Trauma and Public Memory in Central Asia: Public Responses to Political Violence of the State Politics in Stalinist Era in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Central Asian (CA) states obtained their independence and statehood with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was the starting point for many in CA region to re-interpret the events of the past and attempt to construct new histories of their own newly independent republics. In many cases, these re-constructed histories re-interpret historical events and offer insights into histories from the perspectives which are aimed to oppose the Soviet historical discourses, which used to dominate history books in CA region for many decades. Political violence and the state policies of Stalinist era (such as collectivization, deportation of ethnic groups and others) can serve as an appropriate example of such difference in historical discourses of Soviet and post-Soviet times. While Soviet historiography described the events of collectivization and displacement of people as the state policy, which was painful yet unavoidable and necessary for the development of the country, the post-Soviet discourse on these issues suggests that these were the policies of colonization and in some cases of genocide of CA peasantry and intelligentsia in order to control these republics. However, both of these polar perspectives do not always accurately reflect on how ordinary citizens regarded these issues at that time. There is a lack of input on how ordinary people remember the times and policies of Stalinist era and on how those policies and approaches affected their everyday life. That is not to say that these public memories alone can provide full and impartial picture of the situation of the public responses to the Stalinist era policies regarding collectivization, political participation, religion and ethnicity. 1 They represent “another venue of memory and identity transmission […] operated simultaneously and competitively with history,” which may and indeed need to be contrasted and counterchecked against archival data and other sources [Crane, 1997: 1372]. In this sense, any discussion of how state policies and traumatic experiences of the past have influenced formation of current political systems in CA purely based on “official” historical accounts and “master narratives” without oral recollections of those times by individuals is incomplete and often inadequate. In Post-Soviet and in particular, Central Asian context, it is this “living history that perpetuates and renews itself through time and permits the recovery of many old