite of its ideological seeds, planted in the early years of independence, the process of creating and implementing Uzbekness pursued more utilitarian and pragmatic goals and, in general, repeated the Communist totalitarian system of ideological governance. So, now in Uzbekistan the process of creating Centres of Spirituality and Enlightenment from top to bottom is taking place. These are sorts of political departments in the administrative, industrial and public education sectors. If you replace, let’s say, the emblematic figure of Lenin by Amir Timur, or the idea of Communism by the idea of a free market, the philosophy of dialectical materialism by the Tasawwuf or Sufism, etc., the function of these elements in society and the state remain essentially the same. The essence of them is the ideology of total control from top to bottom. However, as it were, a national audit of spirituality has eliminated or sterilised public institutions which were in the forefront of Gorbachev’s perestroika, such as the Writers’ Union, social movements Birlik, Erk, Tumaris and independent student organisations.
Uzbekness and the media
The Soviet style of relation towards the media is also characteristic of the relations between the authorities and the Uzbek media. Freedom of speech, declared by the Constitution, by several laws on freedom of journalism and even by the Law on abolishment of censorship is, as the Communist phraseology goes, ‘a paper tiger’. Media subsidised by the state, in addition to a strict political censorship, are also under the yoke of economic censorship. Papers of opposition movements have been closed and now from time to time publish a very limited circulation from abroad; the so-called independent press within the country is also under the strict control of the system. On the other hand, under the auspices of the President, several bodies were established to develop and promote a new ideology of Uzbekness, such as the magazines Tafakkur (Thinking) and Mulokot (Dialogue), etc.
Uzbekness and literature
As in any traditional society it is literature which has played the role of public consciousness in Uzbekistan and the same literature primarily prepared the ground for the creation of the Uzbekness ideology. However, after this ideology had been adopted by the state, Uzbek literature found itself in disarray. Shrewder were those writers and poets who wrote in Soviet times poems and novels about the Party and Lenin; in fact, according to the new ideology, it has been sufficient to replace the Party with the Nation, and Lenin with Amir Timur, or at worst with the President, and this literature was in demand. It was more difficult for the writers and poets of a literary–nationalist streak combined with dissidence which grew during the Soviet era. The subject of their dissidence has now become a state ideology, and therefore some of them were recruited from the opposition to the current ruling party, publishing books such as Feeling of a Motherland or An Encyclopaedia of Uzbekness; but another few, for whom the literature was higher than the current politics, were forced to emigrate or go into internal exile.
Uzbekness and education
If any segment of the population is able to absorb the new ideology and master it as the original one, it is of course children and youth. And since nearly half the population of Uzbekistan falls into this category, it is clear that one of the first acts of leadership in the sphere of ideology was reforming the education system. The education system is still based on the European form of general education, though the content has been amended according to the above-mentioned Uzbekness paradigms. At the same time it was decided to change the alphabet based on the Cyrillic system to the Latin script. In this case the form of the change was more important than the essence, and change of graphics has been implemented for the sake of change itself. Arguments about bringing together the Uzbek people and Western technology through the Latin alphabet, or improving the phonetics of the Uzbek language, do not stand up to serious criticism. The disastrous consequences of this shift have already started to affect Uzbeks in the form of the appearance of a new generation of students who cannot read either books, or newspapers (all still published in the Cyrillic alphabet), as well as a generation of parents unable to help their children, having no clue of the Latin alphabet. This change of orthography only adds to the problems of the Russian minority in Uzbekistan.
Given the fact that the former Communist elite, who were in power in Uzbekistan during the Soviet era, remained in power in independent Uzbekistan, there has developed a very paradoxical situation with regard to the alphabet change, since the elite themselves don’t read in the Roman alphabet. The same paradox is taking place in the official status of the Uzbek language, adopted under the pressure of informal movements during the Perestroika time. These elites are taken hostage by their own decisions because they are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking. And since the law on the status of the Uzbek language, especially regarding its exclusive use in work places, is indefinitely delayed, it’s hard to imagine that one day the current President of Uzbekistan will suddenly deliver one of his speeches on Uzbekness in the Latin alphabet newly adopted by himself.
Uzbekness and the West
Our previous reflections show that Uzbekness is a concept used and abused by the Uzbek authorities for their political or pragmatic ends. We talked about internal and external consumers for whom this concept is designed. Thus, in their relationship with the West, the Uzbek authorities have learned how to use their ‘otherness’, expressed through Uzbekness, on many fronts. For example, when it comes to the need for the democratisation of society, or political reforms, or human rights, the Uzbek authorities usually bring the argument that the people of Uzbekistan are not yet ready for these changes because of local traditions. The same authorities are very quick in their own adaptation of some features of Western civilisation, when it comes to villas, yachts, football clubs or fashion shows, but for the rest of the people there’s an imperative of Uzbekness.
The same thing happens with the thesis of ‘otherness’, which is often used in the counter-arguments against Western institutions and values: the same rulers who fiercely defend their ‘otherness’ do not allow the same ‘otherness’ for their subjects; the ‘otherness’ in their right to be Westernised stops with themselves. It’s obvious that I am not arguing against either the ‘otherness’ of other people or cultural sensitivity in engaging with them. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t fool ourselves when this ‘otherness’ is used and abused for political, economic, pragmatic and other ends by a few at the expense of many.
I have started my notes with an anecdote of Hodja Nasreddin and I would like to conclude with another one.
Once Mullah Nasreddin was in a neighbouring village. On the way home, he bought a watermelon. Eager to eat, he cut it in half and ate the half, leaving another half on the road and saying to himself:
‘Let him who sees this watermelon think that here was a nobleman.’
He walked a bit, then came back, picked up the abandoned half, ate it, and said to himself:
‘Let them think that the nobleman was with a servant, who had eaten this half.’
He walked a little more, felt sorry, went back, picked up the crust and ate it, saying:
‘Let them think that the nobleman had also an ass.’
So sometimes believing in and absolutising the ‘otherness’ of some people is similar to believing in the scenario which greedy and witty Hodja Nasreddin prepared for us.
Hamid Ismailov is a London-based poet and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992. He heads the Central Asian Service at BBC World Service where he is also Writer in Residence. He is a prolific translator and writer of prose and poetry, and his books have been published in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages; his works are banned in Uzbekistan. His novel, The Railway, was written before he left Uzbekistan.