Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan

2. The Making of Soviet Culture in Kyrgyzstan during the 1920s and 1930s1. Th e clubs must

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 22 CHAPTER 2 The Making of Soviet Culture in Kyrgyzstan during the 1920s and 1930s 1. The clubs must belong to the workers. In the clubs, they should improve their own amateur talents [samodeiatel’]. 2. It is imperative that Marxist guidance be intensified. 3. It is imperative to turn the clubs into collectives to promote amateur talents. —Nadezhda Krupskaia, “Chto dolzhny sdelat’ kluby rabochikh?” and “Chto takoe klub?” Nadezhda Krupskaia, a Bolshevik leader and the wife of Lenin, identified three essential functions of clubs: improving amateur talents, teaching Marxist ideology, and collectivizing the institution. As one of the first Bolsheviks to define the role of clubs in forging Soviet culture, Krupskaia provides important evidence for early Soviet cultural policies.1 The Kyrgyz version of the club was an exemplary setting where new Soviets could experiment with the Bolshevik concept of “cultural transformation” as if in a laboratory. Krupskaia ’s description of the three functions of clubs addresses both the cultural and the nationalities policies. “Improvement of amateur talents” refers to cultural development in accordance with Marxist ideology, a development that had to take place among all nationalities. Krupskaia and other leading Bolsheviks inherited their understanding of non-Russian nationalities and ways of reforming them from their colonial predecessors. Their seemingly Marxist discourse of “cultural transformation” was undeniably built upon a colonial tradition of reform. In setting the stage for a new and revolutionary culture in Kyrgyzstan, the Bolsheviks had to prepare new club administrators to conduct the cultural and ideological education of the Kyrgyz populations. The major obstacles THE MAKING OF SOVIET CULTURE IN KYRGYZSTAN DURING THE 1920s AND 1930s 9 23 the revolutionaries would face included regional community characteristics such as nomadism and Islam. Early Bolshevik attempts at converting Kyrgyz to Soviet culture were awkward at best. Most, if not all, of the revolutionary administrators were from outside of Kyrgyzstan and faced a rather unfamiliar culture. What they did know of this Central Asian region flowed from the views of their imperial predecessors, whom they simultaneously denounced for colonizing these non-Russian lands. The club administrators introduced new artistic norms, such as those of the Proletkul’t movement and its successors, in order to build a more proletarian culture. The social and economic climate that developed under the New Economic Policy (NEP) did not promote the formation of a steady cultural policy in Kyrgyzstan; as a result , Kyrgyz revolutionaries (including writers and artists) and government administrators (such as club managers) began to form a new Kyrgyz community for themselves.2 The Bolsheviks’ Nationalities Problem In many respects, the Bolsheviks were successors of the Russian intellectuals of the imperial era. They debated and often disagreed about the values of Westernization, modernity, populism, and other issues in their efforts to initiate cultural change. Lenin’s writings defined culture in broad terms that reflected his admiration for the Western European efficiency built upon industrial advancement, social orderliness, and the educational and cultural sophistication of the elites. Lenin envisioned Bolshevik culture bringing such efficiency, and all its accompanying successes, to the masses. He believed that developing culture among the masses would be the unique achievement of the Soviet Union and would allow it to surpass Western European societies. However, while the Soviet concept of culture drew from Western European models, it also emerged in opposition to them.3 Regarding the nationalities problem, the Bolsheviks wanted to abrogate colonial policy in the region. At the beginning of the revolutionary era in Russia, the Marxist intellectual orientation required that the Bolsheviks condemn colonialism and imperialism, move beyond national and ethnic allegiances , and establish working-class communities. When they proclaimed that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” would eventually rule Russia (and the rest of the world), they failed to foresee the rise of nationalist movements among the non-Russian elites. Lenin’s vision of a socialist society did not include cultural autonomy for Russia’s nationalities.4 Rather, Lenin imagined a Soviet Union defined by one culture that would incorporate the traditions of every nationality within the Soviet sphere and become an example for the rest of the future communist world. The promise of this utopian view 24 9 THE MAKING OF SOVIET CULTURE IN KYRGYZSTAN DURING THE 1920s AND 1930s failed to materialize, however, because of the realities of a multiethnic, multidenominational country that was home to many non-Russian, non-Orthodox peoples...