Preface

Central Eurasian studies have made remarkable progress over the lasttwo decades. Formerly a rare subject, Central Eurasia is now studied bya large number of researchers on the basis of primary sources and fieldwork. Scholars in the West and Central Eurasia, once separated by theIron Curtain, now make frequent contact. Japan, having a long traditionof studying the ancient and medieval history of Central Asia, has also
witnessed a surge of interest in modern Central Eurasia.1
This volume is a product of collaboration of Japanese, Central Eurasian, American, and Russian scholars, and reflects recent innovation inapproaches and methodologies in this field of study. The first group ofthemes in this book is related to the history of Central Eurasia under theRussian Empire and the Soviet Union. The multinational character ofthese successive “empires” has become common knowledge, but specialists in Russian history tend to rely exclusively upon Russian sources
and analyze the events in Russia’s “peripheries” only in the context ofRussian administration. Our approach is to combine Russian, Turkic,and Persian sources, and to investigate interactions between Russianadministration and local people.
The second main subject is Islam, which was inseparably related to1 In addition to individual works, recent works collectively written by Japanese scholars on Central Eurasia include: KOMATSU Hisao, UMEMURA Hiroshi, UYAMA Tomohiko,OBIYA Chika, and HORIKAWA Toru, eds., Chuo Yurashia wo shiru jiten [Cyclopedia of Central Eurasia] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2005), 624 p.; IWASAKI Ichiro, UYAMA Tomohiko, andKOMATSU Hisao, Gendai Chuo Ajia ron: Henbo suru seiji-keizai no shinso [Contemporary Central Asia: Political and economic changes] (Tokyo: Nippon hyoronsha, 2004), xxi + 301 p.;
KITAGAWA Seiichi, MAEDA Hirotake, HIROSE Yoko, and YOSHIMURA Takayuki, eds., Kokasasu wo shiru tame no 60 sho [Sixty chapters about the Caucasus] (Tokyo: Akashi shoten,2006), 336 p.

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Tsarist policy and the life of many of the Central Eurasian peoples, andwas suppressed but later revived under the Soviet regime. For today’s
Central Eurasian countries, Islamic rebirth is both a homegrown andglobal phenomenon. Our third focus is on contemporary politics, inwhich the peculiarities of each country and transnational factors bothplay crucial role. Overall, the basic concept of this book is interaction
between internal/regional dynamics and external/transregional dynamics.
The book begins with a chapter by Komatsu Hisao, who explores theperception of Russian imperial rule by intellectuals, especially Islamicscholars, in Turkestan. Contrary to the view that Turkestani Muslims
always dreamed of liberation from Russia, he shows that prominent intellectuals regarded Russian Turkestan as Dār al-Islām (Land of Islam) onthe grounds that Muslim qādīs (judges) worked there according to Sharī‘a.
They accused the leaders of the Andijan Uprising of being ignorant Sufis
who made fun of qādīs and disturbed Muslim life. Later, the concept ofDār al-Islām also served as a basis for the idea of Turkestan autonomy.
Uyama Tomohiko turns his attention to the Russian officials’ views on
the Central Asians expressed in long discussions on the possibility ofChristianization and military conscription, and characterizes Russianpolicy by the conceptions of particularism, Orientalism, and rising Russian nationalism. He also points out that although Muslim intellectuals
were generally receptive to both particularistic discourses and the ideaof Russia as their motherland, the Russian government was reluctant toaccept their offers to mediate between it and ordinary people.
If Komatsu and Uyama examine the mutual perceptions of the Russian government and the Central Asians and the political relations between them on a macro level, Naganawa Norihiro focuses on a microlevel of interaction between the state institutions and the Volga-UralMuslims. He analyzes the debates among Jadid intellectuals, Muslimschool teachers, and local Islamic leaders on educational reform in thecontext of competition between the Ministry of Education and thezemstvos. His paper is related to such important issues as the role of themahalla (parish) as a public space, and the coexistence of Russian citizenship and Tatar nationality. Margaret Dikovitskaya opens the worldof a unique kind of historical material, namely the photograph. Shevi

Prefaceclaims that the color ethnographic photography of Prokudin-Gorskii,
being a new visual technology, was a powerful publicity tool that represented Russian national pride and discriminatory views on the indigenous populations of Central Asia.
Adeeb Khalid’s essay on the revolutionary period continues both thethemes of Central Asian Jadid discourse (Komatsu) and of cultural reform (Naganawa). Khalid vividly describes how the Russian revolution
urged the Jadids, who had earlier engaged in cultural reform, to politicalaction. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and the establishmentof British paramountcy in the Middle East converted the Jadids fromEuropean liberalism to anticolonialism. They maintained revolutionary
enthusiasm after the Bolsheviks won the civil war, although their activities were gradually confined again to the cultural realm. Mambet
Koigeldiev narrates even harsher conflicts between the Bolsheviks andKazakh intellectuals, extensively referring to rare documents from theformer Communist Party and KGB archives. The Kazakh national
movement, which culminated in the establishment of the Alash Orda
autonomous government (1917–1920), was met with hostility from theBolsheviks. Goloshchekin, the notorious secretary of the Kazakh Krai
Committee of the Communist Party (1925–1933), launched an assault on
the Kazakh elite, many of whom were sent to concentration camps andeventually killed.
Along with the purge of national elites in the 1930s, one of the mosttragic events caused by Soviet policy is the deportation of entire nationalities in the 1940s. Elza-Bair Guchinova, through a series of interviews,
minutely describes the adaptation difficulties and survival strategies of
the Kalmyks deported to Siberia. Although their overall situation wasextremely difficult, they worked and studied hard, communicated withthe local people, and marked their festivals secretly, and their common
experiences consolidated their ethnic identity. While the Kalmyks returned to their homeland in the late 1950s, some other ethnic groups
were forced to remain in exile for more decades. Hanya Shiro focuses on
their problem in order to better understand nationalities policy in theBrezhnev era. The Germans, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turksdemanded rehabilitation and return to the homeland. The authorities
reacted with carrots and sticks, repressing activists of national move-vii

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ments while permitting return to the homeland under limited conditions.
The plan to create a German autonomy in Kazakhstan was abandoned
because of the Kazakhs’ objection, which testified to the growing national consciousness of titular nations in the 1970s.
Ashirbek Muminov approaches the Soviet period from a different angle and demonstrates the paradoxical nature of Islamic rebirth under aregime that propagated atheism. Shami-Damulla, an anti-Sufi andanti-Hanafi Arab theologian, was extremely influential in Tashkent in
the 1920s. Some of his followers later played prominent roles in theSpiritual Directorate of Muslims and struggled against local traditions
with the support of the authorities. The idea of Shami-Damulla and hisfollowers returning to the Qur’an and the hadiths was borrowed by theyoung clergy who launched fundamentalist movements in the late Soviet period. George Sanikidze provides valuable information on Islamic
resurgence in the Pankisi Gorge, a place that became famous after Russia
accused Georgia of harboring Chechen rebels there in the early 2000s.
Sanikidze shows that Islam was historically not the sole dominant religion in the gorge, with Georgians and Russians often successfully propagating Christianity among the local Kists. Sufi orders were active during
the Soviet period, but radical Islam appeared in the gorge only in the1990s, when Chechen refugees and Arabs arrived there.
The next two chapters are dedicated to analyses of the internal political dynamism of Central Eurasian countries. Dosym Satpaev showschanges in the political system and elite of Kazakhstan over the postSoviet period, and the formation of various groupings around figures
close to the president. He also points out the danger of super-personification of governmental power. Alexander Markarov analyzes long debates on constitutional reform in Armenia, using the concept of semipresidentialism. The constitutional distribution of power has been an objectof contestation in many of the post-Soviet states, and it has been an especially complicated issue in Armenia, where parliamentary coalitions
have often been transformed.
The book ends with two chapters that deal with current transborderissues. Sergey Golunov sheds light on the problem of drug trafficking
that poses a threat to both Eurasia as a whole and the border regions ofRussia and Kazakhstan. He explains in detail the significance of the Rus-viii

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sia-Kazakhstan route among various routes of drug trafficking, theforms of organization of trafficking, and measures taken against it. Oka
Natsuko focuses on two transborder ethnic groups, the Uighurs andUzbeks in Kazakhstan, and proves that although they are sometimes
faced with problems deriving from the relationship between Kazakhstan
and China or Uzbekistan, they largely maintain stable relations with theKazakhs and the authorities, and their transborder ethnic links have notchallenged the existing border.
All the chapters are based on the papers presented at the international
symposium “Regional and Transregional Dynamism in Central Eurasia:
Empires, Islam and Politics” (Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, July 7–8, 2005).2 Both the symposium and this volume have been
financed by the 21st Century COE Program “Making a Discipline ofSlavic Eurasian Studies.” The symposium was also supported by theproject “A Comparative Study of the Role of Intellectuals in the Modernization of Central Eurasia” (grant-in-aid for scientific research by theJapan Society for the Promotion of Science). I am grateful to the discussants who made helpful comments and suggestions on the papers, and all
those who helped in organizing the symposium, especially Iwashita
Akihiro, Fujimori Shinkichi, and Maeda Hirotake. A special thanks goesto the editorial assistants―Hosono Mitsue, Yokokawa Daisuke, andOkada Yukari.
Transliteration is a complex issue in this book where the authors refer
to sources in various language and alphabets, such as old Tatar in Arabic,
Kazakh in Cyrillic, Uzbek in Latin, Georgian in its own script, and so on.
Therefore, some words are spelled differently among the chapters, buttransliteration is consistent within one chapter. Transliteration fromRussian follows the Library of Congress system, although some wellknown proper names (such as Catherine II and Yuri Andropov) arespelled according to English convention. Japanese names are writtenwith the family name first.
Uyama Tomohiko
2 Regrettably, a paper on Islamic folk publications in Xinjiang presented at the symposium was not submitted to this volume.

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