6318
#11
From: "Wallace Kaufman" <taconia@cavenet.com>
Subject: Legacy of Soviet Ethnic policies
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002
The consequences of the Soviet regime's insistence on and preoccupation with classifying citizens by ethnic groups has a serious impact on the region's future and should be an important consideration in western foreign policy. Challenging thinking and documentation of these consequences have recently been published as "The Nationalities Question in Post Soviet Kazakhstan," by Nurbulat Masanov, Karin, Chebotarev, and Natsuko Oka, Institute of Developing Economies, Jetro, Japan. It is now on line at: http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Mes/51.html
I quote a couple of passages not for endorsing the perspective but to give a taste of the book.
"In any case all historic events are ethnicized; in this way, they are mythologized and subjected to total mystificationa nd falsification. ANd history, playing, as a rule, the servant to ethnicity, actually is the best refutation and proof of the incommensurability of the myth of ethnicity before the twentieth century. Only the twentieth century globalized and politically activated ethnicity; before then, ethnicity had never been an independent subject of study."
"Consequently, there arose false ideals regarding the fact that the rights of the individual or group based on ethnic affiliation were higher than those of a person. Hence the stereotype regarding the special right to success in life and career advancement only within the territory of one's own national-state formation. . . . the rights of the Kazakh nation, the indigenous ethnos, enjoys a higher status than human rights. . . Consequently, representatives of the Kazakh ethnos have a 'natural' and 'historic' right to occupy the country's top government posts and to receive preferential treatment with respect to higher educatin, career advancement, and study of their culture and history."
While the writers explore the consequences of ethnic politics in Kazakhstan, and the book is an excellent documentation of demographics and power there, its observations are relevant to all areas of the former Soviet Union, to the Balkans, and even to the consequences of emphasizing ethnic identity in western countries.
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