Modern Clan Politics: The Power of "Blood" in Kazakhstan and Beyond

3/ Two Face of Soviet Power

Far more than in the premodern era, states have gone beyond defense of the realm to offer a large chunk of the strategies of survival that people construct for themselves. - Joel Migdal Illnesses pass, but habits remain.-Kazakh proverb AMONG THE CRITICAL IRONIES OF SOVIET RULE WAS THAT A modernization projectdesigned in partto eradicate clan divisions helped to contribute to their ongoing importance. As we will see, by creating a political economy based on endemic shortages, the Soviet state generally promoted tight-knit access networks-whether in Estonia or Moldova or Russia. In Central Asia and the Caucasus, it particularly promoted subethnic access networks by tapping the concealability of clan divisions (introduced in chapter 1). What had previously sustained clan-identity relations-nomadic pastoralism-was now gone, but in the Soviet period, state-generated shortage performed a similar function . In replacing pastoralism, this political economy left a profound imprint on how clan relationships were instantiated and how clan politics operated. Soviet rule deeply transformed subethnic affiliations in Central Asia. On the face of it, this point is as obvious as Soviet institutions were coercive, but it bears emphasizing. The collapse ofstate socialism did not impel a wholesale return to pre-Soviet political or social institutions; the Soviet collapse did not erase the Soviet experience. To the contrary, state socialism left a deep mark on Central Asia in ways that were only starting to become clear a decade after its conclusion .l This chapter shows that while Soviet authorities may have preferred to eliminate clan identities, Soviet modernization repro- Two Faces ofSoviet Power 47 duced them, in altered form. In this particular sense, clan divisions are resonant in post-Soviet Kazakhstan not in spite ofthe Sovietproject, but rather because ofthe particular ways in which it was executed.2 Given the social transformations of the Soviet period, should we draw a terminological distinction between pre-Soviet and post-Soviet subethnic identities? This is a question worth considering. The philosophers ask, "When does a red sock continually darned with green yam become a green sock?" For research on group identities with its emphasis on subjective self-definitions, the issue lies centrally with how the sock-wearer views the item in question. Were he to acquire a red sock and keep it (repairing it periodically with green yarn) over the years, it would likely remain the "red sock" in his imagination, a high percentage of green yarn notwithstanding. An outsider might disagree, measuring carefully the green surface area against the red surface area, but for the sock-wearer, the threshold to reimagine it as fundamentally different (as having become green) is much higher. Likewise with group identities: most members imagine groups as substantively continuous, as exhibiting a core sameness across time and space-notwithstanding changes that they might identify. The use ofthe term "clan" to describe subethnic identities before and after Soviet rule is thus not merely a step taken for analytic convenience; it represents the subjectively imagined continuity of groupness over time. To reiterate: the argument is not that clans-substantively unchanged from the pre-Soviet era-survived Soviet rule to manifest themselves in political and social life in the post-Soviet period. Nor is the argument that Soviet rule created clans (unless one defines "clan" as simply a tight-knit network that is not necessarily based on claims ofkinship). Rather, because of Soviet rule, clans- imagined as substantively continuous-persisted in particular social niches into the post-Soviet years. Their function and meaning had been altered in particular ways by state socialism. TOWARD THE ERADICATION OF CLAN AUTHORITY? The efforts of states to transform subject populations lie at the heart of the modern condition. Demonstrating the "ecumenical character of high-modernist faiths," Scott shows that attempts at human engineering were most destructive in the former socialist bloc, but these cases were in no sense unique. Across the globe, radical schemes designed to "improve the human condition" by reconstructing social and political interactions have multiplied and resoundingly failed} The Soviet state's extraordinary penetration into civil society is an extreme value on a more general trend. This penetration into society had enormous consequences for clan relationships. First, the regime deliberately targeted kin-based divisions for eradication, as chapter two introduced. The intention was to eliminate traditional authority patterns and undermine the bases for behavior considered to be anti-Soviet, thereby facilitating the construction of the new social order. Second, many general...