“Восток – дело тонкое”: (Пост)имперские нарративы и практики в среднеазиатском кишлаке (Размышляя над книгой: С. Абашин. “Советский кишлак: Между колониализмом и модернизацией”)
1/2016
“Восток – дело тонкое”: (Пост)имперские нарративы и практики в среднеазиатском кишлаке (Размышляя над книгой: С. Абашин. “Советский кишлак: Между колониализмом и модернизацией”)
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.