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Chapter Four: An Empirical Illustration: Soviet Central Asia
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Conceptual distinctions among different forms of hierarchy, their characteristics , and predictions about their causal effects on patterns of governance and institutional formation have been set forth. This chapter presents four sectoral cases—two in security and two in economy—in Soviet Central Asia as empirical illustrations of these conceptual claims. Applying the firm-type model to the Soviet case allows us to chart how these two distinct governance logics generated very different types of political institutions and state-building within the same political setting. Thus, the sectoral approach offered here captures internal variation in the development of the Soviet polity, a matter other approaches that treat Soviet policy and institutional development as uniform cannot account accurately. First, the methodological justification for selecting the Soviet case is described, and this chapter is located within broader debates about institutional approaches to Soviet politics. Next, I show how Soviet administrators employed both U-forms and M-forms in their governance of the Central Asian periphery across security (policing and defense) and economic (industry and agriculture) sectors, thereby governing some sectors as an M-form empire and others as a U-form integrated state. Last, I examine how each of these organizational forms produced contrasting modes of political development, thereby creating harmonizing institutions in some sectors and patrimonial institutions in others. . For an important exception that does examine variations in patterns of state-building and identity formation, see David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ). . For a fascinating debate on the role of transitology in post-Soviet studies, see Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe Schmitter, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?” Slavic Review (): –; and Valerie Bunce, “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Review (): –. . Oksana Olga Dmitrieva, Regional Development: The USSR and After (London: UCL Press, ), ix. C L C S Two important criteria served to qualify Soviet Central Asia as the empirical focus of this study. As an empirical setting, the case exhibits significant variance on the independent variable within different issue areas as Soviet planners simultaneously employed both U-form and Mform techniques in their administration of the region’s security and economy. Moreover, the Soviet case is commonly studied as a case where ideology and identity constitute important sources of political behavior. Accordingly, the organizational approach is intended to explain variation that ideational approaches to Soviet governance cannot.1 The other reason for selecting Central Asia as a focal case relates to the methodological debate within postcommunist and Central Asian studies regarding comparative theoretical frameworks and social scientific inquiry. As Valerie Bunce points out, scholars should be wary of comparing geographic regions and political systems that differ so fundamentally that they will render comparison theoretically meaningless.2 Olga Dmitrieva eloquently advances the case against broad theoretical comparison when she explicitly rejects that Soviet Central Asia in any way resembled the colonies of other European powers: the system of relationships in the ethnic peripheries demands insight studies, in as much as the periphery displayed a curious mixture of preindustrial feudal relations with a strong Moslem heritage, interwoven with an administrative command business network and bureaucratic system . . . it resulted in a quite unusual system of relationships which could scarcely be found anywhere else. Therefore, studies of the ethnic periphery , including Central Asia, can hardly be done in the framework and terminology applicable to other Third World countries.3 The point is an important one, but like the general debate about theory and comparison in post-Soviet politics, it focuses too narrowly on the issue of whether transitology should be the appropriate frame of . Some recent contributions have already demonstrated the theoretical fruitfulness of applying economic concepts of organization to the study of Soviet hierarchies. See Steven Solnick, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ); and Randall Stone, Satellites and Commissars: Strategy and Conflict in the Politics of Sovietbloc Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ). . Alexander Motyl, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (New York: Columbia University Press, ); Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds., The End of Empire? The Disintegration of the USSR in Comparative Perspective (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, ); Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen, eds., After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and NationBuilding : The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, ); and Hendrik Spruyt, Ending Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ). . Martha B. Olcott, “The Basmachi or Freemen’s Revolt in Turkestan...
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