Academic literature on the topic 'Political posters, Soviet – Social aspects – Uzbekistan'

Much has been made in the social sciences of the ambiguity of nationalism in Central Asia, where not only the boundaries between republics but between nations, languages, and peoples were drawn by the Soviet state. The similar ambiguity of Central Asian religiosity, however, has remained largely ignored. Perhaps religiosity, unlike the more recent idea of nationalism, is considered too fixed a construct for the modern and artificially created states of Central Asia. The division of religions into specific sects, each with its own explicit doctrine and precepts, would seem to preclude definitional necessity. Yet in the 1980s it was religiosity, malleable and stubborn, which proved as essential to the decline of the Soviet Union as did nationalism. As a vital component of identity, religion can exist without any clergy, place of worship, or understanding of sacred text, much as a nation can exist without a state or a government. The illusory aspects of religion, the comforts and mystery of rite and ritual, are as difficult for a state to control as national sentiment, and often prove the impetus behind the latter.

Visual research has been gaining popularity in various social sciences in recent decades. Moreover, developments in sociology, political science and law related to the study of cultural aspects of society are interdisciplinary in nature. Jurisprudence is a fairly conservative scientific field in Russia, and the theories of the Soviet period continue to occupy dominant positions in legal science. Nevertheless, there are quite interesting approaches borrowed from other sciences of the socio-humanitarian profile. In this regard, the study of visual sources in jurisprudence seems to the author to be a promising direction, since, one way or another, legal concepts are represented in the visual. It is worth remembering any works of fine art (propaganda posters) or cinema (cinema), where you can see the reflection of certain political and legal ideas. The purpose of the article is to show the role and importance of visual sources of information in general, as well as in relation to the history of political and steam exercises. Because the standard format of considering political and legal ideas only within the framework of written sources does not allow for a comprehensive study of the influence of doctrines on legal consciousness. Visual as well as auditory sources significantly expand the picture of the legal world. Also, the author for the first time gave a classification of visual and legal sources, which, in turn, are divided into static and dynamic. The work clearly shows that law can also be studied in a visual context, which is to some extent an anthropological reading of the legal matter.

This article researches the concept of law-abiding state in the doctrine and practice of the Central Asian countries. The analysis of the formation of law-abiding state and the legal systems of give sovereign republics, taking into account the world experience in this process, the relationship of law with morality, economy, state, politics, and other aspects of public life was carried out. Law is one of the highest social, spiritual and political values, one of the most important cultural phenomena, together with justice, humanism, etc. The authors explore the different points of view of various scientists on the This article researches the concept of law-abiding state in the doctrine and practice of the Central Asian countries. The analysis of the formation of law-abiding state and the legal systems of give sovereign republics, taking into account the world experience in this process, the relationship of law with morality, economy, state, politics, and other aspects of public life was carried out. Law is one of the highest social, spiritual and political values, one of the most important cultural phenomena, together with justice, humanism, etc. The authors explore the different points of view of various scientists on the legal state and the legal systems of the Republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. It is impossible to imagine a democratic state governed by law-abiding state without an organized, hierarchically constructed democratic legal system that protects the rights and freedoms of individuals. The term “law-abiding state” includes the legal framework of the legal state. This is especially true when we mean not just the concept of law-abiding state, but the modern democratic, secular, legal and social state. All of these major systemic entities are undergoing the same stage of formation as law-abiding state and civil society in the post-Soviet space. Many new legal phenomena need to be understood in theory and mastered in practice in systemic contexts - the system of legislation, the system of law and the legal system as well.

The article concerns the fate of Felicjan Karp’s family, one of the richest landowners of Samogitia (Lithuania) in the first two decades of the 20th century. After his father, he inherited approximately 40,163 hectares. The history of this family perfectly illustrates the changes that this social class has undergone in the past century. The end of their existence was the end of the landowner’s existence. The twilight of the Samogitian Karps took place quite quickly, for only a quarter of a century from July 28, 1914, the date of the outbreak of World War I to the Soviet invasion of the Republic of Lithuania on June 15, 1940. Over the course of these years - on a large scale two-fold - military operations, changes in the political and economic system, including agricultural reform initiated in the reborn Lithuanian state in 1922 and deportations to Siberia in 1940 brutally closed the last stable chapter in the life of Rekijów’s owners, definitively exterminating them after more than 348 years from the land of their ancestors. Relations between the Karp family and the Rekijów estate should be dated at least from September 21, 1592. In addition to the description of the family, it is also necessary to emphasize their significant economic and political importance in the inhabited region. These last two aspects gained momentum especially from the first years of the 19th century and were reflected until 1922. At that time, representatives of the Karp family jointly owned approximately 70,050 ha and provided the country with two provincial marshals (Vilnius, Kaunas) and two county marshals (Upita, Ponevezys). The author also presents their fate during World War II in the Siberian Gulag, during the amnesty under the Sikorski–Majski Agreement of July 30, 1941, joining the formed Polish Army in the USSR (August 14, 1941), the soldier’s journey through Kermine in Uzbekistan, Krasnovodsk, Caspian Sea, Khanaqin in Iraq, Palestine to the military camp near Tel-Aviv and then Egypt and the entire Italian campaign, that is the battles of Monte Cassino, Loreto and Ancona. After the war, leaving Italy to England (1946), followed by a short stay in Argentina and finally settling in Perth, Australia.

The article considers the prospects of tourism development in five countries of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. The author analyzes cultural, social and economic aspects of the tourism industry in the region. The main directions of activity of international organi-zations in the framework of tourism promotion programs are given. Central Asia has a huge potential for the tourism development. The study of the current state of tourism in Central Asia is becoming increasingly important. Tourism resources have every chance to become part of the national wealth of the countries of this region. In the group of factors determining socio-economic development of the countries in the region are natural resources, the level of production and investment, social infrastructure, management quality, international competitiveness, etc. The need for the regional development management system is conditioned by regionalization processes inherent to the current economic situation, oriented to ensuring positive national economic dynamics and maximum using the region’s potential. The studying problem of regional development makes it possible to justify, as one of the directions of its solution, the use of cluster technologies oriented to those branches of the economy that can become a vector of regional development. According to experts, the tourism industry is one of the most profitable sectors of the economy of the region. This industry covers numerous sectors of the economy and various links between them. The main tourist routes in the present time, covering many objects of the Great Silk Road, do not offer a more detailed study of the local historical, architectural and archaeological heritage. The lack of infrastructure facilities is the reason for this. This fact forces us to search solutions, which will provide a comfortable environment for both tourists and researchers. At present, the Central Asian countries occupy a very modest place in the world market of tourist services. According to many experts, the demand for sanatorium, tourist and excursion services has decreased due to the transition period, and the existing network of tourist institutions, boarding houses, rest homes needs reconstruction. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, tourism in the Central Asian republics began to develop independently, without common approaches and concepts. In many respects this is determined by the fact that the new states have chosen their own models of socio-economic development, different from each other. The different level of political freedoms, economic development features determine the current state of the tourism industry in various countries of Central Asia. The perspective of tourism development in this region is quite difficult, but an interesting task, necessary for familiarizing humanity with the most interesting culture of peoples inhabiting Central Asia and developing the economies of countries.

Nowadays the post-Soviet Central Asian countries face a broad range of security challenges and threats. Some of them are systemic in nature, while others occur sporadically. Many challenges and threats are coming from the outside the region, but the countries’ internal situation and background including historical, economic, social and political aspects. The reaction in the countries on religious-based radicalism and movements like ISIS is an ambiguous. The range and level of the threats and challenges depends on various reasons and different in all Central Asian countries. But the case of ISIS is very unprecedented and needs to be under the special analysis through the political and socio-economic dimension in all states. The different ways of development chosen by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and different background including borders, political systems, the role of religion and social stability defines the reflection to the threat in different way. Tajilistan and Uzbekistan are in high risk zone. The existing regional and extra regional organizations as CSTO and SCO are important in terms of security strengthening in Central Asia. Analyzing the general social, economic and religion climate picture in terms of absorbing or reflecting religious based extremism and ISIS the real power to stop it can be both effective inter-governmental cooperation and coordination with strong civil society support. Keywords: security, Central Asia, extremism, ISIS;

Collectives bring people and their concerns together. In the twenty-first century, this assembly happens across different material and virtual spaces that, together, establish connective layers of society. A kind of politics has emerged that seeks new forms of communication and expression and proposes new modes of (co)existence. Riots in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, the repair of a public village centre, railway workers’ strikes, green activists’ protests, songs in support of tsunami victims… These are some examples of collective actions that unite people and places. But very often these kinds of events and social practices take place and fade away too quickly without visible traces of becoming collectives. This article focuses on the contingent spaces that enable collective action and provide possibilities for “peripheral” concerns and communities to become public. The concept of “diasporas” is widened to permit discussion of how emerging (international) communities make their voices heard through political events. Some theoretical concepts will be illustrated, using two examples of collective action on 1 May 2009 that demonstrate different initiatives concerning the global (economic) crisis. Assembling Collectives and Affective Events Building a house/centre and singing for something: these are examples of practices that bring people and their ideals together in a collective action or event. This article discusses the different communities that evolve within spaces that enable collective action. These communities are formed not only on the basis of nationality, occupation, or race; elements of (temporal) membership are created out of a wide spectrum of affiliations and a sense of solidarity. Hinchliffe (13) argues that collective action can be seen as a collection of affects that link together disparate places and times, and thus the collective is a matter of considerable political interest. The emergent spaces of collective action publicise particular concerns that may connect already existing but (spatially) dispersed communities and diasporas. However, there is a need to discuss the affects, places, and temporalities that make the assemblage of new collectivities possible. The political potential of collective spaces needs careful elaboration in order that such initiatives may continue to grow without extending the influence of existing (capitalist) powers. Various communities connected “glocally” (locally and globally) can call new publics into existence, posing questions to politics which are not yet “of politics” (Thrift 3). Thus collective action can invent new connecting concerns and practices that catalyse (political) change in society. To understand the complex spatiality of collective action and community formations, it is crucial to look at processes of “affect”. Affects occur in society as “in-becoming” atmospheres and “imitation-suggestions” (Brennan 1-10) that stimulate concerns and motivate practices. The “imitation” can also be an invention that creatively binds existing know-how and experiences into a local-social context. Thinking about affects within the spaces of collective action provides a challenge to rethink what is referred to simply as the “social”. Massumi (228) argues that such affects are virtual expressions of the actually existing things that embody them; however, affects such as emotions and feelings are also autonomous to the degree that they exceed the particular body within which they are presently confined. The emerging bodies, or spaces, of collective action thus carry the potential to transform coexistence across both intellectual and physical boundaries, and communication technology has been instrumental in linking the affective spaces of collective action across both time and space. According to Thrift, the collision of different space-times very often provokes a “stutter” in social relations: the jolt which arises from new encounters, new connections, new ways of proceeding. But how can these turbulent spheres and trajectories of collective action be described and discussed? Here the mechanisms of “events” themselves need to be addressed. The “event” represents, abstractly, a spatio-temporal locus where different concerns and practices are encountered and negotiated. “Event” refers to an incoming, or emerging, object (agent) triggering, through various affective responses, new ideas and initiatives (Clark 33). In addition to revolutions or tsunamis, there are also smaller-scale events that change how people live and come together. In this sense, events can be understood to combine individual and social “bodies” within collective action and imaginations. As Appadurai has argued, the imagination is central to all forms of agency, is itself a social practice, and is the key component of our new global order (Appadurai 29-30). Flusty (7) argues that the production of the global is as present in our day-to-day thoughts and actions as it is in the mass movement of capital, information, and populations which means that there should be the potential to include more people in the democratic process (Whatmore). This process can be seen to be a defining characteristic of the term cosmopolitics which Thrift describes as: “one of the best hopes for changing our engagement with the political by simply acknowledging that there is more there” (Thrift 189). For many, these hopes are based on a new kind of telematic connectedness, in which tele- and digital communications represent the beginning of a global networked consciousness based on the continuous exchange of ideas, both cognitive and affective. Examples of Events and Collectives Taking Place on 1 May 2009 The first day in May is traditionally dedicated to working people, and there are many public gatherings to express solidarity with workers and left-wing (“red”) policy. Issues concerning work and various productions are complex, and recently the global economic crisis exposed some weaknesses in neoliberal capitalism. Different participatory/collective actions and spaces are formed to make some common concerns public at the same time in various locations. The two following examples are part of wider “ideoscapes” (official state ideologies and counter-ideologies) (see Appadurai) in action that help to illustrate both the workings of twenty-first century global capitalism and the translocal character of the public concern. EuroMayDay One alternative form of collective action is EuroMayDay, which has taken place on May 1 every year since 2001 in several cities across (mainly Western) Europe. For example, in 2006 a total of about 300,000 young demonstrators took part in EuroMayDay parades in 20 EU cities (Wikipedia). The purpose of this political action is “to fight against the widespread precarisation of youth and the discrimination of migrants in Europe and beyond: no borders, no workfare, no precarity!” (EuroMayDay). This manifesto indicates that the aim of the collective action is to direct public attention to the insecure conditions of immigrants and young people across Europe. These groups may be seen to constitute a kind of European “diasporic collective” in which the whole of Europe is figured as a “problem area” in which unemployment, displacement, and (possibly) destitution threaten millions of lives. In this emerging “glocality”, there is a common, and urgent, need to overcome the boundaries of exclusion. Here, the proposed collective body (EuroMayDay) is described as a process for action, thus inviting translocal public participation. The body has active nodes in (Western) Europe (Bremen, Dortmund, Geneva, Hamburg, Hanau, Lisbon, Lausanne, Malaga, Milan, Palermo, Tübingen, Zürich) and beyond (Tokyo, Toronto, Tsukuba). The collective process marks these cities on the map through a webpage offering contacts with each of the “nodes” in the network. On 1 May 2009, May Day events, or parades, took place in all the cities listed above. The “nodes” of the EuroMayDay process prepared posters and activities following some common lines, although collective action had to be performed locally in every city. By way of example, let’s look at how this collective action realised its potential in Berlin, Germany. The posters (EuroMayDay Berlin, "Call") articulate the oppressive and competitive power of capitalism which affects everyone, everyday, like a machine: it constitutes “the permanent crisis”. One’s actual or potential unemployment and/or immigrant status may cause insecurity about the future. There is also a focus on liminal or transitional time, and a call for a new collectivity to overcome oppressive forces from above that protect the interests of the State and the banks. EuroMayDay thus calls for the weaving together of different forms of resistance against a deeply embedded capitalist system and the bringing together of common concerns for the attention of the general public through the May Day parade. Another poster (EuroMayDay Berlin, "May"), depicting the May Day parade, centres around the word “KRISE?” (“crisis”). The poster ends with an optimistic call to action, expressing a desire to free capitalism from institutional oppression and recreate it in a more humanistic way. Together, these two posters represent fragments of the “ideoscope” informing the wider, collective process. In Berlin in 2009, thousands of people (mostly young) participated in the May Day parade (which started from the public square Bebelplatz), backed by a musical soundtrack (see Rudi). Some people also had posters in their hands, displaying slogans like: “For Human Rights”; “Class Struggle”; “Social Change Not Climate Change”; and “Make Capitalism a Thing of the Past”. Simultaneously, dozens of other similar parades were taking place across the cities of Europe, all bearing “accelerated affective hope” (Rosa) for political change and demanding justice in society. Unfortunately, the May Day parade in Berlin took a violent turn at night, when some demonstrators attacked police and set cars on fire. There were also clashes during demonstrations in Hamburg (Kirschbaum). The media blamed the clashes also on the economic recession and recently dashed hopes for change. The Berlin May Day parade event was covered on the EuroMayDay webpage and on television news. This collective action connected many people; some participated in the parade, and many more saw the clashes and burning cars on their screens. The destructive and critical force of the collective action brought attention to some of the problems associated with youth employment and immigration though, sadly, without offering any concrete proposals for a solution to the problem. The emotional character of the street marches, and later the street fighting, were arguably an important aspect of the collective action inasmuch as they demonstrated the potential for citizens to unite, translocally, around affective as well as material grief (a process that has been given dramatic expression in more recent times with events in Egypt, Libya, and Syria). Further, although the recent May Day events have achieved very little in terms of material results, the network remains active, and further initiatives are likely in the future. “Let’s Do It! My Estonia” On 1 May 2009, about 11,000 people participated in a public “thought-bee” in Estonia (located in north-eastern Europe in the region of the Baltic Sea) and (through the Estonian diaspora) abroad. The “thought-bee” can be understood as a civil society initiative designed to bring people together for discussion and problem-solving with regards to everyday social issues. The concept of the “bee” combines work with pleasure. The bee tradition was practised in old Estonian farming communities, when families in adjacent villages helped one another. Bees were often organised for autumn harvesting, and the intense, communal work was celebrated by offering participants food and drink. Similarly, during the Soviet era, on certain Saturdays there were organised days (obligatory) for collective working (e.g. to reconstruct sites or to pick up litter). Now the “bee” concept has become associated with brainstorming in small groups across the country as well as abroad. The number of participants in the May 1st thought-bee was relatively large, given that Estonia’s total population is only 1.4 million. The funding of the initiative combined public and private sources, e.g. Estonian Civil Society Foundation, the European Commission, and some companies. The information sheet, presented to participants of the May 1st thought-bee, explains the event’s purpose in this way: The main purpose of today’s thought-bee is to initiate as many actions as possible that can change life in Estonia for the better. My Estonia, our more enjoyable and more efficient society, will appear through smaller and bigger thoughts. In the thought-bee we think how to make life better for our own home-place... Let’s think together and do it! (Teeme Ära, "Teeme", translated from Estonian) The civil society event grew out of a collective action on 3 May 2008 to pick up and dispose of litter throughout Estonia. The thought-bee initiative was coordinated by volunteers. The emotional appeal to participate in the thought-bee event on May 1st was presented and circulated in newspapers, radio, television, Internet portals, and e-mails. Famous people called on residents to take part in the public discussion events. Some examples of arguments for the collective activity included the economic crisis, the need for new jobs, self-responsibility, environmental pressures, and the general need to learn and find communal solutions. The thought-bee initiative took place simultaneously in about 500 “thought-halls” all over Estonia and abroad. Small groups of people registered, chose main discussion topics (with many suggestions from organisers of the bee) and made their groups visible as nodes on the “initiative” webpage. Other people had the opportunity of reading several proposals from the various thought-halls and of joining as members of the public brainstorming event on 1 May. The virtual and living map of the halls presented them as (green) nodes with location, topics, members, and discussion leaders. Various sites such as schools, clubs, cultural centres, municipality buildings, and theatres became part of the multiple and synchronous “space-times” within the half-day thought-bee event. Participants in the thought-bee were asked to bring their own food to share and, in some municipalities, open concerts were held to celebrate the day. These practices indicate some continuity with the national tradition of bees, where work has always been combined with pleasure. Most “thought-halls” were located in towns and smaller local centres as well as on several Estonian islands. Moreover, these thought-halls provided for both as face-to-face and online encounters. Further, one English-speaking discussion group was organised in Tallinn so that non-Estonian speakers could also participate. However, the involvement of Russian-speaking people in the initiative remained rather limited. It is important to note that these embodied spaces of participation were also to be found outside of Estonia—in Brussels, Amsterdam, Toronto, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Prague, Baltimore, New York, and San Diego—and, in this way, the Estonian diaspora was also given the opportunity to become involved in the collective action. Following the theories of Thrift and Clark cited at the beginning of this article, it is interesting to see an event in which simultaneously connected places, embodying multiple voices, becomes part of the communal present with a shared vision of the future. The conclusions of each thought-hall discussion group were recorded on video shortly after the event. These videos were made available on the “Let’s Do It! My Estonia” webpage. The most frequently addressed topics of the thought-bee (in order of importance) were: community activities and collaboration; entrepreneurship and new jobs; education, values; free time and sport; regional development; rural life; and the environment and nature conservation (PRAXIS). The participants of the collective action were aware of the importance of local as well as national initiatives as a catalyst for change. The initiative “Let’s Do It! My Estonia” continued after the events of May Day 2009; people discussed issues and suggested proposals through the “initiative” webpage and supported the continuation of the collective action (Teeme Ära, "Description"). Environmental concerns (e.g. planting trees, reducing noise, and packaging waste) appear as important elements in these imaginings along with associated other practices for the improvement of daily life. It is important to understand the thought-bee event as a part of an emerging collective action that started with a simple litter clean-up and grew, through various other successful local community initiatives, into shared visions for a better future predicated upon the principles of glocality and coexistence. The example indicates that (international) NGOs can apply, and also invent, radical information politics to change the terms of debate in a national context by providing a voice for groups and issues that would otherwise remain unheard and unseen (see also Atkinson and Scurrah 236-44). Conclusions The collective actions discussed above have created new publics and contingent spaces to bring additional questions and concerns into politics. In both cases, the potential of “the event” (as theorised in the introduction of this article) came to the foreground, creating an additional international layer of temporal connectivity between many existing social groups such as unemployed young people or members of a village union. These events were both an “outcome” of, and an attempt to change, the involuntary exclusion of certain “peripheral” groups within the melting pot that the European Union has become. As such, they may be thought of as extending the concept of “diasporas” to include emerging platforms of collective action that aim to make problematic issues visible and multiple voices heard across the wider public. This, in turn, illustrates the need to rethink diasporas in the context of the intensive de-territorialisation of human concerns, “space-times and movement-trajectories yet to (be)come” (Braziel and Mannur 18). Both the examples of collective action discussed here campaigned for “changing the world” through a one-day event and may thus be understood in terms of Rosa’s theory of “social acceleration” (Rosa). This theory shows how both to the “contraction of the present” and the general instability of contemporary life have given rise to a newly affective desire to improve life through an expression of the collective will. Such a tendency can clearly take on far more radical forms as has been recently demonstrated by the mass protests and revolts against autocratic ruling powers in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. In this article, however, cosmopolitics is better understood in terms of the particular skills (most evident in the Estonian case) and affective spheres that mobilised in suggestions to bring about local action and global change. Together, these examples of collective action are part of a wider “ideoscape” (Appadurai) trying to reduce the power of capitalism and of the state by encouraging alternative forms of collective action that are not bound up solely with earning money or serving the state as a “salient” citizen. However, it could be argued that “EuroMayDay” is ultimately a reactionary movement used to highlight the oppressive aspects of capitalism without offering clear alternatives. By contrast, “Let’s Do It! My Estonia” has facilitated interactive public discussion and the practice of local skills that have the power to improve everyday life and the environment in a material and quantifiable way. Such changes in collective action also illustrate the speed and “imitative capacity stimulating expressive interactions” that now characterise everyday life (Thrift). Crucially, both these collective events were achieved through rapid advances in communication technologies in recent times; this technology made it possible to spread know-how as well as feelings of solidarity and social contact across the world. Further research on these fascinating developments in g/local politics is clearly urgently needed to help us better understand the changes in collective action currently taking place. Acknowledgements This research was supported by Estonian Science Foundation grant SF0130008s07 and by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Center of Excellence CECT). References Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 25-48. Atkinson, Jeffrey, and Martin Scurrah. Globalizing Social Justice: The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in Bringing about Social Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. Braziel, Jana Evans, and Anita Mannur. “Nation, Migration, Globalisation: Points of Contention in Diaspora Studies.” Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. Eds. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 1-18. Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. London: Continuum, 2004. Clark, Nigel. “The Play of the World.” Using Social Theory: Thinking Through Research. Eds. Michael Pryke, Gillian Rose, and Sarah Whatmore. London: Sage, 2003. 28-46. EuroMayDay. “What Is EuroMayDay?” 23 May 2009. ‹http://www.euromayday.org/about.php›. EuroMayDay Berlin. “Call of May Parade.” 3 Aug. 2009. ‹http://maydayberlin.blogsport.de/aufruf/text-only/›. EuroMayDay Berlin. “May Parade Poster.” 3 Aug. 2009. ‹http://maydayberlin.blogsport.de/propaganda/›. Flusty, Steven. De-Coca-Colonization. Making the Globe from the Inside Out. New York: Routledge, 2004. Hinchliffe, Steve. Geographies of Nature: Societies, Environments, Ecologies. London: Sage, 2007. Kirschbaum, Erik. “Police Hurt in May Day Clashes in Germany.” Reuters, 3 Aug. 2009. ‹http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5401UI20090501›. Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Ed. Paul Patton. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. 217-39. PRAXIS. “Minu Eesti mõttetalgute ideede tähtsamad analüüsitulemused” (Main analysing results about ideas of My Estonia thought-bee). 26 Oct. 2009. ‹http://www.minueesti.ee/index.php?leht=6&mID=949›. Rosa, Hartmut. “Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences of a Desynchronised High-Speed Society.” Constellations 10 (2003): 1-33. Rudi 5858. “Mayday-Parade-Demo in Berlin 2009.” 3 Aug. 2009. ‹http://wn.com/Rudi5858›. Teeme Ära. “Teeme Ära! Minu Eesti” (Let’s Do It! My Estonia). Day Program of 1 May 2009. Printed information sheet, 2009. Teeme Ära. “Description of Preparation and Content of Thought-bee.” 20 Apr. 2009. ‹http://www.minueesti.ee/?leht=321›. Thrift, Nigel. Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics and Affect. London: Routledge, 2008. Whatmore, Sarah. “Generating Materials.” Using Social Theory: Thinking Through Research. Eds. Michael Pryke, Gillian Rose and Sarah Whatmore. London: Sage, 2003. 89-104. Wikipedia. “EuroMayDay.” 23 May 2009. ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroMayDay›.

Defence date: 16 January 2009
Examining Board: Prof. Edward A. Rees (University of Birmingham, EUI) - supervisor Prof. Douglas T. Northrop (University of Michigan-Ann Arbor) - external supervisor Prof. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (European University Institute) Prof. Galina M. Yemelianova (University of Birmingham)
First made available online: 26 July 2021
The thesis examines four cases of sovietization (modernization) as realized in Central Asia and especially in Uzbekistan in the 1920s, with particular emphasis on the period between 1924 (the regionalization of Central Asia) and 1930 (the end of the last general purges of the 1920s). Showing how Moscow intended to transform the region along the lines of Soviet ideology with the idea of converting the Homo Islamicus speaking Muslim into Homo Sovieticus speaking Bolshevik, the cases embodied by the four main parts of the thesis represent the intersection of soft-line and hard-line policies and bureaucratic control. Women, as a surrogate of the proletariat and as communicators between the population and the establishment, are the central subjects that tie the four cases together. The first part focuses on visual propaganda and introduces the first level of soft-line control with state-sponsored posters being regarded as direct means for modifying the attitudes of Central Asians using images and slogans. The second part, devoted to the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, represents the second level of soft-line bureaucracy with nuances of hard-line control, highlighting the interconnections between a supposedly neutral international (front) organization and party-state and Red Army institutions. The third part of the thesis is devoted to gender policy with particular emphasis on the hujum, the reactions among the indigenous population that emerged in the form of resistance in the second half of the 1920s, and the counter-reactions by the establishment through the first stage of purges, illustrating the transition from soft-line to hard-line policy, and leading both chronologically and conceptually to the fourth part dealing with the general purges of the 1929-1930, which represent the highest degree of hard-line policy and further confirm that the Soviets intended to sovietize the region beginning with its women.