Once considered the major element of the Soviet ‘divide and rule’ policy, regionalism in Tajikistan has proved to be the main obstacle that precludes the building of civic nationalism. Following its unexpected independence Tajikistan has witnessed an enormous upsurge of regionalism as both an unwritten political ideology of the government and an open matter of press confrontation between Tajik intellectuals from various regions of the country. As promised before, tajikistanweb will try to shed light on the regionalism mosaic in Tajikistan and threats it poses to the consolidation of the nation.

Regionalism attributed to less developed societies could be seen in some of the most advanced countries like the United Kingdom too. However, the North-South divide in Britain contains only the economic and cultural differences between southern England and the rest of the kingdom and has nothing to do with politics. A person’s place of birth could not be a decisive fact in her/his CV. Whereas Tajik regionalism is based mainly on politics and one’s place of birth could be more important than his/her academic degree or career record in defining his/her future.

Tajik regionalism (a loose translation of mahalgarai) previously expressed in people’s surnames (Bokhari, Samarqandi, Khojandi, Vanji) evolved into something more than just a regional self-designation under the Soviet reign. National-territorial delimitation by the Soviet planners excluded the majority of Tajiks and most of their areas from the Tajik republic during 1924-1929 to ensure Moscow’s control over the region. The topic has been discussed by tajikistanweb in "The Axed Persian Identity". Here the links will be drawn between the obviously unfair delimitation and the rise of Tajik regionalism.

An excerpt from a report by Aleksey Dyakov, the chairman of the Organisation Office (Orgburo) of the Khojand Okrug in 1928 explains how Samarkand and other Tajik areas had been granted to Uzbekistan based on a biased false census conducted in 1926:

"During the census of 1926 a significant part of the Tajik population was registered as Uzbek. Thus, for example, in the 1920 census in Samarkand city the Tajiks were recorded as numbering 44,758 and the Uzbeks only 3301. According to the 1926 census, the number of Uzbeks was recorded as 43,364 and the Tajiks as only 10,716. In a series of kishlaks [villages] in the Khojand Okrug, whose population was registered as Tajik in 1920 e.g. in Asht, Kalacha, Akjar i Tajik and others, in the 1926 census they were registered as Uzbeks. Similar facts can be adduced also with regard to Ferghana, Samarkand, and especially the Bukhara oblasts." (Paul Bergne, The Birth of Tajikistan, 2007, p. 106).

The outspoken Communist was removed from his post in August 1929.
The major Tajik cities of Bukhara and Samarkand with their long-standing Persian history could have generated the sense of Tajik nationalism in the dawn of the Soviet empire, had they been officially incorporated into the Tajik republic. The two cities have served as the capitals of Persian or Persian-speaking empires in the past and still remain as mainly Persian-populated, despite the cultural massacre led by various Uzbek governments.

The loss of traditional Tajik political and cultural centres contributed to the development of Tajik regionalism and adversely affected the process of Tajiks’ consolidation into a single nation. (Vladimir Babak, Political Organisation in Central Asia, 2004, p. 290).

A torn apart people could not see itself as a nation, while most of their co-ethnics and cities were left beyond their official borders.

The point is well-clarified in Post-Soviet Political Order by Barnett R. Rubin and Jack L. Snyder:

"Analyses of this orientation attribute the weakness of Tajik nationalism to social characteristics of Tajiks, the history of the Tajik intelligentsia (conceived as the potential creator and agent of nationalism), and the mode of formation of the national republic of Tajikistan. While all identities in pre-Soviet Central Asia were weakly territorialized, the Tajik were the least territorial. If nationalism is the political belief that ethnic and territorial boundaries should coincide, the Tajiks were uniquely unsuited for it. For Tajiks even more than for other Central Asians, the difficulty was not that the borders were drawn incorrectly, but that no borders could have been "correct" in a nationalist sense." (Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building, p. 135).

Nevertheless, it could not be cited that Tajiks lacked the sense of nationhood altogether. There were Tajik Communist nationalists like Shirinsho Shotemur, Nusratulla Makhsum and Abdurrahim Hajibayev who persuaded the Soviet planners to include the Khojand Okrug within the newly-established Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929.

(to be continued)

Regionalism Vs Nationalism. Part 2

Regionalism Vs Nationalism. Part 3

Regionalism Vs Nationalism. Part 4