--- Adam Souzis <adamsz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > yes, i was using the term racist loosely --
> "nativist" would have been
> > > more precise. Just saying "chauvinistic" seems
> too broad a term to me
> > > unless it has some nuance i'm not aware of.
> > >
> > > And yes, its not too surprising. Wasn't it Lenin
> himself who said
> > > anti-semitism is the communism of the ignorant?
> > >
> > > -- adam
> > >
>
FWIW Igor Rotar wrote the following interesting piece on nationalism in the fSU a few years ago. He doesn't discuss the CPs though.
Jamestown Foundation www.jamestown.org Russia and Eurasia Review Volume 1, Issue 14 December 17, 2002
MYTHS AND PREJUDICE ACROSS THE FSU By Igor Rotar Igor Rotar represents the Keston Institute (UK) in Central Asia.
An interesting paradox has emerged across a number of the former Soviet republics: an unexpected anti-Semitism in people who have often never even met any Jews. And along with this, a distorted sense of history is sometimes apparent, one not uncommon in a people or nation in crisis.
FUNDAMENTALISM Before the war Chechens were relatively benevolent towards the Jews who lived among them, but today the situation is very different. Time and again I have heard Chechens from varied backgrounds referring to themselves as "victims of an international Zionist conspiracy," saying that "the Jews are using stupid Russians to kill the Muslims for them." After the 1999 incursion of Chechen militants into Dagestan, the republic's chief ideologist, Movladi Udugov, declared that the Chechens were fighting not the Russians but international Zionism, and that the ultimate objective of the current war was the liberation of Jerusalem. Tellingly, as soon as the mufti of Chechnya, Ahmad Kadyrov, agreed to collaborate with the federal authorities, an article appeared on the separatist website, Kavkaz.org, in which it was "conclusively" proven that the teip [clan], of this "traitor" had accepted Jews from the mountainous regions into its community and was therefore no longer truly Chechen.
The most fervent anti-Semites in Chechnya are the so-called Wahhabis [fundamentalists]. This is how the Georgian politician, Giorgi Zaalishvili, who was held hostage by the Chechens for a year, describes their attitudes to the Jews: "More than anything else, the fundamentalists for some reason hated not the Russians but the Jews. They gave me literature that was practically indistinguishable from material published in Moscow by the Pamyat group [a Russian radical nationalist organization] and other similar organizations. The Jewish-Masonic conspiracy was one of their favorite subjects for discussion."
With the appearance of a fundamentalist underground in the Central Asian republics, anti-Semitism became popular with elements of this region's indigenous population as well, though most people have never met a Jew. For example, in a leaflet published by the banned Hizb-e Tahrir party (an international organization calling for the unification of the world's Muslims into a single Caliphate), Uzbek President Islam Karimov is referred to as "an evil being, a Jews' Jew, who detests Islam with all his body and soul, and is hostile to the Koran and Mohammed (blessings and peace be to him)." In conversations with Central Asian members of Hizb-e Tahrir, I heard the view that "the Jews are the chief enemies of Muslims the world over." One Hizb-e Tahrir member even told me that he greatly regretted that "Hitler had failed in his time to eliminate all the Jews."
ETHNIC RIVALRY The various ethnic groups that make up a single nation also often portray each other in a persistently negative light. During the civil war in Tajikistan, several opposition leaders declared that their enemies were "impure" Tajiks. In a conversation with me, for example, the chairman of the republic's Democratic Party, Shodmon Yusuf, claimed that "the so-called Tajik people do not boast even a single anthem that all the regions like. Tribal thinking recognizes the right to existence of none but members of one's own tribe. The purely Farsi-speaking Tajik tribes are distinctive for their greater spirituality." At the same time, Yusuf explained that the "inhuman acts" of the Leninabadi and Kulobi (ethnic groups of Tajiks) are the result of their "intermingling with Turkic tribes and the remnants of the Mongol conquerors." The Pamiri tribes also had theories about their exclusiveness, maintaining that of all the Tajik ethnic groups they alone were the direct heirs of the ancient Aryan culture and (simultaneously!) the descendants of Alexander the Great.
As a rule, such exaggeration of one's role in history to the point of absurdity is highly characteristic of peoples who have experienced some national catastrophe.
HISTORIOGRAPHY After the armed clashes with Ossetians, for example, a group of Ingush intellectuals wrote an open letter to the Russian leadership in which they claimed that "for 5,000 years the Ingush people have been the most discriminated against people in the world." Where the figure of 5,000 years came from, or exactly why the Ingush people should have been the world's most discriminated against people was not explained.
Similar historical sensations have been circulating in Northern Ossetia. A book has been published in Vladikavkaz that seeks to prove that eleven of Christ's apostles were Ossetians and only one--Judas, naturally--was a Jew.
But absurd historiographical treatises probably appear most often in Chechnya. Djohar Dudaev maintained that the Chechens are the founders of the Muslim faith. In his opinion, a religion as great as Islam could not have developed in the barren Arabian desert, in a community of nomads, but in some paradise on earth, amongst the people of a highly cultured and mutually respectful society. The Chechens' first president considered that his country was just such a place. According to contemporary Chechen historiography, Noah's Ark came to rest on the summit of a Chechen mountain and its eight occupants, including Noah himself, were the ancestors of today's Chechens. Further unusual historical findings have emerged. For example, it is claimed that Chechnya's traditional towers are modeled on alien spaceships that visited many centuries ago. Contacts between the Chechens and aliens are given as conclusive proof that the Chechens are a chosen people.
Interestingly, exclusivity theories are also popular with peoples that have been assimilated into other nations. Thus in Bashkiria a historiographical study has been published that relates how the Sumerians in fact came from the ancient Bashkiri tribes, but migrated in the 3rd century BC to Mesopotamia, where they founded their own state. According to yet another sensational theory by authors in Ufa, the Bashkiris have common origins with the English.
However, even quite controversial theories are often incorporated into the official historiographies of the independent states which have emerged on the territory of the former Soviet Union. For example, according to contemporary Ukrainian historiography, the Ukrainian nation was established in the 9th century and not in the 16th century, as Soviet historians maintained. In line with this theory, the first Ukrainian state was in fact Kievan Rus (from the 9th to 12th centuries).
According to contemporary Uzbek historiography, the founder of the new Uzbek state was Timur (Tamerlane), who is known there as none other than the master of the three corners of the earth--Europe, Asia and Africa. In the recently constructed and astonishingly pompous Timur Museum, there is a map of the great ruler's areas of influence (those territories from which he levied tribute), embracing not only Northern Africa and Northern India but also a significant part of modern Russia, including its present-day capital. Teachers at local colleges explain to their pupils that it was Timur who saved Russia from the Mongol Horde. In fact, Tashkent aspires almost overtly to regain this superpower status today. In the central square of the Uzbek capital an unusual monument, nicknamed "the globe of Uzbekistan" by the locals, is being erected. Mounted on a pedestal is a stone globe, on which are carved the contours of just one state--Uzbekistan--which covers almost half of the planet. Similar monuments are going up in front of administrative buildings in other cities of Uzbekistan.
In Uzbekistan, the term "Soviet" is now banned and, in line with a decree from the state's cabinet of ministers, schools and libraries are having to remove textbooks and training manuals printed prior to 1993. This decree has had most impact on school and municipal libraries. Yet it is not only ideological literature that is being confiscated, but also foreign language and medical textbooks. The offending books are being sent for pulping and then used in the production of toilet paper. However, this year, as a result of a catastrophic shortage of textbooks, the authorities are relaxing their monitoring of the implementation of the decree. And Soviet-era books are sometimes allowed to stay in a library, provided that the librarian underlines the term "Soviet" throughout.
But in today's Uzbekistan, it is not only the Soviet era's cultural inheritance that is banned from study. Teachers in the state's music schools have told me that they are now required to remove the works of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven from the syllabus, "because Uzbekistan has plenty of great composers of its own."
CONCLUSION It would appear, then, that an unfounded exaggeration of the role of one's people in world history is symptomatic of a nation in crisis, and that this sort of historiography may well be incorporated into the ideology of a new and still precarious state.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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