“The Orient Is a Subtle Matter”: (Post)imperial Narratives and Practices in a Central Asian Village (Reflections on the Book by Sergei Abashin, Soviet Kishlak: Between Colonialism and Modernity)
1/2016
“The Orient Is a Subtle Matter”: (Post)imperial Narratives and Practices in a Central Asian Village (Reflections on the Book by Sergei Abashin, Soviet Kishlak: Between Colonialism and Modernity)
SUMMARY:
Vladimir Bobrovnikov discusses the new book by Sergey Abashin, The Soviet Kishlak: Between Colonialism and Modernization. Historiographic analysis overlaps with ego histoire, as Bobrovnikov has witnessed the work on the project from its inception, twenty years ago, when the new cohort of scholars of Muslim communities was forming in Russia. Through participant observation and oral histories gathered in 1995–2009, Abashin succeeded in writing a microhistory of empire in the case of an Uzbek village in North Tajikistan. Working at this local level, he deconstructs imperial and national narratives of the Russian conquest of Central Asia, examines practices and networks of village solidarity and rivalry between its factions, and investigates social foundations of local religiosity.