[lbo-talk] Urbanization -> Modernization (was Re: WWP & KPRF)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 5:31 AM -0400 6/3/03, Chris Doss wrote:
>The most I've ever said about Chechens is that Chechen culture is 
>pre-modern and based on a system of clans that works against 
>modernization. This true. There is no national notion of a "Chechen 
>people" that transcends clan loyalty, which is why Chechen 
>nationalism resorts to fascist and Wahabbi ideology in an attempt to 
>create a substitute that can unite the various feuding clans, who 
>have all declared blood feuds on each other by this point. Pointing 
>this fact out is "trash"?

According to Edward W. Walker, Chechens remained "substantially more 
rural than the Soviet population as a whole -- according to the 1989 
census, 27 percent of Chechens lived in cities..." ("Islam in 
Chechnya," March 13, 1998, 
<http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~bsp/caucasus/newsletter/1998-06_walker.pdf>). 
Clans didn't disappear because the Soviets failed to urbanize them. 
The same problem existed in Kosovo.  Can't easily become modern 
without first becoming urban.
-- 
Yoshie

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