Introduction/Overview

Since its collapse in 1991, the USSR has increasingly been retroactively recognised as an
empire; indeed as the last empire, vestige of a past long-gone in the West that, inevitably,
had to disappear due to its historical anachronism. However, tautological explanations that
tend to insert the Soviet Union within the imperial frame precisely because it collapsed, fail
to recognise the unique experience of the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent of its imperial
predecessor vis--vis the colonial empires of Western Europe.
For instance, the territorial contiguity of mainland Russia with the steppes region and
Central Asia has impacted the feature of state-building in the whole Eurasian region over the
last two centuries, creating the characteristic ambiguity between the nation- and empire-
building activities (Beissinger, 1995). In addition, if Tsarist Russia can be more easily
associated with its colonial counterparts in the West, the comparison between the USSR and,
for instance, colonial France or Britain is more controversial.
Indeed, the Soviet Union as the first post-imperial state (Martin, 2001: 19) bore substantial
differences with the Russian as well as European colonial powers: the attempt to enforce
integration and modernisation as opposed to the colonial enforcement of cultural and racial
differences (Beissinger, 2006); the planned economy based on the accumulation of
redistributive or allocative power (Verdery, 1996) as opposed to the colonial forced
integration of hitherto uncapitalised societies into a capitalist world-system (Lazarus, 2012);
the promotion of marriages across ethnic lines (Edgar, 2007) as opposed to racial segregation,
and so on.
On the other hand, the Bolsheviks anti-colonial claims and rhetoric notwithstanding, the
economic, social, territorial and ethnic configuration and policies of the USSR have re-
created, to a certain extent, the conditions of coloniality within its own borders, especially in
the southern regions. Firstly, the pattern of peripheral incorporation in the southern republics
followed a colonial model in which titular nationals shared influence with Russians and had
virtually no prospect of moving into important all-Union positions (Laitin, 1998); the
appointment of an ethnic Russian as the second-in-command in all the Central Asian
republics resembling the function assigned to a political commissar in the first post-
revolutionary years in controlling the actions and the conduct of co-opted ancient regime
elements in influential positions. Secondly, the inter-regional division of labour and the
unequal exchange that followed had a considerable effect on the current underdevelopment of
the region (Khazanov, 1995); thirdly, the subalternity of local communist elites coupled with
the planned economic system has created the conditions for the development of a deeply
rooted patronage system (Heathershaw, 2010); moreover, the creation of national borders,
even though did involve the participation of local communists, eventually paved the way for
the eruption of ethnic tensions as in the highly ethnically fragmented Ferghana Valley;
lastly, despite the official egalitarian propaganda, the privileged position of the Russians as
the elder brothers, first among equals and, in Stalins terms, the most outstanding nation
of all the nations forming the Soviet Union (Bonnett, 2002: 453), created among Central
Asians a self-orientalising inferiority complex, compensated with heroic efforts to modernise
as quickly as possible (Tlostanova, 2008: 5-6).
To complicate the picture, the legacies of the Soviet Union have to be framed in the context
of what Andre Gunder Frank (1992) has called the third-worldisation of the former Soviet
bloc. In fact, differently from its British and French and also Dutch, Belgian and to a certain
extent Portuguese counterparts during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s decolonisation of Africa
and Asia, post-Soviet Russia has found itself, throughout the 1990s, downgraded from its
position of former coloniser and world super-power to a (neo)colonised, semi-peripheral
country. This has in turn implications not only on the self-image of Russia itself, yet on the
image, attitude, and policies of the newly independent Central Asian states in their relation
with the former colonial power as well as with other regional and global powers such as
China, the European Union and the United States.
In the next pages I briefly discuss some of the ways through which the Soviet Union
produced relations and conditions that can be defined as postcolonial in its southern
borderlands of Central Asia. However, to paraphrase Beissinger (2006: 302), I will do so by
identifying postcoloniality in post-Soviet Central Asia not as a casual paradigm, but as a
specific political outcome.

In-Between Powers: Central Asia and Postcoloniality in the International Arena

In the immediate aftermath of September 11 the last vestiges of Russias colonial ambitions
in Central Asia seemed finally to have been abandoned: the agreement between the US and
Uzbekistan that granted the use, by the former, of a number of Uzbek airfields and, few
months later, the Kyrgyzstani green light for the building of an air base at Manas seemed, to
many observers, to be a complete and final capitulation by Russia in the face of US power
(Bowring, 2003: 238-239).
The undeniable weakness of the Russian Federation in its near-abroad throughout the
1990s and early 2000s is a significant difference with postcolonial development in other
geographical areas. Whereas France or Great Britain have faced, until recently, no serious
challenge to their predominance in, for instance, West Africa or South Asia respectively,
Russia has to contest other regional and global powers influence in the area (Gammer, 2000).
However, this has not meant a complete demise of Russian power projection in the area as
previously suggested; on the contrary, at least two aspects are strikingly similar to a
postcolonial setting in the relations between the former coloniser and colonised.
Firstly, the inability of Central Asian countries to engage in any meaningful regional
organisation without the mediation, if not direction, of Russia, might be seen as a result of,
firstly, the Moscow-centred Soviet economic and financial spider-web and, secondly, the
dialectics of suppression and reification of nationalism in the USSR.
As early as the 1920s, the consolidation of nationhood in the backward Soviet East became
associated with historical developmental progress. The formation of nations then became to
be seen as both an unavoidable and positive stage in the modernisation of the Soviet Union as
a whole (Martin, 2001: 6). However, economically and environmentally, Central Asia
became increasingly prey to mono-agriculture or other economic activities considered
unsuitable for European Russia (Bonnett, 2002). The division of labour according to the
assumed comparative advantages of the different regions, with redistribution from the
Moscow centre, meant that was almost natural for the Central Asian republics to be
integrated into the Union as primary producers, due to their backwardness. In addition, the
surplus from agriculture and primary extraction, though it contributed to a comprehensive
system of social welfare, was not turned towards extensive industrialisation, causing the weak
industrial-manufacturing base of all Central Asian countries (Kandiyoti, 2002: 239).
Furthermore, the economic integration of the different parts of the USSR followed all-Union
priorities which prevented the formation ab initio of regional economic blocs; in Gammer
(2000: 130) words: a factory in Uzbekistan would operate machinery produced in Estonia on
electricity from Kyrgyzstan, in order to assemble parts from Siberia and Georgia. The
produce will then be sold in Ukraine. All these activities were planned and supervised by
Moscow. The effect has been a huge dependence on Moscow after the fall of the Soviet
Union, on trade, machinery supply, as well as skilled man-power, whilst the economic ties
among the Central Asian countries themselves were almost completely cut off.
We can see the same dynamics at play in the dependence of West African states on France as
the trading partner and main source of skilled man-power (Gammer, 2000). However, as I
mentioned before, both the geographical position of Central Asia and the still relative
weakness of the Russian economy have opened opportunities to overcome its post-colonial
economic path-dependency. For instance, the proximity of two global economic powers such
as the EU and China have permitted to Kazakhstan to relatively reduce its economic ties with
Russia; as a matter of fact, the EU surpassed Russia as Kazakhstans main trade partner in
2004 (Kassenova, 2012: 9-10).
The exploitation of great-powers rivalries to ones own advantage resemble the
development strategies of newly decolonised states in the second half of the twentieth century.
In fact, many Third World socialist states of Africa and Asia similarly exploited Cold War
rivalries claiming independence from Chinese or Soviet control, while relying on their former
imperial powers for military, scientific, and economic aid (Chari and Verdery, 2009). These
dynamics are evident, for instance, in the Janus-faced foreign policy of Kazakhstan in the
aftermath of independence, holding joint military exercises with British forces (Lewis, 2008:
212) whilst simultaneously strongly advocating for a Eurasian Union with Russia; as well as
in the recent move of the same into the Russian-led Customs Union whilst even strengthening
economic ties with the European Union and China.

The Perverse Effect of Empowering Nations: Postcoloniality in Central Asian Society

A second aspect of a postcolonial condition in Central Asia is a direct result of the

nationalities policies implemented throughout the existence of the USSR.
The ethno-political system inaugurated with the korenizatsiia campaign of 1923-1939
allowed local communist elites to exert control over local distribution channels and serve as
purveyors of patronage, exploiting the strategic position occupied as intermediaries between
the centre and their ethno-national constituencies (Heathershaw, 2010). This subalternity
allowed many elites in the Central Asian republics to retain their positions after independence,
grasping the levers of state power and developing what is fashionably known as neo-
patrimonialism. Even though the communist elites were rarely associated with traditional
chiefs, ethno-communism recreated and recomposed traditional society (Roy, 2000: xiii).
Similarly, Western European empires, far from suppressing group identities, rather incited
them with imperial policies that reified chiefs and traditional authorities as instruments of
indirect rule (Chari and Verdery, 2009) creating a variety of postcolonial subaltern politics
and hybrid identities.
These hybrid identities can also be seen at play in post-Soviet Central Asia. Non-Russians
who aligned themselves with the communist project were fully assimilated, entering the
space of Russian/Soviet modernity. However, since in the USSR modernity was
simultaneously politicising and ethnicising - typically around the idea that Russian urban
workers were the natural bearers of communism - (Bonnett, 2002), a space for a
reconfiguration of traditional identities emerged in the early independent period. These
identities were used as tools to galvanise anti-colonial sentiments among the population,
becoming effective elite instruments in a narrow pseudo-nationalism that only perpetuates
the socio-economic violence of colonialism after the end of formal colonial rule (Fanon,
1963). Paradoxically, this pastiche of identities (and ideologies), of modern nationalism,
communism and traditionalism is not only affecting the former colonies, yet the former
coloniser as well. The rise of neo-eurasianism as formulated by Aleksandr Dugin - as a
influent ideology shaping Russian (and arguably Kazakhstani) foreign policy, with its
emphasis on a post-Soviet anti-modernity rhetoric of a conservative revolution is a perfect
example of what Fanon calls pseudo-nationalism.

Conclusion

In this short paper I have tried to give a general overview of the convergences between the
postcolonial and the postsocialist in Central Asia. The evident differences nevertheless, the
former colonies of the Western Empires in Africa and Asia and their counterparts in Central
Asia share a series of common feature, such as a disproportionate dependence on the former
rulers in the international and economic spheres; in addition, in both cases, the societies of
the colonised have been largely re-shaped and modified by their encounters with the other,
with the important difference that in the Central Asian case the former coloniser, the now
Russian Federation can be arguably seen as going through a stage of mind colonisation due
to its own incorporation in the capitalist world-system, against which reactionary/resistance
tendencies like the Eurasianist one rise.
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