Various versions of this paper were presented at the annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association (San Francisco, 2001) and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Toronto, 2003), as well as at seminars at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Princeton University. I would like to thank audiences at all these venues for their probing questions; answering them has made this a better paper. I have also benefited from the insightful comments of Sergei Abashin, Laura Adams, Peter Blitstein, Adrienne Edgar, Howard Eissenstat, Parna Sengupta, two anonymous referees for Slavic Review, and Diane Koenker, its editor. The responsibility for the views expressed here is, of course, mine alone.

1. Knight, Nathaniel, “Grigor'evin Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire?” Slavic Review 59, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Knight is speaking specifically of the critique of orientalism first presented by Edward Said, but to the extent that Said's work underpins a great deal of postcolonial critique, Knight's suspicion extends to the latter as well. Other recent treatments of tsarist rule over Central Asia find little use for postcolonial literature in understanding the dynamics: see, for instance, Brower, Daniel, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London, 2003)Google Scholar, or Robert Crews, “Allies in God's Command: Muslim Communities and the State in Imperial Russia” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1999). For an example of the sustained use of postcolonial literature to study tsarist Central Asia, see jeffery Frank Sahadeo, “Creating a Russian Colonial Community: City, Nation, and Empire in Tashkent, 1865–1923” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000).

2. Northrop, Douglas T., Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, 2004), 22 Google Scholar. While Northrop makes the colonial case most explicitly, a number of other scholars have seen early Soviet Central Asia through the prism of postcolonial studies; see Michaels, Paula, Curative Poivers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia (Pittsburgh, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Cassandra Cavanaugh, “Backwardness and Biology: Medicine and Power in Russian and Soviet Central Asia, 1868–1934” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2001).

3. One might also note parenthetically the curiosity that there has been little interest in the economic relationship between Central Asia and the Soviet state, which is where the colonial argument is the easiest to make. Soviet economic planning turned the whole region into a gigantic cotton plantation in order for the USSR to achieve “cotton independence.” The bulk of the cotton harvest was shipped to Russia, where it was processed, and the finished goods were then sent back to Central Asia. No comprehensive study of the Soviet cotton complex exists, but see J. Michael Thurman, “The ‘Command-Administrative System’ in Cotton Farming in Uzbekistan 1920s to Present” (Papers on Inner Asia 32, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Bloomington, Indiana, 1999). Scholars who invoke postcolonial studies in the study of Central Asia have been much more interested in the cultural work of Soviet power, a much sexier topic than the history of cotton.

4. Here I am entirely sympathetic to the misgivings aired by Gerasimov, I. et al., “V poiskakh novoi imperskoi istorii,” in Gerasimov, I. et al., eds., Novaia imperskaia isloriia postsovelskogo prostranstva: Sbornik statei (Kazan, 2004), 24 Google Scholar.

5. The work most often quoted in this regard is Doyle, Michael W., Empires (Ithaca, 1986)Google Scholar. For definitions devised specifically to include the Soviet Union among empires, see Suny, Ronald Grigor, “The Empire Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, ‘National’ Identity, and Theories of Empire,” in Suny, Ronald Grigor and Martin, Terry, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York, 2001), 25 Google Scholar; and Motyl, Alexander J., Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.

6. Prakash, Gyan, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, 1999)Google Scholar; Goswami, Manu, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dirks, Nicholas B., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar; Edney, Matthew H., Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. This argument is also made by Peter Blitstein in this issue and by Slezkine, Yuri, “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Socialism,” Russian Review 59, no. 2 (April 2000): 227-34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Conklin, Alice L., A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, 1997)Google Scholar, describes how French ambitions of transforming West Africans subsided when it was discovered that this would require more than the construction of railways. Colonial authorities might have proscribed individual customs or traditions, but that seldom amounted to the intrusive state regulation we see in the mobilizational states of the twentieth century. Perhaps the most celebrated case of such a proscription in postcolonial literature is that satī, the practice of cremating widows with their deceased husbands among some groups in India; see Mani, Lata, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley, 1998)Google Scholar.

8. Beissinger, Mark, “Demise of an Empire-State: Identity, Legitimacy, and the Deconstruction of Soviet Politics,” in Young, Crawford, ed., The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay? (Madison, 1993)Google Scholar; Beissinger, Mark, “The Persisting Ambiguity of Empire,” Post-Soviet Affairs 11, no. 2 (April-June 1995): 149-84Google Scholar.

9. These two categories of observers were not mutually exclusive, of course, although most of the scholarly literature was produced by the first group. See SirCaroe, Olaf, Soviet Empire: The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (London, 1954 Google Scholar); Kolarz, Walter, Russia and Her Colonies (London, 1952)Google Scholar; Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, The Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt, trans. Martin Sokolinsky and Henry A. La Farge (New York, 1979); and Conquest, Robert, ed., The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet Future (Stanford, 1986)Google Scholar.

10. For an attempt to see the two transformations in comparative perspective, see Findley, Carter V., The Turks in World History (New York, 2005)Google Scholar.

11. I have emphasized the interconnections between intellectual currents in the two empires in much of my work to date; see also Shissler, A. Holly, Between Two Empires: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey (London, 2003)Google Scholar, and Adam, Volker, Rußlandmuslime in Istanbul am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (Frankfurt am Main, 2002)Google Scholar.

12. Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), 16–27 Google Scholar.

13. In different contexts, different colonial regimes held out the possibility that individual natives (the évolués in French West Africa or British colonial subjects resident in Britain, for example) could come to be considered full “citizens,” but this possibility was never opened up to natives as a group. In the British case, race came to be a significant marker distinguishing colonial subjects from one another. See Mongia, Radhika Viyas, “Race, Nationality, Mobility: A History of the Passport,” Public Culture 11 (1999): 527-56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Colonies of settlement eventually acquired self-government (dominion status) well before decolonization swept the rest of the empire.

14. Becker, Seymour, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968)Google Scholar. On the traditionalizing impact of Russian rule in Bukhara, see Khalid, Adeeb, “Society and Politics in Bukhara, 1868–1920,” Central Asian Survey 19, nos. 3-4 (2000): 367-96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16. Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire.

17. I. V. Stalin, “Nashi zadachi na Vostoke,” Pravda, 2 March 1919.

18. Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001), 126-32Google Scholar.

19. Following the usage coined by Sheila Fitzpatrick, the Anglophone historiography of the USSR uses the term cultural revolution for a very specific campaign by the party to seize control of cultural and scientific institutions between 1929 and 1932. See Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington, 1978), 8–40 Google Scholar. Soviet leaders used the term in a much more expansive sense; without invoking this broader understanding of the term, it is impossible to understand developments of the early Soviet period. See David-Fox, Michael, “What Is Cultural Revolution?” Russian Review 58, no. 2 (April 1999): 181–201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David-Fox, Michael, Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks (Ithaca, 1997)Google Scholar; Hirsch, Francine, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, 2005), chap. 5Google Scholar. This sense of cultural revolution was superbly captured by Fülöp-Miller, René, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia, trans. Flint, F. S. and Tait, D. F. (London, 1927 Google Scholar).

20. Governor-General P. I. Mishchenko to Minister of War, 4 March 1909, Tsentral'nyi gosndarstvennyi arkliiv Respubliki Uzbekistan, f. 1–2, op. 2, d. 369,1. 7ob. This “top secret” memorandum is largely a meditation on the thinness of Russian rule in Turkestan, and this flight of fancy aside, is full of the usual complaints about the lack of financial and personnel resources that prevented Russian rule being established on firmer footing.

21. Khalid, Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform.

22. The “nation” (millat) had always been a central feature of Jadid thought, although the way thejadids imagined their nation was in flux until 1917, when an ethnic understanding of it rapidly displaced all others. After that, Jadidism became primarily a nationalist project. See Adeeb Khalid, “Nationalizing the Revolution: The Transformation of Jadidism, 1917–1920,” in Suny and Martin, eds., A State of Nations, 156–59.

23. For detailed accounts of the conflicts of 1917, see Khalid, Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform, chap. 8; Eisener, R., “Bukhara v 1917 godu,” Vostok, 1994, no. 4:131-44 and no. 5:75–9Google Scholar2; Genis, V. L., “Bor'ba vokrug reform vBukhare: 1917 god,” Voprosy istorii, 2001, no. 11-12: 18–37 Google Scholar.

24. [Abdurauf] Fitrat, “‘Tadrij’gaqorshu,” Tong, no. 3 (15 May 1920): 78–80.

25. I have made this point at greater length in Khalid, “Nationalizing the Revolution,” 153–56.

26. A serious study of early Soviet theater remains to be undertaken. The clearest evidence of the burst of energy in the realm of theater lies in the newspapers of the time.

27. Fierman, William, Language Planning and National Development: The Uzbek Experience (Berlin, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Asimova, B. S., Iazykovoe stroitel'stvo v Tadzhikistane, 1920–1940 gg. (Dushanbe, 1982)Google Scholar.

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29. On Latinization in the USSR, see Baldauf, Ingeborg, Schriftreform und Schriftwechsel bei den muslimischen Russland- und Sowjettürken (1850–1937): Ein Symptom ideengeschichtlicher und kulturpolitischer Entwicklungen (Budapest, 1993)Google Scholar; Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, chap. 5; Smith, Michael G., Language and Power in the Creation of the USSR, 1917–1953 (Berlin, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 6; Edgar, Adrienne, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton, 2004), 139-43Google Scholar.

30. On Central Asian debates over the position of women, see Kamp, Marianne R., The New Woman in Central Asia: Islam, the Soviet Project, and the Unveiling of Uzbek Women (Seattle, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

31. This and the following four paragraphs represent, in very condensed form, the first results of an ongoing research project on the transformation of Central Asia in the early Soviet period. I have cited existing literature, but otherwise made no attempt at comprehensive citation of all archival sources.

32. The text of Ikramov's speech can be found in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii, f. 62, op. 2, d. 734, 11. 47–55.

33. See, in general, Keller, Shoshana, To Moscow, not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia, 1917–1941 (Westport, Conn., 2001)Google Scholar. As Keller points out, many of the relevant archives are still closed to researchers, and much still remains to be learned about these campaigns.

34. Kamp, New Woman in Central Asia, chaps. 6–8.

35. Northrop, Veiled Empire.

36. Here I differ from Massell, Gregory, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929 (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar, and Northrop, Veiled Empire, who both see the hujum as the beginning of serious intervention in society.

37. The impact of collectivization on Central Asia has attracted surprisingly little attention. On Uzbekistan, see Shamsutdinov, Rustambek, O'zbekistonda sovetlarning quloqlashtirish siyosati va uning fojeali oqibatlari (Tashkent, 2001)Google Scholar; Shamsutdinov, Rustambek, Qishloq fojeasi: Jamoalashtirish, quloqlashtirish, surgun (Tashkent, 2003)Google Scholar; on Kazakhstan, Pianciola, Niccolò, “Famine in the Steppe: The Collectivization of Agriculture and the Kazak Herdsmen, 1928–1934,” Cahiers du monde russe 45, no. 1-2 (2004): 137-92Google Scholar.

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46. The actual compilation of the Latin alphabet and its implementation took all of three months in 1928 under the personal attention of Mustafa Kemal. Typically, the law ushering in Latinization (Türk Harflerinin Kabulu ve Tatbiki Hakkında Kanun) spoke of the adoption of “Turkish,” not Latin letters. The modern was by definition national.

47. Quoted by Bozdoğan, Sibel, Modernism and Nation-Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle, 2001)Google Scholar, 94.

48. Hoffmann, David L., Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50. Quoted by Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation-Building, 84.

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57. Quoted by Soner Çağaptay, “Crafting the Turkish Nation: Kemalism and Turkish Nationalism in the 1930s” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2003), 21–22, who provides an excellent discussion of the ethnicization of Turkish identity under Kemalism.

58. Ersanlı-Behar, Büşra, İktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye'de “Resmi Tarih” Tezinin Oluşumu (1929–1937) (Istanbul, 1992)Google Scholar; Copeaux, Etienne, Espaces et temps de la nation turque: Analyse d'une historiographie nationaliste, 1931–1993 (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar.

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63. Hirsch, Empire of Nations, chap. 6. Even when, after the mid-1930s, Russians became the elder brothers of all other “fraternal Soviet peoples,” and thus the recipients of saccharine praise for their role in leading all Soviet peoples to socialism and beyond, their primacy was rooted, not in any innate racial or ethnic supremacy, but rather in the fact of their having progressed further along the evolutionary path than all others in the union.