Mediums of Power and Powerlessness in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia

Abstract

Mediums of Power and Powerlessness in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia Botakoz Kassymbekova Victoria Clement, Learning to Become Turkmen: Literacy, Language, and Power, 1914–2014. 302 pp. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. ISBN-13 9780822964636. $28.95. Victoria Clement's Learning to Become Turkmen: Literacy, Language, and Power, 1914–2014 traces how language, literacy, and learning formed the Turkmen nation in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Clement shows how under three different regimes—imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet—cultural and/or political leaders were working on transforming Turkmen into modern citizens through language reform and literacy campaigns. Clement analyzes ruptures and continuities of language politics throughout decades, cautiously warning that Turkmen national identity was never a stable construct and meant different things in various political contexts. Analyzing the journey of Turkmen language from Arabic script to Latin, Cyrillic, and back to Latin, Clement reveals ideas and political forces behind the changes. Theoretically, Clement's work is influenced by Joshua Fishman and Pierre Bourdieu. Whereas Fishman was inspirational to study how "languages around the world have undergone transformation and amendments" (10), Bourdieu's ideas made Clement look at how actors appropriated language practices and what role it played for their individual social standing.1 Clement's work follows a classic narrative of Soviet Central Asian transformation, relying on works by Adrienne Edgar and Adeeb Khalid for its argument about pre- and early Soviet modernization attempts by Turkmen reformists and the Soviet [End Page 645] state, but Clement's analysis goes beyond the early Soviet period, covering the Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev periods, the period of Soviet collapse, and the independence period until 2014.2 Clement starts with writing the Turkmen reformist intellectuals into the history of late imperial Central Asia. She argues that so-far-ignored Turkmen Jadid reformers also existed in what later became Turkmenistan: Turkmen reformers were acting in the name of a Turkmen people and modernity, albeit in conversation of other Turkic reformers. Apart from their call to a specific Turkmen awakening, however, their vision of modernization was in accordance with general tendencies: they hoped to achieve cultural, social, and political modernization through education and by raising the prestige of learning. Just like other Turkic modernists, Turkmen Jadidists propagated the Arabic script reform to suit the Turkic language, making propositions for specific solutions to Turkmen vowel representation to allow more accessible learning. Importantly, that was when new-method schools integrated bilingualism by introducing Russian into its curriculum and argued for the education of women. The early Soviet period was also marked by debates among Turkmen cultural elites, in conversation with other Turkic Muslim reform leaders, regarding literacy, script, and language reform. Important were the debates regarding orthographic standardization. Given the diversity of dialects, this was not an easy task. Among various Turkmen tribes, two of which were dominant, it was not easy to decide which word should be used in school textbooks. Another question that arose was whether new words such as revolution or the proletariat should be borrowed or created based on Turkic or Persian. Already in this period some reformers advocated a turn to Latin script, first inspired by Azerbaijani intellectuals, to modernize and internationalize Muslim writing. Although Turkmen leaders did not want to Latinize their script, they were not as vigorously opposed to it as were, for example, Tatar leaders. Clement sheds light on some internal disagreements regarding grammar and orthography among the Turkmen but also in conversation with other Soviet Turks at Turkological congresses. These conversations did not "naturally" lead to Latinization of Turkic languages, since there were varying arguments regarding representation of speech in text, so that in 1930 it was ordered by decree. Around this time, Moscow and Leningrad linguists became important in regard to language reform, although Clement does not specify the nature of cooperation. [End Page 646] Starting in 1935, language planning in Turkmenistan became a Moscowled endeavor. Russian was prioritized over other languages; if previously, linguists were looking for words that were new to Turkmen from other Turkic or Persian languages (such as yoksul for proletariat), they now sought Russian words (such as soviet) that would "enrich" Turkmen. The change in priorities from Turkic/Persian to...