Identity politics and intellectual trajectories in Bukhara, 1917-1924
This analysis of the intellectual trajectories and changing political identities of liberal proponents of reform in Bukhara in the early communist period is concerned primarily with three questions: First, what can a close study of the Bukharan intelligentsia reveal about their intellectual lineage in the context of larger reformist movements in Central Asia and the Muslim world in an age of revolution? Second, following failed efforts at reform and Soviet conquest, how were communism and communists created in Bukhara, and how did Bukharans define their position vis-à-vis Bolshevik ideology? Third, how did Bukharans themselves understand communism and their place in the “modern” world? In the final analysis, the case of the People’s Soviet Republic of Bukhara (1920-1924) demonstrates that Muslim modernism (Jadidism) and communism became incompatible as ideologies of world-making in Central Asia—that is, at the beginning they were not mutually exclusive ideologies. It was only after the consolidation of Soviet power in Central Asia beginning in 1924 that Muslim modernism was understood by Soviet authorities to be explicitly counter-productive and, finally, counter-revolutionary. Moreover, the shifting political identities and varied intellectual trajectories of the Bukharan intelligentsia expressed during the period of the BNSR demonstrate the extent of ideological uncertainty, pluralism, and experimentation present in Bukharan reformist circles.
Modernity, reform, revolution, Jadidism, communism, Central Asia
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign