Despite Cultures ─ Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan

Despite Cultures examines the strategies and realities of the Soviet state-building project in Tajikistan during the 1920s and 1930s. Based on extensive archival research, Botakoz Kassymbekova analyzes the macro and micro-level tactics of Soviet officials at the center and periphery that produced, imitated, and improvised governance in this Soviet southern borderland, and in Central Asia more generally. She shows how the tools of violence, intimidation, and coercion were employed by Muslim and European Soviet officials alike to bring about the Soviet objectives of modernization and industrialization.
In a region marked by ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity, the Soviet plan was to recognize these differences, while subsuming them within the conglomerate of the Soviet state culture, for the enlightenment of all. As Kassymbekova reveals, the local ruling system was built upon an intricate network of individuals, whose stated loyalty to Communism was monitored through a chain of command that stretched from Moscow through Tashkent to Dushanbe/Stalinabad. The system was tenuously based on both the power and insecurity of individual leaders who struggled to decipher the language of Bolshevism, yet found common ground through violent repression.

Botakoz Kassymbekova is a research fellow at the Technical University of Berlin.