Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan, 1919-1937

Cloe Drieu, Adrian Morfee

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253037879
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: History

Between the founding of Soviet Uzbekistan in 1924 and the Stalinist Terror of the late 1930s, a nationalist cinema emerged in Uzbekistan giving rise to the first wave of national film production and an Uzbek cinematographic elite. In Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan Cloé Drieu uses Uzbek films as a lens to explore the creation of the Soviet State in Central Asia, starting from the collapse of the Russian Empire up through the eve of WWII. Drieu argues that cinema provides a perfect angle for viewing the complex history of domination, nationalism, and empire (here used to denote the centralization of power) within the Soviet sphere. By exploring all of film's dimensions as a socio-political phenomenon—including film production, film reception, and filmic discourse—Drieu reveals how nation and empire were built up as institutional realities and as imaginary constructs.

Based on archival research in the Uzbek and Russian State Archives and on in-depth analyses of 14 feature-length films, Drieu's work examines the lively debates within the totalitarian and so-called revisionist schools that invigorated Soviet historiography, positioning itself within contemporary discussions about the processes of state- and nation-building, and the emergence of nationalism more generally. Revised and expanded from the original French, Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan helps us to understand how Central Asia, formerly part of the Russian Empire, was decolonized, but later, in the run-up to the Stalinist period and repression of the late 1930s, suffered a new style of domination.

PART I

DECOLONIZING CENTRAL ASIA: FILM STRUCTURES AND REPRESENTATIONS (1919–27)

Part 1 Introduction

Turkestan Prior to the Birth of the Soviet Union: Revolts and Colonial Revolution

TURKESTAN HAD BEEN a military province of the empire of the tsars since 1867.¹ Like many other colonial provinces, its fate underwent a fundamental shift in the second half of the 1910s—a period that, despite coinciding with a short-lived period of national liberation, was particularly violent and lethal for Turkestan’s population.² The First World War and the resulting 1916 revolts sparked by the imperial decree to requisition the labor of Muslims in Turkestan—which were violently quashed by the Imperial Army—along with the attendant economic crisis all did lasting damage to the region, triggering general destabilization. Marco Buttino estimates that the indigenous rural population of Turkestan dropped by 30 percent between 1915 and 1920, amounting to nearly half a million people (1990, 65). The rural economy was devastated by the years of civil war and aggravated by famine, disease (malaria, typhus, rabies, and cholera), difficult weather conditions, and the suspension of railway communications that cut off cereal deliveries to Turkestan. Galloping inflation meant that it became increasingly expensive to produce cereals, which had already been hit by the promotion of cotton growing.

The economic crisis caused acute tension between the indigenous population and the Russian settlers who had arrived since the taking of Tashkent in 1865. Conflicts flared up over land disputes and over access to water and food supplies. The 1917 revolutions, which in Turkestan amounted to a “colonial revolution,” to use the title of the work by Giorgi Safarov ([1921] 1985), led to the introduction of dictatorial Russian power.³ This power was, for the most part, wielded by former settlers, who shut the Muslim population out from political life, thus putting an end to the cooperation that had existed between the Russians and influential segments of the indigenous population. “Paradoxically, in Turkestan, it was not the Bolshevik party which set up Soviet power, but Soviet power and the need to confirm the power of the Soviets [which] created a Bolshevik party,” Safarov observes (110). The following years, in his opinion, were a time of “Russian-style anarchy” (russkaia svobodka)—a period of famine, pillage, exactions by Red Army guards against local traditions (byt), summary justice, the confiscation and requisition of livestock, arbitrary searches, and so on (127). The Red Army soldiers involved in removing former leaders from office (in Bukhara and Khiva) and establishing new governments were the same as those behind the quashing of the first independentist stirrings of the short-lived Provisional Autonomous Government of Turkestan, based in Kokand (also known as the Kokand Autonomy, which ran from November 1917 to February 1918), leading to further loss of human life and incipient disillusionment with local Bolshevik power (Agzamkhojaev 2006, 231).

The end of the Kokand Autonomy is generally viewed as marking the starting point for Basmachi anti-Soviet resistance, an insurrectional movement without any real political unity that wished to retain the traditional order.⁴ The history of Russian colonization until the outburst of violence in the 1916 revolts had, however, been punctuated by episodes of armed resistance by various movements. The distance that had grown between Tashkent and the Bolshevik leaders now gradually shrank. Though the Russian Soviet elites in Turkestan initially became increasingly resentful of central power and sought to manage Turkestan’s territory in autonomous fashion, the situation changed when the Commissariat of Nationalities sent a delegation headed by Petr Kobozev to reassert central authority (Sahadeo 2007, 209–11). In April 1918, the Soviet regional leaders declared the founding of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR), which nevertheless remained part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic—referred to as the Russian Soviet Federation in this work—and set up a Central Executive Committee of Turkestan, chaired by Kobozev. The advantages provided by central power (in terms of funds, grain delivery, and the promise of industrialization) meant that ties with Moscow were never completely broken off. Indeed, Kobozev managed to involve the local elites to a greater extent in the functioning of the TASSR.

The role played by the Red Army and the military authorities (and especially Mikhail Frunze) was crucial in establishing Soviet power in Central Asia, convincing the local population to participate, and winning the backing of members of the indigenous communist elite who were granted influential positions (Haugen 2003, 21).⁵ Difficulty in accessing some sources makes it difficult to establish the background of certain high-placed individuals in the state apparatus, but it seems clear that the local communist elite were appointed primarily to regulatory bodies involved solely in positive government action. Those in charge of coercion, such as the political police (the GPU, the OGPU, and then the NKVD) were run by men appointed by Moscow.⁶ The Turkestan Bureau (replaced on May 19, 1922, by the Central Asian Bureau), as the plenipotentiary representative of the Central Committee of the All-Russian (subsequently All-Union) Communist Party, was behind a number of actions that strengthened the local grip of the Bolshevik authorities. This Bureau disappeared on October 2, 1934, once central authority had been firmly established (Keller 2003).

But in the wake of the February Revolution, Russians who had acceded to local positions were not prepared to recognize the indigenous elite as their full equals: “We must not forget our status as conquerors, and we need to occupy positions within the Republic that are fitting to our importance,” they declared.⁷ Bolshevik discourse and policies were imbued with anti-imperialism—especially their pronouncements on agrarian reform (Pianciola 2008)—and for the indigenous elites involved in establishing new regimes they were a source of satisfaction (albeit wholly relative) after several years of political frustration (S. Becker 2004). The Bolshevik nationalities policy, which ostensibly encouraged national movements so as to win over Eastern populations to the revolutionary cause, thus had a positive image. The Russian Soviet Federation, which presented itself as an anti-imperialist power, was perceived as an ally. But local Russians, including communists, were viewed unfavorably (Khalid 2001, 151).

The political, economic, social, and symbolic issues affecting first Turkestan and then Uzbekistan after the end of the civil war are viewed in this book through the prism of film activity in the broad sense of the term, embracing both institutions and representations. The institutional history of the early film organizations brings into focus the initial stages of Soviet state building and the fashioning of the relationships of dependency and autonomy taking root between 1920 and 1925, a key period during which national cultural autonomy was won (chap. 1). Yet despite the assertion of sovereignty in the cultural field, amounting to the decolonization of the way institutions functioned, the first films—produced by filmmakers from outside Central Asia—still bore testimony to Russia’s former imperial hegemony. Those films are marked by colonial stereotypes comparable to the social imaginaries conveyed by cinema in the great European empires, even though Soviet political codes were timidly being taken up (chap. 2). Decolonizing social imaginaries would take longer.

1 Cultural Autonomy and the Nation (1919–24)

THE HOPES HELD out by cinema in the mid-1920s as an object of technical and social modernity are perfectly symbolized by the studio logo that appeared on posters for films produced or distributed by the Uzbek film organization (fig. 1.1). It is not possible to ascertain who created this logo, but it appears to have been designed by someone from the region given that the image reads from right to left, like Arabic script that was in use at that time. This drawing presents two Muslims. The one at the top, shown against a background of a five-pointed star, is presented in a “modern” manner, wearing a military-style cap (topi) and holding out to his compatriot, depicted manacled and with a turban, a spool of film that serves as a rope that releases the man from the dazzling divine light. This light emanates from a crescent moon, almost forming a perfect circle, thus reinforcing the idea of imprisonment and repetition, whereas the five points reach inexorably outward in all directions. The vertical composition of the image, a classic feature of Soviet iconography, creates an opposition between heaven and hell while reversing the terms; religion and creed are generally said to free man, yet here they imprison him. The nature of this opposition is corroborated by the fact that the man at the top shows his eyes and is prepared for confrontation and conflict, with his gaze associating him with fighting spirit and dynamism, unlike the man beneath, who does not even show his face. Yet while the image appears very clear-cut, there are two elements that disturb any univocal interpretation: first, the lower figure is apparently as easy to blind by film as by light; and, second, to produce any image whatsoever, the film projection needs a source of light, here found at the intersection between the Soviet star and the Muslim crescent moon.

The institutional path leading to this presumed liberation by film was to be a long and tortuous one. Indeed, the Soviet authorities in Central Asia inherited from the colonial period a legacy of disorganized and largely noncentralized film activity, though there was a network of film theaters, a collection of films, and a certain experience and audience. As in the Maghreb, colonization provided fertile ground for cinema to spread because it created powerful circulation networks, such as railways. European districts were built that became outlets for initial screenings, such as in Tashkent, and perhaps also delimiting a geographical space deemed comparatively secure by entrepreneurs working in fairs (Fomin 2004, 14–19; Akbarov 2005, 9; Corriou 2012).

Figure 1.1. Uzbekkino logo.

The situation in colonial Central Asia did not differ markedly from that in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and Iran, and the first experiments with cinema were comparable to spectacles in fairs and street performances that were organized to celebrate popular and religious festivals. Indeed, for vernacular societies, cinema was very much an extension of this tradition (Günther 2008; Drieu 2012). And then, as elsewhere in the world, cinema started to become sedentary. In 1908, the first coffeehouse screenings were held by private entrepreneurs (first in Tashkent and then in Samarkand, Bukhara, and Andijan). In 1910 and 1911, the Khiva winter and summer cinemas (figs. 1.2 and 1.3) were built in Tashkent by Prince Nikolai Konstantinovich, a cousin of Emperor Nicholas II (Akhrorov 1971, 5).¹ In tandem with the operation of agents from the Pathé and Gaumont film companies, such as Félix Mesguich, local elites started appropriating the new invention of cinema and enlisting it to serve power. Khudoibergan Devonov (1878–1940) made films showing Khan Esfandiar of Khiva and his region.²

In Central Asia and elsewhere, cinema soon became caught up in the field of politics, for notables and the authorities sought to exploit the fixed or moving image to undergird their power and entrench their legitimacy. What sets Central Asia apart, however, is the Bolshevik project to politicize film images and production to an extreme degree in the period after the civil war.

The Complex Territorial and Institutional Bases of Film Production and Distribution in Turkestan

The founding of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR) in April 1918, at the Fifth Congress of Turkestan Soviets, saw the setting up of the first film institutions against the chaotic backdrop of the civil war. But attempts to structure a viable film production system for Turkestan as a whole were hindered by the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which generated a tension between using cinema for political ends and using it for commercial profit. Moreover, the TASSR was a territorial entity in the Russian Soviet Federation (RSFSR) and so in a position of dependency and administrative and legislative subordination. Last, the lack of interest displayed by the early film studios for a place such as Turkestan—which was not only peripheral but Muslim to boot—meant that no films were made especially for local audiences. Nevertheless, this was the context in which the Russo-Bukharan Cinematographic Company was formed and made the first fiction film ever produced in Central Asia, The Minaret of Death.

Figure 1.2. Khiva winter cinema (1911). By kind permission of Boris Golender.

Figure 1.3. Khiva summer cinema (1912). By kind permission of Boris Golender.

Film Activity amid the Chaos of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on Transcriptions
• Prologue
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Decolonizing Central Asia: Film Structures and Representations (1919–27)
• Part 2: Cultural Revolution and Its Paradoxes: Nation, Modernity, and Empire (1927–31)
• Part 3: The Paradoxes of the Nationalities Policy: Nationalism versus Internationalism (1931–37)
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Notes
• Sources and Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author