Despite Cultures : Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan

Despite Cultures examines the strategies and realities of the Soviet state-building project in Tajikistan during the 1920s and 1930s. Based on extensive archival research, Botakoz Kassymbekova analyzes the tactics of Soviet officials at the center and periphery that produced, imitated, and improvised governance in this Soviet southern borderland and in Central Asia more generally. She shows how the tools of violence, intimidation, and coercion were employed by Muslim and European Soviet officials alike to implement Soviet versions of modernization and industrialization.

In a region marked by ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity, the Soviet plan was to recognize these differences while subsuming them within the conglomerate of official Soviet culture. As Kassymbekova reveals, the local ruling system was built upon an intricate network of individuals, whose stated loyalty to communism was monitored through a chain of command that stretched from Moscow through Tashkent to Dushanbe/Stalinabad. The system was tenuously based on individual leaders who struggled to decipher the language of Bolshevism and maintain power through violent repression.

“Botakoz Kassymbekova’s book is a highly innovative contribution to the historical study of Central Asia. Her analysis of the predicaments of establishing Soviet rule in Tajikistan is compelling. In striking detail she manages to uncover the Bolsheviks’ simultaneously radical and compromising attempts at mundane state building in the country.” — Dr. Till Mostowlansky, Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore (NUS)

“Kassymbekova offers a rich and much needed history of the early Soviet era in Tajikistan. Her archival research provides a detailed insight into people’s everyday lives. The nuanced analysis of her findings is the primary strength of this book, giving historians and students of Central Asia a chance to connect Soviet cultural policies with ordinary citizens in this previously overlooked region.” — Ali Igmen, California State University, Long Beach