Suchergebnisse

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the new states of Central Asia have been obliged to adjust their institutions to new symbolic frontiers and to take into account the independence they achieved in 1991. Both universities and Academies of Sciences have been called to reconsider their research policies and to orient them in order to respond to emerging national issues. The building of national narratives is a particularly relevant object of study in observing the various modes of legitimization of the Central Asian states and the scientific instruments they deem necessary for their political validation. The aim of this paper is to overcome the apparent, albeit actual, character of a number of changes that have taken place in Uzbekistan since 1991, in order to demonstrate the continuity of personal, institutional, and intellectual lines uniting contemporary research to that conducted during Soviet period. The preference accorded to ancient history, the praise of the originality and long heritage of the people, and an obsession with ethnogenesis, all are rooted in the contemporary narrative of the previous regime. They invite a reconsideration of the past two decades in a more nuanced manner and a rereading of the Soviet past in order to understand the process of building the nation-state, which has now been underway for more than half a century.

Dans l'espace postsoviétique, les débats sur le « colonialisme » sont marqués par l'interprétation du passé soviétique et la dissociation entre des discours politiques souvent victimisateurs et des habitus qui intègrent et même revendiquent des éléments du quotidien soviétique. En Asie centrale, le thème du colonialisme russo-soviétique est contrasté : certains États comme l'Ouzbékistan et le Turkménistan se posent en victimes du colonialisme russe, tandis que le Kazakhstan, le Kirghizstan et le Tadjikistan hésitent entre victimisation et approbation des logiques de modernisation sociale, culturelle et économique qui ont permis d'accéder à l'indépendance. De nombreux impensés politiques liés à l'histoire mouvementée du XXe siècle forment le soubassement idéologique de cette difficulté à prendre parti sur le débat du colonialisme.

ABSTRACT. As in all post‐Soviet states, the Russian intelligentsia has been preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the beginning of the 1990s. Although the place of Orthodox religion in Russia is well documented, the subject of neo‐paganism and its consequent assertion of an Aryan identity for Russians remains little known. Yet specialists observing the political and intellectual life of contemporary Russia have begun to notice that the development of references to 'Slavic paganism' and to Russia's 'Aryan' origin can be found in the public speeches of some politicians and intellectual figures. This article will attempt, in its first section, to depict the historical depth of these movements by examining the existence of neo‐pagan and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture, and focusing on how these discourses developed in different spheres of post‐Soviet Russian society, such as those of religion, historiography, and politics.