“While the broader ideological project of the USSR was indeed that of the fusion of peoples into a homo sovieticus (who, incidentally would be exclusively Russian-speaking), the strategic aim at the time of the founding of the new empire was to break up the large linguistic and cultural blocs founded on language (Turkic) and religion (Islam). In order to do this Stalin advanced the concept of ‘nationality’ (natsionalnost). Every national political entity had to have its corresponding titular nationality, defined as an ethnic community which had preserved an identity founded on language throughout the whole process of its history. Such peoples were presented as living natural facts which developed independently of any political contract or conscious choice among their members. …”

“However, the fact remains that the peoples selected in this manner and presumed to have arrived at the final stage of their development – that of the nation – were accorded the trappings of statehood: a political apparatus (the Communist Party of the republic concerned), a state structure (Council of Ministers and head of state), a national language, a university and an academy of sciences. Thus it was the Soviet system that implanted the model of the nation-state into a region where it had previously been unknown. The Soviet system forged the conceptual instruments (historical, ethnographic and linguistic) which provided the Muslim republics with the elements of their legitimacy and their self-definition. The proof of the existence of these peoples, given the lack of pre-existing nationalism, was the national form which they were suddenly accorded. Certainly the Soviet postulate, endlessly repeated, was that this was only a form, and that the content, whether in literature or politics, had to be Soviet. But the form ended up creating the life of its object.”

“A Soviet republic is an empty frame which produces an effect of reality. The existence of institutions and an administrative apparatus results in the generation of a political class, a bureaucracy and an intelligentsia which owe the fact of their social being to that framework. The fact of having a national territory, national symbols, a language and references in school to the existence of a national culture, however superficial it may be, result in the implantation of a vision of the world which is not so much nationalist as simply national. Nationalism here is not an ideology, it is a habitus, a way of being which is internalised and which accords well with the actual ideology of communism, inasmuch as this latter does not question the functioning of the national framework….”

“The major effect of the Soviet period was the territorialisation and systematic ethnicisation of populations, which led to an exacerbation of regional and ethnic conflicts that had been unknown up until that point. This took place within a framework of collectivisation, the assignment of individuals to collectives (kolkhoz), the basis of the Communist Party on the basis of territorial administrative divisions (soviets at the level of village, district and province, and the republic’s communist party). In a parallel development, identity became univocal: the ten-yearly censuses and ‘line-5’ in people’s internal passport required that all people declare themselves as belonging to one, and only one, of the ‘nationalities’ (ethnic groups), to be chosen from an official list drawn up by the state. Generalized territorialisation went hand-in-hand with a systematic ethnicisation of identity: the foundations of the ethnic-state were thus imposed to the detriment of a strictly political identity, that of citizenship in relation to a Soviet state which foundered amid the vapors of petrol and alcohol at the end of August 1991.”

Consider the above passage from a leading French sociologist. Is it possible that both the Soviet colonial republics and the new independent nation-states based on western structures cover deeper layers of ethnic identity and local governance in Central Asia, identities that have survived waves of conquest and assimilation? Is it possible that new models of governance could emerge in Central Asia, ones based on older political structures and ethnic identities that respect plurality and encourage diversity? Can we develop fresh shoots from the old roots, expressions of ethnic identity that do not fracture society, or rely on fossilized traditions incomprehensible to new generations? As we research ethnic plurality, religious diversity and nation-building in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, we will look for older models that can be grafted onto new structures in order to thrive in local conditions.