Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:56:25.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Genealogy, Class, and “Tribal Policy” in Soviet Turkmenistan, 1924-1934

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Adrienne L. Edgar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article focuses on Soviet policy toward genealogically defined identity groups in the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan. For Soviet authorities, kinship loyalties were problematic chiefly because they hindered the emergence of class consciousness among the Turkmen. Soviet officials pursued two essentially contradictory policies in their attempt to eliminate “tribalism” in the Turkmen republic. First, they sought to undermine the economic basis of genealogical affiliation by dismantling the existing system of collective land tenure. Second, they devised a policy of “tribal parity”, which attempted to suppress kin-based conflict by guaranteeing fair and equal treatment for all genealogical groups. Instead of allowing class consciousness to supplant kinship loyalties, however, Soviet rule tended to increase the salience of distinctions based on genealogy. Because of the close linkage between genealogy and socioeconomic standing in Turkmenistan, Soviet attempts to foment class conflict inadvertently exacerbated descent group conflict.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , Summer 2001 , pp. 266 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I am grateful to all the colleagues who have commented on earlier versions of this paper, especially Barbara Keys, D'Ann Penner, Yuri Slezkine, Gaïgïsïz Charïev, Francine Hirsch, Shokhrat Kadyrov, the members of the Harvard Central Asia Working Group and the Harvard Russian and East European History Workshop, and the editor of and anonymous referees for Slavic Review. Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board, with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Department of State, which administers the Russian, Eurasian and East European Research Program (Title VIII), as well as by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. None of these individuals or organizations is responsible for the views expressed.

1. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), f. 62, op. 1, d. 20 (protocols of Central Asian Bureau meetings, April-June 1924), 11. 46-48.

2. On Soviet nationality policy, see Suny, Ronald G., The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, 1993)Google Scholar, and Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 14–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On subnational groups in the Soviet Union, see Massell, Gregory J., The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929 (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar, and Francine Hirsch, “Empire of Nations: Colonial Technologies and the Making of the Soviet Union, 1917-1939” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1998), chap. 5, esp. 246-52.

3. Turkmenskoe Natsional'noe Biuro, “Gde byt’ stolitse Turkmenii?” Turkestanskaia pravda, 9 September 1924, 2.

4. The campaign to erode genealogical structures was only one aspect of a broader Soviet assault on “backwardness” in Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviet regime also sought to “emancipate” women, eradicate religious and customary practices, replace Muslim confessional schools with Soviet secular education, and impose other forms of radical social change. On these efforts in Turkmenistan, see Adrienne Edgar, “The Creation of Soviet Turkmenistan, 1924-38” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999).

5. Khazanov, A. M., Nomads and the Outside World (Cambridge, Eng., 1984), 138-39.Google Scholar John Armstrong has discussed the crucial role of the “genealogical principle” in the emergence of ethnicities in the Middle East and Central Asia. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, 1982), chap. 2. See also Shryock, Andrew, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley, 1997), 311-28.Google Scholar

6. In the Soviet Turkmen republic of the mid-1920s, only about 15 percent of the population was fully nomadic. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), 1. 3316, op. 20, d. 392 (report on Sovietization of nomadic regions delivered to the presidium of the Soviet of Nationalities, 13 August 1927), 1. 25. It is not entirely clear when the sedentarization of Turkmen nomads took place. Some scholars claim that the Turkmen had been semisedentary for centuries, while others argue that the majority of Turkmen settled only in the mid-nineteenth century. See Marat Durdyev, Turkmeny (Ashgabat, 1991), and Bregel, Yuri, “Nomadic and Sedentary Elements among the Turkmens,” Central Asiatic Journal 25, no. 1-2 (1981): 5–37.Google Scholar See also König, Wolfgang, Die Achal-Teke: Zur Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft einer Turkmenengruppe im XIX Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1962), 41–43.Google Scholar

7. Irons, William, The Yomut Turkmen: A Study of Social Organization among a Central Asian Turkic-Speaking Population (Ann Arbor, 1975), 40–44.Google Scholar When I use the term tribe, I mean simply the largest subset of the genealogical category Turkmen (Teke, Yomut, and so forth). In Turkmen, these large groups were called halq or il, both of which can also be translated as “people.” I will use “lineage” to refer to smaller, local groups and “descent group” as a general term for all genealogically defined groups.

8. Ibid., 43-44. See also G. I. Karpov, “Rodoslovnaia turkmen,” Turkmenovedenie, no. 1 (January 1929): 56-70; Karpov, “Iomudy: Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk,” Turkmenovedenie, no. 7-9 (July-September 1931): 69-70. This distinction between “real” or “effective” kinship and mythical kinship has been observed in other genealogically organized societies as well. See Thomas J. Barfield, “Tribe and State Relations: The Inner Asian Perspective,” and Lois Beck, “Tribes and the State in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Iran,” both in Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, eds., Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (London, 1991), 156-57 and 197-98; Schirin Fathi, Jordan, an Invented Nation? Tribe-State Dynamics and the Formation of National Identity (Hamburg, 1994), 52-53. See Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 21-25, for a dissenting view on the mythical nature of tribal genealogies.

9. A. Lomakin, Obychnoepravo turkmen (Ashgabat, 1897), 52; Irons, Yomut Turkmen, 61, 113-15.

10. A striking illustration of this is the presence of “slave lineages” within some Turkmen tribes; formed by freed slaves of non-Turkmen descent, these lineages were grafted onto the genealogical trees of their former masters. Iu. E. Bregel, Khorezmskie turkmeny v XIX v. (Moscow, 1961), 161-63; see also Irons, Yomut Turkmen, 46-53, 56-58, 112-15; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286 (report of ethnographic brigade studying village life in the Poltoratsk okrug of the Turkmen SSR, 1925), 11. 14-15; König, Die Achal-Teke, 78-79.

11. On western views of nomadic and tribal groups, see Eickelman, Dale, The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 3d ed. (Upper Saddle River, N J., 1998), 128-34Google Scholar; Abu-Lughod, Lila, “Anthropology's Orient: The Boundaries of Theory on the Arab World,” in Sharabi, Hisham, ed., Theory, Politics and the Arab World: Critical Responses (New York, 1990), 99–101 Google Scholar; Fadri, Jordan, an Invented Nation? 55-56. Anthropologists have noted that pastoral nomads often adhere to an ideology of equality despite the persistence of economic and political stratification within the group. See, for example, Black-Michaud, Jacob, Sheep and Land: The Economics of Power in a Tribal Society (Cambridge, Eng., 1986).Google Scholar

12. Tapper, Richard, ed., The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London, 1983), 47 Google Scholar; Khazanov, Nomads, 142-43; also A. Hammoudi, “Segmentarity, Social Stratification, Political Power, and Sainthood: Reflections on Gellner's Theses,” Economy and Society 9, no. 3 (August 1980): 279-303. On inequalities in Bedouin Arab society, see Fathi, Jordan, an Invented Nation“? 55-57. One anthropologist has distinguished between the “non-stratified” tribal structure found in the Middle East and the stratified Inner Asian type, although others have questioned the existence of such a dichotomy. See Barfield, “Tribe and State Relations,” 157-60; Beck, “Tribes and the State in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Iran,” 219.

13. Bregel, Khorezmskie turkmeny, 122-44; Geiss, Paul Georg, “Turkman Tribalism,” Central Asian Survey 18, no. 3 (1999): 347-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Bode, K., “O turkmenskikh pokoleniakh iamudakh i goklanakh,” Zapiski russkogo geograficheskogo obschestva, vol. 2 (1847): 224 Google Scholar; Lomakin, Obychnoe pravo turkmen, 33-34; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286,11. 13, 144; König, Die Achal-Teke, 79.

15. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286,11. 13-16, 19-21, 42, 182-85, 264.

16. Ibid., 11. 13-16, 19-21; G. I. Karpov, “Turkmeniia i Turkmeny,” Turkmenovedenie, no. 10-11 (October-November 1929): 39; F. A. Mikhailov, Tuzemtsy zakaspiishoi oblasti i ikh zhizn': Etnograftcheskii ocherk (Ashgabat, 1900), 38-39; Basilov, V. N., “Honour Groups in Traditional Turkmenian Society,” in Ahmed, Akbar S. and Hart, David M., eds., Islam in Tribal Societies: From the Atlas to the Indus (London, 1984), 220-43Google Scholar; A. P. Potseluevskii, “Plemia Nokhurli (po materialiam ekspeditsii Turkmenkul'ta),” Turkmenovedenie, no. 5-6 (May-June 1931): 30-35.

17. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286,11. 42, 182-85, 264.

18. Ibid., 11. 144, 264. On stratification and oppression of “outsiders” in other nomadic societies, see Équipe écologie et anthropologic des sociétés pastorales, ed., Pastoral Production and Society/Production pastorale et société: Proceedings of the International Meeting on Nomadic Pastoralism, Paris, 1-3December 1976 (Cambridge, Eng., 1979), 58-59, 443.

19. Irons, Yomut Turkmen, 2-3, 155-58. Some scholars have argued that cyclical wealth fluctuations based on the size of the household labor pool were features of the Russian countryside as well. See Shanin, Teodor, The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910-1925 (Oxford, 1972), 63–65.Google Scholar On cyclical wealth fluctuations elsewhere in Eurasia, see Humphrey, Caroline, Marx Went Away, but Karl Stayed Behind (Ann Arbor, 1998), 280-81Google Scholar; Khazanov, Nomads, 157.

20. Mikhailov, Tuzemtsy, 34, 50.

21. See Tumanovich, O., Turkmenistan i Turkmeny (Ashgabat, 1926), 94, 90-91.Google Scholar

22. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki, f. 1562, op. 336, d. 26 (materials on the 1926 census), 1. 157; SSSR komissiia po raionirovaniiu Srednei Azii, Materialy po raionirovaniiu Srednei Azii, vol. 1, Territoriia i naselenie Bukhary i Khorezma (Tashkent, 1926), 13-14.

23. The 1897 Russian census had revealed that nearly two-thirds of Turkmen in the Transcaspian province engaged in agricultural cultivation at least part of the time. Dövletov, Juma, Turkmenskii aul v kontse XlX-nachale XX veka (Ashgabat, 1977), 56–61, 66-67Google Scholar; Nemchenko, M. A., Dinamika turkmenskogo krest'ianskogo khoziaistva (Ashgabat, 1926), 6–10.Google Scholar

24. Nemchenko, Dinamika, 19-27; Nemchenko, “Agramaia reforma v Turkmenii,” Novyivostok, 1927, no. 19:126-27, 134.

25. See Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia“ Journal of Modern History 65 (December 1993): 749-50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Vareikis, I. and Zelenskii, I., Natsional'no-gosudarstvennoe razmezhevanie Srednei Azii (Tashkent, 1924), 72.Google Scholar

27. Lewin, Moshe, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization (Evanston, 1968; reprint, New York, 1968), 41–78.Google Scholar

28. See Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class,” 752-53, for a discussion of these policies in Soviet Russia.

29. Vel'tner, A., “Minuia kapitalisticheskuiu stadiiu razvitiia,” Turkmenovedenie, no. 10 (October 1930): 4.Google Scholar See also Vorshev, V., “Osnovnye etapy razvitiia partorganizatsii Turkmenistana,” Revoliutsiia i natsional'nosti, no. 12 (December 1934): 69.Google Scholar

30. Alexander Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan, 1917-1927 (New York, 1957), 336-37.

31. Ves’ Turkmenistan (Ashgabat, 1926), 220.

32. Ibid., 219; Lomakin, Obychnoe pravo turkmen, 108-9. This system was also used by some of the neighboring peoples of Iran and Afghanistan. See Tapper, Conflict of Tribe and State, 48-49.

33. Nemchenko, Dinamika, 8; Lomakin, Obychnoe pravo turkmen, 119; Ves’ Turkmenistan, 219. See also Ch. Iazlyev, Turkmenskaia sel'skaia obshchina (Ashgabat, 1992).

34. Ves’ Turkmenistan, 218.

35. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286,11. 42, 182-85, 264.

36. Dövletov, Turkmenskii aul, 50-51, 158-59, 179.

37. Lomakin, Obychnoepravo turkmen, 107-8; Nemchenko, “Agrarnaia reforma,” 122.

38. Nemchenko, Dinamika, 9; Dövletov, Turkmenskii aul, 156-58; Ves’ Turkmenistan, 219.

39. Nemchenko, “Agrarnaia reforma,” 126-27, 133-34; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 849 (correspondence of Central Asian Bureau and Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan [KPT] on land reform in the Turkmen SSR), 1. 38.

40. See Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan, 335-36; Vel'tner, “Minuia kapitalisticheskuiu stadiiu,” 4; Vorshev, “Osnovnye etapy,” 69.

41. Nemchenko, “Agrarnaia reforma,” 129-30; Ves’ Turkmenistan, 218, 221.

42. RGASPI, f. 17. op. 69, d. 20 (investigation of the KPT Central Committee by party instructors), 1. 102; Ves’ Turkmenistan, 213; Nemchenko, “Agrarnaia reforma,” 137. The Poltoratsk and Marï provinces correspond to the present-day Mari and Ahal vilayets. Among the Turkmen of Khiva, land and water were owned collectively by the lineage and distributed equally among tribal subsections, as in Transcaspia. In Bukhara, according to Soviet ethnographers, individual land ownership was the rule among the Turkmen population. Bregel, Khorezmskie turkmeny, 96-107; N. V. Briullova-Shaskolskaia, “Na Amu Dare: Etnograficheskaia ekspeditsiia v Kerkinskii okrug TSSR,” Novyi vostok, 1927, no. 16- 17:297.

43. Ves’ Turkmenistan, 212, 334-35; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 69, d. 20,1. 102.

44. Ves’ Turkmenistan, 213, 217, 224-25.

45. Ibid., 220-22, 224-25.

46. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 69, d. 20,1. 103.

47. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 630 (reports of Leninsk provincial party committee, 1926), 11. 46-47; f. 17, op. 69, d. 20,1. 103; GARF, f. 374, op. 28s, d. 1474a (Central Asian Economic Soviet survey of the results of the 1925-26 land-water reform in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan), 1. 22.

48. GARF, f. 374, op. 28s, d. 1474a, 1. 22; Ves’ Turkmenistan, 214.

49. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 69, d. 20, 1. 103. See also GARF, f. 374, op. 28s, d. 1474a, 1. 23; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1811 (OGPU surveys of political conditions in Central Asia, January-December 1929), 1. 191.

50. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1494 (OGPU surveys of conditions in the Turkmen republic, March-July 1928), 11. 5-6, 31; d. 1811, 11. 190, 284-85; and d. 1350 (OGPU surveys of political and economic conditions in Central Asia, April-June 1928), 1. 86; GARF, f. 374, op. 28s, d. 1474a, 1. 23.

51. RGASPI, f. 121, op. 1, d. 42 (materials on village party cells in Turkmenistan from the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party, 1925), 1. 30.

52. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1350,1. 86; d. 1494,11. 5-6, 31.

53. Vareikis and Zelenskii, Natsional'no-gosudarstvennoe razmezhevanie, 60. On korenizatsiia, see Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: Ethnicity and the Soviet State, 1923-38” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1996), esp. 34-35 and chap. 3; George Liber, “Korenizatsiia: Restructuring Soviet Nationality Policy in the 1920s,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 14, no. 1 (January 1991): 15-22. On Bolshevik views of the historical inevitability of nationhood, see Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire,” 22-25.

54. The concern with tribal parity also extended to the cultural realm, where Turkmen linguists worked to create a standardized Turkmen language that would incorporate elements from all the major Turkmen dialects. See Edgar, “Creation of Soviet Turkmenistan,” chap. 8.

55. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 1, d. 22 (protocols of Central Asian Bureau meetings with materials, 23 August-28 September 1924), 11. 209-12, and op. 3, d. 513,11. 121-22. According to 1927 figures, the Turkmen population included 270,254 Tekes, 157,483 Ersaris, 103,729 Yomuts, 32,729 Sariks, 35,541 Salirs, 20,899 Goklengs, and 24,077 Chaudirs. Karpov, “Turkmeniia i Turkmeny,” 39-40.

56. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 67, d. 206 (Central Asian Bureau materials on Uzbek and Turkmen party congresses and other matters, February 1925-November 1926), 1. 11.

57. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 1, d. 22, 11. 209-12. See also V. Karpych, “Iz istorii vozniknoveniia Turkmenskoi SSR,” Turkmenovedenie, no. 10-11 (October-November 1928): 46-52.

58. Ia. A. Popok, O likvidatsii sredne-aziatskikh organov i zadachakh kompartii Turkmenii: Doklad sekretaria TsK KPT na sobranii partaktiva Ashgabata, 16. okt. 1934g. (Ashgabat, 1934), 6; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286,11. 166-68; d. 1494,1. 75.

59. Here I am following Terry Martin, who pioneered the use of the term affirmative action to refer to the Soviet policy of ethnic preferences.

60. While statistics are scarce, an impressionistic survey of the biographies of leading party officials in the 1920s and 1930s indicates that a majority were Tekes from the Ashgabat and Mari regions.

61. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 874 (Central Asian Bureau correspondence on disputes and judicial matters, January-December 1927), 11. 19-21, 23-24, 31.

62. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2818 (reports by party instructors and investigatory brigades of the Central Asian Bureau and the KPT Central Committee, February- August 1932), 1. 20.

63. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 286,1. 107.

64. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 3, d. 293 (stenographic account of the joint plenum of the KPT Central Committee and Central Control Commission, 12-15 May 1928), 11. 18-20, 26.

65. On attitudes toward “bedniaks” in Russia, see Brovkin, Vladimir, Russia after Lenin: Politics, Culture, Society (London, 1998), 165 Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York, 1994), 31.Google Scholar

66. Basilov, “Honour Groups in Traditional Turkmenian Society,” 222-30; Irons, Yomut Turkmen, 65-66; König, Die Achat-Teke, 82-84. Such religious strata were a common feature among the tribal populations of Central Asia. See also Tapper, Conflict of Tribe and State, 49-50.

67. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 3, d. 513 (stenogram of the second joint plenum of the KPT Central Committee and Central Control Commission, 10-13 October 1930), 1. 121.

68. Some scholars have argued that British colonialism actually created “traditional” Indian society. For an overview of this literature, see Niels Brimnes, Constructing the Colonial Encounter: Right and Left Hand Castes in Early Colonial South India (Richmond, Surrey, 1999), 5-9. See also Dirks, Nicholas, “Castes of Mind,” Representations 37 (1992): 56-78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the consolidation of tribal identities and practices under colonial rule in the Arab world, see Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia, 139-40.

69. Studies of ethnicity have shown that incorporation into a modern polity often results in a strengthening of particularistic loyalties, at least in the short term. See Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 1993), 67–68 Google Scholar; Esman, Milton J. and Rabinovitch, Itamar, Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca, 1988), 14–15.Google Scholar

70. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1494,11. 67-68; f. 62, d. 1349 (OGPU surveys of political and economic conditions in Central Asia, January-March 1928), 11. 154, 159.

71. On village Soviets, see Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, 81-84; Brovkin, Russia after Lenin, 164.

72. On the use of “kulak” allegations in village feuding, see Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants, 260.

73. Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class,” 757-59; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1811,11. 74-75.

74. “Perevybory sovetov 1929 g. po Turkmenskoi respublike,” Sovetskoe stroitel'stvo, 1929, no. 6:64-68.

75. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1349,11. 83, 153; on the misuse of electoral commissions in Russia, see Brovkin, Russia after Lenin, 164.

76. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1349,11. 83, 153.

77. Ibid., 1. 154.

78. Ibid., 11. 154, 84.

79. Nomads, for example, came to be regarded as inherently “kulak,” in part because of their greater ability to resist and evade the Soviet regime. K, Atabaev, “Sovetizatsiia kochevii i voprosy skotovodstva,” Turkmenovedenie, no. 2-3 (February-March 1929): 29; RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2793 (stenographic account of the first Central Asian party meeting on the socialist reconstruction of livestock herding, 2 - 6 March 1932), 11. 114-15. On defining kulaks elsewhere in the Soviet Union, see Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants, 54; Lewin, Moshe, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York, 1985), 124-28Google Scholar; Viola, Lynne, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York, 1996), 33–35.Google Scholar

80. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 3290 (Central Asian Bureau report on collective farm construction in the Gazanjïk region of the Turkmen SSR, August 1934) ,11. 1- 4. A KPT Central Committee resolution of 20 April 1932 deplored the forcible collectivization of livestock and the rush to form artel’ collective farms among nomads. Blaming overly zealous regional party organizers for this error, the Central Committee declared that the looser collective form known as the TOZ (Association for Joint Working of the Land) was more appropriate for nomadic and seminomadic areas. The decree is reproduced in Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo turkmenii, 1934, no. 1:3-4. On the response to collectivization in Turkmenistan, see Edgar, “Creation of Soviet Turkmenistan,” chap. 5.

81. K. Lapkin, “Kollektivizatsiia i klassovaia bor'ba v kochevykh raionakh Turkmenii,” Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo turkmenii, 1934, no. 1:23-26.

82. P. F. Preobrazhenskii, “Razlozhenie rodovogo stroia i feodalizatsionnyi protsess u turkmenov-iomudov,“Etnografiia, 1930, no. 4:11-15; A. Bernshtam, “Problema raspada rodovykh otnoshenii u kochevnikov Azii,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1934, no. 6:86-115. On the new impatience with “backwardness” during the cultural revolution, see Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994), 260-61Google Scholar; Hirsch, “Empire of Nations,” 208-9.