On the Edge?: Central Asia’s Place in the Field

Shortly before the Soviet Union’s collapse, the U.S. Congress invited Firuz Kazemzadeh—at the time, one of the few historians specializing in Russia’s southern periphery—to give a briefing about Central Asia. Fully expecting a host of detailed questions about the Soviet republics, he was surprised to discover that much of his session was taken up trying to explain that there were four of them, and that they had different names.¹ Whereas today most legislators in Washington probably do not have a much better grasp of our planet’s geography, it would now be much easier to find scholars able to testify knowledgeably about the region. Once a rarefied specialization with dim, if any, job prospects, there is no question that Central Asian history has enjoyed growing attention and respectability in what is increasingly being called Slavic and Eurasian studies. Nevertheless, its practitioners still complain that they are marginalized—according to one of them, habitually relegated to the 8 am Sunday time slot at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies convention (378).

To what extent are they right? Furthermore, what is their relevance to the field of Russian studies, broadly defined? Kritika’s editors commissioned four prominent scholars who have made their careers in Central Asian history to comment about its place and prospects in the academy. I was then asked if I might reflect on their remarks as someone who has studied Russia’s engagement with the East more broadly.

Reflecting Kritika’s stated ambition to transcend “the insularities of national particularism,” these scholars represent four different regions: Central Asia itself (Gulmira Sultangalieva), Russia (Sergei Abashin), East Asia (Tomohiko Uyama), and North America (Jeff Sahadeo). It would be churlish to complain that Western Europe, which also boasts distinguished specialists, has been left out. Nevertheless, their observations are remarkably congruent. Perhaps we are not as isolated as it often seems.

What Is Central Asia?

The independence of Central Asia’s five republics has naturally led to a considerable boom in the study of their own history there over the past two decades. Among the region’s leading scholars in this respect is Gulmira Sultangalieva. As professor of history at Kazakh National University in Almaty, Sultangalieva devotes much of her attention to the study of her own country’s past. Nevertheless, many of her remarks are equally relevant to the other states in Central Asia. Sultangalieva points out that the region has a “complex nomenclature.” In a more existential vein, she even wonders, “Has Central Asia existed as a single and coherent region?” (345). What was once vaguely described as “Tartary” on old European maps has variously been known as Turkestan, Central Asia, Inner Asia, Eurasia, Central Eurasia, and the Heartland, albeit with wildly varying boundaries.²

Like Sultangalieva, Abashin refers to “Central Asia.” By contrast, Jeff Sahadeo and Uyama Tomohiko discuss “Central Eurasia.” If they are dissonant, they are not alone. Indeed, there still is no general scholarly consensus about what precisely constitutes Central Asia. Should we take it as “scientifically” defined in 1843 by the Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt as “that region of Asia which is 5° north and 5° south of the 44.5° parallel”?³ Do we accept UNESCO’s designation, which encompasses former Soviet Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet, as well as portions of northern India and Iran?⁴ Or does Central Asia consist only of the former Soviet republics (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and sometimes Kazakhstan), according to the more common contemporary political practice? Perhaps the most straightforward solution would be to return to the region’s earlier appellation, (western) Turkestan.⁵ That term lost favor in the 1920s as the young Soviet regime separated the region into separate “republics.”⁶

It is interesting that none of the authors contests that Central Asia was a colony in both the late imperial and the Soviet eras.⁷ Before 1991, when the USSR was not commonly regarded as an empire, this would have been fraught with political implications. At the same time, there...