INTRODUCTION

Between 1917 and 1941, many language communities in the Soviet Union underwent a double alphabet change from a traditional alphabet to the Latin one (mainly between 1917 and 1932) and from the Latin to the Cyrillic alphabet. This process of radically changing the alphabet for a language community that had already used an alphabet before, affected a significant proportion of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union. Almost all Turkic languages (including the Azerbaijan Turkic/Azeri, Tatar, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Bashkir, and Yakut languages), the Tajik language, the Mongolic languages (especially the Buryat and Kalmyk languages) and many other languages, such as the Abkhaz, Kabardin, Ingush, Chechen, Ossetian, Avar, Dungan, and some Finno-Ugric languages were Latinized by 1931-1932.
The story of Latinization in the Soviet Union, as usually told, is a story of Moscow activity. For historians in the Tatar Republic, for example, it is part of the history of Stalinism, and Stalinism is eo ipso a story of Moscow domination. Western historians shared this perspective for a long time: The main motives for the radical rupture with older alphabets must have been the result of the initiative of the central party or state organs. Meanwhile, historiography on the Soviet Union under Stalin has long shifted its focus from central to peripheral actors. Indigenous party activists have attracted historians’ interest as well as phenomena of subversion, resistance, or the “weapons of the weak.” This holds true especially for aspects of Soviet nationality policy.
However, there remain some aspects of Soviet nationality policy that are still examined from a center-dominated perspective. The Latinization of the alphabets of Soviet minority languages that had formerly had an older (Arabic, Mongolic) script tradition is one of these aspects. The thesis of this article and the source presented (a protocol of the partfraktsiia at the Baku Congress, 1926) is that peripheral actors played a central role in this process, that without their political action, strategies, and tactics, the Union-wide success of Latinization cannot be understood, that peripheral actors had well understood the rules of the game and used them to their favor. But my thesis goes beyond this empirical observation: I suggest that research on the Soviet Union should concentrate more on relations between actors in different peripheries and the role of actors from the political center within these relations. In this way, we may learn much about the specific imperial character of the Soviet Union.
To substantiate this thesis, I present a short outline of the alphabet competition between politicians and scientists in Baku and Kazan – the main centers of alphabet discussions in the early Soviet Union. The argument is developed along the turning points of the alphabet discussion process: the All-Union Turkological Congress in Baku, 1926, and the Third Session of the Central Executive Committee of the SSSR in Moscow, 1927. I then concentrate on what these processes tell us about the Soviet Union’s imperskost’ in the 1920s.^[1] Finally I present a source that may cast new light on one specific step in this process: the protocol of the sessions of the partfrakcija during the Turkological Congress in Baku 1926.

ALPHABET DISCUSSIONS BEFORE 1926: TALKING AT CROSS-PURPOSES

The wide spectrum of Latinized languages as described above gives the impression that these processes could only have been initiated in the center. Almost all interpretations of the Latinization process published during the Cold War concentrated on the question of what Moscow had in mind by Latinizing minority alphabets.^[2] Contemporary observers noted that Latinization might be motivated by Moscow’s wish to separate the Turkic-speaking part of the Soviet population from the rest of the Turkic world.^[3] Other interpreters speculated about a special kind of divide et impera strategy: The introduction of a Latinized alphabet marked phonetic differences between the Turkic languages more clearly than the Arabic script had before, and therefore it might have served as a tool of ethnic differentiation.^[4] A third line of interpretation emphasized the Soviet perception of a kinship relation between the Arabic script and Islam and interpreted Latinization as one of many tools in the antireligious campaigns of the early Soviet Union.^[5] In a wider context this could be integrated into a fourth line of interpretation: The old alphabets were part of premodernity, and the Soviet push into modernity had to be accompanied by the introduction of new, “modern” alphabets.^[6] The devaluation of the alphabet skills of the prerevolutionary elites and the intended loss of traditional bodies of knowledge would have been a valuable side effect of this policy.^[7] Finally, a last group of explanations concentrated on the following policy of Cyrillization of the formerly Latinized alphabets in 1939/40 and emphasized that Latinization had only been a first step in an overall Russification policy.^[8]
Altogether these interpretations had one weak point in common: They all assumed implicitly or explicitly that decisions of this importance could only have been made in the center, and, more precisely, in the decision-making body of the Communist Party. In fact, however, the Party organs in Moscow had for a long time avoided any decision.^[9] This is not to say that there were no alphabet discussions in Moscow at all. Scientific bodies, in particular, had thought about these questions since 1918. In 1918 the Bureau of Education in the Central Muslim Commissariat (a branch of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities) had charged a commission with the elaboration of the alphabet question, and at the beginning of 1919 it held a Turkological conference that argued for a reform of the Arabic script. The discussion continued for some time, but it did not go beyond the insider circles within the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities. In 1922, even a longer exchange of arguments on the pages of Zhizn natsionalnostei, the official organ of the People’s Commissariat, did not provoke any political reaction. The People’s Commissariat’s only answer was the proposal to convene an All-Union Congress of Turkologists, an idea that the Academy of Sciences had launched in May 1922. They did not, however, find a sponsor, and thus the congress did not take place. A subsequent discussion in 1923 met a similar fate, and even a new “Committee for the New Alphabet,” which was founded in Moscow after the closing of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities, stopped working in 1924.
For Baku (here understood as a code for Azerbaijan politicians who favored a Latin alphabet for all Turkic languages in the Soviet Union), this was highly unsatisfactory because Azerbaijan was already on its way to an all-embracing introduction of the Latin alphabet.^[10] In 1920 the People’s Commissariat for Education in Baku had already charged a commission with the reform of the alphabet. In January 1921, the Commissariat opted for the Latin alphabet, although the discussion lacked comprehensive linguistic analysis at the time. In 1922, the government of Azerbaijan accepted this decision and took over the Committee for the New Alphabet under the leadership of Samedaga Agamali-ogly. Its work was characterized by an astonishingly naive belief in the miraculous powers of the Latin alphabet. Finally, in October 1923, the Latin alphabet was recognized as the state alphabet by the Central Executive Committee and the Council of the People’s Commissars in Baku.

THE TURKOLOGICAL CONGRESS IN BAKU, 1926: STAGING A “SCIENTIFIC” ALPHABET DISCUSSION

The anticipated expenses for the introduction of a new alphabet (which was to be accompanied by the implementation of new technologies, especially in the printing industry and courses for the retraining of alphabetized cadres) would, however, have to be allocated on more republics, as Agamali-ogly suggested. He not only hoped to pool risks, but certainly expected common gains from a collective decision for the Latin alphabet. In December 1922, he dispatched a circular to the People’s Commissariats of Education in Turkestan, Tatarstan, Chiva, and the Crimea^[11] wherein he promoted the Latin alphabet. At the same time, his committee slowly but decidedly extended its activity beyond the borders of Azerbaijan and founded branch offices throughout the whole Caucasus wherever it could find interested activists. In autumn 1924, a delegation led by Agamali-ogly set off on a promotional tour through the whole Union. The delegation visited Simferopol’, Tashkent, Orenburg, Ufa, and Kazan, although the tour had no lasting effect in these republics.
The idea of reviving an old idea therefore suggested itself: the convention of an All-Union Congress of Turkologists, now endowed with a mandate to definitively decide the alphabet question. By December 1924, the Society for Regional Studies^[12] had been charged with the preparation of a Turkological Congress to decide pressing questions of language policy in the Soviet East. The working group, by Agamali-ogly, quickly decided to organize this congress in Baku (not in Moscow or in Leningrad!). It cooperated with prominent Orientalist scholars in Moscow and Leningrad, and the Scientific Association for Orientalistic Studies (which had seen no possibility of funding the congress a year before) supported these plans. In August 1925, the Central Executive Committee of the SSSR approved that this congress be conducted “without spending monies in connection with the congress that exceed the existing budget.”^[13]
In fact, the leadership of the Communist Party was not very pleased that the Azerbaijan alphabet enthusiasts were pressing ahead. Following a recommendation of the secretariat, the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided on February 15, 1926:

“(1) The Communists participating in the Congress will operate in a manner as to ensure that the Congress will confine itself to clarifying the possibility of a transition to the Latin script without deciding categorically the question of an immediate transfer to this script. (2) The Congress must not establish a permanent and elected organ having legal capacity. (3) In order to prepare and conduct the Congress a commission will be set up with the following composition: the chairman will be comrade Ordzhonikidze, the members will be Agamali-ogly, Pavlovich, Nagovitskii, and a representative of the Azerbaijan Central Committee.”^[14]

The Congress was opened on February 26, 1926, and included 131 delegates and scores of invited guests who participated in the discussions that raised various questions of culture and language. The Congress was well organized and publicized.^[15] The most heated discussions centered on the alphabet question. In the orthographic section, a resolution assessed the amenities of the Latin alphabet in relation to the old and reformed Arabic alphabets.^[16] Galimdzhan Ibragimov, the chairman of the Academic Center of the People’s Commissariat for Education in Kazan, closely followed the directions of his own Tatar party organs and declared himself in favor of the reformed Arabic alphabet. In the actual alphabet discussion, it was Galimdzhan Sharaf, Tatarstan’s well-known linguist (a disciple of Vasilii Alekseevich Bogoroditskii and for some time a student of history at Petrograd University), who defended the reformed Arabic alphabet. His well–elaborated, cutting-edge argument was nevertheless a rhetorical fiasco: “His presentation was the longest; he talked more than three hours in nervous haste, although the chairman did not interrupt him, and without considering psychology of his audience, which had no possibility of grasping his argument because of the length of his statement.”^[17]
Sharaf was the only renowned speaker in favor of the (reformed) Arabic alphabet.^[18] On the opposite side several delegates spoke out in favor of the Latin script. The Moscow linguist Nikolai Yakovlev began the discussion with a comparative argument about the assets and drawbacks of the Arabic and Latin alphabets in different republics, and concluded that the Latin alphabet would be a better solution for the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union. He was supported by his colleague Lev Zhirkov who emphasized the technical and didactic advantages of the Latin alphabet. After Galimdzhan Sharaf, the audience was to enjoy comedic mockeries of the pro-Arabic arguments. The whole debate dragged on for two days, and in the end the Tatar delegation, which had proposed giving every republic the right to decide these alphabet questions for itself, got the short end of the stick. With 101 yes and 7 no votes (9 abstentions from voting^[19]), the Congress arrived at the following resolution:

“(1) While the Congress acknowledges the advantages and the technical superiority of the new Turkic (Latin) alphabet in relation to the Arabic and reformed Arabic alphabets and the enormous cultural, historical, and progressive importance of the new alphabet compared to Arabic, it regards the introduction of the new alphabet and the methods of its implementation in the Turkic-Tatar republics and provinces to be these republics’ and peoples’ funeral. (2) In connection with this the Congress assesses the enormous, positive relevance of the introduction of the new alphabet on a Latin basis in Azerbaijan and other provinces and republics of the SSSR (Yakutia, Kyrgyzstan, Ingushetia, Karachai-Cherkessia, the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Oblast, Ossetia, and Chechnya) and of the powerful movement for the introduction of the new alphabet in Bashkiria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Cherkess (Adyghe) Autonomous Oblast. While the Congress emphasizes and happily welcomes the positive work that is being done in some provinces and republics in relation to the new Turkic (Latin) alphabet, it recommends that all Turkic-Tatar and other peoples study the experience and methods of Azerbaijan and other provinces and republics of the SSSR in considerating the possible introduction of this reform within its own territory.”^[20]

TURNING LINGUISTICS INTO POLITICS: ALPHABET BEHIND THE SCENES

The unambiguousness of the Congress’s resolution had to be a surprise for every participant or observer who knew about the republics’ and provinces’ interests before the Congress convened. The Academic Center of the Uzbek republic, for example, had spoken out definitively against the Latin alphabet three months before the Congress. The Uzbek delegation, however, opted unanimously for the pro-Latin resolution cited above. Obviously, the Azerbaijan organizers of the Congress had succeeded in convincing other delegations of the superiority of the Latin alphabet. But the technical, didactic, or “progressive” properties of the Latin alphabet were not the decisive arguments. The decision was prepared behind the scenes in a body that allowed to exclude the public and to regard these questions from a totally different perspective at the same time: the sessions of the partfraktsiia.
In these sessions the members of the Communist Party among the delegates assembled separately to discuss all questions of a more political character (partiinye voprosy). Thus some “arabists,” for example, the chairman of the Kazakh Academic Center Akhmet Baitursunov, could not participate in these sessions. The alphabet question was one of the most important items on the agenda of the partfraktsiia from the beginning. The chairman in the first session, Mirza Guseinov, had fixed this in advance:

“The question about the alphabet will be the last one. Concerning the passions that this question may possibly provoke, I propose that this question be discussed within the fraction in order to determine the behavior of the comrades-Communists in advance of the decision. Thus the fraction will do everything in its power to prevent conflict or scandal.”^[21]

On March 1, 1926, the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow (vide supra) was read aloud. Pavlovich introduced the resolution, commenting that the Central Committee looked benevolently on the Latin alphabet. Furthermore, the communist delegates should not forget that the Muslim world (India, Persia, Turkey, and Egypt) was very closely observing the proceedings of the Congress. Only after this introduction did he present the resolution of the Moscow Central Committee and the proposition of a resolution of the Congress.
The reactions among the communist delegates varied, but they all depended on the delegates’ principal position in the alphabet question. Gaiaz Maksudov, an adherent of the reformed alphabet used in Kazan, reinterpreted the resolution:

“This means that the Central Committee on the one hand forbids us to decide on a resolution of such a categorical character, and on the other hand does not obligate us to decide positively on a resolution in favor of the Latin alphabet.”^[22]

Furthermore, he denied that the alphabet question was a question of partiinost’ because there could not be any discussion about any question of partiinost’ – once the central party organs in Moscow had agreed upon a discussion, they had admitted this was not a partiinyi vopros. Umar Aliev, a delegate from the Northern Caucasus, disagreed with him. To his mind, in a state where everything was directed by party members, there was no question that it could and would become a question of partiinost’. Other delegates aligned themselves with this position. Nazir Tiuriakulov, administration manager of the Central Publishing House for the Peoples of the Orient, even suspected the Kazan representatives of a certain affinity to the Mensheviks. Galimdzhan Ibragimov explained that he was ready to defend the Tatar position in the Control Commission of the Party. The argument turned into an exchange of suspicions.
Finally Pavlovich informed the communist delegates that he had participated in a reception of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Georgy Chicherin) together with the Turkish ambassador and the Turkish Minister of Agriculture. The representatives of the Republic of Turkey had made their position clear to him that the modernization of the whole Muslim East, including Turkey, depended on a pro-Latin decision of the Turkological Congress.^[23] Given the strong pan-Turkic emotions at the Congress, this was a strong argument in favor of the Latin alphabet. At the end, the Azerbaijan alphabet enthusiasts in cooperation with pro-Latin scientists and communists from Moscow and Leningrad, succeeded in building up enough pressure on the Kazan delegation that other, less well-informed delegations were deeply impressed and changed allegiance. At the end, 101 delegates opted for the pro-Latin resolution that went beyond what the Politburo had allowed them to decide.

FOISTING A DECISION ON MOSCOW: THE THIRD SESSION OF THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

For many observers, the resolution of the Baku Congress had been the central turning point of Latinization history in the Soviet Union. But in fact the delegates had violated the strict restrictions Moscow had imposed upon them before the Congress. Not only had they opted for a resolution that spoke out clearly in favour of one of the alphabets, they even tried to establish a permanent organ – another violation of the resolution of the Politburo. Tiuriakulov therefore recommended on March 1, 1926, that representatives of all republics turning to the Latin alphabet shortly after the Congress assemble in order to coordinate their respective alphabet politics. The partfraktsiia approved this proposal. Formally this was still in line with the Moscow resolution. In another meeting of the partfraktsiia, an Azerbaijan activist named Karaev (probably Asad Karaev) offered the interpretation that the Moscow resolution prohibited the establishment of a central organ but not of many permanent bodies at the republican level. Levon Mirzoian, at this time first secretary of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) Azerbaijan, remarked that Moscow had clearly spoken out against a permanent organ but was reminded that Moscow had only rejected an elective organ.
On March 6, 1926, one day after the closing of the Congress, Agamali-ogly assembled all of the delegates interested in the Latin alphabet, including Shamil’ Usmanov, a Tatar Latinist from Kazan. The assembly chose to name the Azerbaijan Alphabet Committee the “motor of the Latinization in the whole Union” and to make Baku the center of the printing industry in the new alphabet. Accordingly, the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasus (ZakTsIK) renamed the Baku committee in October 1926; henceforth it would be called the “Central Executive Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet.” By the summer Agamali-ogly had provided the presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the SSSR with a resolution proposal to acknowledge the establishment of a permanent All-Union Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet, based in Baku, but without success. Another initiative by Biashim Kul’besherov, later secretary of the Soviet of Nationalities, to convince the Central Executive Committee of the importance of an All-Union Committee for the new alphabet ended likewise. The secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow reacted with displeasure and answered: “According to p. 2 of the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of February 18, 1926, concerning the Turkological Congress, the request is denied.”^[24]
Only on February 28, 1927, one year after the Congress, did the Orgburo finally decide to acknowledge the All-Union Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet. It was to be based in Baku with a branch in Moscow. Agamali-ogly was officially accepted as its chairman. Why did the central party organs wait so long to foster the Latinization endeavors? In my eyes, this is the wrong question. In fact, the central party organs had never seen the alphabet question as the one of utmost relevance. For them, it was a question that demanded rather pragmatic answers, and was not important enough for them to risk opposition or resistance. Therefore, they did not interfere in this process, which seemed to be a problem of the republics themselves. Hence, the question has to be asked differently: Why did the central party organs finally agree to take sides in these discussions? What made them sure that the politics of noninterference could no longer be maintained?
In my opinion, the turn in the party organs was linked to the final provocation of the Azerbaijan Latinists, which no longer allowed this policy of turning the other way and letting things develop without interference. During the Third Session of the Central Executive Committee of the SSSR some of the leading representatives of the Turkic republics of the Soviet Union had assembled separately to discuss the alphabet question. Finally they determined that the creation of an All-Union Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet based in Baku (with a branch in Moscow) was necessary and in due time. Three months later, on May 11, 1926, the presidium of the Central Executive Committee approved the foundation of this committee. In the original terms of the resolution the presidium only “took note”^[25] of its foundation. Meanwhile, the central party organs had sanctioned the unionwide Latinization process and the creation of the corresponding permanent body.
It may now seem that the party had finally declared itself openly in favour of Latinization – a solution it had pursued for a long time. But the central party and state organs never had a clear option for Latinization, and if it is true that they regarded the alphabet as a question of minor importance, it is all the more interesting to find out why they reacted in spring 1927. Did they opt for a certain alphabet, or did they opt for something else? Interestingly enough, the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Orgburo never tried to subordinate the All-Union Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet^[26] – and this may attest to the ongoing neglect of this question in higher party and state circles.
I suppose that the central party organs had to make a totally different decision: between the “Baku” and “Kazan” models. Moscow must have observed that these were the two most important players in the alphabet dispute and that their controversy alone is what hampered a pragmatic unionwide alphabet decision. The Azerbaijan politics of enforcing a decision of the central party organs by bringing forward the idea of an All-Union Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet repeatedly contributed to the impression that Moscow would now have to interfere – or lose control of the process completely. The informal assembly at the Third Session of the Central Executive Committee was a last provocation that could no longer be ignored. In principle, Moscow would have to denounce the Turkic Latinists for creating a fraction behind the scenes of a session of the highest formal political body in the Soviet Union. By this means Moscow would de facto have favoured Kazan. Keeping silent and waiting for a self-regulating process was not a solution anymore because this would have been an option for the Kazan model as well. In fact, the strong Tatar polygraphic industry would have set the standards for a long time – it was Kazan and not Baku (as the Azerbaijan activists had demanded) that supplied the majority of the Turkic republics with typewriters and printing technology. Moscow had only a choice between inactivity (a de facto choice for Kazan) and active interference in favor of Baku.
In this situation, Baku seemed to be the republic more deserving of support. Both republics had seen “pan-Turkic” movements, but the Tatar variant seemed more dangerous. Sultan-Galiev, the most prominent and highest-ranking Muslim Communist and head of the most dangerous pan-Turkic movement (the Sultan-Galievshchina), had a strong basis in Kazan. In Baku, the Azerbaijani variant of pan-Turkism “did not pose such a great threat” because “Stalin’s loyal allies in the Caucasus, Sergo Ordzhonikide and S. M. Kirov, guaranteed strict supervision over the Azerbaijani national communists in charge.”^[27] Sultan-Galiev was not the only trouble, however. In fact, Moscow had had problems with the Kazan party leadership for a long time. In October 1923, fifteen members of the Kazan Obkom had protested against the lawfulness of the imprisonment of Sultan-Galiev (the “letter of the fifteen”) and criticized the realization of the resolutions of the Twelfth Party Congress of the CPSU concerning nationality policies. One year later, thirty-nine members of the Kazan party leadership presented an analysis of the inner conflicts in the Tatar party organization and made suggestions to Moscow about possible solutions. This letter was later remembered in Moscow party circles as proof of a Tatar affinity to inner-party factionality.^[28] In the spring of 1927, ten Tatar People’s Commissars dramatically protested against the “imperalist” politics of Russian Communists in Tatarstan. They even traveled to Moscow to campaign for the relocation of Mendel’ Markovich Khataevich (who had been specially sent to Kazan by Moscow to end the faction strife). A multitude of documents concerning group conflicts in Tatarstan that may be found today in the former Party Archive prove that Moscow viewed Kazan as a breeding ground for pan-Turkism, local chauvinism, and “tribal” factionalism.
In conclusion, Moscow avoided interfering for a relatively long time. In the spring of 1927, it could no longer afford to abstain from a decision. On the one hand, further abstention from siding with Azerbaijan or Tatarstan would have been de facto support for the Tatar solution; the reform of the Arab alphabet would have become a standard for the Turkic republics in the Soviet Union because only Kazan was capable of supplying other republics with publishing technologies. On the other hand, several times Azerbaijan had broken the limits set by Moscow. In the course of the Turkological Congress, it had brought about a resolution that went beyond what Moscow had allowed; after the Congress, Baku representatives established a permanent All-Union structure for Latinization politics and policies that broke the limits of the Moscow resolution even more clearly than before. The assembly of representatives of the Turkic republics behind the scenes of the Central Executive Committee session was a provocation that could no longer be ignored. In this situation, Moscow opted for Azerbaijan – for reasons that had nothing to do with linguistics or alphabet politics.

ENGAGING THE HUB OF THE POLITICAL WHEEL: THE SOVIET UNION AS EMPIRE

What do these considerations tell us about the character of the Soviet Union as an empire? Is it even legitimate to say that the Soviet Union “actually” was an empire? In a former article for Ab Imperio,^[29] I argued that on the one hand it is useless to define “empire” by looking for its “essence” or “essential features.” On the other hand, Begriffsgeschichte (the history of the concept “empire”) cannot substitute for the history of empire, or, in the words of Alexander Motyl: “the etymology of empire can tell us only how the term has been used and not what the concept means – until we first make a conceptual leap toward it.”^[30] By contrast, I have proposed working with a Nominaldefinition of empire, an arbitrary convention by which an author declares the phenomena to which he refers in using a particular term. In historical analyses, this Nominaldefinition is in most cases the result of an Explikation, a philosophical technique that is intended to give an imprecise or an ambiguous term a more precise meaning for the purposes of a specific research interest. This is especially necessary for terms that are used widely in everyday speech. Here Begriffsgeschichte comes into its own as it is able to disentangle the different layers and strata of meaning. It is, however, important that Begriffsgeschichte is only instrumental in this perspective. The Explikation is thought to reduce the multitude of meanings to a precise and narrow definition of a term. Its goal is to arrive at a definition of the term that makes the term usable in the context of a theory.
For the purpose of this argument, I confine myself to a definition of empire presented by Alexander Motyl, in whose definition empires should be understood

“as a hierarchically organized political system with a hublike structure – a rimless wheel – within which a core elite and state dominate peripheral elites and societies by serving as intermediaries for their significant interactions and by channeling resource flows from the empire to the core and back to the periphery.”^[31]

To clarify: I do not suggest that this is the “right” definition. As long as definitions are understood as arbitrary fixations, there is no “right” or “wrong” in them. They are only “useful” or “useless,” and I think in my case this is a useful definition. The ensuing question may be asked as follows: Was the Soviet Union a hierarchically organized political system (this is indisputably right) within which a core elite and state dominated peripheral elites and societies by serving as intermediaries for their significant interactions and by channeling resource flows from the empire to the core and back to the periphery?
At first glance, this question (and definition) appears to demand a state and an elite that actively dominate peripheries and channel communication and resource flows. In such a narrow understanding of the definition, the actions of peripheral actors might be understood only as a transformation of central input (a classical perspective of imperialism studies) or as subaltern resistance or creative appropriation of central concepts (which I would call a postcolonial perspective^[32]). The definition as such should not be read narrowly, however. According to Motyl’s definition, the core elite and state only “serve” as intermediaries for “significant interactions” (between peripheral elites as well!) and by “channeling resource flows” from the center to the periphery. Thus, it encompasses processes such as the one discussed here, where one actor from one periphery tries to impose his political will on an actor from another periphery, including his hope for an according resource flow from the center to the peripheries in question. Whatever the first actor may think of to reach these goals, he has to go a long way around: Without engaging the center, he will achieve neither his first nor his second goal.
In sum, the Soviet Union fits well into this definition of “empire.” But the foregoing discussion about an adequate definition of empire would be of no value if it lacked methodological consequences or a theoretical surplus. In the following and concluding remarks on my topic I will try to show that the different aspects of this argument – the definition of “empire,” the case in question, and the following source – contribute to a wider understanding of the Soviet Union as empire that enables us to observe and analyze aspects of the political as well as economic, cultural, and social history of the Soviet Union that might otherwise remain unobserved.
I would like to discuss a point concerning overcoming the old center–periphery dichotomy that underlies even most of the earlier studies of nationalities policies in the Soviet Union. They often imply that peripheries could have relations with the center but not with other peripheries, or they suggest that relations with other peripheries were possible on a nonpolitical level. Furthermore, they often transfer the notion of a certain hierarchy between center and periphery to all possible relations between them; political action in the periphery is thus often interpreted as resistance against or transmission of central politics. But the definition adopted in this article does not assume a hierarchy on all levels. On the contrary, it assumes only a hierachy of formal status, a hierarchy within the polity. In fact, as we can see from the case presented, in other aspects peripheral actors could act on an equal footing (albeit not formally) with the center and impose their political will upon central actors and even the highest organs of the party and state leadership. In this sense, Azerbaijani politicians played Moscow off against Kazan – and might have done the opposite in other cases.
The case of Latinization thus shows (and this is a methodological consequence) that it will be necessary to concentrate more specifically on the question of who the relevant actors are in the historical problem in question – and what their relations are to one another. I think that such a perspective does not focus on a new grand narrative of the Soviet Union – and there is no need to do so. In fact, it is an old methodological demand in historiography “to find out who the actors were” but it is not always followed thoroughly. For example, I suggest that postcolonial thinking leads us to concentrate on periphery – center relations only – but that relations between one periphery and another, peppered furthermore with questions of power and different attempts to attain it, and complicated by the imperial, that is, “hublike” structure of the polity, do not fit into this scheme. The theoretical surplus in this perspective would be, first of all, the discovery of a challenge at the empirical and theoretical level: In the empirical respect, we do not yet know in which and in how many cases peripheral actors tried to influence actors in other peripheries and which instruments they had for doing so. In the theoretical perspective, we still lack a theory of action in imperial contexts, that is, a general theory of action including hypotheses about the opportunities and restrictions in typically imperial contexts. This holds true for central as well as peripheral actors. Consequently, until we know more about the figurations^[33] of actors, we will have difficulties in understanding the peculiarities of Soviet polity. And in some respect it may be these figurations that constitute the Soviet civitas, the heterogenous body of interacting and counteracting individuals whose inter- and counteraction is structured in a manner that can be described as imperial.

SESSIONS OF THE PARTY FRACTION OF THE TURKOLOGICAL CONGRESS IN BAKU

The following document has been found in the Mikhail Pavlovich (Vel’tman) source in the Russian State Archive (GARF). It is an exceptional additional source of knowledge about the proceedings of the Turkological Congress in Baku in 1926. The official record of this Congress has been long known.^[34] The previously unpublished protocols of the sessions of the partfraktsiia allow us to know more about the maneuvering that took place behind the scenes. It is very instructive to follow the communicative strategies used by the different actors for reasoning and convincing. In fact, while they all gather their arguments around their own interpretation of Party resolutions in Moscow, Kazan, and Baku, they all use them not as they are meant to be understood but as corresponds to their political goals. This is, in fact, not only informative about the process of alphabet policy in the Soviet Union; it may also serve as a good example of the imperial structures of communication in Soviet nationality policies described above. At first glance, it appears as if the supporters of the Latin alphabet are clearly on the side of the Central Party organs in Moscow; they manage to present their position as the most convincing interpretation of the resolution proposal formulated in Moscow. At second glance, one wonders why Ibragimov, Maksudov, and Sabirov (the main representatives of the Tatarstani position) so stubbornly defend the reformed Arabic alphabet developed in Tatarstan. And finally, one notes that the proponents of the Latin alphabet are not very sure of their own position; their arguments are of a rather rhetorical (and not scientific!) nature, and their aggressiveness toward pro-Arabic statements proves that they know their interpretation of the Moscow proposal (and still more, their wish to “strengthen” this proposal by farther-reaching formulations) is a risky undertaking.